News

Poroshenko, Putin to address United Nations this weekend

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KYIV – It’s no coincidence that the warring in Donbas has calmed this month, with relatively few casualties and injuries, Kyiv experts said. The Russian government was satisfied with the decision of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, to approve on August 31 the first reading of constitutional amendments establishing a specific order in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Yet there’s another factor to the reduced fighting, experts said. Russian President Vladimir Putin will be addressing the United Nations this weekend for the first time in 10 years and he wants to present himself as a peacemaker and open the door for more negotiations, experts said. “Putin really wants this meeting” of the United Nations (U.N.), said Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Reseach in Kyiv.

News

Corruption alleged at top government rungs

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KYIV – When it comes to reforms, Ukrainians are more concerned about corruption than any other issue, according to a poll conducted in late July by Kyiv’s Razumkov Center and the Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund. When asked to choose five spheres of reform as most important, about 65 percent of the 2,011 respondents cited anti-corruption reform, about 58 percent cited legal reforms and about 40 percent selected pension and social security reform. Yet the very leaders of Ukrainian politics and business remain as engrossed in corruption as ever, if the accusations they’re flinging at each other on a weekly basis are to be believed. The latest such attack came on September 15 from Vice Prime Minister Valerii Voshchevskyi when alleging to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, that the president exclusively controls the energy ministry. “The rivalry between the two heads of the executive government is so obvious that they are not only disrupting the energy sphere, but all of Ukraine,” said Mr. Voshchevskyi, a member of Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party who submitted his resignation on September 1.

News

Debt restructuring solves Ukraine’s short-term problems

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KYIV – It’s been two weeks since the Ukrainian government confirmed that it succeeded in convincing private lenders to restructure $15 billion of debt owed them. As often is the case, the politicians resolved their immediate problems. Yet the debate continues on whether the deal benefits the Ukrainian economy in the long run. The main success of the debt restructuring was that it postponed the first debt payments to 2019 from as early as this month, when $500 million was due to the private lenders, economists said. This enabled the government to avoid a possible default, as well as continue building its international reserves, which are critical for supporting the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency. “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is elated with this agreement because it means its Ukraine program will be fully financed, while Ukraine is elated because it won’t have to pay anything for the next four years.

Ukraine

Deadly violence erupts after vote to amend Constitution

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KYIV – Ukraine endured on August 31 its most serious domestic political conflict since the Euro-Maidan when violent protests erupted on August 31 over the decision of the Verkhovna Rada to approve the first reading of constitutional amendments to shift certain state authority to local governments. The vote prompted simple bombs and explosives to fly towards Parliament from the crowd of hundreds of protesters, the majority being Svoboda party nationalists. The attacks were capped off by a military grenade that killed three National Guardsmen (one immediately) and hospitalized more than 90, news reports said. The conflict drove a wedge in Ukraine’s pro-Western forces, pitting the business-oriented, establishment parties against the populist, nationalist forces, who insisted the amendments betray national interests. Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party announced the next day it was abandoning the ruling coalition in the Verkhovna Rada.

Ukraine

Ukraine celebrates independence despite ongoing turmoil in east

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KYIV – The Ukrainian government commemorated the start of its 25th year of independence from Moscow on August 24 by hosting a march of the nation’s top soldiers along Kyiv’s main boulevard, Khreshchatyk, and awarding Anti-Terrorist Operation commanders honorary battle flags. Though it dropped the display of armaments and hardware as was the case in the previous year’s Khreschatyk parade, the Ukrainian government emphasized the military theme, which remains relevant as Russian-backed terrorists continue to engage in daily attacks on Ukrainian military and civilian targets. “It was you who made an attack deep into Ukraine impossible for the enemy, who – besides the Anschluss of Crimea and Sevastopol – tried, attempted and planned to annex at a minimum eight other Ukrainian regions in the framework of the so-called Novorossiya project,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a pre-Independence Day speech on August 22 to soldiers at the Chuhuyiv Airfield in the Kharkiv region. “It was you who freed from the occupants a large part of Ukrainian Donbas and contained the fighters in the southeastern districts of these two regions [Donetsk and Luhansk]. It’s you who, in tightly closing off the fighting lines, are holding the defense against the aggressor with an impenetrable fortress.

