Ukrainian opposition leaders urged a continuation of the biggest protests since the 2004 Orange Revolution to force President Viktor Yanukovych to reverse a decision to snub the European Union in favor of Russia.
Boxing world champion Vitaly Klitschko, leader of the UDAR party, called for continued demonstrations after more than 100,000 people marched yesterday through the capital, Kiev.
Opposition leaders, including Arseniy Yatsenyuk, head of jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party, led the march after the former premier urged people to take to the streets.
Tensions have been rising since the government halted preparations for a free-trade agreement with the EU on Nov. 21, saying it wanted to focus on reviving trade with Russia and other ex-Soviet states.
Protesters have since poured into Kiev’s Independence Square, the focal point of Orange Revolution protests that overturned a Yanukovych presidential election victory the opposition said was marred by corruption and fraud.
“We should gather every day,” Klitschko said in remarks broadcast by Ukraine’s Channel 5.“We should press the authorities to sign the deal.”
CDS, Bonds
The cost to insure Ukrainian debt against non-payment for five years using credit-default swaps, which jumped after the government said it was scrapping the EU talks, fell to 938 basis points as of 3:20 p.m. in Kiev, the world’s fourth-highest after Argentina, Venezuela and Cyprus, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The yield on the government’s dollar bond due 2023 was down 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, at 9.55 percent.
“Recent events suggest an increasing probability of securing a trade deal with Russia,” Citigroup Inc. analyst Ivan Tchakarov said today in an e-mailed note.
Opposition groups, which lack a parliamentary majority, registered a no-confidence bill in the government today, according to a statement on Tymoshenko’s party website.
Protests will run as long as needed, Tymoshenko ally Oleksandr Turchynov said yesterday as demonstrators erected several dozen tents. The protests underscore a long-standing dispute over where Ukraine belongs between its more pro-EU west and the Russian-speaking east and south.
The EU and Russia each buy about a quarter of Ukrainian exports and have been jostling over relations with the nation of 45 million, the former Soviet Union’s second-most populous and a crucial energy transit route.
United, Europe
“We are together. We are united. We are Europe,” people chanted yesterday, waving banners as a rock band played. Police on the scene estimated the crowd at 110,000 at noon.
Pro-EU rallies also took place in other Ukrainian cities, including Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Lviv, where at least 10,000 people gathered, Interfax reported. Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnybok, who heads the right-wing Svoboda party, led a march to the government building today and urged people to gather at the square at 6 p.m.
“We’ve been coming since Friday,” 20-year-old Nika Rassadina said today as she stood on Independence Square with 20 fellow students. “European values mean you see yourself as a part of the society in which you live and you feel personally responsible for what’s going on.”
Premier Mykola Azarov said yesterday in an interview with Russia’s Channel One that he wasn’t “afraid of” protests.
The authorities will look into how the demonstrations are being financed, he said, according to a transcript on the channel’s website. Darka Chepak, Yanukovych’s spokeswoman, didn’t answer calls to her mobile phone.
EU, Russia
European governments have urged Ukraine to sign association and free-trade agreements at a Nov. 28-29 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Russia, which supplies 60 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas, threatened trade measures if the deal went forward, offering membership in its customs union as an alternative.
The two sides accused each other of blackmail, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the EU is encouraging protests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Nov. 23 that Russia too often views European overtures toward its eastern neighbors for tighter political and economic ties as “directed against Russia.”
She’ll address the issue with Putin “at the next opportunity,” she said in her weekly podcast. The EU is “pressuring and blackmailing” Ukraine to reverse the Nov. 21 decision, Putin said Nov. 22 in St. Petersburg.
The Black Sea nation is crucial to Putin’s ambition to set up a trading area to emulate the Brussels-centered bloc.
‘Our Chance’
While Yanukovych reiterated on Nov. 21 that his country’s goal is European integration, lawmakers repeatedly failed to pass a bill to allow Tymoshenko to travel abroad for medical treatment, a key EU condition for the trade accord to proceed.
“It is our chance to complete what we didn’t do in 2004,” Tymoshenko, who suffers from chronic back pain, said in a letter read out yesterday by her daughter, Eugenia, to protesters in Kiev.“Our future is in a united Europe.”
Backing for EU membership is 58 percent, according to a poll of 1,000 people this month by researcher IFAK Institut GmbH & Co. It gave no margin of error. The door “remains open” for intensified relations between the EU and Ukraine, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters today in Berlin.
