Articles :

Almost 12,000 Ukrainian children require adoption. But due to the nature of Ukrainian society and national legislation, many orphans continue and will continue to grow without parents. Moreover, about 25,000 parentless kids, once grown up, will become homeless as well.

Over the last three years, the Ukrainians have already forgotten the notorious convoys roaming Kyiv streets creating traffic havoc to the comfort of the former president and prime minister, but the army of bodyguards serving the lower rank officials has not gone anywhere. Meanwhile, state funding, the one actually coming from people's pockets, of the agencies providing such protection has been increasing ever since.

Andriy Shevchenko’s team saw a minimum result while playing quite ambiguously, as the coach admits. UNIAN analyzes the team’s play at the current stage, predicting a thorny path in the near future.

Increasing the funding for the army is a must thing for Ukraine. Will take part of the burden off the volunteers’ shoulders? Probably. Will volunteering become irrelevant? That’s unlikely.

In an interview with UNIAN Jamala spoke of shooting a video that premiered today for “1944”, her winning Eurovision 2016 entry. She also told whether she was invited to host Eurovision 2017 in Kyiv and whether she, as a person with a firm view on life, ever thought about trying herself in politics.

The most popular news among our readers this week was the performance of a 95 Kvartal comedy show in Latvia’s Jurmala, unexpected counterattacks of MP Leshchenko against a widow of a murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze, and the fate of another loan tranche of the IMF.

Hello, dear readers. UNIAN editorial represented by your humble servant of a chief editor has decided that it’s time for your vision of the top news to be put into spotlight. From now on, I will share with you my observations regarding the news of the past week caught most attention of our audience, and also what important events remained unfairly ignored, despite the efforts of our editors.

The EU Delegation to Ukraine together with 1 + 1 Media launches a large-scale information campaign, aimed  to prove that even a small business can win the major European markets, overcoming social stereotypes, bureaucratic obstacles, and economic challenges.

It has been more than two years since residents of Donbas have first started leaving their homes, fleeing the war. The lucky ones were welcomed by their relatives or friends, while someone at the time had their savings handy. Still, for most of these people, this was a road to frightening emptiness.

The price of not obtaining Ukrainian citizenship for many foreigners in the Anti-Terrorist Operation is freedom. Despite government promises, foreign citizens fighting on the Ukrainian side are for the third year trying unsuccessfully to obtain the long-promised passports with a Ukrainian trident.

Defend one’s homeland is not solely the men’s job. Despite the lack of proper military education for women in Ukraine and facts of discrimination on the part of the stronger sex, thousands of women have taken up arms to fight for their land in eastern Ukraine. UNIAN has learned how their status was changing in the course of the two years of war.

Despite the differences in society over the situation in the east of Ukraine, the citizens are united in one thing: Donbas is part of Ukraine. UNIAN tried to determine what the residents of the temporarily occupied territories felt and what they are silent about, two years after the war began.

Perhaps there has not been such an extensive, open and frank debate on sexual violence in Ukraine since the terrible tragedy in Vradiivka when a local young woman was brutally raped and almost murdered by a group of men that included police officers. It is important that today's "wave" not die off within social networks, and society – make its first steps toward recovery, not taking violence for granted, and building an efficient system of protection against it.

A criminal case against Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the country’s “gas king” Oleksandr Onyshchenko has come to its climax. The Verkhovna Rada’s majority approved the move to prosecute, detain, and arrest their colleague. However, it is too early for the law enforcers to uncork champagne. They have yet to defend their evidence in court.

There are more than enough problems regarding the future of Eurovision-2017 in Ukraine. The major one is a venue for the song contest, or rather, a lack thereof.

Psychologists say that the Ukrainian combatants, one way or another, suffer from the so-called "ATO syndrome." Therefore, after the demobilization, it is difficult for the troops to come back to civilian life. UNIAN learned about one of the aspects of adaptation – the employment.

On May 25, 2016, the Ukrainian female pilot and a member of parliament, the most high profile of Ukrainian citizens, who have become the Kremlin’s captives, Nadia Savchenko finally returned home. The Ukrainian citizen was a prisoner of the Russian Federation for more than 700 days. UNIAN remembers the key moments of the history of Nadia’s captivity.

Despite a year-old declaration by Ukraine officials that the illegal amber mining was about to be stopped, the "Amber People's Republic" is still thriving. The only thing that changed is the levy for such unlawful extraction.

It is difficult to argue that the issue of possible local elections in Donbas should only be discussed in close conjunction with the restoration of full control over the situation in the east of Ukraine. UNIAN has asked the experts who and how can secure such control.

Almost half a million people have fled the annexed Crimea and the occupied Donbas for the government-controlled territory of Ukraine over less than a two-year period. But there are those who are unable to do so due to objective reasons – they were serving prison terms or were arrested awaiting trial at the moment the war broke out.