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By Gbenga Olarinoye Osogbo A student of Osun State University, UNIOSUN, Osogbo, Miss Latifat Abiola Oyeleye was declared the over best medical student of the Karazin Kharkiv National University as well as the 2017overall best students in the entire Ukraine with an outstanding score of 95.6% in KROK 2 Exams.

Fifty of the 85 students of Osun State University sent to Ukraine to complete their medical studies by the Governor Rauf Aregbesolas administration graduated from the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkov, Ukraine and become medical doctors.

Over 500 medical students, among which are the 50 UNIOSUN students, were inducted as qualified medical doctor in a ceremony that was chaired by the Vice-President for Research and Education of the University, Prof Mykola O. Azarenkov, on Friday.

The convocation of the students came after their successful outing in the 2017 KROK 2 National Exams which is the final qualifying medical exams in Ukraine.

The UNIOSUN students were sent to Ukraine by Aregbesolas administration to complete their medical studies in Ukraine in 2013 as a result of non-availability of a teaching hospital for their clinical studies.

The remaining 32 sponsored UNIOSUN medical students will graduate next year.

The Deputy Governor of Osun State, Otunba Grace Titi-Laoye Tomori who represented gov. Aregbesola at the convocation ceremony, said it was a dream come true for the state government, saying in spite of paucity of fund, Aregbesola did not abandon nor recalled the students back home like other states .

Leader of the UNIOSUN Medical students in V.N. Karazin Kharkiv university, Dr S.O Owoeye thanked Aregbesola for his unflinching support in helping them realized their dreams of becoming medical doctors, not minding the challenges.

The event was graced by the Chairman, Osun Assembly House Committee of Education, Hon Bamisayemi Folorunso, the Osun Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology, Engr Oluremi Omowaiye, the Vice Chancellor of UNIOSUN, Prof Labo Popoola and the Rector of Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, Dr Jacob Agboola.

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UNIOSUN medical student declared overall best graduate in Ukraine university - Vanguard

Ukrainian authorities arrested two men that it claims are Russian security agentsoff theBlack Sea coastafter the pairapparentlygot lost at sea in a tiny boat duringa training exercise in Crimea, seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.

The men, who were washed ashore in Ukraine's Kherson region,claimed to beagents of Russia'sFederal Security Bureau(FSB) who had been deployed in Crimea, where they were taking part in a training drill,the head of Ukraines border police, Viktor Nazarenko, announced on Facebook.

Read More: Why Ukraines president met Trump before first ever meeting with Putin

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Russia has not yet commented publicly on the arrest but hascontacted Ukrainian authorities to confirm the men were FSB patrol guards, Ukraines border guard spokesman Oleg Slobodyan told the local112 channel. The two men have been jailed for 15 days.

It is not the first time Russian security or military officials have arrived unannounced in Ukraine under suspicious circumstances.

Last November Ukrainian forces near the border with Crimea announced the arrest of another pair of Russian servicemen, though Russia denied the charges and said the pair were abducted from Crimea.

Detentions of Russian soldiers have also been reported in the war-torn Donbass regionin eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this week BBC reported that Ukrainian forces detained a Russian soldier fighting in eastern Ukraine. Russias Ministry of Defense issued a statement to state news agency RIA Novosti on Wednesday, confirming the man was a former soldier but had quit in 2016, before travelling to fight in Ukraine as a volunteer.

Russia denies sending any soldiers to prop up separatist militants in eastern Ukraine and when Russian servicemen have been captured fighting alongside separatist militants Moscow has disowned the soldiers, claiming they were no longer active servicemen.

The largest incursion happened when 10 Russian paratroopers landed onto Ukrainian-held land in Donbass. Once again denying that the group were meant to land on separatist-held land as reinforcements, Russias explanation was that the men were training nearby and entered Ukraine by accident.

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Russian Agents Detained in Ukraine After Getting 'Lost at Sea' During Crimea Training Exercise, Says Kiev - Newsweek

Problems piling up.

There are few better windows into how Russia and Ukraine compare today than garbage collection. Major cities in both countries are having trouble with waste disposal, but the political fallout is markedly different between the two -- one an authoritarian state and the other a messy, corrupt democracy.

The former Soviet Union wasn't concerned with recycling or even burning garbage: When you control one-sixth of the world's dry land, there is plenty of space to bury or simplydump trash. Separating garbage, as it's done in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the U.S. has been half-heartedly tried and abandoned many times because of poor uptake and the impossibility of enforcement.

