So they have started to clear and make major changes inside of the police system.
However, the name Yehor Sobolev requires attention. It could be that he is a good guy or a bad guy. Nonetheless, lustration is one of the main demands of the people in Maidan. They don't want to have people connected to the Party of Regions, the post-Soviet political-criminal nexus, or the Communist Party in government.
The role being played by the oligarch and president of the European Council for Jewish Communities, Ihor Kolomoyskiy, governor of the new Dnipropetrovsk, must be considered. His role has been to take his private money to fuel the military, and simultaneously he's an owner of a bank called PrivatBank. While he was taking his private money to fuel the Ukrainian military, his bank was the first one to start dispensing rubles in the Crimean peninsula. Right now the banks are starting to have a very difficult time to operate because they have to switch to Russian laws. PrivatBank is not having problems, but they were the first to use the ruble.
Russian-backed ethnic cleansing is taking place in Crimea, as mentioned earlier. Catholic priests have been abducted+ and beaten. Politicians and anybody who has anything to do with supporting democracy are being persecuted. Ukrainian parents have actually been put under duress because elementary schools have been attacked by men in green and the kids have been basically put under pressure to influence the behaviour of their parents. That's just one example.
The self-appointed prime minister of Crimea, Sergey Aksionov, is directly related to an organized criminal ring, called the Salem. Salem is backed by Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich is, I think, the second or third most wanted criminal in the world on an FBI list. He is linked to Gazprom and the underground arms trade, particularly through Transnistria, which is a potential hot spot at this point, with direct links to Yanukovych. Firtash, the oligarch who was arrested in Austria, has links to funding him.
The legality of Yanukovych's presidency is a potential trump card up Putin's sleeve. Ukraine does not have an impeachment process. When one carefully reads Putin's speech, Putin says that there are three ways that you can get rid of the Ukrainian president and none of those have been done. He named impeachment. There is no impeachment process, so technically people are still waiting for Yanukovych to come back. He is still the only recognized president that Putin continually refers to.
Jumping a little bit, in 2012 the SBU, the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, was infiltrated up to 75% by Russian intelligence. When dealing with Nalyvaichenko, the current head of the SBU, this factor should be considered. He did do significant work under the Orange government to get rid of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, to try to get the Russian military off the ground, but he failed. The same percentages hold for the Ministry of Defence top guns.
Media warfare is rampant in Ukraine. Canada can actually do something by really supporting a nationwide public broadcasting station, which will also include Crimea and eastern parts of Ukraine. Those people have no access to any information.
I made a very long story short.
Thank you.