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The other big event on the agenda is a pair of meetings in early December: the trilateral EU, Ukraine and Russian group is due to meeting to discuss the Russian gas transit deal via Ukraine; and the Normandy Four meeting (Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany) will have its first meeting since Zelenskiy was elected.
The transit deal is due to expire at the end of this year, although Naftogaz told bne IntelliNews that a new deal has to be agreed by December 13 if there is going to be enough time to put the transit into operation. Naftogaz’s base assumption is no deal will be reached and Russia will cut off its supplies of gas on January 1. Both companies say there is now enough gas in storage in both Ukraine and the EU to get through the winter without major disruptions.
The Normandy meeting is important as it is the first face-to-face meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy, who has vowed to end the war in the Donbas. Zelenskiy has already made several concessions to Russia in the run up to the meeting and most analysts expect him to make more to bring the fighting to an end. However, Russia is unlikely to withdraw its forces or support from the region until it gets some sort of iron-clad guarantee that Ukraine will never join Nato which is Putin’s goal in the conflict.
2.0 Politics
2.1 Rada passes raft of anti-corruption bills
Ukraine parliament approves anti-embezzlement, illicit enrichment bills.
Ukraine’s parliament approved on November 1 a bill on the prevention and counteraction of legalizing (embezzling) revenue gained by criminal means, financing terrorism and financing the distribution of weapons of mass destruction. Finance Minister Oksana Markarova told the session that the bill is important for securing Western macro-financing and Euro-integration. Among its measures are raising the threshold for financial monitoring to UAH400K (from UAH150K) and raising the penalty for violations. The bill drew 278 votes in favor compared with 225 votes needed.
Ukraine’s parliament approved on October 31 a bill that returns to the criminal code a statute to punish illicit enrichment. The law was originally approved by parliament in 2015 before it was overturned by a controversial Constitutional Court ruling in February this year. The current draft calls for criminal charges to be filed if the value of a state official’s assets exceeds their official income by at least UAH6.5mn, said MP Anastasia Krasnosilska, the head of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, adding that this measure is aimed at bigger corruption cases.
The current bill also calls for confiscating property if a state official’s questionable revenues are worth more than their legal revenues, starting at UAH1mn, which applies to smaller cases, she said, as reported by pravda.com.ua. “These instruments – civil confiscation and criminal responsibility – will be available only to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the National Agency
5 UKRAINE Country Report December 201 www.intellinews.com
