[Ohio UZO News] FT; WSJ; RFE/RL; EDM; link

[Deychak, Orest]

Financial Times

Yushchenko ally to lead Ukraine parliament

By Roman Olearchyk in Kiev

Wed., Dec. 5, 2007

Ukraine's pro-western governing coalition passed a major obstacle on
Tuesday mustering just enough votes to elect a trusted ally of President
Viktor Yushchenko as parliament speaker.

The candidacy of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a 33-year old former central bank
chief who served most recently as Kiev's Foreign Minister, was supported
by a razor-thin majority of 226 lawmakers in Ukraine's deeply-divided
450-seat legislature. 

The approval of Mr Yatsenyuk, a trusted confidant of Mr Yushchenko,
boosts chances for the president's erstwhile ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, to
be approved as premier in coming days.

Both Orange Revolution heroes reunited this summer after a bitter
falling out in 2006 to oust the governing coalition of Viktor
Yanukovich, whom they accused of derailing western integration
initiatives.

With a surprisingly strong showing in early elections, Ms Tymoshenko's
bloc last week entered into a coalition with the president's political
grouping. Trust between both camps was fragile in recent weeks but has
strengthened with the successful vote on Mr Yatsenyuk's candidacy. 

A handful of presidential allies in parliament warned days earlier they
would not support Yatsenyuk, whose candidacy was viewed as a key
ingredient for a Tymoshenko-led coalition.

Ms Tymoshenko is viewed as a supporter of Mr Yushchenko's efforts to
join the European Union and Nato military alliance, but is expected to
challenge for the presidency in a 2009 campaign. A vote on her candidacy
for premier is expected within days.

Ms Tymoshenko's coalition is expected to be fragile, but it would mark
the first time Mr Yushchenko held a western-leaning majority in
parliament since being propelled to the presidency by the pro-democracy
Orange Revolution.

Mr Yatsenyuk, viewed as a figure who could seek compromise with a strong
opposition led by Mr Yanukovich, pledged to bring balanced "diplomacy"
into the halls of Ukraine's deeply divided parliament.

The Wall Street Journal

December 5, 2007 

Russia, Ukraine Agree on Gas 

Ukraine agreed to pay close to $180 for every thousand cubic meters of
natural gas it gets next year from Russia, a 38% increase over current
prices, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said. The deal, which comes after
months of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev and a dispute two years
ago, when Russia cut supplies, is part of what Russia describes as an
effort to stop selling energy supplies to former Soviet republics at
cut-rate prices. Separately, Russia approved a 25% increase in domestic
gas prices next year.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Ukraine Set To Pay Much More For Gas In 2008 
 

Yulia Tymoshenko has attacked the deal as "brainless"

(AFP)

December 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Ukraine's outgoing government has agreed to
a significant price hike in a deal for supplies of natural gas from
Russia, sparking an immediate denunciation from the incoming prime
minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.


But she and other opponents of the agreement appear less concerned about
the nearly 40 percent price hike than the specifics of the deal, which
include the services of a murky intermediary, RosUkrEnergo.

Prime Minister-designate Tymoshenko called the government's continued
use of the middleman company's services part of a "corrupt" and
"brainless policy."

If she is confirmed at the head of a new government, however, Tymoshenko
will have little alternative but to comply with the deal, which appears
to have the consent of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Russian monopoly gas provider Gazprom announced after the conclusion on
December 4 of negotiations with Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy
Boyko that it will charge Kyiv $180 per 1,000 cubic meters for gas
supplies next year, up from the current $130.

The EU was watching the talks closely for signs of a repeat of a price
dispute in 2006 that led Gazprom to briefly shut off supplies to Ukraine
-- through which 80 percent of Europe's Russian gas supplies travel.

In October, a similar crisis was averted when Ukraine and Russia came to
an agreement on unpaid gas debts that had led Moscow to threaten to cut
supplies again. Ukraine eventually paid RosUkrEnergo nearly $920 million
to end that dispute.

History Of Murky Middlemen

The potential involvement of the Swiss-based intermediary in supplying
Russian gas in 2008 had also placed the recent negotiations under
intense scrutiny in Ukraine.

Tymoshenko had urged Boyko during negotiations to cut RosUkrEnergo out
of any new deal, and in the run-up to September 30 parliamentary
elections, Yushchenko was highly critical of the company's role as
intermediary.

