"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR"
An International Newsletter
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary
"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"
UKRAINE GOVERNMENT SO FAR MAKING FEW ATTEMPTS TO
CHANGE ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS SYSTEM FOR THE BETTER
Where are any real reforms? They are few and far between.
[OP-ED, article two]
"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" - Number 484
E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C. and Kyiv, Ukraine, FRIDAY, May 13, 2005
------INDEX OF ARTICLES------
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"
1.UKRAINE PRES: VOTERS SHOULD DECIDE ON EU, NATO MEMBERSHIP
Associated Press (AP), Kiev, Ukraine, Thu, May 12, 2005
2. UKRAINE GOVERNMENT SO FAR MAKING FEW ATTEMPTS TO
CHANGE ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS SYSTEM FOR THE BETTER
OP-ED: Inside Ukraine Business Newsletter
Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, May 13, 2005
3. UKRAINE TO REVIEW PRIVATIZATIONS OF 29 COMPANIES
According to First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh
AP Worldstream, Kiev, Ukraine, Thu, May 12, 2005
4. CHERNOBYL VICTIMS SLAM NUCLEAR FUEL RECYCLING PLAN
Associated Press, Kiev, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
5. US-FUNDED RADIO LIBERTY REBROADCAST IN UKRAINIAN CAPITAL
Ukrayina Moloda, Kiev, in Ukrainian 12 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Thu, May 12, 2005
6. NAFTOGAZ SAYS UKRNAFTA'S PROFIT SHOULD BE FUNNELED INTO
COMPANY'S DEVELOPMENT NOT GIVEN AS DIVIDENDS TO GOVERNMENT
Interfax-Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, May 12, 2005
7. GOVERNMENT DRAFTING CONCEPT OF COAL MINING INDUSTRY'S
DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT 2030
Oleksandr Khorolsky, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
8. PRESIDENT DISCUSSES POSSIBILITIES OF NEW PROJECTS IN
HUMANITARIAN AND TOURIST SPHERES WITH TORONTO MAYOR
AND REPRESENTATIVES OF CANADIAN BUSINESS
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
9. BOSTON SHRINERS CLINIC SAYS NASTIA OVCHAR'S RECOVERY
FROM SEVERE BURNS ASSUMES SIGNS OF STABILITY
Yana Lemeshenkio, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
10. RUSSIA: STOPPED US, UK, KUWAIT, SAUDI SPYING NGOs
Trying to weaken Russian influence in the CIS
Russian claims Ukrainians will be brought to Belarus to foment change
Associated Press (AP), Moscow, Russia, Thu, May 12, 2005
11. UKRAINE REBUFFS RUSSIA'S "EXPORT OF REVOLUTION" ALLEGATIONS
First Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteyko Comments
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 12 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Thu, May 12, 2005
12. CHERNOBYL PILOT SOARS ABOVE HIS OBSTACLES
By Lyuba Pronina, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Moscow, Russia
Thursday, May 12, 2005. Issue 3163. Page 11.
13. UCC STATEMENT ON THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY IN EUROPE
Ostap Skrypnyk, Executive Director
Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC)
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Friday, May 6, 2005
14. SOVIETS NEVER FORGAVE "TRAITORS"
Reconciliation between veterans of Red Army and URA never took place
COMMENTARY: By Mycola Velychko, Lviv
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
15. "PARADING AGAINST RECONCILIATION"
President Yushchenko's initiative to reconcile Soviet veterans and veterans
of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has been repulsed, but the issue is likely
to trouble future Victory Day celebrations.
OP-ED: By Ivan Lozowy, Transitions On Line (TOL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Wed, 11 May 2005
16. FORWARD TO VE DAY
Our memory wars will never end, but a common future is possible
COMMENTARY: Timothy Garton Ash in Warsaw
The Guardian, London, UK, Thursday May 12, 2005
17. WAS WORLD WAR II WORTH IT?
OP-ED: By Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Cause
Vienna, Virginia, Wednesday, May 11, 2005
18. BRUSSELS'S BETRAYAL OF UKRAINIAN DEMOCRACY
By Phillip Giddings, Phillipgiddings@aol.com, UK,
The Action Ukraine Report, Wash, D.C., Thursday, May 12, 2005
==============================================================
1. UKRAINE PRES: VOTERS SHOULD DECIDE ON EU, NATO MEMBERSHIP
Associated Press (AP), Kiev, Ukraine, Thu, May 12, 2005
KIEV - President Viktor Yushchenko said Thursday that he would let
Ukrainians decide for themselves in plebiscites whether the former Soviet
republic should seek membership in the European Union and NATO.
