The Regionnaires’ inability to understand just what freedom is and how it works was amply on display in the last few weeks. With something that elementary beyond their grasp, it’s small wonder that President Yanukovych and his pals invariably elicit eye-rolling, groans, and grins when they pontificate about such things as free speech and civil society. Back in mid-January, Ihor Huzhva, editor of the pro-regime newspaper Segodnya, was fired by the paper’s supervisory council, which reports to the owner, Ukraine’s richest man and a lapsed Regionnaire MP, Rinat Akhmetov. The incident was undeservedly underreported, even though Huzhva made the following sensational claims in an interview: As far as I know, the question of my firing was decided after I refused to submit to censorship in the paper. This was last summer. That’s when all my problems began. When we initiated our action [a planned strike], I knew what...

The foreign ministry's attempt at positively spinning a recent press freedom report has backfired. Everything is relative, but it was still a cynical stretch for the good people of Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry to claim that press freedom in the nation is improving. With Ukraine losing its standing on all diplomatic fronts, West and East, it’s understandable that the Foreign Ministry is so desperate for good news that officials tried to manufacture some favorable publicity through a Jan. 27 press release. It backfired. Headlined “Ukraine seen as improving in press freedom rankings,” the ministry cites the most recent World Press Freedom Index by the international free-speech watchdog, Reporters Without Frontiers. Correctly, the ministry notes that...

The daughter of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko says her mother is being ill-treated in prison, but she remains strong in spirit. Eugenia Tymoshenko testified Wednesday in Washington before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on European affairs at a hearing on Ukraine. She said that during visits to her mother in prison she has to lift her from the bed and help her walk. Eugenia Tymoshenko said authorities are using sleep deprivation and intimidation to try to break her mother. “This includes a 24-hour lit room and 24-hour video surveillance. Lately...

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Steven Pifer outlines the democratic regression that has taken place within Ukraine during the two years of President Yanukovych’s tenure in office and the negative impact that has had on Ukraine’s relations with Europe and the United States. Pifer concludes that U.S. policy, in coordination with that of the European Union, should work to crystallize in Mr. Yanukovych’s mind a choice: he can have a more authoritarian political system, more difficult relations with the West, and a greatly weakened hand in dealing with Russia, or he can return to a more democratic approach and have a stronger relationship with the West and a balanced foreign policy...

A eurozone recession this year appears pretty certain, but its possible impact on the volatile economy of Ukraine remains very unclear. A smallish swing in the west tends to trigger much larger shifts on the Dniepr river. Still fresh in memory is the whopping 15 per cent GDP contraction experienced during the 2009 global recession. The country remains deeply vulnerable to global shocks – not least those triggered by the eurozone – due to its dependence of on commodity exports, starting with steel. If the recession in the eurozone, which accounts for about a third of Ukraine’s trade, is limited, another dramatic fall in GDP in Ukraine is not expected. But if there is a new round of financial shocks, economists fear the worst...

The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has criticized the Ukrainian opposition, claiming that it is attempting to make Europe introduce sanctions on Ukraine. "Sanctions against officials, and not against the whole of Ukraine, do not exist indeed, because the statutory documents of the Council of Europe envisage only two kinds of sanctions: either the whole delegation, including the opposition, is deprived of the right to vote, or the state is expelled from the Council of Europe," Director of the Information Policy Department of the Foreign Ministry Oleh Voloshyn has said during a roundtable entitled "After Davos: Prospects of Ukraine's Foreign Policy and Energy Security" in Kyiv on Tuesday. He added that...

Kiev's city government spoke against installing a Russian-made monument to a tsarist statesman in the Ukrainian capital. The gift was proposed by Russian Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev, who wanted to commemorate Pyotr Stolypin in connection with the anniversary of the statesman’s death. Stolypin was shot dead by an assassin in Kiev in 1911. But the proposal is “either a provocation or an extremely thoughtless move,” Alexander Briginets, head of Kiev legislature’s culture and tourism commission, said on Monday. “Stolypin’s reforms destroyed Ukrainian peasantry and Ukrainian traditions, forced a large part of the nation to move to Siberia and bled Ukraine dry,” Briginets said, the country’s news agency UNIAN reported. Avdeyev did not comment on the rejection as of late Monday. Stolypin was one of the most controversial figures in the history of late tsarist regime, earning a...

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych must come up with a clear, strategic plan as soon as possible in order to face the country's political and economic challenges, says Amanda Paul of the European Policy Centre in Brussels. Amanda Paul is policy analyst and programme executive at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. The following was sent exclusively to Euractiv. "Ukraine enters 2012 facing many challenges but some opportunities too. Co-hosting the 2012 Euro Football championship with Poland offers Ukraine’s leadership a golden opportunity to showcase the country. However, at the same time, Ukraine faces serious problems both domestically and in its foreign policy, which require a coherent, dynamic and strategic approach. On the foreign policy front...

On January 30, 2012, the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) sent letters to President Viktor Yanukovych, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, expressing grave concern over the content of adraft law on amendments to certain legislative acts of Ukraine, tabled in the Verkhovna Rada by the Cabinet of Ministers, which provides for the reform of the oil and gas industry. In particular, the UWC highlighted the proposed amendments to article 7 of the Law of Ukraine on trunk and distribution lines, which currently bans the reorganization (merger, joining, division, separation or transformation) and privatization of state-owned trunk pipeline enterprises. In the new draft of this article, the references to banning the reorganization and privatization of state-owned trunk pipeline enterprises are repealed and replaced with terminology that broadens the government’s mandate. The new language provides...

Ukraine’s president showed no mercy Friday for imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, despite increasing fears that her case will hurt his country’s struggling economy and its relations with the European Union. The gas contract with Russia that was the premise for Tymoshenko’s conviction “is Ukraine’s biggest problem today,” President Viktor Yanukovych said at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He added that he foresaw more judicial troubles for the ex-premier. Tymoshenko, a bitter rival of the current president, is serving a 7-year sentence on charges of abuse of office in a case the West has condemned as politically motivated. Her family accuses prison authorities of denying her proper medical care. Tymoshenko was found guilty last year of overstepping her authority while negotiating the natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009. Authorities say the contract was not in Ukraine’s economic interest. She charges...