08/06/2015 Ukraine: Daily Highlights - President Poroshenko signed a Law on Local Elections

President Poroshenko signed a Law on Local Elections

08.06.2015 Daily Highlights by the Digests & Analytics Ukraine News Agency

Topics from Media and Social Networks

• President Poroshenko signed a Law on Local Elections.
• The situation in the Donbass deteriorated again, the number of dead and wounded increases.
• Bloomberg Agency informed that Ukraine and the Creditors Club agreed on writing-off of 22.5% of the debt.

Key Events in Ukraine

• President Poroshenko signed a Law on Local Elections which contains an extremely complicated system of votes counting. There will be an open party list voting with a five per cent electoral threshold; elections of mayors of medium and large cities will be held in two rounds; the number of deputies of the local councils will be reduced by third; the Law describes the procedure to recall the deputies.
  A law introducing an automatic photo and video recording of the traffic rules violations was also signed .
• The Cabinet moved the State Fiscal Service under the control of the Minister of Finance and now it will not be able to directly influence the actions of this department.
• Head of the State Fiscal Service Nasirov said that "Ukrnafta" owes the budget UAH 9.6 billion.
• The Ministry of Economy offered to cancel the employment record books. The Draft Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers on the matter is being coordinated in the Ministries.
• The President Administration stated that instead of the military parade there will be a March of Independence for the Independence Day on the Maydan.
• The State Statistics Committee reported that for the first time in two years in July, deflation at the rate of 1% was recorded, at an annual rate the inflation slowed from 57.5% to 55.3%. The July deflation was achieved by reducing the prices for seasonal fruits and vegetables.
• Ukraine increased the volumes in application for reverse natural gas imports from Slovakia by one third - to 30 million m3 per day.
• The General Prosecutor's Office informed about the submission to Interpol of the materials to search for former President Yanukovych and Prime Minister Azarov.
• The official hryvnia exchange rate slightly increased: 21.48 UAH/USD (-0.08 UAH), 23.39 UAH/EUR (-0,08 UAH), 3.36 UAH/RUR 10 (-0.07 UAH).

Ukraine at War

• The situation in the Donbass worsened again , the militants are continuously attacking Maryinka, settlements near Donetsk airport, in the surroundings of Horlivka, Schastya and Stanitsa Luhanska. As usual, the situation deteriorates at night, the militants shellings intensify sharply. The Headquarters of the Anti-Terrorist Operation inform about over a hundred violations of the ceasefire during the day. Ukrainian army suffered heavy losses again: five soldiers were killed, six were wounded. As a result of attacks, local residents also suffered. Once again, the northern part of the Luhansk region lost the electricity supply because of the destruction of high-voltage lines in Schastya.
• Three Ukrainian soldiers were freed from captivity.
• The OSCE reported that only through a checkpoint in Gukovo on the Ukrainian-Russian border during this year  21 trucks with corpses of  dead soldiers marked as "Cargo 200"  drove to Russia.
• Foreign Minister Klimkin described the conditions for the creation of a buffer zone in the Donbass: withdrawal of all weaponry by the militants; unhindered access for the OSCE observers monitoring; a guarantee that the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops will not lead to the capture by the militants of the abandoned territories. Klimkin stated that Russia is not interested in the de-escalation of the conflict in the Donbass.

Ukraine and the World

• The Foreign Ministers of the United States and Russia agreed a draft UN Security Council resolutions to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria, as well as video conferencing regarding the Minsk talks on the settlement in the Donbas and holding of the local elections there.
• The Pentagon reported about the intervention of the Russian hackers into the e-mail system of the agency, which led to its shutdown for two days.
• No Ukrainian tourists were harmed in the bus accident in Turkey.
• Bloomberg Agency reported that during the negotiations between Ukraine and International Creditors Club a preliminary agreement to write off 22.5% of the public debt  was reached .
• ExxonMobil company closes its office for hydrocarbon production in Ukraine.
• President  Duda inauguration was held in Poland.