"The forming of a national position regarding such issues as membership
in the E.U., it is an issue that will be decided exclusively through a
referendum," Yushchenko said, answering a question about NATO member-
ship during a live televised call-in show marking his first three months in
office. He did not say when such votes might be held. The E.U. and NATO
have said Ukraine has considerable work to do before a membership bid
could be considered.
Yushchenko has made it a top priority to nudge Ukraine closer to the West,
but he has always said that Ukrainians must fully appreciate the benefits of
membership in the Western organizations. He has also insisted that Ukraine
must maintain good relations with its giant neighbor, Russia.
"We need strategic relations with Russia and with the European Union and
both are mutually connected," Yushchenko said during the show which was
broadcast live on three television stations controlled by Viktor Pinchuk,
the son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma. "The mistake of the
previous government was that they developed relations 'either-or.' We
developed relations 'and-and,"' Yushchenko said.
He also urged Ukrainians to give his new government time to fulfill his
campaign promises, saying three months in office isn't enough time to make
sweeping changes. Ukrainians gathered in downtown squares in four cities to
complain directly to Yushchenko about social problems and demand more
government help.
They also called in and sent e-mails with complaints and requests. "Arm
yourself with patience," Yushchenko said. "Let's allow the new government
to work." He pledged that his team "will not bury its head in the sand" and
will admit its mistakes.
He said the government's aim was to improve the lives of all of Ukraine 's
48 million people, and pledged that his economic policy will help everyone
from "the pregnant mother to the oldest retiree."
Yushchenko won a court-ordered presidential repeat vote last year that was
called in response to mass protests, dubbed the "Orange Revolution" after
Yushchenko's campaign color. Demonstrators had refused to accept the
declared victory of Yushchenko's opponent, claiming mass fraud.
His presidency so far has brought an increase in pensions and raised Ukraine
's international profile, but Ukrainians are also grumbling over economic
decisions - such as the strengthening of Ukraine 's hryvna currency against
the dollar - and rising inflation, all of which are hurting their
pocketbooks.
The opposition has accused the government of political persecution, and the
business community has been rattled by the review of some post-Soviet
privatization deals that Yushchenko's government claims gave valuable state
businesses to Kuchma's cronies at rock-bottom prices. Pinchuk, Ukraine 's
wealthiest tycoon, has been one of the primary targets of these reviews.
Yushchenko repeated allegations that billions of hyrvnas were stolen by the
previous regime, and said that the alleged thefts had to be investigated.
But he insisted that this was a job for prosecutors and the courts and not
for the president. He also demanded that property on nature reserves along
the Black Sea where many wealthy tycoons built their homes illegally during
Kuchma's rule be returned to the state within two months.
The call-in show began with questions about Yushchenko's controversial bid
to reconcile Ukraine 's Red Army veterans with the 100,000 partisan soldiers
who fought the Soviets during World War II. "Don't ask who should forgive
first, the one who is more clever will be the first to forgive," he
said. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
===============================================================
2. UKRAINE GOVERNMENT SO FAR MAKING FEW ATTEMPTS TO
CHANGE ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS SYSTEM FOR THE BETTER
OP-ED: Inside Ukraine Business Newsletter
Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, May 13, 2005
What is very disappointing is that the new Ukrainian government is
making very few attempts to reform the economic and business
system for the better. Instead, the various reformed smokers (nothing
worse than a reformed Smoker) only target areas they know they
made their money on, and have unleashed nothing but political
retribution.
One has to giggle when you hear from them about "only the oligarchs
are complaining." First there aren't so many Oligarchs, by definition,
and second what do they consider themselves, poor?
Knowing Ukraine, this is not for revenge, it is simply for positioning
and influencing circles from the old to the new for the upcoming
Parliamentary Elections.
One has to feel a bit disappointed for private business who spent
money and helped in very large ways only to be totally ignored now.
The feel In our "western" still existing cold war mentality, is that the
media and various key people are more interested in reporting a cold
war victory, rather than beginning to press Ukraine for real reform and
holding the "Orange Revolution" to the expectations they spoke of
and that the average person, by the tens of thousands, fought for.
To date it has all been "plain folks propaganda" designed to get to power.
The media has given Ukraine a pass to date. The honeymoon should
already be over.
