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Krassimir Yankov from Amnesty International has written a blog for the "Kyiv Post" about a recent visit to the Luhansk region. It does not make for pleasant reading:
As we drive out of Luhansk, a street market along Budyonnoho Boulevard captures my attention. It appears unusually large for a city under siege. Dozens of people are lined up in the mud and melting ice, presenting their goods on sheets of paper and plastic. Passers-by shoot awkward glances at the showcased wares: watches, clothes, pickled vegetables, old audio and video tapes. Suddenly it becomes clear that this is a flea market, in which everyone brought out everything that they could spare from their homes with the hope to score some extra income. But we continue to drive to a nearby village.
Novosvitlovka is only some 20 minutes away from Luhansk by car, but it looks like another planet. The moon-like landscape is dotted with craters, scorched tanks can be seen on almost every street, and very few houses have escaped the shelling. The church at the entrance of the village has also been damaged. In the small courtyard two men are concentrating on welding together what looks like a support frame for the dome of the church.
Next to them is Iryna Tchernyakova, 60, a local volunteer who dons a thick black coat to shield her from the frosty wind. “I’m ordering these clothes here, which are donated by people in the village for those who have lost their homes. There’s nothing else for me to do at the moment,” she tells me.
Further down the road, at the burned-out carcass of Novosvitlovka’s former House of Culture, two more women report they hadn’t received their pension for the last five months. “No one informed us of anything, no one tried to contact us,” they said. “We are starving,” one of them added, a desperate look in her eyes.
Read the entire article here
RFE/RL's Luke Johnson has sent our news desk this item from Washington:
The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland has told a Washington-based think tank that Ukraine needs to beat corruption and that aid provided by the United States is conditioned on Kyiv "staying the reform course."
Nuland, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on December 17, said that the United States believes "that if Ukraine does not beat corruption this time, if it does not create a clean, transparent, democratic country, then it will once again blow its chance."
Ukraine's Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius called Ukraine the "most corrupt country in Europe" on December 16 and said the country must change course.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States, and the European Union have pledged aid to help the country stave off an economic crisis, while also demanding that Ukraine tackle corruption.
With reporting by AFP, Reuters