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17.04.2012
For all his pretensions of being a “transformative” president, Barack Obama’s foreign policy prescriptions are rooted in a deeply conservative and nostalgic tradition. When it comes to Russia, the tradition this White House channels most is that of Richard Nixon. This seemingly incongruous resemblance was well illustrated in a recent controversy over the nullification of a Nixon-era piece of legislation, the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which binds U.S. trade relations with autocratic regimes to those regimes’ human rights records. Jackson-Vanik is the thorn in the side of Obama’s “reset” policy with Russia, which wants to accede to the World Trade Organization—a major component of the reset... |
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05.04.2012
“I am again and repeatedly an innocent victim of the Germans ... I find it an unbearable arrogance of Germany, that Germany is misusing me to turn the attention away from the war crimes committed by Germans, to make them forgotten and against the truth to claim that the true criminals of the Nazi crimes were me, the Ukrainians and the European neighbours of Nazi Germany.” --John Demjanjuk during his trial in Munich, Germany during which he was convicted of being an accessory to the Nazi murders of 27,900 Jews while serving as a guard in the World War II death camp in Sobibor, Poland, after the former Soviet Red Army soldier was taken prisoner of war by the Germans in 1942... |
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05.04.2012
 Good morning and welcome to the Ukraine at a Crossroads Conference in the Canada’s national capital. Canada is an ideal spot for this conference for many reasons: 1. Canada is home to one of the largest and most influential Ukrainian diaspora’s in the world. 2. Canada has historically enjoyed a special relationship with Ukraine and continues to consider Ukraine a foreign policy priority. 3. Canada’s interests in Ukraine are based upon values and principles that have been consistent and reliable for decades. These values and principles are objective and free of other external influences such as Russian gas or other geopolitical considerations. 4. Canada is an emerging global power and has demonstrated its commitment to democracy and human rights around the world... |
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05.04.2012
UNITED NATIONS – The World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations (WFUWO) hand-delivered two letters to international leaders regarding the matter of the unfair trial and incarceration of former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko. Both letters were delivered during the recent 56th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which ended on March 12 in New York City... |
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05.04.2012
 Several dozen well-wishers and VIPs gathered in the private dining room of Kingston's River Mill Restaurant on Friday, 9 March, to honour Danylo Luciuk, presented with the "Mykola Mikhnovsky Medal of Merit" for his more than half century of service in the cause of Ukraine's independence and ongoing commitment to the good of the Ukrainian community in Canada... |
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05.04.2012
 At their National Convention several years ago, the Women’s Association for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine (WADFFU) voted to undertake a project in memory of the millions who perished in the Holodomor — Soviet-induced Famine-Genocide of Ukraine in 1932-1933. Several of the members had lost their families during this genocide and they themselves had barely survived. This winter the project came to fruition with the publication of Olha Mak’s historical novel Stones Under the Scythe in the English language. The book was originally published in Ukrainian in Canada in 1973 and later in Ukraine in 1994 and 2004 as Kaminnia pid kosoyu... |
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30.03.2012
I recently came across the saddest commentary on Ukraine’s eastern provinces that I have ever encountered. It’s a video blog by one Stanislav Tsikalovsky from the city of Luhansk. The 34-year-old Tsikalovsky goes by the name of Proctologist. His slogan is: “Believe me, because madmen always speak the truth.” The truth that recently caught the attention of some 30,000 Ukrainians came in a video Tsikalovsky made after a trip to Lviv, in western Ukraine... |
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27.03.2012
Two years have passed since Viktor Yanukovych was inaugurated as president. Since then Ukraine has changed greatly. After hardly any legislation being adopted during five orange years, the country has seen febrile legislative activity. The number of government changes has also been large. But the trajectory is worrisome. With the latest appointments in January and February, a clear pattern is evident: Yanukovych is concentrating power into the hands of his family. The number of oligarchic groups in the government has steadily been reduced, and only two – the Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov groups - are left standing. There is little reason to believe they will survive... |
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26.03.2012
Vladimir Putin’s victory in Russia’s presidential election was marred with fraud, but nevertheless he appears to have a mandate from the Russian voters to rule for another six-year term. If re-elected in 2018, he may rule until 2024. Regardless of the outcome of the November U.S. elections, a clear Russia policy is necessary, and it should not be the ill-fated “reset,” which naively bet on President Dmitry Medvedev’s staying in power... |
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26.03.2012
A news item on my computer screen reports that John Demjanjuk, a convicted war criminal, passed away at age of 91 in a German nursing home, still protesting his innocence. I look at a letter in my archives I wrote to my literary agent, the late Stanley Colbert, 25 years ago. In the fall of 1987, John Demjanjuk was a retired auto worker from Cleveland, on trial for his life. A man of Ukrainian birth who settled in America after the war, Demjanjuk had been stripped of his American citizenship and extradited to Israel in 1986 to face charges of having been "Ivan the Terrible," a guard of legendary brutality at the infamous Nazi death camp of Treblinka... |
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