Force Division

The Ukraine is a presidential democracy with separation of powers. They still becomes - with structures inherited from the Soviet Union - centralist reigns.

The country is apportioned into 24 districts, whose governors are nominated of the president. The cities Kiev and Sewastopol have a special status.

Whereas the West Ukraine, with L'viv in the center, tries to open itself for the west, so the east and south of the Ukraine still seek the proximity to Russia. This division of the Ukraine is a product of its history. Centuries long the east was affiliated to the Russian Empire, whereas the west was subordinated to the Kingdom Poland and later to the Habsburger Empire.

The discrepancy is especially clear to see at the Peninsula of Crimea. 1954, on the occasion of the 300-year-jubilee of the Contract Of Perejaslav - the reunification of the Ukraine with Russia - the peninsula Crimea was transferred from Russia to the Ukraine.

Although in the year 1992 the Ukraine conceded extensive autonomy to the peninsula, many of there living 1,6 million Russians still strove for the connection to Russia. After bloody confrontations between the Russian and the Ukrainian minority the autonomy was abandoned meanwhile.

Today the peninsula Crimea is provided with an Ukrainian conforming constitution, with an autonomy status, with an individual parliament and an individual government. The Tartars whose coming back to the peninsula Crimea today, which were deported from Stalin after 1944, have to to fight with the defense stand of many Russians and Ukrainians.

Political Parties

The Most Important Parties

Name Party Political Line Foundation
People-Movement Ruch Ruch democratic, nationally 1989
Members Of The Greens Party PSU green, ecologically 1990
Social Democratic Party Of The Ukraine SDPU social-democratic 1990
Socialistic Progress Party PSP communist 1991
Communistic Party Of The Ukraine KPU communist, subsequent party of Soviet-era 1993
Agrarian Party APU communist, farmer party 1993
Democratic People Party NDPU democratic, centrically 1998
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Political Personalities

Heads of State And Government Heads in the 20th Century

First Republic, 1918 - 21 in Kiev

Administration Name Office
1918 Mychailo Hruschewsky Chairman of the Central Committee
1918 Pawlo Skoropadsky Hetman
1918 - 19 Wolodymyr Wynnytschenko Chairman of the Board
1919 - 21 Symon Petljura Chairman of the Board

Ukrainian State: West-Ukraine, 1918-19 in L'viv (Lemberg)

Administration Name Office
1918 - 19 Jewgen Petruschewytsch Chairman of the National Council

Ukrainian Soviet-Republic, 1918-22 in Charkov

Administration Name Office
1918 Juchim Medwedjew Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
1918 Wolodymyr Satonsky Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
1918 - 19 Andri Bubnow Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
1919 - 38 Grigori Petrowski Chairman of the Central Executive Committee

1922 - 91: Constituent Republic of the Sovietunion

Second Republic, since 1991

Administration Name Office
1991 - 94 Leonid Krawtschuk President
since 1994 Leonid Kutschma President

Economy

Beside of the agriculture, are the coal mining and the steel industry the most important branches of industry. Important are airplane construction and rocketry moreover. The Ukraine has over a well developed, but renewal needy infrastructure for gas, stream, traffic and aeronautics.

The country reform with the dissolution of the inefficient large concerns, the creation of no-agriculture jobs in rural areas, as well as the creation of a free ground market, will be, like the finance reform, the denationalization process and the damming of the corruption, one of the most important topics of the coming years.

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Daily News

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Friday 10 July 2020
The Dutch government made the move to help individual cases brought by victims’ relatives, the foreign minister said in a letter to Parliament.
Thursday 9 July 2020
A Chechen man shot near Vienna last weekend had spoken publicly of giving Austrian and Ukrainian authorities information about contract killings. He also said there was a price on his head.
Friday 3 July 2020
Russia’s grievances against what it sees as American bullying and expansion into its own zones of influence have been stacking up for decades.
Thursday 2 July 2020
The International Monetary Fund agreed to lend Ukraine $5 billion over 18 months while stressing the importance of central bank independence. Three weeks later, the central banker quit, citing political pressure.
Wednesday 24 June 2020
Environmentalists say illegal logging in the Carpathian Mountains is contributing to flooding. Rising waters forced the partial evacuation of a hospital treating Covid-19 patients.
Saturday 20 June 2020
Status-conscious fast-food joints across Eastern Europe have offered their diners disposable gloves for years. The idea may find a wider audience in the pandemic era.
Wednesday 10 June 2020
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine won an endorsement for his anti-corruption policies with the approval of a $5 billion lending program from the International Monetary Fund.
Wednesday 10 June 2020
Eleven foreign couples, previously barred by coronavirus restrictions, have entered the country to meet their newborns. But births are still outpacing pickups.
Saturday 6 June 2020
The plan is a further blow to America’s weakening European alliances and likely to be welcomed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Wednesday 27 May 2020
As she endured a difficult recovery from Covid-19, the grandmaster Irina Krush thrived in competition and found familiar support from others in the game.
Ukraine
Sunday 23 July 2023
Shaun Walker in Odesa

