An action group, which consists of human rights activists, journalists, political scientists and other opinion leaders, has stated that it is necessary to replace public representatives in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) in Minsk. The action group also said that more effective negotiation platforms could be created if the government does not admit its mistakes.
According to members of the action group, the team of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues sabotaging the Minsk process by creating artificial obstacles for the implementation of his campaign promise to establish peace in Donbas as soon as possible.
Non-transparent appointment of negotiators as representatives of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO) and obviously secondary dependent people, who do not have enough authority among the internally displaced persons (IDPs), aroused distrust among a major part of the Ukrainian society and absolute non-acceptance among Ukrainian citizens, who live in the non-government controlled territories.
Special attention should be paid to the “background” of the new negotiators which mainly consists of active and intentional actions aimed at deepening the split in the Ukrainian society and discrimination of a part of citizens based on political, territorial and other grounds.
“The negotiations on the settlement of the situation in Donbas will succeed only if people, who are not involved in instigation of war, participate in them,” journalist, representative of NGO Freedom of Speech Center Dmytro Vasylets said.
Doctor of Political Sciences Oleksandr Semchenko said during the press conference that the president’s initiative to include public representatives in the delegation is good. However, the implementation of this initiative by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Reznikov distorted and discredited the idea. The introduced negotiators are guided exclusively by private political interests and will not do any good.
“It is ordinary citizens who have suffered an unprofessional personnel policy of the President’s Office in first turn and became prisoners of the situation. For example, we are witnessing the fact that representatives of the self-proclaimed republics (Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics) have been unable to agree with the Ukrainian side on the opening of a checkpoint for a long time explaining this by the epidemiological situation. In fact, the reason is on the surface – a political protest caused by categorical non-acceptance of the public representatives in the Ukrainian delegation,” the leader of the Anti-War movement, Viktoria Shylova, said.
“We demand that the president of Ukraine intervene in the situation as soon as possible. It is not a mistake which matters for the system of any state, as everyone makes mistakes, but the response to this mistake. If the newly appointed people (public representatives) aggravate the crisis in the Minsk talks, such people must be replaced immediately. We are awaiting an adequate response of the Ukrainian authorities and, at the same time, in order to not waste time, we are initiating a range of negotiation platforms at both the national and international levels,” lawyer, human rights activists, Head of the Public Council under the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Hennadiy Borysychev.
BORYSYCHEV, REZNIKOV, SEMCHENKO, SHYLOVA, VASYLETS, ZELENSKY
The revocation of lawyer monopoly will oversaturate the legal services market, but will not improve their quality, Head of Omerta Organized Law Group Yevhen Fedoseyev has said.
“The legal market will become even more oversaturated. The activities of a lawyer require adherence to high standards and rules of ethical conduct, which in turn eliminates unethical behavior in the process, which can be observed when a person acting under a power of attorney may abuse procedural rights, disrupt court hearings, and in some cases puts pressure on justice and he is not afraid of disciplinary action,” he said.
The lawyer said that one of the duties of a lawyer is to constantly improve his professional level. At the same time, he said that as a result of the abolition of the lawyer monopoly, “justice will open its doors to a wider circle of people who, due to their financial situation, could not turn to lawyers, but no one has canceled the fact that any lawyer will also not perform work for free.”
“An appeal to a layman who does not know the intricacies of accompanying cases will ultimately cost a lot more,” the lawyer said.
According to Fedoseyev, the introduction of the exclusive right of lawyers to represent interests in court or the so-called lawyer monopoly is an important step for a democratic state, which seeks to effectively and professionally protect the rights and interests of its citizens. In Ukraine, the lawyer monopoly was introduced in 2016 on the basis of a bill amending the Constitution of Ukraine.
“The lawyer monopoly has been building in our country for a long time. Previously, the need for a more professional approach to representation and defense in the courts was not an urgent issue. However, over time and the development of a democratic state, professional and, most importantly, effective defense and representation in courts have become a necessity, since many cases were reviewed only on the basis of the procedural errors in the documents,” he said.
Fedoseyev said that a lawyer is a person who is professionally involved in the defense and representation of citizens in courts, during investigative actions, and similar actions. “Imagine that it’s not doctors, but ordinary amateurs who will treat people. Or someone who wants to entrust a heavy operation to a person who is not a professional in this field? Perhaps this is a rhetorical question,” he said.
The lawyer also suggested that lawyers in criminal cases, who will be affiliated with inexperienced lawyers with whom the participants in the criminal process continue to communicate, may suffer from the abolition of the lawyer monopoly.
“Such “lawyers” in criminal cases will be incompetent to advise parties to criminal proceedings, prepare procedural documents on their behalf and the like. The Institute of Civil Lawyers will also lose a lot, because often only an experienced lawyer can observe ethical standards in civil proceedings, prevent conflicts of interest and “wimping out” of the opponent’s position,” Fedoseyev said.
Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air has announced the launch of flights to five new destinations from Ukraine.
As the airline’s press service said on Tuesday, in particular, from September 1, 2020 it is planned to launch flights from Lviv and Kyiv to Pardubice (the Czech Republic), and from March 2021 from Odesa to Milan (Malpensa), Rome (both starting from 29 March) and Bologna (from March 30).
The cost of a ticket without baggage starts from UAH 579.
As reported, in August 2020, Wizz Air intends to launch flights from Dortmund (Germany) to Zaporizhia, which is linked to the opening of an air carrier base in Dortmund.
Kyiv International Airport named after Sikorsky has started a phased reduction of its employees, amid the crisis in the aviation industry due to the coronavirus pandemic, the airport’s press service has said. Currently, the airport division is deciding whom of the employees to dismiss and how to optimize the operation of the enterprise.
“We predict a slow recovery in demand for air travel and expect a return to the pre-quarantine level in only a few years. We cannot survive on our own without support from the state. Unfortunately, we will have to fire 50% of the staff, including highly qualified specialists of the industry,” director general of Master-Avia management company Oleh Levchenko said.
The airport also stressed that the problem was also aggravated by a lack of reaction and assistance from the government, the relevant ministry and Kyiv authorities, despite the fact that the airport management had repeatedly appealed to the authorities for help.
In total, according to the enterprise, about 2,000 people work at the airport and Master-Avia. Another 8,000 employees work in related enterprises that cooperate with the airport.
Kyiv Airport is the second Ukrainian airport in terms of passenger traffic.
Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) is expanding the list of destinations for July and August 2020 due to the easing by some countries of the border crossing regime for Ukrainian tourists.
According to the press service of the company, domestic flights will be operated in three directions – Kherson, Odesa and Lviv.
So, in the period from July 1 to July 30, UIA will serve domestic flights to Odesa, Lviv and Kherson, flying every Friday to the regions and returning to Kyiv every Sunday. However, in the first half of August, it is planned to change the schedule for the direction Kyiv-Odesa: flights will be operated on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (Odesa-Kyiv on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday). From August 16 to August 31, a flight to Odesa on Thursdays may also be added.
International flights, as UIA notes, will be operated in the directions of the airline’s regular flight program: Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Dubai, Tbilisi, Batumi, Larnaca, Athens, London, Nice, Rome, Naples, Baku, Berlin, Milan, Munich, Prague, Yerevan, Madrid, Vienna, Barcelona, Chisinau, and there will also be periodic flights to Toronto.
Sociologists have conducted a survey among Ukrainians, during which they suggested choosing which of the allegations about the origin of coronavirus and its worldwide spread is true to a greater extent. Some 66% of respondents believe in the artificial origin of coronavirus.
The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in late May – early June asked respondents of the survey to choose among the following options: (1) natural occurrence and subsequently spread in the world; (2) artificial development in the laboratory, but random distribution in the world; (3) special development and deliberate distribution in the world to reduce the population and/or damage to individual countries. In addition, respondents could name their option.
Most respondents – one in three, 37% – chose the option that the coronavirus was “specially designed and intentionally distributed in the world to reduce the population and/or damage individual countries.” Another 29% chose the option that the coronavirus “was made artificially in the laboratory, but its worldwide spread was an accident.”
Only 18% chose the option that the coronavirus appeared naturally and then spread worldwide.
Respondents who chose the option of artificial origin, but accidentally distributed in the world, were asked the additional question “In which country, in your opinion, was the coronavirus artificially made?” The question was posed in an open form, that is, the respondent was not offered any answers.
“The vast majority of respondents (70%) believe that coronavirus was artificially developed in China. Another 5% called the United States, and 3% called Russia.
At the same time, respondents who chose the option “coronavirus was specially designed and intentionally distributed in the world to reduce the population and/or damage to individual countries” asked an additional question: “Who, in your opinion, is responsible for the development and intentional spread of coronavirus?” The question was also posed in an open form, that is, the respondent was not offered any answers.
“Half of the respondents (49%) found it difficult to answer the question. However, 26% believed that China was responsible for the development and deliberate distribution of coronavirus. The United States (11%) and Russia (with 2%) followed. Other answers were less common,” the information says.
KIIS conducted a CATI survey (using a computer assisted telephone interviews) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers from May 31 to June 4, 2020. The sample is representative of the adult population (aged 18 years and older) of Ukraine. The sample does not include Russia-occupied areas in Donbas and Crimea.
During the survey, 2,000 interviews were conducted. The statistical error of the sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) does not exceed: 2.2% for indicators close to 50%, 2.1% for indicators close to 25%, 1.4% – for indicators close to 10%.
