The agreement, signed on April 30, establishes a joint investment fund between Kyiv and Washington and grants the U.S. special access to projects developing Ukraine's natural resources.
Ukraine is considering moving away from the U.S. dollar and closer to the euro as a benchmark for the hryvnia, National Bank Governor Andrii Pyshnyi told Reuters.
The Atesh partisan group claims it disabled communication at several Russian military facilities when it allegedly destroyed equipment at a transformer substation in the village of Mogiltsy in Russia's Moscow Oblast.
Confiscated money from the perpetrators of the scheme (Source: National Police of Ukraine)
The U.K. has sanctioned Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, along with Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos, and Latvian politician Aivars Lembergs, according to the U.K. government’s website statement on Nov. 21.
The statement noted that freezing their assets is part of a crackdown on global corruption and "dirty money."
Firtash allegedly "extracted hundreds of millions of pounds from Ukraine" and invested significant amounts of the gains in U.K. properties.
His wife, Lada Firtash, was also sanctioned as she “profited from his corruption and holds UK assets on his behalf.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy emphasized the sanctions as a step toward holding corrupt elites accountable for exploiting public resources.
Firtash, formerly a close associate of pro-Russian ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, accumulated much of his wealth by buying Russian gas and selling it in his home country.
U.S. prosecutors charged Firtash with racketeering and bribery in 2014 and he was briefly arrested in Austria before posting bail. The Ukrainian tycoon has so far avoided extradition from Austria's capital, where he resides.
Sonya Bandouil is a North American news editor for The Kyiv Independent. She previously worked in the fields of cybersecurity and translating, and she also edited for various journals in NYC.
Sonya has a Master’s degree in Global Affairs from New York University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of Houston, in Texas.
Abbey Fenbert
