Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (click to enlarge):
Our Ukrainian Service, Radio Svoboda, fact-checked last night's presidential debate. You can see the original here:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy: "First [Petro] Poroshenko says it will take 10 hryvnya to buy a dollar, and another Poroshenko makes it 30 hryvnyas [he said there were two Poroshenkos]."
Fact: Monetary policy, and hence the stability of the national currency, is handled by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), not by the president of Ukraine. The head of the NBU is appointed by the Verkhovna Rada on the proposal of the president. In November 2014, Poroshenko did say on the air that he would make the exchange rate economically sound, and that it should not exceed 10 hryvnyas per dollar.
Zelenskiy: "On Mikhaylovska Square (Kyiv) one Poroshenko shouts, 'Putin, I'll show you!' and another one sends greetings ['privyetiki'] to Moscow via Viktor Medvedchuk."
Fact: According to the publicly available service of airplane tracking called Plane Finder, a P4-GEM belonging to Viktor Medvedchuk flew to Moscow on April 4, 2019. According to a Schemes investigation, his board was the only one that was allowed to carry out direct flights between Ukraine and Russia by the intelligence services of both countries. In the period from January 2018 till November 2018 he had 21 direct flights to Russia.
Zelenskiy: "The first Poroshenko says he passed his business to a blind trust, and the second one increased his wealth by 82 times!"
Fact: According to Forbes Ukraine, in 2014 Petro Poroshenko's wealth amounted to $750 million, and in 2017 it was $1 billion. In 2018 it was $1.1 billion. Poroshenko's party headquarters explained this revenue growth by the fact that the president over three years did not receive dividends from enterprises, where he is an end beneficiary
Poroshenko: "Basic military training should have taken place in 2014 when the country needed volunteers the most, while Zelenskiy was hiding from military service."
Fact: Ministry of Defense: Zelenskiy received the call-up papers for the armed forces (summons for military duty) four times in 2014 and 2015 during the mobilization. However, he did not go to the military recruitment unit (Military commissariat). In April 2019 his mother said that she did not receive any call-up papers while her son had moved to Kyiv. In 2014, according to the media, she called her son and informed him that she received such a call-up paper. At the time, Zelenskiy promised that he would go to war if needed.
Poroshenko: "You said yourself that you are a 'cat in a bag,' but you are not a cat in a bag, you are a bag yourself, and in your bag today there are devils and cats, including oligarchs and former regionals!"
Zelenskiy (on April 18): "Concerning the cat in the bag, if you compare the two candidates, then it seems to me that it's better to have a cat in the bag than a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Fact: The head of Zelenskiy party HQ, Dmitry Razumkov, started his political career at the Party of Regions. In 2006, he was a part of the party's youth wing.
Zelenskiy: "How did it happen that Ukraine is the poorest country with the richest president in history?"
Fact: According to the World Bank, Ukraine's GDP (at purchasing power parity) per capita is ahead of 73 countries
Zelenskiy said that he had not gone to Russia since the beginning of the war.
Fact: According to the information on the crossing of the state border, received by Schemes journalists, it was June 4, 2014, when Zelenskiy flew to Russia (Moscow) for the last time. He returned from Russia on June 12, 2014.
Poroshenko: "None of my friends has and will not have any relation to corruption."
Fact: Schemes journalists have revealed phone conversations featuring the president's army comrade and close associate, Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction first deputy head Igor Kononenko, who discussed the scheme for the withdrawal of hundreds of millions of hryvnyas from the state "oblenergos" (regional power distribution company) . At Schemes' request, they were verified by American specialists working with the U.S. government.
Zelenskiy: "Why is Hontareva hiding in London?"
Fact: In autumn 2018, the former NBU chief Valeria Hontareva in an interview with Novoye Vremya said that since October she had been living and working in London
Poroshenko: "If you only knew in what condition I inherited Ukraine in 2014: without money in the public treasury, without an army, without any weapons! And at that same time you insulted our state, tried to show Ukraine as a prostitute, receiving money from Russia for filming your movies when the country needed any help!"
Fact: In 2017, the Russian company Green Films (at that time Zelenskiy was one of its co-founders ), through the Cypriot company Green Family LTD, received 35 million rubles as a grant for the film Vniz (Down). This is evidenced by the agreement No. 054-11-975 / 1, available in the Russian federal budget-subsidy registry.
Poroshenko: "We have replaced Russian markets with free-trade-zone markets."
Fact: Exports from Ukraine to EU markets in 2018 increased by 15 percent, according to official statistics, while exports to Russia for the same period of time fell by 7.2 percent. However, Russia still remains the largest trading partner of Ukraine. Total exports of Ukraine are growing by 9 percent per year.
Zelenskiy: "How did the hryvnya collapse?"
