Here are the latest happenings in the country, under the Russia-friendly Yanukovych government

The presidents of Ukraine and Russia, Viktor Yanukovych and Dmitry Medvedev, have laid wreaths before the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Kyiv Park of Glory. The ceremony took place amid heavy rain and hail.

Then, from the Eternal Flame, the presidents went on to the Memorial to the Holodomor Victims, where they also laid wreaths and lit oil lamps to commemorate the victims of Ukraine’s famine of 1930’s.

Yanukovych had some troubles at the ceremony – an eerie premonition from the country’s consciousness perhaps: ‘Stop selling out Ukraine’s national interests to Moscow’ or ‘Proclaim that the Holodomor was in fact genocide’

As of Tuesday afternoon, only three Ukrainian channels have aired this: Novy.tv, KanalUkraina.tv and 5.ua.
Reuters reportedly complied with the Yanukovych admin’s request to keep the embarrassing footage in the closet. [Ukrainiana]

 

Political persecution of opposition

Mrs Tymoshenko, who lost to President Viktor Yanukovich in a bitterly-fought election in February, immediately accused her old foe of conducting "open, undisguised repression" to silence her as an opposition force.

The prosecutor’s main investigation section said Mrs Tymoshenko had been called in on Wednesday and formally told that the case, which had been prematurely halted in January 2005 without a proper investigation, had been reopened.

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is paying an official visit to the ex-Soviet republic on May 17-18 and Mrs Tymoshenko’s BYuT bloc says it will organise protests if any more agreements are signed which it deems against the national interests.

As she left the prosecutor’s office, Mrs Tymoshenko told journalists she had been summoned to see investigators again on May 17 and she linked the move to Mr Medvedev’s visit.

"Yanukovich wants to demonstrate how he deals with the opposition," she said.

"Once again it shows he is … simply a puppet, ready to do whatever is required to humiliate and bleed Ukraine of its life’s blood.

"Yanukovich is now hauling out old cases which will lead nowhere. He is creating open, undisguised repression," she said.

 

Russia Plans to Open New Military Bases in Ukraine

Russia plans to reinforce Black Sea fleet in Ukraine and open new military bases in response to NATO expansion to the East, edition Nezavisimaia Gazeta informs about it.
Submarine base acting in Soviet Union in Balaklava will be restored first of all. Museum belonging to Ukraine’s military – marine forces runs on the territory of the base now.
Ukraine may give its consent on opening military bases in the mouth of Nikolaev, Odessa and Dunai.
Commander of Russian Black Sea Fleet Aleksandre Kletskov states that the government is working on not only modernization of the fleet but on plans of equipping Russian militants in Sevastopol and Crimea. Black Sea Fleet modernization plan is calculated till 2020.

 

Dreams of EU, NATO integration crushed

Ukraine’s representative to the European Union Andriy Veselovsky and head of the Ukrainian mission to NATO Ihor Sahach have been dismissed from their posts.
The relevant decrees were signed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Wednesday, the president’s press service reported.
The documents do not state why the two were dismissed.

 

No more protests – depending who you cheer for 

Hundreds of supporters of President Viktor Yanukovich threw a cordon around the Ukrainian parliament today as opposition politicians and demonstrators angrily accused the leadership of selling out the country to Russia.

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Several hundred members of the pro-Yanukovich Regions Party today formed a barrier to the entrance to the parliament building, while police kept back about 3,000 supporters of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko from drawing near.

 

Censorship in Ukraine’s media

A European media rights watchdog says it is concerned about pressures on journalists working for Ukraine’s TV channels and is urging authorities to respect media freedom.

"We are concerned by these developments which threaten to reverse major steps we saw in past years toward democracy, partly thanks to press freedom, said Arne Konig, President of the Brussels-based European Federation of Journalists, in a statement Tuesday.

Last week, journalists from Ukraine’s two major private TV channels complained about censorship by authorities.

Last month, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the ex-Soviet nation has seen a return of intimidation and physical attacks on journalists and abuse of authority directed at the media since the election of its new, Russia-friendly president earlier this year.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said on Thursday he would not allow any restrictions on freedom of expression in the country.

Moscow hopes for improved relations with Ukraine in the media sphere as a result of improving bilateral ties,  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

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Yushchenko’s government reduced the presence of Russian television channels in Ukraine by banning several Russian channels in 2008 for not broadcasting in the Ukrainian language.

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Lavrov said the issue of expanding Russian media to other countries in the CIS calls for a comprehensive approach, based on conserving a common media space.

The release of the first unified Russian-Ukrainian textbook for history teachers is planned for the end of 2010, the Ukrainian education minister said at a RIA Novosti video link-up on Thursday.

