Politics

29.08.2011 CLASH OF WILLS The 20th anniversary of Ukrainian independence on Aug. 24 was marked by clashes and a brief standoff between riot police and protesters as tensions are running higher over the prolonged detention of several opposition figures. Leaders from 12 opposition parties gathered at the monument to Taras Shevchenko in downtown Kyiv. They tore into President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration in passionate speeches to a crowd of roughly 5,000 supporters...

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27.06.2011 GEORGIA: CREATING BLACK LIST FOR SOVIET POLITICAL ELITE, KGB COLLABORATORS Georgia has become the first post-Soviet country outside of the Baltics to ban former KGB operatives and senior Communist Party and Komsomol officials from holding public office. While many Georgians welcome the move, some critics worry that the measure could easily lead to civil rights abuses...

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13.11.2010 UKRAINIAN CANADIANS CALL FOR RESPECT FOR UKRAINE’S NATIONAL DIGNITY On September 22, 2010 Ukrainian Canadians gathered at a Vigil before the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa to defend Ruslan Zabily and to express their concern over the policies of the administration of Ukraine’s President, Victor Yanukovych. Organized by the Canadian Conference in Support of Ukraine (CCSU) and supported by the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union (UCSU), the participants displayed signs calling for the removal of the Minister of Education, Tabachnyk, and the head of the Institute of National Memory, Soldatenko, and the head of the SBU, Khoroshkovsky. Other signs called for the government to stop falsifying Ukrainian history and tell the truth about Soviet Russian crimes in Ukraine, for the President to acknowledge that the Holodomor of 1932-33 was an act of genocide, and for...

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13.11.2010 “BACK TO THE USSR” IN UKRAINE OR THE ART OF MAKING EXCISIONS FROM A HISTORY TEXTBOOK When today’s government was in opposition, not that long ago, they criticized the “Orangists” for excessive control over the humanities spheres. Nevertheless, on the basis of their own first steps, the new leadership demonstrated that they have now inherited control of this area. In fact, discussions about repressions, the Holodomor ( genocide by famine in Ukraine, 1932-33), UPA, and other aspects of the Ukrainian past have not diminished in society; instead omniscient politicians rather than professional historians now put forward the primary interpretations of these events. Accustomed to the idea that in Ukrainian politics “the winner takes all,” the new regime has decided to widen its governance to include the historical past. The newly elected president--who notwithstanding the facts of academic research, international recognition, Ukrainian legal decision, and...

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12.09.2010 A LETTER TO MEDVEDEV We are writing to you on behalf of the Commission on Human and Civil Rights of the Ukrainian World Congress. The matters of concern include the recent efforts of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation to use the justice system in order to close down the Federal National-Cultural Autonomy “Ukrainians of Russia” (FNCA). It has come to our attention that the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation is alleging three breaches of the law on the part of the FNCA: statements made by Valerii Semenenko of Moscow, the co-chair of the FNCA, on Radio Liberty; participation by FNCA co-chairs Valerii Semenenko and Vasilii Babenko of Ufa in the international scholarly conference “Ukrainian Studies in Russia: history, status and development”, which was...

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12.09.2010 UKRAINE’S DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE Ukraine’s Foreign Minister recently promulgated a new “modernized” foreign policy which has been evolving since President Victor Yanuykovich took office. This unambiguous position statement should be serious cause for concern for the people of Ukraine and the world’s democracies interested in cultivating a Western style democracy in Ukraine. Two components, in particular, comprise this declaration. The first is an unequivocal pronouncement of Ukraine’s non-aligned status, but not “a synonym entirely of the Switzerland brand,” points out the Foreign Minister. This distancing from NATO is softened somewhat by assurances of continued cooperation with NATO. Still the current regime’s predilection in favor of Russia makes NATO cooperation lip service. Lest there be any ambiguity, the Foreign Minister vows to honor “longstanding and closest historical ties with Russia.” “Paradoxically” in the Minister’s own words...

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09.07.2010 THE POLITICS OF APPEASEMENT Russian muscle flexing in Georgia in August 2008 and more recently in Ukraine, installing its lackeys as rulers, has caught the attention of the international community. However, the reaction has been acquiescing with little manifest indignation and no protest. The relevance of a Soviet manufactured and Russian rebuilt plane with almost one hundred Polish leaders killed to this Russian show of force has yet to be determined. What is largely unknown is how the Kremlin internally has directed police tactics against its ethnic communities in Russia. Russia has never manifested much love for its non-Russian population, but recent steps have become brazenly hostile, yet with seemingly no protest from international structures in which Russia is a member...

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25.01.2010 THE DIASPORA NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO THE THREAT OF A YANUKOVYCH VICTORY IN THE 2010 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS The Ukrainian-Canadian and Ukrainian-American diasporas have yet to appreciate that the upcoming 17 January 2010 presidential elections will be a replay of the 2004 elections. Five years ago Viktor Yushchenko faced Viktor Yanukovych in the dirtiest and bitterest election in Ukraine’s history. In six months Yulia Tymoshenko will face the same Yanukovych in what will become another battle of wills between two different world views, European and Eurasian. As with all Ukrainian presidential elections, there will be many other presidential candidates but this should not distract us from the fact that the main contest – as in 2004 – will be between the two main candidates. This time...

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05.12.2009 INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN RECALLING GENOCIDAL GREAT FAMINE LAUNCHED An educational campaign recalling the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, known as the /Holodomor/, was launched today. Thousands of postcards are being sent to embassies and consulates internationally, urging governments to officially recognize that this famine was an act of genocide perpetrated by the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. Canada is one of the few countries that has already recognized the /Holodomor /as genocidal. Drawing upon the writings of Dr. Raphael Lemkin, the "father of the [UN] Genocide Convention," who described the "destruction of the Ukrainian nation" as the "classic example of Soviet genocide," the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation and...

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05.12.2009 “CANADA AND UKRAINE’S SEARCH FOR SECURITY” The 20th century saw two horrific world wars that destroyed over 100 million lives and produced some of humanity’s greatest horrors: the sea of mud in which tens of thousands were mustard gassed in World War I, World War II’s Auschwitz; we could go on. Both of these world conflagrations began in Europe, more precisely, in Central and Easter Europe, with attempts to change European borders by the force of arms. Subsequent to the horrors of World War II, we lived for over 50 years in a world of relative peace where world wars were avoided; a world in which Washington and Moscow, the two pre-eminent world powers, tested each other through revolutions, coup d’états, or proxy wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America. None of these led to a world at war as Europe remained in...

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