Commentary

I often get asked "How's Ukraine? How's Kyiv?" upon my returns, and I never really know how to respond. Because on the one hand the trendy restaurants popping up everywhere, lively night scene, luxury cars parked on street corners, and weekly festivals would indicate that everything is great, and that war is the furthest thing from anyone's mind. But then, lurking behind these facades are the military hospitals and rehabilitation centres, filled with men and women who have been physically and psychologically traumatized by war, often roaming the hallways or sitting in their rooms with blank stares and empty eyes. There are the...

Feigning concern for the efficacy of Ukraine's foreign policy is a good approach to reach an audience that otherwise would not bother to read obvious disinformation. There are serious flaws in Andreas Umland's recent article in “New Eastern Europe”: Misrepresentations ...the ultra-nationalist, ethnically cleansed and monistic one-part state that the Bandera faction envisaged, at least until the early 1940's, would have itself amounted to an illiberal and totalitarian dictatorship. The OUN was a national liberation movement. At its first congress in 1929 it did not adopt any resolution regarding the form of government of a future state. When the OUN began to address the issue of a...

Today, the British House of Commons unanimously passed the UK Magnitsky sanctions legislation. Following the historic vote, Member of Parliament James Bezan issued the following statement: “Today the United Kingdom became the third country to adopt Magnistky sanctions. The U.K., the U.S., and Estonia each passed their respective bills unanimously. In 2015, the Canadian Parliament unanimously passed its own motion calling for Magnitsky sanctions to be applied to corrupt foreign officials. “In May, I tabled Bill C-267 “Justice for Victims of...

With the upcoming elections in the United States, particularly presidential and congressional, Ukrainian American voters should be raising issues of concern with the candidates. The purpose is to both inform the candidates about those issues and to let the Ukrainian-American electorate know the candidates’ positions. It seems to me that the following issues should be of importance to the Ukrainian-American voter: Personal and sectoral sanctions have had a significant effect on the Russian economy, but have not compelled Russia to withdraw. One of the reasons for this tepid success has been that the economic woes have affected the Russian population but not the oligarchs. In particular, Putin's family and inner circle have been shielded by...

Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, on February 12. It’s the first time the leaders of the two churches have met since the Great Schism almost 1,000 years ago.* There is much more to this meeting than a push for unity from two church leaders. The Russian Orthodox Church is an essential tool for the Russian government. Kirill is allegedly a former KGB agent. Kirill, wrote Stratfor, “has been deeply involved with Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB), and he thinks geopolitically. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has used the political nature of the church to consolidate influence at home and reach out for...

Western analysts have failed to understand Russia for many of the same reasons they failed to understand the Soviet Union: a rejection of normative criteria. Editor’s Note: How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and...

Fighting continues to gradually intensify in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin-backed militants are now using heavy weapons, including tanks, artillery, and ferocious Grad rocket systems, sporadically. Moscow's rationale behind this latest escalation is to achieve a frozen conflict by gradually sabotaging the execution of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement. Russian President Vladimir Putin likely realizes that his offensive in the Donbas has essentially stalled and that for now he cannot take more Ukrainian territory, not without sustaining heavy casualties among his regular military forces and triggering additional Western sanctions. And so...

It was a cold, foggy, and rainy night. The concert was set to begin at four in the afternoon, but by 16:20 it was clear that it would be delayed. People wandered about Khreschatyk Street not knowing what the planned schedule was. Nor did they know what to do with themselves: are we commemorating or celebrating the two year anniversary of the beginning of Euromaidan? November 21, 2015 was – weird. The day began with a 10:00 “meeting” (the kind they had during the Maidan) but it did not generate many attendees. Those who did come out walked up Institutska Street to protest the government. There were shouts and angry cries, but this peaked after a few hours and people melted away. Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Winter on Fire” also premiered in Kyiv and included replica barricades outside the movie theatre. The action, or inaction, occurred later, at...

Ukrainian nationalism was and remains an ideology that sprouted and developed as a national liberation movement in the modern era. It is not possible to designate one founder or main ideologue of Ukrainian nationalism. However, the following individuals contributed substantially to it with the first being perhaps, the foremost in his overall influence: Taras Shevchenko, Julian Baczynsky, Mykola Mikhowsky, Dmytro Dontsov, Petro Poltava, Osyp Diakiw Hornovyj and others. This spectrum consisting of ...

In early April 2015 the Ukrainian government approved several laws that should have been implemented several (roughly 25) years ago. Poland and the Baltic States already have similar legislative laws in place and yet the sole criticising voice to those laws was Russia – the West, and in particular, Western academics, remained silent to these countries’ decisions on how to frame their national history. Yet, in Ukraine, the reaction was very different. Basically, the four laws are: renaming the Great Patriotic War to the Second World War (and in so doing, acknowledging that the war began...