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It isnt often when mixed martial arts is called upon to act as a unifying force in a ravished conflict zone. Despite its inherently violent nature, MMA will serve as the foundation for an unprecedented sports event in the Donbas, the Eastern region of Ukraine currently occupied by pro-Russian separatist forces.

Just hours before Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor square off in Las Vegas on August 26, UFC veteran Nikita Krylov will headline a one-off United Donbas event against Maro Perak in the occupied territory of Donetsk. The news was announced in a press release sent out by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism in the de facto Donetsk Peoples Republic.

The press release revealed that a total of 18 competitors from the occupied territories, Croatia, and China, will compete in nine fights before inviting fans of martial arts in the Republic and those temporarily under the control of the Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region to attend and see grandiose sports event of this summer with their own eyes." In addition to the MMA event, a concert will be held featuring notable Russian artists. Attendance to both is free of charge.

The unique event is funded by the United Donbas Foundation, a humanitarian aid program started by the two self-proclaimed republics within Ukraine, the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), to unify the people of the Donbas. Over the past couple of years, both republics have shared a growing fascination with mixed martial arts, one that has led to the proliferation of the sport among the republics youth.

Naturally, the pro-Russian leaders have already glimpsed the sports potential as a political tool. UFC veteran Jeff Monson has already paid a visit to LPR in 2016, thus establishing a precedent for other athletes to legitimize the self-imposed government.

In short, MMA has become a core component of the separatist republics political strategy. Its politicization is the result of the ongoing conflict and the inevitable nationalism that sprouts from the chaos and destruction left in its wake.

War Torn & Forgotten

In November 2013, Ukraines fourth president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a trade association agreement with the European Union, which triggered severe unrest within the country. Citizens accused the president of widespread state corruption and excessive loyalty to Russia instead of improving relations with Europe. The rapidly growing sentiment was that Yanukovych represented Russian interests and not those of the Ukrainian people. The organized uprising known as Euromaidan lasted until February 2014, when president Yankovych was deposed and fled Kiev.

Yanukovychs departure and eventual exile to Russia triggered anti-revolution backlash from Ukrainians in Russophone regions with loyalty to their neighboring country, as well as lightly veiled military intervention from Russia. Just a few months removed the Euromaidan movement, Russian forces swept in and annexed Crimea and Sevastopol in March 2014.

Cities in eastern and southern Ukraine began to protest the decision to remove Yankovych from office, eventually resorting to armed resistance against the seemingly anti-Russian government. While Western Ukraine remains under government control, the Donbas region in the east has been divided into two de facto pro-Russian separatist statesthe Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) which the Ukrainian government considers temporarily occupied territories. A bitter stand-off has ensued between the separatists and the Ukrainian government, making it Europes most volatile conflict in over 25 years.

Though fragile ceasefire agreements were imposed in 2015, the conflict continues to rage on. Between April 2014 and March 2017, report suggests that millions of Ukrainians have been displaced and nearly ten thousand have been killed. Casualties on both sides have sharply risen over the past two years as millions struggle for survival in a conflict zone.

The early days of Donald Trumps presidency saw renewed escalation in the conflict between separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. The UN report documented 73 civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine in July 2016, which, at the time, was the highest death toll since August 2015; 69 separate civilian casualties had been reported the previous month. Despite the spike in death tolls and civilian casualties, the conflict in Ukraine has been woefully underreported in 2017.

Largely forgotten in the spheres of international politics, the separatist forces have been left to their own devices in their self-proclaimed (yet officially unrecognized) republics. Local leaders have turned to sports as part of a so-called humanitarian program to revitalize their struggling populations and distract the local youth traumatized by war. This has resulted in the proliferation of mixed martial arts in Eastern Ukraine and, hence, its inevitable politicization.

Cagefighting Nationalism

In February 2017, official envoys of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) unveiled a humanitarian program that sought to reunify the people of the Donbas.

In a joint statement read by representatives Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego at an official meeting in Minsk, Belarus, the DPR and LPR described plans to provide humanitarian aid in the form of financial, medical and educational assistance to vulnerable groups of Donbas population, primarily those in regions controlled by the Ukrainian government.

