[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: CR; FT; KP; RFE/RL; WoE; EDM; Jamestown blog

[Deychak, Orest]

United States
of America

PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE 111th CONGRESS, 1st SESSION

 

 

	


Vol. 154

Washington, Wednesday, December 2, 2009

No. 16



 

Senate

 

60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VOICE OF AMERICA'S UKRAINIAN SERVICE

HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN

OF MARYLAND

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, for six decades the Voice of America's, VOA, Ukrainian-language service has been providing an invaluable service through its consistent broadcasting of factual and comprehensive news and information to the people of Ukraine. 

During the first four decades of its existence, the Ukrainian service reached a Ukrainian population starving for information under an extremely strictly controlled, propagandistic Soviet media environment. Ukrainians went to great lengths and some risks to overcome Soviet censorship, which included the jamming of VOA and other shortwave international broadcasting. 

During the Cold War VOA Ukrainian provided its listeners with uncensored news about such monumental events as the Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, rise of Solidarity, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. A variety of shows worked to open the outside world to Ukrainian listeners, including a Popular Music Show, a Youth Show, and the long running series Democracy in Action, which was about how democracy works in the United States. 

The Ukrainian service also focused on developments within Ukraine itself. VOA broadcasts about Soviet human rights violations in Ukraine, including its coverage of activities of the Helsinki process and the Helsinki Commission, gave sustenance to Helsinki Monitors and other Ukrainian human rights activists, especially those languishing in the gulag for daring to call upon the Soviet government to live up to its Helsinki Final Act obligations. They knew that they were not forgotten. Furthermore, the Ukrainian service also provided objective information about the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and the development of Ukraine's movement for democracy and independence, culminating in the December 1, 1991, referendum in Ukraine in which an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted for the restoration of their nation's independence. 

For nearly two decades since, VOA's Ukrainian service has continued to fill an important role in Ukraine's evolving democracy. VOA reported on the challenges that Ukraine faced and on the U.S.'s considerable support and assistance for Ukraine, including in the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union. During the Orange Revolution, VOA Ukrainian helped to reassure millions of Ukrainians that the international community would not sanction electoral fraud. 

As Ukraine has evolved, so has the Ukrainian Service. While no longer broadcasting on radio as it did for most of its 60 years, it reaches more Ukrainians than ever with daily broadcasts over Ukrainian television--something unthinkable during Soviet rule--and reporting on its website. It continues to report on what is happening in Ukraine, but also it continues to cover every aspect of American life and society. As Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, I commend the ongoing role of VOA's Ukrainian service in helping Ukraine fulfill its aspirations in becoming more fully democratic, independent, and secure.

Financial Times

A fire to light

By Stefan Wagstyl

Published: December 3 2009 

Excerpts:

...Although both Russian and Ukrainian leaders have pledged this year's supplies will flow normally, political tensions are running high in Kiev, with presidential elections due next month, the first since the country's 2004 pro-west Orange Revolution. Andris Piebalgs, the outgoing EU energy commissioner, told a conference last month that while he believed the Commission had done everything to avoid another crisis with Russian supplies, "There are issues which are not settled and I believe there is a possibility that we could have a crisis and that is why we are taking [further] measures."...

...The immediate challenge is avoiding a rerun of the January 2009 crisis in which Gazprom, the Kremlin-directed gas group, cut supplies to Ukraine for nearly two weeks, and Kiev stopped sending gas downstream to other countries. Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, and Yulia Tymoshenko, his Ukrainian counterpart, ended the dispute with a deal, billed as heralding a new era in gas. Meeting last month in the Ukrainian resort of Yalta, Mr Putin and Ms Tymoshenko promised to stick to it. "It would be very good to meet the new year without any shocks," said a good-humoured Mr Putin.

But the atmosphere in Kiev is charged, with Ukraine's leaders running against each other in the presidential race. President Viktor Yushchenko, hero of the Orange Revolution, appears certain to lose either to Ms Tymoshenko, his former ally, or to Viktor Yanukovich, his 2004 opponent. Moscow, which backed Mr Yanukovich five years ago, is signalling that either Mr Yanukovich or Ms Tymoshenko would be acceptable but is quietly keeping its distance.

Paradoxically, perhaps the biggest political risk to gas supplies comes from the Ukrainian president. Anders Aslund of the US-based Peterson Institute says: "On the whole, the risk of a new gas disruption is small. The only relevant party that may have an interest in a new Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict is Mr Yushchenko, who is toying with the tactic, 'the worse the better'."

