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DW: Mr. Milbradt, what message does a former German state premier have for a country undergoing major political reforms like Ukraine?

Georg Milbradt: That it was right to move to decentralize the government. Meaning, it was right to give as much power in shaping daily life back to the people as possible, taking into account the interests of the country as a whole. Questions involving public services are best discussed and decided on the lower levels of government. It's easier to influence these things on the local level than it is on the national level.

Milbradt says that the locals have responded positively

Germany has a federal government and is divided into states - Ukraine on the other hand has seen the decentralization of state power. What are the differences between the two concepts?

Here, I'm only talking about the local level. Under a federal government there is a middle level: territories or states. It's not like that in Ukraine. In many federal states and centralized European countries there are self-administered regions - think of Poland, France or the Scandinavian countries. One has nothing to do with the other - they're only concerned with their communities, possibly also the larger territories or regions. There, the will of the people can be directly implemented. In a smaller community, in a place of fiveor ten thousand inhabitants, different policies are implemented than in a country of 45 million people like Ukraine.

Read more: NATO in Baltics learns from Ukraine's mistakes

You have been working here as a consultant for a long time and know the people and the country well. What are the greatest obstacles in regards to decentralization?

I want to begin in a different way: Ukraine has been seeing great success since the 2014 revolution. Decentralization had been discussed before then, but it wasn't until after the revolution that people had the chance to make it happen. And they began with the right step: giving the rural communities, i.e. the smallest communities, the opportunity to merge, giving them more rights and the appropriate amount of money for them to fulfill their news tasks.

When you go to these newly organized communities, you see that the mayors have actually accomplished something with their money and their new power. This is also reflected in the poll numbers in Ukraine: Decentralization is seen very positively by the population, especially in the rural areas. In the big cities - such as Kyiv - you can't tell, because Kyiv hasn't been impacted by these reforms yet.

Read more: Ukraine president calls for an end to Russian aggression

Ukraine's capital city, Kyiv, is not seeing direct effects of the decentralization

In the armed conflict against separatists and their Russian supporters in Donbass there is also talk of a special status, such as perhaps partial autonomy for communities like Donetsk and Luhansk. Can the concept of decentralization help bring an end to the conflict?

Not in regards to the separatists! I would say it's the opposite way around: If Ukraine succeeds in developing its economy through decentralization, as Poland did 25 years ago, then this will also have a big impact on those communities not under the control of the Ukrainian government.

Read more: Ukraine separatist 'Little Russia' sparks concern over peace deal

You are currently the special envoy of the German government for the Ukrainian reform agenda. At the center of this agenda is decentralization and good governance. Where will your emphasis lie?

I will initially focus on decentralization, since it's a strategically important point. Through this a part of good governance will already be accomplished. That will then be the second part that I'll focus on. Part of this will be reforming the public institutions. Since there is already a law that needs to be implemented, a corresponding law for the local level is needed. That's my second priority.

Western experts and observers in Kiev have had the impression in recent months that the country has been falling behind in the fight against corruption. What are your plans to give Ukraine a new impetus to fight corruption?

In the request that President Poroshenko sent the G7 countries through Chancellor Merkel, the topic of corruption was also addressed. But someone else must deal with this.

Georg Milbradt is the German special envoy for the Ukrainian reform agenda. He is occupied primarily with the theme of governance and decentralization. He was Minister President of the German state of Saxony from 2002 to 2008.

This interview was conducted by Christian F. Trippe.

Read more here:
Special Envoy Georg Milbradt: Ukraine has achieved major success - Deutsche Welle

Towns on Ukrainesceasefire line are markingthree years since some were retaken by government forces frompro-Russian separatists. But there is little cause for celebration:houses in Marinka, Krasnogorovka and Avdiivka bear the scars of war. Some of these scars are recent, including a large house with nine apartments that was destroyed in shelling in late July.