Congregation rallies to clear rubble and save precious artefacts as prayers held outside

‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.” The priest dabbed tears from his eyes as his sonorous voice emerged from loudspeakers hastily assembled outside his devastated cathedral, the incantation competing with the crash of debris being loaded into trucks and the drilling of repair works on neighbouring buildings.

This was the second time that the vast, sand-yellow Transfiguration Cathedral, which sits in the heart of Odesa’s Unesco-listed historic centre, had been attacked: in the 1930s, it was torn down during Joseph Stalin’s atheism drive. On Sunday morning, the rebuilt version was hit during a Russian airstrike on the city. A missile blew a large hole in the roof, collapsed the altar and left several walls charred by fire.

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Ukraine
Monday 24 July 2023
Martin Belam (now) and Adam Fulton (earlier)

Sergei Sobyanin says no serious injuries after drones hit non-residential buildings in Russian capital’s centre; Ukrainian drones hit depot in Dzhankoi, says Moscow-backed official

Russia’s overnight drone attack on the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa destroyed a grains depot and injured four port employees, Reuters reports Ukraine’s southern military command as saying.

Based on preliminary information, three drones were destroyed in the attacks, the command said on social media.

These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough.

It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking, I think, at several months.

And the important focus is on making sure that when they do, they’re properly trained, they’re able to maintain the planes, and use them in a smart way.

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Arctic
Monday 24 July 2023
John Last

Indigenous people and experts say Moscow’s military push and increased shipping and mining will destroy Arctic environment

The Barents Sea port of Severomorsk is the base of the Russian navy’s Northern Fleet and, since 2014 – when Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine – it has become the main administrative hub for all of Russia’s Arctic military activities.

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, Russia is not so quietly expanding its military activities in this region, too. In the past six years, Russia has built 475 military sites along its northern border. The Kola peninsula and the archipelagos of the Barents Sea have seen dozens of new airstrips, bunkers and bases.

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Russia
Monday 24 July 2023
Agence France-Presse

Defence ministry blames Ukraine for drones that hit non-residential buildings in the Russian capital and says there were no casualties

Russia said it had neutralised two Ukrainian drones over Moscow in the early hours of Monday, with one crashing close to the defence ministry in the city centre.

Officials said the drones hit non-residential buildings in the capital and that there were no casualties. The attack came one day after Kyiv vowed to “retaliate” for a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

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Ukraine
Monday 24 July 2023
Guardian staff and agencies
Russian missile attack on Odesa leaves at least one dead and 22 wounded and damages historic cathedral; Putin says Ukrainian counteroffensive has ‘failed’See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverageRussia attacked the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa again and kept up a barrage that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said. At least one person was killed and 22 wounded in the strike early on Sunday. The city has come under repeated attack since Moscow last week pulled out of a deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain.Four children were among the wounded in the Odesa blasts, which severely damaged the historic Transfiguration Cathedral, a landmark Orthodox cathedral in the city, said Odesa’s regional governor, Oleh Kiper. The cathedral’s archdeacon, Andrii Palchuk, rued the “enormous” destruction of the church, which he said was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile.Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has failed” as he hosted Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, his close ally, for talks in St Petersburg. “There is no counteroffensive,” Russian news agencies quoted Lukashenko as saying on Sunday, to which Putin replied: ...
Unilever
Sunday 23 July 2023
Angelique Chrisafis

Consumer group says it is aware of rules that could mean its employees in Russia are sent to war in Ukraine

The consumer group Unilever, which owns brands including Cornetto ice-cream and Dove soap, has said it will comply with Russian conscription law, meaning its Russian employees could be sent to war in Ukraine if called up.

The Anglo-Dutch group, whose products also include Marmite spread and Magnum ice-creams, is facing controversy over its decision to remain operating in Russia, where it employs about 3,000 workers across four manufacturing sites, producing mainly personal care and hygiene products, but also ice-cream.

