person:viktor yanukovych

Avakov: Ukraine’s wall along Russian border nearly half complete

Ukraine has built almost half of its 2,300-kilometer wall on the border with Russia, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Nov. 24 during his visit to the border checkpoint in Kharkiv Oblast.

“The project has been extended until 2021,” Avakov said. “The budget plan for the 2019 allocates Hr 400 million ($14.4 million) for it. But the head of the Border Guard Service hopes to receive additional funds.”

The Kharkiv section of the Ukrainian-Russian wall has been almost completed with only 20 kilometers left, according to Avakov. The works will continue on the border sections in Sumy and Luhansk oblasts. It includes fortifications with a barbed wire fence, two-meter deep anti-tank trenches, 17-meter-high watchtowers, 40 border checkpoints as well as equipment with motion sensors, border security closed-circuit television (CCTV) and alarm systems.

Overall, 47 percent of the 2,300-kilometer wall has been built, the minister said.

In addition, starting from January, Ukraine has launched the biometric control system for Russian passport holders at all border-crossing checkpoints.

https://www.kyivpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/the-wall.jpg

Former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is running for president in the upcoming March presidential elections, joined Avakov on the trip to the border in Kharkiv Oblast on Nov. 24.

The ambitious project known as the European Wall was announced by then-Prime Minister Yatsenyuk in 2014 in the wake of the Russian military intervention in the Donbas. Ukraine lost control over parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and 400 kilometers that border with Russia. The wall was designed to protect Ukraine from further attacks on its territory as well as to stop illegal flow of weapons from Russia.

In the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014, Kremlin incited mass anti-government demonstrations in eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimean peninsula. In Donetsk and Luhansk, protesters “declared independence” from Ukraine which escalated into an armed conflict between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed forces. In April 2014, pro-Russian protesters took over the Kharkiv administration and “declared independence from Ukraine” but the Ukrainian government managed to retain control over the region.

The construction of the wall, however, halted due to lack of funding and a corruption scandal.

In 2015-2017, the Border Guard Serviced received Hr 800 mln ($28.8 million) — less than a quarter of the total cost of the project estimated at over Hr 4 billion ($147.6 million).

In November 2017, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested eight people on embezzlement charges. NABU detectives found that the officials of the Border Guard Service in cahoots with local contractors had siphoned off Hr 16.68 million ($600,800) from the Project Wall funds.

https://www.kyivpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/the-wall2.jpg

#Ukraine #Russie #murs #frontières #barrières_frontalières

North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-missiles-ukraine-factory.html

North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.

The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Such a degree of aid to North Korea from afar would be notable because President Trump has singled out only China as the North’s main source of economic and technological support. He has never blamed Ukraine or Russia, though his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, made an oblique reference to both China and Russia as the nation’s “principal economic enablers” after the North’s most recent ICBM launch last month.

Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.

Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in #Dnipro, #Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.

But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known as #Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.

“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Mr. Elleman said in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”

Will #Ukraine Ever Change ?

Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the Russian parliament, was walking out of the Premier Palace Hotel in Kiev on March 23 when he was killed in a hail of bullets. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko immediately blamed the Russian state for his murder. Voronenkov, a former supporter of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine who was accused of corruption in Russia and then fled to Kiev last year, had been a controversial figure. After his defection, he was given Ukrainian citizenship, denounced Putin and his policies, and, perhaps crucially, testified against Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s former president, who had fled to Russia when he was driven from power during the Maidan revolution of 2014.

http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/judah_1-052517.jpg

UPDATE : Critical lawmakers to be expelled from parliament after exposing corruption
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/critical-lawmakers-to-be-expelled-from-parliament-after-exposing-corruptio

A congress of the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko on March 25 voted for stripping two critical ex-members of the bloc – Mykola Tomenko and Egor Firsov - of parliamentary mandates.

If approved by parliament and the Supreme Administrative Court, the expulsion of Tomenko and Firsov will be the first-ever implementation of a constitutional clause allowing parties to expel members who leave their factions.

The decision on stripping them of mandates follows large-scale corruption accusations by Firsov against Oleksandr Hranovsky, a high-ranking Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker, and his key ally Ihor Kononenko.

Some critics even argue that the decision reflects the Poroshenko Bloc’s transformation into something worse than disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s notoriously corrupt Party of Regions.

Tiens, ça c’est une excellente idée à suggérer à FH pour sa prochaine réforme constitutionnelle.

