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countries. Cutting off the bus and train connections as well will make it much more difficult to reach Kyiv from Moscow and more expensive.
Ukraine ought to play a role in gas transit to Europe even after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline starts operation, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18. "In the context of Ukraine, we will also discuss gas transit. I believe that even after Nord Stream 2 starts working, Ukraine should continue playing its part in gas transit to Europe. I am very much pleased that we have begun talks on this matter together with the European Union," Interfax news agency quoted Merkel as saying. Kyiv-based experts believe that the construction of Nord Steam 2 adds risks that Ukraine’s gas transit system connecting Russia and EU countries will become virtually obsolete by the early 2020s. The risk is also aggravated by the fact that the current gas transit contract between the Ukrainian and Russian gas monopolies concludes in late 2019. Meanwhile, Putin has said repeatedly that Nord Stream 2 is "a solely economic project and it closes no opportunities for transit shipments via Ukrainian territory".
Ukraine’s electronic procurement system, ProZorro, has saved the government an estimated UAH55.3bn ($2bn) of budget funds in its two years of operation, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine said, reports Interfax . "On August 1, 2016 the public procurement fully switched to the electronic platform. Since then the ProZorro has saved UAH55.3bn of budget funds and continues saving every day," the ministry said on August 1. The ProZorro was hailed as a major victory in the fight against Ukraine’s endemic corruption when it was launched and has forced state-owned enterprises to increase the transparency of procurement. In theory the prices at which companies sell/buy to/from the state are available to anyone. And tenders are now open to any businessman. In practice there is still a lot of abuse of the system, but the online procurement system has improved transparency. "The success of the ProZorro system is so amazing that other countries are asking for advice on reforming public procurement in their countries," the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said.
The Ukrainian government is planning to request that Western governments draft a list of sanctions against Russian officials for violating the rights of Ukrainian political prisoners, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Aug. 13. “We will approach our international partners with the proposal of forming a separate list of sanctions analogous to the Magnitsky list, which will practically be a list of those individuals responsible for kidnapping, detaining, abusing and torturing Ukrainian citizens who are political prisoners on Russian territory,” he said. On Aug. 10, Ukraine submitted a complaint to the European Court for Human Rights against Russia for violating the rights of its Ukrainian political prisoners, which Petrenko referred to as the first legal document that outlines mass human rights violations against Ukraine’s political prisoners. In response to Petrenko’s announcement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described Ukraine’s plans as a gross violation of international law and a violation of the presumption of innocence principle given the alleged crimes haven’t been proven in a court of law. The proposal is “the latest attempt to introduce unilateral forcible measures, which violates international law and practices of civilized interstate communication,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Ukraine loses over €4bn a year due to corruption in its customs service
an investigation by a German newspaper found. "It is more than one tenth of
10 UKRAINE Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com