[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: AP(2); EDM; KP; NYT

[Deychak, Orest]

AP

Probe of Ukrainian reporter's killing questioned 

By MARIA DANILOVA 

Associated Press Writer

31 July 2009

Ukrainian journalist said Friday she doubts the recent arrest of a key
suspect will help police track down those responsible for the crime.

Valentina Telychenko, representing Heorhiy Gongadze's widow, said she
doesn't trust Ukrainian investigators and believes the authorities are
trying to conceal the true organizers of the grisly murder.

Gongadze, who wrote about high-profile corruption, was kidnapped in
September 2000 and his beheaded body was discovered outside Kiev several
months later.

Opponents and rights groups accused then-President Leonid Kuchma of
involvement in the slaying. The killing sparked months of protests
against Kuchma after his former bodyguard released tape recordings in
which a voice that sounded like Kuchma's is heard complaining about the
journalist and suggesting subordinates deal with the problem.

Kuchma has denied the allegations.

Last week, authorities arrested former senior police officer Olexiy
Pukach, the main suspect in the case who had been in hiding for several
years. With his help coroners located what they believe are fragments of
Gongadze's skull and are now trying to identify them.

The arrest occurred during a visit to Ukraine by U.S. Vice President Joe
Biden. Ukrainian officials denied there was any connection, but
pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko has vowed to fight corruption
and bring killers to justice. He also is trying to shake off Russian
influence and courting U.S. and European support as he aims to integrate
his country with the West.

Prosecutors allege that Pukach took Gongadze to the site of the murder
with the help of three subordinates, who were sentenced to lengthy
prison terms last year, and then personally strangled him. Experts
believe Gongadze was decapitated after his death.

But Telychenko said she was pessimistic that the arrest will help solve
the crime. "Pukach's detention is very important, but it doesn't
guarantee that those who ordered (the crime) will be uncovered," she
told reporters.

She said she asked the prosecutors to assign a new group of
investigators to the case and to conduct forensic tests of the skull
with the participation of foreign experts.

Telychenko suggested that Ukrainian authorities were more interested in
pretending to having solved the high-profile crime to score points ahead
of January presidential elections than to find the true masterminds. "I
have doubts that there is a political will to uncover those who ordered"
the killing, she said.

Telychenko accused the authorities of collaborating with the masterminds
of the crime, who she believes were senior government officials in
Kuchma's administration, and hampering the investigation. She refused to
be more specific about which officials are allegedly stalling the probe.

"I don't know what kind of agreements the masterminds have with the
current authorities; all the time I feel that the investigation is being
hampered," Telychenko said.

The Gongadze case remains a major test of Yushchenko's commitment to the
rule of law. He came to power on a wave of pro-democracy and
anti-corruption protests in 2004.

AP

S&P: Ukraine getting on track 

By PAN PYLAS 

AP Business Writer

31 July 2009

LONDON (AP) - Ukraine won a thumbs up Friday from a leading credit
ratings agency for its efforts to get its battered economy in shape for
a loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Standard & Poor's <javascript:void(0);>  said it was revising its
outlook on Ukraine's long-term ratings to positive from negative in the
wake of budgetary and financial sector reforms in compliance with the
$16 billion IMF standby arrangement.

This led to the approval of the third lending installment of $3.3
billion by the IMF earlier this week. Ukrainian officials said the money
is supposed to reach government coffers by the end of the week. More
than 60 percent of the IMF's loan has already been given to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has used
the money to fund capital injections into the financial system worth
more than 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product, while
increasing its 2009 budgetary deficit target from 0 percent to 6
percent.

S&P said strong and coordinated banking measures have also helped to
improve depositor confidence in Ukraine.

"The IMF's highly flexible approach to both the disbursement schedule
and the component of budgetary support compared with the original
program is testimony to the weight of IMF shareholder support in favor
of Ukraine," said Standard & Poor's <javascript:void(0);>  credit
analyst Franklin Gill.

Despite its generally upbeat tone, S&P noted that political and economic
risks remain ahead of January's presidential election in Ukraine and
that containing the country's need for capital would be dependent on
improving economic performance, including the performance of the hryvna.
To meet the IMF's deadlines, the government had to pass several actions
by decree rather than submitting them to Parliament.

