After a three-month wait...

After a three-month period spent making promises, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine made public its decree No. 479-r “On the Allocation of Funds to Provide One-Time Financial Assistance to Family Members of Persons Whose Deaths Were Linked to Their Participation in the Mass Civil Protests That Took Place from November 21, 2013 to February 21, 2014.” With this act, the Cabinet instructed the Ministry of Social Policy to allocate 11,692,800 hryvnias to provide one-time financial assistance amounting to 100 subsistence minimums for working people per case. In addition, the Ministry of Social Policy must approve before June 2 the list of expenses related to the provision of this assistance, and submit a report on its work on this issue before October 1.

These payments will be made from the state budget’s reserve fund.

COMMENTARY

Viktor TYMOSHCHUK, head of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms:

“The amount of money is easily affordable for the state, so it is most likely to be paid out in full. The decision-making was influenced by the concerned citizens’ response to inactivity. It is no secret that as long as people do not defend their rights, the government is only too happy to save money by not paying them.

“They should also speed up the investigation of the victims’ deaths. I am not a specialist in criminal justice, but I can identify several reasons why it is still hampered. Firstly, some law-enforcement bodies are still staffed by people who were involved in these events directly or just kept the jobs they had before in their agencies. The corporate solidarity is at work here. They are in no hurry to implicate their colleagues in crimes. Secondly, a lot of documents have been destroyed. Thirdly, a lot of people who could influence the course of the investigation are in hiding abroad. The current government is likely interested in the investigation’s success, but the capacity to do it just is not there yet.”