We underestimated the ability of various people we know to disappear in
a cloud of jets and western hotels, disengaged, never to be heard from
again. Sometimes we have to admit to being a little naïve. The lesson
was Gaidar in Russia's first democratic government, so eager to kiss
the west, he forgot his own countries real needs, and the victory was
soon lost.
Where is the legislation to lower taxes? Where is land reform discussion
and legislation? Where is removal of Deputies immunity (even Russia
eliminated this)? Where is the removal of Ukraine's Soviet-style economic
(commercial code)? Where is the removal of the anti-investment National
Bank of Ukraine edits? Where are any real reforms? Few and far between.
Only more tax checking, more contract checking, more court cases against
arbitrary state acts, more price and export controls, more double-digit
inflation, more large budget deficits, higher tax burdens for small
business, foggy reprivatization plans, more state capitalism at the expense
of private capitalism, higher risks thus higher interest rates, more
business going into the shadow economy than coming out, monetary
policy uproar and confusion, disorganized government administration
at the top, new officials pulling and pushing in different directions, only
new hands looking to be filled.
At the same time business and investment tries to goes on. Since 1992
we have been waiting for something positively serious to happen. We
thought it would happen now. O.K. will we have to wait another 10 years?
If the trends of the first 100 days continue we will have to.
In the mean time agriculture is where its happening in Ukraine. Its also
is why Ukraine has zero chance for EU entry, the French will never allow
it as they will be replaced. -30-
===============================================================
3. UKRAINE TO REVIEW PRIVATIZATIONS OF 29 COMPANIES
According to First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh
AP Worldstream, Kiev, Ukraine, Thu, May 12, 2005
KIEV - A senior Ukrainian official announced Thursday that the government
wants to review the privatizations of 29 companies - a number far below the
thousands that some investors had feared. First Deputy Prime Minister
Anatoliy Kinakh, who heads a working group charged with looking into this
ex-Soviet republic's past privatization deals, refused to identify the
companies but said the list was the group's final recommendation.
Ukraine's new government had vowed to revisit the privatizations of key
factories that it said were sold over the last 10 years to allies of former
President Leonid Kuchma at rock-bottom prices. The post-Soviet
privatizations helped a handful of Ukrainians make vast sums, but critics
say the sales did little to fill state coffers.
Initially, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had suggested thousands of
companies could be affected, but later officials said it would only be
several dozen. Business leaders had pressed the government to quickly
clarify how big a review it planned, warning that uncertainty would scare
away the investors Ukraine needs to boost its economy.
Kinakh said the list of 29 businesses would be given to the Cabinet, and
later publicized. He insisted that all reviews would be carried out in
strict observance of Ukrainian law, with the final decisions resting with
the courts. "Until the courts have made a corresponding decision, please
don't draw any conclusions or make any prognosis," he said in an appeal
to his Cabinet colleagues.
Kinakh, who chaired the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs,
is considered one of the business community's biggest allies in the new
government. The Ukrainian government has already begun the review process,
targeting the country's biggest steel mill, Kryvorizhstal, which was bought
last year by a consortium that included Viktor Pinchuk, Kuchma's son-in-law.
Other Pinchuk businesses are also under investigation. -30-
===============================================================
4. CHERNOBYL VICTIMS SLAM NUCLEAR FUEL RECYCLING PLAN
Associated Press, Kiev, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
KIEV - A group representing victims of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster on
Wednesday criticized plans by Ukraine to examine the possibility of nuclear
fuel reprocessing.
The Chernobyl Union, which is also a leading Ukrainian anti-nuclear group,
described the move as "impossible from an economic and technical point of
view." Yuriy Andreev, the union's head, said the plan would cost hundreds of
millions of dollars (euros) to implement. "It's just a political move ...
only Russia and America have the capacities for that," Andreev said.
The state-run nuclear operator said Saturday that Ukraine wants to build 11
new nuclear reactors by 2030 in a strategic move aimed at boosting its
energy independence. Energoatom also said the government had instructed
it to carry out a feasibility study into recycling nuclear fuel.
In 1986, Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, when a
reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, spewing radiation over much
of northern Europe. Some 4,400 people died and about 7 million people in the
former Soviet republics are believed to have suffered from radiation-related
health problems.
Chernobyl's remaining reactors were finally shuttered in 2000. At a donor
conference to be held in London later this week, Ukraine will seek funds to
build a new shelter over the hastily constructed entombment that secures the
destroyed reactor core. -30-
===============================================================
5. US-FUNDED RADIO LIBERTY REBROADCAST IN UKRAINIAN CAPITAL
Ukrayina Moloda, Kiev, in Ukrainian 12 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Thu, May 12, 2005
KIEV - Radio Kiev, which uses the 98 FM frequency, has begun rebroadcasting
Radio Liberty's programmes. The "Morning Liberty" programme, which contains
the latest international news from foreign observers and correspondents,
goes on the air every weekday from 0600 to 0655 [0300 - 0355 gmt].
