Commentary

Mr. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Lib): Mr. Speaker, Crimea’s seductive beauty has enchanted visitors over the centuries. It is also the ancestral home of the Crimean Tatars. As blessed as Crimea is in natural beauty, tragic has been the history of its indigenous peoples, the Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars evolved from an amalgam of tribes who have lived in Crimea since time immemorial. The indigenous people of the peninsula came to be known as Tats, a term to describe converts to Islam not of pure Turkic descent. The Tats were the dominant demographic grouping of the peninsula, and along with the neighbouring Nogai Steppe Tatars, they evolved into the ethnicity of the Crimean Tatars...

It is not easy being disabled in Kyiv. It is especially difficult being a disabled child in Kyiv. But, with the help of family and charitable organizations, children with disabilities can experience a full life in a country that is usually seen as unwelcoming of special needs children. This attitude generally stems from the Soviet Union’s lack of compassion for people with disabilities. In 1980 one Soviet representative even went so far as to state in that “There are no invalids in the USSR!” With this state view, it was little surprise that children who were born different were usually placed in orphanages or stayed hidden in the shadows. Soviet infrastructure did not need to build special ramps for wheelchairs since people who needed wheelchairs didn’t exist...

Russia’s war against Ukraine is entering its third year. Every day, Russian and proxy forces in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, shell Ukrainian military positions and civilian areas in towns along the front. Every day, Ukrainian soldiers fight and die to defend their country. Today the people of Ukraine are fighting the only war in Europe simply because Vladimir Putin’s Russia is compelled to control the countries on its border to ensure the principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law do not infect his kleptocratic regime...

The President of Israel Reuven Rivlin was not simply politically incorrect. He came to a foreign country which was honoring among others the victims of his own national greatest tragedy and responded with bad behavior. He denigrated his hosts: "Around 1.5 million Jews were murdered in the territory of modern day Ukraine during the Second World War; in Babi Yar, and in many other places of murder. They shot them in the valleys, in the woods, into pits, into mass grave. Many of the collaborators were Ukrainian, among the most notorious the members of the OUN who carried out pogroms and massacres against the Jews and in many cases handed them over to the Germans. It is true, there were more than 2,500 Righteous Among The Nations, lone candles who shone in the darkness of humanity. Yet the majority remained silent."...

On the invitation of the Prime Minister and Administration of the President of Ukraine, a Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) delegation led by President Eugene Czolij joined commemorative events in Kyiv, Ukraine, in remembrance of the victims of Babyn Yar on the 75th anniversary of this tragedy. In Babyn Yar the Nazis, during their occupation of Ukraine, murdered over one hundred thousand people, including 33,771 Jews executed on 29-30 September 1941. Those who died at the hands of the Nazis in Babyn Yar also included priests, the local intelligentsia, among them Ukrainian poetess Olena Teliha and her husband Mykhailo (a renowned bandurist), editor-in-chief of the newspaper Ukraiinske Slovo Ivan Rohach, Head of the Kyiv municipal administration Volodymyr Bahaziy, and many members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists...

Professor Oleh Wolowyna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill spoke at a seminar titled “What we now know about the Holodomor: New research results” at the University of Toronto on September 15. His presentation addressed the results of research conducted in collaboration with a team of Ukrainian demographers at the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv: Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Pavlo Shevchuk, Alla Kovbasiuk and Nataliia Kulyk. The event was sponsored by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (University of Alberta) and the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (University of Toronto)...

The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), in support of an appeal by the Parliament of Ukraine on 5 October 2016, calls upon the international community, including human rights organizations, to assist with efforts to secure the release of Ukrainian journalists and all political prisoners detained unlawfully by Russian authorities. Roman Sushchenko, a Paris-based correspondent with Ukraine's Ukrinform news agency, was arrested in Moscow on 30 September 2016 on charges of espionage while in the Russian Federation on a personal visit. Following closed proceedings on 1 October 2016 the court ordered his detention for two months. Contrary to international norms and a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, Roman Sushchenko was being denied the basic right to see a lawyer and a Ukrainian consul...

Very often, Western policies aimed at propagation and support of democratic values find it hard to show solidarity or guarantee security to the country that is struggling for its democratic values. In such moments the role of European and Western democracies becomes sinister, as they start to acquiesce to an authoritarian regime which jeopardizes neighboring countries. The world stays reluctant and passive. It tries to appease the aggressor instead of stopping it, no matter how harsh the method. Doesn’t it remind you of the Munich Syndrome of 1938? I think that it does, and now it has reached Ukraine...

The National Executive of the League of Ukrainian Canadians welcomes the unanimous passing of the H.R. 5094 “Stability and Democracy for Ukraine Act” by the U.S. House of Representatives on September 21, 2016. The legislation demonstrates the deep understanding and strong commitment on behalf of the United States to address Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine and a threat of a larger military conflict in Eastern Europe. The bill also prohibits the United States from recognizing the Russian Federation’s illegal annexation of Crimea and provides for the maintenance of U.S. sanctions with specific reference to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula...

The revelation that Russia’s intelligence services hacked the computer systems of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in what appears an attempt to weaken her in the U.S. election against Donald Trump may seem like the stuff of conspiracy. But the truth is far more alarming. Russia’s activities aren’t part of a conspiracy. They are elements of an openly stated doctrine — a resurrection of Soviet style political warfare, in which intelligence agencies seek to amplify divisions among their enemies, weakening the Western front by sowing discord and dissent whenever the opportunity presents itself. The political warfare of the Cold War is back — in updated form, with meaner, more modern tools, including a vast state media empire in Western languages, hackers, spies, agents, useful idiots, compatriot groups, and hordes of internet trolls. The target of the hacks wasn’t just Clinton. Nor is Moscow much interested in supporting Trump (willing useful idiot though he may be). What the Russians have in their sights is nothing less than the democratic fabric of American society and the integrity of the system of Western liberal values...