- Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, recently spoke at a event for Tribute to Liberty, a recently established Canadian organization, whose first project is to have a permanent memorial built in Ottawa commemorating the Victims of the Crimes of Communism. He first brought Canadian government support for Tribute to Liberty into the public forum in his remarks on November 28th at the International Forum: My People Will Live Forever in Kyiv.
- “How can anyone doubt there was a genocide,†Ilya Somin in Texas said, “I saw the starving and dying people myself!”. Yet Russia successfully blocked Ukraine’s resolution at the 63rd UN Assembly for genocide. While the US and the UK backed the agreement, many countires from Europe chose not to. Meanwhile, Azerbaijanis in Ukraine are appealing Azerbaijani parliament to recognize the Holodomor as genocide.
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel went to St. Petersburg last week for meetings with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. The central question on the table was Germany’s position on NATO expansion, particularly with regard to Ukraine and Georgia. Merkel made it clear at a joint press conference that Germany would oppose NATO membership for both of these countries, and that it would even oppose placing the countries on the path to membership.
- Earlier this month The First Lady of Ukraine Kateryna Yushchenko presented Brant MPP Dave Levac with a prestigious award for his work on the Holodomor.
- The Hills asks why Communist war criminals are allowed to come to Canada.
- Ukraine’s government forecasts 9 percent unemployment in 2009, as well as an inflation rate of 9.5%. The World Bank has forecast Ukraine’s GDP will fall by 4% in 2009 with the inflation being 13.6%
- The World Bank approved $500 million for Ukraine, the third in a series of loans aimed at encouraging economic reforms and helping the country weather an economic crisis.
- President Viktor Yushchenko dug in on Monday against attacks by Ukraine’s prime minister, rejecting blame for a deep economic slide and refusing to sack the central bank chief after the hryvnia currency sank to record lows. The prime minister demanded the resignation of Mr Yushchenko, and named Dmytro Firtash, the billionaire and Gazprom partner in the supply of natural gas to Ukraine and Europe, as a co-conspirator in the alleged currency speculation. Yanukovych has called for simultaneous early presidential and parliamentary elections.
- Ukraine’s political elite has traded increasingly vicious barbs as the ex-Soviet state faces a winter gas supply cut from Russia over unpaid debts which Moscow warned might disrupt supplies to the European Union. President Yushchenko made known on Friday that he thought there should be a price cut next year instead.
- For two months now the Ruthenians, an obscure ethnic group in Zakarpattia oblast, have been considering calling for independence. Stratfor has now learned the driving force behind the possible secessionist movement: the Kremlin.
- Under a proposed agreement with Kyiv, Libya would lease 247,000 acres of Ukraine’s rich black land to grow wheat. The harvest would then be shipped back to Libya, giving the desert nation a more secure supply of food in the face of predictions about higher food prices and potential shortages in decades to come. Ukraine, in turn, would get access to Libyan oil fields, helping free it from dependence on Russia for its energy needs.
- Judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Danchuk Valeriy Heorhiyovych is deeply impressed with the sophisticated electronic filing system used by the federal courts in the United States and hopes his country, Ukraine, will adopt a similar system. By the same token, he thinks the United States could learn a bit from the criminal justice system in Ukraine, which tends to emphasize the rehabilitation of offenders in the community rather than relying so heavily on imprisonment.
- The United States and Ukraine Friday signed what was termed a Charter of Strategic Partnership calling for cooperation in defense, energy, trade and other areas. The United States will set up a diplomatic mission in Ukraine’s Crimean region.
- Thousands of car drivers in Kyiv angrily blew their horns for several minutes Monday, protesting what they call incompetent and corrupt government policies that led to a devastating financial crisis.
- Victor Yushchenko has demanded that law-enforcement agencies and courts effectively complete the investigation into the killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
Category Archives: news
Ukrainian news round-up – Dec 8 2008
- Theatre director Andriy Zholdak premiered his Holodomor play “Lenin Love, Stalin Love” in Kyiv TV last week drawing 10 million viewers. It is based on the Soviet-banned 1963 novel “Yellow Prince” by Holodomor survivor Vasyl Barka who emigrated to the US to publish his novel. The play is looking to tour through Japan, Korea, Romania, Germany, Finland, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg before ending in Kyiv.