RFE/RL analyst Roman Kupchinsky says this is because RosUkrEnergo's
services "will cost Ukraine about $1 billion a year." 

When negotiations began in the fall, Gazprom Chairman Dmitry Medvedev
said that "we will probably revise the scheme of our relations [with
Ukraine] and give up any intermediary structures that are not clearly
understandable -- at least those structures whose existence is not quite
clear to us and who were proposed by our partners in a certain
historical context."

During negotiations for the 2006 supplies, President Yushchenko
supported the entry of RosUkrEnergo into the arrangement, over the
objections of Tymoshenko.

Kupchinsky explains that the company receives a commission -- in the
form of gas -- on transit fees for the 50 billion to 55 billion cubic
meters of Turkmen natural gas that Ukraine buys from Gazprom. 

"They then resell [that gas] in Europe and make even more money,"
Kupchinsky says. The market rate for gas imported to Europe is about
$230 per 1,000 cubic meters. 

Moscow's Least-Favorite Prime Minister Returns

It took nearly two months of maneuvering after Ukraine's recent
parliamentary elections for a coalition to emerge of the Yulia
Tymoshenko Bloc and President Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. 

The same day Gazprom announced the gas deal, Tymoshenko's bid for
confirmation as prime minister got a boost with the election of former
Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the post of parliament speaker.
Our Ukraine member Yatsenyuk received 227 votes in the 450-member
parliament. 

"What is very strange is that they tried, and they succeeded, in signing
the deal before the new government comes in -- which will lock either
Tymoshenko or whoever becomes prime minister into this deal," Kupchinsky
says. He says it's a "bad deal" to which RosUkrEnergo "does not add any
value." 

During Tymoshenko's seven-month stint as prime minister following the
2004 Orange Revolution, Ukraine's relations with Russia fell to an
all-time low. Moscow previously sought her extradition relating to
corruption charges stemming from her role as president in 1995-97 of
Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine -- which served at the time as
middleman for Russian gas imports.

The new agreement follows a jump in the price that Gazprom pays
Turkmenistan for imported gas, and was not unexpected. Last month, it
was announced that the Russian company would pay $130 per 1,000 cubic
meters of Turkmen gas for the first six months of 2008, and $150 for the
second half of the year.

Ukraine is the end user of much of the Turkmen gas imported by Gazprom.

 

Eurasia Daily Monitor

November 30, 2007

PRAISE AND CONDEMNATION OF STALIN: RUSSIA AND UKRAINE GO THEIR SEPARATE
WAYS

On November 24-25 the Ukrainian authorities marked the 75th anniversary
of the 1932-1933 famine. President Viktor Yushchenko, Acting Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych, former President Leonid Kuchma, and other
political leaders attended the ceremony.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on November 26, Yushchenko said, "The
Holodomor (Terror-Famine) was an act of genocide designed to suppress
the Ukrainian nation." Yushchenko described Stalin's policy as aimed at
destroying Ukrainian national identity by targeting the peasantry and
Soviet Ukrainian institutions, including national communists: "It was a
state-organized program of mass starvation that in 1932-33 killed an
estimated seven million to 10 million Ukrainians, including up to a
third of the nation's children."  

Yushchenko's counterpart in Russia has a very different view of Stalin.
In June President Vladimir Putin dismissed Stalinist crimes with the
words: "Other countries have done even more terrible things."

The differing regimes in Ukraine and Russia - democratic versus
nationalist-autocratic - have taken different approaches toward what
became known in the Gorbachev era as the "blank pages of history,"
especially the Stalin era.

A similar rehabilitation of Stalin is also taking place in Belarus where
Stalin is, like in Russia, routinely praised on television. There,
Stalinist atrocities have been presented as committed by the Nazis,
while Stalinist crimes, such as at the massacre at Kuropaty, have been
ignored. In contrast, Kuropaty's equivalent in Ukraine, the Bykivnia
forest outside Kyiv, the site of hundreds of thousands of Stalinist
crimes, is officially commemorated.

Yushchenko has expanded the commemoration of the Ukrainian famine and
Stalinist crimes, following a process that can be traced to the early
1980s (president.gov.ua/content/150_1.html).