"Evening Liberty" is broadcast from 2000 to 2055 [1700 - 1755 gmt] and
focuses on live discussions of current events in Ukraine. Radio Kiev is also
planning to start broadcasting programmes by Deutsche Welle. -30-
===============================================================
6. NAFTOGAZ SAYS UKRNAFTA'S PROFIT SHOULD BE FUNNELED INTO
COMPANY'S DEVELOPMENT NOT GIVEN AS DIVIDENDS TO GOVERNMENT
Interfax-Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, May 12, 2005
KYIV - Leaders of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy, which owns 50%+1 stock in OJSC
Ukrnafta, believe that the use of the company's profit should be changed,
Naftogaz Ukrainy's press service reported in a Thursday press release.
At a shareholder meeting on May 11, Serhiy Pereloma, Naftogaz Ukrainy's
first deputy board chairman, did not back a proposition by Ukrnafta's
supervisory council to channel practically all of the net profit for 2004
into paying dividends.
As the press release reads, Naftogaz Ukrainy, as a shareholder, should care
not only for profits, but also for Ukrnafta's further development. The
program for Ukrnafta's development projects realization of large-scale
projects, particularly on extracting hydrocarbons beyond Ukraine's borders
and developing the chain of filling stations. These projects require
considerable capital investments.
Naftogaz Ukrainy has initiated consideration of the question on distribution
of Ukrnafta's profit from 2004 at the company's shareholder meeting
scheduled for June 20. -30-
===============================================================
7. GOVERNMENT DRAFTING CONCEPT OF COAL MINING INDUSTRY'S
DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT 2030
Oleksandr Khorolsky, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
KYIV - As Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko told participants in high-profile
deliberations to tackle the Ukrainian coal mining industry's problems, the
Government has embarked on drafting a concept of the coal mining industry's
long-term development throughout 2030. In particular, the concept envisages
that coal extraction will increase from 60 million tons to 110 million tons
a year.
Mrs Tymoshenko stated the deliberations as aimed at finding ways to
restitute the domestic coal mining industry's repute, power and affluence,
rather than starting massive shutdowns of coal mines. The Prime Minister
also stated the coal mining industry development program as part and parcel
of the national fuel-energy strategy.
According to Yuliya Tymoshenko, Ukraine has ample ground to have an
optimistic outlook about its fuel-energy sector's future. Mrs Tymoshenko
stated coal as the only fuel which Ukraine can boast of possessing in
strategic amounts, which is why Ukraine's energy security may be viewed
as heavily relying on extraction of coal.
The Head of Government admitted to the coal mining industry's deep systemic
crisis, which has been caused by coal mines' depreciated technical
equipment, inefficient management and misappropriation of funds, with the
money continuously washing out through vertically integrated companies into
the economy's shadow sector.
This vicious practice could not but have a most disastrous effect on coal
mines' satellite townships and the local population, Mrs Tymoshenko
contended. As the Prime Minister stressed, the concept of the coal mining
industry's development proceeds from the dire need to improve its workers'
living standards and safety of their work.
Speaking in the deliberations, First Deputy Fuel & Energy Minister Viktor
Topolov noted that coal is Ukraine's only fuel, amounts of which are enough
to meet the national economy's needs. As he said, experts predict that the
share of coal in the global balance of fuels will increase as the share of
petroleum tends to shrink. According to Viktor Topolov, coal accounts for 67
percent of fuels, which the would extracts, versus petroleum's 18 percent
and 15 percent for natural gas.
In Ukraine coal accounts for 95.4 percent of the nation's fuel deposits (the
shares of petroleum and natural gas are just 2 percent and 2.6 percent).
If Ukrainian fuel-fired power plants switch to applying technologies of
so-called boiling supralayers then Ukraine's energy requirements will be
securely met for at least 60 years to come, Mr Topolov noted.
Further commenting on the concept, Viktor Topolov said its materialization
will be carried out in three stages. The first stage, which will last to
2010, provides for boosting coal extraction to 91 M. tons a year. Within
this period new longwalls will be commissioned with an up to 17 M. ton
capacity. This will allow to meet Ukraine's demand for energy coal.
