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Editor's Note: The Kyiv Post tracks the progress made by Ukraine's post-EuroMaidan Revolution leaders in making structural changes in the public interest in five key areas: security & defense, energy, rule of law, public administration and land.

Security & Defense

Ukrainian national guardsmen started a six-month training program on April 20 with 290 U.S. paratroopers in western Ukraine’s Yavoriv. “We will be conducting classes on war-fighting functions, as well as training to sustain and increase the professionalism and proficiency of military staffs,” Major Jose Mendez, operations officer of the brigade, said.

Addressing criticism that foreign assistance for Ukraine’s armed forces hadn’t arrived when urgently needed last year, President Petro Poroshenko said that Ukraine wasn’t ready then due to corruption within the army and infiltration by Russian agents.

“In the past six months we have changed the military, with the help of volunteers and due to decisive actions by new officials at the Ministry of Defense and in the Ukrainian General Staff,” Poroshenko said.

Also, on April 23, Parliament simplified the procedure for obtaining citizenship by foreigners fighting on the Ukrainian side of Russia’s war.

The Verkhovna Rada also on April 9 sanctioned the use of a simplified bidding procedure to accelerate state procurement for construction of military fortifications.

Ukrainian coal miners protest mine closings and cuts to subsidies in Kyiv on April 22. (Volodymyr Petrov)

Energy

On April 22, hundreds of coal miners protested in Kyiv to stop the closure of 11 mines. Mustafa Nayem, a former investigative journalist who is now a politician, accused billionaire oligarch Rinat Ahmetov of staging the protest to pressure the Ukrainian government for subsidies to coal mines owned by his DTEK company. The energy holding company denied the accusations.

On April 9, Parliament took a long-awaited step aimed at breaking up monopolies and opening up the natural gas market to competition. By an overwhelming majority of 290 votes, the legislature adopted a set of measures that pave the way toward separating the functions of extraction, distribution and sale of natural gas. This process, known as unbundling, should bring an end to the convoluted structure of state gas company Naftogaz. Government plans also envision raising gas and heating prices to market levels and reducing subsidies, thus eliminating the company’s historically huge deficit by 2017.

The reform was one of the key conditions of a March $17.5-billion rescue package by the International Monetary Fund.

Ukraine’s gas market is now formally in line with the European Union’s Third Energy Package, which aims to eliminate conflicts of interests on the market, ensure transparency and boost competition. Analysts are concerned that the implementation process could take several years and that oligarch influence could obstruct reform.

Subsidized energy prices have favored larger consumers and created opportunities for rent- seekers with corrupt access to cheap gas. Millions of poorer households will now be subject to a system of targeted subsidies to cover higher utility bills.

Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk during a Cabinet of Ministers meeting on Jan. 28. (Volodymyr Petrov)

Rule of Law

Speaking at a Kyiv School of Economics symposium on April 25, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst accused the top leadership of Ukraine of abuse of office.

“They say all the right things, but they prospered under the old regime and the old rules were convenient for them when they were a minister. Imagine how good the rules are for you when you are above that level. In that situation you can’t expect good progress. Currently we again see a movement of assets up to the vertical of power.”

Others speakers at the forum remained optimistic, believing that an alliance of civil society, young reformers and Western donors could check high-level corruption.

Ukraine has begun the task of transforming its police force, hoping to convert it into an effective and honest law enforcement agency. The changes are being piloted in Kyiv and comprehensively could takeup to 10 years, Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze said. She was part of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s team of reformers. She said that the police today perform more than 100 kinds of unregulated services and collect money that bypasses state coffers. “This makes me angry,” Zguladze told Ukrainska Pravda.

Kyiv could see the first new patrol units this summer with combined functions of patrol and traffic oversight.

On April 23, after repeated voting, parliament adopted a preliminary version of a bill on reform of public governance. If passed, it will set standards for the hiring of personnel, thus diminishing nepotism and help overcome excessive bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, on April 21, the governing coalition delayed prosecutorial reform until July 15. The reforms are aimed at boosting the independence of the prosecutor’s office. The law is intended to curtail broad and arbitrary powers of prosecutors, long abused by those in power.

