Leading British newspaper The Sunday Times has uncovered evidence suggesting that a former senior member of the Ukrainian security service illegally sold a nuclear missile system capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Iran two years ago. The paper reported that the deal was brokered by an organized crime boss, and is feared to have greatly contributed to the Iranian nuclear programme which is now the subject of a major international confrontation.

I was planning to write a rather upbeat editorial this week to mark the anniversary of 9/11. After all, as the five year mark since those world-shattering terror attacks approaches Ukraine has yet to become engulfed in all the terrorism and ethnic division surrounding the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ that has effectively dominated international relations since the twin towers fell. This is no small feat, considering that the country has one of the largest Muslim minorities in Europe (approx. 4% of the overall population) and in the Crimean Tatars a potential flashpoint if ever there was one. So it looked like being a time to reflect on the relatively easy-going attitudes within Ukrainian society towards religious and ethnic minorities and salute the general lack of xenophobia in this patchwork nation. Then I read the Sunday newspapers, and learned that Ukrainian mafia bosses and former government officials have sold missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Iran (see What’s Up on page 4 for details). So in other words, while Ukrainian society as a whole has come through five years of global turmoil with much to its credit, the twin evils of organised crime and corruption have potentially thrust Ukraine into the very eye of the storm. No wonder the country has such a hard time trying to portray itself in a positive light to the outside world. Similar stories about the sale of suitcase nukes and high grade uranium were almost weekly occurrences throughout the Kuchma years, and the only saving grace in this instance is that the Iranian deal does indeed date back to the old regime, but nevertheless it should prove embarrassing to a country that just over a year ago was looking forward to fast track EU membership talks. At the end of the day we should all probably be thankful that Ukraine was bullied into giving up her not inconsiderable nuclear arsenal back in 1994, or God alone knows what the results would have been for world peace.

¹.31/2006
It was the headline we'd all been waiting to read for the last eighteen months - 'Ukrainians hail ex-Prime Minister's prison sentence as victory over corruption'. Unfortunately, the story that followed did not relate to the arrest and third incarceration of Donbas overlord Viktor Yanukovich. As it turns out the former prime minister in question on this occasion was actually ‘Panama’ Pavlo Lazarenko, the disgraced PM and corruption king of the mid 1990s who was convicted last week in the US of money-laundering and extortion (see What's Up? on page 4 for details). The lesson here seems to be clear enough - if you're going to  cheat the Ukrainian people, keep it within the former Soviet space and make damned sure you don't expose yourself to justice systems that actually function. This serves as yet another sad indictment of Ukraine’s judiciary, but it is to be welcomed nonetheless. After all, while the sight of an American judge handing out prison time to a corrupt Ukrainian politician for what are essentially crimes against Ukraine may leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry, at least Ukrainians will finally have the pleasure of seeing justice served on one of the many high profile figures to profit from state-scale criminality. There is little to suggest that this foreign conviction will in any way serve to moderate the behaviour of local powerbrokers, however. Indeed, in the current climate they could easily be forgiven for thinking that they have never had it so good, and you’d be hard pushed to argue otherwise. So while Panama Pavlo prepares his appeal and gets his prison fatigues ready, his erstwhile colleagues will continue to lord it over their fiefdoms, and we are left to reflect on the fact that at least one 'bandit' has finally gone to prison, regardless of President Yushchenko's inability to enforce his famous Orange Revolution slogan. 

¹.29/2006
Years ago when the government wanted to distract the population’s attention from the mass protests sparked by the Gongadze slaying they organised street parties to be held in tandem with the demonstrations, thus providing observers with the high farce of Kuchma effigies being set alight right beside happy weekenders slurping on ice cream and soda. Other ruses included setting violent ‘anarchist’ groups and other government hired goon squads on the small tent city which lined Khreschatyk in a bid to create as much chaos as possible. It was a surreal time all right, but at least we could show our disgust by offering support for the protesters, many of whom went on to form the nucleus of the Orange Revolution’s Maidan tent city three years later. The spectacular victory of people power on that particular occasion should have taught the authorities a lesson, and unsurprisingly it did – namely that the only way to neutralise the whole people power phenomenon is by paying stooges to form rival crowds supporting your side, thus canceling out the impact that large groups of righteous demonstrators could otherwise have made. We’ve seen it a hundred times since the dawn of the Orange Era, and today Kyiv is awash with professional protesters getting their 30hrv a day for standing around with the flags and banners of whichever party is paying (see page 10 for details). Honest protesters, of which there remain many, tend to get lost in the middle of it all. The real tragedy here is that all the cynics who dismissed the crowds on Maidan during the Orange Revolution as paid off impostors will no doubt now consider themselves fully vindicated, and that is a huge kick in the teeth indeed for the thousands who suffered freezing nights and risked their lives back then on the strength of their convictions alone.

