Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Kolomoisky announces his return to Ukraine to advise Zelensky

He should be in prison.

Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, currently residing in Israel, said that he is ready to help the new president of Ukraine run the country.

In an interview with NTV, he said that he will “go so far as to offer his consultation services” to Vladimir Zelensky, president-elect of Ukraine, after he takes office. At the same time, he admitted that in the last six months he had already given the showman advice “once or twice”.

“I am ready to offer him advice, sometimes I do offer him advice, but this is not happening on a mass scale,” the businessman modestly noted.

Speaking about Zelensky, the oligarch said that he “wanted him to win the election” and hopes that he will cope with the “big burden” he has taken on. Kolomoisky also promised to return to Ukraine after the results were officially released.

The oligarch had already announced his intention to come to Ukraine. Ihor Kolomoisky was going to return between the first and second rounds of the election, but changed his mind because he did not want to add to the “turmoil.

http://uawire.org/kolomoisky-announces-his-return-to-ukraine-to-advise-zelensky

Boxer Denys Berinchyk is not a fan of your normal, boring ring walks.

Hilarious video: https://twitter.com/MichaelBensonn/status/1120395462169759748

Denys Berinchyk

Denys Berinchyk (also represented as Denis Berinchik, Ukrainian: Денис Берінчик; born 5 May 1988[1]) is a Ukrainian professional boxer. Berinchyk won the silver medal in the light welterweight division at the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Baku. He went on to win the silver medal in the same division at the 2012 Summer Olympics.[2]

Berinchyk is also former champion of World University Boxing Championships and European Boxing Cup at the amateur level.[3]

Berinchyk has a PhD in physical education and sport, obtained at the National University of Ukraine on Physical Education and Sport.[4]
Career

In the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships, he beat the No.1 seeded and reigning champion Cuban Roniel Iglesias Solotongo on points.[3][5] In the gold medal bout, he was eventually beaten by Everton Lopes of Brazil following the encounter ended 26–23.[6] Finished the championship as silver medalist, Berinchyk was a part of the Ukraine national team, topped the medal table.[6][7]

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, he had a bye into the second round, where he beat Anthony Yigit. He went on to beat Jeff Horn and then Uranchimegiin Mönkh-Erdene in the semi-final. In the final he lost to Roniel Iglesias, 15-22.[2]

December 22, 2018 Denis Berinchik fights for the title of WBO International. Oleg Malinovsky defending the title of WBO European Champion.

Family moments

My wife and son put a band aid on a big stuffed penguin we have after my son noticed a tear along the seam. After a few days, my wife, unbeknownst to our boy, sewed up the hold. My son was amazed!

I think most of us know that growth comes in spurts. What I’ve discovered since becoming a parent is that there seem to be three types of growth. Sometimes his head grows. Sometimes he gets thicker, and sometimes taller.

Horrible Corruption! Ukrainian Kangaroo Court says nationalization of Privat Bank illegal.

The ruling is a big setback for the government, which wrested PrivatBank from Kolomoisky, a co-founder of the bank, in December 2016.

PrivatBank was nationalized as part of a clean-up of the banking system backed by the International Monetary Fund, which supports Ukraine with a $3.9 billion loan program.

Ukraine’s dollar-denominated Ukraine bonds fell more than 1 percent after the ruling by a Kiev court as President Petro Poroshenko said in a televised address that overturning nationalization threatened “default and a new economic crisis.”
Related Coverage

He has previously said that any backsliding on PrivatBank would spark a “deep crisis in relations with the IMF.”

The central bank said it was impossible to reverse the nationalization and it would appeal against the ruling.

After taking over the bank the government had said it wanted to recover money it says was siphoned out while Kolomoisky owned it. It has shored up the lender with billions of dollars since it was nationalized.

Kolomoisky denies any wrongdoing and says the bank was forcibly nationalized without proper justification.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-privatbank-idUSKCN1RU1KY

(humor) Pope Francis Mourns Excess Carbon Emissions Given Off By Notre Dame Fire

Pope Francis has called for a time of mourning within the Catholic Church after the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned earlier this week.

The period of mourning is said to be a time of weeping for the extra carbon dioxide emissions let off into the air from the fires.

https://babylonbee.com/news/pope-francis-mourns-carbon-emissions-given-off-by-notre-dame-fire

“Court” Returning Privat Bank to Kolomoiski!?????

This is outrageous. So depressing. Ukraine has a bazaar instead of a legal system.

