Ukrainians’ happiness rating sinks
WASHINGTON – A survey by Gallup shows that Ukrainians gave their lives in 2015 the worst ratings that the opinion pollster has yet measured in the country. The survey, published on January 4 in Washington, indicates that on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best possible life, Ukrainians on average rated their current lives at 4.0. Current life ratings have dropped among residents from all age groups, education levels, and gender, Gallup said. The only exception were the wealthiest Ukrainians, whose ratings of their future lives have improved slightly over the past year. Gallup said the poor outlook is likely related to Ukrainians’ growing dissatisfaction with their living standards in the conflict-torn country. Over the last year, the percentage of Ukrainians who report being satisfied with their living standards has dropped from 27 percent to 17 percent, Gallup said. The percentage of Ukrainians who view the country’s economic situation as “poor” jumped from 62 percent in 2014 to 79 percent in 2015. Ukraine’s Crimea region, which was annexed by Russia, has not been included in the Ukraine survey since 2014. Also excluded were Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Ukrainian forces have been engaged in military conflict with Russian-backed separatists since April 2014. Gallup said the results of its survey are based on interviews with 1,000 adults, conducted in July and August 2015. (RFE/RL)
Savchenko’s health ‘worrisome’
MOSCOW – A lawyer for Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko, who has been on a hunger strike in Russian custody for nearly a month, has described the state of his client’s health as “worrisome.” Lawyer Nikolai Polozov, who is based in Moscow, said in a tweet on January 12 that Ms. Savchenko had lost 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of weight since she started a hunger strike on December 17. Mr. Polozov also said she feels pains in her stomach and heavy nausea. Ms. Savchenko launched the hunger strike to protest a Donetsk city court’s decision in Russia’s Rostov region to prolong her detention until April 16. Russian officials say Ms. Savchenko helped relay information to artillery units that fired near a location in eastern Ukraine where two Russian journalists were killed by artillery fire in 2014. She denies the accusations, saying she was kidnapped and forcibly brought to Russia in July 2014. The 34-year-old has spent over a year in custody in Russia, during which time she has already protested her detention by going on an 83-day hunger strike. (RFE/RL)
Russian hacker Sandworm is blamed
DALLAS – U.S. cyberintelligence firm iSight Partners said it is certain that a Russian hacking group known as Sandworm caused last month’s unprecedented power outage in Ukraine. “We believe that Sandworm was responsible,” iSight’s director of espionage analysis, John Hultquist, told Reuters. iSight and other cybersecurity companies had been leaning toward blaming Sandworm, a nebulous, Moscow-based hacking group that has been strategically aligned with the Russian government, because of the Ukraine hackers’ use of BlackEnergy malware associated with Sandworm. U.S. security agencies have suspected that Russia was behind the Ukraine power outage, as well as similar attacks in the United States and Europe, but have not publicly named any culprits to date. Ukraine’s state security service has blamed Russia for the blackout affecting 80,000 customers in western Ukraine on December 23, 2015. iSight came to the conclusion it was Sandworm based on its analysis of BlackEnergy 3 and KillDisk malware used in the attack, and intelligence from “sensitive sources,” Mr. Hultquist told Reuters. He said it is not clear whether Sandworm is working directly for the Russian government. The group is named Sandworm because its malware is embedded with references to the “Dune” science-fiction series. “It is a Russian actor operating with alignment to the interest of the state,” Mr. Hultquist said. “Whether or not it’s freelance, we don’t know.” To date, Sandworm has primarily engaged in espionage, including a string of attacks in the United States using BlackEnergy that prompted a December 2014 alert from the Department of Homeland Security, according to iSight. That alert said a sophisticated malware campaign had compromised some U.S. industrial control systems. While no outages or physical destruction was reported as a result of those attacks in the United States and similar ones in Europe, some experts said that may be simply because the attackers did not want to go that far. iSight said the earlier attacks outside Ukraine may have been experimental in nature. ”iSight believes the activity is Russian in origin and the intrusions they carried out against U.S. and European SCADA systems were reconnaissance for attack,” an iSight spokesperson told Infosecurity Magazine. “It’s not a major stretch to conclude the difference in the outcomes of the attacks in the Ukraine versus those in the U.S. were an issue of intent, not capability,” Eric Cornelius, managing director of cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc. and a former U.S. homeland security official responsible for securing critical infrastructure, told Reuters. iSight said Sandworm has been staging attacks against Ukrainian officials and media for some time. During Ukrainian elections last fall, for example, Sandworm’s “malware of choice,” BlackEnergy, was allegedly used in destructive attacks against Ukrainian media. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters, Daily Beast and Infosecurity Magazine)
Ukraine for more active role of U.N.