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Russia and Ukraine differ in their interpretation of the 1930s famine in Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalists say Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility for the famine in which more than 3 million people perished.

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He (Yanukovych) said the current authorities do not share the plans of the previous administration to make heroes of figures such as nationalist Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator popular in the west of the country.

 For Ukrainians who want independent and fair TV news coverage, experts say the choices have dwindled to two options: Channel 5 and TVi.

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TVi’s owner, exiled Russian businessman Konstantin Kagalovsky, claims his channel is being unfairly stripped of frequencies by the State Committee on Television and Radio.
"Information airwaves have narrowed for the opposition. Censorship is re-emerging, and the opposition is not getting covered as much.”

So what about the rest?

One by one, they have fallen victim to the political interests of their owners, state censorship or old-fashioned journalistic self-censorship out of fear of running afoul of President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration.

 

Russian Payback – the neo Soviet Union

While it would be a stretch to say that Russia was the sole architect and puppet master of Ukraine’s February presidential election and Kyrgyzstan’s messy coup in April, the country certainly played a key role. It sheltered and supported Kyrgyz opposition leaders and made it clear to Ukrainian voters that a victory for Viktor Yanukovych would usher in a new era of cheap gas and increased trade. Moreover, this year’s strategic victories have inspired the Kremlin to encourage further regime change in what Russians still call their "near abroad."

Medvedev, on his first state visit to Ukraine, said he would welcome the former Soviet republic into the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

"If in the future you would consider it proper to join the CSTO, we would be happy to accept you," Medvedev said in Kiev. "The CSTO is not the Warsaw Pact… we do not need confrontation with NATO or other military blocs."

The Kremlin leader sought to draw Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbor closer to Moscow’s vision of European security on the last day of a visit in which the two sides have agreed to renew long-term cooperation after five years of cold relations.

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In a bid to shore up Yanukovich at home, Medvedev defended the fleet’s presence in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol as a guarantee of stability in the region.

"Will Russia use its Black Sea fleet to attack neighboring states? No, it will not," he told a gathering of university students in Kiev.

He made no mention of the deployment of the fleet’s flagship, the rocket cruiser Moskva, to blockade the Georgian port of Poti in 2008 during Russia’s brief summer war with Georgia.

Yanukovich has endeared himself to Moscow by pushing possible membership of NATO — pursued by his predecessor — off the agenda, but during Medvedev’s two-day visit, he stressed Ukraine’s neutral status as a "non-bloc state."

The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada has upheld President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision to admit foreign servicemen to Ukraine in 2010 for taking part in multinational exercises.

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Ukraine will train together with NATO and neighbors, among them Russia, Belarus and Moldova.

The Party of Regions and the Communist Party opposed such exercises in the past. Party of Regions faction leader Alexander Yefremov explained the changed position with the need for training Ukrainian servicemen.

 

Russia is exploiting U.S. and European inattention to reassert its influence in the former Soviet republics, spending more than $50 billion to turn the “near abroad” into an engine of economic and political power.

Initiatives include Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s proposal to unify Ukraine’s state energy company with Moscow- based OAO Gazprom, discussed during talks this week in Kiev. Russia also cut gas prices to Ukraine to secure a naval base there, formed a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan and pledged 75 percent of a $10 billion regional fund to help countries including Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Russia aims to restore its leadership of a region with about 276 million people that produces 26 percent of the world’s gas and almost 16 percent of its oil, says analyst Sergei Mikheev. That would help Russia keep pace with the other BRIC countries — Brazil, India and China — and blunt EU and NATO expansion in an area it views as its sphere of influence.

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The EU, which gets 20 percent of its gas from pipelines running through Ukraine, declined to comment on the Russia- Ukraine proposal. Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said the deal was up to the two companies.

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the U.S. and EU refrained from speaking out during April’s Kyrgyz revolution, in which President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was toppled by an interim administration that secured $50 million in aid from Russia. Bakiyev’s collapse was caused by corruption and failure to ensure economic development, Medvedev said April 15.

Former Ukrainian prime minister and current opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko warned on Saturday that Ukraine may lose the Tuzla island in the Kerch Strait at the border with Russia as a result of forthcoming talks between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents.

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"As early as during the next visit [by the Russian president], discussions and decisions are expected to take place on one more territorial problem between Russia and Ukraine — the Kerch Strait, where Ukraine has an outlet to the Sea of Azov, where Ukraine has a possibility to develop strategic offshore oil and gas deposits," Tymoshenko said in a live broadcast on the Ukrainian Inter television channel.

