With former President Viktor Yanukoych and most of his cronies on the run, the full extent to which they have looted Ukraine is now coming to light as activists and journalists sift through documents abandoned in the haste of flight. Document scraps recovered by bne point to a billion-dollar fraud masterminded by one of Yanukvych's closest allies, which is giving rise to concerns that the financial position of Ukraine could be even worse than pessimists predict.
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine—Thousands of pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protesters squared off in dueling rallies Wednesday outside the Crimean regional parliament, where the future of the coastal region, which has deep ties to Russia, was to be discussed.
A government of popular confidence cannot include people on the list of Ukraine's richest citizens, or executive agency employees, or members of the presidential administration since the beginning 2010, according to the set of criteria formulated by Maidan activists.
Hundreds of men and women have joined civiliian patrols to keep the peace in Ukraine’s capital. They are helping separate units of EuroMaidan people's self-defense groups whose members -- wearing military fatigues, bulletproof vests and helmets, and armed with baseball bats and clubs -- are still on duty to protect and defend Kyiv.
The palatial compound of Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine, was opened to the public over the weekend, offering a glimpse of his lavish lifestyle.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury warned banks on Tuesday to be on the look-out for potentially suspicious transfers of financial assets by Ukraine's fugitive President Viktor Yanukovich or members of his inner circle.
The chief of the Berkut riot police in Volyn Oblast has revealed that all Volyn members of the Berkut who were transferred to Kyiv during the protests received a bonus of Hr 5,000 to Hr 15,000. They had also been promised apartments in Lutsk.
Please sign a petition asking for a review of the gravely flawed “case of the sacristans.” Three men are facing 13 and 14 year sentences over a crime nobody believes they committed because Viktor Yanukovych once ordered arrests within the week. Please help move the justice system away from such distortion, and help three of its victims.
In the frenetic moves Ukraine’s new leaders are making to shed the country’s recent past, they are demonstrating regrettable continuity in style and mentality with their predecessors. This is particularly seen in their unwillingness to separate the judiciary and legislative branches of power, with the same political motivation and manipulation of legal norms emerging. Moves are likely on Feb 25 to remove Human Rights Ombudsperson, Valeria Lutkovska. Others have already been taken to oust the Constitutional Court judges who voted to return the 1996 Constitution.
Someone wanted the records to disappear without a trace under the gray waves of the Kyiv Reservoir. Instead, they are ending up on the Internet for everyone in the world to see.
As chaos explodes in Ukraine and the threat of Russian intervention persists, the responsibility of the west to help attain a constructive outcome becomes more self-evident.
Struggling to reach a deal to form a new majority coalition in Parliament, and under excruciating pressure because of a looming economic disaster, the Ukrainian lawmakers temporarily running the country on Tuesday delayed until Thursday the naming of an acting prime minister and a provisional government.
WASHINGTON — Televisions around the White House were aglow with pictures of Ukrainians in the streets, demanding to be heard and toppling a government aligned with Russia. It was an invigorating moment, and it spurred a president already rethinking his approach to the world.
Some Western media appear to be losing it, despite having knowledge of recent events in Ukraine. Three days after the bloody Thursday (Feb. 20) at Maidan, the CBS news radio in New York put it roughly this way in several sentences at 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 23: “Ukraine today is leaderless and in disarray. Russia’s President (Vladimir) Putin is telling (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry that something must be done to restore order.”
Men respect them, women feed them, and all the young ladies want their photos taken with them. They’re Kyiv’s masked and armored “self-defense” forces, and they’re the most popular authority around town.
In the hours after Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev, reports started surfacing that there were documents floating in the reservoir on his palatial 350-acre estate outside the capital. The estate is well known to the media as an off-limits locale; journalists, in fact, had never entered more than 300 yards past the front gate, and even at the height of Yanukovych’s openness and good relations, they had only been allowed to the front door to receive cakes on journalism day.
Ukraine’s new authorities navigated tricky political waters Tuesday, launching a new presidential campaign, working on a new government and trying to seek immediate financial help from the West.
Happily, Ukraine has achieved a democratic breakthrough. The country’s economy, however, remains in crisis. There has been no growth for two years. Last year Ukraine’s current account deficit was 8.9 per cent of gross domestic product; its budget deficit represents 8 per cent of GDP. The country is running out of currency reserves. It has not been able to borrow on international markets for a long time. Indeed, it was these economic ills that forced Viktor Yanukovich, the impeached president, to lead his country into the arms of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The venal president of Ukraine is on the run and the bloodshed has stopped, but it is far too early to celebrate or to claim that the West has “won” or that Russia has “lost.” One incontrovertible lesson from the events in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, is that the deeply divided country will have to contend with dangerous problems that could reverberate beyond its borders.
Over the years, my press pass has afforded me the opportunity to join, as a kind of participant/observer, in the sacking of various interior ministries, newly liberated prisons and the odd presidential palace. I've seen mansions of the once-mighty fall, and get quickly looted, gutted, torched, bombed. I will confess there is something undeniably mesmerizing about watching the proles breach the walls and get their first gawk inside the surreal inner sanctums and badly decorated Xanadus of a Moammar Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein or his witless sons and skeevy family members.
These past few days in Kiev have provided something new.