Germany's Maas cancels trip to Donbas front line ahead of peace summit:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has canceled a trip to the front line of the Donbas conflict in eastern Ukraine due to adverse weather conditions, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.
He was scheduled to visit the line of contact on November 19 ahead of next month's planned four-way talks to end the bloody conflict at a summit involving Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia.
Plans foresaw flying to the city of Kharkiv, east of Kyiv, on November 18 and then to the Donbas by helicopter the following day.
Instead, Maas will meet with Foreign Minister Vadym Prystayko and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv to discuss the December 9 four-way talks known as the Normandy Four.
The last time the leaders of the four countries met was in October 2016.
French President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to host the talks in Paris to seek peace in the war that has killed more than 13,000 people and displaced 1.5 million more in what is the largest internal migration of people on the European continent since World War II. (w/Deutsche Welle)
Slovaks seize 700 kilograms of smuggled amber from Ukraine:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Slovak authorities have detained four Ukrainians who allegedly smuggled more than $722,000 worth of raw amber into the country.
A combined stash of nearly 700 kilograms of the semiprecious gemstone was found in the trunks of three vehicles with Ukrainian license plates on November 12, the criminal service of the Slovak Financial Department told state-run TASR news agency last weekend.
All four Ukrainian nationals were detained in the city of Kosice and are currently in custody following a November 15 court appearance.
If found guilty, the unnamed suspects face four to 10 years in prison for not paying 130,000 euros ($140,000) in duties on the amber.
Transporting amber into Slovakia is legal but it must be declared with the customs office, which in this case wasn't done.
According to the Slovak police, two of the suspects have been deported in the past over the smuggling of tobacco products.
Valuable deposits of amber are found across Ukraine, particularly in the wooded northwestern region known as Polissya. About 90 percent of the fossilized tree resin in Ukraine is extracted illegally using crude techniques that devastate the forest and cause environmental damage.
The illicit trade in amber is lucrative and pays far more than legal occupations like farming or police work.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk on September 30 said his cabinet had completed drafting a law on the prohibition of exporting raw amber and that it had been sent to parliament for consideration. (w/TASR and Tellerreport)
Ukreksimbank chief suspected of money laundering released amid IMF visit:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A Kyiv court has released the chairman of a Ukrainian state-owned bank accused of money laundering, setting bail at $120,000, which the suspect must pay in five weeks.
Prosecutors at the Pechersk district court had asked for Ukreksimbank head Oleksandr Hrytsenko to stay in custody or post bail of $4.1 million.
Two days before, officers of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) arrested the bank chairman on suspicion of creating an organized crime group, embezzlement, and money laundering.
SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska said on November 16 that the suspect is facing charges that involve complicity in laundering stolen assets connected to the inner circle of former President Viktor Yanukovych.
The news of Hrytsenko's arrest came as a mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is visiting Kyiv.
Kyiv is looking to seal a three-year, $6 billion loan program, one that the Washington-based lender said would be tied to fiscal austerity and deep, structural changes.
A big obstacle for the IMF so far has been the legal effort by Ihor Kolomoyskiy, Zelenskiy's main media backer, to regain ownership of PrivatBank, the country's largest lender that required an injection of $5.5 billion to keep it afloat before it was nationalized in 2016.
Hrytsenko's lawyer, Denys Halanskiy, said on November 17 that his client was being punished for going after assets linked to the former president's entourage.
The 78-page indictment says Hrytsenko, who has headed the bank since August 2014, allegedly took part in unfreezing assets belonging to the media empire of the former president's reputed moneybag man, Serhiy Kurchenko, the UNIAN news agency reported.
Ukrainian Media Holding (UMH) once published the most widely circulated weekly news magazine in the country and had rights to publish the Russian-language versions of Forbes and Vogue in Ukraine.
Kurchenko and Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014 in the wake of the pro-democracy Maidan movement.
A trained lawyer, Kurchenko had bought UMH in 2013 partly with a loan from Ukreksimbank.
Ukreksimbank is Ukraine's third-largest bank, with more than $7 billion in assets, according to the central bank.
Meanwhile, another bank chairman, Oleksandr Pysaruk of the Austrian-owned Ukrainian unit of Raiffeisen Bank, was released on bail on November 15.
He is suspected of participating in a $49 million embezzlement scheme during a bank bailout in 2015 while serving as the deputy chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, the country's central bank.
