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26.03.2012
Just when did people start referring to the inner circle around President Viktor Yanukovych as “The Family”? The term is now commonplace, but my impression is that it started entering the political vocabulary of Ukraine about six to twelve months ago, when son Oleksandr joined Viktor Senior and Viktor Junior to form a triumvirate of power holders and all three began promoting their buddies to positions of authority in the government or to positions of unbounded rapaciousness in the economy... |
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26.03.2012
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Gryshchenko’s recent response to the opinion article of five E.U. foreign ministers was a paradigm reminiscent of Soviet diplomacy. Granted it was amusing because it was so egregious. After all, Gryshchenko is a copycat of Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov and they are alumni of the same school. Perhaps the most entertaining statement is in the introduction where Gryshchenko states, “for me it is not perception that matters but facts.” He then submits five misrepresentations, spins them like an old Soviet apparatchik, and offers them as a diplomatic rebuke to his foreign counterparts. Having spent time in the West, Gryshchenko cannot possibly believe that anyone is buying this nonsense, but nonetheless, he feels personally satiated because he feels he has one- upped his detractors... |
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23.03.2012
Much has been accomplished since women-libbers started burning bras some 50 years ago. Yet, as the world marked another International Women’s Day on March 8, it was clear that the struggle is not over. Take Rush Limbaugh, for instance, and his sexual slurs against a law student. He apologized but major sponsors of his radio show are withdrawing support: women matter. But not in Ukraine. There, the violation of human rights, women’s in particular, is endemic. Not only have its leaders failed to address issues like equality in the workforce, equal pay for work of equal value, or sharing family and household responsibilities, their pejorative language stemming from an antiquated mindset tells the tale... |
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23.03.2012
“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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20.03.2012
Ukrainians like to blame their country’s ills on “Moscow and the Muscovites,” but the UK’s highly respected Royal Institute of International Affairs (a.k.a. Chatham House) has just provided good grounds for thinking that their paranoia may be justified. Take a look at the January 2012 briefing paper, “A Ghost in the Mirror: Russian Soft Power in Ukraine,” by two Kyiv-based analysts—Alexander Bogomolov and Oleksandr Lytvynenko. Bogomolov is president of the Association of Middle East Studies, while Lytvynenko is director of research projects at the Foreign and Security Policy Council. Neither is a “nationalist hothead.” Both are sober establishment men... |
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20.03.2012
The newspaper headline reads, “Nazi dies, avoiding jail time”. By any measure John Demjanjuk was not a Nazi. By his worst accusers he was a Prisoner of War forced to work in a Nazi concentration camp. The article concludes, “Demjanjuk was the first man in Germany to be convicted for serving as a guard at a death camp – but without evidence of being involved in any specific murders.” How consistent! Over thirty-six years – there was never any evidence... |
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09.03.2012
The latest Ukrainian film release “He Who Went Through Fire” or as in the official film trailer’s title “Fire Crosser” maybe just the blockbuster hit that Ukrainians are wanting to see. Insightmedia Producing Center in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine, and specifically the State Service for Cinematography financed this film in the hopes of finding a movie hero that appeals to a wide range of Ukrainian movie goers, a “Ukrainian Rambo” you might say, except a real one and find him they did in the most unexpected of all places, in Montreal, Canada. Film maker Mykhailo Illienko worked on this full-length feature film several years. It has all the elements of a great cinematic tale. “Fire Crosser” is not a documentary but it is based on historical realities. It’s about a highly decorated Soviet Ukrainian squadron leader who is captured by the Germans in WW II and considered missing in action. He manages to escape German captivity and cross impossible front lines to return to his squadron only to be arrested and hauled off to Siberia as a traitor. This time he manages to escape Russian imprisonment and ends up in Canada to become a Mohawk chief all the while maintaining his Ukrainian cultural identity... |
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09.03.2012
“Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933”. Series “Poland and Ukraine in 30-40’s of the XX Century. Unknown documents from special services archives”. Volume VII. Warsaw-Kyiv, 2009. (In English). The presented volume consists of 230 documents from Ukrainian and Polish archives. 134 documents come from the archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), 58 from various state archives in Ukraine and the remaining 38 documents were obtained from Polish archives that originated in Polish diplomatic and military sources. With the exception of about a dozen of Polish documents, all of them have never been published before... |
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09.03.2012
The Strategic Foresight Institute (SFI) kicked off its 2012 Speakers Series at St Vladimir Institute in Toronto on Thursday Feb 2, 2012 with Dr Lada. L. Roslycky, from Kyiv. The goal of the SFI 2012 Speaker Series is to highlight geostrategic topics that will play an important role in the next 6-12 months and may not be on everyone’s radar screen yet. Dr. Roslycky’s topic in Toronto was the focus of her recently completed dissertation: National Security, the Political Criminal Nexus and Separatism in the post-Soviet States in the Black Sea Region, with a special focus on the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine... |
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09.03.2012
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is to meet with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at NATO's Chicago summit in May 2012, reads the Ukrainian president's letter of congratulations to Rasmussen on his birthday, which has been published by the president's press service. "I strongly believe that the constructive partnership between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will develop in future based on trust and mutual understanding. I hope that I will have the opportunity to meet with you in May this year during NATO's summit in Chicago to discuss important cooperation issues," reads the letter... |
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