The second and three stages will last to 2015 and 2030, respectively. By
2015 extraction of coal is supposed to increase to 96.5 M. tons to 110 M.
tons a year. As far as the coal mining industry's reconstruction is
concerned, in 2006 7.45 bn. UAH is supposed to be allocated to this end,
including 4.5 bn. UAH of budgetary means.
According to Viktor Topolov, the industry's proprietorial relations will be
radically altered. Today, he said, out of Ukraine's 167 coal mining
enterprises 122 enterprises remain the State's property, 20 enterprises are
joint-stock companies, four enterprises are leased entitles, ten coal mines
combine state and private capital and only ten coal mines are privately
owned.
As Viktor Topolov told the audience, though Ukraine belongs to the world's
ten biggest extractors of coal, labor efficacy and productivity of Ukrainian
coal mines is much lower than in Germany and Poland and dozen times
lower than in the USA and Canada.
Mr Topolov stated Ukrainian coal mines' credit indebtedness as fluctuating
between 9 bn. UAH and 10 bn. UAH for several years, which is 2.5 times
larger than their debtor indebtedness, two times in excess of their yearly
extraction. Mr Topolov stated wages in the coal mining industry as the
fuel-energy segment's lowest.
According to Viktor Topolov, 47 percent of coal, extracted in Ukraine, is
meant for making coke, 33 percent is shipped to fuel-fired power plants,
8 percent is exported, 4 percent is meant for coal mines' internal
consumption, one percent is meant for public utilities, and 7 percent is
meant for other purposes.
Touching on the coal mining industry's restructuring, Fuel & Energy Minister
Ivan Plachkov noted that the concept envisages a four-tire management
system, which is the Fuel & Energy Ministry, the national company Vuhillia
Ukrainy ("Ukraine's Coal"), regional state-owned coal agencies and coal
mines. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
===============================================================
8. PRESIDENT DISCUSSES POSSIBILITIES OF NEW PROJECTS IN
HUMANITARIAN AND TOURIST SPHERES WITH TORONTO MAYOR
AND REPRESENTATIVES OF CANADIAN BUSINESS
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
KYIV - President Viktor Yushchenko met with Toronto (Canada) Mayor David
Miller and representatives of the Canadian business, the presidential press
service told Ukrinform. Attending the meeting was also Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr
Omelchenko.
During a conversation the Head of State assured Canadian guests that the
new power in Ukraine would make everything possible so "that national and
international businesses felt that the Ukrainian market is interesting,
profitable and promising". According to Viktor Yushchenko, the new
Ukrainian power is convinced "What is profitable for business is profitable
for Ukraine". "Power and business should find a contact with each other",
he noted.
Viktor Yushchenko underscored once again that the Council of Investors
under the President of Ukraine is an independent institute, which is under
the state control. "I realize how important it is that Ukraine is
comfortable for investors, how important it is not to disappoint those
investors, who have already come to Ukraine", the President noted.
President also discussed with the Toronto Mayor and representatives of
business circles possibilities of new projects, in particular, in
humanitarian and tourist spheres. In their turn, the Canadian businesspeople
and the Toronto Mayor noted that they are ready to assist Ukraine to occupy
a worthy place among other states. -30-
===============================================================
9. BOSTON SHRINERS CLINIC SAYS NASTIA OVCHAR'S RECOVERY
FROM SEVERE BURNS ASSUMES SIGNS OF STABILITY
Yana Lemeshenkio, Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
KYIV - Foreign Ministry deputy press service chief Dmitri Svistkov said
during a Wednesday news briefing, that according to sources with the
Boston Shriners Clinic, where the five-year-old Ukrainian girl Nastia Ovchar
is being treated for severe burns, that the girl's condition, though still
very complicated, has assumed signs of stability.
On Monday, May 16, Dmitri Svistkov said, the little girl will undergo yet
another surgery to plant new skin in the last ten percent segment of her
body's skin, 80 percent of which had been burned. Nastia sustained severe
burns in a fire in her home, during which she managed to rescue her two-
year-old sister. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
===============================================================
10. RUSSIA: STOPPED US, UK, KUWAIT, SAUDI SPYING NGOs
Trying to weaken Russian influence in the CIS
Claims Ukrainians will be brought to Belarus to foment change
Associated Press (AP), Moscow, Russia, Thu, May 12, 2005
MOSCOW (AP)--Russia's security chief said Thursday that his agency has
uncovered U.S., U.K., Kuwaiti and Saudi spy activity that was being
conducted under the cover of non-governmental organizations. The head of
the Federal Security Service or FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, also suggested that
foreign governments are using NGOs to fund and support changes of power
in former Soviet republics.