His current employer posted the $208,000 bail and Pysaruk has returned to work.
Pysaruk, also a former IMF employee for nearly three years, "will continue to serve as chairman of the board of Raiffeisen Bank Aval," Raiffeisen Bank International Chief Financial Officer Martin Gruhl said in Vienna. "We are all convinced that all suspicions of misconduct will be lifted from Mr. Pysaruk in the near future."
This ends our live blogging for November 18. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Zelenskiy appoints U.S. lawyer as adviser amid outreach to diaspora:
By Todd Prince
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appointed a U.S.-born lawyer as an adviser with a mandate to build relations with ethnic Ukrainians living abroad.
Zelenskiy named Andrew Mac, who heads the law office of Asters in Washington, as an adviser on November 5, according to a brief statement on the president's website. Mac gave more details about his role in a November 14 foreign-agent registration filing with the U.S. Justice Department.
Mac's appointment comes as Ukraine's reputation in the United States has taken a hit amid a Democratic-led impeachment hearing into whether President Donald Trump withheld military aid to the country in order to pressure its government to conduct investigations into a potential rival for the 2020 presidential election.
Republicans have sought to defend Trump in part by casting Ukraine as one of the world's most corrupt countries.
Mac's role will "likely involve" speaking with Ukrainian-American media or media outlets read by the Ukrainian-American community, according to the filing with the Justice Department.
Neither Mac nor spokespeople for Zelenskiy returned RFE/RL's calls for comment.
"Fighting the perception that Ukraine is corrupt is probably going to be part of his portfolio," said Andrij Dobriansky, director of communications for the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.
There are more than 1 million Americans that identify as Ukrainian, he said.
However, Mac's main role will more likely focus on promoting Ukraine as a place to do business, Dobriansky said. "President Zelenskiy's goal is to grow the economy, as he has very concrete budgetary concerns," he said.
Ukraine, among the poorest countries in Europe, is negotiating a new loan package from the International Monetary Fund. Low living standards have driven many Ukrainian citizens to seek work abroad, in countries such as neighboring Poland.
Zelenskiy, who won the presidency in a landslide in April on a promise to fight corruption and accelerate economic growth, met with the leaders of the Ukrainian World Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress during a visit to Toronto in July.
Mac specializes in cross-border transactions involving the United States, Ukraine, and other former Soviet states, according to a biography on Asters' website.
According to a 2010 interview with the Kyiv Post, Mac said he was recruited to Kyiv in 2002 by PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm and decided to stay longer after being "inspired" by the 2004 revolution that brought a pro-Western government led by Viktor Yushchenko to power.
Mac, born in New York City and raised in the Philadelphia area, is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora, according to the Kyiv Post. (w/Mike Eckel)
France says return of Ukrainian ships builds "trust" ahead of Putin-Zelenskiy summit:
By RFE/RL
France has welcomed Russia's return of three Ukrainian naval vessels that were seized by Moscow in the Black Sea last year, saying that the move would facilitate a planned December summit in Paris on resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
"The gesture...contributes to strengthening the trust in the dialogue between Russia and Ukraine," the French Presidency said in a November 18 statement following a telephone conversation between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia handed the ships over to Ukraine earlier in the day.
The statement added that the two leaders had discussed "preparations" for the December 9 summit in Paris between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Putin. The meeting will also be attended by Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Paris summit will be the first meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy, who was elected president of Ukraine in April.
The conflict in parts of eastern Ukraine between Kyiv and separatist formations that are militarily, politically, and economically supported by Moscow has left more than 13,000 people dead since 2014. The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled in November 2016 that the war in eastern Ukraine was "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."
The three Ukrainian naval vessels -- two small armored ships and a tugboat -- were seized by Russia on November 25, 2018 near the Kerch Strait, off the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia claimed they had violated Russia's territorial waters, a claim that Ukraine has denied.
Moscow released the 24 Ukrainian crewmen who were aboard the ships on September 7 as part of a prisoner exchange with Kyiv.
The Paris summit, a revival of the so-called Normandy Format for resolving the war in Ukraine, will be the highest-level negotiations on the conflict since 2016.
Following the phone call between Putin and Macron, the Kremlin issued a statement saying the December summit should help "quickly and fully" implement a 2015 peace plan that was brokered by France and Germany in Minsk.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow expected France to stress that the Paris summit "underlines that the Minsk agreement is inviolable and has no alternative." (w/AP, AFP, and TASS)