Thousands protest voting fraud in Kryvyi Rih, call for uprising
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/thousands-protest-over-voting-fraud-in-kryvyi-rih-call-for-uprising-402616

About 5,000 demonstrators attended a protest rally on Nov. 22 against alleged voting fraud in the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off election in the city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The mood at the rally was tense, with speakers calling for an uprising, saying that they feel the authorities are ignoring both the law and their demands.

According to the official results of the mayoral election, incumbent Mayor Yury Vilkul, a former associate of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, won with 49.25 percent, while Yury Milobog from the pro-European Samopomich Party got 48.83 percent – a difference of a mere 752 votes. Milobog argues that the vote was rigged and is calling for a recount.

Early on Nov. 22, a Dnipropetrovsk court rejected all of Milobog’s complaints, triggering a backlash from his supporters.
[…]
[Samopomich MPs Yegor] Sobolev demanded that members of Kryvyi Rih’s election commission be replaced with more “principled” people.

Representatives of the Radical Party, Batkyvshchyna, Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front at the commission, which is dominated by Vilkul’s representatives, had consistently supported Vilkul. Critics say the parties’ local branches have sold out to him.

New parties with old faces perform well in local elections
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/new-parties-with-old-faces-perform-well-in-local-elections-401684.html

Ukraine’s local elections on Oct. 25 saw a whole range of new parties gain seats across the country. Yet, behind the new facade, there were plenty of old faces.

The 94 percent of election results available on Nov. 9 show that three new political parties — Our Land (Nash Kray), Revival (Vidrodzhennia) and UKROP (Dill) — made it into top 10 country-wide in popularity.

Our Land already received more than 4,100 seats in the regional and local councils, becoming the third among party lists after the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party. UKROP took seventh place among the parties with more than 1,800 seats in councils, following by Revival with more than 1,500 seats.

The experts say that Our Land and Revival have been largely formed to shelter the escapees from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, while UKROP is a political project of billionaire oligarch and former Dnipropetrovsk governor Ihor Kolomoisky.

Now these parties have a local base from which to convert their electoral — and possible future governing — success into seats in the national parliament

Après les nouveaux habits du Parti des régions, un nouveau parti d’oligarques…

The success of UKROP party has absolutely different grounds.

A creation of billionaire Kolomoisky and infamous Dnipropetrovsk businessman Gennady Korban, the party positioned itself as a “patriotic force.” Party’s full name literally means “Ukrainian Union of Patriots.” UKROP (or dill) is also the way Russian-backed separatists derogatorily call the Ukrainian soldiers.

Kolomoisky and Korban were credited with preventing the separatist advancement in the summer of 2014 by financing volunteer battalions and various PR campaigns. Now the prosecutors accuse Korban of running an organized crime group.

Another factor which contributed to UKROP’s success is financial – the party had one of the most expensive campaigns with a massive number of billboards advertising the party.

… et les nouveaux micro-partis locaux.

The local elites are responsible for dozens of the new parties created this year.

This way they tried to create the illusion for the electorate that the new people and new ideas stand behind them, Fesenko of Penta said. The local elites also wanted to show the government that "they are neither for nor against Kyiv and can continue on as they always did,” he added.

One more reason — the local elites do not want to pay the unofficial fees to get on the lists of the bigger parties. Similarly, parties like Bloc Petro Poroshenko might not want these local elites for fear they could tarnish their reputations, especially if they are too close to Kyiv, Fesenko said.

Bref, #plus_ça_change_plus_c'est_la_même_chose

Incumbent Odesa Mayor Trukhanov declared winner in Oct. 25 mayoral election
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/incumbent-odesa-mayor-trukhanov-declared-winner-in-oct-25-mayoral-election

The Odesa city elections commission has declared incumbent Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov the winner in the mayoral elections, even though Odesa regional administration chief Mikheil Saakashvili had suggested earlier that Trukhanov and his main rival should run in the second round.

The city elections commission head announced on Oct. 27 evening that Trukhanov had garnered nearly 139,000 votes, or 52.9 percent of all those who cast their ballots in the elections, so securing his victory in the first round.

Oleksandr Borovyk (Sasha Borovyk), an adviser to the Odesa regional administration head, came in second with 66,500 votes, or 25.7 percent of the vote. Former Odesa Mayor Eduard Hurvits came in third, having garnered 22,500 votes, or 8.5 percent of the vote.

