James Temerty, a prominent Canadian businessman and philanthropist, has donated $1.2 million to fund Ukrainian-Jewish interfaith relations at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). The major gift was announced by Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a former Canadian parliamentarian, on Nov. 12 in Toronto after a meeting with the university's rector, Rev. Fr. Borys Gudziak, who has been traveling throughout North America in an effort to raise funds for the university. UCU is one of Ukraine’s leading educational institutions. More than 1,500 students are enrolled in full- and part-time study at the Lviv-based university. It houses six research institutes and is the only Catholic university in the former Soviet Union. The university...

I finally managed to get my hands on Viktor Yanukovych’s bestselling book, Opportunity Ukraine. No one I know in Ukraine has ever laid his or her eyes on the volume, but I have it—my very own copy. I’ll discuss the actual volume in subsequent blogs, but for the time being let me tell you how I found it. It wasn’t easy. I scoured the bookstores of Kyiv and Lviv a few weeks ago, but to no avail. Silly me: why would an English-language book by its president be sold in Ukraine? But surely it’d be available in Vienna, right? I mean, the publisher...

President Viktor Yanukovych's irresponsible remarks that the public is arming itself with weapons are a sign that further crackdowns on civil liberties could be on the way. If President Viktor Yanukovych is to be believed, saboteurs in the nation are illegally buying up massive amounts of firearms in preparation for a coup. The public has yet to hear any sort of proof to back up these claims, however, because most likely nothing of the kind is happening. “They want to disrupt the financial stability in Ukraine, to disrupt the political stability and go to the streets with pitchforks,” the president said earlier this month. “I learned from...

The United States National Archives has published a one hundred page study entitled “HITLER’S SHADOW Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War”. The authors are Richard Breitman and Norman J. W. Goda, two leading Jewish American authorities on the Holocaust, and certainly, men on a mission.. The study is packed with footnotes referencing apparent authority. Unfortunately the sources are often questionable and in all instances non-primary. The text by the two authors is replete with unsubstantiated innuendoes and ill-chosen sweeping characterizations...

On Nov 9, 2011 the Faculty Club at the University of Toronto hosted the book launch of Andrew Gregorovich’s latest work: Anna Yaroslavna, Queen of France and Princess of Ukraine. The book is dedicated not just to Princess Anna Yaroslavna, the daughter of King Yaroslav the Wise, who was born in 1032 in Kiev (old spelling), and who became Queen of France in 1051, but to her three sisters, Elizabeth (Queen of Norway), Anastasia (Queen of Hungary) and Agatha (Princess of England and Scotland). This is the first English book written about...

It has been two decades since Ukraine’s declaration of independence. For two decades Ukraine has been mired in a political morass that although bearing the external markings of democracy, is very far from it. All attempts at reforming the present condition into a functioning democracy have been doomed to failure. The result has been Ukraine-fatigue in the West, and an apparent apathy within the country itself. It is revealing to note that this state of affairs was entirely predictable. One hundred and fifty years ago, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote a treatise “Representative Government” that I find applies very directly to today’s Ukraine...

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...