In comments to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, former Mikhail Saakashvili again spoke out against corruption and vowed to pursue officials who only enrich themselves:
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, now governor of Ukraine's Odesa region, has vowed to stamp out corruption in his jurisdiction. In recent days, he has run into trouble with Ukrainian leaders, accusing officials in Kyiv of sabotaging his reform efforts.
President Petro Poroshenko still owns one company directly and ten more through a closed, non-diversified corporate fund called Prime Assets Capital, reports Schemes, a Radio Liberty investigative program.
The ultimate owner of the fund is the president himself and its director is his father, Oleksiy Poroshenko.
The fund has assets in several different spheres, including agriculture, media and industry.
Though during his presidential campaign Poroshenko had promised to sell his assets, the structure of his business has undergone few changes during his one year in office.
Poroshenko’s business partners are Ihor Kononenko, deputy chairman of his faction in parliament, and Oleh Hladkovskyy, first deputy secretary of National Security and Defense Council.
For two weeks the journalists tried to contact Poroshenko for comment, but despite multiple written and telephone inquiries to the president’s press service, they haven’t received a response.
Here's a Hromadske.tv video of a Lenin statue in Zaporizhhya being draped in the colours of the Ukrainian soccer team:
Support for Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov -- who was jailed by Russia on terrorism charges that many see as politically motivated -- is still pouring in, especially in the moviemaking community:
Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf has dedicated the Robert Bresson Award to imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov.
The award was presented this morning (Sept 7) during the Venice Film Festival by the Fondazione ente dello Spettacolo (FedS) and the cinema magazine Rivista del Cinematografo in recognition of “a director who has given testimony of the difficult path towards the search for the spiritual meaning of life”.
Founded in 1999, the award has been received in past years by directors such as Manoel de Oliveira, Alexander Sokurov, Ken Loach and Wim Wenders.
Makhmalbaf’s most recent film, The President, was shown in Venice last year.
Speaking to ScreenDaily ahead of the award ceremony, Makhmalbaf said that he had been made aware of Sentsov’s fate by festival programming director Alexey Medvedev when he served as jury president at the On The Edge Film Festival in the Russian Far East town of Sakhalin last month.
¨In recent years, we have heard many statements from Russian leaders that Russia has finally found its independent voice and is ready to play an important role on the world arena,¨ Makhmalbaf said in a statement.
¨These claims, of course, can only be supported, but it is also important to remember that no national revival is possible on the basis of lies and propaganda.
“Even one destroyed life – and a 20-year sentence for a 39-year-old filmmaker surely means the cruellest of all individual punishments – will lead to an even greater punishment and retaliation that may befall the whole country.
¨The way to a better future can start only with an act of magnanimity, mercy, and understanding. Oleg Sentsov should make new films, not count years in prison.”
Read the entire article here