"What is to be agreed and signed now — it means that we practically lose the Tuzla island. This is a question of a real territorial loss," the opposition leader said.

Medvedev signed a raft of agreements with President Viktor Yanukovych at the start of a two-day visit to Ukraine, including on border demarcation, aerospace, interbank cooperation and cooperation between intelligence services.

But difficulties were expected in talks on natural gas after Kiev’s cool reception of a proposal by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to merge Gazprom and Naftogaz, the countries’ main state energy holdings.

 

Gas-for-fleet was certainly no deal

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says his nation won’t scrap prospective pipeline routes bypassing Ukraine, but is ready to discuss other energy projects with the new Ukrainian leadership.

Medvedev told a Russian-Ukrainian business forum Tuesday that Russia’s state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz company will continue talks on prospective means of cooperation.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has recently offered to merge Gazprom and Naftogaz. The proposal has drawn criticism from the Ukrainian opposition, which sees it as an attempt by Moscow to wrest control over a sprawling network of gas pipelines carrying Russian natural gas to Europe.

 

About 80 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe are delivered by Ukrainian pipelines. Gazprom twice in the past four years cut supplies to Ukraine because of pricing disputes.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said he was not concerned about the South Stream pipeline project, designed to pump Russian gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine, Russian media has said.

The South Stream pipeline will pump 63 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually to Bulgaria, Italy and Austria and is part of Russia’s efforts to cut dependence on transit nations, particularly Ukraine and Turkey.

From France24:

Ukrainian communists on Wednesday unveiled a controversial monument to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, despite angry criticism from nationalists.

About 1,000 supporters of the Communist Party, including many elderly World War II veterans bedecked with medals, cheered as the monument was dedicated in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporozhia.

“Long live Stalin!” said one of the speakers at the festive, Soviet-style event, as the audience responded: “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”

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Stalin is a deeply controversial figure who is accused of causing the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens in his brutal Gulag prison camps and through the forced collectivization of agriculture.

Nationalists in Ukraine — which won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — revile Stalin as the instigator of a 1930s famine which killed millions of Ukrainians.

But Stalin’s supporters praise his role in the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

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Svoboda (Freedom), a Ukrainian nationalist group, had sought to hold a protest against the dedication of the monument, calling Stalin “the executioner of the Ukrainian people.”

But Svoboda was denied permission by Zaporozhia authorities to hold its protest, the Interfax news agency reported.

The dedication comes three months after the election of Ukraine’s new pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Yaunkovych has downplayed the importance of the Stalin statue, saying it was a communist initiative not backed by the government.

“Since this territory belongs to the communists, the consent of the city council was not needed,” Yanukovych said last week in comments carried by the presidential press service.

Read the rest of the article

Also it was noted:

The monument is the first to Stalin to be erected in Ukraine since 1953.

Ukrainian Communist Party leaders said similar monuments will be erected in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Odesa, and Lviv soon.

Here is a video of the unveiling – is this progress?

The writing has been on the wall for quite sometime since Yanukovych ‘won’ the elections in January:

The Kremlin’s influence in Ukraine is increasing rapidly. This is the impression one gets when visiting Ukraine after the election that brought pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych to power.

The country’s assets are being sold, deliberately and steadily, to oligarchs in Moscow who back powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Hypermarkets, sovereign economic facilities and even the very integrity of Ukraine are being marketed to Russia.

Opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday accused President Viktor Yanukovych of turning Ukraine into a dictatorship, raising tensions ahead of a planned protest rally next week:

Tymoshenko has called on her supporters to rally outside parliament on May 11, in acrucial test of her support amid growing controversy over the succession of deals Ukraine has agreed with Russia in the last weeks.

“They (the government) don’t consult with civil society, they don’t consult with the opposition, they are using force to intimidate,” Tymoshenko said in a statement.

“One of their methods is throwing people in jail. It is a true method of dictatorship, and Yanukovych is starting to use it today”, said Tymoshenko, who was defeated by Yanukovych in February’s presidential elections.

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“The new authorities have started giving away our territories without any consultation with society,” Tymoshenko said.

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“We… hope that your government will do what is necessary to ensure that journalists are able to work in the manner that is normal in a democratic country,” it said.

Amidst the fighting, Ukraine’s other large ethnic group goes mainly ignored:

Moscow and Kyiv in their accord have neglected to take into consideration “a very important player” – the national movement of the Crimean Tatars, whose leaders are considering how to proceed in the wake of the new base accord

From Russia, Putin tries to takeover Ukraine’s gas industry:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s proposal was Russia’s boldest move yet and would allow Moscow to control its gas transit to Europe. Ukraine’s opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko said the deal was part of “a plan to destroy Ukraine.”

