Here's an item from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
Washington Hails Ukrainian Officials' Public Declarations Of Wealth
Washington has welcomed Ukrainian officials' public declarations of their wealth as a step toward increasing citizens' confidence in elected officials.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told RFE/RL in an interview on November 2 that the asset declaration system is "an important first step" toward increasing transparency in government.
She added that the declarations are necessary in order for Ukrainians to "have confidence that their public officials don't have conflicts of interest and that their wealth is acquired in a legitimate manner."
She added that the asset declarations are now being looked at by journalists and anticorruption agencies in Ukraine and that scrutiny is an important second step to the process.
Officials had until October 30 to upload details of their assets and income in 2015 to a publicly searchable database, part of an International Monetary Fund-backed drive to boost transparency and modernize Ukraine's recession-hit economy.
The online declarations of wealth online have exposed a vast difference between the fortunes of politicians and those they represent.
Some senior officials declared millions of dollars in cash. Others said they owned fleets of luxury cars, expensive Swiss watches, diamond jewels, and large tracts of land.
Here's an excerpt from this piece by RFE/RL's Christopher Miller, which is already being shared quite a lot on social media:
KYIV -- Dressed in a black sweater and equally nondescript turtleneck, with wisps of raven hair corkscrewing from under a black baseball cap, the lanky Ukrainian introduces himself in accented English as "Sean."
Sean Townsend is his chosen pseudonym on Facebook, complemented by images of the notorious Guy Fawkes mask of hacker group Anonymous and the Ukrainian coat of arms. Before Sean, he was "Ross Hatefield," until the world's leading social network banned that account for impersonation.
In hacker circles, he is better known as RUH8 -- pronounced "roo-hate" to express his aversion to all things Russian.
RUH8 agreed to speak with RFE/RL on condition that we avoid publishing his real name, which he only uses with friends unaware of what he does outside his day job as a Kyiv-based security researcher.
He provided details of the cyberwar that has been raging -- parallel to the shooting war between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine over the past 30 months -- between the respective sides' patriotic hackers using digital subterfuge.
RUH8 is part of a Ukrainian "hacktivist" collective that includes four hacker groups: CyberHunta, Falcons Flame, Trinity, and RUH8. When working together, they call themselves the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance. Their declared enemy is the Kremlin, and their avowed mission is to expose its meddling in Ukraine and ultimately to destroy Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime.
They regard a hacker group called CyberBerkut -- which international cybersecurity experts have blamed for digital attacks on Ukrainian ministries and its presidential election in 2014 -- as their Russian counterpart. They also believe CyberBerkut is an alias for Fancy Bear, a hacker group with suspected ties to the Russian state that is thought to have worked with another Russian group, Cozy Bear, to disrupt the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Read the entire article here.
Here's a video excerpt of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine's interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
U.S. Ambassador: Crimea Is 'Part Of Ukraine'
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told RFE/RL in an interview on November 2 that Washington is working to ensure that Russia's occupation of Crimea does not become more deeply entrenched. She also voiced support for Ukrainian reform efforts.
