BULLDOZERS AGAINST PROTESTERS

Authorities in Sevastopol have sent bulldozers to raise to the ground a mock anti-NATO outpost set up by young members of the Derzhava movement. The authorities mobilized bulldozers from many construction sites in the city to deal with the issue as soon as possible. They feared that president of the Ukraine Victor Yushchenko who announced his plans to visit Sevastopol would be hurt by seeing young people vigorously objecting to his pro-NATO policies. The outpost was installed at the so-called “Yalta Ring”, a fork at the highway by the entrance to the Sevastopol administrative territory. It is not yet known what happened to the protesters and what consequences they may face for expressing their anti-Yushchenko views. Several days ago the Sevastopol administration did not step in when a group of nationalistic youths tried to storm into the headquarters of the Russian Navy. The militants from the Ukrainian Students Brotherhood came from a number of provincial cities to stage a protest. Later, a Sevastopol court rejected a complaint by the militants and banned their violent protests in the city.

YUSHCHENKO STILL HIDES THE TRUTH

President of the Ukraine Victor Yushchenko fears a destabilization of his country. Mr. Yushchenko admitted it in a private conversation with journalist Sergey Leshchenko from the “Ukrainian Pravda”. Earlier, Yushchenko gave Leshchenko a brush off when the journalist started putting question about the president’s spoiled brat at a press conference. Several days ago Sergey Leshchenko revealed in the “Ukrainian Pravda” that elderly son of Yushchenko Andrei, 19, drives a flashy BMW, dines out with his girl friend in the most expensive restaurants in Kiev and tops his lavish dinners with champagne at $600.00 a bottle. An incident at the press conference caused an uproar in the Ukrainian journalistic community. Friday, Mr. Yushchenko called the journalist to make amends. The conversation was rather conciliatory and the two men made it up. However, a number of questions remain unanswered. Who paid Andrei Yushchenko’s extravagant lifestyle? Where did he get money to buy or rent his car and his luxury penthouse downtown Kiev? The official explanation that Andrei, a third year student at the Institute of International Relations, is in consulting business does not hold water. Who can a 19-year old consult? Who needs his advice? Many in the Ukraine think that Yushchenko the junior may be involved in some illegal activities or may be supported by unknown rich oligarchs willing to wriggle into his father’s favour by bribing the president’s son. Yushchenko shared with the “Ukrainian Pravda” journalist his fears that publications about his son could be used to destabilize the Ukraine. Mr. Yushchenko seems to be unsure of himself and apparently does not believe in the survival of his regime which is becoming more and more unpopular with the population.

100 DAYS OF CRIMEAN PREMIER

The first 100 days of the new Prime Minister of the Crimea have been marked by a number of failures. The Republican Party of the peninsula said it at a briefing for journalists held Thursday in Simferopol. Speaking at this briefing leader of the Crimean republicans Alexander Gress, his deputy Galina Grzibovskaya and political expert Serguei Kisilev pointed out that first steps of any government are the most difficult. However, Mr. Matvienko’s initiatives make it already possible to form an opinion on strong and weak sides of his cabinet.
The Republicans identified at least eight failures of the Matvienko government. The premier failed to normalize relations between him and members of the local legislation, he is not creating a proper investment climate, the tourist industry is in deep recession, nothing has been done to resolve the crisis in communal services, the government does not protect the interests of the Crimean farmers, land problems are not settled and the steps taken in this direction may further exacerbate ethnic tensions. These tensions have been constantly on the rise because Mr. Matvienko is courting the Crimean Tatar Medjlis, illegitimate organization posing as a parallel power structure. There is no dialogue with the population and residents of the Crimea are virtually excluded from debates and decisions taken on important issues.
Mrs. Galina Grzibovskaya criticized Anatoly Matvienko for concluding an agreement with illegitimate Crimean Tatar organization the Medjlis. Mr. Matvienko is denying that such an agreement exists. Mrs. Grzibovskaya said she had personnaly seen it.

