Commentary

The Pentagon says Russian troops are continuing fighting and efforts in all directions, according to Voice of America correspondent Jeff Seldin. A senior US Defence Department official said today that advanced units of Russian troops are located 25 kilometres from the centre of Kyiv. Speaking about Kharkiv and Chernihiv, the Pentagon said that Russian troops are at a distance of 10 kilometres from the city centres. The United States also cannot deny reports that Russia has seized Kherson, the Pentagon said. Ukrainian forces, the US Department of Defence said, continue to control Mariupol. A Pentagon official also said that there was no reason to doubt Russia's statements about the seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. According to the official, the seizure of power plants and important infrastructure may be motivated by the...

Westerners are wondering about Putin’s intentions regarding Ukraine. They take into account the slightest declarations that emanate from the Kremlin, the movements of troops, the evolution of propaganda. But the broader context of the crisis often escapes them. The destruction of the independent Ukrainian state is certainly a priority objective pursued by Putin because of his historical obsessions. But it must also serve as an instrument for realizing a goal no less important in Moscow’s eyes: the training of European elites...

The crisis at Ukraine’s borders has dominated news coverage for weeks, and has sparked a flurry of diplomatic engagement in an effort to de-escalate the threat of an imminent Russian invasion. Amid the acute focus on the hourly breaking news, insufficient attention has been paid to understanding the backstory at play. What are the psychology and motivation behind the Kremlin’s moves? How do they differ from our own? How does Vladimir Putin operate? And why is it that this crisis matters globally – beyond Ukraine, beyond Europe, and beyond the NATO-Russia strategic face-off? The starting question is why does Ukraine want to join NATO in the first place? It aspires to join this critical collective security alliance precisely to protect itself from further Russian invasion. Is this fear justified? Absolutely – if 900 years of history are any indication...

When I met Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time as NATO secretary-general, he opened our meeting by telling me he wanted to disband NATO. If NATO allies engage with Russia’s most recent proposals for a new security relationship in Europe, they will be directly helping him move a step closer to achieving his goal, giving Russia the whip hand over the security of Central and Eastern Europe. Under the new Russian proposals, NATO would have to seek consent from Moscow to deploy troops in Central and Eastern Europe, refrain from “any military activity” across Eastern Europe, the southern Caucuses and Central Asia, and halt any NATO drills near Russia. The agreement also demands a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be offered NATO membership, and a draft treaty with the United States would ban it from sending warships and aircrafts to “areas where they can strike targets on the territory of the other party,” like the Baltics and the Black Sea...

Editor’s note: Moscow’s buildup of troops on and near Ukraine’s borders and bellicose rhetoric have raised the prospect of a major conventional war in Europe. The phone call today between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin underscores the dangers of this Kremlin-manufactured crisis. Below is a statement by twenty-four distinguished experts and former senior officials offering their ideas on how to deter Moscow from escalating its current war of aggression against Ukraine and more broadly to discourage Moscow from future provocations. The statement represents the views of the signatories and not of their institutions. Since President Biden’s virtual summit with President Putin on December 7, Russia has increased its troop presence on or near Ukraine’s borders. Having created this crisis, the Kremlin has demanded security guarantees for Russia that the United States and its allies cannot possibly provide. It has made provocative statements at high levels, including outlandish claims that US private military contractors intend to launch a chemical weapons attack in eastern Ukraine. Moscow wrongly asserts that NATO enlargement has created a military threat to Russia; the Alliance has fully abided by its commitments in the NATO-Russia Founding Act to refrain from deploying nuclear weapons or permanently stationing substantial combat forces on the territory of new member states, despite the fact that Russia has violated many of its own Founding Act commitments, as well as the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Paris Charter, and the Budapest Memorandum...

Last week, several political elders of the Ukrainian American community held an emergency meeting to strategize about the responses our community could provide in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing military build­up on the border of Ukraine and the distinct possibili­ ty of an invasion (of some unspecified mag­ nitude). While a number of individuals par­ ticipating were assigned the obvious task of immediately mobilizing various members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, perceived as friends of Ukraine on the Hill, to show support for the threatened nation, others were asked to provide talk­ ing points that could help elicit such sup­ port. I was steered into the latter group and, after putting in some admittedly sleep­ less nights to produce something useful, came to the next meeting with a memo (channeling my inner Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski meets Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges). Several meeting participants who read the memo encouraged me to circulate it more widely, which is the purpose of this article...

300 days without a piece of bread to the meager dinner, 2.4.1933. Photo from the private archive of Mykola Bokan, State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine

Euromaidan Press, Article by: Hennadiy Yefimenko, Translated by: Christine Chraibi

Editor’s Note

The scientifically sound estimate of the number of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s Holodomor famine is roughly 4 million. Yet, many scholars attempt to impose unrealistically inflated numbers — up to 15 million. This does no justice either to the victims, or to the status of the recognition of the artificial famine as a genocide of Ukrainians, writes historian Hennadiy Yefimenko. For years on end, scholars, academics and historians have been inflating the number of deaths caused by the Stalin-made famine in 1932-33 (Holodomor). This is mainly due to the fact that reliable information sources were not available. Nevertheless, academic circles continued to...

The cause of the Lviv pogrom in early 1941 was the mass killings of inmates in the prisons of Lviv, which were carried out by the NKVD prior to the Red Army’s retreat from the city. Einsatzgruppe С opened the city jails to discover the consequences of NKVD brutality. The Nazis forced Lviv Jews to drag out the bodies of the executed prisoners. The victims’ bodies were laid out for inspection, so that relatives could identify and bury their loved ones. The Nazis accused the Jews of these crimes, and conducted masterful agitation amidst the masses, provoking them to commit violent actions against the city’s Jewish population. Nazi propaganda declared that the pogrom was an act of “sacred vengeance” on the part of Ukrainians for the crimes of the “Judeo-Bolsheviks.”...

The Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) today announced its support of a project to demine agricultural lands in Eastern Ukraine to make them available for use by the local citizens. CUF has donated $13,000 USD to support the “Let’s Clean Donbas Together” project mounted by the Ukrainian Deminers Association (UDA). The European Union is also contributing 40% of the total project cost towards this critical initiative. “We at the Canada-Ukraine Foundation understand the great significance that demining of arable lands has for the local civilian population living in demilitarized zones. These lands provide them with the ability to feed their families and sell their surplus harvest for their livelihoods” – said Major (Retired) Oksana Kuzyshyn, CD1, Chief Operating Officer and Chair of the Civil Society Committee at the Canada-Ukraine Foundation. “This project will also help raise the profile of the landmine issue in Ukraine and bring it to broader public attention and the attention of the Ukrainian government for funding”...

The Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) announced on October 1, 2021, a donation to help fight the impacts of COVID-19 in Ukraine, particularly hard hit by the fourth wave of the global pandemic. Together with partners League of Ukrainian Canadians, Dnipro-Oshawa Fund at BCU Foundation, and the Ukrainian National Federation, CUF committed a $30,000 CAD donation to support the “Oxygen for Life” Phase 2 program mounted by Kyiv-based civil society organization Initiative E+. Transparency International has noted an acute shortage of hospital beds in Ukraine, with many COVID-19 patients not receiving required oxygen support, being discharged with low oxygen-saturation levels, and without provision of oxygen concentrators for self-management, due to shortages of equipment...