Kyiv, Ukraine — Addressing the nation during the celebration of the 21st Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych singled out a number of positive developments over the past year. They include infrastructural adjustments, conducted to accommodate EURO 2012, further deregulation of the state economy, as well as advances in the ongoing medical reform.

European football championship 2012 became the first major sports event Ukraine hosted in the 21 years of its independence. EURO 2012 attracted nearly 400,000 tourists to Ukraine, estimated the experts of the Ukrainian Youth Tourist Association. The foreign guests were able to visit the renewed stadiums in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Lviv, use upgraded airports, 3,455 kilometers of new or renewed roads, 1,700 kilometers of railroads, and 902 new vehicles of public transport across the country, as well as stay at 290 renovated and newly opened hotels.

In preparation for EURO 2012, Ukraine renovated airports in all host cities, increasing their channel capacity, improving the runway and infrastructure. In May 2012, Ukraine expanded its main air gateway – Boryspil airport, allowing it to service up to 15 million visitors per year.

Additionally, Ukrainian government reported on achievements in economy deregulation and reduction of administrative impact on business. Ukraine cut the total number of state taxes in half. Corporate income tax was reduced from 25 to 21 percent. In 2014, it will go down to 16 percent.

Moreover, starting January 2013, enterprises producing software are exempt from paying value added tax (currently – VAT is 20 percent) on software supply operations. Since January 2013, the corporate tax for IT companies will be reduced from 21 percent to five percent. Ukraine also offers tax incentives to green energy companies, including corporate tax exemption on sales for 10 years starting January 1, 2011.

Another important step for Ukraine is medical reform. It will introduce five-stage medical assistance in Ukraine, featuring first aid, followed by primary, secondary, and tertiary aid, as well as palliative care. At the moment the reform was introduced in four pilot regions. So far, the Ukrainian government opened 21 new and renewed hospitals. Furthermore, Ukraine launched six state of the art perinatal centers under the National Project “New Life.”

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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukraine intends to build transport and energy infrastructure facilities in Afghanistan, as well as help repair military equipment produced in the USSR, said the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych at the meeting with Hamid Karzai, the Afghani President. The meeting took place in the framework of the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago.

Ukraine also aims to continue providing NATO with air transport support to finish the peacemaking campaign in Afghanistan by 2014, mentioned the Ukrainian leader. In addition to the listed intentions, President Yanukovych supported the security transition in Afghanistan by 2014, as outlined in the Lisbon Roadmap.

As a nation contributing to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Ukraine also supports the 2014-2024 strategic partnership that involves the USA and NATO and is set to help establish peace on the territory of the Central Asian country.

Addressing the summit, Ukrainian leader also expressed the country’s readiness to join the Danish initiative Coalition of Committed Contributors. The so-called 3C-initiative will help fund Afghani security forces after 2014. So far 23 nations joined the initiative, reported Stephen J. Flanagan, PhD, at the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia hearing on April 26, 2012.

Ukraine has already joined the Central Asia Counternarcotics Initiative, countering threats of stability from Afghan and Pakistani violent extremist groups which use drug trafficking to fund their activities.

Currently, 22 Ukrainian peacekeepers are stationed in Afghanistan. The team from Ukraine features mine clearance experts, medics, army aviation advisors, and staff officers. It was recently announced that Ukraine planned to add to its ISAF mission a dog handler who specializes in mine and explosives detection.

Ukraine sent its first ISAF representatives to Afghanistan in May of 2007. A team of 10 to 30 Ukrainians (depending on the stage of the mission) performed tasks along with the peacekeepers from Denmark, Croatia, Georgia, and Lithuania. Among other peacekeeping jobs, Ukrainian team helped construct a mosque in a refugee camp in Chaghcharan.

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Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers adopted the 2012 plan of immediate measures concerning the country’s integration to the European Union. The document deals with internal reform issues (the likes of gas transporting system modernization, institutional reform in Ukraine, and hosting EURO 2012), as well as questions of deepening Ukraine-EU ties: visa liberalization, cooperation with EU police and justice offices, expanding trade cooperation, etc.

Besides the listed domestic reforms, the document stipulates measures to enhance regional development of the country, restructuring of the national gas managing company Naftogaz, as well as preparations to the Association Agreement implementation.

Ukraine also plans to enhance cooperation with the EU in the areas of nuclear safety, research and technology, defense, space exploration. Additionally, the new document sets the agenda for creating the common airspace with the EU. According to the plan, Ukraine intends to join the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity.

Ukraine and the EU share a 1,391 kilometer long border and have established close cooperation in a number of areas. Ukraine is EU’s strategic gas transit partner. Its gas transporting system services 70% of the Russian gas export to Europe. The EU is one of Ukraine’s key trade partners with the trade volume in 2011 constituting USD 44 billion and demonstrating a 36% growth.

European integration has been a long-term foreign policy goal for Ukraine. The country began negotiations with the EU in 1999. Various officials of the EU member states, including Czech Republic, Finland, and Lithuania, backed Ukraine’s European ambition.
By 2007 the sides agreed to eventually sign the Association Agreement. After 21 rounds of negotiations over the Association Agreement, Ukraine and the EU finalized the negotiating process on December 19, 2011.

The Association Agreement will regulate political cooperation of the partners, as well as introduce the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area between Ukraine and the EU. Initialing of the political and, partly, economical sections of the document took place in Brussels on March 30, 2012.

Currently the sides are working on the technical aspects of the document preparation for signing and further ratification. Meanwhile, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych stated that Ukraine perceived the Association Agreement as comprehensive program of reforms.

