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Russian Culture Ministry freezes ties with International Organization of Turkic Culture
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/russia-and-former-soviet-union/russian-culture-ministry-freezes-ties-with-international-organization-of-t

The Russian Culture Ministry has announced the decision to discontinue all communication with the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TURKSOY), a ministry spokesperson told Interfax on Nov. 27.

Organisation internationale pour la culture turque — Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_internationale_pour_la_culture_turque

L’Organisation internationale pour la culture turque (en turc : Uluslararası Türk Kültürü Teşkilatı - TÜRKSOY) est une organisation internationale de pays regroupant des populations turques qui parlent une langue appartenant à la famille des langues turques. En plus d’être une abréviation de l’ancien nom officiel Türk Kültür ve Sanatları Ortak Yönetimi - Coopération pour la Culture et les Arts turcs, « Türksoy » est un nom composé signifiant en turc « Türk » (Turc) et « soy » (ancêtre).

6 des 14 membres sont des « sujets de la Fédération de Russie ».

Russia stops gas supplies to Ukraine

▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/russia-and-former-soviet-union/russia-stops-gas-supplies-to-ukraine-402778.html

La guerre du gaz repart.

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2015/09/24/p1a0097nls1lkqph31c0kf5h1aju4/original_big.jpg

MOSCOW - Supplies of Russian gas to Naftogaz Ukrainy are being stopped on Wednesday because prepayments have ended, and new money has not arrived, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told journalists.

#gaz #ukraine #russie #guerre_du_gaz

Thousands protest voting fraud in Kryvyi Rih, call for uprising
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/thousands-protest-over-voting-fraud-in-kryvyi-rih-call-for-uprising-402616

About 5,000 demonstrators attended a protest rally on Nov. 22 against alleged voting fraud in the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off election in the city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The mood at the rally was tense, with speakers calling for an uprising, saying that they feel the authorities are ignoring both the law and their demands.

According to the official results of the mayoral election, incumbent Mayor Yury Vilkul, a former associate of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, won with 49.25 percent, while Yury Milobog from the pro-European Samopomich Party got 48.83 percent – a difference of a mere 752 votes. Milobog argues that the vote was rigged and is calling for a recount.

Early on Nov. 22, a Dnipropetrovsk court rejected all of Milobog’s complaints, triggering a backlash from his supporters.
[…]
[Samopomich MPs Yegor] Sobolev demanded that members of Kryvyi Rih’s election commission be replaced with more “principled” people.

Representatives of the Radical Party, Batkyvshchyna, Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front at the commission, which is dominated by Vilkul’s representatives, had consistently supported Vilkul. Critics say the parties’ local branches have sold out to him.

Media: National Guard, Kherson battalion troops beat Crimean blockade activists (UPDATED)
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/media-national-guard-kherson-battalion-troops-beat-crimean-blockade-activi

About 100 Ukrainian National Guard troops and soldiers from the Kherson Battalion have beaten a group of activists enforcing an unofficial blockade of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory of Crimea, Ukrainian media reported on Nov. 21.

The troops were reported to have surrounded a group of activists near the town of Chaplynka, at the site of some high-voltage power line pylons reported to have been damaged by explosions in the early hours of Nov. 20.

According to Shevket Namatullaev, a journalist of the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR, the armed troops were beating the activists away from the area with their rifle butts. He said several Crimean Tatar activists had been injured.
[…]
According to the spokeswoman of the National Guard of Ukraine, Svitlana Pavlovska, the National Guard has yet to arrive in the area. However, she said that the guardsmen had been ordered by the Interior Ministry to provide security while the power pylons are being repaired.

“In accordance with the Interior Ministry leadership’s decision, the National Guard has been sent to secure areas, along with the national police and other law enforcement agencies, where electrical supply lines were damaged in order to ensure and provide security while they’re being repaired,” Pavlovska told the Kyiv Post by phone.

“The National Guard hasn’t arrived yet to those areas. It has no orders that are related to the so-called blockade / roadblock of Crimea from the mainland,” she added.

Officials say the damage to the electricity pylons could threaten the power supply to 40 percent of Kherson and Mykolayiv oblasts, Ukrainian television channel 24 Kanal reported.

Crimean Tatar activists, along with fighters from the ultra-nationalist Right Sector organization, have been blockading the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula for several weeks, preventing heavy goods vehicles from entering the annexed Ukrainian territory.

Kuwait arrest raises specter of Ukraine black market as source of arms for ISIS
▻http://mashable.com/2015/11/20/kuwait-ukraine-isis-weapons

The arrest in Kuwait of a Lebanese man with ties to the Islamic State has raised the specter that Ukraine’s notorious illicit arms market may be a source of weapons for the the militant group.