H. Trukhanov était membre du Parti des Régions de Ianoukovytch.

Shuster’s political show cut off air, raising free-speech concerns once more
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/top-political-show-cut-off-air-triggers-parallels-to-yanukovych-era-questi

Ukraine’s top political talk show Shuster Live was cut off the air on Ukraine’s leading Channel 1+1 right before the program was supposed to start.

The controversial decision of the channel’s administration has received a strident backlash from Savic Shuster, the show’s host, who compared the situation to late November 2013, when his show was canceled during President Viktor Yanukovych’s authoritative rule that ended on Feb. 22, 2014, with the EuroMaidan Revolution.

“This is an insult against the people, to say the least,” Shuster said. “I think this is an agreement between the owner (oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky) of Channel 1+1 and the president’s administration. I don’t know on what grounds and, more so, for what reasons.”

The Kyiv Post is still waiting for a response from the president’s spokesperson.

Instead of the show, Channel 1+1 showed Zimniy Vals (Winter Waltz), a Russian melodrama TV series.

“This is like Swan Lake in 1991,” Shuster said, reminding of the attempt of censorship control during the collapse of the Soviet Union, where the Soviet Communist Party wanted to take one last chance of restoring authoritarian control. The ballet Swan Lake was shown on television instead of the heated events in Moscow.
[…]
Shuster Live, however, was broadcast at www.3s.tv, the show’s official website, and then, soon after being canceled on Channel 1+1, on channel 112.

During the show Shuster received a letter from Oleksandr Tkachenko, the general director of Channel 1+1, mentioning that Sushter Live does not have the right to broadcast the show on another channel, since it was not in the license agreement.

“We did not have in our agreement that you could broadcast us as you wish, and like some kind of trash, throw us from left to right,” Shuster replied. “Tkachenko, you of course are a colleague journalist but I am not your slave, I am not some sort of shit in your hands. Look into the mirror more often – maybe you will see more truth there.”
[…]
Lyashko believes that the channel was pressured by the president’s administration because of his presence at the show. Lyashko was planning to defend Ihor Mosiychuk, a Radical Party member who was controversially stripped of immunity and arrested on Sept. 17 during a parliament session.

He said that the decision to cancel the program was a result of a deal between Poroshenko and Kolomoiskiy.

“An oligarch will go to the president, find an agreement, the president will give a command, and the oligarch closes down the program,” Lyashko said.

Whistleblower fired after accusing Poroshenko’s ally of corruption
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/whistleblower-fired-after-accusing-poroshenkos-ally-of-corruption-397656.h

Ukraine’s customs offices, long a cash cow for corrupt officials, have come under attack from two directions – Konstyantyn Likarchuk, deputy head of the State Fiscal Service, and Mikheil Saakashvili, the ex-Georgian president and reformist governor of Odesa Oblast.

The fallout from the affair has already cost Likarchuk his job. He was fired on Sept. 7 after accusing his boss, Roman Nasirov, of theft and restoring ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s corrupt customs schemes.

Meanwhile, Saakashvili accused Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his Cabinet of allegedly sabotaging measures designed to make customs in Odesa Oblast transparent and corruption-free.
Nasirov, who was a lawmaker in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction before being appointed to head the State Fiscal Service, denied Likarchuk’s accusations. In turn, he accused the would-be whistleblower of incompetence and corruption.

To support his claims, Likarchuk published on Sept. 8 what appears to be a scanned copy of a property title to an apartment owned by Nasirov in London. Since Nasirov did not include this in his property declaration, he should be fired under Ukraine’s lustration law, Likarchuk wrote.

Likarchuk also said in August that Nasirov was re-introducing Yanukovych-era schemes by appointing allies of the ex-president and his former customs agency head, Ihor Kaletnik.

Violence erupts after rival Kharkiv rallies
►http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/violence-erupts-after-rival-kharkiv-rallies-2-394928.html

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/0o2lu6uu831rpwv/20150803Kharkiv.jpg

Special forces were deployed along with police negotiators on Aug. 3 when a rally in Kharkiv erupted into violent clashes, with pro-Ukrainian activists driving supporters of the Opposition Bloc into a building in a scene frighteningly…

… la suite est manquante, la page n’est pas accessible (le Kyiv Post connait des problèmes d’accessibilité depuis ce matin), mais doit certainement évoquer le massacre d’Odessa.