¹.29/2006
Years ago when the government wanted to distract the population’s attention from the mass protests sparked by the Gongadze slaying they organised street parties to be held in tandem with the demonstrations, thus providing observers with the high farce of Kuchma effigies being set alight right beside happy weekenders slurping on ice cream and soda. Other ruses included setting violent ‘anarchist’ groups and other government hired goon squads on the small tent city which lined Khreschatyk in a bid to create as much chaos as possible. It was a surreal time all right, but at least we could show our disgust by offering support for the protesters, many of whom went on to form the nucleus of the Orange Revolution’s Maidan tent city three years later. The spectacular victory of people power on that particular occasion should have taught the authorities a lesson, and unsurprisingly it did – namely that the only way to neutralise the whole people power phenomenon is by paying stooges to form rival crowds supporting your side, thus canceling out the impact that large groups of righteous demonstrators could otherwise have made. We’ve seen it a hundred times since the dawn of the Orange Era, and today Kyiv is awash with professional protesters getting their 30hrv a day for standing around with the flags and banners of whichever party is paying (see page 10 for details). Honest protesters, of which there remain many, tend to get lost in the middle of it all. The real tragedy here is that all the cynics who dismissed the crowds on Maidan during the Orange Revolution as paid off impostors will no doubt now consider themselves fully vindicated, and that is a huge kick in the teeth indeed for the thousands who suffered freezing nights and risked their lives back then on the strength of their convictions alone.

East is east and west is west, and Ukraine has never been more divided, right? Well, if you were to casually peruse the latest international press coverage of Ukraine's schoolboy politics this would certainly be the overwhelming impression, but scratch a little deeper and there is cause to hope that the country's very public wounds are slowly beginning to heal. It may not be a particularly optimistic time for many Ukrainophiles, but if one applies a little perspective it is not all doom and gloom. For example, according to a recent poll a surprisingly high number of East Ukrainians actually preferred the Ukrainian language version of the latest Disney blockbuster to its Russian counterpart (see What's Up? on page 6 for more). This may not represent a major landmark, but it is undeniably progress along the road to national reconciliation and bodes well for the future. It also fits in with reports of a lessening of polarisation across the land, something I encountered first hand down in Lviv last weekend, where I found a wide variety of attitudes towards the current crisis on display, almost all expressed unselfconsciously in Russian. The self-styled bastion of Ukrainian nationalism remains a proud city, but it appeared to be far from the partisan place it is so often portrayed as. Then there’s Monday’s football match between PORA and the Regions, unheard of just two years ago (see p.4). None of this amounts to much when viewed in isolation, but when bound together they create an impression of a nation gradually coming to terms with its own diversity, albeit very gradually indeed! Perhaps the logical conclusion to this thaw will be a moderation in the country's political direction, with the all-or-nothing Russia or Europe arguments replaced by a more reasoned middle ground, but that might be a little bit too much to hope for right now.

If you had wanted to pick the one political figure that represented the majority of decent Ukrainians trying to live a better life, it would surely have been Oleksandr Moroz. I remember him leading the 'Ukraina Bez Kuchma' protests during the Gongadze scandal in 2000 while Yuschenko kept his head down and backed the authorities, and then led the opposition movement of the following years. He forced the constitution through in the teeth of Kuchma's machinations back in 1996. I also hear he lives in a relatively humble apartment with his wife. There are no billion dollar gas transit fortunes hidden away at the back of his closet, no expensive dacha palaces in his name. In short, he has long stood out from the corrupt crowd as a decent and principled fellow, always ready to champion the little man and apparently devoid of personal greed. So in many respects Moroz was absolutely the last figure anyone would have expected to have gone against the Orange forces and cut a pact with the Donbass clans, but that is exactly what appears to have happened. A more damning development is hard to imagine, and news of this latest nadir has come as a kick in the teeth for anyone who hoped Ukraine had genuinely turned the corner and was on the road to reform and European integration. The political drama will continue to play out for the coming weeks, no doubt, but I fear that the damage to Ukraine's embryonic democratic culture has been done, with the end result being a landslide victory for political apathy. The really sad thing is that this is nothing new. From the time of Kyiv Rus onwards Ukrainian history is full of examples of such petty in-fighting and betrayal, and it is one national trait that the country could well do without.

