Month: February 15, 2019 9:51 am

KYIV – Medical care system reformer Ulana Suprun, M.D., can perform her duties as Ukraine’s acting minister of health after the judge who suspended her last week reversed his injunction on February 14. 

The decision came after four days of deliberation by Kyiv Administrative Circuit Court Judge Serhiy Karakashyan based on a Justice Ministry appeal. 

KYIV – If politics wasn’t behind the dismissal of public broadcasting chief Zurab Alasania, then the shifting of its date until after the March 31 presidential election was. 

This week the general director of the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC) had his contract truncated, effective on May 6, two years before its expiration. 

In 2018, the “Freedom in the World” report recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned all continents and a variety of countries, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat.

The administration of President Donald Trump has moved beyond browbeating the European countries involved in the Nord Stream 2 project and threatening sanctions against the natural gas pipeline’s partners; it is now making the same threats against its contractors. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor at the Christian Democratic Union party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, refuse to knuckle under. At the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 23), Germany’s departing leader said that Berlin will stick with the deal to buy more Russian gas, which will be delivered via Nord Stream 2 (Russia Business, January 24).

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is on a tour of Central Europe, warned on February 12 that Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a threat to democracies worldwide.

Mr. Pompeo was speaking in Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, his latest stop aimed at curbing Russian and Chinese influence in the region.

The new plan for peace in Ukraine’s east, disclosed by former Ambassador of Austria to the United Nations Martin Sajdik (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, January 30) and the reactions to it from Kyiv, Moscow, Donetsk and Luhansk, illustrate three basic facts about the Russian-imposed Minsk agreements and their non-implementation from 2014-2015 to date.

… Colleagues, if we are ever to have a lasting ceasefire in this conflict, which Russia manufactured and continues to stoke, Russia’s forces must start with the agreed-upon steps of ceasing hostilities. They must withdraw weapons and place them in storage sites, as stipulated in the Minsk agreements. Let us not fall into the trap of moral equivalency here.

KYIV – A trove of documents belonging to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was found in a Polish milk canister on January 12 in a forest near the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast town of Rohatyn.

KYIV – “Psychological health is as important as physical health.” That was the key message of a press briefing on psychological health during warfare, which took place in Kyiv in the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on December 7, 2018. The briefing marked the launch of Mental Health Without Prejudice (MHWP), a major project led by Ukraine-based NGO Development Foundation managed by Vitaliy Kharechko, vice-chair of the board, and with support of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine (PAS). 

OTTAWA – The establishment of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) could help pave the way for the Holy See’s recognition of a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate, according to a Ukrainian church historian. 

It’s been four years since the second Minsk agreement aimed at halting the war in Ukraine was signed. Clearly, it has failed.

Fifteen years ago, on February 22, 2004, the Ukrainian National Association marked its 110th anniversary. The newspaper published a yearlong feature focusing on the UNA’s history. This year marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the UNA on February 22, 1894.