One senior Ukrainian official with access to intelligence agency reports told Mashable on Friday that it is “plausible” the man, arrested by Kuwaiti authorities on Thursday, had obtained FN-6 surface-to-air missile systems he admitted to getting from a broker in Ukraine. Calling news of the arrest “interesting,” the official stopped short of giving a definitive answer to a question about whether Kiev had direct information about the arms sale in question.

Pour les purs et durs, ça ne peut venir, évidemment, que des zones tenues par les séparatistes…

FN-6 shoulder-fired missile systems, manufactured by China, have never been sold to Ukraine, nor has the government given permission for their transit through its territory, the Ukrainian defense ministry said in a statement on Friday. And there have been no documented reports of the the FN-6 shoulder-fired missile systems appearing in Ukraine since the war began in April 2014.

But that doesn’t mean the weapons couldn’t have been transported into the country another way, the senior official admitted, adding that Kiev has monitored the illicit trafficking of weapons to and from separatist-controlled territories since the start of the war, and that it "really struggles" to stem the “heavy” flow.
[…]
But on both sides of the battle lines, weapons have a way of disappearing in Ukraine, where corruption remains rampant, an Ukrainian security official told Mashable in June.

“Weapons can disappear all the time,” possibly falling into the hands of extremist groups, said the official. “We have seen the black arms market flourish since the start of the war in Donbass,” the official said, using the colloquial term for eastern Ukraine.

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/newsphoto/2013-03-15/450/FN-6%20MANPADS%203-121005_copy1.jpg

Ukraine : audition parlementaire pour faire le point sur l’enquête sur les événements de Maïdan (demain 21/11 sera le deuxième anniversaire du début)

Ni le procureur général, ni le ministre de l’Intérieur ne se déplacent.

Frustrations high at EuroMaidan killings hearing as violence erupts
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/frustrations-high-at-euromaidan-killings-hearing-as-violence-erupts-402499

On the eve of the two-year anniversary of the Nov. 21 start of the EuroMaidan Revolution, lawyers representing the families of dozens of protesters killed asked why those responsible still haven’t been brought to justice.

The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Interior Ministry ignored the meeting, where they were called to give a progress report on the investigations.

Yegor Sobolev, the head of the Anti-Corruption Committee, threatened that “the public would take action” in light of such disrespect by the authorities.

Le seul représentant du gouvernement, chef adjoint du Service de sécurité, visiblement ironique pendant l’intervention d’un « héros de Maïdan » se prend un coup de latte dudit héros…

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-F1veQaxoY

Parasyuk later apologized for his violent outburst, but many saw a wider issue that highlighted the public anger over the continued impunity among officials despite the EuroMaidan’s demands for rule of law in the nation.

Echoing comments from a number of leading lawmakers, Volodymyr Viatrovych, the director of the Institute for National Remembrance, wrote on his Facebook page that the authorities would keep losing its monopoly on violence if it didn’t actually use that right in the pursuit of justice.

Ukraine finally passes anti-bias law, a prerequisite for visa-free travel to EU
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/ukrainian-finally-passes-anti-bias-law-a-prerequisite-for-visa-free-travel

In its third attempt in a week, Ukraine’s parliament passed amendments to the Labor Code on Nov. 12 that will end lingering Soviet-era workplace discrimination over sexual orientation, political and religious beliefs.

The law, which received the support of 234 lawmakers, was the most controversial bill in parliament among a package of anti-corruption and other legislation the European Union requires in its visa liberalization action plan.

The voting process has been excruciating, however, requiring six rounds of voting and frantic consultations before it finally passed. In the last unsuccessful vote, 219 lawmakers voted in favor, seven votes short of the 226 votes in the 423-seat parliament that are needed for a bill to pass. Parliament’s speaker Volodymyr Groysman then announced a 15-minute break for talks.

“Dear deputies: Seven votes stand between us and a visa-free regime,” Groysman said before calling the break.

Arguing in favor of the bill, Groysman after the break said that “the individual and his rights are at the foundation of our society.” He ensured that the anti-discrimination measure had no bearing on the broader issue of gay rights. “God forbid same-sex marriages in our country,” he said.

After the break, lawmakers returned to the vote, and managed to pass the bill at the first attempt. The extra votes needed were provided by the president’s faction, 108 of whom eventually voted for the bill, compared to 99 before the break, and by the prime minister’s faction, where 65 voted in favor as opposed to 62 before the break.

