01/29/2016 Ukraine: Daily Highlights -Constitutional Court will consider amendments to the Constitution during the weekend

Constitutional Court will consider amendments to the Constitution during the weekend

01.29.2016 Daily Highlights by the Digests & Analytics Ukraine

Topics from Media and Social Networks

• Constitutional Court will consider amendments to the Constitution during the weekend.
• Experts called the Minsk Agreement null and void and urged to legislatively recognize Russia to be aggressor and to set up a new format of negotiations.
• Ukraine commemorated the Heroes of Kruty.
• Monument to one of the initiators of the Holodomor Petrovskiy was demolished in Dnipropetrovsk.

Key Events in Ukraine

• Vocational education workers held a rally in Kyiv outside of the Parliament building with demands to restore funding for their educational institutions.
• Court lifted attachment of property of the former Minister of Environment Zlochevskiy suspected of illicit enrichment and embezzlement of budget funds, because his case was forwarded to the Prosecutor's Office to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau without presenting new suspicions.
• IBRD has allocated $300 million for programs aimed at improving district heating energy efficiency in eight cities of Ukraine.
• The hryvnia continued to drop rapidly, nearing the February 2015 record: 25.56 ₴/$ (+0.40 UAH), 27.91 ₴/€ (+0.48 UAH), 3.40 ₴/10 ₽ (+0.15 UAH).

Ukraine at War

• Two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the conflict area in Donbas. The militants are firing at Ukrainian positions near Horlivka and at villages near Donetsk.

Ukraine and the World

• China has introduced a limited visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens, who will be able to visit Shanghai and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces for six days without a visa.
• Polish Foreign Minister Waszczykowski believes Russia, pursuing a revanchist policy and building up its military potential, to be the greatest threat to the European security.
• ECHR President Raimondi said that Russia's refusal to fulfill the decisions of the court should be followed by the country's withdrawal from the Council of Europe.
• PACE has named the European countries with the most corrupt judicial systems, including Ukraine, and urged them to implement the recommendations to reform their judiciary.
• Turkey has demanded that the EU increase assistance to address the refugee problem to €5 billion, however, Europe is ready to allocate the previously promised €3 billion only after a rigorous inspection of expenditures expediency.
• According to a survey commissioned by German publication Focus, 40% of respondents supported the resignation of Chancellor Merkel because of her policy towards migrants.

The Trends

• A group of Ukrainian think tanks called Minsk Agreement null and void, and urged the Ukrainian President: to terminate them unilaterally; to revoke the law on the special self-government regime in Donbas and the special status of Crimea; to legally recognize Donbas to be an occupied territory; to establish an international commission to assess the damage from the Russian aggression to file suits in international courts; to hold new talks on the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict involving the United States, the EU and other stakeholders, primarily the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum, based on the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
• Experts and political analysts believe that the demonstratory violation of the Constitution by the President and Parliament would deligitimize them, creating conditions for social upheavals and the military scenario of the power shift.
• The Constitutional Court will consider amendments to the Constitution related to the justice system using the fast-track procedure over the weekend, so that MPs could adopt them in the first reading during the current session.
• The National Guard has issued an order depriving of the military rank the "Commander of Donbas Battalion" MP Semenchenko.