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The recently amended law (signed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on March 3, 2012) on the legal status of Ukrainians abroad considerably broadens the scope of rights of such persons. In particular, the legal act lifts the 10-year validity term of the Ukrainian’s abroad certificate, making it permanent.

The newly amended law sets annual quotas for the admission of Ukrainians abroad to higher educational institutions of Ukraine to get state-funded education. Also, the law makes provision for such persons to get employed with companies and organizations of any level on the same grounds existing for the citizens of Ukraine.

According to the law on the legal status of Ukrainians abroad, Ukrainian government creates a program on collaboration between the state and the persons who have acquired appropriate status. A Ukrainian abroad is a citizen of a different state, however, of Ukrainian ethnicity or origin, explains the law.

In order to acquire such status, one should identify him or herself as a Ukrainian, and upon turning 16 years old – file an appropriate application. The applicant is requested to prove his or her Ukrainian ethnicity or origin by providing relevant documents and testimonials by Ukrainian citizens, other Ukrainians abroad or Ukrainian public organizations abroad.

Ukrainian state maintains and actively develops the relations with individual Ukrainians, as well as self-organized groups of Ukrainians residing abroad  through a number of governmental programs (cultural, professional, educational, etc.) Notably, according to the report by the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports of Ukraine, Ukrainian educational institutions function in 36 countries around the globe.

Funded by the Ukrainian government, as well as local communities, these establishments help preserve national culture within Ukrainian diaspora and promote their successful integration into the societies of the host countries.

Currently the population of Ukraine amounts to 45.6 million people, according to the latest population census. The largest Ukrainian diaspora resides in neighboring Russia (4,379,690 people).

The second most numerous Ukrainian diaspora can be found in Canada (1,209,085 persons, mainly Canadian born). Canada, therefore, boasts the world’s third-largest Ukrainian population behind Ukraine itself and Russia. Large Ukrainian diaspora can also be found in the neighboring Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and more distant USA, Great Britain, and Germany.

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Former Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko could be pardoned under a new Criminal Procedure Code now being introduced as part of the country’s pro-European Union reform agenda.

Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych said that if her sentence remains in force after the code becomes law, he will consider any pardon request from her because he wants the “right solution” according to “European standards.”

Tymoshenko was last year jailed for seven years for exceeding her authority as Prime Minister in concluding a 2009 gas contract with Russia. That deal has since resulted in he                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    r country paying significantly higher prices for Russian gas than its neighbours.

The Yanukovych government maintains that it has always kept its distance from the court proceedings against Tymoshenko. The President says as things now stand, he cannot legally grant her a pardon. Only the completion of court procedures and the introduction of new laws will give him the latitude to free Tymoshenko once her appeal has been heard.

“Once we get a solution of the Court of Appeal…if we adopt the Criminal Procedure Code, I think we will have such a possibility,” he said on Ukrainian TV.

“I am for this matter to be considered under the new Criminal Procedure Code.”

The Code is now working its way through the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) and is one of a number of reforms the Yanukovych has championed to bring his nation in line with EU countries and to express Ukraine’s “European identity.”

Ukraine has also initiated wide-ranging economic reforms and the President last week honoured his pledge to revitalise his cabinet by bringing in three new ministers, including an opposition-linked businessman Petro Poroshenko, as minister for economic development and trade.

Yanukovych said that later this year the EU and other nations will be able to witness fair, free and transparent elections in Ukraine.

“I stand for a fair fight by the rules. There is the law. I am for implementation of this law and fight by the rules according to it,” he said.

“I always stress that this is the first big election to be held by the current power, and of course we must show that we are a civilized country (and) a European country.”

Yanukovych has long maintained Ukraine’s future lies in the European Union and getting a signed Association Agreement with Brussels is the next important step on the long road to EU membership.

Yanukovych has also had to cope with pressure from Russia, which is asking its neighbours to sign a Customs Agreement that would create a Russia-centric free trade alternative to the European Union. Ukraine also recently suffered, along with the EU, unilateral cuts of gas supplies by Gazprom during the cold spell.

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Ukraine assumes chairmanship at the Central European Initiative for the period of 2012. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, highlighted the importance of active participation of Ukraine in the work of this regional organization given the country’s strategic goal to integrate with the EU.

Ukraine replaces Serbia that presided over the CEI in 2011. In August of 2011, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, assigned the Prime Minister to prepare for the CEI presidency. On November 11, 2011, the Secretary General of the CEI, Ambassador Gerhard Pfanzelter, visited Kyiv in preparations for the presidency of Ukraine.

The representatives of both parties agreed on the importance of deepening of cooperation between the macro regions within the CEI, including the following: the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Adriatic-Ionic, and the Danube.

Such cooperation would serve the goals of the international organization that aims to promote political, social-economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation, as well as strengthen safety and secure stability of the region. Moreover, during the meeting in Kyiv, the sides expressed full support to the core CEI missions to promote regional cooperation for European integration.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, noted that Ukraine considered the European Strategy for the Danube Region an important initiative that could enhance regional cooperation in the Danube area. He also emphasized that cooperation with the EU remained one of the main priorities of the Initiative.

On December 9, 2011, the CEI was granted the UN observer status.  The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykola Azarov, claimed to be eager to explore the opportunities this new status gives the CEI and its member states. Prime Minister Azarov suggested holding a meeting of member states’ finance ministers at the beginning of 2012. The aim of the meeting would be to jointly elaborate on a way to overcome the financial crisis.

Formed in 1989, the CEI is a forum for regional cooperation in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe. Ukraine has been cooperating with the CEI since 1992. By 1994, Ukraine became an associate member and, already in 1996, acquired full membership in the organization. 2012 is the year when Ukraine assumes the chairmanship at the CEI for the first time.

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