“Yanukovych himself has not said the final word yet as he leaves some space for maneuver,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Political Analysis Center.
bloomberg.com
Boxing world champion Vitaly Klitschko, leader of the UDAR party, called for continued demonstrations after more than 100,000 people marched yesterday through the capital, Kiev.
Opposition leaders, including Arseniy Yatsenyuk, head of jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party, led the march after the former premier urged people to take to the streets.
Tensions have been rising since the government halted preparations for a free-trade agreement with the EU on Nov. 21, saying it wanted to focus on reviving trade with Russia and other ex-Soviet states.
Protesters have since poured into Kiev’s Independence Square, the focal point of Orange Revolution protests that overturned a Yanukovych presidential election victory the opposition said was marred by corruption and fraud.
“We should gather every day,” Klitschko said in remarks broadcast by Ukraine’s Channel 5.“We should press the authorities to sign the deal.”
CDS, Bonds
The cost to insure Ukrainian debt against non-payment for five years using credit-default swaps, which jumped after the government said it was scrapping the EU talks, fell to 938 basis points as of 3:20 p.m. in Kiev, the world’s fourth-highest after Argentina, Venezuela and Cyprus, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The yield on the government’s dollar bond due 2023 was down 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, at 9.55 percent.
“Recent events suggest an increasing probability of securing a trade deal with Russia,” Citigroup Inc. analyst Ivan Tchakarov said today in an e-mailed note.
Opposition groups, which lack a parliamentary majority, registered a no-confidence bill in the government today, according to a statement on Tymoshenko’s party website.
Protests will run as long as needed, Tymoshenko ally Oleksandr Turchynov said yesterday as demonstrators erected several dozen tents. The protests underscore a long-standing dispute over where Ukraine belongs between its more pro-EU west and the Russian-speaking east and south.
The EU and Russia each buy about a quarter of Ukrainian exports and have been jostling over relations with the nation of 45 million, the former Soviet Union’s second-most populous and a crucial energy transit route.
United, Europe
“We are together. We are united. We are Europe,” people chanted yesterday, waving banners as a rock band played. Police on the scene estimated the crowd at 110,000 at noon.
Pro-EU rallies also took place in other Ukrainian cities, including Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Lviv, where at least 10,000 people gathered, Interfax reported. Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnybok, who heads the right-wing Svoboda party, led a march to the government building today and urged people to gather at the square at 6 p.m.
“We’ve been coming since Friday,” 20-year-old Nika Rassadina said today as she stood on Independence Square with 20 fellow students. “European values mean you see yourself as a part of the society in which you live and you feel personally responsible for what’s going on.”
Premier Mykola Azarov said yesterday in an interview with Russia’s Channel One that he wasn’t “afraid of” protests.
The authorities will look into how the demonstrations are being financed, he said, according to a transcript on the channel’s website. Darka Chepak, Yanukovych’s spokeswoman, didn’t answer calls to her mobile phone.
EU, Russia
European governments have urged Ukraine to sign association and free-trade agreements at a Nov. 28-29 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Russia, which supplies 60 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas, threatened trade measures if the deal went forward, offering membership in its customs union as an alternative.
The two sides accused each other of blackmail, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the EU is encouraging protests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Nov. 23 that Russia too often views European overtures toward its eastern neighbors for tighter political and economic ties as “directed against Russia.”
She’ll address the issue with Putin “at the next opportunity,” she said in her weekly podcast. The EU is “pressuring and blackmailing” Ukraine to reverse the Nov. 21 decision, Putin said Nov. 22 in St. Petersburg.
The Black Sea nation is crucial to Putin’s ambition to set up a trading area to emulate the Brussels-centered bloc.
‘Our Chance’
While Yanukovych reiterated on Nov. 21 that his country’s goal is European integration, lawmakers repeatedly failed to pass a bill to allow Tymoshenko to travel abroad for medical treatment, a key EU condition for the trade accord to proceed.
“It is our chance to complete what we didn’t do in 2004,” Tymoshenko, who suffers from chronic back pain, said in a letter read out yesterday by her daughter, Eugenia, to protesters in Kiev.“Our future is in a united Europe.”
Backing for EU membership is 58 percent, according to a poll of 1,000 people this month by researcher IFAK Institut GmbH & Co. It gave no margin of error. The door “remains open” for intensified relations between the EU and Ukraine, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters today in Berlin.
“Yanukovych himself has not said the final word yet as he leaves some space for maneuver,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Political Analysis Center.
bloomberg.com
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