Kolomoiski stoke $5 Billion from Ukraine, whose M2 monetary supply is less than $50B.

The District Administrative Court of Kyiv satisfied Igor Kolomoisky’s claim to the National Bank and the Cabinet of Ministers regarding the privatization of Privatbank.

This is stated on the official website of the court.

The court found it illegal and abolished the decision to withdraw the insolvent “Privatbank” from the market with the participation of the state.

“The court … recognized the illegal decisions of the defendants, which resulted in the nationalization of PJSC CB” Privatbank “, and declared invalid from the moment of the conclusion of a contract of sale by the state of the bank’s shares,” the statement reads.

According to judges, the procedure for withdrawal of “Privatbank” from the market violated the norms of the current legislation.

“The grounds for adopting such a decision were, among other things, the lack of knowledge of the defendants in the availability of statutory grounds for assigning PJSC CB” Privatbank “to the category of insolvent, as a result of which the procedure for its nationalization was initiated, and the violation of the nationalization procedure of the bank itself, the procedure of which is regulated at the legislative level, “the press service of the court reported.

“Thus, the procedure for the nationalization of PJSC CB” Privatbank “was declared unreasonable by the court and carried out with numerous violations of the legislation in effect at that time, resulting in unlawful interference of the state with the right of shareholders of the Bank, including the plaintiff, to peacefully own a proper one property that violates both the requirements of national legislation, including the Constitution of Ukraine, and the provisions of international standards in this area, “the report said.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2019/04/18/7212603/ (Ukrainian)

Hacked Emails Appear to Reveal Russia Is Backing Comedian Likely to Be Ukraine’s Next President

Comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, has upended Ukraine’s presidential race over the past several months by promising young voters a break from a past riddled with corruption and leaders beholden to powerful oligarchs.

But now, a tranche of hacked emails suggest that Zelenskiy may have a powerful patron of his own: the Kremlin.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s security services revealed that they are investigating whether Zelenskiy’s campaign received financing from members of the Russian security service who are supporting the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a self-proclaimed, pro-Russian separatist proto-state in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-president-election-volodymyr-zelenskiy-1399563?fbclid=IwAR25qg4WO5jAqGrgvfrFSpyVzZ4yBsdYKUg2kM4HXsptCxQLe9ZB495KVww

Typical propaganda: “Ukraine cannot be a homogenous ethnic nation-state”

Here’s the trash article: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/ethnopolitics-doesn-work-ukraine-190409093526620.html

The story of this election was corruption, not an embracing of any sort of multiculturalism.

This sentence, “Given its radicalism and close association with fascist ideology, Ukrainian nationalism,” is straight out of Kremlin’s playbook.

Family moments – Chair Crashing, and computer literacy

1) chair crashing

For the past two nights we had a game after dinner. I’d sit in one of our bean-bag chairs. My now-three-year-old son rushed toward me — usually starting in the adjacent room, and he’d crash into my arms, and I’d tip backwards. The bean-bag chair allowed for a more-or-less slow motion falling backwards onto the floor. My son was almost delirious with delight.

As we progressed, he started to identify the tipping point, and after crashing into me, and my starting the slow tipping, he’d clamor up as high as he could onto my chest to reach it as quickly as possible.

Sometimes he’d strike too low, and I wouldn’t tip backwards, and once I said jokingly that he hadn’t eaten enough kasha. He immediately went to the counter, where the left overs from dinner still stood, maneuvered a spoonful of kasha into his mouth, and, still chewing, crashed into me again. Of course, I feigned a devastating impact. Proud as could be, he repeated the process. Mouth full, he’d call out to his mom, asking if she saw how I fell over. My wife said she never saw him eat so much kasha. Later he drank some water to test its effects on the impact. Still later, a sip of water combines with a sip of juice.

2) computer literacy

We try to keep Danylo’s screen time to an absolute minimum. Today, he climbed onto my lap while I was writing emails. Often this turns into a problem because he can’t restrain himself from banging the keyboard to moving the mouse, and I have to decide between interrupting my work or upsetting my son. (I usually choose the latter betting that he has to learn sooner or later.) Anyway, today he showed remarkable restraint, first asking what I’m doing (“writing an email to your grandmother”), and then asking if he could watch, and then climbing into my lap.

