Commentary

Empowering Voices, Enriching Heritage: BCU Financial and BCU Foundation, as Shortlist Book Sponsors, lay the groundwork for stories that resonate with hearts and minds across borders. Their support paints a brighter future for literature. BCU Financial and BCU Foundation - Фундація Будучність had the honour to be one of the sponsors of the prestigious literary award - 2024 Kobzar Book Award, organized by the Shevchenko Foundation. The award presentation gala took place on March 21, 2024, at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. BCU Financial Group was represented by the senior management and the teams of BCU Financial, BCU Wealth Management of RJL and BCU Foundation...

Over two years after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians are still fighting valiantly. Two years on, Russian President Vladimir Putin is still spewing baseless propaganda that my country, a country with a Jewish president and a thriving Jewish community, is a Nazi state. There is no more profound symbol to counteract this false portrayal than the recent completion of the Torah scroll of solidarity between Ukraine and Israel, with letters inscribed by their presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Isaac Herzog. This scroll will be a motivating force for the Ukrainian and Jewish communities to unify, closer than ever, to counter the old Soviet playbook and ensure that freedom prevails. But more must be done...

While the Kremlin is trying to link Ukraine to the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, the Islamic State (ISIS), specifically its Afghan branch known as ISIS-K, has claimed responsibility for the shooting at the concert hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region. The Islamic group calling itself the Khorasan State (ISIS-K), named after the old name of a region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan, emerged in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and quickly gained a reputation for extreme brutality. Among the motives for this group to see Russia as its enemy, experts say Moscow’s involvement in the global fight against ISIS and its affiliates, especially through Russian military operations in Syria and its efforts to establish ties with the Afghan Taliban, ISIS-K’s rival on its territory...

At the invitation of Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Yaroslav Hunka went to Ottawa on 22 September 2023 to witness the visit of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. When The Jewish Daily Forward subsequently reported that Hunka had served in the 14 Waffen- Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) – more commonly referred to as the Galicia Division – a controversy erupted. It continues to fester. Criminal vandalism against cemetery monuments to veterans of the Division has jacked up, even as Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine and Ukrainians has escalated. That is not a coincidence. Deplorably, some Canadians have bought into Soviet-era propaganda about the Galicia Division, as regurgitated by operatives of the Russian Federation and their fellow travellers in the West. That has only furthered the goals of a KGB campaign, known as Operation Payback, orchestrated to provoke tensions between the Jewish, Baltic and Ukrainian diasporas over what happened in eastern Europe during the Second World War...

The suggestion from Pope Francis that Ukraine should have the “courage” to raise the “white flag” and negotiate a settlement with (in other words, surrender to) Russia was deeply shocking for Kyiv and its backers. The understandably outraged response from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was that the only flag Kyiv would raise was its own: the yellow and blue of Ukraine. Some may think that the pope’s words are inconsequential to how this war unfolds. It is not the first time Pope Francis has displayed overtly pro-Russian sympathies, nor has the Vatican’s mediation, for instance regarding the liberation of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia, been successful so far. So what if the pope speaks out again about the war, given that his views are already known and his practical efforts to address the humanitarian dimensions of the war...

Almost immediately after the murder of her husband, Yulia Navalnaya announced that she would continue what he did. Now comes the hard part. What exactly will she do? Will she return to Russia and go to jail? Will she expose more corruption in the Russian army (and incidentally make the Russian army more efficient in killing more people in Ukraine)? Will she advocate lifting sanctions on Russia (including sanctions on Russian oligarchs)? Will she organize a national uprising? Will she focus on giving talks and speeches in London, Berlin and other capitals? Time will tell but, most likely, she will..

Imagine the British Prime Minister saying today that the US is an artificial state because its war for independence was arranged and sponsored by France and that, in reality, the US was always part of the UK and should remain so. And all who disagree are Nazis and should be “denazified.” This is precisely the logic Putin uses regarding the history of Ukraine to justify his current war to eradicate Ukraine’s independence and everything Ukrainian. Only the role of France in his propagandist narrative is assumed by Poland. At the same time, Ukraine is constantly described as “part of Russia,” subversively used as a weapon against the “Motherland” by Poles, later by Austria, and now by the USA. For contemporary Europeans and Americans, such reasoning could seem funny or insane. For Ukrainians, it is, too, but its...

Joining communities around the globe, Edmonton’s Ukrainian community marked the tragic second anniversary of russia’s full scale invasion of peaceful Ukraine on February 24, 2024. Approximately 2000 people, gathered at the Alberta Legislature grounds to commemorate the genocide being perpetrated against the Ukrainian Nation. This important event was organized by the Edmonton Branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) in cooperation with the Ukrainian National Federation, Edmonton Branch and the Alberta Provincial Council of the UCC. Edmonton UCC President Yaroslav Broda thanked everyone for standing with Ukraine, including various elected officials. The Nove Zhyttia Choir under the direction of Oleksandra Hryniuk who performed the Canadian and Ukrainian National Anthems opened the program. A moving prayer for Ukraine was delivered by Archpriest Cornell Zubritskу, Dean of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Edmonton. In further remarks, Broda said “ Russia has...

On the night of November 30, 2023, Ukrainian saboteurs detonated an explosion in a key strategic tunnel located on the Baikal Amur Mainline (BAM) railroad in eastern Siberia. The attack on the Severomuysky tunnel is notable not only for the impact it had on Russian rail traffic in the Russian Far East but also because the Ukrainian security services organized and conducted a clandestine strike deep inside Russia at a distance of nearly 4,000 miles from the territory of Ukraine. Attributed to the Ukrainian Security Service, or SBU, the attack is to date one of Kyiv’s boldest infrastructure strikes in the past year marked by repeated raids on Russian bases, factories, and railroads. These attacks include cross-border assaults into Russian territory adjoining Ukraine, such as Belgorod province, and also include aerial attacks on Russian strategic air bases by Ukrainian drones – such as the Tula air-based attack (home to the TU-95 nuclear bombers); and ...

Tucker Carlson is far from being the first Western journalist to have aligned himself with the enemy. There’s a long tradition of the likes of Hitler and Stalin finding pliable Brits and Americans to do their propaganda for them. Russian President Vladimir Putin can be confident he won’t be facing any zingers in his interview with Carlson, due to be broadcast on Thursday night in the U.S. It will probably be more an exercise in sycophancy akin to the softball encounter between Carlson and Donald Trump last August. Indeed, it could be an attempt to map out the contours of another Trump-Putin love-in. After all, Carlson nailed his colors to Putin’s mast long ago. He’s argued ...