Ukraine has had a separate collection law since 2013, but it's being ignored. Only1 percentof the country's garbage is incinerated and a further 4 percent recycled. By contrast, Sweden -- one of the global leaders in garbage treatment -- recycles or burns99 percentof its household waste. At least 4 percent of Ukraine'sterritory is reportedly occupied with 6,000 legal and 30,000 illegal dumps, according to the Ukrainian business news portal Delo.

In Russia, Yuri Trutnev, then-environment minister,saidin 2011 that creating dumps was more economically efficient than trying to incinerate or recycle trash. The following year, the country's environmental agencyreportedthat incineration was a better idea than recycling.

Russia is vast, and in many regions, there's still plenty of room for dumps and landfills.But one of Russia's many economic curses is its centralization: Moscow keeps growing uncontrollably. According to the Moscow region's government, which runs the suburbs but not the city itself, the capital's environs nowaccumulate20 percent of the country's trash, and the refuse output grows some 2.5 percent a year. The 5 percent of trash that isn't dumped is mostly burned, not recycled. No wonder people living in the capital city's close vicinity are starting, quite literally, to smell that something's wrong.

Thestench is similar in Russia and Ukraine; both of them need to invest in waste treatment technology and to clean up the dumps. But political reactionsto the miasma present a sharp contrast.

In Ukraine, Andriy Sadovy, the popular mayor of Lviv, the biggest city in the country's staunchly pro-European west, has been waging a garbage war with the central government in Kiev. Since a fire at the city's main dump last yearkilledthree first responders, the city has been forced to stop using the 82-acre site. Sadovy has begged other regions to take Lviv's waste, buthundredsof towns have refused.

Sadovy has accused the central government in Kiev of running a "garbage blockade" of Lviv as a revenge for his political party's decision to quit the governing coalition in 2016. Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman has denied this, accusing Sadovy of incompetence and politicking. President Petro Poroshenko, Hroisman's political patron, has blamedthe mayor for"literally burying Ukraine's most beautiful European city in trash."

As the politicians wrangled, garbage accumulation threatened to become catastrophic.Lviv's economy is tourism-based, and Sadovy has largely managed to keep mountains of refuse from building up in the city's quaint historic center, built under the Habsburgs. But in some residential areas, waste hasn't been collected for weeks, breeding rats and a fearof epidemics.

On Thursday, a temporary solution wasreached: Sadovy agreed to pay the surrounding region, run by a Poroshenko appointee, to lease a parcel of land for two years so that waste could be dumped there. Sadovy now promises to run a "zero waste" program in the city and make sure recycling plants are built. Whether he can keep those promises, or whether the waste will bury his rumored chances at the presidency, remains to be seen: Sadovy's resources and power are limited even compared with the cash-starved central government.

Russia lacks Ukraine's lively political scene. It has President Vladimir Putin instead. During his latest annualcall-in showwith voters on June 15, he was shown footage of the Moscow region's biggest dump, located right next to a residential area in the town of Balashikha. The residents petitioned the president for the dump's closure, complaining that they regularly felt sick and vomited because of gas eruptions from the mountains of waste. Putin promised to "try to do something."

Such a televised promise never goes to waste. Andrei Vorobyev, the governor of the Moscowregion immediately drove to Balashikha and promised to close the dump by 2019. But at a government meeting a weeklater, Putin remembered his promise. "Listen to me," he said, "and I want Vorobyev to hear me: You have a month to close that dump."

It was closed the following day, and the mayor of Balashikha resigned four days later. In less than a weak, the area was cleaned up; the authorities now plan a ski park there. The waste was taken to the region's other dumps, which are also receiving the tons of refuse that Balashikha used to get from Moscow every day. That strains their own capacity; the mayor of Mozhaisk, one of the towns forced to take the garbage, said the local dump would now be full in 18 months. It's a temporary solution, like in Lviv; like the Ukrainian city, the Moscow region also hasbig waste treatment plans, including the construction of several incineration plants and a separate collection scheme meant to train locals to sort garbage into "dry" and "wet." Anything more sophisticated would be doomed to failure.

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Neither Ukraine's chaotic democracy-like system or Russia's autocracy have found a lasting fix to a problem that originates in their shared Communist past. The countries can only achieve permanent change ifthose who live in them become educated about the value of recycling and alter their ways. It starts withsimple things like separate containers for paper, plastic, glass and biological waste. Once those actions are part of life, like in Europe, it'll be clear that progress is being made. But that requires a public information campaign that so far the politicians seem unlikely to wage.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net

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To Compare Russia and Ukraine, Look in the Trash - Bloomberg

A ransomware demand for $300 worth of bitcoin sits on the screen of a laptop infected by the 'Petya' computer virus inside a store in Kiev, Ukraine, on June 28, 2017. Vincent MundyBloomberg/Getty Images

Ukrainian state power distributor Ukrenergo was hit by another cyber attack on Thursday which used a computer virus different from one that hit Ukraine earlier in the week, the company 's acting chief said.

