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accord was supposed to end the war between Ukrainian and Russian-led forces in breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, but has become deadlocked. “I’m now participating in the process that was designed before my time,” said the former comic actor who was elected in 2019 on a promise to end the war. “The Minsk process should be more flexible in this situation. It should serve the purposes of today not of the past.”
Ukraine’s parliament appointed Herman Haluschenko to the position of energy minister on April 29. A supermajority of 305 MPs (out of 226 needed) voted in favor of this appointment, including the pro-president faction, opposition factions and pro-oligarchic groups and factions. Over the last year, Haluschenko served at the position of vice-president of state nuclear generation company Energoatom. Before that, he occupied various positions in the foreign ministry, justice ministry and presidential administration. Recall, the position of energy minister has remained vacant all the time since the appointment of the Cabinet of PM Denys Shmyhal in March 2020, so the ministry has had only acting heads. The latest attempt to appoint an energy minister was in December, when the Rada failed to gather enough votes to appoint Yuriy Vitrenko. Vitrenko, a former top manager of Naftogaz, served as acting energy minister since late December. On April 28, Vitrenko was appointed CEO of Naftogaz.
In one year, a Hague tribunal is expected to rule on Naftogaz Group’s $9bn claim against Russia for property seized during the March 2014 annexation of Crimea. Russia seized Chornomornaftogaz, a Simferopol-based unit of Naftogaz that owned about $2bn worth of offshore drilling platforms and jack up rigs in the Black Sea. This June, Naftogaz is to argue the amount of compensation in an oral hearing at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. A ruling is expected one year later.
Ukraine’s third coronavirus wave may be receding, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov wrote on April 15 on Facebook. Hospitalization rates are declining and Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia are no longer considered “red” zones. He reported that Tuesday “was the first day when the number of people discharged from hospitals exceeded the number of hospitalized people.” However, he added Kyiv city and the regions of Kyiv, Lviv and Poltava “continue to be in the ‘red’ zone of increased epidemic danger and the situation there remains extremely difficult.”
By the end of this year, as many as 1mn Ukrainians living in Russia-controlled Donbas will receive Russian passports, said Viktor Vodolatsky, the Deputy chair of Russia’s Duma Committee on CIS Affairs and Eurasian Integration (TASS). “Today, 538,000 people living in the territory of Donbas are citizens of the Russian Federation,” he said. “By the end of this year, up to 1mn Donbas residents will have become Russian citizens.”
Russia has closed for three more sections of the Black Sea near Crimea for six months of ‘training exercises’, Ria Novosti has reported from Moscow, citing Russia’s defence Ministry. In the first week of April Russia closed the southern approaches to the Kerch Strait to foreign navies and foreign governments through the end of October. This same prohibition has been extended to waters off the coast of Russia’s Opuk training ground, a 100 km stretch between Hurzuf and Sevastopol, and Crimea’s westernmost tip, facing the southern Kherson region. Responding to protests that this will hamper commercial shipping to Ukraine’s Sea of Azov ports, Russia’s defence Ministry
10 UKRAINE Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com