UNITED NATIONS – Ukraine’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Volodymyr Yelchenko presented his credentials to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on January 4. During his meeting with Mr. Ban, Mr. Yelchenko “spoke in support of a more active role of the U.N. to stop the Russian aggression against Ukraine. He stressed that one of the possible ways the U.N. could engage in the de-escalation of the conflict in Donbas would be the deployment of a peacekeeping operation there,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported. Ambassador Yelchenko stated, “We are ready to discuss the mandate and other aspects of such an operation. In order to analyze the situation on the ground, we invite the assessment mission of the U.N. Secretariat to visit Ukraine.” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
OSCE: ‘People of Ukraine seek peace’
KYIV – The chief monitor of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ISCE), Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, on December 31, 2015, expressed strong hope that the coming year will be pivotal in de-escalating the violence and taking concrete steps towards a comprehensive solution to the conflict in Ukraine. “The people of Ukraine seek peace and normalization of the country,” he said. “We recognize the devastating impact of the humanitarian crisis that confronts so many in eastern Ukraine, and the need to put an end to the violence that perpetuates this crisis,” said Mr. Apakan. In anticipation of the upcoming holidays that are celebrated by people across the country and beyond, “we are mindful of the many who have lost, or are separated from, family and friends with whom they would otherwise celebrate,” added the chief monitor. There were positive developments in 2015, he said, noting the signing of agreements on the ceasefire and on weapons’ withdrawal, but this still does not mean that peace has come, or that civilians’ safety is guaranteed, said Ambassador Apakan. “A full and comprehensive ceasefire is still to be established. The fact that the number of ceasefire violations in the last weeks of December had increased again in eastern Ukraine reflects a worrying development as the year ends.” He added, “Ceasefire violations are not the only danger for civilians. On both sides of the contact line, mines continue to cause death and injury.” He was recalling that the signatories to the memorandum of September 19, 2014, had agreed that all mines have to be removed in the security zone. “It is urgent that they fulfill their commitments, for the safety of all the people of Ukraine,” concluded Mr. Apakan. (OSCE)
Putin says EU sanctions are ‘absurd’
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has described European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over its interference in Ukraine as “absurd.” In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper published on January 11, Mr. Putin said, “What the European Union is doing with those sanctions is nothing but a theater of the absurd.” He added that sanctions were “severely harming Russia” on international financial markets. The Russian president also contended that a Russian-orchestrated referendum in which people in Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine and join Russia was “democracy, the people’s will.” The vote, held after Russian forces entered the peninsula, was denounced as illegal by 100 countries in a U.N. vote. Mr. Putin rejected criticism of Moscow’s role in eastern Ukraine, where a conflict between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,000 people, saying Kyiv has failed to adequately implement a peace deal signed in Minsk in February 2015. Mr. Putin also spoke out about NATO’s enlargement following the 1991 Soviet break-up, saying the alliance’s inclusion of countries close to Russia exacerbated tensions. “NATO and the U.S. wanted a complete victory over the Soviet Union,” he said. “They wanted to sit on the throne in Europe alone.” (RFE/RL, based on reporting by DPA and Reuters)
Debt restructuring deal with Sberbank
KYIV – Ukraine’s Finance Ministry says a deal has been agreed with Russia’s Sberbank to work out a restructuring deal for commercial loans guaranteed by the Ukrainian government. Sberbank and two Ukrainian companies, Ukravtodor and Yuzhnoye State Design Office, “have agreed to work together to achieve a settlement of the transaction as soon as possible,” the ministry said in a statement on January 13. It did not say how much the loans were for, but in December of last year Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk referred to $507 million of Ukrainian commercial debt held by Russian banks that the government was seeking to restructure. Most of Ukraine’s external debt has been successfully swapped, apart from a $3 billion Eurobond held entirely by Russia. The Finance Ministry repeated on January 13 that it was ready to negotiate a restructuring of the Eurobond. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters)
Coke stirs outrage with map
WASHINGTON – Coca-Cola Russia, the affiliate for the global beverage giant on December 30, 2015, posted a holiday greetings message to the Russian social-media site VKontakte along with a map of the country dotted with Christmas trees. The map, however, sparked an angry response from Russian VKontakte users, who complained it excluded several regions, including Crimea. The annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula by the Kremlin in March 2014 has been rejected by most United Nations members and triggered Western sanctions against Moscow. On January 5, the company issued an apology on its official VKontakte page, along with a new map that included Crimea, as well as two territories missing in the earlier map: Russia’s western Kaliningrad exclave and the Kurile Islands, the Pacific Island chain whose ownership is partially contested by Japan. The new map generated a fresh wave of outrage from Ukrainians, who began circulating the hashtag #BanCocaCola and calling for a boycott of the company. “Personally, I’m not going to buy more of these products, and I call on all sober fellow citizens, and their friends and followers, to do the same,” Mustafa Nayyem, pro-Western