Nikolai Kojushko, Chairman of the Ukrainian human-right organization "Let's Help Children", has addressed to the Ukrainian Government and law enforcement agencies as well as to European Union countries to take measures to combat corruption, "which has plagued Ukraine".

 

He stated at a news conference at Infotag on Monday that in late 2013 Ukrainians rose for "the Maidan of Dignity, at which citizens demanded changes and a better life". [The word 'maidan' means 'square', 'marketplace' in Russian and Ukrainian. The Kiev Maidan, which is the central square in Ukraine's capital, is a new political term that means the events the place had seen since late 2013 and practically throughout 2014.] "At the maidan, so much was promised to citizens, but eventually nothing of the promised was fulfilled", he said.

 

According to him, the average monthly pension is some 1,200 hryvnas, which is the size of a monthly utility bill. The average salary is 2-3 thousand hryvnas. Everything has become several times more expensive than in early 2013, and utility tariffs have soared by 30-80%, but there was no pension indexation.

 

"There is no struggle against corruption in the country. When a politician is arrested for violations, he immediately becomes an ill person who needs a wheelchair. Others just pay a pledge of several million and they are released. When the new authorities came into power, they declared they would be practicing lustration. But despite this, people from the ex-President Victor Yanukovitch's surrounding keep working at high posts, though in other ministries or projects", said Kojushko.

 

In his words, corruption has defeated the Maidan of Dignity in Ukraine.

 

"At the mid-term election to the Ukrainian Supreme Rada [parliament], the Yanukovitch regime representatives are craving for power. In the city of Dnepropetrovsk, a Rada deputy post is being aspired by Zagid Krasnov, who was involved in the annihilation of a local wine-making factory and to a number of contract murders. Now he is dishing out paultry doles on the money he had stolen when he was a Rada deputy. Another example is oligarch Rinat Ahmetov, who controls 70% Ukrainian energy in Ukraine", said the human right activist.

 

He addressed to the governments of Moldova, Romania and other EU countries with a request to take measures to help combat corruption in Ukraine.

 

Commenting on the situation in eastern Ukraine, Kojushko said that the military conflict in the Donbass region should be resolved within the framework of the Budapest Memorandum and exclusively in the territory of Ukraine "because the Minsk accords have not justified themselves".

 

Kojushko optimistically believes that a good future is awaiting his country "but only after corruption has been rooted out". Nevertheless, he apprehends there may be "food riots and cold riots in the country next winter because the populace is not able to feed themselves or keep their homes warm".