In Ukraine each side accuses the other of cease-fire violations

(February  5) Both the pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities accuse each other of carrying out frontline artillery attacks in eastern Ukraine resulting in civilian casualties on both sides.

The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukrainian forces of violating the Geneva Convention by shelling civilian areas and also of violating the Minsk peace deal by using banned heavy weapons. An Independent article comments: "Civilians are among more than a dozen people killed in Ukraine in a “dangerous deterioration” in the continuing war amid fears rebels have been emboldened by Donald Trump’s silence on alleged violations."

If Trump is pro-Russia as he purports to be he should be supporting the Russians. Even the Independent also notes that it is not clear what sparked the escalation and that the Ukrainian army had gained some ground in an advance around Avdivka. This means that the Ukrainians at least in one sector have actually advanced. These clashes have followed on a short relative lull in fighting.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham US hawks on the Ukraine spent the end of the year holidays touring Georgia, the Baltic countries and Ukraine. In the Ukraine both visited Ukrainian front line troops and spent the night with Ukrainian president Poroshenko in their barracks. According to this article Senator Graham said: "Your fight is our fight, 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of a Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price." John McCain is quoted as saying: "I believe you will win. I am convinced you will win and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win. We have succeeded not because of equipment but because of your courage." These are certainly words that would encourage the Ukrainians to keep fighting. The Ukrainians did so around the end of January.

Trump is reported to have told former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko at a private meeting on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast that he will not lift sanctions against Russia until it pulls out of the Ukraine. Trump has already generated a firestorm of criticism by stating the obvious that the US and some Americans have been killers. No doubt it is a mortal sin to somehow compare in this way, Putin the ruler of the Evil Empire with the morally superior leader of the Free World, the US. It appears unlikely that Trump will defend the pro-Russian rebels or the Russian position on the Ukrainian issue.

Trump has already said much to anger China, has further sanctioned and threatened Iran, and suggested there be safe zones for Syria. Russia may decide in the near future that perhaps they have misjudged Trump. So far there is very little that Russia has gained from his presidency. For now, Russia has not joined in the chorus of criticism against Trump.

Ukrainian parliament passes legislation to meet IMF austerity and other demands

The Ukrainian parliament yesterday passed a budget that is designed to balance the books and carry out a plan that is required and backed by the International Monetary Fund.

The plan for 2015 passed after a marathon debate in parliament that only ended after 4 a.m. President Poroshenko even made an unannounced visit to the parliament Sunday in order to convince disgruntled members of his coalition to support the legislation. There has been widespread opposition to the austerity measures as shown on the appended video. Even though there were almost 1,000 people outside the parliament with flares lit protesting against the austerity measures the vote was a lopsided 233 in favor to only 27 against. However before the vote the Prime MInister Arsenly Yatsenyuk promised that deputies would have an opportunity to change some of the most unpopular policies on February 15, but only on condition that any changes be approved by a visiting IMF team.

An IMF team is scheduled to send a mission to Ukraine on January 8th and will stay the rest of the month. Many legislators complained that the government did not provide them with details of the budget before calling the vote. Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister but now part of the ruling coalition said: "After voting for laws that radically changed the revenues and expenditures parts, we do not have the draft budget in our hands." Included in the budget was $5.7 billion for defense. Poroshenko promised to boost defense spending from under 2 percent of GDP as it is now to 5 percent

Among the most unpopular austerity measures are a 10 percent increase in duties on alcohol and tobacco and many food items as well. Given the drastic drop in the value of the currency, the hryvnia, this will make imported goods quite expensive. Many other items will have a 5 percent increase in customs duty. To raise revenue, the budget includes provisions for the state to open up casinos and allow online gambling. The government has spent much of its foreign currency reserves in an attempt to stop the decline in value of the hryvnia. Reserves are at a 10-year low. There are only reserves sufficient to pay for two months of imports.

While defense spending will more than double social benefit payments will be increased only in line with inflation. Help in paying utility and other bills will be cut off entirely. The budget deficit is projected at 3.7 percent in 2015. Natalie Jaresko, the Finance Minister, who is an American citizen, said all measures had been agreed with by the IMF and that most measures would be repealed in 2016. The IMF approved a $17.1 two-year loan back in April. There were austerity conditions imposed as part of that loan that the parliament had agreed to back in March: It took two readings of the bill for 246 MPs out of 321 registered to approve the austerity measures outlined in the legislation dubbed “On prevention of financial catastrophe and creation of prerequisites for economic growth." The IMF had held back the last two payments until President Poroshenko came up with a restructuring plan that would stem the trend towards increasingly unsustainable debt. Even with the new measures rating agency Standard and Poor warned Ukraine may need another bailout of $15 billion next year to meet its debt obligations.

