Commentary

Ukraine says the Kyiv negotiation with Iran was 'constructive' as the two sides agree on the terms of next round. Ukraine has said its first round of talks with Iran held in Kyiv about the downing of a Ukrainian airliner in January had been "constructive", but he said it was too early to say how much compensation Tehran would agree to pay. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday an Iranian delegation agreed to the terms of next round of talks, which - according to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office - was set for October...

The Soviet regime had a serious image problem in the 1970s and ‘80s. While the communist propaganda apparatus was trying to present Soviet Russia as a normal peaceful state, in the United States and other free countries, people of Ukrainian, Jewish and Baltic origin were working together to expose the repressive and imperialist nature of the communist dictatorship. They picketed Soviet embassies, provided the press with names of prisoners in the Soviet Gulag and demanded freedom for the peoples of the Soviet empire. The Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party assigned the KGB to solve this problem...

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appeared in court on June 18 for a pretrial hearing on charges related to alleged abuse of office during his presidency. This is one of around twenty cases involving the ex-president that are currently being pursued in what critics have labeled a clear-cut case of political persecution. If convicted, Poroshenko could face prison. However, some observers believe it is Ukrainian democracy rather than the country’s ex-leader that is now on trial. The campaign to prosecute Poroshenko is closely linked to his successor, President Zelenskyy, who has made little secret of his antipathy towards the man he replaced last year. Zelenskyy campaigned for the presidency as an anti-establishment figure and promised to bring corrupt high-ranking officials to justice. Poroshenko, who remains Zelenskyy’s closest political rival, is believed to be the current president’s number one target...

One particular of Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarchs, whose identify emerged in the heart of the Trump impeachment saga, is beneath investigation by a US federal grand jury for allegedly laundering hundreds of tens of millions of dollars in US genuine estate, BuzzFeed Information has discovered. Billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky is accused by Ukraine regulators of orchestrating a scheme to siphon funds from the country’s largest lender and funnel it into prime attributes, including landmark place of work towers and steel services across the US. The US grand jury is analyzing the funds of Kolomoisky, a vital supporter of President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a probe that has tracked the money from the Ukrainian bank by way of a maze of offshore businesses to the US, in accordance to two resources acquainted with the inquiry...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the international community must maintain pressure on Moscow to return the land it seized from Ukraine in 2014 – and he thanked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to readmit Russia into the G7. But even though Ukraine is one of Canada’s closest allies, Mr. Zelensky wouldn’t say whether he had supported Ottawa’s failed bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Zelensky said that while he was committed to seeking peace with Vladimir Putin’s Russia – an effort he called “most tricky and difficult” – Ukraine needed its international allies to hold firm during those negotiations. While talks have slowed to a near-stop amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they saw some modest early gains, including several exchanges of prisoners...

I would like to share with you the TRUE story behind this Skoryk earworm. It is a piece of music that TRUE Ukrainians should anathematize. Let me explain. In 1982 a Soviet film, Vysoky Pereval, was released for which the music score was written by Myroslav Skoryk. You can watch it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=n1Mnimpj6BE The director claims that the movie is about heroic events in a Carpathian village during and after WWII. Yes, heroic, but he doesn't say which side is heroic – the Soviet or the Ukrainian side. The story is about a Ukrainian woman (Slavka Petryn), separated from her family during WWII, rescued by the Soviets, indoctrinated with Communism and sent back to her village together with other Soviet agents to create a Stalinist paradise there. She is shocked to discover that her family is with the Ukrainian partisans fighting the Communists. The typical backwater violence ensues as the two sides struggle for supremacy. In the end she is killed, but her orphaned son reaches out to a Russian orphan in a gesture of "eternal brotherhood" as a cloud in the form of a dove floats above them and the Melodiya screams its last phrases...

The Ukrainian media Espreso TV is saying it is being pressured after the Ukrainian state media regulator scheduled an unplanned inspection of the channel. The reason for the inspection is eerily reminiscent of Soviet times: broadcasting programs of the Ukrainian desks of the BBC and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which Ukraine’s National Council on TV and Radio Broadcasting said was a violation. The regulator accused Espreso TV of breaching its license agreement, according to which national audio and visual products should comprise 100% of its broadcast time. According to the regulator, Espreso has allegedly violated the agreement by broadcasting 1 hours and 11 minutes of BBC and RFE/RL programs a day (some 5% of its total broadcast time)...

The Crimean Peninsula has long suffered from water shortages, but these are now often exacerbated by the ever-more frequent winters with little-to-no rain or snow. In the last several months, under Russian occupation, those difficulties have become critical: according to Russian officials, the region has seen its reserves of potable water decline by 60 percent and will entirely run out of supplies of this critical natural resource sometime in July or August (Gazeta.ua, May 21). The situation is creating a serious public health crisis in Crimea and could prompt Moscow, which has few other options, to engage in a new military action against Ukraine to gain access to water supplies, especially as Ukrainian officials and commentators have made clear that Kyiv is not prepared to sell water to the occupation authorities...

Kyiv’s press pack braved a light spring drizzle on May 20 to gather in the gardens of the Ukrainian president’s official residence for a long-awaited event: a press conference with President Zelensky himself. The three-hour Q&A event at Mariyinskiy Palace was held to mark the first anniversary of the Zelensky presidency. Notably, it was only Zelensky’s second formal press conference in the twelve months since his inauguration in May 2019. The occasion itself yielded few major surprises. At one point, Zelensky appeared to backtrack on his campaign commitment to serve just one term as president and suggested he would be willing to seek re-election in 2024. He also offered dark hints of coming legal troubles for his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. However, the real story of the press conference was that it was taking place at all...

A commemorative stained-glass window is planned for St. James's church, in Sussex Gardens, London to honour Ukrainian Canadians who fought in the Second World War. Supplied / Postmedia...