Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

Interfax quoted Gryshchenko as saying that NATO membership did not have the support of the majority of the population and had a "destructive effect" on state policy.

But his words indicated that Ukraine, whose Crimean peninsula is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet on an extended lease until 2042, would continue to take part in military and civil emergency programs with NATO countries.

• Here's the president on local elections. [Ukrainska Pravda]
• On the journalist held in Transdniester. [RFE/RL]
• Four possible scenarios for Ukraine by Andrew Wilson. [NY Times]
• Akhemetov raises the possibility of uniting the championships of Ukraine and Russia.[BBC Ukraine]
• A reading campaign in Russia. [via Literary Saloon]
• суботник nostalgia, for some. [BBC Ukraine]

“Transdniestria will remain independent and not become part of Ukraine,” she said. Suggestions to the contrary are “provocations” by Yuliya Timoshenko in order to cast doubt on “the political and diplomatic successes of Viktor Yanukovich in order to destabilize the situation in the country.”

But Filin concludes, her words are less than fully convincing, all the more because the Verkhovna Rada has already discussed the procedure that would have to be followed for places like Transdniestria to join Ukraine. Indeed, he says, the Ukrainian deputies have come up with a slogan: ‘Transdniestria – the First Stage of a New Pereyaslavska Rada’ – neither more nor less!”

Demographics of "Ukraine" on May 23, 2010 (from Lexicalist.com).

Demographics of "Moscow" on May 24, 2010 (from Lexicalist.com).

Now Yuliya Tymoshenko has given warning that the country could break up, as its new President embraces the Kremlin once more.

 Disintegration  isn't the real threat, its a return  to a quasi-authoritarian rent seeking state (Kuchma II or Kuchma-lite).  The interview isn't long, election and post-election activities are not covered.The  interview includes a dire warning by Tymoshenko on the consequences of Yanukovych's actions (renewed political persecutions). 

• “Soviet archives again are returning to their customary status – closed to outsiders'. Paul Globe looks at the decision to close Soviet archives in Ukraine. [Window on Eurasia]
• '' Buried down near the bottom of the piece, there is some interesting info on Igor Sechin's aims to get into the country's hydroelectric generation projects (though Ukrainians claim that this "help" is not needed)''. [Robert Amsterdam]
• "It was an impromptu," he said. "And it does not at all mean that Ukraine will decide it this way." President Yankovych downplaying Putin's suggestion that Naftogaz and Gazprom merge.[Itar-Tass]
• An interesting non-political story about a Nigerian student in Ukraine who won a poetry reading contest in Donetsk. [RFE/RL]
• Yanukovych interview by the BBC where the president backtracks a bit from the Naftogaz and Gazprom merger speculation. [BBC Ukraine]

• “Soviet archives again are returning to their customary status – closed to outsiders'. Paul Globe looks at the decision to close Soviet archives in Ukraine. [Window on Eurasia]
• '' Buried down near the bottom of the piece, there is some interesting info on Igor Sechin's aims to get into the country's hydroelectric generation projects (though Ukrainians claim that this "help" is not needed)''. [Robert Amsterdam]
• "It was an impromptu," he said. "And it does not at all mean that Ukraine will decide it this way." President Yankovych downplaying Putin's suggestion that Naftogaz and Gazprom merge.[Itar-Tass]
• An interesting non-political story about a Nigerian student in Ukraine who won a poetry reading contest in Donetsk. [RFE/RL]
• Yanukovych interview by the BBC where the president backtracks a bit from the Naftogaz and Gazprom merger speculation. [BBC Ukraine]

As reported, the Ukrainian government hired Washington DC based Trout Cacheris PLLS to evaluate the financial and economic activity of the previous government from 2008 through the first quarter of 2010.

Trout Cacheris, PLLC, will lead a team of professional legal and consulting firms that will include Kroll, Inc. and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP

Yes, this seems like an attempt by the new government to appear impartial in a politically motivated investigation into the previous government's action. Tymoshenko is also being investigated for a 2004 bribery case that has just been reopened.  While Tymoshenko may have broken the law, I doubt that the move against her is purely legally motivated.   Alena Ledeneva writes in How Russia Really Works that “the pervasiveness of rule violations, punishment is bound to occur selectively on the basis of criteria developed outside the legal domain” (pg. 13). Legal action, in other words, can be a political tool.   The timing of the investigation, after a fiasco in the Rada, suggests that the new regime wants to weaken a major opponent of the regime. Last time I checked former President Kuchma had not been arrested for anything during his time as president, yet Tymoshenko finds herself a subject of multiple criminal investigations. 

RFE/RL: How would you describe the current form of government?

Yushchenko: Right now it is a totalitarian model, where one person holds three institutions in his hand: the parliamentary majority, the government, and the presidential office.

RFE/RL: If Yulia Tymoshenko was president now, do you think she would have made the same statement that Yanukovych made on the Holodomor in PACE? Would she have repealed your decrees regarding Bandera and Shukhevych? Would she have signed the Black Sea Fleet pact with Russia?

Yushchenko: If we're talking about ideology, I'm certain that Tymoshenko and Yanukovych share the same ideology. Yanukovych did not reverse the gas deal that was signed by Tymoshenko, because it suits both of them. Yanukovych and Tymoshenko are the best project Moscow has done in the past 100 years.

The effort expended in the name wars would be better spent on smartening up what was once a wonderfully grand provincial metropolis. Along with the ghosts of murdered Jews and deported Poles, echoes of past glories are unmissable, particularly in the fine frontages of the city centre. Not only there: your correspondent once visited the city’s museum of sewerage to inspect the magnificent wrought-iron pipes of long ago.