Lawmakers in Kiev worked on reshaping government after ousting Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency for a role in the violence that killed at least 82 people last week. The U.S. and the European Union pledged aid for a new cabinet. Border guards stopped Yanukovych at an airport in the eastern city of Donetsk two days ago. He wasn’t detained.
With protesters in control of the capital and Yanukovych denouncing events as a “coup d’etat,” his opponents face a contentious period after the release from prison of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Jailed more than two years ago for abuse of power, she vowed to return to the fractured political scene before presidential elections on May 25.
“Ukraine’s economy is spinning out of control,” Turchynov said on parliament’s website late yesterday. “The new government’s task is to stop the country’s slide, to stabilize the currency rate, to ensure timely salary and pension payments, to win back investors’ trust, and to create new jobs. Another priority is to return to the European integration path.”
Mykola Tomenko, a member of Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, said the former premier was a candidate for the premiership, along with party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and billionaire ex-Economy Minister Petro Poroshenko. Tymoshenko later ruled out such a role for herself, as did Vitali Klitschko, who heads the UDAR party.
Nation Divided
Ukraine spiraled into crisis in November when protesters took to the streets to oppose Yanukovych’s rejection of a deal to deepen ties with the European Union. Violence crested last week in fighting in central Kiev before a peace agreement brokered by EU foreign ministers ended the clashes and triggered Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev.
The peace deal bolstered Ukrainian assets, with the yield on the government bond maturing in April 2023 falling 77 basis points, or 0.77 percentage point, on Feb. 21 to 10.33 percent.
With western nations and Russia tussling for sway over the country of 45 million people, the International Monetary Fund is ready to help Ukraine “not only from a humanitarian point of view but also from an economic point of view,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters in Sydney following a meeting of Group of 20 officials yesterday.
Checkbook Ready
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said the U.S. was prepared to help Ukraine return to a path of democracy, stability and growth. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne agreed.
“We are here ready to help just as soon as there is someone at the end of the telephone,” Osborne said in an interview yesterday in Sydney. “We should be there with a checkbook to help the people of Ukraine rebuild their country.”
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, will travel to Ukraine today to meet party leaders. Russia halted a $15 billion bailout for its neighbor after the unrest and talks on resumed financing may continue only after a new government is formed, RIA Novosti reported yesterday, citing Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov in Sydney.
Yanukovych’s departure is a blow to Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin wanted Ukraine, a rout for its energy shipments to Europe, to join a trade partnership of former Soviet states to rival the EU.
In Ukraine, the political crisis polarized sentiment in largely between its western and central regions bordering the EU and those in the south and east that are home to more Russian speakers and ethnic Russians.
Lenin Toppled
While people toppled Vladimir Lenin’s statues across the county as protests, according to TV channel 5, more than 2,000 rallied for closer ties with Russia in the southern city of Odessa. In Kerch, also in the south, marchers replaced a Ukrainian flag at the mayor’s office with Russian and Crimean flags, the Unian news service reported.
The opposition is following the lead of “armed extremists and thugs whose actions pose a direct threat to the sovereignty and constitutional order in Ukraine,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a statement On Feb 22.
Russia called its ambassador to Kiev back to Moscow for consultations due to “aggravation of the situation” in Ukraine and a “need for in-depth analysis,” its Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website yesterday.
‘Grave Mistake’
White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the U.S.would work with European partners to help finance Ukraine’s economic recovery, while warning Russia that any insertion of its troops would be “a grave mistake.”
“It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or of the United States to see the country split,” Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence return and the situation escalate.”
Russia should recognize Ukraine’s “European Choice,” Turchynov said in the statement.
“We are ready for a dialog with top Russian officials to build relations on new, truly equal grounds,” he said.
Turchynov, the deputy chairman of Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, also has temporary control over the outgoing cabinet. That administration has shrunk after lawmakers voted out the foreign, interior and other ministers.
‘Escape, Cowardice’
Turchynov said he would give up his leadership positions once an executive is formed.
Parliament also approved measures aimed at bringing those responsible for the violence to justice, while Yanukovych’s Party of Regions blamed him for the bloodshed.
“We condemn Yanukovych’s escape and cowardice,” the party said in a statement on its website yesterday. It decried “criminal orders that led to victims, an empty treasury, huge debt and shame in the eyes of Ukraine and the whole world.”
Border officials stopped Yanukovych’s plane in Donetsk two days ago and refused an offer from armed men of money in exchange for permission to depart, Oleh Slobodyan, head of the Border Service media department, said by phone yesterday.
Yanukovych left the airport in an armored car and hasn’t been seen trying to cross the border again. Former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka and former Tax Minister Oleksandr Klymenko were also denied permission to leave at the same airport.
Wealth Disparity
With Yanukovych on the run, thousands of people visited his former residence over the weekend after lawmakers voted to revert it to state ownership. People milled around the man-made lakes, the life-sized galleon, the private zoo and a garage full of antique cars and limousines that surround a towering mansion, according to images on website Censor.net.
The luxurious estate dominated news broadcasts in Ukraine, where the average nominal wage is 3,619 hryvnia ($404) a month, according to data from the national Statistics Office.
Tymoshenko, jailed in 2011 for abuse of office on charges EU leaders have called politically motivated, spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule yesterday.
After telling journalists two days ago that she would run for president in May, Tymoshenko yesterday said she didn’t want to be considered for prime minister of the new cabinet.
“I was surprised by information that I am proposed for the post of prime minister,” she said in a statement on her website, addressing lawmakers in parliament. “Thank you very much for respect, but I ask you not to consider my candidacy.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net; Kateryna Choursina in Kiev at kchoursina@bloomberg.net; Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net; James M. Gomez at jagomez@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-23/ukraine-interim-leader-warns-of-economic-danger.html
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