The war in eastern Ukraine is a forgotten conflict in many ways. It is talked aboutas frozen or hidden yetthere is little recognition that the fight is still rumbling on. Unlike Bosnia or the border between Georgia and the breakaway statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, eastern Ukraine witnesses dozens of exchanges of fire a day. Visiting the front line forseveral days makes it clearjust how active this conflict still is.

In early July, Theresa May and Boris Johnson met with Ukraines Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman ata summit in London designed to show continued western support for Kiev. Delivering Ukraines ambitious reform agenda is not just good for Ukraine but good for the whole of Europe, Boris reassured his guests. The Foreign Secretary also said the UK was at the forefront of sending a British military training mission to aid Ukraines armed forces.

The US is even moredeeply involved in the Ukrainian imbroglio. Paul Manafort, Donald Trumps campaign chairman in 2016, was closely linked to Ukraines former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. An article in Bloomberg publishedin May noted that in the decade before he worked for Trump, Manaforts efforts did for Moscow what its finest minds had failed to do: help get a pro-Russian candidate installed in Kiev.

The deep connections that the 2014 Ukraine crises had to the West and Moscow arenow at the heart of the continued suspicion overshadowing relations. The Zapad military exercise in September in Belarus is being closely watched by NATO countries and neighbours over fears that it is more than just a military drill. In early August, Ukraine participated in a NATO exercisein Georgia called Noble Partner. Troops from the UK, Germany, Turkey, Slovenia and Armeniaall took part.

This is why what happens today on the ceasefire line in the Donbas matters. With more than 10,000 killed in the conflict so far, the border between the Ukraine army and the separatists is at the heart of the Wests conflict with Moscow. Ukraine is trying to become part of the EU and NATO. It wants to refurbish its army along NATO lines. Speaking to commentators and officials in Kiev it is clear that they feel the country has turned the corner on reforms and that the war has enabled the country to set a clear national agenda.

However, the soldiers on the ground are still seeing action almost every day. This includes larger calibre ordinance, such as 120 mm mortars, being fired a clear violation of the agreements signed in Minsk in February 2015 between Ukraine and Russia. The separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk, where millions of people still reside, show no sign of seeking peace or being willing to allow the Ukrainian government to return to these areas. Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, will not be returned to Ukraine. At the moment therefore it seems this is a slow war of attrition. Ukrainians argue this itis alsoa drain on Russias economy because Russia is close to the separatists. But the war is fought on Ukrainian soil and it istaking its toll on civilians and military personnel. For now, this low level conflictshows no sign of stopping any time soon.

Link:
Ukraine's slow war of attrition still rumbles on - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18 visited the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, triggering an angry rebuke from Kyiv, which accused him of disregarding international law by traveling to the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Moscow three years ago.

Putin's visit included a trip to a memorial complex honoring a coastal battery that defended Sevastopol during World War II, where he and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev placed flowers and met with members of the Night Wolves, a pro-Kremlin biker movement.

The trip is at least the ninth visit by Putin to Crimea since it was annexed by Russia in March 2014. Both the United States and the European Union have hit Moscow with several waves of sanctions over the land grab and Russia's backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denounced Putin's visit in an August 18 statement, condemning it as a "gross violation of Ukraine's state sovereignty and territorial integrity."

The ministry added that it had delivered a note of protest to the Russian Foreign Ministry over what it called Moscow's "cynical and demonstrative disregard" for "generally accepted norms of international law."

In March 2014, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that the Russian-orchestrated referendum on Crimea's secession from Ukraine was invalid and urging the international community "not to recognize any alteration of the status" of the peninsula.

The measure passed by a vote of 100-11 with 58 abstentions.

"Crimea and the city of Sevastopol are and will remain an integral part of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

The war between Russia-backed separatists and Kyiv's forces that followed the Crimea annexation has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014 and persisted despite a pact known as Minsk II, a February 2015 agreement on a cease-fire and steps to resolve the conflict.