Patrushev told lawmakers in parliament that his agency, which is known by
its Russian acronym FSB and is the main successor to the Soviet KGB, has
prevented espionage operations by the U.S., U.K., Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
"The activity by these states was conducted by non-governmental
organizations working in Russia," Patrushev said.
He named the Peace Corps - which pulled out of Russia in 2002 amid FSB
spying allegations - as well as the U.K. medical group Merlin, the "Saudi
Red Crescent" and a Kuwaiti group he called the Society of Social Reforms.
Patrushev, who is considered a close ally of President Vladimir Putin - a
longtime KGB officer and former FSB chief - said that "foreign intelligence
services are using nontraditional methods" along with classic spying
techniques. "He said that "lobbying of the interests of foreign states and
information-gathering are conducted under the cover of various humanitarian
and educational programs."
Patrushev reiterated claims by Russian officials who have accused the U.S.
and other Western nations of using NGOs to aid opposition forces that have
brought down governments in other ex-Soviet republics in the past two years.
His comments came just two days after U.S. President George W. Bush visited
Georgia, site of the "Rose Revolution" 18 months ago that marked the start
of a wave of uprisings against entrenched leaders in ex-Soviet republics. An
uprising followed in Ukraine , then in Kyrgyzstan.
"Our opponents are steadily and persistently trying to weaken Russian
influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the international
arena as a whole," Patrushev said. "The latest events in Georgia, Ukraine
and Kyrgyzstan unambiguously confirm this."
Patrushev suggested Russia believes the next Western target is Moscow ally
Belarus, where U.S. officials haven't masked their disgust at authoritarian
President Alexander Lukashenko and have called for free elections next year.
He said that "according to certain information, more than $5 million has
been earmarked by non-governmental organizations for financing future
elections," and claimed there were efforts under way to bring Ukrainians who
protested during last year's "Orange Revolution" to foment change in
Belarus.
The FSB routinely claims to have uncovered spying by foreign countries
including the U.S., but Patrushev's remarks in the lower parliament house
came days after Putin and Western leaders, including U.S. President George
Bush, celebrated unity during commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the
Allied victory over Nazi Germany. Putin also reached a new agreement this
week deepening cooperation with the European Union.
Patrushev's statement was the latest from a top official assailing civil
society groups in Russia, which Putin criticized last year as often being
more interested in foreign funding than in helping Russian people. -30-
=================================================================
11. UKRAINE REBUFFS RUSSIA'S "EXPORT OF REVOLUTION" ALLEGATIONS
First Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteyko Comments
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian, 12 May 05
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Thu, May 12, 2005
KIEV - Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteyko has been ironic
about statements that activists from Ukraine have allegedly been taking part
in drafting an international plan to topple the Belarusian authorities.
Buteyko was commenting on the statement by the chief of the Russian FSB
[Federal Security Service], Nikolay Patrushev, about the possible export of
the "orange revolution" to Belarus.
"I would advise people who are looking for orange sources to look for
sources of the national liberation movement led by [Ukrainian 17th-century
Cossack leader] Bohdan Khmelnytskyy or the uprising led by Spartacus,"
Buteyko said. Buteyko was also ironic about "the security service's special
task to look for something which is not visible". "If one is to look for
causes of a revolution abroad, one will go a long way," he said.
At the same time, Buteyko recalled that during meetings between the
Ukrainian and Russian presidents, Viktor Yushchenko and Vladimir Putin,
there was good dialogue and mood for cooperation. [Passage omitted:
details of Patrushev's statement] -30-
===============================================================
12. CHERNOBYL PILOT SOARS ABOVE HIS OBSTACLES
By Lyuba Pronina, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Moscow, Russia
Thursday, May 12, 2005. Issue 3163. Page 11.
If there are men who have gone through fire and water, Nikolai Melnik is
certainly one of them. Once a test pilot, Melnik lives in Spain, where he
has received a royal award for his efforts in aerial firefighting. His most
dangerous mission, however, came in 1986, when he was sent to help
measure radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after one of its
reactors exploded.
Making about 40 sorties to the area, he was hit by radiation 10 times
above the permitted level. Predictably, medical complications ensued.
"In 1994, I had two operations. ... Doctors told me to stay away from
drinking and smoking, and lead a normal life," Melnik said as he lit a
cigarette. "A month later, I decided I would live the way I like, not
limiting myself in anything."