Liechtenstein court freezes $13.6 million belonging to Ukrainian judge
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/liechtenstein-court-freezes-136-million-belonging-to-ukrainian-judge-39462

A court in the capital of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, on July 28 ordered the arrest of 13.1 million Swiss francs ($13.6 million) on accounts owned by the wife of a Ukrainian judge, Ukraine’s State Financial Monitoring Service has reported.

The service, together with the financial intelligence services of Liechtenstein, discovered that five companies, registered in Panama and Liechtenstein, had opened the accounts in banks in Liechtenstein and Latvia.

“A substantial amount of money of doubtful origin” has accumulated in the accounts, according to the report.

The State Financial Monitoring Service said the companies belong to or have been operated by the acting judge of Ukraine’s Supreme Economic Court and his wife. The service did not identify the judge.

The service, however, did say that the judge had been one of the deputies of the chairman of the Supreme Economic Court when Viktor Yanukovych was president.

Right Sector plans to call all-Ukrainian referendum to express no confidence in authorities
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/right-sector-plans-to-call-all-ukrainian-referendum-to-express-no-confiden

The Right Sector party will initiate an all-Ukrainian referendum to ask the nation whether it trusts the authorities, whether it sees fit to blockade the territories in the eastern part of the country not controlled by Kyiv, and whether volunteer battalions should be legalized, Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh said.

Has The War In Ukraine Moved To A Second Front?
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/war-in-ukraine-second-front-transcarpathia-russia/27125339.html

If Ukraine’s east is a combustive mix of languages and loyalties, its west can be even trickier.
 
In Transcarpathia, many residents live within shouting distance of four EU countries. Inhabitants speak not only Russian and Ukrainian but Hungarian, Romanian, German, Slovak and Rusyn. Many of its 1.3 million inhabitants hold more than one passport.
 
It’s a region, in short, where loyalties don’t necessarily lie with Kyiv. So when armed violence broke out on July 11 between police and Right Sector nationalists in the Transcarpathian city of Mukacheve, it was an eerie echo of the Kremlin’s insistence that Ukraine’s problem is not outside influence, but internal strife.
[…]
Right Sector — a heavily armed militant organization branded by Russia as “neo-Nazis” and “fascists” for their ties to World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who cooperated with German forces to fend off Soviet troops — is estimated to have as many as 10,000 members serving in volunteer battalions in the Donbas war zone and elsewhere in the country.

A sometimes uneasy ally of last year’s Maidan protesters, the group has since grown critical of the government of Petro Poroshenko, in particular for cracking down on volunteer units. But one member, while confirming the group’s intention to protest in Kyiv, said they would not do so “with assault rifles and machine guns.”

The group has also sought to portray the weekend violence as fallout from the group’s self-described anticorruption efforts. Oleksiy Byk, a Right Sector spokesman, said police were to blame for the bloodshed.
[…]
Local reports suggest the Mukhacheve violence may have been the result of a business dispute. Cross-border smuggling of cigarettes and other contraband is said to be worth billions of dollars in Transcarpathia, with its easy ground access to Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

The region’s customs officials have been suspended in the wake of the violence, and at least one authority — parliamentary deputy Mykhaylo Lan, who has been accused of ties to smuggling networks — has been called in for questioning.

But it remains to be seen whether suspicions will trickle up to powerful local authorities like the so-called Baloha clan — revolving around Viktor Baloha, a former emergency situations minister and current parliamentary deputy — which is said to rule Transcarpathia with near-complete autonomy.

Some observers have suggested that the July 11 violence was little more than a battle for influence between Lan and Baloha.
[…]
Transcarpathia, which during the 20th century was alternately ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary before being claimed by the Soviet Union, leans heavily on largesse from its western neighbors.

Budapest in particular has provided passports and special benefits to residents with proven Hungarian roots. The country’s pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has set Ukraine on edge with professed concern for Transcarpathia’s Hungarian minority, which many see as shorthand for a Russian-style separatist conflict.

Moreover, the region has long shown an affinity for pro-Russian parties. In the 1990s, Transcarpathia was a solid supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Viktor Medvedchuk, the pro-Kremlin strategist with close personal ties to Vladimir Putin. Before the Maidan protests, it put its weight behind Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, rather than pro-democratic “orange” candidates.

Political analyst Viktoria Podhorna says government negligence has only added to Transcarpathian exceptionalism. Poroshenko, who earned atypical support from Baloha, appears to have responded by involving himself only minimally in Transcarpathian issues.

“There’s some kind of trade-off between the central government and regional authorities, who are basically owned by local princelings,” Podhorna says. “And this is the foundation that can lead to conflicts like those in Donbas.”