Last Orange Government ousted in the Ukraine

Although the Orange revolution has floundered and the arch-nemesis of the revolution is back in power the democratic process in the Ukraine has been strengthened. Tymoshenko first fought with her ally Yushchenko and then her government failed to rescue the sinking Ukraine economy that shrunk by 15 per cent last year. Yanukovych, the new president, will need to form a government or call new elections. He is for closer relationships with Russia. Under Yanukovych the Ukraine is not likely to seek NATO membership.

Tymoshenko's government ousted in Ukraine

Ukraine's parliament ousts Tymoshenko government in a no-confidence vote

ANNA MELNICHUK and SIMON SHUSTER
AP News



The Ukrainian parliament ousted the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in a no-confidence vote on Wednesday, dealing a final blow to the leadership of the pro-Western Orange Revolution and leaving her to lead the opposition in parliament.


The vote followed weeks of shifting alliances in the parliament after the pro-Western Tymoshenko lost her bid for the presidency to Kremlin-friendly Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych has moved quickly to consolidate power, and secured a major victory as the no-confidence resolution passed with 243 votes in the 450-seat chamber.

The parliament now has 30 days to form a new governing coalition. It is expected to coalesce around Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and would then be able to put forward a new prime minister.

If no new coalition is formed, Yanukovych will be able to disband parliament and call early elections.

Addressing the chamber ahead of the vote, Tymoshenko said she would embrace her new role as an opposition leader, and her speech showed a level of fervor that was absent during the tumultuous weeks following her election defeat.

She said her new goal will be to hold Yanukovych and his team to account for every decision they make.

"We will protect Ukraine from this new calamity that has befallen her," she said.

... The coalition, formed in December 2008, was loosely centered on the political ideals of the Orange Revolution, a series of massive street protests in 2004 led by former President Viktor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.

Those protests against vote fraud resulted in the Supreme Court overturning Yanukovych's election victory in 2004. Yushchenko, a reformer who wanted closer integration with the West, won a revote. Tymoshenko became his prime minister.

But relations between the two deteriorated significantly and led to near-paralysis of the government as the country staggered through the global economic downturn.

In Wednesday's vote, seven of Tymoshenko's own party members voted to remove her, but she will still command the second largest faction in parliament.

Before the vote, the leaders of Yanukovych's party lambasted Tymoshenko for failing to fend off the effects of the global financial crisis, which shrank Ukraine's economy by 15 percent last year.

"For the period of her haphazard policymaking, the state has suffered the deepest social and economic crisis that Ukraine has not known for 20 years. We did not see any anti-crisis program from Tymoshenko," said Mykola Azarov, the deputy head of the Party of Regions, which has named him as a candidate for the prime minister's post.

___

Yushchenko Orang Revolution figurehead concedes defeat in Ukraine

Interesting that this is covered in Pakistan but there is not much coverage in the mainstream western press. The two remaining front runners who will face a runoff election are both more pro-Russian. This is in effect the end of the Orange Revolution although as Yuschenko points out there is now a more democratic system in the Ukraine. However whoever wins the tilt of Ukrainian politics will now be more toward Russia than the West.

This is from thenews (Pakistan)

Yushchenko concedes defeat



Thursday, January 21, 2010
KIEV: President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday said he accepted defeat in Ukraine’s presidential elections but defiantly vowed to remain in politics as the next stage of the campaign heated up.

Yushchenko, the figurehead of the 2004 Orange Revolution, won just 5.45 per cent of the vote in the first round elections on Sunday amid widespread disappointment with his presidency.

But in a characteristically defiant statement, Yushchenko said that the holding of free elections, warmly praised by international observers, was in itself proof of the victory of the Orange Revolution. “As head of state, I accept the will of the people in the January 17 elections. The main thing is the elections were free, democratic and legal,” he told reporters in his first public comment after the vote.

“But national and state circumstances do not give me the moral right to leave political life,” he added.

Yushchenko had vowed to turn Ukraine into a prosperous nation anchored in the European Union and NATO but his ambitions were undermined by political infighting and a dire economic crisis.

Analysts also critisised the president — a passionate defender of Ukraine’s cultural heritage — for focusing on grandiose historical projects at the expense of concrete reform.

Yushchenko’s result left him in a lowly fifth place, behind frontrunners Viktor Yanukovich and Yulia Tymoshenko, who will now contest the run-off vote on February 7. Both are seen as more pro-Moscow than the incumbent president.

But after observers led by the OSCE praised the elections as of “high quality,” Yushchenko said the vote had set an “example” for the entire former Soviet Union.

The apparent success of the elections contrasted with the last polls in 2004 where mass rigging blamed on Yanukovich’s supporters prompted the peaceful protests of the Orange Revolution that swept the old order from power.

“The fact that the elections were free means that the Orange Revolution actually won and did not only win in word but also in deed,” Yushchenko said.

Ukrainian election will oust western backed president.