Parliament twice failed to pass the amendments in earlier voting: On Nov. 5 a similar measure garnered only 117 votes, while on Nov. 10 the draft bill gained 207 votes – still far short of the 226 votes that are needed for a bill to pass in the 423-seat parliament.

Ah ben, ça y est, le parlement a réussi à voter cette interdiction de discrimination. Mais de justesse et après une suspension de séance (et les remontées de bretelles qu’elle autorise).

Steinmeier says law on special status of Donbas must come into effect when elections take place there
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/steinmeier-says-law-on-special-status-of-donbas-must-come-into-effect-when

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that the law on the special status of Donbas must enter into force on the day when local elections are held in the region.

Profile parliamentary committee fails to gather quorum to agree bill on agency for detection of corrupt assets
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/profile-parliamentary-committee-fails-to-gather-quorum-to-agree-bill-on-ag

The parliamentary committee for preventing and fighting corruption has failed to hold a meeting due to the absence of quorum.

(brève)

#je_ne_peux_pas_j'ai_piscine

EDIT: ah, oui #Ukraine, where else?

Ne pas oublier de désactiver l’alarme de son portefeuille avant de s’en servir…

Ukrainians create high-tech device to protect wallets from pickpockets (VIDEO)
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/ukrainians-create-high-tech-device-to-protect-wallets-from-pickpockets-vid

When Bilbo Baggins, the hero of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit, first tries his hand at pickpocketing, he gets caught immediately when a troll’s enchanted purse cries out “’Ere! ‘Oo are you?” as soon as he lays hands on it.

Now, in real-world Ukraine, a group of IT entrepreneurs has come up with some technological magic to help protect anyone’s wallet or purse from light-fingered thieves. This device won’t cry out if someone tries to steal it, but it will start beeping and make your mobile phone vibrate if a strangers’ fingers get too close to your cash.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpD__uRRrqc

New parties with old faces perform well in local elections
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/new-parties-with-old-faces-perform-well-in-local-elections-401684.html

Ukraine’s local elections on Oct. 25 saw a whole range of new parties gain seats across the country. Yet, behind the new facade, there were plenty of old faces.

The 94 percent of election results available on Nov. 9 show that three new political parties — Our Land (Nash Kray), Revival (Vidrodzhennia) and UKROP (Dill) — made it into top 10 country-wide in popularity.

Our Land already received more than 4,100 seats in the regional and local councils, becoming the third among party lists after the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party. UKROP took seventh place among the parties with more than 1,800 seats in councils, following by Revival with more than 1,500 seats.

The experts say that Our Land and Revival have been largely formed to shelter the escapees from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, while UKROP is a political project of billionaire oligarch and former Dnipropetrovsk governor Ihor Kolomoisky.

Now these parties have a local base from which to convert their electoral — and possible future governing — success into seats in the national parliament

Après les nouveaux habits du Parti des régions, un nouveau parti d’oligarques…

The success of UKROP party has absolutely different grounds.

A creation of billionaire Kolomoisky and infamous Dnipropetrovsk businessman Gennady Korban, the party positioned itself as a “patriotic force.” Party’s full name literally means “Ukrainian Union of Patriots.” UKROP (or dill) is also the way Russian-backed separatists derogatorily call the Ukrainian soldiers.

Kolomoisky and Korban were credited with preventing the separatist advancement in the summer of 2014 by financing volunteer battalions and various PR campaigns. Now the prosecutors accuse Korban of running an organized crime group.

Another factor which contributed to UKROP’s success is financial – the party had one of the most expensive campaigns with a massive number of billboards advertising the party.

… et les nouveaux micro-partis locaux.

The local elites are responsible for dozens of the new parties created this year.

This way they tried to create the illusion for the electorate that the new people and new ideas stand behind them, Fesenko of Penta said. The local elites also wanted to show the government that "they are neither for nor against Kyiv and can continue on as they always did,” he added.

One more reason — the local elites do not want to pay the unofficial fees to get on the lists of the bigger parties. Similarly, parties like Bloc Petro Poroshenko might not want these local elites for fear they could tarnish their reputations, especially if they are too close to Kyiv, Fesenko said.

Bref, #plus_ça_change_plus_c'est_la_même_chose

European diplomat claims world will condemn Ukraine if it does not investigate murders on Maidan, in Odesa
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/european-diplomat-claims-world-will-condemn-ukraine-if-it-does-not-investi

Ukraine will face international condemnation if Kyiv ignores the remarks of the Council of Europe experts concerning the investigation into the events on Maidan, the tragedy in Odesa in 2014, Director of Human Rights, Special Advisor to the Council of Europe’s Secretary General for Ukraine Christos Giakoumopoulos has stated.

