Kyiv Gets Aid and Promises from Washington, Sikorski Gets the Boot
Kyiv Gets Aid and Promises from Washington, Sikorski Gets the Boot
Plus, Bulgaria is accused of abusing Syrian asylum seekers, and Turkmenistani troops stake out turf in Afghanistan.
by Barbara Frye, Ioana Caloianu and Anders Ryehauge 19 September 2014
1. U.S. hands Ukraine defensive military gear, humanitarian aid
As Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was in Washington this week securing a package of aid and financial guarantees, the Russian government was demanding more concessions on an EU-Ukraine free-trade deal that has been a fundamental point of contention between Moscow and Kyiv.
In an 18 September address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Poroshenko asked for military aid, “lethal and non-lethal,” Radio Free Europe reports. What he got was $46 million worth of mostly defensive gear, including “counter-mortar radar detection equipment used to locate incoming artillery fire and increase the ability of Ukrainian security forces to respond,” Reuters writes.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko talks with U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on 18 September. Photo by Pete Souza/White House.
In addition, Ukraine will get “engineering equipment, patrol vehicles, personnel transports, small maritime craft, surveillance equipment, and some chemical and explosive detection gear, as well as body armor, rations, de-mining equipment and first-aid items,” Reuters reports, citing a senior Obama administration official.
The package includes a further $7 million in humanitarian aid. The Ukrainian president told Congress the aid would be used by “non-corrupt establishments,” RFE reports.
Poroshenko said in a tweet 19 September that the United States has also promised $1 billion in financial guarantees, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, after securing a 15-month delay in an EU free-trade pact ratified this week by the European and Ukrainian parliaments, Moscow is demanding changes to the agreement, Reuters also reports.
The news agency cites a letter from Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukaev to the EU trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, saying negotiators from Moscow, Kyiv, and Brussels should be permitted to propose amendments “to remove the concerns of the Russian side.”
“Moscow is worried primarily that Ukraine will bar imports from Russia that fail to meet EU quality standards,” according to Reuters.
In the past several years, Russia has cited quality concerns to impose numerous bans on imports from Eastern European countries with which it had political disputes – including a ban on chocolate made by a company owned by Poroshenko before he became president.
Moscow also wants about one-fourth of the breaks on tariffs offered to Ukraine removed from the pact.
De Gucht has ruled out changes to the document, Reuters writes.
2. Poland’s foreign minister loses post in new cabinet
Radek Sikorski, Poland’s high-profile foreign minister, has lost his post and will become speaker of the lower house of parliament under the country’s prime minister-designate, Ewa Kopacz, Polskie Radio reports.
Radek SikorskiThe shift is part of a cabinet reshuffle under Kopacz, who was named to succeed former Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier this month. Tusk will become European Council president in December.
Former Interior Minister Grzegorz Schetyna will replace Sikorski in the ruling center-right government.
Sikorski spent stints in the UK, where he studied at Oxford University, and the United States. He worked as a journalist before entering government service and has served in the Polish parliament since 2005. He became foreign minister in November 2007.
According to his official biography, Sikorski “initiated Poland’s NATO accession campaign” in 1992. He has been vocal about the need to contain Russian expansionism and maintain Poland’s westward orientation.
Still, in taped recordings released in June, Sikorski allegedly told then-Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski that Poland’s ties to the United States could actually damage the country, giving it a “false sense of security.”
The scandal, which included other embarrassing recordings, sent Tusk’s government into damage-control mode.
“Kopacz didn’t say why Sikorski was being replaced, but Polish media have suggested that it’s because of a personality conflict between the two,” the Associated Press reports.
3. Report: Bulgarian police abuse, turn back Syrian asylum seekers
Human Rights Watch is urging European authorities to investigate Bulgaria’s treatment of asylum seekers as new testimonials of abuse at the country’s border with Turkey have surfaced.