Fact: According to the NBU, the fall of the hryvnya is explained as an inevitable consequence of changes in the economy of any country. The last fall of the national currency (July 2018), according to the regulator, was due to large volumes of dividend transfers abroad, VAT refunds, payments on domestic government bonds and an increase in demand for the dollar (that is, there was a market outflow). The hryvnya lost most of its initial purchasing power in 1996, 1998-2000, 2004 and 2008 -- due to periods of crisis, the NBU says. The president is not responsible for the hryvnya exchange rate, this is the responsibility of the NBU.
Poroshenko: "Kolomoyskiy personally has paid $41 million from a Privatbank account to your offshore accounts."
Fact: Volodymyr Aryev, a deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, was the one to name this figure, in a Facebook post. There is no other evidence of this.
Zelenskiy: "In Ukraine, all TV channels belong to the oligarchs: Kolomoyskiy, Pinchuk, Firtash, Akhmetov...."
Fact: The top-rated channels in Ukraine are in fact registered to offshore companies, most of which belong to the oligarchs. However, there are several TV channels whose owners do not have a large business affiliated with the authorities (this is what the term oligarch means). For example, one cannot call Viktor Medvedchuk an oligarch. He controls Channel 112. Also Yekaterina Kit-Sadova (wife of the mayor of Lviv), who owns a mid-sized business. Moreover, the public broadcasting channels are financed from the budget of Ukraine.
Poroshenko: "More than 60 000 people were present at the stadium."
Fact: According to the Interior Ministry, At 7 p.m. there were 22 000 people
Poroshenko: "The law says that candidates must be present at such debates."
Fact: The law on presidential elections in Ukraine, Article 62, says that "Candidates take part in TV debates in person. In case of refusal of one of the candidates to take part in televised debates, the time allocated for TV debates is given to another candidate."
Poroshenko: "There was a terrible part, it concerns the position of my opponent, when he called the Russian mercenaries and the regular armed forces of the Russian Federation the 'rebels' of the DNR and 'rebels' of the LNR."
Fact: Zelenskiy actually said "LDNR rebels," but it was a quote, as he said, from "questions from the people" that he was reading from the paper ."Is it true (I do not claim) that there are 'Roshen' candies in the ratios of LNR and DNR rebels?"
Poroshenko: "Since the beginning of the war, we have returned more than 3,270 prisoners, hostages, and political prisoners."
Fact: The Security Service of Ukraine, in response to a request from Radio Svoboda, said that since April 2014, 3,239 people had been released or found in the ATO zone.
Poroshenko: "There is not a single meeting at the highest international level where I would not raise the issue of our prisoners of war who were captured as a result of military aggression in the neutral waters of the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait or where I would not raise an issue of the Crimean Tatars."
Fact: During international meetings with EU and U.S. leaders on the international stage, including the UN General Assembly, Poroshenko emphasizes the need to liberate Ukrainian citizens held on a political basis in the occupied Crimea, Russia, areas of the Donbas, as well as respect for the rights of Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and citizens of other nationalities in the occupied Crimea.
Poroshenko: "We have already started a program on April 1, according to which every third-fourth child in a family will receive a subsistence level. Today it is more than 1,600 hrynyas, from April 2: 1,779 hryvnyas."
Fact: From April 1, the government has introduced aid to large families: 1,700 hryvnyas for the third and each subsequent child (paid up to six years). This is slightly higher than the subsistence minimum for a child under 6 years of age, which is 1,626 hryvnyas.
Poroshenko: I am the only president who has not extended his powers, but also has significantly narrowed them!
Fact: On February 2, 2014, immediately after Viktor Yanukovych had fled to Russia, the Verkhovna Rada voted to return to the constitutional amendments of 2004, limiting the powers of the president. On June 2, 2016, the parliament also took away the president's right to form courts
In response to a question about Maidan affairs:
Poroshenko: "Five months later, the cases will in any case be transferred to the State Bureau of Investigations."
Fact: The Prosecutor-Generals' Office said that in connection with the establishment of the State Bureau of Investigations, the Prosecutor-General's Office has the right to finish prosecutions of the proceedings, which are subject to the SBI, till November 20, 2019.
Zelenskiy: "There was a fight for a visa-free regime with the EU even before you became president."
Fact: The first time Ukraine called on the EU to abolish the visa regime was shortly after independence, during the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk. The official visa-free dialogue started at the Paris EU-Ukraine Summit on September 9, 2008. The visa regime was canceled under Poroshenko in June 2017.
Zelenskiy: "As for the tomos, this is a victory, first of all, of Filaret even before you became president, even in times when you were a parishioner of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow Patriarchate."
Fact: Patriarch Filaret made great efforts to establish the independence of the Ukrainian church. At the same time, he repeatedly thanked Poroshenko for his role in obtaining the tomos, a historic event for Ukraine.
Zelenskiy: "I have nothing to say about roads -- there are no roads."
Fact: The government recognizes that 95 percent of roads are in "terrible condition." Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman calls road repair one of his priorities, last year 3,800 kilometers of roads were repaired, a record-high figure, according to officials. Also, road repair is not the responsibility of the president.