"The predictability of policymaking continues to be poor due to
Ukraine's weak institutions, and the high turnover rate among key
decision-makers," said Gill.

With many international institutions predicting that Ukraine's economy
could shrink by as much as 15 percent this year and capital controls
that have stabilized the currency this year set to be unwound this year,
Ukraine continues to face a number of hurdles.

Gill also laid out the hope that it could upgrade its foreign currency
rating on Ukraine if policymakers manage to implement the remainder of
the IMF program.

However, Gill said "backtracking" on the program could cause a further
loss of confidence by depositors and investors in the economy and the
exchange rate regime, leading to downward pressure on the rating.

In its update, S&P maintained its long and short-term ratings on
Ukraine's currency at sub-investment grade levels.

The positive news came a day after another major credit ratings agency,
Fitch, downgraded Ukraine's troubled state-run energy firm Naftogaz,
saying the firm could possibly have to restructure its $500 million
Eurobond which matures in September. Debt-ridden Naftogaz, which is
responsible for transporting much of Europe's natural gas exports from
Russia, is also facing higher prices for Russian natural gas.

Analysts said, however, that Naftogaz' troubles did not spoil an overall
poisitive economic trend. Olena Bilan, a macroeconomics analyst with
Dragon Capital, said the real sector of the Ukrainian economy was likely
to pick up in the coming months, subject to growing demand for the
country's key export commodities, metal and chemicals, on global
markets.

"The Ukrainian economy has bottomed out," Bilan said. "It is too early
to say that the economy has begun recovering, but there are signs that
we will see green shoots in the real sector over the next several
months."

Eurasia Daily Monitor

July 29, 2009

U.S.-Ukraine "Tough Love:" the Feeling is Mutual

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden's visit to Ukraine (EDM, July 28)
underscored the shift from enthusiastic support of Euro-Atlantic
integration goals to conditional support, depending on Ukraine's own
performance. Dubbed "tough love," this revision in U.S. policy was long
in the making, but had not received official high-level expression until
now. A "tough-love" U.S. policy had begun to emerge in response to the
post-Orange revolution crisis in Ukraine's institutions and governance.
However, the policy change was not officially conceptualized or
articulated, nor clearly visible to the public. The Bush
administration's loss of focus on Europe's East delayed this
reformulation of policy; and its sudden, enthusiastic but short-lived
burst of support for Ukraine's NATO candidacy obscured the actual U.S.
shift toward a "tough-love" policy.

Thus, the Obama administration is formalizing and articulating a policy
change that was already developing under its predecessors. As expressed
by the Bush administration's senior State Department official handling
Ukraine, David Kramer, the United States can help the country to the
extent that Ukraine helps itself (David Kramer, "Biden's Critical Trip
to Ukraine and Georgia," GMF Policy Brief, July 17), which indeed became
Biden's message in Kyiv.

The tough-love feeling, however, turned out to be mutual. Excepting the
weakened President Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian leaders and parties made
clear during Biden's visit that they do not expect unilateral U.S.
favors; and also that Russia is a factor to be taken into account in
Ukraine, particularly in an election year.

Biden spoke with extraordinary frankness about the dysfunctional aspects
in Ukraine's political and economic systems in both of his public
appearances in Kyiv. Portraying its political leaders as less mature
than their own people, he wondered "why communication among leaders has
broken down [and] political posturing prevents progress." He told the
political establishment in nearly-admonitory terms that Ukraine needs
accountability in governance, "an independent court system as a check on
the corruption that fuels cynicism and limits growth." He chastised
energy waste in Ukraine, called for phasing out energy subsidies to
consumers, and openly invoked the "strings attached" to any U.S. or IMF
lending to Ukraine, and reminded his audiences that "friendship requires
honesty." Based on shared goals, however, "the United States and Ukraine
will work together in the months and years ahead to strengthen the
strategic partnership" (Vice-President Joseph Biden, speech at Ukraine
House and news conference in Kyiv, White House press releases, July 21,
22).