Cheers,
Peter Dickinson, Editor

Who would have thought that good old Ukraine, land of the Cossacks with their ubiquitous pipes, would be one of the first European countries to impose large scale anti-smoking bans? Not me, that's for sure, but that's just what they appear to have finally done. Last weekend legislation passed in 2005 came into effect, banning smoking in a number of public places, with restaurants and the like forced to make half their venues non-smoking. The Rada has been talking about it for years, of course, but I always assumed that they were playing some game or other with the tobacco barons and never actually intended to implement such an apparently unpopular measure. After all, cigarette smoke is a quintessential aspect of life in Ukraine, whether we're talking about a pack of smokers puffing away while crammed into the end of a railway wagon, the huddles in every office corridor or the random old fella with his evil little snout who gets under your feet in the subway. This is simply a smoker's land, and no mistake. For further proof just look at the relative mania for cleaning ashtrays local waitresses and waiters display in even the meanest establishments, especially when compared with their normal service standards. So on reflection, is this the most progressive piece of legislation to have come out of independent Ukraine? It will certainly take a lot of people by surprise. However, one has to wonder quite how this law will be enforced. When things are left up to the discretion of the local police things have a habit of going astray. In fact you'd have to wonder whether we are in practice about to see yet another pseudo-law which in fact merely facilitates the extraction of bribes. The irony of that would be almost as rich as the smell of tobacco smoke as you first arrive at Boryspil.

Cheers,
Peter Dickinson, Editor

Ukraine's World Cup adventure continues, for another few days at least. The significance for the country cannot be overrated, and so far it has certainly been a massive success. Ukraine has taken its place among a joyous community of nations, won friends and column inches all over the globe, and despite reports coming out of Moscow of clashes between Russian-language Ukraine fans and the large Ukrainian diaspora contingent, the overwhelming sense of national unity and international friendship is hard to escape. Except, that is, when you listen to all the complaints of gross corruption among the officials responsible for handling Ukraine's ticket allocation. What emerges is a sad tale straight out of the bad old days of the Kuchma regime, with a single tour operator offered a monopoly on all the country's tickets, long-since made bookings cancelled and guests asked to pay up extra upon arrival. Fortunately all this unpleasantness did not manage to spoil the party, but with so much being done to make Ukrainians feel at home in Germany it is a sad indictment of local attitudes that the people who appear consistently most eager to cheat and extort Ukrainians are their fellow countrymen, usually from the relative safety of their perch three rungs up the social ladder. In fairness it should be noted that the whole World Cup ticket allocation business is a deeply unsatisfactory process that has drawn complaints from almost every participating nation, but nevertheless it is interesting to note that debut boys Ukraine should have so quickly proven themselves able to add their own corrupt roof to the existing FIFA structure.

Cheers,
Peter Dickinson, Editor

I noted with amusement plans put forward last week in Moscow to ban the import of Ukrainian metals to the Russian Federation, with Kremlin officials citing the enormous dangers posed by Chornobyl-infected goods making it into the country. After all, everybody knows that Ukraine's huge metallurgy industry is largely centered around Chornobyl, with some minor subsidiaries in the Donbass region! This is surely the most ridiculous and disingenuous of all the recent bans imposed in Russia, which has seen everything from Georgian mineral water and Moldovan wine to Ukrainian meats put on the black list. What I like most about this clumsy Russian posturing is the attempts they make to present the bans as perfectly rational and justified in their own right, as if they have nothing whatsoever to do with the country's regional bully boy politics. One has to wonder what will be next - presumably Ukrainian bread will soon be labelled as infected with bird flu, and if the Baltics play up their herring exports could well be declared unclean. None of this is fooling anyone, of course, and while slackening trade with Russia will surely hurt the local economy, it might not be a bad thing in the long run if it forces Ukraine to look elsewhere and build international trade relations with more reasonable partners. In the meantime I'll be enjoying a glass of Georgian wine with my dinner, and toasting the geniuses who alerted us to the dangers of radioactive Ukrainian metal!

Cheers,
Peter Dickinson, Editor

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