JOURNALISTS ANGRY AT YUSHCHENKO

KIEV, July 27, 2005 (AFP) - Six months ago Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko was a media darling, hailed as a democratic reformer. Today he faces a hail of criticism amid warnings of creeping censorship.
What happened? His son took a ride in a flashy car.
The car -- a sleek BMW that reportedly has a price tag of well over 100,000 euros -- led a muckraking Internet newspaper to write a critical story, asking how Yushchenko's oldest son, 19-year-old university student Andriy, could afford such luxury.
This in turn sparked a furious reaction from the president, who said the story was full of lies and was an invasion of his son's privacy.
"Act like a polite journalist and not a hired killer," Yushchenko told a reporter from the publication, Ukrainska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), when the latter asked him to comment on the topic.
Yushchenko's comment -- to a publication that was one of his staunchest supporters during last year's "orange revolution" -- shocked the journalism community, which openly cheered the election of the Ukrainian leader.
By Tuesday, more than 200 reporters had signed a letter to Yushchenko saying: "You had sworn ... to uphold the freedom of speech.
"Today you disregard freedom of the press, which includes free access to information, including that of public figures. You have to realize that you and your family are objects of public attention. Society has the full right to know about the revenues, spending and lifestyle of your family.
"We are forced to talk about the country sliding into censorship, self-censorhip and the lack of freedom of speech," it said, demanding that Yushchenko apologize for his remarks.
Observers say the conflict is a test of whether Yushchenko's administration will fulfill its campaign pledges for transparent government and a free press now that it is in power.
Yushchenko has insisted that his son is not a politician and the stories were an invasion of his privacy.
"It is right for the president's family to live under the press spotlight," Yushchenko said in a letter to Ukrainska Pravda late Tuesday. "But it's not a reason to deny my family the right to a personal life."
Reporters argue that the spending habits of Ukraine's first family are fair game, since business interests under the previous regime often influenced policymakers by lavishing gifts on them and their families.
"We're not talking about invasion of privacy of the president or his son," said Yevgen Bystritskiy, executive director of the non-governmental organization Renaissance Fund, which monitors the Ukrainian media.
"This is a question of principle of how transparent are relations between the government and oligarchs," he said.
Yelena Pritula, chief editor of Ukrainska Pravda, agreed: "It's a question of principle. This government differs little from the previous one in that it doesn't like and it doesn't handle criticism well.
"They haven't found a way to react to it," she said. "Yushchenko's reaction differed little ... to what (previous president Leonid) Kuchma would have said in a similar situation.
"Instead of dealing with the situation, the president decided to insult the journalist," she said.

DEAD DOLPHINS ON BEACHES NEAR BALAKLAVA

(Forum.ua)
Every day, at Balaklava (district of Sevastopol,the sea brings ashore at least on new dolphin corpse. The Black Sea is a habitat for the smallest kind of dolphins.
They die beacuse of fishing nets positioned at 60-90 meters deep to catch sole. Dolphins hunt for fish at the same depth and get entangled in the nets. They die of suffocation. Fishermen throw dead animals away because they do not need them.

AIDS ON CRIMEAN SEAFRONT

(Moscow News)
Ukrainian health authorities report that an increasing number of patients are visiting doctors after jabbing themselves with abandoned syringes on beaches in the Crimea and one boy has contracted HIV, the cry.ru website reported on Tuesday.

An epidemiologist from the Ukrainian Republican Center for AIDS Prevention and Therapy, Yelena Druchinina, said that the boy was receiving anti-retrovirus therapy. He was infected after jabbing himself with a syringe that had been used by a HIV-infected drug user, the doctor said.

The doctor also said that they give anti-retrovirus therapy to all patients that address them after similar injuries without waiting for test results from the syringes.

She said that two people visited the center last week after such incidents.

According to the latest statistics, the Crimea peninsula, Ukraine’s major sea resort, has 5,313 registered HIV carriers. 116 people died of AIDS in Crimea in 2005.

ORANGE REGIME CRACKING DOWN AGAINST OPPONENTS

Former Prime-Minister of the Crimea Serguey Kunitsyn has been interrogated Friday by authorities investigating cases of corruption. Some sources say that Kunitsyn signed a pledge not to leave Simferopol during the investigation. The local branch of the People Democratic Party has flatly rejected these allegations. The party has pointed out that its Crimean leader visited the Prosecutor’s Office as “a witness”. The majority of officials who had supported Victor Yanukovitch at the presidential elections last year were formally accused of corruption. Criminal charges were laid against most of them. They were summoned first to the Prosecutor’s Office as witnesses. Some were arrested on the spot and sent to jail. Member of the Verkhovnaya Rada (Ukrainian Legislation) from the Crimea Yefim Fix said Friday that the Ukraine is becoming a police state. He accused the regime of using the fight against corruption to crack down against its opponents, notably the Social-Democratic Party of the Ukraine. Mr. Fix is the leader of the SDP local branch.

Federal Ukraine?

MOSCOW (Alexei Makarkin, deputy general director of the Center for Political Technologies, for RIA Novosti) - Ukraine is currently faced with an extremely contradictory political situation.

On the one hand, a significant part of the country's political class and many ordinary people increasingly view Ukraine as a unified state. The Ukrainian yellow and blue flag, which just a few years ago was a highly controversial symbol, is now seen as perfectly legitimate (it is used by both Viktor Yushchenko's supporters and Viktor Yanukovich's supporters).

