Commentary

Making sense of the national elections in Ukraine that occurred nearly a year ago is of great importance for Ukrainians and for those involved in understanding the Ukrainian polity. Initially, many pundits concluded that Ukrainians sought and got a new, young face unblemished by politics. Becoming belatedly apparent is the fact that the new political leadership lacks a basic understanding of running a country, much less reforming it. The new government has not broken with its populist messaging during the campaign and refuses to speak squarely with the citizenry...

Marika Panchuk has spent much of her life listening to wartime stories about her father, Bohdan Panchuk, and meeting people across Canada who owe their lives to him. “Through the years people have certainly come up to me and said, ‘I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for your father,’ ” Ms. Panchuk, 69, recalled from her home in Winnipeg. “There certainly was a bond between everyone who was there. But there wasn’t a lot of talk about details.” Indeed, the story of Mr. Panchuk and the Ukrainian Canadian Servicemen’s Association – the group he co-founded during the Second World War – has been largely forgotten. And yet the former schoolteacher from Saskatchewan, who enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1939 and landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in 1944, became a key figure in helping more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees come to Canada after the war. The exploits of Mr. Panchuk and the UCSA were set to be recognized on Friday as part of Britain’s 75th-anniversary celebration of the victory in Europe, or VE Day. A service was planned at St. James’s Church in London to unveil a stained glass window in honour of the association, which operated out of the church’s vicarage...

A year ago, a beaming Volodymyr Zelensky strolled into his campaign headquarters to the theme song of the popular TV sitcom in which he played an accidental president. Confetti showered from the rafters and a crowd of supporters erupted in applause. He had just won Ukraine's presidential runoff election with 73 percent of the vote, the largest tally in the country's history. The moment is captured in a slickly produced 50-minute video released by his office on April 21, the anniversary of the election. More of a public-relations puff piece than a documentary film, it sometimes resembles the sitcom and shines an uncritical light on Zelensky's first year in office...

International attention is now fully focused on the fight against COVID-19. The topic of Russian aggression against Ukraine has rarely hit the front pages of global mass media even before that. At the same time, Russia has stepped up its efforts to take advantage of the coronavirus momentum, either through the PR support of its not always helpful assistance to Western countries, or through calls to lift sanctions. What should Ukraine prepare for? What to expect from Russia? How will the EU and the US behave? The New Europe Center addressed the experts with the question “How does the pandemic affect the negotiations on Donbas?”...

As war-torn and pandemic-hit Ukraine entered April 2020, the last thing the country needed was more drama. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. For much of the month, the coronavirus crisis and the ongoing conflict with Russia were both temporarily overshadowed by a spate of forest fires in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone that generated lurid international headlines and plunged Kyiv into apocalyptic gloom. These blazes exposed Ukraine’s unpreparedness for such emergencies and served as a grim warning of what may lie ahead during the long summer months in a country parched by an abnormally warm winter season that saw record high temperatures and virtually no snow. When news of forest fires in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone first started to emerge in the days following April 4, it soon became a hot topic on Ukrainian social media (no pun intended)...

As April began, the official number of coronavirus cases in Ukraine continued to rise slowly but surely. While several significant clusters have been identified, the overall outbreak has yet to mirror the scale of the crisis witnessed elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, forecasts for Ukraine remain grim, with many believing that a chronic lack of testing and widespread misdiagnosis of patients are combining to mask the true extent of the epidemic in the country. Crucially, there is a sense that the Ukrainian authorities have failed to make use of the vital weeks at their disposal since the emergency began to unfold internationally during the first few months of 2020. Rather than address the material shortcomings of the...

At times of national crisis, a government must project a unified front of competent leadership that engenders calm, confidence, and competence. These are the characteristics that Winston Churchill’s leadership illustrated on the eve of an imminent attack by the Germans at the beginning of World War II. His wisdom was evident in his ability to form a coalition of diverse political persuasions and extremely strong personalities into a unified team. In Ukraine however, recently published articles reveal glaring weaknesses in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team – particularly with regard to the country’s health minister. This is a minister whose most prominent statements to date regarding the spread of the coronavirus include a public pronouncement that most of Ukraine’s elderly population will die and the need to declare a state of emergency to make...

The coronavirus may hit Ukraine hard. With its anemic health care system, large elderly population, and less than 1,000 life-saving ventilators in the country, all bets are off. Ukraine’s leaders have rightly closed airports and public transport. On March 22, the Office of the President of Ukraine issued a short video featuring First Lady Olena Zelenskyy and three other famous mothers giving their tips for staying healthy during the pandemic. The ninety-second video was remarkable in whom it did not feature. There was not a man or father. Instead, it’s all up to Ukraine’s tough and heroic women to weather the pandemic and keep their children and country safe. “Women are the...

Ukraine has gone into a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As of Tuesday, the country is completely closed to foreigners. All international air traffic has stopped and Ukraine’s land borders are closed, too. Ukrainian citizens stuck abroad have been instructed to go to their nearest consulate so they can get a seat on a chartered flight home. All domestic air, train, and bus travel has been suspended. Here in the capital city of Kyiv, the only businesses allowed to stay open were grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations. The government has ordered everything else closed. Schools, gyms, malls, movie theaters, barbershops, museums. Everything. The ...

As COVID-19 shakes down stock markets around the globe, Ukraine is putting on a brave front. Prime Minister Denys Shmygal claimed on March 11 that Ukraine was prepared for the world economic crisis “better than ever before.” “We have great liquidity in banks, high gold reserves, we have a pretty positive dialogue with the International Monetary Fund,” said Shmygal. However, with the world economy slowing down and lurching towards recession, Ukraine’s economy is about to take a hit, too. It will face additional pressure from expensive foreign lending and decreasing exports. To make matters worse, Ukraine has a new government that has been on the job for just 10 days. There is low confidence that it is prepared to take on the crisis...