With gross domestic product down about 15 per cent this year, Ukraine is in deep recession. A $16.4bn International Monetary Fund rescue has saved Kiev but payments were suspended last month after Mr Yushchenko approved big pre-election pay and pensions increases. The central bank has about $28bn in reserves but money is needed to support the budget and the currency, down more than 40 per cent since mid-2008. Even state-owned companies struggle with debt repayments - including gas utility Naftogaz, which narrowly averted default this autumn when creditors agreed to roll over $1.6bn. But Naftogaz has not missed any of Gazprom's $400m-$700m monthly supply bills.

Fortunately for Kiev, gas prices have fallen following the drop in global oil prices. Under a complex oil-linked formula, prices of Ukraine's Russian gas imports have come down from $360 per 1,000 cubic metres in early 2009 to about $200. The 20 per cent discount Ukraine has enjoyed in 2009 ends this month but a price rise to about $300 will be partially mitigated by increases in the transit fees Moscow pays Kiev.

With 2009's 40 per cent fall in Ukrainian gas consumption, Kiev has cut imports to about half of what it agreed to buy - and as a result was threatened with fines for breaking "take-or-pay" contract clauses. But Moscow last month cancelled fines racked up this year and accepted a 35 per cent reduction in import volumes for 2010.

On one level, Moscow is bowing to economic reality. However, Kiev may yet have to pay a political price. Russia has long sought a stake in Ukraine's pipelines. Mr Yushchenko has resisted any suggestion of giving up control of the network, but a new president might come under even greater pressure.

If Mr Putin sits out the winter without rocking the Ukrainian boat, Gazprom will do the same. The company badly needs to bolster its finances as it struggles with the economic crisis: net profits were down 48 per cent in the first half of 2009 to $10.6bn on a 30 per cent decline in exports and a 30 per cent increase in debt. Alexei Miller, chief executive, has seen a modest recovery in exports in recent weeks - and expects more next year. He will not want a supply row. Gazprom said on Thursday: "If Ukraine fulfils all its obligations, including payment and transit, everything should be fine."...

Complete article:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/831c98da-e059-11de-8494-00144feab49a.html

 


Kyiv Post


Stranglehold


 

Mark Rachkevych 

The European Union's top official in Ukraine this week dropped diplomatic doublespeak and nuance and said what he and a lot of others really think about what's wrong with the nation. 

"Corruption, red tape, administrative obstacles of every kind - these are only things that serve the interests of those who today control the economy because they do not want competition. They are allergic to competition," Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira of Portugal told journalists on Nov. 30. "The vast majority of Ukrainians cannot have employment, cannot have decent salaries, do not have a decent social system, because the country today is in many aspects like 20 years ago."...

 

Complete article:  www.kyivpost.com

 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

'The Day I Killed The Soviet Union' 

December 01, 2009 

 

December 1 is the happiest day of my life. On this day I killed the Soviet Union. 

I am not a violent person. But on December 1, 1991, I voted in a referendum on the independence of Ukraine, along with more than 90 percent of Ukrainians. 

This was the end of the USSR. I am saying this not because my life immediately became better. In fact, for many of my fellow Ukrainians life became worse, or at least more difficult. 

Nor am I trying to challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who said that the demise of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. God forbid! He may have his own reasons to feel this way. I just want to share my happiness and explain it.

I never liked the Soviet regime. From early childhood one had to learn to be a liar, a hypocrite, to stop being oneself in order to make a career or even to survive. But it was not the kind of regime one bravely stood up to, as you would to a foreign occupation.

I have this constant argument with my Russian husband, who likes to tell me about his relatives who were dying of hunger in besieged Leningrad during World War II. 

I say: true, their suffering was immense. They were holding out against the Nazis, they were treated as heroes -- and rightly so. 

But not all people who were dying of hunger in the Soviet Union were treated as heroes. 

My grandparents and their extended families, who were dying alongside millions of other Ukrainian peasants in the 1930s during the Holodomor, did not receive such an honor. In times of peace they were sentenced to death by, presumably, their own government for being just that: Ukrainian peasants. 

How can I be proud that the Soviet Union liberated Ukraine and half of Europe from the Nazis, if Stalin's regime killed more people in my family than Hitler's?

