News

Coalition near collapse after failed no-confidence vote

By |

KYIV – Ukraine’s coalition government approached the brink of collapse after the Verkhovna Rada failed on February 16 to muster enough votes to dismiss the highly unpopular prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and his Cabinet of Ministers. The Samopomich and Batkivshchyna parties announced in the following days that they were exiting the coalition government, accusing national deputies of the biggest parties of abandoning the principles of the Euro-Maidan that reached its bloody conclusion nearly two years earlier to the date. “A union of power has become obvious between the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, the People’s Front (led by Mr. Yatsenyuk), and the fragments of the Party of Regions that are controlled by a series of oligarchs,” said a February 18 statement by the Samopomich party leadership. “Such actions delegitimize the government of Ukraine. They are an encroachment on the country’s order and they put a final end to the ‘European Ukraine’ parliamentary coalition.

News

Poroshenko assures IMF he’s committed to reform

By |

KYIV – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko assured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) he remains committed to pursuing economic reforms and purging corruption from his government. After receiving a sharp warning from the lender that Ukraine’s $17.5 billion bailout is at risk on February 10, Mr. Poroshenko spoke with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde by phone and agreed to draw up a “road map” aimed at keeping reforms on track. “The president noted the necessity of rebooting the government without snap elections, which would only deepen the political crisis and worsen conditions for carrying out reform,” a statement on President Poroshenko’s official website said. Separately, Ms. Lagarde said Mr. Poroshenko “reassured me of his unwavering commitment to reforms, including improving governance and fighting corruption.”

“We agreed on the principle of a roadmap of actions and priority measures to ensure prompt progress,” she said. Ms. Lagarde, in a highly unusual statement from Washington, had strongly warned that “without a substantial new effort to invigorate governance reforms and fight corruption, it is hard to see how the IMF-supported program can continue and be successful.”

The warning followed the abrupt resignation last week of Ukraine’s widely praised economy minister, Aivaras Abromavicius, who cited corruption within the ruling coalition.

News

Ukraine’s economy minister resigns over stalled reforms

By |

Poroshenko: Abromavicius should stay on
Ukraine’s minister of economic development and trade abruptly resigned on February 3, citing obstacles to change and raising concerns about the war-torn country’s ability to institute sweeping reforms and rebound economically. Lithuanian-born Aivaras Abromavicius announced on February 3 that he had submitted his resignation due to “the sharp escalation in efforts to block systemic and important reforms.”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, reacting that same day to Mr. Abromavicius’s resignation, said that the economy minister should stay at his post and push ahead with reforms.

Announcing that he was submitting his resignation, Mr. Abromavicius said in a statement to reporters that he had “no wish to be a cover for open corruption or puppets under the control of those who want to establish control over state money in the style of the old authorities.”

He singled out Ihor Kononenko, a senior lawmaker close to President Petro Poroshenko, saying Mr. Kononenko had lobbied to get his people appointed to head state companies and at top government positions. Mr. Kononenko rejected the allegations as “completely absurd” and accused Mr. Abromavicius of trying to shift the blame for his own failures atop the Economy Ministry. “I would like to make clear that each and every member of this Cabinet for the last 14 months has been doing everything in their power and sometimes even more,” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a Cabinet meeting. One of three foreign-born ministers

Mr. Abromavicius, a 40-year-old former asset manager, was one of several foreigners appointed to official posts as part of Ukraine’s attempts to pull the country away from its Soviet past, recover from Russia’s seizure of Crimea and kick-start a reform process.

News

Putin regime has two years at best, finance leaders say

By |

KYIV – When the West imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its military aggression against Ukraine, its leaders assured the public that they would accomplish their goals of restoring order and peace better than a military response would have. Hence President Barack Obama’s restraint in supplying arms to Ukraine. Nearly two years later however, the Ukrainian public – forced to endure economic misery and possibly another military draft – is still anxiously waiting for the sanctions to force an end to the aggression. The latest forecasts that surfaced in recent weeks cite 2017 as the year when Vladimir Putin’s regime could begin to crumble. “I think it’s very clear that Russia is in a very, very weak position.