Fiala, EBA president and Dragon Capital CEO, says ’patience is thin’
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/fiala-eba-president-and-dragon-capital-ceo-says-patience-is-thin-393118.ht

Tomas Fiala, president of the European Business Association and CEO of Dragon Capital in Kyiv, is determined not to let the promise of another revolution slip away from Ukraine.

“I would hate for the 2005 post-Orange Revolution to repeat itself,” Fiala said, referring to the unsuccessful rule of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which opened the way to Viktor Yanukovych’s election as president in 2010.

Fiala, however, fears the promise of reform is yet again in danger of fading away more than a year after the end of the EuroMaidan Revolution that prompted Yanukovych to take refuge in Russia, along with other former top officials suspected of crimes ranging from mass murder to stealing billions of dollars from Ukraine.

“Patience is thin, especially if nobody gets punished for corruption and people are getting poorer while others are getting richer who are close to the current leadership,” Fiala said in a recent Kyiv Post interview.

L’un des représentants des investisseurs européens trouvent que rien ne change et que les copains du pouvoir en place s’en mettent plein les poches…

US Peace Corps volunteers gladly return to Ukraine after February 2014 suspension during EuroMaidan Revolution
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/us-peace-corps-volunteers-gladly-return-to-ukraine-after-february-2014-sus

When Kathryn Ridinger of Kent, Ohio first heard that the U.S. Peace Corps program in Ukraine was abruptly suspended at the height of the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014, she cried.

Ridinger was one of 239 Peace Corps volunteers that the U.S. government decided to evacuate on Feb. 24, 2014, days after at least 75 anti-government demonstrators were killed by snipers on Feb. 18 and Feb. 20.

But now, more than 16 months after President Viktor Yanukovych fled power, at least 15 volunteers evacuated in 2014 have returned to Ukraine. They came back on May 20.

“They put their lives on hold waiting to come back to Ukraine,” said Denny Robertson, head of Peace Corps Ukraine.

The first group of returnees will be followed by others.

An additional 65 volunteers are scheduled to arrive in October, and 80 more in March.

“By June we’ll have up to 150 volunteers,” Robertson told the Kyiv Post. “We’re amazed at how many people wanted to go to Ukraine, to be a part of the change that is taking place in the country.”

Grand retour (des volontaires du Corps) de la Paix en Ukraine.

Ukrainian journalist called in for questioning after report on jet-setting judges
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/journalist-called-in-for-questioning-after-report-on-jet-setting-judges-vi

Authorities are taking action over investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap’s April 1 reports on a group of Kyiv District Administrative Court judges who took multiple trips abroad over the past four years while issuing verdicts from cruise ships. Many of the rulings went against the state’s interests and were in favor of alleged corruption and tax-evasion cases involving close allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

But it may not be the kind of action that society expects. Investigators are focusing on how Gnap got the information, not on the wrongdoing he exposed.

On June 16, Gnap, a journalist for Hromadske TV and Slidstvo.info, was called in for questioning as a witness related to his report by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

It was for “disclosure of documents with limited access” in a criminal case based on a legal complaint lodged by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. The judge who initiated the complaint, Ruslan Arsiniy – via Volodymyr Keleberda, the deputy head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court – had visited 11 countries, some three and two times, in 2011-2014.

Arsiniy had issued six verdicts while vacationing abroad, according to Gnap’s report on Slidstvo, although Arsiniy said it was only four. The act is illegal.

Très, très classe : délivrer son jugement du pont de son navire de croisière…

Ukrainian prisoner in Russian custody ’may already be dead’
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/ukrainian-prisoner-in-russian-custody-may-already-be-dead-388684.html

The imprisonment and presumed death of a key ally of Ukrainian nationalist leader Dymtro Yarush are suspected as part of a dark ploy by Russia’s Federal Security Service to infiltrate the Right Sector.

Mykola Karpyuk was a close ally of Dmytro Yarosh, who shot to fame as part of the militant wing of the Euromaidan Revolution. The Right Sector leader gained a fearsome reputation in Russia, fueling the Kremlin’s view that ex-President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.

Karpyuk was detained while entering Russia in March 2014. That’s the last anybody from Ukraine heard about him.
[…]
His detention came shortly after Right Sector announced its political ambitions, which is fueling speculation that Russia’s security services may have taken him.

