Ukraine to celebrate Navy Day July 3

KYIV, June 30, 2011 (UKRINFORM). On the Navy Day in Ukraine, which will be celebrated on Sunday, July 3, a parade of ships will be held in Sevastopol. Ukrainian Navy will be represented during the holiday by frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, large landing ship Kostiantyn Olshansky, command ships Slavutych and Donbas, sea minesweeper Chernihiv, medium landing ship Kirovohrad, corvette Ternopil, and others. They will be joined by the ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. July 3 at 08:45, hoisting of the Navy flag will be held on ships and in military units of the Ukrainian Navy, then - the parade of ships and the traditional delivery of dirks to graduates of the Naval Academy named after Nakhimov. On this day, Sevastopol residents and city guests can visit the Ukrainian Navy ships.

302nd Anniversary of the Battle of Poltava

The main event of this year folk festival dedicated to the 302nd anniversary of the Battle of Poltava is an opening an access for the public to the grave chapel located in the common grave of the Russian warriors killed in the decisive battle of the Great Northern War.

The chapel, named St. Peter and Paul Chapel in honour of the apostles, was consecrated to God on September 3, 1907. In the 1930s a pig-breeding research institute was established near the common graves, and the grave chapel was turned into a storage facility for fuel and chemicals in accordance with decision signed by then director of the institute. This resulted in the destruction of the ventilation system and all of the wall paintings. The walls themselves began to disintegrate because of the dampness and chemical fumes. Although the chapel was repaired several times after WWII, its unique interior has been lost forever. For a period of time the chapel was turned into a simple, somber memorial hall, with a grave stone its only decoration.

A monument to Ukrainian Hetman Pylyp Orlyk has been unveiled in Kyiv.

KYIV, June 24, 2011 (UKRINFORM). A monument to outstanding Hetman Pylyp Orlyk, the author of the first Ukrainian Constitution of 1710, has been unveiled in Kyiv. The unveiling of the monument is the dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Constitution of Ukraine. The monument consists of a figure of the hetman signing the constitution and a vertical decorative heraldic composition from the elements of weapons, art, and nationhood.
After the Battle of Poltava in 1709, he escaped together with Hetman Ivan Mazepa and king Charles XII of Sweden to Bender in the Principality of Moldavia, where Mazepa soon died. Pylyp Orlyk was then chosen as a Hetman in exile by the cossacks and the Swedish king Charles XII. While in Bender Orlyk wrote one of the first state constitutions in Europe. This Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk was confirmed by Charles XII and it also names him as the protector of Ukraine. Between 1711 and 1714, together with Crimean Tatars and small groups of Cossacks, Orlyk carried out unsuccessful raids into Right-bank Ukraine. Afterwards, Pylyp Orlyk now together with several other cossacks followed the Swedish king Charles XII to Sweden via Vienna and Stralsund. Orlyk with his family and about 40 other Cossacks arrived in Ystad in late November 1715. After some months in Ystad they lived in the city of Kristianstad for some years. Orlyk and his family left Stockholm in 1720 but as late as 1747 his widow and children received financial support from the Parliament of Sweden. From Sweden Orlyk first went to Hamburg, Hannover, Prague, Wrocław and Krakow, where he left his family to stay in a monastery. Orlyk went on to France and in 1722 he arrived in Iaşi in Ottoman Turkey in order to organize an alliance against Russian Empire. From there he went on to Thessaloniki and from the mid 1730s he is known to have lived in Budjak. He died 1742 in Jassy, Principality of Moldavia (today Iaşi, Romania).

Ukraine mourns Great Patriotic War victims

June 22, 2011 (UKRINFORM, Interfax-Ukraine)
Ukraine is holding official events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Hitler's attack on the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Kyiv, which the Nazis bombed at the dawn on June 22, 1941, commemorated the victims of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Glory Park and the monument to Marshal Ivan Kozhedub. On the eve, President Viktor Yanukovych addressed the veterans and compatriots, stressing that the Ukrainians had paid an incredibly high price, more than ten million lives, for freedom and peace. The Great Patriotic War (Second World War) is not over until the last soldier who was killed at war is buried, and the state will promote such steps, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has said.