Both sides were careful to de-emphasize NATO during Biden's visit. Biden
alluded to it obliquely as "Euro-Atlantic integration" (upholding any
country's right to opt for it) and made only one direct reference to
NATO: "The United States also supports Ukraine's deepening ties to NATO
and to the European Union. But again, we recognize that they are your
decisions, not ours, whether you choose the E.U. and NATO....How far and
how fast to proceed is, again, a uniquely Ukrainian choice, not ours."

Among the top politicians, Yushchenko alone spoke out for Ukrainian
membership in NATO during Biden's visit, describing this as the only
real protection against a Russian sphere of influence (Interfax-Ukraine,
UNIAN, July 22). Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko avoided the subject
altogether. Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych alluded to NATO
negatively by saying that "between war and peace, I have chosen peace."
While the other presidential aspirant, Front for Change leader Arseniy
Yatseniuk, calling for a "new agenda" in Ukraine-U.S. relations,
announced that he discussed economics, not NATO with Biden
(Interfax-Ukraine, UNIAN, July 21, 22).

Support for closer relations with NATO has become an internal political
liability in Ukraine. Among the potential candidates in the January 2010
presidential election, Yushchenko -with a popularity rating in the low
single-digits- no longer has anything to lose; Tymoshenko has everything
at stake; Yanukovych and his party are on record against a NATO
membership track; and Yatseniuk has been removed from the parliament's
chair, in part for having co-signed last year with Yushchenko and
Tymoshenko the application letter for a Ukrainian Membership Action Plan
(MAP) with NATO.

Shortly before Biden's visit, the United States and more than a dozen
NATO member countries had to cancel the U.S.-led Sea Breeze-2009
exercise in Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada declined to grant the necessary
authorization for the participating troops' entry to Ukrainian territory
(EDM, June 23). Awaiting the presidential election, and with a defense
ministry lacking a minister and other top officials, there seems to be
no movement on Ukraine's Annual National Plan, the substitute for MAP.
Any real progress in Ukraine-NATO relations will be contingent on the
presidential election's outcome. Unlike the previous election in 2004,
Russia and the United States do not seem to support any particular
candidates in the upcoming election.

--Vladimir Socor

 Kyiv Post 


Kyiv got message it needed to hear


23 July, 2009 

Myron Wasylyk says elite still doesn't understand need for big internal
changes.

 

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Ukraine this week accomplished
three very important objectives not only for the U.S.-Ukrainian
bilateral relationship, but also for communicating Washington's security
policy views to Central and East Europeans. 

First, Biden affirmed for official Kyiv the continuity of U.S.-Ukrainian
relations and their strategic importance to both sides on a wide range
of issues. This ended speculation in both capitals about the status and
nature of the bilateral relationship and affirmed that an independent,
democratic and prosperous Ukraine remains a strategic priority for
America.  

During meetings with Ukraine's political and business leaders, Biden
specifically affirmed Washington's support for the 1994 Budapest
Memorandum, which gave Kyiv security assurances from the United States,
United Kingdom and Russia in exchange for Ukraine's getting rid of its
nuclear weapons arsenal, one of the world's largest at the time. The
term of the memorandum expires this year and the Ukrainians were keen to
receive a signal of support from Washington.  

In another important step for Kyiv, the Charter on Strategic Partnership
signed by Presidents George Bush and Victor Yushchenko was renewed.
Biden announced a bilateral commission would be established to focus on
economics, trade, energy, security and rule of law with an inaugural
meeting of the commission scheduled for this autumn in Washington, D.C.
Biden also affirmed U.S. support for Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration
without mentioning NATO by name.

Official Kyiv also received confirmation of plans for a visit of U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a possible meeting between
Presidents Barack Obama and Yushchenko this fall.

While the Ukrainians received almost all the items on their bilateral
"wish list," how Ukraine ranks with regard to America's other global
priorities remains to be seen.  Debates among Washington bureaucrats and
policy wonks continue regarding Ukraine's importance and relevance to
the U.S.-Russia relationship.  Nonetheless, Biden's high-level
assurances in Kyiv this week about Ukraine's importance to the U.S. have
left a positive impression here.

