Here's another item from RFE/RL's news desk:
Campaigning Ends In Ukraine Ahead Of Presidential Vote
Candidates in Ukraine’s presidential election spent one final day campaigning on March 29 ahead of the crucial first round vote this weekend.
No campaigning or political advertising is allowed in Ukraine one day ahead of balloting on March 31.
Thirty-nine candidates are vying for the post, but only three are given a realistic chance of winning: the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been the surprise of the campaign, leading in all opinion polls.
Zelenskyy, who stars in a TV comedy series about a teacher who becomes president after a video of him denouncing corruption goes viral, has tapped into public frustration in Ukraine over the pace of reforms and the fight against graft.
At a political rally in the western city of Lviv on March 28, Poroshenko alleged that his two top rivals – Zelenskyy and Tymoshenko -- were being financed by self-exiled tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskyy, who splits his time between Israel and Switzerland.
"He has fled abroad, but he is simultaneously moving two figures on the election chessboard," Poroshenko asserted.
Poroshenko claimed that Kolomoyskyy, a billionaire who has faced investigations and government pressure in Ukraine, wants to "to take revenge against the state" for the 2016 nationalization of his Privatbank.
Poroshenko also said that Vladimir Putin would fail in what he called the Russian president's bid to derail Ukraine's effort to join the European Union and NATO.
"Only the Ukrainian people, not Putin, not anybody else, not oligarchs who sit in Israel, will define what will be the future of Ukraine," he said. "I'm confident of this, and I'm confident that this future will be trans-Atlantic membership, NATO and Europe."
A reported 20,000 people attended the rally in Lviv amid a heavy police presence, which kept several hundred ultraright demonstrators from disrupting it.
Ultraright activists have dogged Poroshenko at his campaign stops across the country, accusing him of corruption and demanding the detention of those linked to a military embezzlement scheme.
Poroshenko has rejected the allegations dating back to 2015 and involving corruption with military procurement.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s interior minister has accused Poroshenko and Tymoshenko of bribing potential voters.
In a statement released late on March 28, Arsen Avakov said that his ministry is looking into hundreds of claims that campaigners for Poroshenko and Tymoshenko were offering money to voters who would promise to cast a ballot for their candidate.
He said most of the complaints, about sixty percent, were leveled at the Poroshenko campaign.
Avakov claimed neutrality, but he has heavily focused on alleged violations by Poroshenko's campaign.
With reporting from UNIAN, Interfax, AP, and AFP
Here's an item from our news desk:
Ukraine's Orthodox Church Faces Eviction In Russia-Annexed Crimea
Ukraine's independent Orthodox Church is facing eviction in Simferopol, the capital of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which was seized by Russia in 2014.
Crimea's Russia-installed minister of land and property issues, Anna Anyukhina, told the state-run TASS news agency on March 29 that the peninsula's Moscow-controlled government had filed a lawsuit with a local court demanding the church's eviction.
"This religious organization has failed to reorganize its founding documents in compliance with the legislature of the Russian Federation and currently does not pay taxes in Crimea and is not officially registered,” Anyukhina said.
"Due to the reason that this organization has no reason to remain in the building it occupies, the ministry is working on vacating that building and a relevant motion has been filed with a court," she added.
Anyukhina added that the church will be allowed to use the building for free on a contractual basis if it re-registers with Russian authorities.
In early January the Orthodox Church in Ukraine was granted independence, or autocephaly, ending more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine.
Moscow long opposed such efforts by the Ukrainians for an independent church, which intensified after Russia annexed Crimea and threw support to separatists in parts of Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Earlier in March, Russia-controlled authorities in Crimea briefly detained the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the region, Archbishop Klyment, for unknown reasons.
Klyment, who heads the Orthodox mission to help victims of human rights violations and persons deprived of their freedom, said in February that Crimean authorities were set to revoke a lease on his church because he failed to register the parish in the Russian Federation.
Russia took control of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, seizing key facilities, and staging a referendum dismissed as illegal by at least 100 countries.
With reporting by TASS
Yulia Tymoshenko was once one of the richest people in Ukraine, then a prison inmate. Now she's making her third bid for Ukraine's top job.
