Ukraine 1999

In 1999, Ukraine had a population of around 50 million people. The economy of Ukraine was heavily reliant on the export of steel, chemicals, and other industrial goods. Foreign relations in 1999 were primarily focused on improving ties with the West, particularly through its membership in the Council of Europe and its negotiations for closer ties with NATO. Politically, Ukraine was governed by a president who had been in power since 1994 and had created a parliamentary democracy. Despite this commitment to democracy, however, there were still some issues such as corruption and economic inequality that needed to be addressed in order to improve the lives of the people of Ukraine. See ethnicityology for Ukraine in the year of 2018.

Yearbook 1999

Ukraine 1999

Ukraine. Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Ukraine. Domestic politics was dominated by the campaign ahead of the November presidential campaign. The incumbent President Leonid Kuchma was challenged primarily by the left-wing radical and populist Natalja Vitrenko and Communist Party leader Peter Simonenko. Kuchma promised to continue with market reforms and a Western-friendly policy, focusing on closer ties with the EU and NATO. Vitrenko wanted Ukraine to set the loan payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and use the money for, among other things. increased pensions. She was bombed at one of her elections in October and was lightly wounded. A large number of meeting participants were also injured. Simonenko tried to alleviate the widespread communist terror and said that he would neither break with the IMF, stop privatization or rush Ukraine into union with the Russian Federation and Belarus.

  • Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of UKR which stands for Ukraine and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.

Map of Ukraine Kiev in English

Large sums in wages and pensions had not been paid, and there was a deep popular dissatisfaction with what Kuchma had done. But at the same time, the fear was great for a return to a Soviet-like system and for a possible union with the Russian Federation and Belarus. Kuchma played in this election campaign in this election, and he won the first round of elections before Simonenko. In the second round, Kuchma won 56% of the vote against 38% for Simonenko. The latter received the majority of votes in the precarious and economically poor areas in the east, while Kuchma received overwhelming support in the west.

During the campaign, the opposition had been very difficult to come up with in the media. Its candidates also accused Kuchma of breaking the electoral law and using military and security services to undermine the opposition.

Repeated attacks against opposition election workers and offices were not investigated. Prior to the election, the majority in Parliament supported a statement that the president turned the government into its campaign headquarters and used it to impede its rivals in the election campaign.

In early December, Kuchma signed a decree on a comprehensive land reform and decommissioning of the country’s collective agriculture. The collective lands can now be bought, sold or leased by Ukrainians but not by foreigners.

Kuchma, who criticized the Russian war in Chechnya, met Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow in December. Relations with the Russian Federation are very important for Ukraine, which gets most of both oil and gas from it. 40% of foreign trade is with the Russian Federation.

The EU, which emphasized the importance of fair elections in Ukraine, set the country aside when in December the Union decided to invite a number of new countries to membership negotiations. The decision was a big disappointment for the Ukrainian government.

The economic crisis led the left-wing parliament in December to refuse to accept the re-elected president’s proposal to give Prime Minister Valerij Pustovojtenko confidence. Instead, Viktor Yushchenko was appointed new head of government. Yushchenko, formerly the governor of the central bank, promised to speed up economic and political reforms and fight corruption. Opposition’s Natalja Vitrenko accused Yushchenko of being “the IMF’s puppet”. The head of the state nuclear agency Energoatom said at the end of the year that the accident-hit nuclear power plant in Chernobyl is likely to be closed in 2000. According to Energoatom’s head, Ukraine cannot afford the repairs required for continued operation of the power plant.

Following the Crimean incorporation into Russia, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk voted in May 2014 for independence, as per. the Separatists were adopted with over 90% of the vote. The decisive factor in the decision to conduct referendums was the massacre in Odessa on May 2, when right-wing Ukrainians set fire to a union building and allowed 42 to burn. The Separatists’ militia quickly took control of the border area with Russia, leaving the border open so that weapons and volunteers could flow from Russia into the breakaway republics. While Russia had immediately incorporated Crimea, the country did not do so with the breakaway republics.

The May presidential election was already won in the first round by oligarch and chocolate king Petro Poroshenko with 54.7% of the vote against 12.8% for Yulia Tymochenko. The United States thus got her husband deployed to the presidential post. Poroschenko had, together with the United States, financed the coup against Yanukovych. In the eastern part of the country, only 20% of polling stations were open due to threats from separatists, so Poroshenko was basically the president of western Ukraine. At his inauguration in June, US Vice President Joe Biden attended.

In July, the Parliament changed the rules on the size of the parties’ parliamentary groups and then dissolved the Ukrainian Communist Party. Over the summer, several parties had left the “government” and Poroshenko therefore held a parliamentary election in August in October. At the 2012 elections, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was the largest in parliament with 34% of seats, but the party did not recognize the postponement of the election and therefore boycotted it. The four largest parties after the October elections were all new – had not participated in 2012. The largest was Poroshenko’s newly formed party Petro Poroshenko Blok, who got 132 seats out of 450. The conservative “People’s Front” got 82, while the Christian Self-Help party got 33. 51.2% and, as in the presidential election, the election was largely boycotted in the east.

In June, the country signed the Association Agreement with the EU, and the President declared that it was the first step towards EU membership. At that time, the cooperation agreement with Russia from December 2013 had long since been canceled. On December 23, Parliament voted to repeal a 2010 law proclaiming Ukraine as alliance-free. A week later, the president announced that he would be printing a referendum on joining NATO in the near future.

In July, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine and all 298 on board were killed. Both parties to the conflict accused the other party of being behind the shooting. A Dutch Accident Investigation Board was set up, which issued a final report on the accident in 2015.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine caught fire in January-February 2015. Especially in the Donbass region, where separatists occupied the airport in Donetsk. In February, a fragile ceasefire was negotiated in place, and in September both parties removed their heavy weapons from the front, but mortars and rifles were still used in frequent ceasefire violations. By autumn, 9,000 had been killed and 20,000 injured during the conflict; 1.4 million were internally displaced refugees and 600,000 fled all over the country. Most to Russia.

In October, the regime banned two smaller left-wing parties and in December the country’s Communist Party was banned. At the same time, the right-wing radicals ravaged unhindered. In July, members of the right-wing group Pravy Sector (Right Sector) were involved in an exchange of gunfire with police in Zakarpattya. 3 were killed. In August, the right-wing group Svoboda conducted a demonstration in front of the parliament in Kiev. During the demonstration, a grenade was thrown, killing 4 National Guardians. Several Svoboda members were arrested. In April, journalist Oles Buzina was shot and killed in front of his house in Kiev. He was known for his pro-Russian likes and had 25,000 contacts on Facebook. In November, unknown perpetrators ran electricity masts supplying power to Crimea in the air. It cut off 70% of electricity supply to the former Ukrainian region. Technicians from the electricity company were then prevented from reaching to repair the electricity poles. Only at the end of 2015 did the electricity supply return to normal.

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