Secondly, Biden offered Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans a wider
view of the Obama Administration's thinking and rhetoric with regard to
U.S. foreign policy and international relations in the region. His
remarks at the Munich Security Conference earlier this spring and
Obama's "reset theme" in U.S.-Russian relations has caused trepidation
and misunderstanding throughout East European capitals.  

Last week, 22 intellectuals and former leaders from Central and East
European countries signed a letter to Obama stating their fear that
spheres of influence are being re-established in the region with a
"revisionist Russia." They fear the U.S. will trade off its support of
Central and East European democracies in exchange for securing Russia's
support for America's nuclear disarmament agenda, particularly in Iran.

The intellectuals stated: "We know from our historical experience the
difference between when the United States stood up for democratic values
and when it did not.  Our region suffered when the United States
succumbed to "realism" at Yalta. And it benefited when the United States
used its power to fight for principle during the Soviet era.

Biden explained that a reset in U.S.-Russian relations is not a threat
to Kyiv or any other capital in the region. He said the United States is
not seeking to build spheres of influence or domination in the region,
countering that "zero-sum thinking" is a 19th century idea with no
relevance in the 21st century, where "America recognizes state
sovereignty as the cornerstone of the existing international order."

Biden echoed earlier remarks made by Secretary of State Clinton, who
said the U.S. wants to create a multi-partner world, as opposed to a
multi-polar one, where partnerships are not aimed against anyone. He
assured Ukrainians that the U.S. is looking for strong partners and
called upon them to help meet common challenges.      

Thirdly, Biden delivered to Ukrainians a bitter pill on their economic
policies and an indication of what Washington expects from Kyiv in the
coming weeks and months.  If Ukraine's government wants to receive
assistance from international financial organizations and U.S. support
on a number of policy fronts, ranging from economics and energy sector
reforms to international security cooperation, Biden said unpopular
moves are required.  

So far, Ukraine's government has been reluctant to take austere and
unpopular economic decisions due to a January 2010 presidential
election. 

Instead, government subsidies continue on a wide range of social
programs that have widened Ukraine's budget deficit to historic levels.
It's currently predicted to reach 6 percent of gross domestic product
this year. On the other hand, opposition calls for populist measures
such as raising the minimum wage as Ukraine's unemployment soars and
private sector contracts; and has blocked the work of parliament for the
past several weeks. These two facts alone have turned away international
investors from Ukraine this year and possibly next year too.

Biden said the International Monetary Fund program was "an opportunity
for Ukraine," if the government cuts the budget deficit, enacts tax
reforms, revives the banking sector and removes energy subsidies.
"Energy efficiency alone," he said, "would be a boon to Ukraine's
economy." 

In summary, Biden's visit to Kyiv helped soothe the nervous mood in
Eastern European capitals with affirmation of U.S. commitments to
regional security issues that have been on the back burner since the
transition from one American administration to another. However, with
regard to Biden's message to Ukraine on domestic economic policies, this
author believes a bare minimum will be done by government officials in
the run-up to the 2010 elections. Unfortunately, Ukraine's political
elite still does not understand that economic prosperity and global
competitiveness are just as important a factor to Ukraine's national
security as the security promises made by world leaders through
treaties, memorandums and various charters.

Myron Wasylyk is senior vice president of PBN Company, a leading
international public relations firm. In 2004, he was a speechwriter for
Victor Yushchenko's presidential campaign and wrote on behalf of several
officials, including Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

 

The New York Times

FILM REVIEW 'IMPORT EXPORT'

Seeking Dignity Amid Brutality 

By MANOHLA DARGIS 

31 July 2009

Late Edition - Final

7

Near the start of ''Import Export,'' an unflinching, at times almost
unbearably hard yet moral look at human exploitation, a woman trudges
through a snowy landscape, a cluster of nuclear reactors belching steam
behind her. The exactingly framed tableau, at once horrific and yet
somehow spookily beautiful, looks so unreal that you might try to
persuade yourself that this is science fiction, a vision of some
imaginary hell, an aesthetic indulgence. No one lives like this, you
find yourself hoping, even though you know otherwise.