For the past decade, Melnik, 51, has been living comfortably with his wife
and son in a house in Alicante, Spain, fighting fires and helping out in
emergency situations.
With what he calls a calm and stable life in Spain, Melnik said he would
trade it back for the years when he did "real man's work." "If I was given
what I had back in the Soviet times, I would not have gone to Spain," he
said. "What I do in Spain now is a game for kids. I used to do serious
risk-related work."
Back in 1986, working as a test pilot with the Kamov helicopter design
bureau, Melnik was summoned to Moscow to prepare for the Chernobyl
mission.
However, it was only on the way to Borispol Airport in Kiev that he was told
what he would be doing. Melnik's task was to place radiation sensors in the
reactor by dropping them with a 200-meter cable from his helicopter.
"I just thought, 'Woe is my youth!' when we were told what we were about to
do," Melnik said. "I was 32 years old." A few days before flying to Kiev, he
was practicing the maneuver he would have to perform at Chernobyl at the
Kamov facility in southeast Moscow: dropping a heavy weight into a small
circle. "It looked like a preparation for some official show," he said.
Melnik's interest in aviation followed his father, who was among the first
pilots to test-fly the MiG-9, the first jet fighter made by the famous
design bureau after World War II. In 1972, Melnik started off his career as
a pilot flying the Czechoslovak L-29 trainer jet, later progressing to the
MiG-17 and MiG-21 jet fighters. Five years later, he was forced to switch to
civilian planes, having been decommissioned after he suffered partial
hearing loss in his left ear due to a sudden depressurization in the cockpit
at 7,000 meters.
Melnik moved to Aeroflot, where he got his first taste of flying
helicopters. He flew various types of craft, including the workhorse Mi-8
and superheavy transport Mi-26, starting at Kamov in 1982. After the Soviet
Union broke up, Melnik, who had been named a Hero of the Soviet Union for
his work in Chernobyl, had to make a move again, and he set up a cargo
airline in Kiev.
"When [the country] broke up, I realized that as a Hero of the Soviet Union,
I would either be wearing a dirty jacket and begging like a babushka, or
have to get myself a new job," Melnik said. In 1993, Melnik and a Bulgarian
partner set up the airline in Ukraine, shipping cargo for DHL and UPS on
Antonov 24s and Kamov helicopters. The business did well enough for the
Spanish company Helicopteros Del Sureste to approach him in 1995 about
obtaining some helicopters.
"When [the Spanish firm's representatives] came over in 1995, we had
complete disorder here in the country," Melnik said. "People were pulling
the wool over their eyes for months, taking them [horseriding] and to
saunas, but never gave them business. In 1 1/2 months, we found six Mi-8s
and two Ka-32s for them."
Melnik and his family moved to Spain, where he became a pilot and instructor
for Helicopteros Del Sureste, one of the country's largest helicopter
operators, and a link to Kamov, which supplies Ka-32 helicopters to the
Spanish company. Business between the two firms has taken off.
Melnik has 13,400 recorded flight hours, 3,000 of them in Spain. He has
trained 25 Spanish pilots, and in 1998 he received his award from Spain's
King Juan Carlos for firefighting but shies away when asked about it. "He is
not a man of many words," said Luis Alzira, a pilot he trained. "He would
not go about being proud. He just does it because it's his job and he likes
it."
"But he is a true professional with lots of experience, and one you can
learn a lot from. When you want to try something new, he shows how to do
it and has faith in you," Alzira said. -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/05/12/045.html
===============================================================
13. UCC STATEMENT ON THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY IN EUROPE
Ostap Skrypnyk, Executive Director
Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC)
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Friday, May 6, 2005
While Canada commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of victory over Nazi
tyranny and the contribution of over 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians who served
in its military forces, we should remember that not all who fought for
freedom achieved it in 1945. Among the countries for which victory rang
hollow was Ukraine-the principal battlefield of World War II in Europe,
where 607 German divisions were destroyed.
Red Army casualties in Ukraine in 1943-44 amounted to some 3.5 million,
with Ukrainians accounting for 50-70 percent of them. Tens of thousands of
Ukrainians also fought in other Allied armies. According to recent research,
Ukraine's total casualties approached 10 million. About 2.2 million
Ukrainians were deported to Germany as slave labourers. More than 700
towns and 28,000 villages were completely or partly destroyed.