All funding was provided through the United Donbas Foundation and approved by a special committee. According to acting DPR Health Care Minister Alexander Oprishchenko, quality medical assistance [has been] provided to 105 patients who live in Ukraine-controlled part of Donetsk Region since the start of the program.

After achieving modest medical success through the foundation, both de facto republics turned their attention to sports, a tool they planned to use to kindle nationalistic fervour and project the illusion of legitimacy, safety, and prosperity within the separatist regions. Combat sports, mainly mixed martial arts, took centre stage because of its growing popularity among the locals. By August 2017, MMA had been integrated into the LPR and DPRs plans for unification in the Donbas, starting with a large-scale MMA event planned for the end of August 2017.

The event, dubbed United Donbas, was announced by the president of the Association of Combat Sports in Donbas Roman Torshin, who referred to it as a key event of mixed martial arts not only in the Donbas, but also in the territory of the entire former Ukraine. The show will be headlined by UFC veteran Nikita Krylov, himself a native of Donbas.

Krylov exited the UFC in early 2017 following a dispute in contract negotiations with the promotion. He returned to Russia, where he fought for Fight Nights before agreeing to a one-off fight in the Donbas. While Krylovs incentive to participate on the fight card stems from his yearning to fight in front of his fellow countrymen, he also echoed the same statements about unity in Donbas that were propagated by the separatist governments.

It is a huge event aimed at uniting the Donbas as a whole, Krylov told Mk.ru. And I'm very glad that I will fight at home. It was my dream. A great event for the residents. You need to charge the local people. MMA is the number one sport there. They dont care about football or anything else.

Krylovs response adequately summarizes the reasons why MMA was strategically selected for the United Donbas project. The violent sport can be used to stimulate residents of the war-torn regions and unite them by cheering for hometown heroes like Kyrlov. Unlike more traditional sports like football, where rigid international structures and bureaucracy make it impossible for unrecognized de facto states to compete in legitimate tournaments, MMA does not follow such guidelines and is easier to recreate as a tool for national pride. In this case, the separatist forces have been able to hire a fighter who once competed in the worlds most popular MMA promotion, and have him compete on their local show for political gain.

Monson & the Miner

The politicization of mixed martial arts in occupied Ukraine territory is evident in the current landscape, which underlines the sports potential for political influence and diplomacy, particularly when applied in regions ravished by war.

Krylov left the Donbass region of Ukraine shortly following the start of the conflict in mid-2014. Originally a miner from Krasnyi Luch in the Luhansk province, Nikita fled his home in Donetsk just a few weeks ahead of his scheduled fight against Cody Donovan in Dublin, Ireland. He won that fight by TKO, the very same week that the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down while flying over Ukrainian airspace. Krylov fled to Kiev, where he found himself unwelcome because of his pro-Russian stance on the conflict. He was labelled a separatist and was shunned from gyms and training camps. A near-altercation with a soldier from the far-right Azov battalion helped Krylov make the decision to move his family permanently to Moscow.

Since then, the fighter has openly questioned the ongoing conflict, the ideological schism leading Ukrainians to kill other Ukrainians, and the traumatic effect of war on the innocent locals. Indeed, when asked whether he considers the United Donbas event a political one, Krylovs response encapsulated his perspective on the matter: It is a human one. An ideology of unity. Seemingly unconcerned with the overshadowing political context, Krylovs focus is on the events potential as a form of entertainment for an injured population.

This is necessary for lifting spirits, Krylov explained. Some people have not see any holidays and shows there for a long time. It is dangerous in the city and it's dangerous where they fight. And in Donetsk, there live peaceful people, to whom this war brought many misfortunes. It's time to raise their morale.