Read the original here:
Putin Angers Ukraine With Visit To Russia-Annexed Crimea - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

While the intelligence community continues to look into Fancy Bear, the hacking group widely believed to have broken the Democratic National Committees cybersecurity last year, authorities are reportedly getting help from Ukraine. The New York Times reports that a hacker credited with developing one of the tools used during the DNC infiltration has been speaking with police (just writing malicious code is not criminal, so he hasnt been charged) and been made available to the FBI.

Profexer, as he is known online, created the P.A.S. web shell, though Serhiy Demediuk, head of the Ukrainian Cyber Police, told theTimesthat he told us he didnt create it to be used in the way it was. The software was freely available online.

Also newly reported in theTimesreport is that the FBI is in possession of evidence of a Russia-linked electoral hack that happened in Ukraine in 2014. Traces of the same code from that hack were found by researchers investigating the DNC.

Whats interesting is that the Ukrainian election cyberattack revealed damning connections between the Russian government. Heres how it played out:

Intriguingly, in the cyberattack during the Ukrainian election, what appears to have been a bungle by Channel 1, a Russian state television station, inadvertently implicated the government authorities in Moscow.

Hackers had loaded onto a Ukrainian election commission server a graphic mimicking the page for displaying results. This phony page showed a shocker of an outcome: an election win for a fiercely anti-Russian, ultraright candidate, Dmytro Yarosh. Mr. Yarosh in reality received less than 1 percent of the vote.

The false result would have played into a Russian propaganda narrative that Ukraine today is ruled by hard-right, even fascist, figures.

The fake image was programmed to display when polls closed, at 8 p.m., but a Ukrainian cybersecurity company, InfoSafe, discovered it just minutes earlier and unplugged the server.

State television in Russia nevertheless reported that Mr. Yarosh had won and broadcast the fake graphic, citing the election commissions website, even though the image had never appeared there. The hacker had clearly provided Channel 1 with the same image in advance, but the reporters had failed to check that the hack actually worked.

The DNC hack shared code with the 2014 Ukrainian hack, in which circumstantial evidence points to Russia government collaboration. As has often been the case throughout this process, the evidence falls short of conclusive, though the similarities in tools and tactics during both hacks are tough to ignore.

Two years ago, Andrew Macias became a meme after a reporter asked if hed miss his mom while he was at school and he started to cry.

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Redditors, too.

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Google, GoDaddy, Twitter, Facebook, and Cloudflare have all cut ties with the site.

One hacker whose code was used is speaking with authorities.

Michael Cohen tweeted he has no tolerance for racism and included a half-dozen pictures of himself with black people for dramatic effect.

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Jefferson Davis, the lone president of the Confederate, briefly had some company on Wikipedia today.

Think of the statues, please.

See more here:
Ukraine Is Proving Key to the DNC Hack Investigation - New York Magazine

KIEV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian central bank said on Friday it had warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of new malware as security services said Ukraine faced cyber attacks like those that knocked out global systems in June.

The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.

Kiev's central bank has since been working with the government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and police to boost the defenses of the Ukrainian banking sector by quickly sharing information.

"Therefore on Aug. 11..., the central bank promptly informed banks about the appearance of new malicious code, its features, compromise indicators and the need to implement precautionary measures to prevent infection," the central bank told Reuters in emailed comments.

According to its letter to banks, seen by Reuters, the new malware is spread by opening email attachments of word documents.

"The nature of this malicious code, its mass distribution, and the fact that at the time of its distribution it was not detected by any anti-virus software, suggest that this attack is preparation for a mass cyber-attack on the corporate networks of Ukrainian businesses," the letter said.

Ukraine - regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks - is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe.

The state cyber police and Security and Defence Council have said Ukraine could be targeted on Aug. 24 with a NotPetya-style attack aimed at destabilizing the country as it celebrates its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Mark Heinrich

Follow this link:
Ukraine central bank warns of new cyber-attack risk - Reuters