This kind of struggle to accept what you're seeing is part of the price
of watching ''Import Export,'' the second fiction feature from the
Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl. It is a price worth paying. A ferocious
talent, Mr. Seidl made documentaries before turning to fiction in 2001
with his first feature, ''Dog Days.'' Set against a summer heat wave,
''Dog Days'' offers a look, simultaneously comic and tragic, at numerous
unconnected (or disconnected) men and women engaged in banal and
perverse pastimes. A woman dances on a table seemingly oblivious to the
man looking up her skirt; elsewhere, a man bakes under the hot sun, his
swollen belly as stuffed as the ubiquitous sausage that serves as a
blunt visual trope.

Mr. Seidl has an unsettling way of forcing laughs out of you at
inopportune or perhaps just impolite moments -- the laughter tends to
catch in your throat -- which, I think, largely explains why he has
turned off as many critics as he's turned on. ''Import Export,'' which
had its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, is of an artistic and
intellectual piece with ''Dog Days,'' but its narrative structure is
more intricate and its attitude seems considerably less mocking. Even
so, ''Import Export'' was jeered at Cannes at its first press screening
(not an unusual occurrence for good films and bad), yet much of the
criticism I heard had little to do with Mr. Seidl's filmmaking. Rather,
the movie rightly made people uncomfortable.

As its title suggests, there are two separate nodal points in ''Import
Export,'' which was shot in real places with real people. That woman
trudging through the snow is Olga (Ekateryna Rak), a young, single
Ukrainian mother who works in a hospital, where her pay is habitually
shortchanged (''Thirty percent?'' she asks) and the peeling walls look
as if they haven't been painted since the Brezhnev era. The devastating
costs of the collapse of the Soviet Union haunt every image: it's a
failure made visible by the large military jet on display in front of a
decrepit apartment block and in the opening shot of a man trying and
repeatedly failing to start a motorcycle. No one is going anywhere,
though Olga will soon try, leaving her baby and mother for a job abroad.

After exhausting her limited options, including an ugly stint at an
Internet live-sex operation, where women indifferently wag their rears
at computer monitors for demanding, disembodied clients, Olga boards a
train for Austria. Hers is the import part of the story. The export
part, intercut throughout, involves Paul (Paul Hofmann), a fitfully
employed young Austrian with no evident prospects who eventually lands
in Ukraine. Neither Olga nor Paul say much -- like everyone in the cast,
the two leads are also nonprofessionals -- but their mirrored struggle
to find work and the humiliations they endure to keep their jobs and
make their way amid so much crushing indifference are intensely
expressive. This isn't the familiar middle-class search for meaningful,
personally fulfilling work: it's a fight for dignity.

The rightness of this fight is what keeps ''Import Export'' from the
charge of exploitation. Mr. Seidl pushes his camera directly into the
muck of human misery, taking you places rarely seen in fiction films,
like the ghastly row of derelict-looking East European apartment blocks
where segregated Roma families (Gypsies, in the more familiar parlance)
live in unspeakable filth. There, during a misguided visit along with
his stepfather (Michael Thomas), where he is offered young women in
exchange for money, Paul is almost done in by the inhabitants, who
throng around the two men's van, pressing and even flinging themselves
against the fast-escaping vehicle. It's a vivid, resonant metaphor for a
film that restlessly measures the distances -- economic, cultural and
psychological -- between Western and Eastern Europe.

This might not sound like a prescription for an evening's entertainment,
but there is more to movies than escapism. That might seem obvious or at
least might have in the past, when the American movie market made far
more room for nominally difficult work, for films that expand your
aesthetic horizons, test your patience, challenge your assumptions,
provoke, enrage and inspire you to moral argument. Mr. Seidl offers
little in the way of cinematic palliatives. Yet while he's serious, he's
also funny, with a sense of humor that skews Beckettian. (A scene in a
geriatric hospital ends on a bleak if poetic note worthy of ''Waiting
for Godot.'') He is, unlike many others, embracing the world, not in
retreat.

 

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