Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been unexpectedly rocky in recent years. However, as Russia entered its latest election cycle, the Kremlin’s attention drifted away from Ukraine. While there was little doubt that Vladimir Putin would return to power, the president-to-be had to contend with the sudden awakening of parts of the Russian electorate. Now that he has been returned to office for the next six years, the question is how much time he will have for Ukraine. For months Ukraine neither figured as an issue in Russian electoral debates, nor did the Kremlin aggressively pursue its plans for Kyiv to join a Customs Union along with Belarus and Kazakhstan. However, Moscow kept Kyiv close, playing a cat-and-mouse game of...

We write to you in a matter of some concern to the global Ukrainian community. The hosting by your Embassy on March 1, 2012 of a lecture entitled “Bandera-fascist” by a Polish-German developing academic, known only for extremist statements, is deemed by us a signal of an anti-Ukrainian bias on the part of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is our position that while the decision to hold this event may have been that of simply someone at your Embassy, the blame, unfortunately, falls squarely upon the government of the FRG. This is not an issue of free speech or...

Officially launched in March 2009 by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) with a postcard campaign, Ukrainian Literature Day is being marked this year by the Ukrainian Canadian students' organization SUSK and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC). March 9 is the birth date of Taras Shevchenko, a persecuted yet still prolific Ukrainian poet and artist who is widely regarded as Ukraine's literary father. He is also renowned and revered for his impact on the development of the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and the strengthening of the Ukrainian identity. So it is fitting that this date was chosen as Ukrainian Literature Day across Canada...

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s administration is bracing itself for the return of Vladimir Putin as president. It’s hoping the powerful Russian leader won’t kick off a third term by flexing his political muscle against its increasingly isolated and vulnerable neighbour. Putin may not be as strong at home as he was in prior years. He faces the challenge of opposition forces seeking change and reforms. But even his domestic political foes are likely to back his main foreign policy agenda: asserting Moscow’s regional influence. “We should get ready for Putin’s tough style, to the style of constant pressure,” Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko is quoted as saying in a report published in the English-language Kyiv Post. In recent years, Putin has made successful strides in luring Belarus and Central...

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights presents a tremendous opportunity to give prominent recognition to the Holodomor, in which millions of Ukrainians were starved to death by the former Soviet Union, says a university professor. The Holodomor took place in the same vicinity of Europe as the Holocaust, which will have a permanent exhibit at the museum, and within the same time frame -- within a decade -- of that cataclysmic event for Jewish people, said Myroslav Shkandrij, professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. And with so many Ukrainian people living in this part of the world today and having contributed so much to Canada, the museum in Winnipeg could give international recognition to an event that Ukrainian people have struggled to make known despite denials...

The word “Family,” which was once aptly used to characterize Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s inner circle, now seems to be more and more applicable to those who surround Viktor Yanukovych. The Security Service, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense, the National Bank, the State Tax Service, plus the Ministry of Finance now – all these entities are run by the people associated with the current head of state or his sons. “It is already clear that the ‘family interest’ is so far limited to the two most important spheres – money and security. I do not think it needs to be explained why it is money and security: somebody must protect the achievements of the topmost person and his...

“There is a [Ukrainian] slangy catchphrase: ‘Moolah will beat evil.’ In reality, ‘moolah’ or, to be more exact, the pursuit of it, begets evil. The 1990s saw the formation of the foundations of the current oligarchic clan system which envisages attitude to the country as to one’s own manor. And every election is in fact a race for the country as a prize. But the gravest danger is that in the 2000s this chase for ‘moolah’ began to spread to society as well. ‘Cash for coverage’ in the media is a very illustrative example of this. While the 1990s was a period of the primitive accumulation of capital, the 2000s was...

James Bezan, Member of Parliament for Selkirk-Interlake is deeply troubled by the latest example of the deterioration of democracy and rule of law in Ukraine. On February 29th, in the most recent example of politically motivated attacks by the Ukrainian Government, former Minister of Interior and opposition leader Yuri Lutsenko was sentenced to 4 years in prison for abuse of office and embezzlement. “It is undeniable that the current government in Ukraine is on a politically motivated mission to silence their opposition,” said Mr. Bezan. “This selective justice, first illustrated by the conviction...

Reading the introduction to Animal Farm by Christopher Hitchens a few years ago, I was stunned to learn that George Orwell, then a struggling writer in London, worked by letter with a group of refugees to publish the novel in Ukrainian in the displaced persons camps of postwar Europe. The story of Orwell and the refugees was an incredible triumph of life amidst so much death and destruction. Between Stalin's terror famine and the Gulag, Hitler's concentration camps, the clash of Soviet and Nazi armies in World War II, it was as though hell had opened up across Eastern Europe. Sixty-five years ago...

The massive demonstrations that rocked Russia in the aftermath of the Duma elections of December 4, 2011, surprised everyone, including most Russians. But they shouldn’t have. The conditions for such an upheaval have been ripening as a result of the growing power and decrepitude of Putinism. It is likely that popular mobilization will continue, and that the regime’s days may be numbered. Observers generally agree that the fraudulent elections, in which the pro-regime United Russia party won 49.3 percent of the vote, sparked the countrywide demonstrations on December 10th and December 24th, in which, respectively, an estimated thirty to fifty thousand and...