Ukraine announced plans to develop its IT
(information technology) sector as a focus for future growth. There are plans
to launch funding schemes to encourage students and graduates in economics and
IT to remain in Ukraine and build up this sector.
In other news, thirteen observers from the
OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) were stopped at a
checkpoint while entering Slovyansk. The ‘separatists’ claimed that amongst the
observers was a Ukrainian government spy. Welcome to the soviet era.
The second body found two days ago in the river, together
with the body of the MP of Horlivka, has been identified as Yuriy Popravko. Popravko
was a 19 years old student at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in the Department
of Sociology and Law. He was travelling to visit his girlfriend in Kharkiv. The
details of his death are unknown but his body shows signs of torture.
In Mariupol, crowds gathered
claiming that the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) run by the Kyiv ‘fascists’ kicked
out the separatists occupying a government building. People in the crowd said
that the Right Sector had moved in and was terrorising their city. Meanwhile, a
BBC reporter (Natalia Antelava) tried to find out and verify who
entered the building and/or was occupying it. According to the investigations
of this reporter, the building remains empty. There are no signs of any people
from Kyiv and no Right Sector supporters or members. The people in the crowd
that Antelava tried speaking with shouted that she was an American, and
Ukrainian, spy. It is increasingly dangerous for reporters to be working
throughout the Donetsk region.
According to an OESC report published today,
which is based on monitoring information received up to 22 April, the overall
security situation in the city of Donetsk and
in the district remained tense. Occupation of state institutions continues. In
response, Donetsk’s Governor explained that the armed groups were difficult to
negotiate with—they have no leader, no coherent point of view or set of
demands. He considers that the support for separatists by the local population
was decreasing.
The OESC informs, in opposition to what Russian
media is saying, that the situation in the western Ukrainian cities of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk Lviv and
Kyiv was calm. The OESC team
visited the Maidan and entered the city administration building to follow up on
the progress of refurbishment work being done in the building. According to the
team, work in five of the 11 floors is about to be finished and the building is
partially operational.
A revolutionary situation always favours extremists, and
watchfulness is certainly in order. It is quite striking, however, that Kyiv
and Ukraine returned to order immediately after the revolution, and that the
new government has taken an almost unbelievably calm stance in the face of
Russian invasion. The only scenario in which Ukrainian extremists actually come
to the fore is one in which Russia actually tries to invade the rest of the
country. If presidential elections proceed as planned in May, then the
unpopularity and weakness of the Ukrainian far right will be revealed. This is
why Moscow opposes those elections.
People who criticise only the Ukrainian right often fail to notice
two very important things. The first is that the revolution in Ukraine came
from the Left. Its enemy was an authoritarian kleptocrat, and its central
program was social justice and the rule of law. It was initiated by a
journalist of Afghan background, its first two mortal casualties were an
Armenian and a Belarusian, and it was supported by the Muslim Crimean Tatar
community as well as many Ukrainian Jews. A Jewish Red Army veteran was among
those killed in the sniper massacre. Multiple IDF veterans returned from Israel
to Ukraine to fight for freedom.
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