The second attack did not affect Ukraine 's power network, Vsevolod Kovalchuk told a news briefing on Friday.

Ukrenergo was an early victim of a cyber attack that began in Ukraine and spread around the world on Tuesday, knocking out thousands of machines, shutting down ports, factories and offices as it hit around 60 countries.

"The virus was slightly different, of a different nature, similar to WannaCry," Kovalchuk said about the second attack . "The effect from it was insignificant, as some computers remained offline."

WannaCry was the name of a global ransomware attack that struck in May.

For more on cyber attacks, watch Fortune's video:

Speaking about Tuesday's computer virus, Kovalchuk said that, according to preliminary data, it was activated during a software upgrade.

Cyber security firms are trying to piece together who was behind the computer worm, dubbed NotPetya by some experts.

A growing consensus among security researchers, armed with technical evidence, suggests the main purpose of the attack was to install new malware on computers at government and commercial organizations in Ukraine . Rather than extortion, the goal may be to plant the seeds of future sabotage, experts said.

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Ukraine Power Company Says It Was Hit by a Second Cyber Attack - Fortune

The cyber attack that crippled computer systems in Ukraine and other countries this week employed a ruse the appearance of being ransomware that seems designed to deflect attention from the attackers true identity, security researchers said.

And many companies initially fell for it.

The first reports out of cybersecurity firms on Monday, when news of the attack hit, was that a new variant of WannaCry, a virus that encrypted data and demanded a ransom to restore it, was on the loose.

In fact, a number of researchers said this week, the malware which researchers are calling NotPetya does not encrypt data, but wipes its victims computers. If the data is not backed up, its lost, they said.

It definitely wasnt ransomware and wasnt financially motivated, said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, a cybersecurity firm, which has analyzed the virus. The goal was to cause disruption in computer networks.

Moreover, the email address to make a payment to retrieve data is no longer accessible, said Matt Suiche, a hacker and founder of Comae Technologies, a cybersecurity firm.

He said in a blog post this week that the ransomware feint was probably a way to make people think some mysterious hacker group was behind the attack rather than a nation state.

The fact of pretending to be a ransomware while being in fact a nation-state attack ... is in our opinion a very subtle way for the attacker to control the narrative of the attack, Suiche said.

Security researchers cautioned that it is too early to know for sure who is behind it. But some say that the targeting and distribution method of the malware point to Russia.

More than half the victimized computers were in Ukraine, including banks, energy firms and an airport.

Russia, which has annexed Crimea and has backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, has carried out an aggressive campaign of cyberattacks and harassment there.

In December, Russian government hackers disrupted the power grid in Kiev. A year earlier, they knocked out power in western Ukraine.

In this case, to get into victims computers, attackers infected a financial software program in Ukraine, called MEDoc, that delivers software updates to businesses through the Internet.

Thats called a watering hole attack, which targets users who navigate to the site for updates or to browse. It is also a tactic that Russian government hackers have used in the past to compromise industrial control system networks, Williams noted.

MEDoc is one of only two software options Ukrainian businesses have to pay their taxes, noted Lesley Carhart, an information security expert.

This was a clever choice for several reasons, she noted in a blog post, including that the distribution base within the country was extremely comprehensive as many companies used the software.

NotPetya did not spread across the open Internet, she said in an email. Its tactic was to compromise a few computers inside a network once the hacker got in, say, by delivering the malware through MEDoc. Then it could rapidly spread to other computers in the same network using a variety of other methods.

While most patient zero computers were in Ukraine ... the corporate networks those computers [connect to] could potentially span the globe, and infection could also spread to any customers, partners, or vendors with whom they had unrestricted network connections and shared accounts, she said.

That might explain how U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, the Danish shipping firm Maerskeven and the Russian oil company Rosneft became infected.

The Rosneft infection might be an unintended consequence collateral damage, Williams said.

Valentyn Petrov, head of the information security service at Ukraines National Security and Defense Council, said that the attacks timing, on the eve of Ukraines Constitution Day, indicated this was a political attack.

We are in an interesting test phase in which Russia is using modern cyberweapons, Petrov said, and everyone is interested to see how it is working and how threats can be countered.

David Filipov in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Ukraine's ransomware attack was a ruse to hide culprit's identity, researchers say - Washington Post