[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: AP; Glavred (2); WoE; EDM

[Deychak, Orest]

AP

Ukraine's transport ministers resigns amid turmoil 

17 June 2009

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's transport minister resigned Wednesday over disagreements with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko amid a severe financial crisis.

Iosip Vinsky's departure was the latest sign of the persistent political turmoil that has paralyzed the former Soviet republic's government in recent years and intensified ahead of presidential elections in January.

Recent resignations and ousters have left Ukraine's finance, defense and foreign ministries in the hands of acting chiefs, hindering efforts to ease the country's economic problems and muddling policy.

In a statement on the ministry's Web site, Vinsky accused Tymoshenko of blocking crucial infrastructure reforms and refusing to fund construction projects for the Euro 2012 soccer championship. He has said Tymoshenko was withholding funds to build airports for the sports event.

Tymoshenko has in turn accused Vinsky of using 15 million hryvna ($2 million) in government money to fund what she claims are his preparations for a presidential bid. Vinsky has denied that he plans to run for president and has fired back, saying that Tymoshenko should concentrate on managing the economy, not her presidential campaign.

Tymoshenko declared her candidacy this month.

Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk resigned in February, accusing Tymoshenko of mishandling the government's response to the global financial crisis with unrealistic populist policies. Tymoshenko has in recent months allied with the main opposition party in parliament to dismiss the foreign and defense ministers, both allies of her rival, President Viktor Yushchenko.

Those ministries have since been run by acting heads.


Tymoshenko's office declined immediate comment. 


 


AP


June 17, 2009


Ukraine to expel Russian security agents from base


 


A senior security official says Ukraine will expel Russian security agents from the tense Black Sea naval base that Russia is renting from Ukraine.

 

National security agency head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko said that 19 Russian agents stationed at the Crimean port of Sevastopol will have to leave the country in December. In remarks confirmed by his press service Wednesday, he said the agents are engaged in counterintelligence activity and that Ukraine is capable of guaranteeing security at the base on its own. 

The move is part of a struggle between Ukraine and Russia over the Sevastopol base where Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been stationed since czarist times. 

Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and says it will evict the Russian forces when the current lease runs out in 2017.  

 

Hlavred (Glavred)

The Ukrainian lobby in Washington

Alyona Hetmanchuk

(in Ukrainian; also a Russian version)

6-16-09

http://ua.glavred.info/print/articles/15113.prn 

 

Chetverta Khvylya (article about Ukraine's U.S. diaspora, with focus on Washington)

http://ua.glavred.info/archive/2009/06/12/162918-5.html

 

You will also find other recent articles by Alyona Hetmanchuk pertaining to U.S.-Ukraine relations, including an interview with David Kramer.

 

 

Window on Eurasia: Moscow's Failings Transforming FSU from a 'Post-Soviet' to a 'Post-Russian Space,' Paper Says

 

Paul Goble

 

            Vienna, June 16 - Moscow's failure to provide an attractive model for the former Soviet republics or to consider their distinct interests and its aggressive behavior toward many of them are transforming the Post-Soviet space into a "post-Russian" one, in which Russia will not be able to count a single state there as its reliable ally, according to a leading Moscow newspaper.

            In a lead article published yesterday, the editors of "Gazeta" argue that "Russia is entering the stage of the final loss of influence in the post-Soviet space" because it has failed to take the interests of the other countries into account or offer them "attractive" economic and political projects (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/06/15_e_3210751.shtml). 

            What makes this editorial so intriguing is that it comes at a time when many Russian officials and commentators close to them are suggesting that Russia is expanding its influence over the former Soviet republics, a view that more than a few Western governments and analysts appear to have accepted.

            The "Gazeta" editorial, of course, was prompted by the refusal of Belarus and Uzbekistan this week to sign on to Moscow's latest collective security project, but the "Gazeta" editors suggest that is only a symptom of a much larger problem - the rapid decline of Russian influence across the board over the last ten years.

            The Baltic countries as members of NATO and the European Union are beyond Russia's orbit despite Moscow's occasional effort to "defend" Russian-speakers there. In the last decade alone, the editors note, Moscow has managed to alienate Ukraine. And the Russian invasion of Georgia led that country to break relations with Moscow.

            Moldova, despite the presence of a communist leadership "ideologically close to the current Russian powers that be, total poverty, and Transdniestria" has not become a close ally, the editors point out, adding that "Armenia and Azerbaijan both are conducting a multi-vector policy and in the most active way are attempting to diversify their trade."

            "And now," the paper says, "after Belarus joined the European Union's 'Eastern Partnership,' Moscow is rapidly moving toward the loss of even such a quasi-ally as [President Alyaksandr] Lukashenka." And, the "Gazeta" editors write, the situation in Central Asia is not that much better.

            "The absence of real economically and politically attractive projects for the post-Soviet space in conjunction with the continuing aggressive efforts of Russia to put pressure on the CIS countries had led to a situation where almost the last outposts of Moscow's influence on that space are Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

            The editors detail various other Moscow shortcomings, and then they point out what may be the most serious one: "It is naïve," they write, to think that Moscow's war with Georgia demonstrated its influence on the post-Soviet space.  In fact, by that action, "Moscow only still more frightened all the remaining former Soviet republics."

            As a result of Moscow's use of force, they were "forced to seek various forms of geopolitical defense" against the possibility that Russia would use it against them.  And as a result, they have take steps that reduce the significance of "the post-Soviet space" as a separate geopolitical region.

