The Ukrainian parliament's antidiscrimination bill has not convinced everyone, it seems:
Another update from our news desk on what has been a busy day for the Ukrainian parliament:
Ukraine's parliament has approved a resolution recognizing the mass deportations of Crimean Tatars in 1944 as genocide.
The resolution adopted on November 12 also says that May 18 will be marked in Ukraine as the Day of Remembrance of the victims.
Crimean Tatar activists have been pressuring Ukrainian authorities for years to recognize the deportations as genocide.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, on May 18, 1944 on the grounds that they had allegedly collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
More than 180,000 were deported to Central Asia and Siberia. An estimated 40 percent of those deportees died during the journey or within a year of being exiled.
Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in the late 1980s, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Most Crimean Tatars openly opposed Russia's annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014.
(UNIAN, uatoday.tv)
The Verkhovna Rada may receive the European Commission opinion on Ukraine’s adoption of the so-called visa-free laws package in three to four days, said first deputy speaker Andriy Parubiy.
He noted that if the European Commission has any remarks, the Ukrainian parliament could make the necessary amendments.
According to Ukrainian deputies, the European Commission has to give its preliminary conclusions about Ukraine’s implementation of the action plan on visa liberalization on November 24.
The EU's ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, has said that Ukraine shouldn’t expect immediate effects of the free-trade zone with the EU.
"I am very optimistic about what would happen in two, three, four years. I insist that it won’t happen on January 1, 2016. We have to build a foundation, start the engine and the result will follow," he said at a business forum in Kyiv.
The free-trade zone between Ukraine and the EU will take effect on January 1, 2016.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry expects the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to thoroughly investigate violations of the Minsk agreements, it said in a statement.
"We expect that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission will urgently carry out a thorough investigation of violations of the Minsk agreement and asses them objectively.... We call on the international community to strengthen its influence on the Russian Federation to ensure strict adherence to a comprehensive ceasefire and unconditional implementation of the Minsk documents in full," the statement says.
According to the ministry, from November 1 through 11 separatists carried out more than 240 attacks along the dividing line. Sometimes they used 82-mm and 120-mm mortars that should have been withdrawn from the dividing line. In addition, the ministry claims, separatists attempted to storm Ukrainian positions close to Mayorske in the Donetsk region and Novozvanivka in the Luhansk region.