The new generation says corruption plagues the nation – poll

June 16, 2011 (UNIAN information agency)

55.4% of Ukrainian youth take the greatest pride in their country and 12% responded in the negative, according to KyivWeekly. In Kazakhstan 68% responded positively and only 9% negatively, a poll by Gorshenin Institute found. The poll was aimed at comparing the systems of values of young students in Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Kazakhstan.

“The poll has found that the main moral reference points for youth are more or less the same, in the four reference countries,” Director of the Human Potential Development Program at the Gorshenin Institute Maryna Tkachenko told Komentary weekly.
50% of students in all four countries responded that problem number one was corruption. They put economic development in second place. Unlike students from other countries, Ukrainian students are concerned about political instability. 44% of Russians are concerned about the level of alcoholism and drug abuse, while the number of Ukrainian respondents that consider this to be a serious problem was two times less. Also, 39.7% of students in Russia are concerned about the threat of terrorism, while in the other countries practically nobody thinks about this problem – in Ukraine – 4%, in Kazakhstan – 3.9% and in Poland – 6%. At the same time, 21% of Ukrainians are worried about the spread of HIV/AIDS, which two-three times higher than people polled in the other countries.
Asked of what was most unexpected in your survey, Maryna Tkachenko said the Poles “were truly amazing.”. While Ukrainians, Russians and Kazakhs associate success with self-realization (77.2%, 66% and 47%, respectively) and a career with material well-being, the majority of Polish students (54%) have chosen love and friendship. And unlike their neighbors, Poles believe independence and freedom are among the elements of success (40%).

The poll indicated that “it was clear that people who were born and raised in a country in which European democratic values and civil rights prevailed are strikingly different from their neighbors.”

SWEDEN AT A GLANCE

Location: Northern Europe, between Finland and Norway
Government type: constitutional monarchy.
Head of government: prime-minister John Fredrik Reinfeldt
Population: 9 million
Capital: Stockholm
GDP (purchasing power parity): $354.7 billion
GDP - per capita (PPP): $39,100

Swedish globally known businesses:
Ericsson, Electrolux, and IKEA, Volvo, Scania, Tetra Pak, H&M.

Ukraine-Sweden bilateral relations:
Yaroslav the Wise, a prominent Kyivan Rus prince in 11th century, married Ingegerd, a Swedish princess, whose relics are kept today in St. Sofia’s Cathedral in Kyiv.
Ukraine has a small community of ethnic Swedes that live in a village in Kherson oblast since the 18th century.
Kyiv is just a two-hour flight from Stockholm.
Over 100 companies with Swedish capital are registered in Ukraine.
Most known Swedish businesses in Ukraine: Ericsson, Chumak, Oriflame, SEB Bank, Swedbank, Tetra Pak, Skania, SKF.
IKEA, world’s biggest furniture retailer, abandoned investment plans in Ukraine in 2011, allegedly due to unfriendly business environment.
Swedish investment: $1.8 billion
Investment areas: financial sector, manufacture of home appliances, processing of food and agricultural products, packaging, metalworking and engineering goods.

Bilateral trade: $560 million in 2010, Swedish exports comprise 80 percent.

Swedish exports to Ukraine: telecommunications equipment, medical instruments, passenger cars, trucks and buses, manufacturing machinery, heating & cooling, paper and board semi-manufactures.

Ukraine’s exports to Sweden: semi-manufactured products, food products, raw materials, fuels and chemicals.
(Sources: CIS World Fact book, Swedish Trade Council, embassy of Sweden in Ukraine)

Swedish ties to nation are as ancient as Kyivan Rus

June 16, 2011 (Kyiv Post) Diplomatic, political, cultural and economic relations between Sweden and Ukraine date back more than 1,000 years, to the times of the medieval Kyivan Rus empire.