News

More evidence surfaces on Russian Internet trolls

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KYIV – Among the key Russian tactics in the infowars on Ukraine has been the government’s army of Internet trolls, or those recruited to monitor websites and post comments or articles in favor of the Putin regime and discrediting its enemies, often with aggressive rhetoric. More evidence has been surfacing of late confirming the Russian government’s extensive use of trolls. In late June, Liudmyla Savchuk revealed to the telegraph.co.uk news site that she had worked as a St. Petersburg-based troll, whose job it was to spread lies and hate about Ukraine and the war in Donbas. “That was always about the Kyiv ‘junta,’ how the poor people of Donbas are being bombed, how women and children are being shot, how NATO is to blame and Blackwater has mercenaries there,” Marat Burkkhard, another St.

News

Russian-backed attacks escalate as widened sanctions take effect

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KYIV – The war being waged by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian state reached a new phase on August 10 when Russian-backed terrorists intensified their attacks on towns in the Donetsk region where Ukrainian military forces are based. That same day, the latest round of expanded economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. government against private individuals and companies, both Russian and Ukrainian, went into effect. Political players and experts didn’t draw a link between the two events. The widespread view was that the Russians remain interested in fueling the war as part of a strategy to inflict as much damage on Ukraine as possible, and on all possible fronts. Russia and Ukraine exchanged their own economic sanctions in the days following the U.S. measures.

Community

Ukrainian American community continues advocacy of stronger U.S.-Ukraine relations

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WASHINGTON – More than two dozen Ukrainian Americans from New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Washington state and the District of Columbia met on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 15, for the second Ukrainian Day advocacy event to be held this year. Ukrainian Day participants met with House and Senate members or their staff at more than 20 congressional offices to press their case for more robust U.S.-Ukraine relations, including economic and military assistance. They were joined by representatives of groups that comprise the Central and East European Coalition (CEEC). “It’s incredibly important for Ukrainian Americans from across the country to meet personally with members of Congress and their staffs so that they realize how strongly we feel about the need to defend Ukraine’s democratic future,” said Katya Sedova, representing the Ukrainian Association of Washington State. “Normally, Ukrainian Days is held once a year and is a time during which members of the Ukrainian American community meet with our elected representatives to speak on topics related to Ukraine,” noted event organizer Michael Sawkiw, director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS), the public affairs office of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA).

Canada

Yatsenyuk signs free trade deal with Canada’s Harper

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Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA – Faced with a July 24 deadline to pay $120 million to private-bond holders or risk default on its debt along with an economy expected to shrink by as much as 9 percent this year according to the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine received a small boost last week when Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk marked his first bilateral visit to Canada since taking office last year by signing a free trade deal on July 14 with his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper. The Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA), announced in Chelsea, Quebec, near Prime Minister Harper’s summer residence at Harrington Lake, will eliminate nearly all (99.9 percent) duties on imports from Ukraine to Canada, including tariffs on such key goods as sunflower oil, candies and chocolates, baked goods, vodka, apparel and ceramics. Ukraine will also remove duties on 86 percent of Canadian imports on such products as beef, canola oil, frozen fish, caviar and cosmetics. Canada-Ukraine trade has been on the decline, dropping to $244 million (about $189 million U.S.) last year from $322 million (about $249 million U.S.) the previous year – and less than the $400 million (about $310 million U.S.) in low-interest bilateral loans Canada has given Ukraine since its political crisis began in 2013, the year in which World Trade Organization statistics show that Ukraine was not among Canada’s 40 trading partners. As the National Post punctuated in an editorial, Canada’s exports to Ukraine represent one ten-thousandth of Canada’s gross domestic product.

Community

6,000 attend ninth Ukrainian festival at Soyuzivka

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KERHONKSON, N.Y. – Approximately 6,000 people attended the ninth annual Ukrainian Cultural Festival under the theme “Solidarity with Ukraine” during a beautiful summer weekend on July 10-12 at the Soyuzivka Heritage Center. That spirit of solidarity could be seen all around the Soyuzivka grounds, not only the stage show, but among the vendors, the delicious food, the exhibits and film screenings, with the sounds of “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Heroes” echoing throughout the festival. The schedule of events offered festival-goers a variety of things to enjoy. Friday’s evening stage show got under way promptly at 6 p.m. with emcee Marta Czurylowicz, a Canadian television journalist. Two top-notch dance groups shared the festival stage: the Roma Pryma Bohachevsky Ukrainian Dance Workshop and the Lehenda Ukrainian Dance Company from Australia (which had just wrapped up a multi-city tour in the U.S. and Canada).