This seems to be a little covered victory for Russia over the West. No matter who wins it will be someone who wants better relations with Russia even if it is not the main Russian backed candidate. The western backed Yuschenko and hero of the Orange Revolution is polling at a disastrous 3 per cent. This is from the Globe and Mail (canada)


The Orange Revolution fades to black as Russia rises again in Ukraine .
DOUG SAUNDERS

KIEV —
.dsaunders@globeandmail.com

***

It was the handshake that sealed the end of a revolution.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the charismatic Ukrainian Prime Minister and a key figure in the 2004 Orange Revolution that set the country on a pro-European, anti-Russian course, sat down late last year with Vladimir Putin, who offered her a generous deal for sending Russia's natural gas through Ukraine's pipelines, paying 30 per cent more than previously.

She appeared on television warmly shaking hands with the Russian Prime Minister, in what is widely seen as Moscow's endorsement - some would say purchase - of her candidacy.

The image of the handshake is everywhere this week, as Ukrainians prepare to go to the polls Sunday in an election that seems poised to bring the Orange Revolution to a close.

It marks, for Ukraine, the return of Russia.

Viktor Yushchenko, the current President and hero of the 2004 democracy movement, is polling at about 3 per cent, abandoned by almost all voters. Under his watch, the country stagnated, its economy collapsed by 15 per cent, its balance sheet had to be bailed out with a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund, and corruption flourished.

Voters seem poised to give the greatest share of first-round votes either to Viktor Yanukovich, the Moscow-backed leader who was driven from office in the 2004 protests against his fraudulent election, or to Ms. Tymoshenko. Both have pledged to build relations with Moscow and to abandon plans to bring Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"We are witnessing a mass disappointment and irritation with the results of the Orange Revolution," says Fesenko Volodymyr, director of Kiev's Center for Political Studies. "Voters are more willing to ask questions now. They are more pragmatic, because they have been humbled, and it is no longer a simple decision between the East and the West."

The courtship of Moscow's largesse is no longer, for many mainstream Ukrainians, a sign of capitulation to a menacing former imperial master, a country that owned and controlled Ukraine for a century.

Almost immediately after the Orange Revolution protests brought Mr. Yushchenko to office in early 2005 amid promises to reform the economy and join NATO and the European Union, Moscow began to punish Ukraine.

Europe was terrified by Ukraine-Russia "gas wars" in 2006 and early 2009. Ukraine's pipelines carry much of Europe's natural gas supply from Russia, and in both those years, Russia refused to pay Ukraine the price it wanted for carriage. In the winter of 2006, a chunk of Europe went without heat for days.

Mr. Putin's deal with Ms. Tymoshenko was an apparent signal that the gas wars would end under her leadership.

Mr. Yushchenko, sidelined by the deal, issued dark warnings that his two opponents are part of a Kremlin plot. "Tymoshenko and Yanukovich are the finest representatives of a single Kremlin coalition," he told voters in Lviv, in Ukraine's European-minded west.

Ms. Tymoshenko explained her apparent abandonment of Orange Revolution polarities as a matter of pragmatism. "We are destined to have Russia as a neighbour," she wrote in a magazine article. "So it is up to us, as well as Russia's leaders, to create mutually beneficial relations between our nations."

Voters certainly seemed to embrace this, giving her a sharp increase in support after the deal. But her handling of the economy as Prime Minister, during which the international credit crisis devastated Ukraine and effectively bankrupted the government, have punished her, giving Mr. Yanukovich a slightly stronger lead.

It might seem that Ukrainians are shifting their loyalties back eastward after a disillusioning five-year experiment in Europeanism. Attempts at NATO membership brought only fury from Russia. Investment, when it did materialize, was short lived.

The European Union has essentially abandoned Ukraine, building tough border defences on its Polish flank and failing to allow Ukraine onto the bottom rungs of the membership process - even though this accession process has brought political and economic stability to Croatia and Serbia under similar circumstances.

As much as this appears to be a shift of loyalties, the reality is far more complex: Ukraine can no longer be described as a bifurcated country, and politics is no longer a stark east-or-west decision.

While eastern Ukrainians, who speak Russian, still tend to sympathize with Moscow and western Ukrainians are far more European-minded, central Ukrainians, who make up the largest population bloc, are increasingly willing to accept a closer relationship with Moscow, in part because the experience of Western co-operation has offered them so little.

But they aren't willing to give up the nationalist reforms of 2004, which outlawed the Russian language from schools and television. And none of the candidates, even Mr. Yanukovich, has dared touch these changes in campaigns.

Nor do they seem likely to interfere with the impressive media freedoms and protest movement rights that have developed during the past five years, making Ukraine one of the most free and open places among former Soviet states.

And Ms. Tymoshenko, while moving closer to Moscow, has vowed to push harder for an EU position and to fight for improved trade relations with the West. Western diplomats believe that she is sincere in this, and that, paradoxically, the pro-Moscow candidates may be the ones with the political leverage and negotiating skills to give Ukraine an opening to Europe.

"For the past five years, we have seen Ukraine butting its head up against a wall," one seasoned European diplomat said. "If the more Russian-minded candidates win, they seem able to execute something more like a judo move that will use Moscow to push Ukraine to the West."