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IN THE tense, uncertain days of late 2013, when Ukrainians filled Kievs Independence Square in protest at their governments turn towards Russia, the then president, Viktor Yanukovych, grabbed a lifeline. To bolster his resolve in resisting the demands of pro-EU protesters, Russia lent Ukraine $3bn in the form of a bond. Mr Yanukovych was subsequently ousted anyway. Russia and Ukraine went to war. The money was never paid back.

So Russia took legal action against Ukraine. The bond was issued under English law, and a hearing began this week in London. Those on the Ukrainian side say the country has no case to answer. In 2015 a group of creditors agreed to a debt restructuring on favourable terms: Russia refused to take part. And Russia itself made it much harder for Ukraine to repay the bond by annexing Crimea and stoking war in the Donbass. Moreover, it has fiddled with gas supplies to the country and slapped on trade sanctions. In 2013-15 Ukraines GDP dropped by 15%. The purchasing power of ordinary folk has fallen far more. In 2013 eight hryvnias bought one American dollar; it now takes more than 25.

It is not clear, however, that English courts, which pride themselves on their political impartiality, would wish to rule definitively that Russia was responsible for Ukraines economic woes. Awkwardly, Ukraine continued to pay interest on the bond in part of 2015, when it was in the depths of recession. And Crimea was reliant on subsidies from the Ukrainian government. So Russias annexation, perversely, may have made it easier in some respects for Ukraine to repay the bond.

The legal spat comes as the Ukrainian economy is looking its strongest in years. The weak hryvnia is helping to lift exports; in October the IMF predicted 2.5% growth in GDP for 2017. A building boom is under way in Kiev and the shopping malls off Independence Square are now filled with people eating noodles and hamburgers. A few months ago Uber, a car-hailing app, launched in Kiev. Markets do not seem overly concerned by the prospect of a pro-Russian Donald Trump becoming American president: the hryvnia has weakened only slightly since November.

Were $3bn eventually extracted from Ukraine as a result of the Russian lawsuit, however, the hryvnia would come under renewed pressure. Repaying Russia would also infuriate ordinary Ukrainians. Already, the next few years look tough. To service other dollar debts Ukraine will have to fork out about $15bn in 2017-20an amount roughly equivalent to its current reserves of foreign exchange. Should those reserves fall below about $10bn, investors will start to worry about the countrys solvency. Ukraines bail-out programme with the IMF, agreed in 2015, should soften the blow, but it is behind schedule. Last year Ukraine received just $1bn in disbursements from the fund.

Bond repayment or no bond repayment, Ukraines economic to-do list is daunting. Far-reaching reforms are needed to stamp out corruption and improve the rule of law. Some progress has been made. The recent nationalisation of the countrys biggest lender, the struggling PrivatBank, has maintained financial stability, says Tomas Fiala of Dragon Capital, an investment bank based in Kiev. Raising heavily subsidised gas prices has improved the finances of the state monopoly, Naftogaz.

These positives aside, however, reform momentum has slowed recently. Hopes that Ukraines market for agricultural land would be thrown open to foreign investors have been dashed. Ukraines sprawling pension system needs change: spending on public pensions is worth 13% of GDP, extremely high by international standards.

The population, too, is disillusioned about the governments reformist zeal. Elena Besedina of the Kyiv School of Economics points out that no big names from the old regime have been thrown in jail for their wrongdoing. GDP per person is less than a tenth of Americas, yet luxury-car dealers and fashion boutiques still do a surprisingly brisk trade. With elections scheduled for 2019, populist vote-winning measures will doubtless be wheeled out. And this time, Russia will not be financing any part of the bill.

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Ukraine's conflict with Russia is also financial - The Economist

Explanation of IVF using mitochondrial DNA donation, which is designed to allow women carriers of hereditary diseases to have healthy, genetically-related children (AFP Photo/P.Pizarro/V.Lefai)

Kiev (AFP) - A baby boy has been born in Ukraine to an infertile couple after the first ever use of a new technique using the DNA of three parents, the head of a Kiev fertility clinic said Wednesday.

The boy was conceived using DNA from his mother and father but also from an egg donor in a technique called pronuclear transfer, said Valeriy Zukin, director of the Nadiya private fertility clinic in Kiev.

"It is the first delivery (using) pronuclear transfer all over the world," Zukin told AFP.

The clinic said in a statement that the 34-year-old mother gave birth to a healthy boy on January 5 after trying for a baby for more than 15 years and undergoing several failed rounds of IVF

This became possible after the woman's eggs were fertilised with her partner's sperm, but then their nuclei were transferred to a donor's egg which had previously been stripped of its own nucleus.

As a result of the procedure, the egg was almost entirely made up of genetic material from the couple, plus a very small amount (some 0.15 percent) of the female donor's DNA.

Zukin said he hopes the pronuclear transfer technique could help other women whose embryos stop developing at a very early stage of development during cycles of IVF.

The boy is considered to be the second "three-parent" baby after a similar baby was born in Mexico in 2016 after the use of a different technique.

Zukin said the pronuclear transfer method could be used to help women who suffer from a rare condition called embryo arrest.

Zukin estimated that annually some two million women across the world try to have a baby using IVF and around 1 percent of these suffer embryo arrest.

