Ukraine's new leader, Viktor Yanukovch, is planning to visit the EU capital next week. However, the bloc is unlikely to reward him with an early deal on visa-free travel. The president elect is in talks with the office of EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton to come to Brussels on Monday (1 March), three days following his inauguration in Kiev and more than a week before a planned trip to Moscow. The EU visit is intended to signal Mr Yanukovych's foreign policy priorities and to help dispel his image as a Kremlin stooge. Poland at an EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday (22 February) stuck its neck out with a proposal for the union to reciprocate by offering Ukraine a roadmap for visa-free travel when the president drops by...

Moscow has demanded that incoming Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich among other things end Kyiv’s contacts with the CIA and allow the FSB to return to Crimea, part of a more general effort by Russia to exploit the election outcome in Ukraine and an indication of what will be at stake there in the coming months. In an article in today’s issue of “Vlast’,” journalist Vladimir Solovyev, drawing on both Russian and Ukrainian diplomatic sources, describes Moscow’s pleasure at the election of Yanukovich and its expectations that he will reverse many of the “orange” policies of his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko...

My father was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. On June 30, 1941 in the turmoil of the Nazi invasion of and Soviet withdrawal from Western Ukraine, the OUN declared Ukrainian independence in Lviv. This was a direct challenge to the Nazis who would never accept Ukraine’s right to exist. My father and the brother of OUN leader Stepan Bandera were entrusted with the function of carrying out that proclamation in another area of Western Ukraine, then called Stanislaviv now Ivano Frankivsk. As a result, Bandera’s two brothers, my father and other OUN members were arrested on September 22, 1941 in Stanislaviv and sent to Auschwitz, where my father remained interned until just before the Soviets arrived. The Nazis transferred him to another camp at Mauthausen and then Ebensee. He remained interned until the end of the war, finally liberated by the Americans. Bandera’s brothers were not so lucky. They were brutally murdered in Auschwitz. Ms. Rogatchi, how dare you call Stefan Bandera a “butcher?” He was a prisoner...

The spurious allegation that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its members in the Nachtigall Battalion carried out pogroms in Lviv in the summer of 1941, continues to be dredged up to defame the Ukrainian liberation struggle during WWII. Despite having been authoritatively exposed as part of a Soviet disinformation campaign from 50 years ago, it is again being forced on unwitting media outlets to discredit Ukrainian President Yushchenko’s decision to confer a posthumous medal “Hero of Ukraine” on Stepan Bandera, leader of OUN during and after WWII. Five separate and exhaustive investigations...

Stalin is to make a comeback on the streets of Moscow for the first time in decades in a celebration of the Soviet victory over Hitler in the Second World War. Posters and information booths devoted to the Soviet dictator are to go up across the capital under a proposal by Moscow City Council to mark the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9. The decision outraged rights groups and opposition parties yesterday, who condemned it as another step towards rehabilitating a tyrant. It also split the political establishment amid signs of Kremlin unease that Stalin’s legacy of repression could overshadow plans to honour veterans of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. Millions of people...

Georgia on Thursday (19 February) warned Europe against a proposed French sale of warships to Russia, as it would allow Moscow to invade any former Soviet republic "within hours," echoing concerns raised by Baltic leaders that the deal is in breach of an EU code on arms trade. During a visit to London, President Mikheil Saakashvili said that the warship sale was "very risky" and would "reward" Russia's continued military presence in Georgia's breakaway provinces, in violation of a French-brokered ceasefire agreement after a brief war in 2008. Russia is...

On 16 February, Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko made good on earlier statements by officially filing documents with the country’s Supreme (Higher) Administrative Court to overturn the country’s presidential election results. (1) One day later, the Court suspended the official declaration of results by the Central Election Commission (CEC) while it examines the three large boxes of documents submitted with Tymoshenko’s complaint. (2) The court, however, declined to halt the scheduled 25 February inauguration of Yanukovych, saying its jurisdiction only allows it to deal with the actions of the CEC. However...

Outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday the policies of his newly elected successor risk turning Ukraine back into a Kremlin vassal state, the Associated Press reported. Yushchenko made the statements, some of his harshest against President-elect Viktor Yanukovych, at a news conference nine days before he is due hand over power. "The victory of Yanukovych is a Kremlin project. It is a policy of deep dependence on Russia," Yushchenko said. Yushchenko was the leader of mass street protests...

delivered a slightly modified and abbreviated version of the following at The Washington Group (TWG) conference on the Ukrainian presidential elections held on Saturday: Even before Victor Yanukovich's win in the presidential election, there seemed to have been an early declaration of victory - not from either of the two remaining candidates- but from Moscow. Sure, voters trounced incumbent President...

One of the greatest tragedies of the Ukrainian people is that because of their long time status as stateless and oppressed, their history has been written in most instances by the oppressor and/or his agents. Ukraine has been independent for almost a score. Still certain states, i.e. the Russian Federation which has proven to be a legitimate successor in interest to both Czarist Russia and the USSR have not been able to come to grips. Still others who have since befriended Ukraine, i.e. Poland refuse to edit its prejudicially written original account. And even those agents who...