Inside News on Odessa and Ukraine
On 2nd January 2012, I wrote this, stating that the Hryvnia needed to devalue to between UAH 10 or UAH 11 to US$ 1 by mid 2013. Since then I wrote this, on 1st July 2012 stating it would need to devalue to UAH 9 to US$1 by the end of 2012 and this on […]
The new head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, (Ambassador for want of a better analogy), Jan Tombinski, seems to be doing his very best to pour oil on the somewhat choppy waters between Ukraine and the EU in efforts to smooth matters between the two sides to some degree. He recently gave a press […]
Having finally got around to the core issue of Stage 1 relating to the road map on Visa-free travel as per the document from the EU, the RADA has passed the necessary laws for biometric passports and identified the company that will produce them. Just how technically good the new law is remains to be […]
Naturally there is a lot of interest in the forthcoming elections in Ukraine - particularly so by its immediate neighbours. To be frank, there always has been since independence was dumped in the lap of Ukraine. In fact the degree of meddling, both overtly, covertly, cleverly, clumsily, diplomatically and politically, either through direct channels or […]
Turkey looks set to be the next Free Trade Agreement negotiated and signed by the current Ukrainian government - quite possibly by the end of 2012. Quite rightly too. If there is a star economic performer in the Black Sea region over the past few years to date, it most certainly is Turkey. In all […]
Well, I was hoping to write something truly interesting from the meeting between the CIS Prime Ministers that has been held over the past few days in Yalta. Unfortunately, not much worthy of real comment has been said or done - unless you want to include the nearing ascension of Kazakhstan and then Kyrgyzstan as […]
For those of you who follow me on twitter and in particular followed a conversation between Alex Nice (@AlexNicest) and myself (@OdessaBlogger) a few days ago, then the start of this blog entry is more of a summary of what was said - but don’t simply pass - it goes on to new ground that […]
Well the 9th Yalta Annual Meeting as sponsored by one of Ukraine’s most famous Oligarchy, Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of ex-President Kuchma, has begun. Amongst those attending are EU Commissioner Stefan Fule, Swedish FM Carl Bildt, Condi Rice ex US Secretary of State, Gordon Brown ex-Prime Minister of the UK, Newt Gingrich and William Daley and […]
Last week the EU appraised Moldova against the Visa-free road-map it was given, pretty much at the same time as Ukraine was given the same road-map. The up-shot of that appraisal? Moldova has overtaken Ukraine and can now move from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of the said road-map. In short it has its technical […]