Giovanni Kessler: “A Comprehensive fight against corruption cannot be confined to single cases, there is a need for an overall strategy to combat fraud and corruption”

The Ukrainian Week met with Giovanni Kessler who is the current Director-General of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) during his visit to Ukraine. We spoke on the instruments which Ukraine can apply to fight corruption more effectively, possibility of creation of the joint EU-Ukraine body for corruption investigation and the role of OLAF in this process.

“Is There Any Other Way?”

The Ukrainian Week speaks to proactive young Ukrainians – soldiers, volunteers and activists – to find out what they think of as their major accomplishment, of their peers in politics, and of leaving Ukraine

Sociologist Yevhen Holovakha: “30 years is a minimum term for a change in values”

In his interview for The Ukrainian Week, sociologist Yevhen Holovakha discusses ways used to install Soviet values, explains why nostalgia about the USSR and argues that one efficient way to de-Sovietize society is to dispel the myth about the high standard of social care under the Bolsheviks

Historian and sociologist Oksana Mikheyeva:“We must drag people out of the media coma”

The Ukrainian Week speaks to Ms. Mikheyeva about the humanitarian future of her native region

The Comic Wars of Rinat Akhmetov

Rinat Akhmetov, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych continue to weave plots for Eastern Ukraine, making the rebels with black-and-orange ribbons think that they are dying for a New Russia, not for oligarchic interests

Fundraising for the Ukrainian Army

Volunteers who raise funds for the Ukrainian military share their motivations, worries and bank details for those who are willing to donate

Nils Muižnieks: “Once the central government has a long-term plan for IDPs, assistance from the international community will be forthcoming”

The Ukrainian Week talks to Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks about the flow of IDPs from Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, ways for the government to deal with the problem Ukraine has never faced before, and about the hard lesson on integration of minorities Russia’s neighbours had to learn

Russia: Headlong Away From Freedom

The ability to travel or foreign channels on cable TV are failing to safeguard homo post-sovieticus from propaganda of hatred

Donbas battalion commander:“Our format is a compromise between state agencies and the voluntary movement. We want to change our country”

Semen Semenchenko talks about voluntary special forces, the Chechen trail in Eastern Ukraine and inevitable terror

The Chronicles of Dignity

How the past six months changed Ukrainians, Ukraine and the Maidan

Exporting Hatred

Human rights advocates and international experts are alarmed at growing xenophobia in Crimea and separatist-controlled territories

Organize or Face Disappointment

Without grassroots organization and political parties funded by membership dues, Ukrainians will find themselves disappointed once again by self-serving political leaders. Even worse, the country could face further degradation or loss of sovereignty

The Foreign Hundred

The Maidan became both a tourist destination and a place where foreigners, who are not indifferent to the fate of Ukraine, gathered. The flags that flew above it were from various countries, not only those of Ukraine and the EU. The heroes of Nebesna Sotnya - the Heaven Hundred - also include the citizens of other countries. How did, and do, foreigners view the Maidan?

Peter Pomerantsev: “Russia Today is a distraction for more subtle things that Russia does in the sphere of information”

The Ukrainian Week talks to Peter Pomerantsev, British television producer and non-fiction writer who spent nine years in Russia, on Russian state propaganda, new methods of informational war and how Ukraine should defend itself

Heresies and Sects in Russia

Was the West really the source of deviance for Russian orthodoxy?

Pro-Ukrainian Donbas: Intelligent, Creative, Chaotic

Pro-Ukrainian forces in the Donbas neatly fall within the boundaries of the middle class and are in need of organization and government support

Oleh Pokalchuk: "The piety of the today's rich is an old criminal tradition"

A sociopsychological analysis of the "nomenclature continuity" and top officials depicted on icons

Museums Under Occupation

Museums holding over 917,000 exhibits are the price of Ukraine’s cultural loss in Crimea. While museum workers there try to adapt to the new circumstances, Ukraine is looking for ways to keep valuable objects

Self-Preservation for Crimean Muslims

Said Ismagilov, the Mufti of the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Ukraine Ummah: “The status of Muslims here is far better than in Russia”

The Nameless Hundred: The missing people after February 18

What did the police, together with the titushkas, do with the bodies of the people, who were decapitated in the centre of Kyiv on February 18?

Bringing Eastern Ukraine Back Into the Fold

Eastern Ukraine is following in the footsteps of Western Ukraine, but with a considerable delay, natural and historical complications

Ukraine as the Latest Fashion

Poles supported the Maidan gladly and passionately – more so, I think, than Russia supported the anti-Maidans

The Mist of Victory

After Viktor Yanukovych fled and Ukraine found itself on the brink of a war, it seemed Ukrainians could be celebrating the victory, but somehow there was no euphoria. Only a mist.

Volodymyr Vasylenko: “Government bodies were first and foremost responsible for a civilized regulation and solution of the conflict”

The Ukrainian Week speaks to Volodymyr Vasylenko, expert in international law and former Ambassador of Ukraine, about Viktor Yanukovych’s responsibility for crimes against Ukrainian people, grounds for prosecution by the International Criminal Court in Hague and actual assistance the West can provide to Ukraine today

Mafia State

Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian and author of a new book Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia. A former Moscow correspondent, he is currently based at The Guardian's office in London. In the conversation with The Ukrainian Week, Luke Harding explains why Russia is a “Mafia state” in his opinion and why Ukraine is in real danger of becoming one

Donbas. A Stagnation Period

Historian and sociologist Oksana Mikheyeva on why the Donbas intelligentsia is silent and what business in this region wants