News

Proposals to resolve armed conflict in Donbas fail to impress experts

By |

KYIV – Top U.S. and Russian officials were literally brainstorming on new ways to resolve the armed conflict in Donbas on January 15, as described by Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. A solution has yet to emerge from the meeting in Kaliningrad between Mr. Surkov and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the details of which were not made public. Instead, other creative proposals have surfaced in recent weeks to solve the conflict, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) taking control of the Ukrainian side of the occupied border, as well as the United Nations dispatching humanitarian missions and possibly peacekeepers. They haven’t made Ukrainian political experts any more optimistic. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has yet to propose to the Europeans an alternative to the current plan, which involves local elections in occupied Donbas, followed by de facto autonomy, said Oles Doniy, the head of the Center for Political Values Research in Kyiv.

News

Commentators react to Obama’s choice of words regarding Ukraine

By |

KYIV – U.S. President Barack Obama in his State of the Union (SOTU) address to the U.S. Congress on January 12 chose questionable words relating to Ukraine, saying it, like Syria, is being propped up by Russia.

Speaking about threats faced by the U.S. and the world, Mr. Obama said: “Even as their economy severely contracts, Russia is pouring resources in to prop up Ukraine and Syria – client states they saw slipping away from their orbit.” According to various news media reports, apparently the word “client” was a departure from the president’s prepared text, which referred to “states,” not “client states.”

News

Ukraine faces new set of economic challenges

By |

KYIV – Ukrainians rang in the new year with unprecedented economic challenges. In response to the January 1 launch of the Ukraine-European Union free trade area, the Russian government in December imposed a trade embargo on food-related imports from Ukraine and nixed their free trade zone launched in 2011. In addition, changes introduced by Ukraine’s Parliament to the 2016 central budget, approved on December 25, 2015, were not cleared with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), making it uncertain as to whether the next loan tranche of $1.65 billion, needed by the Ukrainian government to ensure stability, will arrive this month. After this year’s economic depression, with an expected 11.5 percent drop in GDP estimated by the government, Ukraine’s economy is widely expected by economists to stabilize, but grow not more than 2 percent. And that’s only if the war in the Donbas doesn’t escalate.

News

Ukraine’s foreign-born ministers at the forefront of reforms

By |

KYIV – When Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov told Mikheil Saakashvili to “Get the hell out of my country!” to conclude their nasty shouting match at the December 14 meeting of the president’s National Reforms Council, he struck a nerve in the country. Ukrainians have been critical of the unprecedented number of foreigners serving in key government posts. Some don’t like their dogged pursuit of reforms, while others don’t like their style. Some are accused of looking for a scapegoat. “We have ministers and governors [oblast state administration heads] from abroad that we’re going to call prime minister and president.

News

Presidents of Ukraine, Poland agree to cooperate in countering Russia

By |

KYIV – Amid renewed Russian military aggression on the Donbas frontlines, which has brought a new round of dead and wounded, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hosted a visit by Polish President Andrzej Duda on December 14-15 during which they consolidated their cooperation across many spheres. Riding a wave of conservative political victories in Europe this year, Mr. Duda went to great lengths to demonstrate Poland’s commitment to Ukraine. He announced that he will advocate for Mr. Poroshenko and his delegation to “have a seat at the table” at the next NATO summit, which will occur in Warsaw in early July. In the context of their plans to relaunch a presidential consultation committee to discuss projects and initiatives, the two leaders went so far as to agree on settling remaining conflicts over culture in order to ensure regional cooperation on crucial issues of security and defense. “In giving deep honor to the victims of the tragic pages of history, the common responsibility of Ukraine and Poland is to ensure their descendants a peaceful present day.

News

U.S. vice-president addresses Verkhovna Rada

By |

Biden says cost to Moscow will rise if aggression persists

KYIV – U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden told Ukraine’s Parliament that Western pressure on Russia will increase if Moscow continues its “aggression” against Kyiv. “If Russian aggression persists, the cost imposed on Moscow will continue to rise,” Mr. Biden said on December 8 in a rare appearance by a top Western official before the Verkhovna Rada. “The U.S. will maintain pressure until Moscow fulfills its [peace deal] commitments,” he said. “Despite some de-escalation in violence, there can be no sanctions relief unless until Russia meets all of its commitments under the Minsk agreement.”

He also directly accused Moscow of sending troops to fight with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and trying to hide that action from the Russian public and the world. “I don’t think the Russian people understand fully what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is doing.