Новости за 03.12.2015

The largest exporters of confectionery to Russia have reduced their supplies to the country 30-40 percent on average since the beginning of the year due to falling demand, an industry report published on Dec. 3 showed.

The Georgian Justice Ministry has recommended to President Giorgi Margvelashvili that he strip former President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgian citizenship.

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov claims that Russia uses local conflicts to train its army.

The European Commission is planning to give Ukraine € 100 million in support of decentralization reform, Deputy Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine Thomas Frellesen has said.

Militants have shelled the positions of the Ukrainian military in Donbas on four occasions on Dec. 3, the headquarters of the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine said on its Facebook page.

STANFORD – Russian President Vladimir Putin's intervention in the Syrian conflict has been welcomed by some as a moment for the Kremlin to "come in from the cold." Russia's conflict with the Islamic State, the argument goes, has aligned the country’s interests with those of the West. Even Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane does not seem not to have deflated this optimism.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has announced the results of local elections in Mariupol and Krasnoarmiysk, Donetsk Oblast.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk visited the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman off the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea at the invitation of the commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet and the U.S. Naval Forces Europe commander.

Vladimir Putin began and ended his annual state of the nation address with it, making crystal clear what is his priority: terrorism.

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine - Supporters of incumbent Kryvyi Rih Mayor Yury Vilkul have disrupted last-ditch efforts by the city's election commission that could have led to a recount in the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off election.

A controversial Ukrainian powerbroker's rehabilitation campaign is hitting unexpected snags. Dmytro Firtash, the exiled oligarch who wants to make a comeback at home, was forced to cancel plans to return to Kyiv this week after a government minister said the businessman would be arrested if he set foot in Ukraine.

The Turkish Stream pipeline construction project has been suspended, Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak told Russian news agency TASS on Dec. 3.

Bread crumbs and a dozen hens: those are the tools an up-and-coming Lithuanian artist is using to denounce what she calls Russia's "politics of plunder."

The foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey met on Dec. 3, the first high-level, bilateral face-to-face contact since the Turkish airforce shot down a Russian jet nine days ago, but there was no immediate word on the outcome of their talks.

The immediate fall-out of Turkey's shooting of a Russian fighter jet may ultimately remain limited. Perhaps, neither Moscow nor Ankara will substantively modify policies towards each other. An ad hoc anti-ISIS coalition that includes both Russia and Turkey could still materialize. However, the indirect repercussions of this brief conflict may still be noteworthy in view of the event’s symbolic and geopolitical significance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects Ukrainian authorities, in addition to the adoption of the national budget for 2016, to make progress in appointing the staff of the State Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Director of the IMF Communications Department Gerry Rice has reported.

The European Union will extend punishing economic sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the Ukraine crisis for another six months, diplomatic sources said on Dec. 3.

On Nov. 30, Ukraine took two steps forward in its fight against corruption. Member of parliament Mykola Martynenko resigned his position, and Nazar Kholodnytsky was appointed the nation's top anticorruption prosecutor.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has assured Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko that the possible cooperation with Russia on the important international agenda will not be carried out at the expense of Ukraine's interests.

What Vladimir Putin didn't say may be just as important as what he did say. In a one-hour speech to a joint session of the Russian parliament, Vladimir Putin did not utter the word "Ukraine" once.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministers Pavlo Klimkin and United States Secretary of State John Kerry met in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 3, and discussed the situation in Donbas and implementation of the Minsk agreements.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry has reaffirmed the unwavering position of the U.S. regarding the need to maintain sanctions against Russia until the full implementation of the Minsk agreements for the settlement of the situation in Ukraine's east.

The Economist is at a conference in Kyiv, organised by the Kyiv Post, a newspaper. Most delegates speak in glowing terms about how Ukraine’s economy, currently moribund, will in time be one of Europe's most prosperous. (Jaded observers at the conference say they have heard it all before.) But few are talking about something much more pressing. Politicians are fighting over Ukraine's proposed budget for next year; if things don't go to plan, 2016 could look very tricky.

Pity Ukraine. Warmer and more fertile than Russia, it ought to have been Russia's plumper, wealthier and less neurotic sister, for the Ukrainians are not drawn to gloire or tormented by dreams of world domination. Instead, it had a different fate – invaded, partitioned and starved out, horrifically in the 1930s, when Stalin engineered a famine to break the back of Ukrainian nationalism and turn the shell into a "model Soviet republic".

Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize for Ukrainian writers funded by Polish Institute in Kyiv.