- Authorities in Kyiv have decided to take down ten Soviet-era monuments, including eight statues of Vladimir Lenin, but will leave a main Lenin monument on the main street of Kreshchatik.
- Somali pirates holding an arms-laden Ukrainian cargo ship on Sunday accused the owners of stalling on a ransom payment and threatened to pull out of a deal for its release struck a week ago.
- The National Bank of Ukraine has unveiled its intentions to intervene Dec. 8 through Dec. 12 so as to revaluate the hryvnia. Ukraine’s finance ministry has proposed that the central bank limit the sale of foreign currencies for cash use. Demand for the dollar has surged as the hryvnia currency rapidly shed over 60 percent of its value since the start of September. Ukraine’s economy is highly dollarised — many Ukrainians took out loans for cars or apartments in dollars.
- Two Berkley California teachers got the chance this summer to impart their skills to aspiring teachers in Ukraine. They focused on training Ukrainian teachers to become technology specialists in order to promote computer literacy among teachers and students of Ukraine.
- Newsweek is reporting while France & Germany have successfully blocked Ukraine’s entry to NATO, more then half the country now supports joining the EU thanks to the Orange Revolution. Viktor Yushchenko said there was “no alternative” to his country eventually joining NATO, but said for the first time that Russia should be included in negotiations on the issue.
- The European Commission announced it will send 350 million euros in aid to Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, and Belarus in addition add to the almost 1.2 billion euros already pledged to these countries by 2020 in the framework of the so-called Eastern Partnership. The scheme, which stops short of offering any firm prospect of EU membership, is also bound to disappoint many in EU hopeful Ukraine and Moldova. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has said it is ready to support and use all the elements of the Eastern Partnership program if it is not presented as an alternative to European Union membership.
- Viktor Yushchenko has spurned parliament, rejecting an invitation to a sitting to solve a political crisis and announcing instead an official visit to Lithuania.
- Shipping costs have plunged to 22-year lows, skewing global grain trading patterns to the point where U.S. hog farmers are importing wheat from Britain and Japan has eschewed U.S. corn supplies to buy from the distant Ukraine. Ukraine have been able to make sales far beyond its traditional markets in Europe and the Middle East, reaching out to Asia, European traders said.
- Putin has brought up the possibility that Europe may be hit hard if Russia cuts natural gas supplies to Ukraine because of a pricing and debt dispute between Moscow and Kyiv. Then Putin switched from Russian into Ukrainian and added “Have you lost your mind?†— a sound-bite that is currently being carried all over Ukraine (as Putin intended). A fall in the value of the hryvnia currency has cost Ukraine an additional $83 million in meeting the cost of gas shipments and disrupted attempts to pay arrears, the state oil and gas company Naftogaz said.
- Ukraine is planning to deploy more troops on its border with Russia in light of the recent military conflict between Russia and Georgia, where the Defense Minister said the move should not be viewed as a threat to Russia.
Ukrainian-American teen turns in $10,000 he found at store
From Tacoma News Tribune:
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — A 17-year-old grocery bagger was ready to wash his hands in the bathroom at the Federal Way supermarket where he works when he saw a brown canvas money bag on the floor. Moisei Baraniuc was curious. He opened it and saw envelopes filled with money – “a pretty thick stack.â€
…
“The first thing that went through my mind was keeping it,†he said.
And then the Ukrainian immigrant remembered what his father, Vitalie Baraniuc, always says at dinner at the family’s home in Pacific.
“My dad is always telling us in this life you’ve got to work for yourself,†said Baraniuc, who goes by the nickname Moses. “If you take what doesn’t belong to you, it will catch up to you.â€
Kurelek painting exceeds estimate
From the Toronto Star:
Paintings by William Kurelek and Tom Thomson exceeded expectations at Joyner Waddington’s fall auction of important Canadian art. A large 1972 work by Kurelek, titled Balsam Avenue After Heavy Snowfall, showing the Toronto street where the Ukrainian-Canadian artist once lived, went for $241,400 – above the pre-sale estimate of $175,000 to $200,000. The auction continues today.
