Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has moved the nation’s foreign policy swiftly in the pro-Russian direction since his Feb. 25 inauguration. He’s criticized the Hero of Ukraine award that his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, bestowed on early 20th century nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. He’s signed the Kharkiv accords, letting the Russian Black Sea Fleet stay in Sevastopol until at least 2042. And Yanukovych has formally renounced the nation’s ambitions to join the NATO military alliance. Other blockbuster deals joining the nation’s energy, aviation and other industrial sectors are believed to be in the works. The breakneck pace has caught the West, which had grown weary of Ukraine’s halting march towards democracy, flat-footed...

The Ukrainian Canadian community of greater Toronto and surrounding communities held a protest rally at the Russian Consulate General in Toronto on May 30, 2010 to voice their opposition to the Russian regime’s aggressive neo-imperialistic policies towards Ukraine. The protesters brought to the attention of their fellow Canadians the struggle of the Ukrainian nation to safeguard its independence and democracy. The initiative for the protest rally came from the World Conference in Support of Ukraine, Canadian Chapter: League of Ukrainian Canadians, League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, Ukrainian Youth Association of Canada-CYM, Society of Veterans of UPA, Association of Former Ukrainian Political Prisoners; co-sponsors included Ukrainian Youth Association-Plast, Fourth Wave, Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union-CYCK. The event took place under the patronage of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Toronto Chapter...

Mr. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Canada’s 1.2 million strong Ukrainian Canadian diaspora community is in angst due to recent attempts to muzzle Ukraine’s media and trumped up criminal charges against opposition leaders. Incredibly, secret service agents have even attempted to intimidate university rectors. On May 18 Father Borys Gudziak, the Rector of the renowned Ukrainian Catholic University received a call on his cell phone from a security service agent. Twenty minutes later this agent was in the Rector’s office. What followed was an hour of attempts to co-op and intimidate the Rector into spying on student activists and to rat out the names of student protest organizers...

Public expressions of piety at civic events may tell us something about a culture, but they rarely disclose geopolitical ambitions or strategic designs. One exception to that general rule of religion and public life took place this past February, in Kiev, capital of Ukraine—an exercise in hardball politics under the veil of public piety that was, in fact, a harbinger of danger for religious freedom, for Ukrainian democracy, and for the future of Europe. Prior to Ukraine’s two previous presidential inaugurations, an ecumenical and interreligious prayer service had been held at the Church of Holy Wisdom in the Ukrainian capital, with all confessional leaders invited to participate and pray for the country and its about-to-be-inaugurated leader. In a country as fractious...

Instead of attempting to emulate Russia, Ukraine should build itself along the universal principles of human rights, democracy and prosperity. Ukraine, under President Viktor Yanukovych, is moving closer to Russia at dizzying speeds on multiple fronts – industrial, military, law enforcement and other cooperation. Once again, Ukraine has leaders looking upon Russia as a big brother worth emulating. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is, however, a case study in what Ukraine should not become. Putin likes to justify his anti-democratic rule by saying he is building a strong state. A decade into his...

What has long been desperately and hopelessly prophesied by the most perspicacious political Kassandras has come true: the Ukrainian state of Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma, and Viktor Yushchenko, fell and was replaced by the Russian protectorate of Viktor Yanukovych. Now, if experts will find out who is to bear the bulk of the blame, they can argue until they are blue in the face. The ultimate verdict is to be returned at the Last Judgment of History. Yet even now us witnesses of the dramatic spring of 2010, comparable to Berestechko and Chornobyl in terms of its implications, realize that all of us are to blame, active participants and silent majority alike....

Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev’s, May 17-18 visit to Kyiv capped a ten-week campaign to lay the basis for “reintegrating” Ukraine with Russia. It was Medvedev’s seventh meeting with Ukraine’s new leaders since early March, not counting Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin’s, similar number of meetings with them. Medvedev’s previous visit to Ukraine, on April 21, had produced the agreement to extend the basing of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on Ukrainian territory, in return for Russia subsidizing Ukraine’s gas consumption. Moscow exploits a triple opportunity: Ukraine’s regime change through...

Opening, alongside Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, the Interstate Commission’s session, Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, turned the clock back to 1990. Invoking that year’s declaration of Ukraine’s sovereignty (still within the USSR), Yanukovych selectively underscored the document’s stipulation of “non-bloc status” for Ukraine. The country can now “finally achieve this goal,” he declared (UNIAN, May 17). This statement implies more than repudiating the hypothesis of NATO membership. Ukraine’s new authorities have already done that, both declaratively and by disbanding the two state commissions that used to handle Ukraine-NATO cooperation programs. Going back to 1990, however...

America will defend the Ukrainian status of Crimea and Sevastopol, said US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow. "We are continuing to support Ukrainian sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, including Crimea and Sevastopol", he said in an interview with the Ukrainian weekly Comments. "We have said many times before that we do not accept the notion of a "sphere of influence" or a "sphere of privileged interests" in the modern world ... Thus, we intend to continue to develop our partnership with Ukraine", said the representative of the US government...

Last week, I blogged here about a new Foreign Ministry policy paper that was leaked to the media calling for Russia to improve its relations with the West in order to secure badly needed investments for its modernization program. In addition to encouraging "alliances of modernization" with the United States and the European Union, the document also presages a fairly assertive Russian foreign policy in the former Soviet space. Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the influential "Russia In Global Affairs," noted this in a recent commentary published in "The Moscow Times": The West is not the only focus of the document...