(brève)

Ukraine wants to engage OSCE/ODIHR experts to discuss elections in Donbas
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraine-wants-to-engage-osceodihr-experts-to-discuss-elections-in-donbas-4

Ukraine proposes engaging experts from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) in the Trilateral Contact Group’s talks in Minsk to analyze proposals on holding elections in Donbas territories that are still not under Kyiv’s control, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

(intégralité de la brève)

Ça bougerait (un peu) ?

Groysman supports extension of moratorium on land sales
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/groysman-supports-extension-of-moratorium-on-land-sales-401571.html

Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has supported the extension of the moratorium on land sales.

((très) brève)

OSCE/ODIHR head concerned about reports on pressure on members of CEC, other election commissions
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/osceodihr-head-concerned-about-reports-on-pressure-on-members-of-cec-other

Head of the OSCE/ODIHR mission Tana de Zulueta at a meeting with the head of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Mykhailo Okhendovsky, has expressed concern about the reports on pressure on the members of the CEC and other election commissions, the CEC press service has said.

Ukraine ’chooses homophobia over EU integration’
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraine-chooses-homophobia-over-eu-integration-401535.html

Even after the European Union reminded Ukraine that a visa-free regime would depend on the adoption of certain human rights bills, Ukraine’s parliament on Nov. 5 failed to pass a landmark bill on discrimination – a move that activists say may scare Europe off for years to come.
[…]
The anti-discrimination bill submitted to parliament was prescribed in the EU-Ukraine Action Plan on visa liberalization. Not only did the legislation lay out protections for homosexuals; it also prohibited discrimination on the basis of skin color and religious belief.

But with a suspiciously large number of lawmakers absent during the vote and many abstentions, the bill failed to pass, with a mere 117 votes out of the required 226.

Political consultant Taras Beresovets said that even liberal lawmakers voted against, fearing that homophobic sentiment among voters might hurt their support.

Some lawmakers cited “Christian” or “conservative” values for their reluctance to vote for the anti-discrimination amendment to the Labor Code. Some argued that approval of the bill would lead to the legalization of gay marriage – a claim that drew indignation from gay rights and human rights activists.

Competition agency lets China’s CNBM to buy solar power plants affiliated with Andriy Kliuyev
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/competition-agency-lets-chinas-cnbm-to-buy-solar-power-plants-affiliated-w

The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has approved the acquisition of shares in the solar power plants Voskhod Solar, Neptun Solar (both in Mykolaiv region), Danube Solar Power Plant One, Danube Solar Power Plant Two, Franco Solar, Franco PV, Pryozerna One, Pryozerna Two, Lymanska Energy One, Lymanska Energy Two (all based in Odesa region) by China’s CNBM International Corporation.

Fiscal service plans to abolish scheduled, off-scheduled, cross audits for large taxpayers in 2016
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/fiscal-service-plans-to-abolish-scheduled-off-scheduled-cross-audits-for-l

The State Fiscal Service of Ukraine plans to abolish scheduled, off-scheduled, and cross audits for large taxpayers in 2016, State Fiscal Service Head Roman Nasirov said at a cabinet meeting on Nov. 5.

Plus de contrôles fiscaux inopinés chez les gros contribuables. La réforme est en marche.

The International Advisory Panel says Ukraine’s investigations into May 2014 violence in Odesa are inefficient
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/the-international-advisory-panel-says-ukraines-investigations-into-may-201

The International Advisory Panel overseeing the investigations into the tragic events in Odesa on May 2, 2014 has said that the investigations being carried out by the Ukrainian authorities have so far been insufficient.

Pour ne pas changer, hélas !

Vigilante group targets gays and others in violent promotion of its ‘family values’
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/vigilante-group-targets-gays-and-others-in-violent-promotion-of-its-family

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2015/11/02/p1a3460j6uq5nfct11251h4pt104/original_big.jpg

They call themselves Fashion Verdict - a group that tries to sweep promiscuity, gambling, sexual offenders and homosexuality from the streets of Ukraine’s cities, without the help of what they say is a corrupt law enforcement system.

Mykola Dulskiy, a 26-year-old self-proclaimed promoter of “traditional family values,” last year founded the group in Kyiv, which claims more than 20,000 members in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

Usually, the group attacks a person when it receives three pictures, and other forms of so-called evidence, of someone leading an “improper lifestyle” –along with their contact information on social media. The self-styled activists then find the victim and then beat them or spray gas in their eyes.The incident is recorded on video.Beatings are dealt out, according recordings the group has posted on social media, for things as trivial as an unusual haircut, to wearing earrings, or posting nude pictures online.