“It is not a merger based on partnership but Russia’s full acquisition of Ukraine,” Tymoshenko said in a statement posted on her party’s website. “The Crimea was just the beginning.”

The deal would at a stroke give Moscow control of the major gas pipelines which run through Ukraine to supply Europe, as well as a lockhold over Ukrainian domestic gas supplies.

It could have devastating consequences for Eastern Europe:

During meetings held last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed an energy cooperation deal to Kyiv that could make Ukraine’s energy partnership with Europe problematic, Polish experts from the Center for Eastern studies in Warsaw conclude.

“Combining energy networks and the parallel operation of transmission systems would mean Ukraine withdrawing from its intentions to join the European networks within the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE),” the report says.

Documents related to the deal indicate that Russia intends to ensure its participation in energy production and distribution, to restrict Ukraine’s opportunities to export energy, and to secure the long-term total dependence of Ukraine on Russian nuclear power—Russian reactors, Russian fuel, and Russia’s participation in uranium exploitation.

The draft of the agreement was released by several Ukrainian media outlets. Analysts say that by signing the deal, Russia will gain more influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States and in Eastern Europe through its use of economic pressure and military presence.

Owned by the state, Naftogaz is the exclusive importer of Russian gas into Ukraine and about 20 percent of the EU’s gas needs flow through its pipelines.

Naftogaz’s finances have crumbled as it buys gas from Russia at expensive prices and is then forced to sell it at subsidised prices to Ukrainian consumers.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s national heroes are being further desecrated:

A small memorial to the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the western town of Storozhynets has been vandalized, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service reports.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in Chernivtsy Oblast, where Storozhynets is located, said on April 30 it was likely the memorial was damaged on April 26. The Bloc of Bukovyna’s National Forces — an organization that unites the region’s nationalist groups — issued a statement demanding the authorities “find and severely punish the vandals.”

There are still quite some worries from this ‘gas-for-fleet’ deal:

Concern was also expressed within the country and abroad that the gas concessions are for the benefit of a small number of rich industrialists and will not significantly help the country. They are in fact an impediment to the inevitable task of reducing Ukraine’s wildly inefficient energy consumption. Over the next few days information was also received about agreements for cooperation with Russia in a number of areas, including nuclear energy.

What’s still unclear are the many unforseen circumstances from this deal:

Russia is talking of buying new warships from France, but Ukraine did not seem to have clarified exactly which vessels Russia would have the right to base in Sevastopol.

Is this ‘balancing’ in Ukraine’s best interests?

Several Russian lawmakers exacerbated those concerns Tuesday during discussion of the fleet agreement in Moscow. They said it will help protect Russia’s cultural and linguistic presence in Ukraine.

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he broke ranks with other leaders, saying the Ukrainian people did not want the deal to be discussed behind closed doors. Opponents prefer membership in the European Union, saying it would lift Ukraine economically and better protect its culture.

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Vitaliy Bala notes Mr. Yanukovych won office with less than 50 percent of the vote and uses foreign policy to legitimize his presidency.

A deal that who’s ratification was very sketchy to say the least:

Another National Deputy from the same Party of the Regions, Serhiy Kivalov, who is one of Ukraine’s representatives on the European Committee for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) remained in Strasbourg to hear the President’s address. He too saw fit to breach Ukraine’s Constitution and allow himself to be registered and “vote” in his absence.

Neither Mr Kivalov nor Mr Holovaty have sought to have their votes annulled despite the fact that the media openly report their unlawful vote in absentia.  Nor are they the only Deputies whose cards so to speak voted for them. There were 211 Deputies registered half an hour before the vote took place, yet 236 Deputies are supposed to have voted for ratification (226 were required).

The arguments used by members of the ruling coalition and the Constitutional Court to allow individual Deputies to leave the party they were voted in as members of and help other parties form a coalition included prohibition of imperative mandate and insistence on each Deputy’s right to choice. It is therefore interesting to note how a representative of the Party of the Regions, Oleksandr Yefremov, is reported as explaining the situation where cards voted without their owners. “He admitted that many deputies had physically been unable to vote however within the coalition the principle was accepted that its members vote according to the decision of the leaders of the factions”.

Freedom of speech is quickly eroding after seeing life in the Orange Revolution:

Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the erosion of the right to information in your country in recent months as a result of arrests and intimidation of journalists working for both traditional and online media.

This aim of this behaviour by police officers abusing their authority appears to have been to scare journalists and pressure them into censoring themselves. Reporters Without Borders is particularly concerned by the fact that the police are beginning to target online journalists.