Government coalition lawmakers argued that prosecutors weren’t ready for the changes, particularly those that would decentralize how prosecutors get hired and the corresponding oversight offices that could monitor their performance. Critics accused the president of trying to keep his leverage by stalling the law.

Batkivshchyna lawmaker Serhiy Vlasenko accused President Petro Poroshenko of trying to boost his quota of appointees to the influential High Council of Justice, a favored tool by former President Viktor Yanukovych for putting pressure on the judiciary.

The appointment of former prosecutorial investigator Artem Sytnyk as head of a newly established and much-hyped National Anti-Corruption Bureau on April 16 ended a three-month search. Sytnyk has yet to hire most of the 700 personnel or find premises.

“The front line of fighting against corruption isn’t less important than the front line that Ukrainian heroes are holding in Ukraine’s east,” Poroshenko said when he introduced the 35-year-old as the first chief of the corruption fighting agency.

Sytnyk made headlines when he resigned from the investigation department of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office in 2011, citing disagreements with Yanukovych. The bureau’s creation was also an IMF requirement.

A Ukrainian traffic police officer speaks with a motorist in 2013. (Ukrafoto)

Public Administration

Russia has put renewed pressure on the European Union to delay the launch of a free-trade zone with Ukraine until 2017. In 2014, Russia was successful in postponing its full implementation until 2016. The EU rejected Russia’s latest move and declared that the free trade zone is on track to take effect as scheduled. The Ukrainian deputy foreign minister responsible for European integration, Yelena Zerkal, on April 23 confirmed that the country is preparing to open its market for goods from the EU at the beginning of next year.

Russia is concerned that it could be victim of dumping by EU goods falsely rebranded as made-in-Ukraine via an existing free-trade arrangement among former Soviet republics. Zerkal said that all issues concerning the origin of goods could be solved bilaterally, pending Russia’s resolve.

The free-trade zone is the core element of the far-reaching association agreement between the EU and Ukraine, signed in 2014.

A major deregulation bill took effect on April 7. The law cuts 38 required permits, certificates and approvals previously required in many areas, from the import of live animals to the reprocessing of scrap metal. This stage of deregulation is expected to bring at least Hr 40 billion in extra tax revenue to the state budget over the next five years.

“The deregulation law significantly decreases the regulatory burden in a number of directions,” said Andrew Zablotsky of the Sayenko Kharenko law firm. “It will allow businesses to reduce their costs and reduce corruption.”

Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius estimates that a further 177 licenses will have to be abolished.

On April 9, Parliament approved a law granting free access to public information online. The law is expected to decrease corruption in public procurement and increase transparency.

Earlier on April 8, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk announced that the Single State Register of Legal Entities is now accessible online. Information about any enterprise in the registry can now be obtained for a Hr 45 fee by completing an online request. This initiative is being carried out in concert with a new law obliging all legal entities to disclose and update information about their ultimate beneficial owners by May 25 on the state registry.

The Cabinet of Ministers on March 18 cancelled a resolution that eliminated the monopoly of state-owned waste management company Ukrekoresursy. The European Business Association hailed the monopoly’s breakup as a “corrupt scheme” that was “stamped out. “Throughout all these (14) years, Ukrekoresursy raised about Hr 30 million per month on importers fees,” EBA said in an online statement on March 18. “The companies had to pay great sums of money on a so-called package waste management system. But nothing was done whatsoever.”

Thus, the measure could eventually pave the way for the emergence of a contemporary waste packaging management system, improve recycling and create thousands of jobs in waste management.

An aerial view of fields in Kyiv Oblast at harvest time on July 27, 2012. (Ukrafoto)

Land

The new deregulation law that went into effect on April 7 also improves land-lease regulation; and a Cabinet of Ministers resolution simplifies the procedure for submitting and obtaining documents on the state registration of property rights.

On March 25, a law specifying the authority of notaries and rules of registration of derivative property rights to agricultural land plots went into effect.

The law opens access to the state land cadaster for notaries, improves content of the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate, and simplifies the registration of property rights to agricultural land. Until now, corruption has been widespread in this sphere, with officials taking bribes in return for real estate ownership information.