05/25/2015 Ukraine: Daily Highlights -First anniversary of Petro Poroshenko’s Presidency

President Petro Poroshenko

05.25.2015 Daily Highlights by the Digests & Analytics Ukraine News Agency

Topics from Media and Social Networks

• First anniversary of Petro Poroshenko’s Presidency.
• "Lyubotin shooter".
• Facebook blocked accounts of Berezovets and Filatov.

Key Events of Ukraine

• Last year on May 25, Petro Poroshenko was elected as a President of Ukraine.
• A law on tax exemption of international technical aid to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was signed .
• President Poroshenko extended by four months the deadline for the enterprises to submit the  data on the final beneficiaries.
• The court of appels unblocked the accounts and assets of the UBR bank, owned by the son of former President Yanukovych, however the State Financial Monitoring Service stopped the operations of the bank again.
• The law enforcement officers shot a resident of the Kharkiv region who killed two  employees of the inforcement service and took two gas station workers as hostages.
• Ministry of Internal Affairs is investigating the case on the withdrawal of 20% stake of the "Inter" TV channel from the state ownership  and the interference of the channel owners with the professional activities of the journalists.
• "Tsentroenergo" stopped Zmievska thermal power plant due to insufficient coal stocks in the warehouses.
• NBU insignificantly lowered the official hryvnia exchange rate against the dollar: 21.13 UAH/USD (+0.39 UAH), 23.20 UAH/EUR (-0,06 UAH), 4.24 UAH/RUR 10 (+0.05 UAH).

Ukraine at War

• Fighting in the Donbass continues, militants and Russian forces are using MLRS’s, heavy artillery and tanks against the Ukrainian army, which contradicts the Minsk Agreements, several Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded again . Foreign Minister Klimkin acknowledged that Ukraine fulfills these Agreements voluntarily and unilaterally.

Ukraine and the World

• NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg explained that the Alliance cannot make decisions on weapons deliveries to Ukraine, as they belong to the competences of the organization member-countries.
• Andrzej Duda officially became the new President of Poland. Former Foreign Minister Deshitsa believes that this could lead to the cooling in relations with Ukraine because of different opinions on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army activities.
• International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, demands from the Serbia government  to deliver the nationalist pro-Russian Serbia Radical Party leader. Serbian Prime Minister did not respond to the  deportation demand, claiming that the government will act in accordance with the laws of Serbia and international law.
• The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that they allegedly demanded the meeting with the Russian military, detained in the Luhansk region, from the first day of their detention. Journalists and Ukrainian officials deny that claim. The Russian Committee of the Soldiers' Mothers requested to determine the status of these military.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the renouncing of the military-technical cooperation with Russia will make Ukrainian enterprises, which fulfilled orders for the Russian defense industry, bankrupt.

The Trends

• Experts give an ambiguous evaluation of the first year of Poroshenko’s Presidency. According to Western observers, despite the ongoing malitary activites, he had a huge credit of trust in Ukraine and abroad for carrying out the fundamental reforms in politics and economy, but he managed to lose it in a year. His rating decreases rapidly , but the Ukrainian society does not see any alternative candidate for this position, despite his obvious personnel and political mistakes, failure to prosecute for  the Maydan crimes and the desire to compromise with former politicians who brought the country to the social explosion in the winter of 2013-2014.