A summit intended to bring Ukraine into Europe's mainstream foundered on Monday after the EU said it would not sign a landmark political and trade deal until Kiev resolves the case of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Negotiations had been finished on the agreement, which would create a free-trade zone and establish deeper ties, but European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said signing and ratifying it "will depend on political circumstances,” Reuters reported. "Our strong concern is primarily related to the risks of politically motivated justice in Ukraine. The Tymoshenko trial is the most striking example," he told President Viktor Yanukovych who sat across a table from him in Kiev. The summit...

On December 17, 2011, Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) President Eugene Czolij met in Toronto, Canada with members of the Board of Directors of Buduchnist Credit Union (Buduchnist), Canada’s largest Ukrainian credit union, and representatives of the leadership of the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC) and the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW). Participating in the meeting were Buduchnist Board members Orest Kostruba, Andrew Tarapacky and Oleh Romanyshyn, who is also Editor-in-Chief of the Ukrainian language weekly newspaper Homin Ukrainy (Ukrainian Echo), LUC President Orest Steciw and LUCW Honorary President and Buduchnist Human Resources Manager Chrystyna Bidiak, and UWC Executive Administrator Lesia Szubelak...

The European Union and Ukraine have finished negotiations on a landmark cooperation agreement, but whether the bloc signs the deal still hinges on the treatment of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the EU president said Monday. The EU has strongly condemned the October sentencing of the former premier and opposition leader to seven years in prison, dismissing the verdict as politically motivated and calling for her release. The agreement outlines deep political and economic cooperation between Ukraine and the 27-nation bloc it aspires to join. "Today we can publicly announce that...

"Members of the European Parliament have approved recommendations on the Association Agreement (AА) with Ukraine addressed to the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European External Action Service. Despite the complicated situation in relations between Kyiv and Brussels, aggravated by the processes over oppositional politicians in Ukraine, the EP has supported the fastest initialling of the AA with Ukraine, and desirably before the end of this year. The voting on the Ukrainian question in the...

On the eve of the Dec. 19 Ukraine-European Union summit, Kyiv’s chances of making a breakthrough in relations with Brussels appear to be fading. European officials have repeatedly warned that closer ties through free trade and association agreements would not happen as long as opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko remains in jail on charges seen as politically motivated. Many – but not all – observers think that President Viktor Yanukovych is calling the shots in the judicial assault on the former prime minister, a course of...

Regardless of how the current post-election protests in Russia turn out, the many thousands of ordinary Russians who took to the streets to demand their rights deserve three big cheers. Their courageous behavior has dispelled a few myths about Russia and sent a powerful signal to all post-Soviet dictators. Big Cheer No. 1: The mostly young and middle-class demonstrators have effectively squashed the regnant view of Russians as having a culturally coded predisposition to quiescence and a strong hand. Obviously...

Nine Ukrainian nationalists charged in the decapitation of a monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhya last year have received suspended sentences, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports. The activists, who were members of the right-wing nationalist organization Tryzub (Trident), were arrested in January and went on trial in March. Their lawyer, Volodymyr Prudovskyy, told RFE/RL on December 12 that the group's leader...

The first prisoners, 109 men, arrived in January 1915, shipped along the Transcontinental railway from Montreal into the remote Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec. Hundreds more would join them eventually, including women and children, not because of any wrong they had done but only because of who they were. Mostly immigrants from western Ukraine, lured to Canada with promises of freedom and free land, they were branded "enemy aliens" at the outbreak of the First World War because they had arrived bearing Austro-Hungarian passports. Off-loaded some eight kilometres west of Amos, at a place today known as...

Here’s the way their argument goes. Start with the fact that President Viktor Yanukovych is so widely detested as to be bereft of the least shred of legitimacy. Continue with the fact that his regime is screamingly incompetent, corrupt, and hostile to reform. Add an internal economic crisis that is compounded by a global economic crisis. And stir in mounting popular discontent that will only get more brazen as the threefold crisis—of leader, regime, and economy—deepens. What’s left for the regime? What is its only remaining power resource? The answer is: force and violence...

There is, as you know, only one copy of Pandora's box. However, it seems that the Ukrainian oligarcho-economy has mastered its serial production and regularly provides the authorities with such boxes. The next such box after the Kharkiv agreements [extending the lease for the Sevastopol base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in exchange for cheaper gas for Ukraine] is already in the hands of the Lord of Mezhyhirya [Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych], who embodies this government. It looks like he is going to open it...