Ukraine: attempted attack on anti-corruption bodies? OSW Commentary 2020-10-16.

The high susceptibility of Ukrainian officials to corruption has been one factor affecting the condition of the Ukrainian state. Since 2014, the government has managed to create several anti-corruption institutions whose independence from the executive is one of the main conditions for Ukraine to continue receiving financial assistance from the West. Over the past year, this system has become more robust, and the first sentences were issued in cases involving state officials caught up in corruption schemes. However, despite President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declared determination to combat corruption among state officials, recent months have seen measures that may weaken the key institutions established to combat corruption; this would be tantamount to reversing reforms in this field. These actions have been initiated by politicians and oligarchs intending to make the fight against corruption less effective. This has triggered major concern from Western donors (who are responding to this by threatening to halt financial support and to suspend the visa-free regime) and from Ukrainian civil society

Neither a miracle nor a disaster – President Zelensky’s first year in office. OSW Commentary 2020-05-20.

20th May marked the end of Volodymyr Zelensky first year as President of Ukraine. Thanks to the clear victory of his Servant of the People party in the snap parliamentary election held in July 2019 and the establishment of the government of Oleksiy Honcharuk the following month, Zelensky swiftly gained full power. The plan for the declared repair of the country and an end to the war in the Donbas involved the appointment of apolitical specialists for key positions in the government to immediately process legislation in the parliament and to conduct informal diplomacy. This strategy brought about certain successes. Partial organisational changes were introduced in the prosecutor’s office and courts; the constitution was amended in the area of the rights of the members of the Verkhovna Rada and the president, and a meeting – the first in three years – in the Normandy Format was held in Paris. Already before the end of 2019 a new election law was passed, a key reform in the gas sector (the unbundling of Naftogaz) was completed and in March 2019, and a breakthrough law regarding the lifting of the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land was passed. However, increasing conflicts of interests inside the parliamentary group of the Servant of the People limited the comfort of governing the country, exposing the most important weaknesses of Zelensky’s bloc: its lack of ideological cohesion, the lack of a clear action plan and, above all, the lack of a professional and independent staff base. The remaining powerful influence of the oligarchs on the state has impeded the work on important laws and Ukraine’s co-operation with the International Monetary Fund, which has also contributed to sustained negative phenomena in the electricity sector. As a result, Zelensky’s first year in office can be considered to be a time of tough learning about how politics, both domestic and international, functions in practice. The scope of power the president has gained thanks to the slogans of removing ‘old’ politicians has become a source of weakness in itself – the below-par effectiveness of ruling the country. It appears that Zelensky is beginning to understand this interdependency. He has entered his second year in office with approval rating in society still high (45% of support in the election survey, 57% of support in the confidence survey). Nevertheless, he will have to face a much more difficult economic situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Zelensky vs. Akhmetov – a test of strength. OSW Commentary Number 420 22.12.2021.

In November, an open conflict broke out between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine’s richest businessman, Rinat Akhmetov. The main cause was Zelensky’s signing of the so-called law on oligarchs. In response, Akhmetov’s television channels, including the most popular one in Ukraine, began to ruthlessly attack the president and to promote his political rivals, in particular the former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Dmytro Razumkov, who had been dismissed a few weeks earlier and who until recently had been one of the key representatives of the ruling camp, a person with high public support. In response, Zelensky publicly suggested that Akhmetov was involved in an allegedly prepared state coup and that his entourage was dragging him into a war against Ukraine. Meanwhile the President’s Office stepped up actions against his business. It is currently impossible to predict how the dispute will end, but the main beneficiaries are other oligarchs, as the president is becoming increasingly dependent on their support (both in the media and in parliament) as he considers re-election. Zelensky’s suggestions to Akhmetov can be seen as a kind of ‘invitation’ to him to negotiate his influence on politics. At the same time, a further escalation of their conflict (which is, however, less likely than a quiet compromise) could result in the destabilisation of the state

Application of spatial weather generator for the assessment of climate change impacts on a river runoff

In this study, the impacts of climate change on streamflow are investigated. The ensemble of outputs from three different Global Circulation Models models: GISS, CCCM, GFDL developed for the emission scenario A1B were analyzed to infer projected changes in climatological conditions for the region of the Upper and Middle Odra basin. Obtaining hydrological scenarios of future changes for the scale of subcatchment required simulating short-term and fine scaled weather patterns for this area. SWGEN model (Spatial Weather GENerator) was applied to downscale projected changes of climatological conditions to the ones required by hydrological model temporal and spatial resolution. Daily time series of solar radiation, temperature and precipitation were generated for the reference period 1981-2000 and for the time horizon 2030 and 2050. The generated data from SWGEN model were integrated in the hydrological model NAM to simulate streamflow under changed conditions with daily time step. The results show considerable changes in annual and seasonal runoff daily distributions for selected study catchment in the future time horizons of 2030 and 2050.12

Estimation of the occurrence of drought in Poland by 2060 based on the HTC index and probability distributions

This article attempts to assess the future occurrence of a drought using the Sieljaninova hydrothermal index (HTC). Air temperature and total precipitation were simulated for current conditions (2000) and forecast for eight locations of meteorological stations in Poland according to the HAD and GFDL scenarios for RCP 45 and 60 for 2040 and 2060

Estimation of the occurrence of drought in Poland by 2060 based on the HTC index and probability distributions

This article attempts to assess the future occurrence of a drought using the Sieljaninova hydrothermal index (HTC). Air temperature and total precipitation were simulated for current conditions (2000) and forecast for eight locations of meteorological stations in Poland according to the HAD and GFDL scenarios for RCP 45 and 60 for 2040 and 2060