National news
• Odesa is dubbed the “criminal capital’ of Ukraine. While on a joint visit to Odesa, on Dec. 4, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced a crackdown on criminality in the southern port city. It is a response, as Lutsenko put it, to “the clear increase in the number of violence against public activists in the south of Ukraine and in Odessa Oblast in particular.”
• Ukrainian Orthodox Christians are poised to complete their break with Moscow. President Petro Poroshenko announced on Dec. 5 that the crucial council of Ukrainian Orthodox communities to create a united “autocephalous” church under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, freeing the majority of Ukraine’s Christians from the control of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
• NATO reaffirms its solidarity with Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference on Dec. 4 in Brussels following the meeting of the North Atlantic Council with Georgia and Ukraine in Foreign Ministers’ session, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg condemned Russia’s “aggressive actions” against Ukraine. He said NATO “restated its solidarity” with Ukraine and recognized its aspirations to join the alliance.
• Corruption is costing Ukraine billions and billions. The Executive Director of Centre for Economic Strategy (CES) Hlib Vyshlinsky estimates that Ukraine has lost at least $70 billion in the past five years through shadow schemes made possible by the lack of the rule of law in the country.
Russia’s war on Ukraine
• Ukraine has proved itself capable of defending itself in the Black and Azov Seas, National Security and Defense Council Secretery Oleksandr Turchinov said after successful tests of a new Ukrainian anti-ship missile from a firing range in Odesa Oblast on Dec. 5. Ukraine’s Neptune missiles are capable of hitting targets up to 280 kilometers away.
• Russia-led forces on Dec. 5 returned to the Ukrainian authorities the body of a Ukrainian soldier who died in battle on Nov. 29. He was identified as Serhiy Prodaniuk. Prodaniuk went missing after a clash in Luhansk region. He was killed while repelling an attack.
Business
• In the latest twist in the long-standing legal battle between the Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky and PrivatBank, the London High Court has ordered the unfreezing of the oligarch’s assets. PrivatBank has been seeking to recover billions of dollars it claims were stolen by Kolomoisky and and Gennadiy Boholyubov who owned PrivatBank before it was nationalized in 2016.
