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Review of the passing week and preview of the coming week's news by Kyiv Post.

Next Week’s News

Medvedev coming to Kyiv

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (left), and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych stroll in Moscow on May 8, ahead of the 65th anniversary celebration of the end of World War II. Medvedev will visit Kyiv on May 17-18 to sign five deals, none of them sensational, according to First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev. Those include these draft agreements: demarcation of the Ukrainian-Russian border, cooperation with the GLONASS satellite navigation system, interbank cooperation between Ukreximbank and VTB, scientific and educational cooperation, and tourism cooperation.

Tymoshenko under investigation again

Ukraine’s prosecutors on May 12 called in ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko for questioning and announced that a closed criminal case into whether she bribed Supreme Court judges in 2003 has been reopened. She says she has been summoned for interrogation again on May 17.

Quote of the week

“The former government cannot be the opposition. They are merely making a smokescreen to hide from law enforcement. Criminal cases involving Hr 42 billion in abuses have been launched. They will simply have no time to get a seat in the parliament, but will be thinking about how to escape or run away.”

– Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Sivkovych during a TV interview on May 11.

Week in Review

Opposition stages protest

Critics of President Viktor Yanukovych held a second protest outside parliament in as many weeks on May 11 (above), mustering a crowd of 2,000 or so supporters. But they were met by hundreds of police and supporters of President Viktor Yanukovych. Divisions among opposition leaders have kept crowds small, while administration critics also say that police curtailed public transportaiton into Kyiv on the morning of the rally. Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said she will step up criticism of the administration in protest of deals that she says sell out the nation’s strategic industries and interests, including allowing the Russian Black Sea Fleet to stay in Ukraine until at least 2042.

IMF remains silent over loan restart to Ukraine

A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is expected to visit Kyiv this month for talks with Ukrainian officials over a new aid package for the recession-battered country. But both IMF and Ukrainian officials provided few details on when the mission would arrive, and on how talks were proceeding.

Ukraine’s government is seeking a fresh two-year aid package of $19 billion to support reforms and partially cover a budget deficit. The government has recently fulfilled one key condition for resuming cooperation with the IMF by adopting a 2010 budget of $40 billion.

But government officials say that they will not increase natural gas prices on households to market levels, another key condition. Furthermore, they are sticking to populist plans to implement wage and pension increases, a move which triggered the IMF to freeze funding late last year. The initiative was pushed through parliament by then-opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych and then President Viktor Yushchenko.

Other factors that led the IMF to freeze its $16.4 billion aid package late last year include lackluster reform efforts by the Yulia Tymoshenko government along with political bickering. The $11 billion received from the initial package helped keep the country afloat financially amid a whopping 15 percent drop in gross domestic product in 2009.


Ukraine seeks manager for $1.5 billion bond

Deputy Finance Minister Andriy Kravets said on May 12 that the Ukrainian government would within one week choose a lead manager for a $1.5 billion Eurobond issue.

Kravets told reporters that Ukraine has received bids from eight European banks interested in leading the sale, but that it had yet to “consider” whether to push ahead with the borrowing or delay the issue, considering that investor appetites could be low amid the spiraling Greek debt crisis.

Ukraine’s government is desperate to fill its cash-strapped coffers amid low tax receipts rooted in last year’s economic recession. In all, the government hopes to borrow about $4.3 billion this year on the domestic and international debt markets.

Communist returns as deputy speaker

Adam Martynyuk, the 60-year-old deputy head of Ukraine’s Communist Party, was on May 11 reappointed by the pro-presidential coalition as deputy head of Ukraine’s parliament. It is his fourth stint at the job during a political career that started in 1980 when he was a party functionary in western Ukraine.

The appointment is seen as a concession to the Communists, formal members of the ruling coalition, made by the pro-presidential Regions Party. In Soviet days, Martynyuk was a history teacher in Lviv. In the early 1990s, he served as chief editor of the Tovarish and Communist Party newspapers.