As most young people, I had a thirst for belief. But the communists destroyed religion. They replaced it with a caricature, Marxism-Leninism, in which even its secular priests, party leaders, failed to believe. 

Operating in a country for several generations and using brutal repression as a means of persuasion, they managed to destroy one's moral compass. Soviet people -- and they did manage to turn some of my countrymen into Soviet people -- had a difficulty in telling right from wrong, because what was right for the regime, was often morally wrong.

This contradiction would eat a person from the inside. A monument to the victims of communism in Prague is a vivid representation of this internal destruction. First, a person whole, then there is crack in him, then the corrosion eats him piece by piece. At the end there is almost nothing left. 

A plaque to the monument says that it is dedicated not only to those who were killed or jailed by the regime, but also to those whose lives were ruined by communist despotism. 

To see what this despotism could do to a society, one needs to look at Ukraine's politics. For many politicians, what is right is what helps one to survive and reap the immediate benefit. Forget about moral principles, national interest, and personal integrity. 

The consequences of this systematic moral distraction are all too visible in Ukraine, and I am afraid, they will be for many years to come. But the system that caused it and supported it with some of the most inhumane methods in history, died on December 1, 1991. 

It is up to an individual now to recollect that he or she is God's creature with free will, who can act in a moral way because it is right. Isn't that a good foundation for happiness?

-- Natalia Churikova 

 

Entire article interesting to read, but the last half is more specifically on Ukraine:

Window on Eurasia: Fewer than Two Belarusians in 100 Think Belarusians are Russians, Poll Finds

 

Paul Goble

 

            Vienna, December 3 - Slightly more than half of all Belarusians in Belarus say that their nation is "a separate people," nearly 10 percent more than those who consider themselves part of "a triune Slavic nation and vastly more than the 1.5 percent who say that Belarusians are in fact ethnic Russians, according to a new poll.

 

            Those findings, announced yesterday by the Budz'ma Company on the basis of research conducted by Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies in Lithuania (BISS) and the Novak polling agency, suggest that Belarusians increasingly view themselves as separate and distinct from other Slavic groups like the Russians (belapan.com/archive/2009/12/02/347253/).   

 

            That challenges the assumption widespread not only in Moscow but elsewhere as well that Belarusian national identity is extremely weak and that the Belarusians, which in this view are "a byproduct" of Russian national identity, will in the future return to the fold rather than seek to promote their distinctive national identity and statehood.

 

            In presenting the findings of the poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 people, BISS director Vitaly Silitsky provided some intriguing additional details.  He noted that "however strange it might seem, "people with a secondary special education identify themselves as Belarusians." Among such people, 56.7 percent do so, he said.

 

            Among students in technical schools, the percentage doing so is 53.7 percent, Silitsky said. But among those Belarusians with a higher education, he noted, 49.5 percent identify as Belarusians.  According to Silitsky, this shows that "small steps" are in fact being taken with regard to "the political self-identification of Belarusians."

 

            In the course of his briefing, Silitsky also discussed regional variations.  In the eastern portions of the country, for example in Homel oblast, a higher percentage of people - 48.8 percent - of the sample identified themselves as members of "the triune nation" of Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians.

 

            "But," he said, "no one expected that in Mohilev oblast, the sense of being Belarusian as a separate nation would reach 60.2 percent," a figure quite comparable to the 62.9 percent of the sample in Grodno oblast who now identify as members of a separate and distinct Belarusian nation.

 

            Meanwhile, in another development that reflects the increasing divisions among the three East Slavic nations, two Ukrainian experts yesterday pointed out that Moscow continues to drag its feet in demarcating the border of the Russian Federation with Ukraine, clearly with the hope that that line will become less rather than more important (vlasti.net/news/67991).

 

            At a Kyiv press conference, Viktor Chumak, a security analyst at the International Center of Perspective Research, and Galina Yavorskaya, an inspector at the Ukrainian government's National Institute of Problems of International Security, described the problems Kyiv has had in getting Moscow to talk seriously about this issue.

 

            This subject, they pointed out, is a particularly sensitive one after Russian border guards shot and killed a Ukrainian citizen on the border November 25, something that led Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to call on Moscow to create a demarcation commission and to schedule a meeting of deputy interior ministers from the two countries.

 

            Yavorskaya pointed out that the question of demarcating the border "arose not today but in 1992" and that it became more sensitive after1994 when then Russian SVR chief Yevgeny Primakov said that "the borders of the countries of the Commonwealth [of Independent States] do not fall under the terms of the Helsinki Final Act about the inviolability of borders."