While Krylov, a native of the Donbas and victim of the ongoing conflict, was a natural pick to headline the show, he is not the only athlete being used to advance the LPR and DPRs plans for combat sports diplomacy. UFC veteran Jeff Monson, a self-proclaimed anarchist and libertarian communist, recently became the first American citizen to accept a LPR passport, a symbolic gesture that preceded his decision to open martial arts schools in the occupied territory in late 2016. Monsons ambitions were approved by the local leaders, and backed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).

Currently in the process of obtaining Russian citizenship, Monson was named the sports ambassador for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) in July 2016. The Communist Party sent Monson to Luhansk in September as part of a new sports programme, which is designed to improve the partys image both on the international stage and at home. Given that American support is rarely available to socialist groups, the KPRF jumped at the opportunity to enlist a willing American communists support.

The KPRF recruited fresh faces to the party by enlisting youngsters in deteriorated regions such as Donetsk and Luhansk into martial arts programs. It is an example of sports diplomacy and how political parties enlist the support of popular athletes to further their overarching goals.

"I want to work with the Communist Party to move it further left," Monson told me in 2016. "A lot of the social projects we are discussing, including opening up free schools to promote youth martial arts, can be done despite capitalist restraints."

Monsons involvement in political sport in eastern Ukraine doesnt end with martial arts academies. Reports recently revealed plans for the LPR to host a martial arts event dubbed the Monson Cup. The UFC veteran is expected to headline the event, which will feature an array of grappling and MMA showcases. The news was first announced by the leader of the Donbas faction of the Night Wolves, the infamous biker gang affiliated to Russian president Vladimir Putin, as well as Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov.

Jeff Monson and Nikita Krylov are the first UFC veterans to be indoctrinated into the separatists sports agenda. Despite contrasting reasons for their participation, the two fighters are a blueprint for how to help legitimize de facto regimes using professional fight sports such as mixed martial arts. Whether it be a tool for diplomacy, kindling nationalism, or even as a distraction from the trauma of war, MMA is a sport that continues to be weaponized by authoritarian regimes anxious to reap its rewards.

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United Donbas: The politics of MMA in war-torn Eastern Ukraine - Bloody Elbow

There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russias intelligence services, but his malware apparently did.

That a hacking operation that Washington is convinced was orchestrated by Moscow would obtain malware from a source in Ukraine perhaps the Kremlins most bitter enemy sheds considerable light on the Russian security services modus operandi in what Western intelligence agencies say is their clandestine cyberwar against the United States and Europe.

It does not suggest a compact team of government employees who write all their own code and carry out attacks during office hours in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but rather a far looser enterprise that draws on talent and hacking tools wherever they can be found.

Also emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28 or Fancy Bear. It is this group, which American intelligence agencies believe is operated by Russian military intelligence, that has been blamed, along with a second Russian outfit known as Cozy Bear, for the D.N.C. intrusion.

Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors.

In more than a decade of tracking suspected Russian-directed cyberattacks against a host of targets in the West and in former Soviet territories NATO, electrical grids, research groups, journalists critical of Russia and political parties, to name a few security services around the world have identified only a handful of people who are directly involved in either carrying out such attacks or providing the cyberweapons that were used.

This absence of reliable witnesses has left ample room for President Trump and others to raise doubts about whether Russia really was involved in the D.N.C. hack.

There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the D.N.C. attack to the G.R.U., F.S.B. or any agency of the Russian government, said Jeffrey Carr, the author of a book on cyberwarfare. The G.R.U. is Russias military intelligence agency, and the F.S.B. its federal security service.

United States intelligence agencies, however, have been unequivocal in pointing a finger at Russia.

Seeking a path out of this fog, cybersecurity researchers and Western law enforcement officers have turned to Ukraine, a country that Russia has used for years as a laboratory for a range of politicized operations that later cropped up elsewhere, including electoral hacking in the United States.

In several instances, certain types of computer intrusions, like the use of malware to knock out crucial infrastructure or to pilfer email messages later released to tilt public opinion, occurred in Ukraine first. Only later were the same techniques used in Western Europe and the United States.

So, not surprisingly, those studying cyberwar in Ukraine are now turning up clues in the investigation of the D.N.C. hack, including the discovery of a rare witness.

Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine.

In this initial report, the department released only one sample of malware said to be an indicator of Russian state-sponsored hacking, though outside experts said a variety of malicious programs were used in Russian electoral hacking.

The sample pointed to a malware program, called the P.A.S. web shell, a hacking tool advertised on Russian-language Dark Web forums and used by cybercriminals throughout the former Soviet Union. The author, Profexer, is a well-regarded technical expert among hackers, spoken about with awe and respect in Kiev.

He had made it available to download, free, from a website that asked only for donations, ranging from $3 to $250. The real money was made by selling customized versions and by guiding his hacker clients in its effective use. It remains unclear how extensively he interacted with the Russian hacking team.

After the Department of Homeland Security identified his creation, he quickly shut down his website and posted on a closed forum for hackers, called Exploit, that Im not interested in excessive attention to me personally.

Soon, a hint of panic appeared, and he posted a note saying that, six days on, he was still alive.

Another hacker, with the nickname Zloi Santa, or Bad Santa, suggested the Americans would certainly find him, and place him under arrest, perhaps during a layover at an airport.

It could be, or it could not be, it depends only on politics, Profexer responded. If U.S. law enforcement wants to take me down, they will not wait for me in some countrys airport. Relations between our countries are so tight I would be arrested in my kitchen, at the first request.

In fact, Serhiy Demediuk, chief of the Ukrainian Cyber Police, said in an interview that Profexer went to the authorities himself. As the cooperation began, Profexer went dark on hacker forums. He last posted online on Jan. 9. Mr. Demediuk said he had made the witness available to the F.B.I., which has posted a full-time cybersecurity expert in Kiev as one of four bureau agents stationed at the United States Embassy there. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Profexer was not arrested because his activities fell in a legal gray zone, as an author but not a user of malware, the Ukrainian police say. But he did know the users, at least by their online handles. He told us he didnt create it to be used in the way it was, Mr. Demediuk said.

A member of Ukraines Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in the D.N.C. hack.

Mr. Gerashchenko described the author only in broad strokes, to protect his safety, as a young man from a provincial Ukrainian city. He confirmed that the author turned himself in to the police and was cooperating as a witness in the D.N.C. investigation. He was a freelancer and now he is a valuable witness, Mr. Gerashchenko said.

While it is not known what Profexer has told Ukrainian investigators and the F.B.I. about Russias hacking efforts, evidence emanating from Ukraine has again provided some of the clearest pictures yet about Fancy Bear, or Advanced Persistent Threat 28, which is run by the G.R.U.

Fancy Bear has been identified mostly by what it does, not by who does it. One of its recurring features has been the theft of emails and its close collaboration with the Russian state news media.

Tracking the bear to its lair, however, has so far proved impossible, not least because many experts believe that no such single place exists.

Even for a sophisticated tech company like Microsoft, singling out individuals in the digital miasma has proved just about impossible. To curtail the damage to clients operating systems, the company filed a complaint against Fancy Bear last year with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia but found itself boxing with shadows.

As Microsoft lawyers reported to the court, because defendants used fake contact information, anonymous Bitcoin and prepaid credit cards and false identities, and sophisticated technical means to conceal their identities, when setting up and using the relevant internet domains, defendants true identities remain unknown.

Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials, though wary of upsetting the Trump administration, have been quietly cooperating with American investigators to try to figure out who stands behind all the disguises.

Included in this sharing of information were copies of the server hard drives of Ukraines Central Election Commission, which were targeted during a presidential election in May 2014. That the F.B.I. had obtained evidence of this earlier, Russian-linked electoral hack has not been previously reported.

Traces of the same malicious code, this time a program called Sofacy, were seen in the 2014 attack in Ukraine and later in the D.N.C. intrusion in the United States.

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.

For me, this is an obvious link between the hackers and Russian officials, said Victor Zhora, director of InfoSafe, the cybersecurity company that first found the fake graphic.

A Ukrainian government researcher who studied the hack, Nikolai Koval, published his findings in a 2015 book, Cyberwar in Perspective, and identified the Sofacy malware on the server.