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World news
Sunday 23 July 2023
Mattha Busby (now); Christine Kearney (earlier)
Another 19 wounded in overnight attack on the southern Ukrainian port city, governor saysWhat we know on day 515 of the invasionUkraine’s most famous rock star Andriy Khlyvnyuk has said the transition to becoming a soldier, receiving orders, was “surprisingly easy”.I thought it would be [difficult]. I was afraid of the brutality, noise and dirt of war. But it wasn’t – it was surprisingly easy.” Why? “Look, if I was sent somewhere to fight, I’d be useless, terrified; I don’t want to kill or be killed. But that’s not what happened. They came for our streets and our children’s playgrounds.Music is a universal language. But music also comes from where you come from; it reflects the feeling of home, and what home means – and on the obligation to protect your family, your neighbour. Anyone who grew up learning their language, and their poets and music by heart knows to say to the empire, any empire: ‘You will not do this to us.’ Continue ...
Ukraine
Sunday 23 July 2023

Russian missile strikes on the Ukrainian city of Odesa have killed one person and damaged a historic cathedral. Authorities said at least 22 people were injured in the attacks in the early hours of Sunday, including a number of children. One strike hit the Transfiguration Cathedral, which was built in the late 18th century, destroyed under Joseph Stalin and then rebuilt in the early 2000s. Russia has been pounding the port city for a week after pulling out of the Black Sea grain initiative last Monday, a deal that allowed for Ukrainian grain to be shipped around the world from Odesa

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Ukraine
Sunday 23 July 2023
Shaun Walker in Odesa

Ukrainian authorities say children among 22 injured in new wave of attacks on Black Sea port city

A new wave of Russian strikes on Odesa has killed one person and damaged a historic cathedral, as missiles again rained down on the southern Ukrainian city.

Authorities said 22 people were injured in the attacks in the early hours of Sunday, including a number of children. One strike hit the Transfiguration Cathedral, which was built in the late 18th century, destroyed under Joseph Stalin and then rebuilt in the early 2000s.

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Vladimir Putin
Sunday 23 July 2023
Simon Tisdall
Accursed, ostracised but heedless of the misery he causes, this accused war criminal is dragging his people into a moral abyssEveryone wants a piece of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Vira Chernukha, defiant amid the ruins of her village in north-east Ukraine, curses him each morning. She wants to see him spinning in his coffin, tormented, unshriven and damned for all eternity. Chernukha might be said to speak for her nation if not the entire western world.The International Criminal Court (ICC) wants to arrest Putin for war crimes, alleging mass child abductions. Mutinous Wagner mercenaries briefly wanted to topple his regime – and gravely weakened him. Heroic opposition leader Alexei Navalny just wants him to shut up. He’s been forced to listen to the same Putin speech in jail each day for more than 100 days. Continue ...
Ukraine
Sunday 23 July 2023
Ed Vulliamy
From nights at the opera to the nation’s best-loved bands, music is playing a vital role in resistance to the Russian invasion. And not only in terms of morale – many musicians have actually gone to the frontlineMen arrive on crutches, two in wheelchairs, through a wintry dusk at the monumental neo-Renaissance opera house in Lviv, western Ukraine. Some 100 seats tonight have been reserved for serving soldiers, who enter the lobby – a fin-de-siècle wonder – in military fatigues. They hand these in, so that the coat check looks like a barracks locker room. A contingent of 40 cadets from the city’s emergency firefighting department duly arrives, disarmingly young. For most, it’s a first night at the opera.The occasion marks the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a concert dedicated to the troops who have fallen during this first, monstrous year of war, and the innocent civilian lives lost. But also to “The Invincible”: a homage in music to Ukraine’s noble cause and just war. The programme is Bucha. Lacrimosa by Victoria Polevá, composed in commemoration of the victims of atrocities in that town during the early weeks of the war, followed by Giuseppe Verdi’s epic Messa da Requiem. The stage is ...
Ukraine
Sunday 23 July 2023
Guardian Staff
The Vilnius summit could have achieved much more, if only the political willpower had allowed it

I live in Kyiv and if your readers are under the impression that this Nato summit was a bit dysfunctional, you can only imagine what a mess it was in the eyes of the Ukrainian public (‘The world’s most powerful alliance should do better. Vilnius was a letdown”, Editorial).

Expectations were high, not least because it was taking place in Lithuania, a country that’s been a great friend to Ukraine long before this war. There were hopes that maybe it was all coming together in these terrible taxing times and there will finally be some good news.

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