 

            That led Kyiv to seek an agreement on the subject, something that was formally achieved only in 2003 and ratified by both countries a year later.  Unfortunately, Chumak added, while Ukraine established the Ukrainian commission that accord called for, the Russians did not until this year.

 

            He suggested that Moscow was not interested in doing so because demarcating the border from its point of view could lead to the creation of "an additional barrier between 'fraternal peoples'" and limit "cross-border cooperation."  However, from Ukraine's perspective, "the border is the final attribute of statehood."        

 

            "It is very difficult," Yavorskaya said, "to conduct negotiations with a partner who in fact does not recognize the right of our state to an independent existence." And it is especially unfortunate when the Russian border guards use real bullets to guard a border Moscow won't demarcate, while Ukrainian guards use rubber bullets to protect one they want to establish.

 

            Because Moscow has dragged its feet on this issue, Ukraine has faced difficulties in its talks with the European Union, she said, because "approximately 80 percent of the illegal immigrants" arriving in the European Union come "across the Ukrainian-Russian border ... and Ukraine does not have any mechanism to stop this."

 

            Now that Russia has named a commission and agreed to meetings, some progress may occur, but Chumak concluded, it is likely to be very slow. "Questions of borders, the gas transport routes, and the basing of the [Russian] fleet will remain on the order of the day of Ukrainian-Russian relations yet another 20 years."

Eurasia Daily Monitor

December 4, 2009

Islamic Terrorist Threat in the Crimea

The head of the Crimean Interior Ministry, Gennadiy Moskal, has drafted new legislation to ban extremist groups in Ukraine (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 27). Moskal is also a Kyiv parliamentary deputy from the Our Ukraine-Peoples Self Defense faction (NUNS) and a member of the Peoples Self Defense party in the NUNS bloc, which is headed by his close ally Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko. "The police are concerned at the situation arising from the penetration into the Crimea of Islamic sects, some of them banned in most Islamic states," one report stated (UNIAN, September 11).

The draft legislation is a product of Moskal's new Crimean position after the Interior Ministry (MVS) and Security Service (SBU) received intelligence about the growth of Islamic terrorist groups in the peninsula. "Unfortunately in Ukraine we are faced with the problem that neither Hizb-ut-Tahrir al Islami (Islamic Liberation Party), al-Takfir wa al-Hijrah (Excommunication and Exile) and other terrorist, fundamentalist and extremist groups are not banned," Moskal said (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 27). Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in many countries.

In the Crimea there are upwards of 100 members of Islamic fundamentalist groups who have arrived as political refugees from countries where they are outlawed. The largest origin of such members is Uzbekistan where Islamic fundamentalists have faced strong levels of repression from the security forces after mounting an armed uprising in Andijan against the Uzbek government in May 2005. Moskal has requested the State Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs to strip the leader of al-Takfir, Khudar Raad Mukhamad Alzhi Bur, of his Ukrainian refugee status.

Moskal pointed to how blasé the authorities had been in registering the Vozrozhdeniye newspaper which propagates support for an Islamic Caliphate and the ideas of Islamic fundamentalists. The SBU has blocked two websites -www.vozrojdenie.crimea.ua and www.qirim-vilayeti.org- run by Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

On July 19, Hizb-ut-Tahrir and its NGO, the Crimean Muslim Community Davet, held the Fifth Islamic conference in Simferopol entitled "From capitalist oppression and injustice to the light of the caliphate" (www.maidanua.org, July 24). 800 people took part in the conference (www.poluostrov.net, July 24). Some Islamic fundamentalists have entered the Crimea disguised as returning Crimean Tatars, 95 percent of whom have emigrated from Uzbekistan. Islamic fundamentalists in the Crimea include Tatars frustrated with the non-violent, Soviet dissident approach of former political prisoners who lead the Crimean Tatar movement, such as Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Dzhemilev's bodyguards are now permitted to carry weapons to protect him and other senior Crimean Tatar leaders in the unofficial Tatar parliament, the Medzhilis (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 27). The decision to permit bodyguards to carry weapons came belatedly and only after Moskal and the SBU received intelligence that Islamic fundamentalists had plans to assassinate the Medhilis leadership and install radicals in their place.

Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in the Crimea have declared that Dzhemilev is not a true believer and therefore a potential target. Dzhemilev accused Russian military intelligence (GRU) of being behind planned assassination attempts, part of a wider plan to promote instability in the Crimea. Moskal has publicly stated his disagreement that Russia is behind these Islamic fundamentalists. Moskal believes the funding for these militants in the Crimea comes from the Taliban via Uzbekistan. Moskal believes the funding for Islamic fundamentalists in the Crimea comes from the Taliban via Uzbekistan.

Free Islamic, Crimean Tatar and Arabic language courses are increasing in popularity in the Crimea overseen by the Spiritual Directorate of Crimean Muslims (Yani Dunya, Qirim, September 5). The funding for them comes from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, where there are large numbers of Tatar emigrants.

In October the Crimean police, who only began to turn their attention to the Islamic fundamentalist threat after Moskal's appointment, detained members of al-Takfir. Most were former members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir who had defected to the more radical al-Takfir, and had stopped attending official Mosques and proclaimed their unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state. The police reported that al-Takfir, "has started to actively prepare for armed jihad. They have bought and made weapons, studied literature on the tactics of guerrilla and subversion war in the conditions of Crimean mountain woods. They built a hideaway near the Chystenke village in Simferopol Region and recruited people for conducting radical extremist activities." The police report added: "Literature and CD's popularizing Wahhabism, in particular, its extreme wings like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and al-Takfir, were found and confiscated during a search in the house of a group member in the Dubky village. Also, manuals on the technical characteristics of weapons and certain explosives were found" (Interfax-Ukraine, October 6).

Three Sevastopol residents were arrested in Balaklava after seeking to sell weapons to undercover policemen. A search of their homes led the police to find more arms, hand grenades, detonators, improvised explosives and narcotics, suggesting a possible second avenue as drug dealers for providing income to the arms traffickers. The SBU and the MVS arrested 5 religious extremists and during a search of their homes found Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles, plastic explosives with electric detonators, 16mm-calibre sawn-off guns, and explosive devices. In addition, terrorist, guerrilla warfare and survivalist manuals on how to survive and engage in warfare in wooded mountains and population centers, maps, and plans of terrorist actions were found (Interfax-Ukraine, October 23). Further searches in undisclosed Crimean hills found two hidden caches with explosives, weapons, camouflage fatigues and stored foodstuffs.

The lack of attention paid to these Islamic militants until now is surprising. The SBU has been focused on separatists and Russian extremists in the Crimea and from Russia while military counter-intelligence, in cooperation with the SBU, has shadowed the Black Sea Fleet. All three areas are seen in Kyiv as the greatest potential threat to Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Islamic fundamentalists were not considered as a potential threat until this summer, because Ukraine is not seen as a potential target. This may be true after Ukraine withdrew its troops from Iraq in fall 2005. But, Ukraine has held joint exercises with NATO and the US for over 15 years in the Crimea, Odessa and Western Ukraine and American and NATO forces might become terrorist targets. Ukraine could also become a safe haven for Islamic terrorists seeking to enter the EU through Ukraine's porous Western borders that are open to corruption from local officials, border troops and customs officers.


--Taras Kuzio


Jamestown Foundation Blog


EU Supports "Authoritarian" President Tymoshenko? 

by Tammy Lynch

December 3, 2009

In advance of Friday's annual EU-Ukraine summit, the EU Observer carried an interesting quote: A "senior diplomat from one former Communist EU country" suggested that a victory by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the upcoming 17 January presidential election seemed likely. And despite accusations in the article that she is "cultivating an authoritarian style," this victory would be welcome. "Under Tymoshenko, Ukraine will be more Kuchma-like," he said. "But she is a rational person. Ukraine will be more stable and more predictable if she is in charge." 

The comment is not dissimilar to those made by many Europeans about Russia President Vladimir Putin. Authoritarian leaders are, after all, easier to work with - if they're on your side, that is, and if you don't worry about that pesky thing called freedom.

Of course, the comment presumes Tymoshenko harbors authoritarian tendencies. This is debatable but understandable given her governing style. Regardless, both the comment and tone of the article suggest that Europe has decided that Tymoshenko will win the election.

A mid-November poll would suggest this is far from a foregone conclusion. ...
Complete article:  http://jamestownfoundation.blogspot.com/2009/12/eu-supports-authoritarian-president.html





 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 47221 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://clevelanduzo.org/pipermail/uzonews_clevelanduzo.org/attachments/20091204/1aa2154b/attachment.bin>