Activists from the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) staged a "public trial" of Bolshevism on Mykhailivska Square in central Kyiv. They erected a plaster statue, Lenin on His Knees, showing the leader of the proletariat clad in a red jacket and grey trousers. However, the action drew few participants. But the few who did join the protest carried posters rebuking Communists for organizing mass political repressions, building concentration camps, destroying Ukraine's intellectuals and Autocephalous Orthodox Church, cooperating with the Nazis and unleashing World War II. A moment of...

Funny you should ask, as a few weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of the stupid Tymoshenko verdict and the subsequent cancellation of Viktor Yanukovych’s trip to Brussels, a raft of Regionnaires bristled at Europe’s supposed treatment of Ukrainians as “schoolchildren.” “We’re equals,” the Regionnaires insisted, “and deserve to be treated as such.” Disregard the underhanded way in which the Regionnaires claimed to stand for all Ukrainians. After all, whatever the Europeans did or said about Tymoshenko, they directed their...

The European Parliament’s resolution on the current developments in Ukraine, adopted toward the end of last week, gives Ukraine until December to bring its judicial system into conformity with EU legislation and legal practice. According to analysts, despite this harshest judgment passed on Ukraine-EU relations over the past decade, European Parliament members showed a rather tolerant attitude to Ukraine’s current administration, using good old political verbiage cliches aimed at avoiding anything that could further complicate the EU-Ukraine integration process. Analysts say...

Madam Ambassador, Allow us to draw your attention to recent remarks by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expressed during a briefing with NGOs on Wednesday, October 16, regarding civil society’s role in preserving human rights: “There can be no success without a healthy civil society. “Please, do your part. Help these women's groups, social media activists, human rights defenders and others to take their rightful place in society ... in government, in parliament, in every public institution.” “I believe that the voice of civil community sometimes is much stronger. As the United Nations Secretary-General, sometimes I have to be very cautious and should not give any impression that I am infringing on national sovereignty...

Professor Serhii Plokhii, who holds the Mykhailo Hrushevsky chair of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, recently visited Edmonton to participate in a launch of new CIUS Press publications (6 October) and to speak about the Yalta Agreement of 1945 in the CIUS seminar series (7 October). The first publication discussed at the book launch was volume 9, book 2, part 2 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus', the latest addition to this translation series issued by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at CIUS. In his introduction Dr. Frank Sysyn, director of the Jacyk Centre, spoke about the significance of the project, its accomplishments and prospects. He noted the efforts of many specialists who brought the volume to...

Following the May 2011 Federal Election, approximately 100 new Members of Parliament were elected who are unaware of the history and background surrounding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). The level of knowledge and understanding of the Holodomor and Canada's First National Internment Operations is quite low amongst these and some other Members of Parliament (MPs), while detailed knowledge of the history and background of CMHR is even lower still. We, therefore, strongly encourage all UCC branches and provincial councils to organize information meetings with their local MPs in their constituency offices. The contact information for your local MP is located at: www.parl.gc.ca under Members of Parliament. Some suggested actions are the following: Write to and call your local Member of Parliament to express your concerns surrounding the CMHR. We encourage UCC branches...

In September 2008, Ukraine seemed headed towards signing an Association Agreement with the European Union (EU) the following year, in 2009. Three years later, in 2011, the Agreement has still not been concluded. The latest obstacle to finalizing the process is the October 11, 2011, sentencing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A resolution passed by the European Parliament on October 27 describes the seven-year jail sentence given to Tymoshenko “as a violation of human rights and an abuse of the judiciary for the purpose of the political suppression of Ukraine's leading opposition politician.” The resolution also warns of the potential consequences for the EU-Ukraine relations: […] a failure to review Yulia Tymoshenko's conviction will jeopardise the conclusion of the Association Agreement and its ratification, while pushing the country further away from the realisation of its European perspective […] It remains to be...

A senior opposition lawmaker on Wednesday attacked the government for last week’s signing of a free trade agreement with Russia and other CIS nations that he says contains too many trade restrictions. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov surprised many by signing the agreement in St. Petersburg on Tuesday even though Ukraine had failed to persuade Russia to lift most of the restrictions. Mykola Tomenko, a deputy speaker of Parliament and a senior member of Batkivshchyna, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s opposition party, said the agreement was a waste of time. “Actually, what the prime minister has signed has nothing to do with the free market because the free trade agreement must have no exclusions and restrictions,” Tomenko said in an interview with Channel 5 television. “If we cannot sell to Russia our main commodities and cannot have normal relations in natural gas sector, then such agreement is not needed.” There were fears raised in Ukraine by opposition figures, including by former President Viktor Yushchenko, that the agreement with Russia and other CIS nations may be signaling a change in the government’s foreign policy away from seeking closer cooperation with the European Union...

An agreement on creation of the free trade area (FTA) between the CIS countries provides for reduction, not expansion of a list of goods, included into the FTA, President of the Association of Ukrainian Banks (AUB) Oleksandr Suhoniako has said, UKRINFORM reports. "Article 2 of the Agreement on the free trade zone provides for 40 pages of withdrawals from the free trade regime. This is actually "an agreement on withdrawals from the free trade area" rather than the free trade area agreement," he said. According to Suhoniako, the agreement provides for the use of import duties for goods from Ukraine by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia, in particular, for sugar, vodka, sugar beet seeds and lactose. Also, export duties for Ukrainian goods are imposed as follows...

On Monday October 24th, the Ukrainian Canadian community held its inaugural Ukrainian Day on the Hill with a grand celebration of Ukrainian culture and heritage at the Government Conference Center on Parliament Hill. This event was coupled with two intense days of meetings between Ukrainian community leaders and political leaders, diplomats and government officials. The purpose of these meetings was to inform decision makers about a number of important issues to the Ukrainian Canadian community including: the 120th anniversary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada; the situation in Ukraine and the erosion of human rights and democracy in that country; Canada-Ukraine Free trade negotiations; the proposed content for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; and immigration levels from Ukraine and visa processing. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) delegation included representatives from the Ukrainian National Federation (UNF), the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), the Ukrainian-Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko (TSF), the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce (CUCC), the Ukrainian-Canadian Professional and Business Federation (UCPBF), and the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC). They held high level meetings with ...