On the other hand, the country is divided into several distinct areas each of which has its own cultural and historical identity. The ethnic composition of eastern Ukraine is very similar to that of the neighboring Russian regions. Galichina was part of Poland, then the Austrian Empire, then Austro-Hungary, and then Poland again, and it only became part of the USSR in 1939. The Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities (58%, 24% and 13% respectively) live side by side in the Crimea, but not without tensions. The only language spoken by almost the entire adult population of the Crimea is Russian, and therefore Russian is the language most often used in communications between different ethnic groups. This situation gives rise to federalist sentiments, which are further encouraged by the policies of the Ukrainian authorities.

This year, new local authorities came into power in the Crimea, as well as in other regions of Ukraine. Anatoly Matviyenko, leader of the Sobor Ukrainian Republican Party, became the new Crimean prime minister. He has never lived in the region before and is seen as a close ally of Yulia Timoshenko. Matviyenko says that the Russian language and culture should be protected. Moreover, it has been promised that next year the Russian language might be included in the curriculum for Ukrainian schools in the Crimea. But when Matviyenko took office this May, the press service of the Crimean local authorities stopped publishing its press releases in Russian, and the website of the local authorities switched to Ukrainian.

These seemingly minor changes have clearly annoyed the Russian community in the Crimea. Under the Ukrainian Constitution, the state language is Ukrainian, and all previous Ukrainian governments have ignored proposals that Russian be given an official national status. However, the Crimea is an autonomous republic (the only one in Ukraine) and it is governed not only by the Ukrainian Constitution, but also by its own constitution. The Crimean Constitution (Article 10) provides for the use of the Russian language in all spheres of public life.

It is not however simply a question of whether this principle is strictly observed or not. Russians in the Crimea see the steps taken by the new authorities as a rehearsal for a sweeping process of "Ukrainization." There is also an element of disappointment: during his election campaign Viktor Yushchenko constantly spoke of the need to protect the languages of national minorities in those areas where there are large ethnic minority populations. Government officials should speak to local populations in a language they can understand. Last year, this was put forward as an alternative to Viktor Yanukovich's proposal to give the Russian language an official status. Therefore there is a clear divergence between declared aims and practice.

The Russian-speaking population (mostly Russians) is in a difficult situation in Ukraine. The majority voted for Viktor Yanukovich and their natural disappointment with the election results is combined with fears of forced Ukrainization and encroachment upon their customary right to use the Russian language. During the Soviet era and in the years since Ukrainian independence, Russians in Ukraine have been accustomed to having the right to use Russian in public life and to receive education in Russian.

It seems that the country's new leaders are more interested in consolidating the support of those people who voted for Viktor Yushchenko in the "third" round of the presidential election (believing that this will give them a majority in the Ukrainian parliament, the Supreme Rada), than in winning over the Russian electorate. When this is combined with the tactless actions of certain representatives of the new Ukrainian authorities in the regions, the country may well see increased support for the advocates of federalism. These include the Party of the Regions headed by Viktor Yanukovich, and also more radical political forces, irreconcilable opponents of Yushchenko's supporters. Although Yanukovich's party has not yet recovered from last year's defeat, it is taking steps to do so. For example, it has signed an agreement on cooperation with the Russian party United Russia.

ORANGE REGIME KILLS FEDERALISM IN THE BUD

DONETSK, June 30 (Itar-Tass) - The administrative-territorial reform of Ukraine considered by the government would cause disastrous consequences, opponents of it say.

The government met on Thursday over a package of draft laws on the reform that was thought up by Ukraine’s new leaders after the change of authority.

The redrawing of Ukraine’s territory envisions a three-level system of government, the formation of 4,000 territorial communities, 280 districts and 32 regions instead of the existing 490 districts, 24 regions and the autonomous republic of te Crimea.

Cities with populations over one million are to add to regions.

Governors of several regions flatly oppose the reform.

In the opinion of the Kharkov region’s governor Arsen Avakov, a “political reform at present is leading the country into a chaos, the loss of the vertical (of authority) and thus of government of the country.

“A danger of a halt to economic development, restoration of which will take a decade, will emerge,” he said.

Deputies of council of all levels and political scientists also warn about negative consequences of the reform.

“It is clear to all that a main goal of the reform is rooting out from the political lexicon notions like a region and federalism, as it will touch most painfully such historically established territories as Donbass and the Crimea that voted in the presidential elections against Viktor Yushchenko,” the director of the Centre of Strategic Planning, Vladimir Kornilov, told Itar-Tass.