Karpyuk’s detention also came at the height of hysteria in Russia over Right Sector, with state-run media furiously circulating reports that members of the group were on their way to Russia to carry out terrorist attacks. Getting at Karpyuk may have been a way for Russian security services to simply hurt Yarosh, Denisenko said.

Officially, Russian investigators accused Karpyuk of creating illegal armed groups in Chechnya in the 1990s, court documents showed.

Bon ben, on va bientôt passer de…

fueling the […] view that […] Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup

… à un Secteur Droit instrumentalisé par le Kremlin.

Sanctions Loosen As Assets Of Yanukovych Allies Elude Ukraine’s Grasp
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-eu-sanctions-yanukovych-assets/27016543.html

For a year after the demise of his boss, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s deputy chief of staff was barred from the European Union, part of the punishment for the ousted leader and senior allies suspected of stealing public funds before he was brought down by street protests.

Now, Andriy Portnov is not only sanctions-free, he is suing the European Commission for punishing him in the first place — and warning that Ukraine’s current, pro-Western leaders are the ones who should be worried about prosecution.

The turnabout is a glaring example of one of the many challenges that Ukraine’s leaders are facing, and finding it hard to surmount, after coming to power in the wake of the Euromaidan protests that sent Yanukovych packing for Russia in February 2014.

Portnov’s story is a case study in Ukraine’s uphill struggle to prosecute key figures from the old regime and reclaim their assets, including billions of dollars the new government says has been squirreled away abroad.
[…]
The prosecutor’s office says it has identified some 300 billion hryvnia ($15 billion) worth of assets misappropriated by 14 former senior officials — less than $30 million of it in Ukraine, with the rest scattered around nations including Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Liechtenstein, and Italy.

Of that total, the prosecutor’s office says Ukrainian authorities have managed to freeze 5.5 billion hryvnia (about $275 million). Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on May 12 that $1.4 billion in Yanukovych assets has been frozen, and there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Whatever the figure, though, freezing the assets does little good unless the authorities can prove they were acquired through corrupt means, reclaim them, and return them to state coffers drained by political turmoil and the deadly conflict with Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The amount confiscated so far is a minuscule 5,014 hryvnia — less than $250.

“The arrest [of assets] looks beautiful for the media, for support, and as a public relations stunt, but has no correlation with the real result,” said Vitaliy Shabunin, head of the Anticorruption Action Center, a nongovernmental organization that specializes in anticorruption investigations and asset tracing.

Shabunin charged that incompetence and lack of coordination between the agencies responsible are hampering government efforts to turn suspicions into successful prosecutions.

Under Ukrainian law, assets can only be confiscated if an official has been convicted of an economic crime.

“As of today, not a single court has ruled to confiscate property [abroad] or to send a request abroad to return it,” said Deputy Prosecutor-General Vitaliy Kasko.

[…]

Portnov has dismissed the accusations against him as laughable and claims the post-Yanukovych authorities falsified documents in order to get him on the sanctions list.

The first hearing in his lawsuit over the sanctions is scheduled for May 21 at the EU court in Luxembourg.

“Very soon, I am not only going to prove that the actions of the Ukrainian authorities were illegal but also a breach of European standards by those in the European Union who used the information provided by the Ukrainian authorities,” Portnov told RFE/RL in April.

Portnov suggested he will not stop at a lawsuit, making clear he wants to turn the tables on the leaders who came to power after Yanukovych’s ouster.

“I think that the Ukrainian authorities, starting with government members and finishing with the president, need to watch their own Internet banking closely,” Portnov said. "What offshore accounts are they using? How are they signing agreements in offshore jurisdictions?

“When the time comes, we will find the assets the current government is hiding abroad, and it will be the subject of a criminal prosecution,” he said.

Firtash talks about his role in Yanukovych’s removal from power in February 2014
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/firtash-talks-about-his-role-in-yanukovychs-removal-from-power-in-february

Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash has said that he played a crucial role in securing a compromise between the opposition and the then president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014, and suspects that Leader of Batkivschyna Party Yulia Tymoshenko was behind the disruption of these agreements.

Firtash, associé à 50% avec Gazprom dans le gazoduc convoyant le gaz turkmène en Europe et ayant fuit l’Ukraine, est jugé à Vienne (Autriche) pour répondre à la demande d’extradition formulée par l’Ukraine pour corruption et autres.

La défense va-t-elle invoquer le risque de contagion de l’épidémie de suicides qui sévit actuellement en Ukraine parmi les anciens hiérarques du régime précédent ?

