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Britain, the ​pravda.com.ua​ news site reported this week. Parliament could still approve today the cabinet’s nomination of Roman Abramovskiy as environmental protection minister. The 37-year-old Stefanyshyna, an MP with the neoliberal Voice faction,​ s​ erved on the parliamentary healthcare committee after building a career in medical procurement. She served as deputy health minister in 2018-2019, working alongside the US-born then-minister Ulana Suprun. Tkachenko, an MP with The People’s Servant party, is a veteran television executive, having served as general director of the 1+1 group of companies between 2008 and 2019.
Kyiv has jumped 44 spots in a worldwide ranking of expatriate cost of living. ​In the Mercer index, Ukraine’s capital is now in 106th place, up from 150th place last year. Kyiv’s rise in the list of 209 cities seems to be largely due to the strengthening of the hryvnia in the second half of last year.
Little has changed in Ukraine’s negotiation position in talks with Russia to resolve the war in Donbas, ​Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba indicated in a summary of the Ukrainian delegation’s June 2 visit to Berlin in a Facebook post the next day. The Ukrainian delegation stressed that more opportunities for compromise will open up only when a cease-fire is achieved, and Kuleba said the Germans share this “Security First” position. “From year to year, Ukraine has demonstrated its readiness to make wise compromises in the issues of the peculiarities of self-governance after the return of temporary occupied territories to Ukraine, but we will never agree to any special status based on the Russian scenario, veto rights on national (Ukrainian) decisions and other demands, which undermine our sovereignty,” he wrote.
Twenty participants involved in a shootout in the suburban Kyiv town of Brovary in late May have been detained for two months without bail, Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov tweeted on June 1. He vowed to detain the organisers of the alleged crime, which he said was a conflict over routes between competing passenger bus transporters. About 100 men participated in the shootout, which resulted in three wounded.
Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian magnate with close ties to Russian President Putin, shares indirect ownership in numerous large Ukrainian enterprises with Ihor Kolomoisky​, a billionaire who has proposed in the last year that Ukraine abandon its Euro-Atlantic integration. Their business ties were reported by the Skhemy investigative news program on June 10 and 11, which drew its information from Medvedchuk’s annual assets and income declaration, which revealed that his stakes in numerous companies are formally registered with his wife, Oksana Marchenko. Most notably, Marchenko is the owner of a company that is part of the ownership structure of the 1+1 media group, controlled by Kolomoisky, and controls 8.22% of the shares of the 1+1 television network and 8.17% of the TET network, according to Ihor Kyrylenko, a lawyer for Medvedchuk who confirmed the original report by Skhemy, which is produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty with Ukrainian state television. Medvedchuk reportedly controls three television news networks that broadcast pro-Russian narratives: 112, NewsOne and ZIK.
Odesa’s Seventh Kilometer market became the scene of the latest business-related shooting in Ukraine on June 2 ​at, which two victims were wounded, the National Police said on its Facebook page that day. Men in masks fired rubber bullets at a textile store at the market, beat up its employees with bats, broke the windows and fled in two vans. The conflict was over parking spaces. The same day, Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov
21​ UKRAINE Country Report​ July 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com