The mirror of the hard drive went to the F.B.I., which had this forensic sample when the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike identified the same malware two years later, on the D.N.C. servers.

It was the first strike, Mr. Zhora said of the earlier hack of Ukraines electoral computers. Ukraines Cyber Police have also provided the F.B.I. with copies of server hard drives showing the possible origins of some phishing emails targeting the Democratic Party during the election.

In 2016, two years after the election hack in Ukraine, hackers using some of the same techniques plundered the email system of the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, which had accused Russian athletes of systematic drug use.

That raid, too, seems to have been closely coordinated with Russian state television, which began airing well-prepared reports about WADAs hacked emails just minutes after they were made public. The emails appeared on a website that announced that WADA had been hacked by a group calling itself the Fancy Bears Hack Team.

It was the first time Fancy Bear had broken cover.

Fancy Bear remains extraordinarily elusive, however. To throw investigators off its scent, the group has undergone various makeovers, restocking its arsenal of malware and sometimes hiding under different guises. One of its alter egos, cyberexperts believe, is Cyber Berkut, an outfit supposedly set up in Ukraine by supporters of the countrys pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.

After lying dormant for many months, Cyber Berkut jumped back into action this summer just as multiple investigations in Washington into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow shifted into high gear. Cyber Berkut released stolen emails that it and Russian state news media said had exposed the real story: Hillary Clinton had colluded with Ukraine.

Continued here:
In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking - New York Times

The United States is not the only country caught up in an emotional debate over health care. The Ukrainian Rada (parliament) has been struggling with the issue for months. And like their counterparts in the U.S. Senate, Ukrainian lawmakers scuttled plans to pass health-care reform just before breaking for summer recess on July 19.

In Ukraine, however, the stakes for reform are higher. For starters, more than 90 percent of Ukrainians have no medical insurance. But the problems go far deeper than that.

The countrys current health-care system is a legacy of the Soviet eraand a most sorry one. Government funding and resources for hospitals are allocated according to the number of medical workers, buildings and beds, rather than the number of patients treated. Physicians and administrators, saddled with a mind-set stuck in the Soviet way of doing things, shun more advanced Western practices and equipment.

The carry-over egalitarianism of the Soviet era leaves doctors earning a paltry $200 a month. Naturally, this breeds corruption. For example, bribery is a commonplace precondition for receiving medical treatment. The situation is dire.

So dire, in fact, that International Monetary Fund (IMF) has insisted that Ukraine reform its health system. The IMFs program to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat is contingent on significant economic reforms, including fixing the corrupt and inefficient health system.

The big stumbling blocks have been the entrenched corruption and Soviet mind-set of Ukraines older generation of political leaders.

But leading the charge for reform is a relative newcomer, Dr. Ulana Suprun, Ukraines Acting Minister of Health.

Born, raised and educated in the United States, Dr. Suprun had a successful radiology practice in New York City. When the Maidan revolution erupted in early 2014, the Ukrainian-American physician traveled to Ukraine to treat those wounded by the security forces of former President Viktor Yanukovych.

Then, when Russian proxies in Eastern Ukraine, backed up by regular Russian troops and equipment, started an insurrection against the central government, Dr. Suprun moved to the frontlines of the conflict, providing lifesaving care and NATO standard Combat Lifesaver training to soldiers.

In 2015, a thankful Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, conferred upon her Ukrainian citizenship, saying during the ceremony: Your efforts saved thousands of lives. In August 2016, she was asked to become the acting Minister of Health.

Under her leadership, the government has rooted out a significant amount of corruption from the health-care sector. For example, by changing the way the Ministry of Health procures pharmaceuticals, the department cut those costs by 40 percent. But more needs to be done.

The reform Suprun was pushing this year aimed to raise the level of Ukrainian health care to international standards. It would, for example, require medical licenses for individual doctors. Currently, only medical practices are licensed and they can hire doctors straight out of medical school, with no clinical training or experience.

