Commentary

Enemies call each other names. They also tell fibs about the foe. I was recently reminded of this as I moved along the frontlines in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. These territories were invaded by the Russians in February 2014. A war, euphemistically described by Kyiv’s politicians as an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation,’ is still being fought there, daily. Vulgarities aside, many Ukrainian soldiers have taken to mocking the so-called “separatists” by calling them vatniks, the name used for the padded winter jackets worn by the Russian military, in this context meaning their opponents are nothing more than a dull-witted bunch of drunks and criminals. For their part the “separatists” and their Russian backers have tried to retaliate, ridiculing Ukrainians by referring to them as ukrop, the word for dill, which many Ukrainians admittedly do enjoy with just about anything they may be eating, from boiled potatoes to borsch. Instead of taking offence, however, Ukraine’s soldiers and even the public have embraced this once-derogatory term for their nation, so robbing it of offensiveness. You can buy a T-shirt declaring yourself an ukrop from many stalls found along the roadway descending from St Andrew’s Church in Kyiv’s upper town to the historically commercial neighbourhood of Podil. I did...

Western governments should take a number of measures to more resolutely support Ukraine’s national security and economic prospects. In recent months, Russia has refrained from triggering another major escalation in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region similar to those that led to the large battles at Ilovaisk in 2014 and Debaltseve in 2015. The Kremlin’s continuing low-intensity warfare against Ukraine is designed to avoid raising broad attention in the West, where many have come to believe that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is frozen...

As the 75th anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army UIA (also known by its Ukrainian acronym UPA) is being observed in Ukraine and throughout the Ukrainian Diaspora, discredited allegations are again being dredged up to defame the UIA, its commander Roman Shukhevych, and the Ukrainian liberation struggle during WWII. One such allegation is that the Nachtigall Battalion, commanded by Roman Shukhevych, carried-out pogroms in Lviv in the summer of 1941...

“Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin, ” Donald Trump tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!” Hours before the two presidents met, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson underlined this tough line on sanctions by appointing Russia hawk Kurt Volker as chief U.S. envoy on Ukraine. Messrs. Trump and Putin made limited progress on Syria, but Moscow has been intensifying its efforts to destabilize Ukraine. Mr. Putin has been reluctant to deploy large military forces, but fighting in Eastern Ukraine claims five or six lives a week. Of late the Kremlin has escalated its aggression with military attacks on civilian targets, assassinations, cyberattacks to cripple the state and economy, and the economic and partial political integration of the occupied region into Russia...

I’m not as good a runner as I used to be. This revelation came somewhere between the ninth and first floors of a murky, bomb-ravaged building located at the edge of no-man’s land in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. I began scrambling downstairs after our sentinel, positioned nearby, yelled “run!” I did not ask why, or linger to consider how only minutes before we had inched up these very same stairs, stepping carefully in each other’s footsteps to avoid setting off any booby-traps secreted to maim, mutilate, or murder anyone scouting this abandoned edifice. Children’s toys, full bottles of alcohol and other seemingly innocuous household items can be the disguised agents of destruction, something I learned a few days earlier at the Ukrainian Armed Forces Demining Centre in Kamyanets-Podilsky. No matter. I ran for my life. It was only after I got outside and turned a corner into the comparative safety of shadows behind the building that I was told a Russian tank had emerged from the distant rubble, maneuvering to take a shot. We didn’t offer the enemy a chance for target practice...

A charge of antisemitism in contemporary Ukraine leveled by Josh Cohen, is belied by the backdrop posted on Reuters in connection with his commentary. President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine came to power in May 2014, defeating rather handily some twenty opponents in a primary scheduled for a runoff except that Mr. Poroshenko managed to garner more than 50% in the first round, rendering round two unnecessary. Mr. Poroshenko is a Ukrainian Jew, albeit one who accepted Christianity as a practicing religion. Mr. Poroshenko is hardly an aberration in Ukrainian politics. The Prime minister of Ukraine is Volodymyr Groysman, a Ukrainian Jew as well and a practicing one. There are only several hundred thousand Jews in Ukraine, a country of some 45million. Neither Mr. Poroshenko's nor Mr. Groysman's background interfered with their rise to political prominence...

Russia is targeting the most capable and dedicated parts of the Ukrainian military. On June 27, Colonel Maksim Shapoval, commander of an elite Ukrainian military intelligence unit, was killed when his car exploded during his morning commute in downtown Kyiv. A few hours later, a massive cyberattack took out computer systems across the city. The next day another car bomb killed a colonel in Ukraine’s Security Service while he was traveling in eastern Ukraine...

A 5-year old child putting his ear to the ground on the grave of his skinny mother (buried without a coffin, merely covered in soil) stood strong not to show a tear. He probably showed off his resilience to his two younger sisters who were hardly able to walk, as their father buried his wife by himself, as the village got deserted as people starved to death... All of this was unveiling in the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine – a country with the richest soil. This heartbreaking scene from “Bitter Harvest” movie has been keeping me awake several nights now, as my own family has been marked by similar horrors in 1932-1933 in Ukraine...

Ukraine managed to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly condemning the violation of human rights in illegally occupied Crimea by Russia. The voting was not particularly impressive or overwhelming. The resolution garnered 70 yea votes with 23 nay and 76 abstentions. Still it was an important vote. All NATO countries voted with Ukraine. The United States led the support which was timely as well particularly as President elect Donald Trump, Putin's close friend is about to take the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States...

Kerry Diotte, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Griesbach is deeply disappointed the majority of Liberals voted to scuttle a bill to recognize an act of genocide against the indigenous people of Ukraine. Diotte's Private Member's Bill proposed to condemn the Soviet Union's 1944 deportation of 200,000 Crimean Tatars as a genocide to be commemorated every May 18. It gained widespread support but was defeated Dec. 13 at second reading in the House of Commons when almost all Liberals voted against it...