12/12/2014 Ukraine: Daily Highlights - Ukraine's military budget is planned at about 50 bln UAH ($3,2 bln)

12/12/2014 Daily Highlights by "Digests and Analytics - Ukraine" News Agency

Topics of the day

Deputies of the Parliament will initiate rejection of the country’s neutral status and recognition of Russia as an aggressor. Ukraine's military budget is planned at about 50 bln UAH ($3,2 bln). The OSCE Mission has not recorded withdrawal of heavy artillery systems from the war zone in East Ukraine.

Events In Ukraine

• Verkhovna Rada deputies are working with the government on the draft budget to be adopted before 26 December. For 2015, planned expences for the Ukrainian Armed Forses are going to be about 50 bln UAH.
• The head of “Naftogaz” Mr. Kobolev said the government is considering increases of natural gas tariffs for households from three to five times to achieve the "fair price", despite the projection for the price of Russian gas falling to $ 340 per 1000 m3.
• The State Property Fund has not fulfilled the plan for the privatization and does not plan new large sales of state-owned enterprises by the end of the year.
• Defense Minister Poltorak said that the Ukrainian army will grow to up to 250 thousand people. Before the end of the year, all the personnel of the Ministry of Defence, including the Intelligence Services, will pass complete re-certification.
• NBU continues gradual decrease of the hryvnia exchange rate: 15,71 UAH/ USD (+0.04 UAH), 19.53 UAH / € (+0,11 UAH), 2.87 UAH / 10 Russian rubles (-0.02 UAH). The real exchange rate of purchases is above 16.35 UAH/$.

The theater of war

• OSCE monitoring mission has not confirmed the withdrawal of heavy equipment and Russian troops from the line of fighting in the Donbass. During the day, firefights using small arms and mortars have been recorded. Volunteer battalion "Azov" was ambushed and suffered casualties near Pavlopil.
• Militant troops continue to regroup in Donbass. There was recorded a reinforcement of the Horlivka group by the militant brigade "Oplot", including armored vehicles. Russian commanders are trying to bring together individual units of militants into regular troops and create an "army of Novorossia", but it suffers from a lack of personnel, desertion of local citizens and problems with the supply of arms and ammunition.
• State Aviation Service has cancelled flights to Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia for security reasons from December, 12th.
• DPR militants did not permit to inspect the area of Pavlopil near Mariupil by the OSCE monitoring mission personnel.
• Trucks of yet another Russian "humanitarian" convoy consisting of 141 units arrived to Donetsk and Lugansk.
• In Donetsk, the day was relatively quiet. Life support systems of the city were getting restored.
• Center for the release of POWs "The officer corps" published data about 632 Ukrainian soldiers captured by militants of DPR and LPR.

Ukraine and the World

• The US Department of State speaker Mrs. Psaki urged governments to refrain from business contacts with Russia after the visit of the Russian official delegation to India for the signing of international treaties.
• The Obama Administration is studying bills adopted by the Senate and House of Representatives before making a decision to approve the final version. The administration said that the pressure on Russia to be more effective via coordinated joint efforts with the EU.
• Ukraine asks EU to strengthen sanctions against the Crimea, and to extend the imports ban with a ban on European products exports to the occupied territory.
• In complete secrecy, "Rosneft" placed ruble exchange bonds for 625 billion rubles to the market in a day, which is more than 11% of corporate market volume. The bonds were purchased by Russia's largest state-owned banks. According to experts, funds from the National Welfare Fund were allocated for this purpose.

Trends

• A group of deputies of the Ukrainian Parliament initiates an appeal to the US to grant Ukraine the status of a special partner outside the NATO, a bill to cancel Ukraine’s non-aligned status, and a bill to recognize Russia as an aggressor in the event of failure of the next round of negotiations in Minsk.
• Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers is ruthlessly cutting all social programs while the taxes on oligarchs income are kept at the current levels.