Ukraine’s antagonistic leaders said on Thursday they favoured a compromise to resolve a stand-off prompted by the president’s dissolution of Parliament, but neither appeared to make immediate concessions. President Viktor Yushchenko, swept to power by the mass protests of the 2004 ”Orange Revolution”, dissolved the chamber and called a new parliamentary election for May 27.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich increased pressure on Ukraine’s president on Wednesday, boycotting the campaign for a poll ordered by a leader aiming to restore his authority two-and-a-half years after the ”Orange Revolution”. Under Ukrainian law, the campaign opened on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree on Monday to dissolve Parliament and order an election next month, stepping up months of confrontation with the assembly and prime minister. Parliament said the decree ”bears all the signs of a step towards a coup d’état” and made clear the chamber would defy it.
Investigators recovered flight recorders from the charred wreckage of a Russian airliner on Wednesday as grief-stricken families prepared to travel to the site to identify remains. Relatives of the 170 victims, who included 45 children under 12, are due to fly out from Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg to the scene of the crash, 45km north of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
An airliner flying from southern Russia to the country’s second city of St Petersburg crashed on Tuesday in flames in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian emergencies ministry said. The ministry said helicopters circling the site about 45km north of the regional town of Donetsk saw the Tu-154 in flames.
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Ukraine toasted its hero footballers on Tuesday after the team defied expectations to secure a place in the World Cup quarterfinals by beating Switzerland 3-0 in a penalty shootout. ”We’re in the quarterfinals!” screamed the headline of one Kiev daily.
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/ 12 January 2006
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko demanded on Thursday that Parliament rescind its vote taken earlier in the week to sack his pro-Western government. The president said that lawmakers who supported a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov’s government on Tuesday did so "in order to form an unstable situation in Ukraine".
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/ 21 November 2005
More than a year after Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko ingested a massive dose of dioxin, mystery still shrouds the poisoning that covered his movie-star handsome face with scars and blisters. ”I am a man like any other. I’d like to wake up with a different face,” Yushchenko told reporters recently.
The symbols of Ukraine’s orange revolution last year have been registered as profitable trademarks in the name of the eldest son of the revolution’s leader, Viktor Yushchenko. Questions are now being asked as to how much money these highly popular logos have generated for the Yushchenko family.
They are the scourge of motorists across the former Soviet Union, known for accusing drivers of fictitious crimes and demanding a bribe to clear them. But now Ukraine has sacked all of its 23 000 traffic police. The President, Viktor Yushchenko, said they had ”discredited themselves” and would cease to exist.
The Eurovision song contest, an annual extravaganza of Euro-pop kitsch, has taken a decidedly political turn for its 50th edition this Saturday in Ukraine. The Eurovision contest, first held in 1956, is often associated with music of questionable merit, bizarre costumes and marked political bias in the voting.
A tiger in a Ukrainian zoo killed a woman trying to clean the animal’s cage by mistake, Interfax news agency reported on Thursday. The incident occurred at the Kiev city zoo after the 23-year-old woman confused enclosure doors, entered the cage of a tiger known to be dangerous, and began collecting trash.
Ukraine’s former interior minister Yuriy Kravchenko was found dead on Friday in an apparent suicide only hours before prosecutors were expected to grill him about the 2000 slaying of a journalist, dealing a significant blow to an investigation that could implicate former president Leonid Kuchma.
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/ 10 January 2005
Ukraine’s Supreme Court on Monday turned down four appeals of last month’s presidential election results filed by Viktor Yanukovych, the former prime minister who preliminary results show lost to a Western-leaning reformer. It was the latest in a series of moves by Yanukovych to overturn the December 26 election won by Viktor Yushchenko.
The Ukraine celebrated Orthodox Christmas on Friday with the end of its election saga finally in sight, after a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to be inaugurated president of the ex-Soviet nation. Hundreds of holiday revellers milled around Kiev’s central Independence Square.
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/ 12 December 2004
For weeks, his face appeared on television screens and newspaper front pages across the world as he led Ukraine’s pro-democracy movement in its extraordinary campaign for fair elections. On Saturday, the truth was revealed about what transformed Viktor Yuschenko into the pockmarked and bloated figure he is today.
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/ 8 December 2004
Ukraine’s Parliament passed a controversial plan to weaken the presidency on Wednesday, breaking a tense stand-off between outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and the opposition. The vote was hailed in Ukraine and abroad as a breakthrough in the political crisis that has split this strategic nation in two polarised camps.
Thirteen Ukrainians were bitten by poisonous black widow spiders in one week, the newspaper Segodnya reported on Wednesday. Last week’s incidents occurred in the southern Odessa region. All the victims were farm workers bitten while digging onions.
More than 100 snakes invaded a Ukrainian railroad building, forcing workers inside to evacuate the premises and so halting rail traffic for several hours, according to a Tuesday Fakty newspaper report. The incident took place in Ukraine’s south-eastern steppe zone along a rail line connecting the cities Donetsk and Mariupol.
Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday gave the go-ahead to the controversial launch of a new nuclear reactor on the country’s western border with Poland, despite European protests and safety concerns. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has claimed the reactor does not meet safety levels.
The death toll from the crash of a Ukrainian air force jet during an air show in western Ukraine has risen to 83 people, including 19 children.