Few countries have a better case for sovereign government and the rule of law than Ukraine. Even today you can take a short ride from the capital Kiev, as I did a couple of weeks ago, and speak to villagers who still remember the catastrophe of 1933, when Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union, and millions of its inhabitants starved when Stalin decided to blame the Ukrainian people for the failures of his own policy of collective agriculture. Intermingled with these recollections are memories of the German invasion only eight years later, which brought a...

Last week, the current majority in Ukrainian Parliament hammered another nail in the coffin of the national information space by adopting amendments to the Law of Ukrai­ne “On Television and Radio.” According to the bill, submitted by MP from the Party of Regions Olena Bondarenko, quotas for the national audio­visual product on TV (in other words, for programs of Ukrainian origin, made, we should note, not only in Ukrainian) was reduced from 50 to 25 percent and quotas for “works of Ukrainian authors and artists” in radio programs (which previously was at the level of 50 percent of the total weekly broadcasting amount) were abolished all the more so. Thus...

Not everyone was clapping and cheering on November 8 as Western European leaders and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met in Lubmin, Germany, to mark the opening of the first part of the Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline. When completed late next year, the 1,224-kilometer, $10 billion pipeline will carry 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas directly to Western markets each year. It will bypass transit countries like Ukraine and Belarus that rely on the revenues from transit fees and also benefit from the political leverage that comes from being part of Europe's energy equation. ​​Now those revenues and...

Just when it seemed that Russia’s way to the World Trade Organization was finally clear, Ukraine and the US Congress have decided to put a spoke in Moscow's wheel. After Russia and Georgia reached a compromise at the WTO negotiations, Kiev threatened to use its veto right unless it gets cheaper gas and free access for Ukrainian goods to the Russian market. While the US Congress demanded that Russia be obliged to join the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) before accessing the WTO. According to Andrey Klyuev, Ukrainian minister for economic development and...

Activists from the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) staged a "public trial" of Bolshevism on Mykhailivska Square in central Kyiv. They erected a plaster statue, Lenin on His Knees, showing the leader of the proletariat clad in a red jacket and grey trousers. However, the action drew few participants. But the few who did join the protest carried posters rebuking Communists for organizing mass political repressions, building concentration camps, destroying Ukraine's intellectuals and Autocephalous Orthodox Church, cooperating with the Nazis and unleashing World War II. A moment of...

Funny you should ask, as a few weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of the stupid Tymoshenko verdict and the subsequent cancellation of Viktor Yanukovych’s trip to Brussels, a raft of Regionnaires bristled at Europe’s supposed treatment of Ukrainians as “schoolchildren.” “We’re equals,” the Regionnaires insisted, “and deserve to be treated as such.” Disregard the underhanded way in which the Regionnaires claimed to stand for all Ukrainians. After all, whatever the Europeans did or said about Tymoshenko, they directed their...

The European Parliament’s resolution on the current developments in Ukraine, adopted toward the end of last week, gives Ukraine until December to bring its judicial system into conformity with EU legislation and legal practice. According to analysts, despite this harshest judgment passed on Ukraine-EU relations over the past decade, European Parliament members showed a rather tolerant attitude to Ukraine’s current administration, using good old political verbiage cliches aimed at avoiding anything that could further complicate the EU-Ukraine integration process. Analysts say...

Madam Ambassador, Allow us to draw your attention to recent remarks by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expressed during a briefing with NGOs on Wednesday, October 16, regarding civil society’s role in preserving human rights: “There can be no success without a healthy civil society. “Please, do your part. Help these women's groups, social media activists, human rights defenders and others to take their rightful place in society ... in government, in parliament, in every public institution.” “I believe that the voice of civil community sometimes is much stronger. As the United Nations Secretary-General, sometimes I have to be very cautious and should not give any impression that I am infringing on national sovereignty...

Professor Serhii Plokhii, who holds the Mykhailo Hrushevsky chair of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, recently visited Edmonton to participate in a launch of new CIUS Press publications (6 October) and to speak about the Yalta Agreement of 1945 in the CIUS seminar series (7 October). The first publication discussed at the book launch was volume 9, book 2, part 2 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus', the latest addition to this translation series issued by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at CIUS. In his introduction Dr. Frank Sysyn, director of the Jacyk Centre, spoke about the significance of the project, its accomplishments and prospects. He noted the efforts of many specialists who brought the volume to...

Following the May 2011 Federal Election, approximately 100 new Members of Parliament were elected who are unaware of the history and background surrounding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). The level of knowledge and understanding of the Holodomor and Canada's First National Internment Operations is quite low amongst these and some other Members of Parliament (MPs), while detailed knowledge of the history and background of CMHR is even lower still. We, therefore, strongly encourage all UCC branches and provincial councils to organize information meetings with their local MPs in their constituency offices. The contact information for your local MP is located at: www.parl.gc.ca under Members of Parliament. Some suggested actions are the following: Write to and call your local Member of Parliament to express your concerns surrounding the CMHR. We encourage UCC branches...