Commentary

On May 22, prior to the arrival of Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid in Ukraine, a rally in support of political prisoner Oleh Sentsov unfolded near the Presidential Administration building. Art professionals, film directors, civic and human rights activists held posters and stood with their ears plugged. This day marked the ninth day of the hunger strike launched by the Ukrainian film director Sentsov, who is being confined in a solitary cell of the Bely Medved prison camp in Labytnangi, Russia...

Violence is on the rise in eastern Ukraine again. There have been a number of civilian casualties and a massive number of ceasefire violations. Some have said that last week was the worst of all the fighting in 2018. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s army took control over the Donbas operation in April and the talks between US Ambassador Kurt Volker, US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, and Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov seem to have broken down. In addition, Ukraine faces presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019...

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced on April 17 that Ukraine might have an independent, unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church as early as July 28—the anniversary of Kyivan Rus’ adoption of Christianity. He made this prediction after the Ukrainian parliament voted to support the president’s efforts to convince Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to grant autocephalous status to the combined Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC)-Kyiv Patriarchate and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church...

Research historian Tanja Penter was visiting from Heidelberg, Germany and welcomed at UCRDC on March 13-14, 2018, which included an interview. Ms. Penter was searching for materials on the Holodomor Famine Genocide in Soviet Ukraine 1932-33, particularly, first-hand diary accounts, personal letters or oral history interviews about violence perpetrated against individuals or groups of persons. Similarly, she was also keen to come across eye-witness accounts of Nazis and Soviets (and those complicit with them) to commit atrocities of personal violence in occupied Ukraine during World War II. First-hand accounts are preferred for their immediacy and accuracy of events over later made recollections, such as those found in memoirs, where memory sometimes could become compromised...

On 22-23 February 2018, Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) President Eugene Czolij fulfilled an official visit to Vienna, Austria, where he addressed a Side Event of the 17th Winter Session of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly titled “Violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Crimea”, and discussed current Ukrainian issues with high-ranking OSCE officials and delegates from participating states. On 22 February 2018, the UWC President addressed a Side Event of the Parliamentary Assembly organized by the Permanent Delegation of Ukraine to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the UWC Mission to International Organizations in Brussels...

Oleksiy Kanarskyy, a twenty-five-year old Ukrainian, never thought he would celebrate January 1 in freedom. His hopes had faded during three years of detention in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, after endless promises of a prisoners' exchange between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists. But on December 27, 2017, the largest prisoner swap since the conflict broke out in 2014 brought him and seventy-three other Ukrainian detainees to freedom, in exchange for over 200 insurgents...

Last week the Senate of Poland voted for the bill “On Amendments to the Law on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, and Some Other Laws.” This step aroused criticism on the part of Kyiv and righteous indignation of Jerusalem. The US State Department also called on the Polish government to reconsider the bill because it can undermine the freedom of speech in the country and set up a new diplomatic barrier...

In these past two years, we have become party to feuds with our closest neighbours, with the community of allied countries and with the Polish State’s strategic partners. Each successive conflict is stirred up in the name of imaginary defending Poland against an imaginary attack of the country’s interests and good name, obsessively reverting to the reality of a war which happened four generations ago. Out of an aversion towards one’s own State, all achievements of the past twenty five years, during which the reborn Republic of Poland participated in joint creation of a system of European alliances and with consequent determination and effectiveness turned into reality a historic reconciliation with Germans, with the Jewish nation and with the Ukrainian nation, are being thwarted...

Ottawa - James Bezan, Member of Parliament for Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman, released the following statement regarding the 4th Anniversary of the tragic shootings which took the lives of over one hundred Ukrainians during the Revolution of Dignity: “Today we remember the lives of the Heavenly Hundred who were senselessly murdered while peacefully protesting against the corrupt Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych. After four years of rampant corruption, the continued violation of democratic rights, and President Yanukovych blatant disregard of the European aspirations of his own people, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian’s took to the streets to call for the resignation of President Yanukovych...

Early in February the Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, Dr. Eric Hoskins, together with MPP Yvan Baker, travelled to Ukraine to meet with President Poroshenko, Vice Prime Minister Zubko, and Acting Minister of Health Dr. Ulana Suprun. Ukraine is currently planning vital health care reforms to transform the way care is provided to its citizens. Those reforms were discussed in meetings between government officials from the Ontario and Ukrainian governments, and follows a series of consultations between the two parties over the past few months. In November 2017 a bilateral meeting between Minister Suprun, Minister Hoskins, and MPP Baker highlighted telehealth and telemedicine as important potential concepts for reform in Ukraine...