lawmaker in Ukraine’s Parliament, wrote on his Facebook page. “A replacement can be found for the loss of something small. But to destroy an entire country, having suffered thousands of losses, and yet to operate in its marketplace – that seems to me, at the very least, to be strange,” Mr. Nayyem added. Later on January 5, Coca-Cola Russia deleted the post entirely from its VKontakte page, though images of the disputed maps themselves could still be found in the page’s photo gallery. Coca-Cola’s Ukraine affiliate, meanwhile, included on its VKontakte page several artistic versions of Ukraine’s map, all of which included Crimea as part of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington said in a January 5 statement that it had “expressed its concerns” to Coca-Cola and the U.S. State Department “about the posting in social media by Coca-Cola’s Russian office of a map of Russia that included the illegally occupied Crimea.” The Ukrainian Embassy said on its website: “The Embassy emphasized that Coca-Cola’s actions violate the official U.S. position condemning Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea, which is and has always been an integral part of Ukraine, and urged the company to immediately correct the mistake.” The Atlanta-based Coca-Cola told RFE/RL in an e-mailed statement that an agency working with its Russian affiliate had made the changes to the map “without our knowledge or approval,” adding, “We, as a company, do not take political positions unrelated to our business, and we apologize for the controversial post, which we have removed.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by Carl Schreck)
Kolomoisky sues Russia over assets
THE HAGUE – A Ukrainian oligarch fleeced of assets in Crimea valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars is taking Russia to court in the quixotic hope of recouping a tiny fraction of those losses. Igor Kolomoisky says he was unfairly deprived of his right to operate a civilian airport in Crimea after Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in March 2014. The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague announced on January 7 that it had agreed to review the claim, which Mr. Kolomoisky filed one year ago with the world’s oldest institution for the arbitration and resolution of disputes involving states. Mr. Kolomoisky’s company – Aeroport Belbek LLC – had a contract to operate a passenger terminal at Crimea’s Sevastopol International Airport until 2020. Mr. Kolomoisky wants Russia to compensate him for an estimated $15 million in losses, according to Ukrainian media reports. But whether the Ukrainian billionaire – who has business interests in the banking, energy, media, aviation and metals sectors – will get his day in court is far from clear. The PCA will first decide if it does, in fact, have jurisdiction to hear the case. Moscow says the court has no jurisdiction over the matter and that it will not participate in proceedings, according to a statement by the court. Mr. Kolomoisky is no friend of the Kremlin. While governor of the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, he took a firm stand against pro-Russia separatism by arming and bankrolling local militia groups and volunteer battalions. Mr. Kolomoisky’s claim has cast a spotlight on the blatant asset grab by the Russian authorities in Crimea after the peninsula’s seizure. Shortly thereafter, all assets belonging to the Ukrainian state – from shipyards and oil rigs to health resorts – were openly expropriated by Crimea’s regional government, now part of the Russian Federation. Others were simply seized by armed men, sometimes claiming to possess official decrees, which were never published, or no documentation at all. Early targets included Ukraine’s Chornomornaftogaz, the oil and gas company that was seized and handed over to a Crimean-run enterprise bearing the same name. The legendary Soviet-era summer camp Artek, and the Massandra, Noviy Svet and Magarch vineyards figured prominently among the other assets that were pilfered. Russian authorities in Crimea said in February that “about” 260 properties on the peninsula had been nationalized. However, officials in Kyiv put the figure much higher. On the first anniversary of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Russia had illegally taken control over more than 400 Ukrainian enterprises in Crimea and seized 18 gas fields. “It was Russia that, using weapons, committed a holdup on Ukraine and nationalized dozens of Ukraine’s state-owned facilities,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in March. “We are talking not about billions, but about hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars.” Even that total, however, is likely much higher if the stolen assets of private firms are factored in. In a preliminary estimate, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry told AP in December 2014 that around 4,000 enterprises, organizations, and agencies had had their property expropriated. (Tony Wesolowsky of RFE/RL)
Google translates Russia as ‘Mordor’
MOSCOW – Google’s hugely popular translation tool has taken to rendering certain Ukrainian words into Russian with a pronounced pro-Kyiv political spin. On January 5, for instance, “Russian Federation” in Ukrainian (Російська Федерація) was being translated as “Mordor,” the fictional realm occupied and controlled by evil necromancer Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, “The Lord Of The Rings.” It was unclear if the mistranslations were the result of a hack, or whether they were due to a malfunction in the algorithms used by Google to power its translation tool. Meanwhile, the surname of Sergei Lavrov, the long-serving Russian foreign affairs minister who has been a prominent and outspoken figure since the crisis erupted between Ukraine and Russia nearly two years ago, was translated as “sad little horse.” Ukrainian media reported that “Russians” (росіяни) was being expressed as “occupiers,” although a test on January 5 failed to produce such a result. The wonky translations appear to have lasted online for at least the better part of a day. Ukrainian media first reported on the political inflections on January 4. (Tom Balmforth of RFE/RL)