From his Wikipedia biography:
He was born near Whitford, Alberta in 1927, the oldest of seven children in an Ukrainian immigrant family: Will, John, Winn, Nancy, Sandy, Paul, Iris. His family lost the farm during the Great Depression and moved to Stonewall, Manitoba. He developed an early interest in art which was not encouraged by his hard-working parents. He later studied at the Ontario College of Art and at the Instituto Allende in Mexico.
Holodomor post-weekend round-up – Nov 24 2008
Taras from Ukrainiana has provided an excellent primer on the Holodomor. He also reported from Kyiv Holodomor commemorations.
- Many Canadians attended a ceremony this week marking the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine, or Holodomor, and Selkirk-Interlake MP James Bezan says it’s about time.
- Three-quarters of a century after the Ukrainian famine, Olga Zazula still gets overwhelmed by intense grief. “All the families were dying of starvation,” said Zazula, 82, the only known Calgary resident to have lived through the Holodomor. Zazula, later sent with her sister to Germany into forced labour, moved to Canada in 1950 and has lived in Calgary since 1953.
- Christian and Muslim leaders jointly conducted a Holodomor service in the St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv and prayed but Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich who attended refused, referring to the Shabbat. Israel is still considering Yushchenko’s call to recognize the genocide as such.
- A book entitled ’Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933’ has been presented in Kyiv, a joint research of Polish and Ukrainian historians who looked for archive documents of the NKVD and Polish secret services concerning the Great Famine. The chairman of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance Janusz Kurtyka said the search brought to light a full picture of the tragedy. He underlined that the West, and that included Poland at that time, remained silent when confronted with the tragic facts reported.
- Slavka Shulakewych in Edmonton stifles tears as she recalls her father’s secret tale of torment, he was a survivor of Holodomor. “It was a dark secret,” Shulakewych said, choked with emotion. “He wouldn’t talk about it. It was something people so horrendously lived through and (they) had to do horrendous things.
- The Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has called the Holodomor a genocide, “It became a weapon of diabolic revenge due to the inability to eradicate from the consciousness of our wise people endowed with great virtues its filial memory of God, the love of God, the loyalty to and faith in God“. A week later an unnamed member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Synod Metropolitan Onufry of Chernovtsy and Bukovina said “Holodomor was a correction from God, suppression of our pride that rebelled against ourselves, against human existence”. “There are certain forces that use holodomor to divide Russia and Ukraine saying that Russians oppressed Ukrainians.†“While I believe that holodomor killed more people in Russia than in Ukraine,†the Metropolitan said. And then of course he urged believers not to make a political action of commemorating holodomor victims, but rather to pay attention to its spiritual causes (we’ve heard this hypocrosy before).
- Media coverage by the mainstream media was poor. No coverage in Toronto, New American notes the void from the New York Times (are we really surprised?). Nash Holos points out the struggle of creating awareness.
- Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus while visiting Kyiv: The Nazi and Soviet-committed crimes against humanity will be equally condemned and their victims commemorated.
- Ukrainian community in Yonkers came together to commemorate the Holodomor by taking part in a solemn procession.
- Ukraine is having a hard time getting the Holodomor of 1932-33 to be recognized on the international level. What with the Kremlin’s frenzied resistance, Ukraine has to struggle even for its right to submit pertinent resolutions for consideration by international organizations and look for additional arguments to prove its rightness and explain its stand, although it is self-evident.
- “I remember when I was eight years old and there was nothing to eat,” said Anna Shewel, 83. She was living with her family in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 and is one of the survivors of the Holodomor. Josef Stalin’s communists cut off food and starved millions in an attempt to destroy the country’s drive towards independence.
- When Soviet authorities and many western journalists denied the Holodomor, Gareth Jones announced that millions were starving in Ukraine as a result of Stalin’s policies at a press conference in Berlin on 29 March, 1933. Several foreign correspondents rushed to rubbish the story with 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty of the New York Times dismissing his eye-witness account as “a big scare story”. Jones was given Ukraine’s Order of Merit at Westminster in London.
- In 1932, when Anna Kaczanowicz was 12 years old, she noticed that her meals were getting smaller and smaller. “My parents tried desperately to grow food, but no matter what they planted, within a few days, everything would be gone — dug up during the middle of the night.” But Kaczanowicz, 88, who lives now in Webster, survived the Holodomor.