13/12/2014 Ukraine: Daily Highlights - The draft of 2015 Ukrainian state budget was immediately withdrawn from the Parliament for revision

13/12/2014 Daily Highlights by "Digests and Analytics - Ukraine" News Agency

Topics of the day 

The draft of 2015 Ukrainian state budget was immediately withdrawn from the Parliament for revision. The issuance of the next tranche of stand-by credit depends on the results of the IMF mission.

Events in Ukraine

• President Poroshenko in an interview to ABC News said Ukraine isn’t going to restore the nuclear status. He pointed out that the UN Security Council proved to be an inefficient structure and proposed to deprive the right of veto of the permanent members of the Council.
• Representatives of the IMF met with President Poroshenko and talked about extending of the cooperation with the Fund and the status of the current stand-by credit programs.
• Ukrainian citizenship was granted to the former georgian minister Zghuladze, who is being groomed for a deputy interior minister,.
• The state budget draft for 2015 submitted by the government of Yatsenyuk was withdrawn for revisions the next day.

War in Ukraine

• According to experts, illegal military formations of Donets’k and Luhans’k “people republics” have about 700 armored vehicles, half of which are the tanks.
• Per UN data, the number of casulaties of the conflict in the Donbass as of November 25th, is 4356 people, including 298 passengers from Malaysian aircraft. More than 10 thousand people were wounded.
• In a weekly report, the OSCE monitoring mission said that the buffer zone under development in the Eastern Ukraine on the basis of Minsk agreements remains insecure.
• Militants continue their provocations and attacks on positions of Ukrainian army. Donets'k airport was shelled three times in the last day.
• Occupation authorities of Crimea want to create a new mobile operator, because the existing companies refuse to work there due to international sanctions.

Ukraine and the World

• Swedish Air Forces intercepted a Russian military aircraft over the Baltic. The aircraft didn’t use the transponder and created a hazard to a civil airplane. Russian authorities denied the threat to civil aircraft and insisted that its interceptor was in the international air space.
• Leaders of Germany and the OSCE satisfied with the conflict de-escalation in the East of Ukraine and believe that only Minsk agreements could be the basis of a peaceful solution.

Trends

• The continuation of negotiations in Minsk in the Russia-Ukraine-OSCE format were deliberately delayed by the Russian Federation in the hopes that the US Congress will not adopt a bill of military support for Ukraine. Russia will try to block weapons supply to Ukraine during the negotiations, which Foreign Minister Lavrov and the US Secretary of State Kerry will hold on December, 15th.