Kyiv Alleges Journalist’s Slaying Not Only Ordered, But Timed To The Minute
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/kyiv-alleges-journalists-slaying-not-only-ordered-timed-to-the-minute/26963867.html

Kyiv officials now allege that Buzyna’s killing was not only ordered at Russia’s behest, but also purposefully timed to serve as seemingly impromptu anti-Ukrainian fodder for Putin’s Q & A.

Poutine, vous dis-je !

Et pourtant, même RFE/RL confesse…

To be certain, Ukrainian officials have done little to resolve a recent string of suspicious deaths that have targeted, almost exclusively, allies of ousted leader Viktor Yanukovych and other pro-Russian figures.

Kalashnikov is the ninth member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions to die violently in the past three months. The majority of the deaths have been ruled suicides and the cases quietly closed.

… avant de se reprendre en rapportant les racontars des kremlinophiles.

The rash of unexplained deaths has prompted critics, including Russia, to accuse Poroshenko’s government of tacitly approving the elimination of Yanukovych’s clan. Pro-Kremlin observers have also accused the West of turning a blind eye to Ukraine’s judicial negligence.

Top investigator says Interpol’s inaction thwarts cases against Yanukovych allies
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/top-investigator-says-interpols-inaction-thwarts-cases-against-yanukovych-

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2015/04/17/p19j265gh2ukf1mm2ss08stmps4/original_big.jpg

Ukrainian authorities cannot try many of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s allies due to Interpol’s refusal to put them on a wanted list and technicalities in Ukraine’s law on trials in absentia, Serhiy Horbatiuk, the prosecutor in charge of the investigations, told the Kyiv Post.

C’est la faute d’Interpol…

Prosecutors insist a major impediment is Interpol’s refusal to put suspects in the EuroMaidan murder cases on an international wanted list because the international law enforcement agency believes the investigations to be politically motivated – a claim dismissed by EuroMaidan supporters. Interpol declined to comment.

On rappelera juste qu’Interpol se contente simplement de demander à l’Ukraine de fournir des preuves… et ne voit rien venir.

’The west is wrong to write off Ukraine’s debts’ | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/13/ukraine-debts-lebedev-corruption

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say, and so it may be with the west’s approach to Ukraine.

On 11 March the International Monetary Fund announced a $40bn assistance package to Kiev, consisting of $17.5bn in new loans and $15-20bn write-offs of previous ones. Such a programme may well help any normal country, but the situation in Ukraine is far from normal.

Before the former government was overthrown and then president Viktor Yanukovych fled for Moscow in February 2014, the country was renowned for its corrupt leadership. Yanukovych, convicted of robbery and assault under Soviet rule, is alleged to have received a share of each hryvnia (Ukrainian currency) that passed through the economy.

According to western analysts, the overall scale of corruption reached 14% of GDP during the early 2010s, or roughly $30bn a year.

We believe that a significant proportion of this ended in the pockets of the president and his family, or in the accounts of the oligarchs and other close associates of the ruling clan.

For years these elites salted away their illicit profits in banks accounts around the world, with the west turned a blind eye.
(…)
Between 2010 and 2014, Ukraine was something unknown in modern history – a private state. All her neighbours, as well as all countries dealing with Kiev, are extremely invested in preventing this from happening again. It’s impossible to believe that none of those discussing the restructuring of the Ukrainian debt today were unaware of what happened in those years in Ukraine. Some knew this better than those who just sent planes with cash to Ukrainian banks or those who charged exhorbitant fees for “legal advice” for Ukrainian oligarchs settled in Europe.
(…)
We strongly believe that the holders of Ukraine’s government debt must rethink the conditions for dealing with this country and realise that rather than helping, debt relief may mean a full amnesty for a corrupt clique who has brought the nation to its knees. If the international community wants to fight against global corruption, Ukraine may be the best place to start.

Mystery of Ukraine’s Richest Man and a Series of Unlikely Suicides
▻http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/17/ukraine-plagued-succession-unlikely-suicides-former-ruling-party-320584.ht

Feuding oligarchs are battling to retain or increase their influence in the new order, and their lieutenants are turning up dead.

Melnychuk was a prosecutor in the southern port town of Odessa, governed by Kolomoisky ally Ihor Palytsia. He is just one of at least eight officials appointed by the Yanukovych regime, ousted by pro-democracy protesters in February last year, to die in mysterious circumstances over the past three months.

