Commentary

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America's Kharkiv mission consisted of 11 persons who came from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. They monitored in four election districts within the City of Kharkiv (#s 168,169,171, 173) and two election districts (#'s 175 and 180). District #175 was specifically suggested because of its proximity to Russia and suspicions raised by local Kharkiv NGO's regarding probabilities of voter fraud or irregularities. The general consensus was that the elections were conducted in a reasonably free and democratic fashion excepting some irregularities: Several precincts in electoral district # 175 failed to display properly the voting bloc/party posters bearing the names and photos of the first five candidates of each bloc/party and the platform. In two precincts visited the...

There is a line in William Shakespeare's “Henry VI, Part 2” spoken by Dick the Butcher, which has been exploited for centuries to embellish lawyer jokes, “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”Shakespeare may have been critical of lawyers for excessive fees and frivolous lawsuits, but given the context and the character of Dick the Butcher, the playwright probably portrayed lawyers positively as guardians of the rule of law. Whichever interpretation one subscribes to, it is indisputable that the profession and its representatives carry significant weight, both good and bad, particularly in developing civil...

Recently I was in Ukraine for the early parliamentary elections. This was my fourth time participating as a member of a Canadian election observation mission, and it many ways it was not unlike my previous three experiences - except for a few stark differences. My first mission was in October 2012 for the regularly scheduled parliamentary elections. Since then I had returned for the December 2013 parliamentary repeat elections...

The recent Milan Summit with Ukraine, Russia and the European Union underscores once again why simple diplomacy may not be the solution to the current Ukraine-Russia crisis. That was strikingly evident from remarks made by Russian President Putin questioning arrogantly the sovereignty of Ukraine so that even Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel felt compelled to reprimand the Russian President reminding him of the Budapest Agreement of 1994. She could have mentioned many more agreements and treaties to which Russia or its predecessor the USSR was a signatory. A signature on a legally binding document means nothing to Putin or Russia. Ukraine's President Poroshenko, also present in Milan, is not delusional. He know that the only way to stop Russia's aggression is through deterrence, not diplomacy or an appeal to Russia's sense of...

Amid the relative lull in the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian military specialists say Russia may soon re-invade Ukraine to seize a critical overland supply route to Crimea. But some analysts and officials in the West are less worried. In the end, says military analyst Ihor Kozak, we have to guess. Still, the dangers in any new Russian invasion are so great that the US government should take four steps quickly to forestall it, according to Kozak. Senior Ukrainian retired generals and other analysts in the country say Putin has powerful strategic reasons to drive deeper into Ukraine with Russian and proxy forces that reportedly were reinforced today on Ukraine's Sea of Azov coastline. By driving west 225 miles (375 kilometers) along...

Many policy makers and political analysts have compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory – Crimea – with Hitler’s aggression against Czechoslovakia and the 1938 Anschluss of Austria. An analysis of the unprecedented actions of Putin in modern European history demonstrates the striking similarity between the strategy of the Nazi Führer and the current leader of the Kremlin, notwithstanding differences in time periods and circumstances. HITLER’S THEORIES… In 1940, by which time the flame of the Second World War was burning strong, and still when Stalin was an ally of the Führer, a book was published in London titled “Hitler Speaks.” A year later a new book...

Don't look now, but Moscow is winning the media war. Since the start of the crisis over Ukraine some four months ago, Russia has waged a massive, sustained media campaign to shape global perceptions about events taking place on the ground there. This offensive—carried out en masse via state-run outlets like Russia Today and through an onslaught of print, radio and television reports—has included everything from blatant mischaracterizations of Ukraine's political parties to outright fabrications about the extent of the pro-Russian sentiment that exists in the south and east of the country. The effort is unprecedented in scope. According to Russian political commentator Igor Eidman, it amounts to the "biggest information special operation" in modern history. And, up until now, it has gone on...

Many policy makers and political analysts have compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory – Crimea – with Hitler’s aggression against Czechoslovakia and the 1938 Anschluss of Austria. An analysis of the unprecedented actions of Putin in modern European history demonstrates the striking similarity between the strategy of the Nazi Führer and the current leader of the Kremlin, notwithstanding differences in time periods and circumstances. HITLER’S THEORIES… In 1940, by which time the flame of the Second World War was burning strong, and still when Stalin was an ally of the Führer, a book was published in...

Ukraine was invaded by Russia and has been dismembered. What happened was not an intervention or an incursion. The Kremlin’s black deeds were not a “stealth war,” nor a Cold War. It was bloodthirsty hot. Ukraine’s Crimea has been under Russian military occupation since March. Heavy weapons fired from inside the Russian Federation have killed Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. More recently, Russian armour and aircraft attacked defending Ukrainian units. Tellingly, POWs were exchanged. Ukraine still faces an (ex)-KGB man turned president-in-perpetuity who barks on how Kyiv ‘s government is “Nazi” even as he parades about cobbling together an ethnic Russian empire. Is “Putler,” as some Ukrainians have...

Comparisons of Vladimir Putin to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin are exaggerations, but only because President Putin operates in an era of forced transparency. The world has changed so dramatically that today, if Stalin's GULAG and Hitler's concentration camps were to be exposed to billions on daily news programs, that could not but diminish the numbers of victims as well as the degree of atrocity. Certainly, this development does not make Vladimir Putin any less of a psychopath, only less lethal. Putin has manifested that President Obama's and Secretary Clinton's Russia reset policy announced some five years ago was delusional. Still that reset was predicated on earlier policy which had failed to recognize that the U.S.S.R. was merely a variation of the Russian empire and with the U.S.S.R.'s demise, the same aggressor had merely changed its name. Certainly, even...