Competent sources say the President's amnesty edict is already "half-way" enacted. Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko agreed to a large-scale amnesty recently, and the President will sign the document after returning from vacation. In other words, a number of Ukrainian citizens who wound up on the wrong side of the law and are serving terms for their pains will be out of jail before long. Interior Ministry statistics point to 232,000 convicts and it is possible to assume that the edict will set one-tenth of them free - in particular, the draft document stipulates pardoning first-time offenders serving terms on work-farms and in regular security penal settlements, including juvenile delinquents, women over 50 and men over 60, among them World War II, Afghanistan, Chornobyl veterans, inmates with minor dependents, and those found guilty of grave offenses who will have served half the term on the date of the edict's enactment.
Unofficial sources attribute the Independence Day amnesty, which has already become traditional, to the government's inability to sustain so many inmates.