And Ukraine’s law enforcement doesn’t want to talk about them.

When Melnychuk’s body was found on 22 March, police initially told local journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk’s “suicide” as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they describe only as “citizen K”. 

In reply to a legal request by Newsweek for information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, the General Prosecutor’s Office responded that all the information about all the deaths was a state secret – a staggering claim to make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told the press were suicides.

After an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General Prosecutor’s Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no evidence of a crime. No other information was provided.

At the heart of this murder mystery is one wealthy businessman in particular – 48-year-old billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man with a fortune estimated at $7bn. A former lawmaker for the Party of Regions (rebranded as the “Oppositon Bloc” for the current parliament) he retains serious clout in the country through his purchasing power and long-standing allies in law enforcement and parliament.

“Ahkmetov was the grey cardinal of the Party of Regions,” says Dmitriy Gnap, an investigative journalist for Ukrainian TV channel Hromadske who has spent more than a decade reporting on the oligarch’s activities. “Yanukovych was the official leader, but Ahkmetov was the man who controlled all the financing, all the political actions of the party.”

Ukraine’s new government has opened numerous criminal probes into those political actions, but with several of those who knew most about Akhmetov’s activities now dead, they can never be compelled to testify in court.

Ukraine : Another crisis for ′Europe′s bread basket′ | Europe | DW.DE | 07.04.2015
▻http://www.dw.de/ukraine-another-crisis-for-europes-bread-basket/a-18365197

China brokered a major deal with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before the political crisis erupted. It would have been one of the biggest so-called “#land_grab” agreements, with Beijing eventually controlling three million hectares, an area equivalent to Belgium. This is now being disputed by the present government. How can Ukraine even go back to the idea of international trade, given the current crisis?

It needs to stabilize its political situation and achieve a measure of peace within the country because while there is a conflict of the sort that we are seeing, realistically investment is not going to come there.
Ukraine needs investment because potentially it is a very rich country. What it needs is people coming in, bringing their money and their expertise to make all the various parts of the economy start working again.
The Chinese deal may not have been the best way to do it because essentially what it did was cede control of an area of Ukraine to China. It was, however, a way of bringing Chinese investment into Ukraine. Simply cancelling, tearing up these agreements is not going to be a way of attracting more Chinese investment into Ukraine and it is not going to make a good impression on other potential investors. We need a stable political framework, a stable economic policy, and a stable legal framework. If all of these things come together, Ukraine actually has great potential.

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Right Sector defies government’s calls to pull out of frontline
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/right-sector-defies-governments-calls-to-pull-out-of-frontline-384526.html

As the Ukrainian government seeks to merge volunteer battalions fighting in the east into the country’s official armed forces, one group has defiantly refused to lay down their arms.

Right Sector, a far-right paramilitary group that was instrumental in the Euromaidan protests that saw Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych overthrown, has called the Defense Ministry’s proposal to join the armed forces “traitorous” and said they have no intention of obeying the order.
The move could throw a wrench into the plans of the Defense Ministry to bring order to all the volunteer forces fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east, where spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov said it was vital for the various regiments to be “structured and systematized and clearly regulated and managed.”
Throughout the Ukraine conflict, private battalions have fought alongside Ukraine’s regular forces to prevent pro-Russian separatists from gaining more territory, but many have expressed concerns that such groups have no one to answer to, no official supervision and unclear sources of financing. Human rights groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm over major abuses by such groups, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and torture.
The government’s initiative to conduct housekeeping of such battalions is meant to both resolve these issues and bolster Ukraine’s own government forces.
The order for volunteer fighters to either join the Ukrainian government forces or leave the counter-terrorism zones in the east came down from the head of Ukraine’s Security Service on March 25.
“Now is the time for both the military leadership and the leadership of the Interior Ministry, as well as the leadership of the SBU, to take care of fighters in the counter-terrorism zones, by providing them with the legal status they deserve, the opportunity to legally enter into the official armed forces … All those who do not want to do so must give up their weapons and select a different mode of behavior – leave the ATO zones, but more importantly, not create and not be a part of any illegal paramilitary groups,” Valentin Nalivaichenko said in comments to Interfax-Ukraine.
Right Sector has been given until March 27 to leave the frontlines in conflict-stricken Mariupol and until April 1 to leave counter-terrorism zones completely, according to the group.
Artyom Skoropadsky, the group’s spokesman, said they had no intention of obeying the order, however – and that there was little the Defense Ministry could do about it.