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their oaths of office. The SBU also reported that day its agents conducted a search of the offices of a charitable organization, uncovering separatist materials and literature promoting ethnically based autonomy and the creation of a Greater Hungary. The SBU’s activities prompted the Hungarian Foreign Ministry to first expel Ukrainian Ambassador to Hungary Liubov Nepop on Nov. 30. It announced the next day it was also recalling its ambassador to Ukraine, Istvan Ijgyarto. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said he would raise the investigations with during a Dec. 1 videoconference of NATO foreign ministers. “It’s unacceptable that a country, which claims to strive towards Euro-Atlantic and trans-Atlantic integration, constantly intimidates and pressures an ethnic minority related to a NATO member-state,” he wrote on his Facebook page. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for Hungary to avoid steps and statements that “don’t reflect reality and create destructive emotional tensions in Ukrainian-Hungarian relations” in response to the dramatic measures, as reported by the ​eurointegration.com.ua​ news site. “Any assertions about ‘intimidating’ the Hungarian community or its segments in Ukraine is baseless speculation,” he said. At the same time, Kuleba deemed as unacceptable the singing of the hymn of a foreign nation by a local elected council.
Oleksandr Tkachenko, Ukraine's Minister of Culture and Information Policy, is proposing to schedule a two-week lockdown, tied to the New Year holidays, ​and also to refuse to allow mass events over Christmas and New Year. "According to the plan of the Health Ministry announced at present, the last weekend [of] quarantine awaits us. Everyone [is waiting] for this, who cannot work under the conditions of coronavirus [COVID-19] bans and restrictions. We are talking about the creative economy and tourism, and small and medium-sized businesses [SMEs] and others," Tkachenko wrote on his Telegram channel.
Ukraine’s ‘lost decade’ of economic growth cost the nation $1 trillion in GDP,​ Prime Minister Shmyhal told the Rada on November 5. Presenting a national ‘economic audit,’ he said: “Ukrainian citizens lost one trillion -- due to constant changes in vectors [priorities], incomplete reforms, absence of long-term economic strategy, corruption, inefficient governance.” Last year, Ukraine’s GDP was $155bn.
Oleg Tatarov, deputy head of the presidential administration, said at the end of November that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau does not serve Ukraine’s interests​ and that its head Artem Sytnyk doesn’t have “the moral right” to run the agency and should be replaced. The next day, the Zelenskiy administration hurried out a statement saying Tatarov’s statement was: “His personal opinion that does not reflect the administration’s official position.”
The Rada lacks the political will to approve bills that world restore the electronic declarations or deal with the Constitutional Court, ​a body determined to dismantle much of the Europe-oriented institutions adopted since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the parliament’s deputy speaker Olena Kondratiuk told ICTV ‘Freedom of Speech’ program. “Unfortunately, now there is no political will in the parliament to pass any bill concerning both the return to electronic declaration [...] and the reconstruction of the Constitutional Court,” she said, predicting that any action will be deferred until Dec. 1.
17​ UKRAINE Country Report​ December 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com