I was impressed how long he sat there. Eventually he asked what this “plus” was, and I didn’t understand what he meant initially and asked him to point. He was referring to the “I” shape that the mouse turns into when hovering over a text field. Next he asked was the sticks were. It turns out they were scroll bars, and I showed him how they work. I also told him that this object was a mouse, and that that the little thing on the screen was a mouse pointer, and I showed them how if you moved the one, the other would also move. He said “how interesting” (“iak tsikavo!”). :-)

Ballingcat hit piece against Azov

A culture that doesn’t respect its warriors gets replaced by one that does.

Bellingcat has produced some great research which I’ve posted here before. But their latest work —

“Defend the White Race”: American Extremists Being Co-Opted by Ukraine’s Far-Right

is slander and guilt-by-association. It mixes fascism with any expression of ethnic identity or solidarity.

Sure some members of Azov have troubling views. You know what? So did a lot of the soldiers in my platoon in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne division. The guys who show up to fight are not your fucking gender studies majors and male feminists.

When I visited the Azov battalion in Shyrokyne, I was moved almost to tears by the quality of people I encountered. A film maker, an architect, the head of a Ukrainian lawfirm. An eighteen year old leader with as much poise, clarity, and maturity as I have ever seen from any military leader. It was only during my third time seeing him that he revealed me he was injured during the evacuation at Illovaisk — 17 at the time.

Azov stared down the Russian army when the fate of Mariupol and Ukraine in general was very much in doubt. And many of them died. They deserve our gratitude.

Here are Azov’s position under Russian Grad Rocket fire.

Here’s a short documentary about a Georgian fighter killed while fighting with Azov.

Remembering “Kozak” of the Azov Regiment (he was from Odesa)

The crazy story of “Swampy”, and Englishman fighting with Azov who ended up lost in the enemy camp

Saakashvili to return to Ukraine if Zelensky wins presidential election

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has said he is confident of Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory in the runoff presidential election in Ukraine, and wants to return to Ukraine and to restore his Ukrainian citizenship.

“In fact, a revolution has happened in Ukraine. There is no doubt that Volodymyr Zelensky will win the runoff election,” Saakashvili told the television channel Rustavi 2 in an interview.

He also commented on claims that Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky was behind Zelensky.

“These allegations are wrong. Perhaps, Kolomoysky stands by Zelensky. I have known Kolomoysky for a long time, and he is very favorably disposed towards me,” Saakashvili said.

https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/578047.html

Zelenski, the favorite to become Ukraine’s next president, took son’s toy!

True story:

Volodymyr Zelensky, the guy who came in first in Ukraine’s presidential election, and will likely win the run off, once took my then-two-year-old son’s toy.

We were leaving a restaurant in Kyiv, and the toy was on a chair while my wife helped our son with his jacket. Zelenski, who was there with what I assume were his own kids, picked it up.

He returned it immediately after my wife said something, and he said quietly that he thought it was for everybody, which seems plausible.

I didn’t recognize him at the time. On the way home, my wife told me he was an actor.

Ukraine’s Presidential Election Results & Commentary

There will be a runoff between Zelensky and Poroshenko, but Zelensky, a former comedian, is the heavy favorite.

TOP 10 of the candidates for the presidency in Ukraine:

– Volodymyr Zelensky – 30,23%
– Petro Poroshenko – 15,92%
– Yulia Tymoshenko – 13,40%
– Yuriy Boyko – 11,68%
– Anatoliy Hrytsenko – 6,92%
– Ihor Smeshko – 6,03%
– Oleg Lyashko – 5,48%
– Oleksandr Vilkul – 4,15%
– Ruslan Koshulynsky – 1,63%
– Yuriy Tymoshenko – 0,62%

Good news:

* Ukraine demonstrating that it can peaceful transition power is a huge accomplishment for Ukraine, and for Russia too – because a neighbor demonstrating democracy puts a lot of pressure on their autocracy.

* This is a break from the old. Zelensky is young and popular with reformers.

* Poroshenko did some thing well, but he’s a horrible crook. It’s nice that he won’t be further entrenched.

* Zelenski is pro Western.

* Zelenski inspires the youth in what seems like a good way – activism, involvement, standing up to corruption.

* It is (hopefully) a message, that Poroshenko’s corruption, lack of judicial reform, and in-action on the Maidan killings will not be tolerated.

Bad news:

* Zelenski is probably a puppet of Kolomoisky, on whose television station he built his career. Kolomoisky’s Privat Bank fraud cost Ukraine 6 Billion.

* If Kolomoisky manages evade prosecution, or worse, return to Ukraine from his self-imposed exile is Israel / Switzerland, it will be humiliating for Ukraine.