HRW writes that at least 43 Syrians trying to enter the EU country on three instances have spoken about beatings and forced returns to Turkey. For instance, “Mohamed,” a member of a group of 15 Syrians trying to enter Bulgaria on 30 August, said police beat him and eight other people. Mohamed alleged that the group was detained for hours and denied access to asylum claim procedures before being returned them to the Turkish side.
In another reported case, on 7 September, police took refugees’ money, phones, food, and water before forcing them to return to Turkey, HRW reports.
Allegations about the mistreatment of refugees first surfaced in an April HRW report decrying alleged abuses by border police. Bulgarian officials, including Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev, denied the claims and said footage from cameras installed along the border would disprove them.
In August, Bulgaria announced it would extend an existing 32- kilometer (20-mile) fence at the border with Turkey despite international criticism of the project.
HRW writes that the existing section of the fence had an immediate effect in stemming immigration. Only 1,514 people crossed the border from January to June 2014 compared with more than 3,600 in October 2013 alone, the rights group says, citing data from the UN Refugee Agency.
4. Turkmenistan troops reportedly push farther into Afghanistan in anti-Taliban effort
Turkmenistan’s armed forces have reportedly begun digging in on the Afghanistan side of the border in an effort to contain the Taliban, EurasiaNet.org reports, citing Radio Free Europe’s Turkmen service.
Residents of a border region in Afghanistan say Turkmenistani troops “crossed the border about three months ago and have dug trenches and built fences.”
Reports of electrified fences going up along the border surfaced in June after separate clashes this spring left militants and three Turkmenistani border guards dead.
“Earlier, there had been reports of Turkmenistan border guards making incursions in Afghanistan, and the Turkmenistan armed forces carrying out exercises close to the border. But now they seem to be going even farther,” EurasiaNet.org reports.
Afghan villagers say the soldiers are digging large trenches and paving a road, blocking access to grazing land for their animals. The district where the residents live is largely under control of the Taliban, which may be shifting its focus from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to Turkmenistan in an effort to gain a foothold in Central Asia, an officer with the Turkmenistani State Border Service told the U.S.-military-sponsored website Central Asia Online in June.
5. Georgia mulls slowing transition to jury trials
Georgian lawmakers are considering a delay in the country’s already-gradual shift to jury trials from its reliance on judges and a system rooted in the Soviet era.
Jury trials were introduced to Georgia in 2010, but they were limited to certain cases. Their use has gradually expanded, and in October they were to have been made available in any case in which the punishment could include imprisonment, Civil.ge reports.
The government, however, is seeking to delay their full implementation until October 2016. In an explanatory note, officials said the juror selection process drags out proceedings, courthouses lack the infrastructure to accommodate jurors, and “in most of the cases, verdicts delivered by jurors are ‘unqualified’ and are not based upon evidence heard during trial,” according to Civil.ge.
In parliamentary debate, Giorgi Vashadze of the opposition United National Movement called the explanation “shameful” and said it was prosecutors who were unqualified.
In a September 2013 report, Thomas Hammarberg, an EU special adviser on constitutional and legal reform in Georgia, said full adoption of jury trials would “require further efforts to ensure adequate adversarial procedures, to guarantee impartial selection, and minimize any attempt of intimidation of jury members.”
Most cases in Georgia are settled by plea bargains. Of 1,170 verdicts reached in a court of first instance in July, 796 – nearly 70 percent – were the result of plea agreements, according to government statistics (pdf).
Of the 374 cases to go to court, about 96 percent ended in guilty verdicts.
In 2011, Hammarberg, then the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, criticized the high rate of plea bargains in Georgia, warning that “very high conviction rates, a stringent sentencing policy, and low public trust in the justice system” can lead people to plead guilty even if they are innocent.
Last year, Transparency International cited statistics it said showed that Georgia’s judiciary was becoming more independent of political influence: in the first half of 2013, 76.8 percent of prosecutors’ requests for imprisonment of defendants were granted, down from 100 percent in the same period of 2012.