            Yet another indication of "the real level of influence of Russia on the post-Soviet space is the absence in power in the former Soviet republics of even a single politician who could be called 'pro-Russian,'" something many in Moscow are inclined to blame on outsiders like the United States and the European Union but in fact is the product of Russia's own failings.

            "Neither the US, nor the European Union have the possibilities of seriously getting involved in the post-Soviet space," "Gazeta" suggests. "Those military bases of the US in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were set up for the delivery of cargo to Afghanistan and not in order to 'separate' Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan from Russia's zone of influence."

            Moreover, the paper's editors say, "the US is not involved now and has not been involved in the establishment of its own orders in Central Asia and to reduce all the processes in Georgia and Ukraine to color revolutions 'planed by the State Department' would also be an oversimplification" and a mistake.

            At the very least, the editorial suggests, "Russia did not offer these peoples any acceptable alternative." And it warns: "If Russia itself does not learn to conduct its affairs with the former Soviet republics as with completely independent states, where the elites have their own interests ... the situation will only become more complicated."

            In that event, "the post-Soviet space" people in Moscow and in some Western capitals talk so much about "will finally become a post-Russian one," something that will leave the Russian government far more isolated and with far fewer possibilities than it has even now, a development that should lead the Russian regime to revise its entire approach.

 

Eurasia Daily Monitor 

The Ukrainian Government Launches Bailout Plan for Banks

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko announced on June 10 that three banks will be bailed out. The state will take over stakes ranging from 84-98 percent in the mid-size banks Rodovid, Ukrgazbank and Kyiv. The government does not plan to keep the banks permanently. They will be auctioned as soon as they start to function normally, she said. The government also plans to bail out two more banks, including Nadra, which is one of Ukraine's few large private banks not controlled by foreign capital.

Ukraine's banking sector was among the worst hit in Europe by the global crisis. The bailout plan for the banking sector resulted from cooperation with the IMF, which pledged $16.4 billion in loans to Ukraine last November. The IMF agreed that 44 billion hryvnias ($5.8 billion) will be spent from the reserves of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to bail out the ailing banks. The government will invest the equivalent of $1.26 billion in the first three banks to be bailed out, so there should still be funds to help another two or more banks. NBU Council Chairman Petro Poroshenko said the sum allotted to the three banks will be more than enough to return deposits to all their 730,000 clients (Ekonomicheskie Izvestia, June 11).

This should help the government restore trust in the banking sector, which dropped to dangerously low levels in the wake of the global financial crisis. Restoring trust in banks is the cornerstone of the anti-crisis package, which the government agreed with the IMF. The government declared its bailout plans initially for seven banks last April. Later two large banks, Imexbank and Finansy i Kredit, rejected the plan as they did not agree to pass the control of more than 75 percent of stock to the state (Kommersant-Ukraine, May 26).

Thus the number of banks to be bailed out shrank from seven to five, three of which will now be recapitalized. Nadra is probably in the worst situation of the two banks that are still in limbo. The government is not going to bail it out until after it has restructured foreign debts amounting to almost $900 million. Acting Finance Minister Ihor Umansky hopes that talks with Nadra's creditors will be completed by the end of June (Ekonomicheskie Izvestia, June 11).

Nadra is the victim of the excessive optimism of its owners, who relied heavily on foreign loans in order to expand its network across the country to reap profits from the consumer spending boom that Ukraine experienced in 2006 and early 2008. The large retail network of Nadra suddenly became useless when the massive outflow of deposits started last fall; at the same time, many of those Ukrainians who had borrowed from Nadra in foreign currency (mostly U.S. dollars), found it difficult to repay loans as their wages in the dollar equivalent plunged when the national currency lost almost 40 percent of its value by early 2009. Nadra had been among the top five leaders in the Ukrainian mortgage loan market, and this became a heavy liability. Tymoshenko's allegations that Nadra was illegally refinanced by the NBU at President Viktor Yushchenko's orders were the last straw (EDM, January 30). Nadra subsequently ground to a halt as a credit institution.

There are hopes that Nadra's well-developed network might attract foreign investors and save it from formal bankruptcy. Former NBU Governor Serhy Tyhypko, who co-chairs the council of investors under the cabinet, said in a recent interview that he found a potential Western investor for the bank in May, though he did not provide details (Ukrainska Pravda, June 15). Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian households keep their money in Nadra, therefore Tymoshenko must prevent this bank from going under, to avoid social unrest ahead of the presidential election expected in January 2010, in which she plans to run.

Politics may still spoil everything. On June 12, parliament again asked Yushchenko to fire NBU Governor Volodymyr Stelmakh. A respective motion was backed by the overwhelming majority of 319 votes in the 450-seat chamber (Ukrainska Pravda, May 12). Yushchenko does not have to obey parliament in this matter according to the constitution, and his first reaction was to reject the motion as he did in January. However, an informed business daily suggested that Yushchenko may change his mind, jealous of the fact that relations have apparently improved between Stelmakh and Yushchenko's arch-rival Tymoshenko, who previously insisted on his dismissal (Delo, June 15).

Stelmakh's two main weaknesses are his political neutrality and his age of 70, five years above the legal maximum for state officials. He can only hope that Yushchenko will remain on his side, otherwise the post of the NBU governor will become a bargaining chip in the continuing war of all against all in Ukrainian politics. Changing the NBU governor at a time when the country's banking system is in shambles might come at a very high cost, including more delays to the bailout plan that might prove fatal to banks.

--Pavel Korduban

 

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