AMERICANS GENERALLY avoid publicly memorializing foreign tyrants who commit murder on an epic scale. That fine custom is all the more sensible when it applies to struggling private foundations whose solvency depends on the goodwill of the public and, specifically, patriotic veterans for whom murderous dictators are not a big selling point. Somehow, all this failed to register with the people who run the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., about 200 miles southwest of...

Secretary Clinton to Travel to Kyiv, Krakow, Baku, Yerevan and Tbilisi.In Kyiv, Secretary Clinton will open the second meeting of the Strategic Partnership Commission and meet with government officials, including President Yanukovych and Foreign Minister Gryshchenko, and with civil society and independent media leaders. In Krakow, Secretary Clinton will participate in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Community of Democracies, an organization initiated by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her Polish counterpart Bronislaw Geremek in 2000. Secretary Clinton will also meet with Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski...

Ahead of Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Washington this week, a "leaked" Russian foreign policy document is causing some Russia watchers to wonder whether the Russian president is shifting his country toward a more positive, pro-Western stance. A careful read of the 18,000-word document does not support such wishful thinking. Russian Newsweek published the document in May, along with a Feb. 10 cover letter to Medvedev from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. While the foreign ministry did not dispute the authenticity of the document, neither it nor the Kremlin has issued it formally...

A court in Ukraine today is due to start hearing a lawsuit against President Viktor Yanukovych for saying the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s should not be considered genocide, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports. Volodymyr Volosyuk is suing Yanukovych for a statement he made in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in April. Yanukovych said that "it is not fair to call the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 a genocide against the Ukrainian people." Volosyuk argues that Yanukovych wounded his personal honor and dignity and the memory of the millions of Ukrainians who died in the famine. He wants the court to demand that Yanukovych offer a public apology for his statement in Strasbourg...

An accredited television journalist was brutally attacked and thrown to the ground by a guard of President Viktor Yanukovych on Tuesday while covering an agriculture equipment show in Kiev region. The attack against Serhiy Andrushko, an STB television reporter, was filmed by another television crew and was made available on YouTube. There have been several cases of police brutality against journalists since the election of Yanukovych in February, but the latest attack goes far beyond in its cruelty, triggering serious concerns. “We were covering the speech by the president. When the speech was over...

In the recent issue of Holodomor Studies, librarian Jurij Dobczansky, in an article reproduced with permission in UKL445 (7 June 2010), writes that the Library of Congress has introduced, last Fall, the new categories of Holodomor denial literature (“for works that diminish the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932‑1933 or assert that it did not occur”) and Holodomor denial (“for works that discuss the diminution of the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932‑1933 or the assertion that it did not occur”). It seems to me that the category of “Holodomor denial” conflates two distinct strands...

Now that the west seems to fear to tread very far into Ukraine, Russia is more than happy to step into the breach. A state-controlled Russian bank appears to have granted cash-strapped Kiev a $2bn bridge loan to plug a budget deficit gap after delays in Ukraine’s bid for fresh financial support from the International Monetary Fund. While details of the deal have yet to emerge, it seems that the Russian bank has agreed to shore up the public finances for six months. The short-term benefits to Kiev are obvious: but the long-term implications of...

Last week, the Ukrainian parliament voted to outlaw its own chances of NATO membership, now and forevermore. It was yet another step in President Obama’s quiet retreat from Eastern Europe, and Russia’s re-assertion of power in the region. The west’s feeble attempts at resistance were poignantly dramatized by April’s egg-and-smoke bomb fight which broke out in Ukraine’s parliament. The fight was a decidedly Second World affair, featuring wasteful hurling of foodstuffs but with a menu limited to beets and eggs. It was also one-sided. Only Ukraine’s pro-Western opposition, recently ousted from office...

One hundred days after the 2010 presidential election, twin specters haunt Ukraine: One is the evil spirit of renewed authoritarianism, the other is the unquiet ghost of the Russian imperial dream. Millions of Ukrainian patriots watched with apprehension as Russian soldiers goose-stepped through the Maydan in Kiev, the heart of the Orange Revolution, to celebrate the Soviet victory in World War II. Sevastopol, the jewel of the Black Sea, has been given over as a base for the Russian fleet until 2042. And Kremlin rulers meet with President Viktor Yanukovych's government officials almost every week, as if Ukraine were a newly annexed Russian province. Perhaps it should have been expected. Three months ago...

Ukraine’s two independent television stations lost dozens of broadcasting frequencies following a Tuesday court ruling on a lawsuit from a rival media company owned by the chief of the SBU security service. Channel 5, the leading 24-hour television news station, and TVi, an independent television station, vowed to appeal the ruling, but admitted it was an uphill battle with the authorities. The development may be the most devastating attack yet on independent media outlets in Ukraine since President Viktor Yanukovych has been sworn in as the president in February...