The reform bill currently up for a vote in parliament would also change the way hospitals are funded, linking the money more closely to actual delivery of patient services. And it would close down or consolidate hospitals that arent treating enough patients to remain cost effective and provide quality services.

As if that werent enough, the proposal would have: reformed palliative, emergency and primary care simultaneously; freed doctors to earn more money in an open, transparent manner so they would not have to resort to bribe-taking to generate additional income; and provided universal health care coverage for all Ukrainians.

The ultimate goal of the reform package was to empower patients, giving them new rights and protectionsa noble ambition. No wonder the G7 Ambassadors to Ukraine endorsed the proposal, calling it a sign that Ukraine is ready and committed to moving forward with its vital reforms, in health care and anti-corruption, for the benefit of its citizens.

In many ways, the health-care debate is emblematic of the larger societal struggle in Ukraine. Its the younger generation of technocrats fighting against the old guard. Its the new Western way of thinking against the old Soviet way of doing business.

The old guard in the Rada was able to block Supruns reform bill from coming up to a final vote just before the summer recess. But thats not necessarily the end of this fight. The Rada will have another chance to vote on it when lawmakers reconvene in September.

The outcome of the health care vote will likely chart the future policy direction of Ukraine: whether it will remain stuck in its failed Soviet past or move toward a brighter future in the Euro-Atlantic community.

Luke Coffey is director of The Heritage Foundations Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies.

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If Ukraine's Economy Is to Reform, Then Its Inefficient Health System Has to Go - The National Interest Online (blog)

Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine's Odesa region who was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship in July, says he plans to return to Kyiv next month.

"I am returning to Ukraine. I will arrive on September 10 travelling from Poland through the Krakovets checkpoint [in the Lviv region]," he said in a live broadcast on Facebook on August 16.

President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship on July 26, a move the former Georgian president condemned as an "illegal way to move me from the political scene in Ukraine."

Ukrainian authorities have said that if he tries to enter the country they will bar him and confiscate his passport.

The 49-year-old Saakashvili, who served two terms as president from 2004 to 2013, is an adamantly pro-Western reformist who came to power in Georgia as a result of the peaceful Rose Revolution protests of 2003.

But his popularity declined in his later years in office, in part because of the 2008 five-day war with Russia during which Moscow's forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country.

Saakashvili was stripped of his Georgian citizenship in 2015 after he took Ukrainian citizenship in order to become governor of the Odesa region.

Georgia is seeking Saakashvili's extradition to face charges related to the violent dispersal of protesters and a raid on a private television station.

He says those charges are politically motivated.

Saakashvili resigned as Odesa's governor in November 2016 -- complaining of official obstruction of anticorruption efforts, accusing Poroshenko of dishonesty, and charging that the central government was sabotaging crucial reforms.

Now, without Ukrainian citizenship, Saakashvili cannot seek political office in Ukraine, where his party is calling for early parliamentary elections. However, he said in the Facebook broadcast that he has been travelling on his Ukrainian passport.

Ukraine is scheduled to conduct its next presidential election in March 2019.

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Saakashvili Says He Plans To Return To Ukraine Next Month - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

The reforms implemented by Ukraine in the field of alternative energy have improved the investment attractiveness of our country for German investors.

The Governmental portal reports this upon the meeting of Chairman of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine Serhiy Savchuk with Executive Director of the Shanda Consult Ltd Stefan Nolte and representative of the EUMECON Europe Middle East Consultancy Association Jan Engelke.

As Mr. Nolte explained, the Shanda Consult Ltd company now examines the legal framework and investment attractiveness of renewable energy in Ukraine. German investors are interested in the results of the study and consider possibility of investing in green projects in Ukraine.

"We see that a number of successful reforms have been carried out since 2014. Therefore, we are interested in the incentives and guarantees introduced for investors, the regulatory mechanisms, stability of the economic situation, etc.," Nolte said. He also noted that the company earlier had investigated the profitability of installing biogas plants and now it studied the use of all renewable energy sources.

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Germans interested in investing in alternative energy development in Ukraine - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news