Watch: óêðà¿íñüêîþ | ïî-ðóññêè | in English

Can Ukraine count on the next tranche, what is important for the IMF now, and what is wrong with the Ukrainian reforms – those are the matters the UP have discussed with the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF David Lipton.

It is Manafort, to whom the Party of Regions owes most of their slogans and political rhetoric, including ‘dangerous NATO’ and ‘suppression of the Russian language in Ukraine’, which artificially divided the country, alienated some people in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and may have helped sow the seeds of the war in Donbas.

There is good motivation for being on time: the next $3 billion tranche of financing from the IMF, ˆ1.2 billion of macrofinancial assistance from the European Union, World Bank money and a number of other financial assistance projects. However, now we can be sure — the launch failed and the system won’t be launched on time. So now we are at a crossroads. Kyiv has two options: a bad one and a worst one

"We are preparing ourselves as well as we can, but we cannot cope without public support," — Head of NABU Sytnyk reassured. Taking into account what kind of enemies NABU is now facing, the scale of the possible media assault can be truly impressive. But we should also take into account that NABU has a resource no other law enforcement agency had before — they have public trust

Ukrainian politics is a dirty and expensive game. Political parties spend colossal budgets to meet the main goals of their sponsors: being elected, getting positions in the cabinet, taking control over ‘income streams’. Recently Ukrainians got their first chance from the times of the country’s independence to look inside the ‘bank vault’ and see the financial reports of the major Ukrainian parties

There is a certain kind of person — when they enter the room, everything becomes more illuminated, funnier and noisier. Pavel was this type of a human being for Ukrayinska Pravda. He contributed an amazing spirit and essence to our office. We called him Paul ‘the Hero’ [Ukr.: Pal Heroyich]. He was a star and a luminary to us

Timothy Snyder is an American historian who has been researching the tragic history of the Eastern Europe for many years. Snyder diligently monitors modern day Ukraine and putinist Russia because he considers that many things which are happening here right now can repeat themselves in his native US.

The Ministry of Economic Development has forecasted two scenarios of the trajectory of the Ukrainian economy until 2019. The document outlines two scenarios — optimistic, which implies quick reforms in the economic sector with the help of Ukraine’s international partners, leading to 3% GDP growth in 2017, and pessimistic, involving slower reforms, weaker position of Ukrainian goods on external markets, and two times slower GDP growth of 1.5%

I ask the conductor: "And if there’s a fire in the cabin-you’ll open the bars for us to jump?" He replies "No, its’ easier for me to write you off, than try and sort out where you all rand off to." (ukr.)

There are no people in the President’s team, whom he would listen to unquestioningly. Poroshenko trusts nobody but himself. All the others he simply lets closer or pushes further. "A Tsar’" — this is a precise description of Poroshenko by one of our sources.

We talked to several media professionals about their missions, experiences, toughest challenges during the last two years, and why they continue working against all the odds

"The Eastern vector is interesting to the audiences. But they are interested in today’s events. Many distributors are tired of movies about WW2. They are interested in how Eastern Europe lives now" — says Marysia Nikitiuk, Ukrainian screenwriter who won Krzysztof Kieslowski ScripTeast award during the Cannes Film Festival in May this year

May 18th is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide. This day in 1944 marked the start of the operation of forced resettlement of Crimeans to Uzbekistan and the Urals region which led to the deportation of more than 180,000 Crimean Tatars in just two days. By different estimates, between 25% and 45% of deported people died on the way and in the so-called special settlements. In 2016, all public remembrance ceremonies for this tragic date in Crimea were banned by the Russian Federation authorities.

International Museum Day was instituted 39 years ago and is celebrated on May 18 each year. In 1997 ‘International Museum Night’ was established. In 2008 several Ukrainian museums with the most forward-thinking management joined the Museum Night for real. In 2015 their number rose to 70 among almost 600 state museums, national parks and reserves.

For many years Groysman has been a younger political partner to Poroshenko. However, tough negotiation between the two men about appointments for the Cabinet of Ministers proved that Groysman doesn’t just want to be ‘the President’s boy’ anymore.

Oleh Sych is CTO of Zillya! Antivirus — a Kyiv-based software company. Zillya! helped the SBU to investigate the largest and most successful hacker attack in Ukraine’s history, when Prykarpattyaoblenergo was forced to black out, leaving parts of the city of Ivano-Frankivsk and a number of towns and villages in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast without electricity days before Catholic Christmas.

Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. Now she came to Kyiv to present the Ukrainian translations of her works. Svetlana’s books are the encyclopedia of the Soviet empire, a research on the ‘red man’, who suffered himself and caused others to suffer.