First, the Ukrainian diaspora commemorated the famine on its 50th
anniversary in 1983, followed by the release of the 1984 film "Harvest
of Despair" (video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3897393411603039499) and
Robert Conquest's book, Harvest of Sorrow.

Second, the national-democratic opposition uncovered "blank pages,"
including the famine, during Gorbachev's glasnost campaign. The
Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) was forced to admit the existence of
the famine in a 1990 resolution.

Third, post-Soviet Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma issued a
decree on the 60th anniversary in 1993, and more commemorative decrees,
resolutions, and appeals followed.

In 2002-2004, Kuchma sought international recognition of the famine as
"genocide," a policy that Yushchenko has followed. During his three-year
presidency, Yushchenko has issued seven decrees on the famine and
Stalinism. UNESCO picked up the theme and issued a resolution on
November 1 on the famine, calling it a "national tragedy"
(unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001538/153838e.pdf).

In Ukraine, many political parties, the presidents, school textbooks,
and the media have all negatively portrayed Stalinist crimes alongside
Nazi crimes against humanity. But in Putin's Russia, the crimes
committed in the 1930s are ignored or marginalized while Stalin is
praised for transforming the USSR into a "superpower."

Russia's rehabilitation of Stalin has been accompanied by a similar
rehabilitation of the intelligence agencies. Last year, copying the KGB,
the FSB introduced national prizes for art, cinema, and literature that
created a "positive image" of the intelligence services. But works
published in Russia extolling the virtues of the KGB and its bloody
predecessors far outnumber books on Stalinist crimes. In Ukraine the
Security Service (SBU) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have
supported the denunciation of Stalinist crimes
(mfa.gov.ua/mfa/ua/publication/content/14504.htm). The SBU declassified
5,000 pages of relevant documents for the Declassified Memory exhibition
in Kyiv (ssu.kmu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/category?cat_id=63245).

In November all branches of the Ukrainian military lower the state flag
in honor of the victims of the famine and Communist crimes. During that
month, the military also helped repair monuments, organized lectures at
military bases by writers and academics, showed films, and discussed
books on the famine and Communist repression. Each year the president
presents state medals to Ukrainian scholars and activists working to
document Stalinist crimes.

In contrast, Alexander Filippov's new school textbook, A Modern History
of Russia: 1945-2006, describes Stalin as "one of the USSR's most
successful leaders" whose repression brought the USSR out of crisis
(AFP, November 3). While Ukrainian textbooks denounce both Stalinism and
Nazism; Filippov justifies Stalin as a necessary evil and backs his
positive treatment by citing opinion polls giving him a positive
approval rating among Russians of 47%.

In Ukraine the opposite tendency is taking place. Some 72.4% of
Ukrainians blame the 1932-33 famine on the authorities, and 63% of
Ukrainians support the recognition of the famine as "genocide"
(Ukrayinska pravda, November 20). These polls have both cross-party and
cross-regional support: 75% of the centrist Volodymyr Lytvyn bloc and
43% of the Party of Regions supported the definition of the famine as
"genocide," while Donetsk's annual commemorations of famine and
Communist repression are attended by local officials, including the
oblast governor and city mayor (Donbass, November 25, 2006). Even the
left supports this step. Some 80% of the Socialist Party and 41% of the
Communist Party backs the use of "genocide" to describe the famine.

How the "blank pages" of history, such as Stalinist crimes, are treated
reflect the nature of the democratic and nationalist-autocratic regimes
emerging in Ukraine and Russia. In both countries there is cross-party,
parliamentary, and public support - but over polar opposite positions.
Ukraine seeks a denunciation of Stalinist crimes, while Russia praises
Stalin and ignores his crimes.

--Taras Kuzio

 

Link to transcript of Helsinki Commission's briefing with Belarus'
democratic opposition leaders:  www.csce.gov <http://www.csce.gov/>
scroll to:  Hearings and Briefings.  [Also feel free to click on map of
an OSCE country - including Ukraine - to see Commission initiatives
relevant to that country.]

Link to VOA Ukrainian story on the Belarus briefing:  
http://www.voanews.com/ukrainian/2007-12-05-voa3.cfm

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://clevelanduzo.org/pipermail/uzonews_clevelanduzo.org/attachments/20071205/38c72f89/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 10508 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
Url : http://clevelanduzo.org/pipermail/uzonews_clevelanduzo.org/attachments/20071205/38c72f89/attachment.jpe