• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away on Sunday due to heart failure at the age of 89. The Guardian has an article noting his final years fantazing Putin as the new czar, denying genocide. President Yushchenko sent his condolences.
• Students in Kyiv launched a blunt protest against Ukraine’s booming brothel business – by dressing as prostitutes and telling sex tourists to get lost. The demonstration is tied to fears held amongst many Ukrainians that the growing sex tourism industry is tarnishing their country.
• The death toll for the flood in Western Ukraine has hit 38.
• Four thousand people attended this year’s CNUF in Dauphin, Manitoba! Also that weekend was the Mill Race Festival in Cambridge, Ontario.
• Alyona Bondarenko occupies the fourth place in the list of top 50 sexiest female athletes competing at the Beijing Olympics.
• Ukraine and Poland are still hanging on to their chance to host the 2012 Eurocup.
• Operatives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have been actively cooperating with the Israeli counterparts, protecting Jews and steadfastly watching students from the Muslim countries in the name of “terrorism”
• Some great music from Ukrainian composers was featured in Ottawa on Saturday.
• Leonardo DiCaprio is reportedly in talks to play Vladimir Lenin in a new movie. The picture will be directed by Russian moviemaker Alexander Der Borodyansky, who insists the actor is perfect for the part because of his striking physical resemblance to the communist politician, who died in 1924.
• Lastly, Canada has a new ambassador to Ukraine!

It was a little over a week ago that Joseph Stalin led the polls in ‘The Name of Russia‘, a TV show where viewers vote in the most notable person in Russian history:

From the Telegraph:

While the poll, conducted by the state run Rossiya channel, has been criticised for allowing multiple voting, there is little doubt that Stalin has undergone a remarkable renaissance in recent years.

Opinion polls regularly name him Russia’s greatest post-revolution leader after Vladimir Putin, the prime minister.

The wartime leader’s resurgence owes much to the Kremlin, which under Mr Putin’s presidency appeared to support a campaign to rehabilitate Stalin, with television documentaries, films and books released in recent years eulogising him.

A newly published history text book, approved by the Kremlin for use in all schools, glossed over the more unappealing parts of Stalin’s rule and ultimately concluded that he was the Soviet Union’s most successful leader.

The Communist party in St Petersburg has petitioned the Orthodox Church to canonise Josef Stalin if he wins a television poll to nominate the greatest Russian in history.

Continue reading Saint Stalin →

Ukraine officially blames Soviet leaders for the Holodomor!  The National Security Service published archive documents “unequivocally” proving its case that Soviet leader Josef Stalin and his subordinates were responsible for the genocide.  The SBU had also published on their website a list of high-ranking Soviet state and party officials and NKVD henchmen who were responsible, available here (direct link if your Ukrainian isn’t that good)!  Not all are happy with the list as the Ukrainian Jewish committee complained the list contained too many Jews and neglected other culprits.

While I was away I was saddened to hear that the United Nations refused to include the Holodomor into their 62nd session agenda due to objections from only one country – Russia.  Ukraine will attempt to re-submit the Holodomor resolution for the 63rd session in September.   The Holodomor issue has not been faring well in Europe this month as OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly stopped short of recognizing it as genocide as well (link to the resolution).

It was the 1020th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus, with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople visiting with President Yushchenko to begin to establish an independant and unified Ukrainian Orthodox church.  The Ukrainian Orthodox Church  Moscow Patriarchate does not recognize the Kyiv Patriarchate or the Autocephalous Orthodox Church and considers Ukraine its canonical territory, even though the baptism of Kyivan Rus predates the founding of Moscow.

It’s been rough times for President Viktor Yushchenko;  Never ending conflicts with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (the latest being over this Odessa-Brody oil pipeline) and forecasting rivaling her for Presidency in 2010 to disputes with the Russian Orthodox church, Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia over the UPA and even his son’s Godfather over his poisining and others he can’t extradite from Russia.

Meanwhile a devastating flood has hit Ukraine, killing 30 people and destroying 40,000 homes.  Yushchenko has declared a state of emergency in the Western region for the next three months while Tymoshenko has been busy prepping the budget and collecting foreign aid to help the victims.  The Kyiv ecology-cultural center has partly blamed the flood on the rising deforestation of the Carpathian mountains, and noted how its neighbouring countries have banned the practice for quite some time.

And finally some quick news:

• A monument to slain journalists including Heorhiy Gongadze is scheduled to go up in Kyiv in August (link)
• Chelsea striker Andrei Shevchenko is likely to return to his former club Milan within the next few days (link)
• Members of the Eurasian Youth Union pelted the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow with eggs on ‘Navy Day’ in protest of plans to withdraw the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, Ukraine, and in protest of the deportation of Duma member Konstantin Zatulin from Ukraine. Police detained head of the Moscow division of the Eurasian youth Pavel Kanishchev for organizing an unauthorized public action  (link)