Tag: Ukraine

NOVANEWS Zelenski beat his opponent Poroshenko with a big advantage. | Photo: EFE The elected president of Ukraine is a comedian and actor without any political experience. Volodímir Zelenski, 41, won the presidency of Ukraine with 73 percent of the votes in favor, compared to 25.5 percent of the outgoing president Petro Poroshenko. The Central Electoral Commission reported that participation reached 62.06 percent of the nearly 31 million Ukrainians. READ ALSO: The pacts govern the debate in the elections in Spain The president-elect, born in Krivói Rog, is a comedian and actor without any political experience. He was a law student, but never practiced. In fact, he chose a very different route: he took a liking to the humorous contest Club of the Fun and Ingenious Peo...

NOVANEWS Ukraine’s presidential race takes bizarre turn as candidates take televised drug tests Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy challenged president Petro Poroshenko to the tests   By Patrick Reevell  Ukraine’s two remaining presidential candidates both underwent televised drug and alcohol tests on Friday, after a week of posturing by the two that has seen the country’s election take an unusual turn. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comedian who swept ahead of incumbent president Petro Poroshenko in the election’s first round, had made the tests one of his conditions for facing Poroshenko in a pre-election debate. Zelenskiy, who has no political experience and stars in a hit sit-com as a man who unexpectedly becomes president, won Sunday’s first round vote by 30% -- nearly double the a...

NOVANEWS Jim Jatras  One of the most contentious and significant controversies in the world today is also one of the least-well understood. In part, this is because it involves matters of faith and church governance, the importance of which many people, especially some of a secular mind who scorn mere “religion,” tend to underestimate. That is a mistake, certainly with respect to the storm that seems on the verge of plunging Ukraine into a new cycle of violence. That may happen if, as seems quite possible, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople recognizes an “autocephalous” (completely self-ruling) Orthodox Church in Ukraine over the objections of the Russian Orthodox Church, of which the Ukrainian Church is an integral part. The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of t...

NOVANEWS Sputnik  Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s longtime business partner, took the witness stand in Manafort’s financial crimes trial for the second time on Tuesday, this time revealing that the former Trump campaign chair had worked on policies to help bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. According to Vice News, on the stand, Gates moved away from offering details on alleged financial crimes the two committed in their heyday and instead shed some light on Manafort’s work as a campaign consultant for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010. Gates claimed that Manafort had signed an annual $4 million advisory agreement to give life to campaign pledges that Yanukovych had campaigned on. One of the policies that Manafort was reportedly working on was called “Engage Ukraine...

NOVANEWS In January, Westinghouse Electric Company signed a nuclear-fuel contract extension with Ukraine’s State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generation Company (SE NNEGC) Energoatom. Nuclear Power Plant (Photo by Greg Dunlap) By Alex Gorka  Countries need independence because they want their decision-making process to be immune to outside influence. Ukraine is an exception to the rule. Emphasizing its independence from Russia, it willingly does whatever Washington tells it to, even if that runs counter to its national interests. In January, Westinghouse Electric Company signed a nuclear-fuel contract extension with Ukraine’s State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generation Company (SE NNEGC) Energoatom. The deal “solidifies Westinghouse’s role as a strategic partn...

NOVANEWS No one, including the most ardent pro-Kiev advocates in the West, disputes the existence of neo-nazis in Ukraine. by Strategic Culture Foundation Volunteers of the Azov Civil Corps light flares during rally at the Ukrainian Parliament, Friday, May 20, 2016.   No one, including the most ardent pro-Kiev advocates in the West, disputes the existence of the far-right and openly neo-nazi groups in Ukraine. However, the common western reaction to this is that the numbers of their followers are negligent and therefore their impact on the political climate and life in the country in general can be easily dismissed. This was the position of US and EU leaders from the beginning of so-called “Maidan Revolution” to the present day. Well, the facts tell us a different story since those w...

NOVANEWS Arkady Babchenko touches his face during an interview with foreign media. © Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters It didn’t take long for the story of a brave operation to prevent a Russian assassination in Kiev by faking a journalist’s death to start unravelling and revealing a crude publicity stunt. On Wednesday, Ukraine’s national security service SBU shocked the world by revealing that it had staged the murder of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. The service claimed it was necessary to foil a real large-scale plot targeting Ukraine and masterminded by the Kremlin. By Thursday the shock effect wore off, and commenters started to tear apart the story they were fed. According to the Ukrainian law enforcement, the biggest immediate win for the SBU in the case was the arrest of a...

NOVANEWS By: Gordon Duff, Senior Editor The US burned Ukraine down [ Editor’s Note: This video is a trip down the Yellow Brick Road, where the US turned most of Ukraine into proxy terrorist killing zone, when after supporting a violent coup with NATO and EU involvement the new government declared open season hunting on all ethnic Russians. This included not only their possessions, but their lives, also. As for political blowback in the US for this act of mass murder, you needed a magnifying glass to find it even among the Democrats. After several years now and all the carnage inflicted on so many Ukrainians, plus those on MH-17 that was shot down, we have seen no regrets in a West that thinks it can blame the whole event on Russia. On the contrary they hate Russia for denying them...