Ukraine tackles graft with new US-style police force
Kiev, July 4, 2015 (AFP) -- Some 2,000 young, athletic, US-trained Ukrainians on Saturday swore oaths to enforce the law -- and resist the temptation to take bribes -- at the launch of a new police service in Kiev to replace a notoriously corrupt force.
Hands on their hearts, the new recruits assembled on a central square sang the national anthem, watched by President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko and the US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt.
Stamping out graft among the police has been a key priority of Ukraine's new pro-Western government.
"Believe me, your job will be no easier than that of soldiers in the Donbass," Poroshenko told the recruits, referring to the eastern region where government forces are locked in a 17-month conflict with pro-Russian insurgents, in which over 6,500 people have died.
"The main danger zone," Poroshenko told the officers, who will patrol the streets and monitor traffic, was "not where the bullets are whizzing but where the banknotes are rustling" -- a reference to the backhanders often sought by traffic police particularly to turn a blind eye to transgressions.
The head of the new force is a 28-year-old former commander of a pro-government volunteer battalion, who spent time on the frontline in the east.
The successful candidates were selected from over 33,000 applicants and received training from US police. Around one in five are women.
Members of the previous force will be required to undergo tests to determine whether they have the fitness level necessary for patrols.
Deputy interior minister, Eka Zguladze, a Georgia native among several officials from Georgia and Baltic states to be given senior posts in Ukraine's new administration, spearheaded the shake-up of the force.
The US contributed $15 million to the effort, with Japan, Australia, Canada and other countries also chipping in funds.
Zguladze, who carried out similar reforms in Georgia under that country's former pro-Western president Mikhail Saakashvili, told AFP she had "the utmost faith" in the new officers.
"They are strong, they will succeed," she said.
The new service is to be progressively rolled out to other cities, including the southern city of Odessa, Kharkiv in the east and Lviv in the west.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Five Ukrainian Soldiers Killed In East
Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and three injured by a land mine in the restive east.
Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters on July 5 that the incident occurred in the village of Donetsky, around 50 kilometers west of separatist-controlled Luhansk city.
Fighting between government troops and pro-Russian rebels has decreased since the signing of a cease-fire deal in February, but both sides accuse the other of violations.
"The situation in the conflict zone remains difficult. Rebels continue to carry out armed attacks, but their intensity is falling," said Motuzyanyk.
Motuzyanyk said that separatists had shelled government positions in villages north of Luhansk, using heavy weapons forbidden under the cease-fire deal.
Rebels accused the Ukrainian military of violating the cease-fire 32 times in the past 24 hours but reported no casualties.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Germany to take part in military manoeuvres in Ukraine
Berlin (dpa) -- The German Army, the Bundeswehr, plans to take part in two military operations in Ukraine this summer, according to a government document seen by dpa on Sunday.
The plan was to have "individual personnel" take part in the ground exercise Rapid Trident as well as the marine exercise Sea Breeze, a written reply by the Foreign Office to an opposition request in parliament said.
The Bundeswehr took part in the same manoeuvres in 2014 in spite of the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and government forces in east Ukraine. Moscow protested the operations at the time.
Rapid Trident is scheduled to take place in Yavoriv in western Ukraine 50 kilometres from Lviv and is expected to involve 1,800 troops from 18 countries, a significant increase on the 1,200 that took part past year.
The United States-led operation is expected to last 11 days and is due to be launched with an official ceremony on July 20.
Sea Breeze, a joint US-Ukraine operation, is expected to last from August 31 to September 12 in the Black Sea.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) warned on Sunday that the situation in east Ukraine had deteriorated significantly over the previous week.
Heavy weaponry like tanks and howitzers had been spotted by OSCE observers along the front, the deputy head of the mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, said during a visit to the port city of Mariupol.
Such weapons were supposed to have been removed from the front according to an agreement signed by both sides in February.
Hug also said there had been an alarming increase in the number of rebel and government checkpoints, which were becoming targets for attacks and therefore endangering civilians stuck in the queues of cars that build up at them.
Hug said the rebels had withdrawn from the fiercely fought-over village of Shyrokyne, 20 kilometres to the east of Mariupol, and that the place was now abandoned.
The OSCE has some 500 observers in the conflict region.