Back then, the nations’ paths crossed on the trade route, which ran from the Vikings in the north to Byzantinum in the south.
In the early 18th century, Ukraine’s hetman Ivan Mazepa struck an alliance with a Swedish king in a bid to gain Ukrainian independence from the Russian Empire and Poland. The endeavor failed when the Russian czar beat the Swedish army in the famous Battle of Poltava in 1709.
Recent history is more cheerful. The 150 or so Swedes who live in Ukraine are mostly involved in businesses. They include successful agricultural start-ups such as Chumak, a food processing business started by two Swedes, two Swedish banks and the Tetra Pak packaging giant. Swedish investment in Ukraine amounts to $1.8 billion, according to the Swedish Trade Council, making Sweden the nation’s sixth biggest investor. Another landmark is the year 1893, when communications giant Ericsson installed a telephone station in Kyiv and then another in Kharkiv. “Sweden was adapting the new communication technologies very early,” said Olle Tholander, general director of Ericsson in Ukraine, who has previously worked in Japan and England. Chased out by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Ericsson did not return until 1995. The company now employs 190 people. “One of the key assets of Ukraine is the high level technical education provided by its main universities. We want to attract these competent and skilled persons,” Tholander said. Paradoxically enough, Ukraine – which has many information technology specialists working abroad or providing outsourced work – is lagging behind in telecommunications. Ukraine is one of the last European countries to spread 3G – or third-generation – technologies widely, making Internet speeds slower than they need to be.
Currently, the only 3G license belongs to Ukrtelecom, the former state telecommunications monopoly, which was sold to Austria’s Epic for a below-market price in what many called an “uncompetitive tender.” While Ericsson looks for more “technological freedom,” SEB Bank, part of the Stockholm-headquartered SEB group that arrived in 2005, seeks clearer regulations and stronger rule of law. “In the crisis, banking showed its weak side,” said Kristian Andersson, deputy chairman of the board at SEB Bank in Ukraine. In Ukraine, the bank mostly specializes in servicing corporate customers from Scandinavia and Germany. Andersson also has “great hopes that a free trade agreement will be signed with the European Union in the near future.”
The agreement is expected to boost Ukraine’s international trade in general and with Sweden in particular. Those bilateral figures aren’t high – only $260 million in 2010, with Swedish exports making up the bulk of the numbers.

Natural disaster examined Poltava communal services

Heavy thunderstorm and squall hit Poltava on June12, 2011. Many big trees have been uprooted and blocked city roads. It took a few days to cut them up and take out. A few damaged roofs have been repared within a few days. Municipal sewage lines faced some minor problems too because of low spillway capacity. Many buildings have been cut of electricity.

Ukraine, NATO complete first stage of project on disposal of ammunition

KYIV, June 14, 2011 (UKRINFORM). Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have successfully completed the first stage a project of the Trust Fund of NATO's Partnership for Peace program on the disposal of conventional ammunition, small arms and light weapons, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Omelyanchuk has said. He said that with the help of the NATO Trust Fund, 15,000 tons of surplus ammunition, 400,000 units of small arms and light weapons, as well as 1,000 man-portable air defense systems, had been disposed of in Ukraine since 2006. The Trust Fund allocated EUR 10.8 million for this stage of the project.
"These joint actions by Ukraine, NATO and its partners are a significant contribution to the nonproliferation of weapons in the world," Omelyanchuk said.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft, as a representative of a leading state in the framework of the project, in turn, said he hoped that the Ukrainian government would soon take a positive decision and sign an agreement on the second stage of the project. The Trust Fund's contribution for the second stage will be about EUR 25 million. At this stage it is planned to dispose of 76,000 tons of ammunition, 366,000 units of small arms and 3 million antipersonnel mines. The project of the Trust Fund of NATO's Partnership for Peace program is aimed at demilitarizing 133,000 tons of ammunition and 1.5 million units of small arms and light weapons in Ukraine within 12 years in four stages. The project was launched at Ukraine's request.