Last week, Yanukovych’s hand picked parliament appointed a new education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk from the Party of Regions. Many are worried because of Tabachnyk’s xenophobic Russocentric comments he’s made in the past:
The appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as education and science minister of Ukraine became a downright shock – he is a politician who doubts the very Ukrainian identity, offering instead a concept of the unknown “Ukrainian-Russian culture.â€
In Tabachnyk’s opinion, the law of Ukraine “on Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine†places our state “in the same line as the most repulsive totalitarian dictatorships.†The minister for education and science thinks that “the desire to play little dirty tricks on the neighbor, betray, make something up to deceive another, a readiness to lose an eye if the neighbor goes completely blind are characteristics of the forming Ukrainian nation.â€
His dictums like “Halychyna residents are lackeys who have barely learned to wash their hands,†who “practically have nothing in common with the people of the greater Ukraine in either mental, or confessional, or linguistic, or political sphere,†as well as other statements about “the struggle between the two types of ethnic groups, Roman-Catholic-Halychyna and Russian-Orthodox†that is supposed to be happening on the territory of Ukraine make one wonder how can they possibly belong to a Ph.D. in history.