"So I think approximately 10-20 thousand women per year could be potential candidates for using this method," Zukin said.

Experts urged caution over using the method as a fertility treatment, however, stressing that it was intended for those at very high risk of passing on serious genetic disease.

"Caution and safety assessment is urged before widespread use of this technology," said Yacoub Khalaf, director of the Assisted Conception Unit at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London, quoted by the Science Media Centre website.

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'Three-parent' baby born in Ukraine using new technique - Yahoo News

What Are Russia's Real Goals in Ukraine? Wall Street Journal In Ukraine Must Make Painful Compromises for Peace With Russia (op-ed, Dec. 30), Victor Pinchuk appeals to the international community for a new start in attempting to end the war in Ukraine, stressing the inevitability of painful compromises for ...

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What Are Russia's Real Goals in Ukraine? - Wall Street Journal

Vyacheslav, a building engineer, in his apartment, Kiev, 2015.

Credit Andrey Lomakin

Ukraine has long had a tricky relationship with guns. In the course of its post-Soviet history, it has been the only country in Europe without legislation governing the civilian possession of firearms. More than a dozen laws have been proposed, but none have been passed by parliament. Instead, Ukrainian gun ownership is regulated by ordinances overseen by the interior ministry. Officially, the only legal way to own a firearm in Ukraine today is to acquire a rifle for hunting or sporting purposes; handguns are banned, available only to security guards and certain categories of state officials.

Those, at least, are the rules on paper. But the war in Ukraines easta grinding conflict between pro-Kiev forces and Russia-backed separatists that has left ten thousand people deadhas made an absurd mockery of these regulations. In the conflicts early days, when the Ukrainian military was in disarray after the Maidan Revolution and Russias annexation of Crimea, much of the fighting was carried out by members of hastily assembled volunteer battalions. Those battalions had an unclear legal status and were not always well equipped; their weapons and supplies came from donations, private supplies, and the black market. Since 2014, when war broke out in the Donbass region, huge caches of firearms have poured into the conflict zone. Today, after numerous shaky ceasefires and direct incursions of Russian soldiers and artillery, a tense, often-deadly stasis has taken hold, and the military weapons are increasingly flooding out of the conflict zone and into the hands of civilians.

According to the Ukrainian photographer Andrey Lomakin, who photographed civilian gun owners in their homes, in 2014 and 2015, the insecurity and trauma of the war have made firearms in Ukraine a kind of modern amulet, awarding their owners an extra power. Not everyone is comfortable to point it at the aggressor and shoot, he has written. But everyone feels safer having one. Lomakin, who is forty-three years old, grew up in Kiev, and remembers his schoolboy lessons in how to assemble a Kalashnikov rifle with his eyes closed, part of mandatory Soviet-era military training. Back then, Lomakin recalls, guns had a foreboding mystiqueyet these days, he says, they have become alarmingly ordinary. He has seen a growing number of otherwise law-abiding citizens looking to buy guns, both legally and on the black market. Last year, the head of a Ukrainian association of gun owners told the Associated Press that the country contained as many as five million illegal firearms. Ukraine has turned into a supermarket for illegal weapons, he said.

Lomakins project, titled Amulet, documents the magnified role of the gun in todays Ukraine. In one image, a father stands at home, cradling his young child, while his wife and three other children sit on the couch. Its a bucolic family scene, made visually dissonant only by fact that in the fathers other arm is a black assault rifle. In another image, a woman poses in her bedroom, an ironing board resting against the pastel-colored walls; her face is stern and her arms are folded across her chest, holding a pistol in domestic repose. Ukraine to date has no functioning national registry of gun owners, and so the issue remainslike the marketplace that fuels itin the shadows. Lomakins portraits provide a visual record of how Ukrainians have been changed over the past three years, becoming at once wounded and disoriented, inured to the spectre of violence while trying to remain vigilant against it.

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Ukraine, a Supermarket for Guns - The New Yorker

By Diyar Guldogan

ANKARA

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Wednesday the situation in Ukraine over a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

"Dissatisfaction was expressed with the general situation surrounding the settlement of the Ukraine crisis," the Kremlin said in a statement.

The leaders discussed the progress toward implementing the Minsk agreements, including Normandy format summit which was held in Berlin on Oct. 19.

Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gathered in Berlin for the first time in more than a year for a four-party meeting, amid intensified fighting in eastern Ukraine between government troops and pro-Russian separatists.

"There was an emphasis on the importance of stepping up joint efforts to de-escalate tensions in southeastern Ukraine and ensuring consistent implementation of the Minsk-2 provisions," it added.

The leaders also agreed on giving an "additional impetus" to the Normandy format activities and holding meetings at various level in the upcoming period.

Ukraine has been wracked by conflict since March 2014 following Russias annexation of Crimea after an illegal independence vote on the heels of violent anti-government protests which led to the overthrow of the then-President Victor Yanukovich.

The UN General Assembly had voted nearly unanimously to proclaim the Russian annexation as illegal.

Along with many UN countries, the U.S., the EU, and Turkey also do not recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russia separatists has seen around 9,750 killed, according to the UN.

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Putin, Merkel, Hollande discuss situation in Ukraine - Anadolu Agency