The Soviet Union, on whose side most Ukrainians were obliged to fight,
was neither a democracy nor a federation of equals but a Russocentric
dictatorship. From 1939 to 1941, as Hitler's armies overran Europe, the
USSR willingly collaborated with Nazi Germany. Under the terms of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, it annexed the western Ukrainian lands and
deported some 320,000 residents to Siberia.
Earlier, during the 1930s, the Soviet regime did its best to wipe out the
nominally sovereign Ukrainian SSR by destroying its institutions, from the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the Communist Party of Ukraine, killing
thousands of intellectuals, breaking resistance to collectivization by means
of a man-made famine that took millions of peasant lives, and Russifying the
Ukrainian language and culture. By the late 1930s, forced centralization had
gone so far that Stalin and his associates considered doing away with the
Soviet republics as administrative units.
In the western Ukrainian lands, reoccupied by the Red Army in 1944,
resistance to the Soviet regime was particularly strong. The Ukrainian
Insurgent Army, formed in 1942 in order to combat the German occupiers,
fought desperately to avoid the fate that had befallen the Ukrainian SSR in
the 1930s.
Research in recently opened archives has revealed the broad scope of that
resistance: more than 153,000 insurgents killed and more than 134,000
arrested, with almost 66,000 families (more than 203,000 individuals)
deported to Siberia. This was no marginal guerrilla action but a war of
national liberation that continued against overwhelming odds until the early
1950s.
For Ukraine, as for Eastern Europe generally, the "liberation" of 1945 meant
the replacement of one tyranny by another. Pro-Soviet "democratic"
governments were imposed throughout the lands occupied by the Red Army.
They remained in place for more than four decades, until the fall of the
Soviet Union ended the war's legacy of dictatorial rule from Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin's statement of April 25 lamenting the fall of the
USSR as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the twentieth century
shows that the Russian political establishment is not prepared, even now,
to confront that legacy and break with it.
The collapse of Nazi Germany in May of 1945 did not mean peace for all of
Europe. In Ukraine, as in other Eastern European and Baltic countries, the
struggle for national liberation and self-determination continued on into
the 1950s. In Ukraine, the war went on even after the armed struggle
ceased: a war carried out by the most brutal totalitarian tactics of the
Soviet regime against human dignity, national rights, religion and the
individual.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress calls upon the Government of Canada and
all Canadians to recognise that the end of the war which destroyed the Nazi
evil brought freedom to some but also saw continued occupation and misery
for millions of others. For the sake of the victims of Soviet oppression,
this must not be forgotten. - 30 -
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Ostap Skrypnyk, Executive Director
Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Tel: (204) 942-4627, Fax: (204) 947-3882
E-mail: ostap.skrypnyk@ucc.ca, Link: www.ucc.ca
===============================================================
14. SOVIETS NEVER FORGAVE "TRAITORS"
Reconciliation between veterans of Red Army and URA never took place
COMMENTARY: By Mycola Velychko, Lviv
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, May 11, 2005
The Victory Day has gone but promised reconciliation between veterans of
the Red Army and Ukrainian Rebellious Army (URA) never took place. And
there's just one reason for that - the concept of this project was doomed
and everybody understood, except Yushchenko himself, that this declaration
was destined to fail.
It's pretty hard to imagine an old "banderivets" (the soldier of URA) who
spent 25 years in concentration camps somewhere in Magadan, shaking
hands with the prosecutor who sentenced him.
The attitude of the Red Army veterans was eloquently depicted by the son
of URA commander-in-chief, Yuriy Shukhevych, who spent 40 years in
concentration camps: "How can they (soviet veteran) make peace with us
if they still consider us bloody killers and believe they are normal?"
These Shukhevych's words, I think, are the reason for the failure of
president's peace project.
'Cause till the authorities put on nationalistic guerillas the stain of
"collaborators", until the authorities recognize their fight for the freedom
of Ukraine, the veterans of the Red Army and URA will never be equal. It's
not just veterans of special police forces (People's Commissariat of
Internal Affairs), yelling "no pasaran", consider URA veterans unworthy of
respect.
That's what the current administration of the independent Ukraine thinks.
The kind of Ukraine, nationalists fought for. And that's why it's not quite
clear: why can't Yushchenko solve the problem of URA veterans'
rehabilitation by his presidential decrees? You can't equate URA and
Red Army veterans? So give them another status.
Let's call'em "Fighters for the Freedom of Ukraine". It sounds a bit
pompously, but as a matter of fact, that is correct 'cause they fought after
the World War II as well. Why not honor posthumously the most prominent
figures of the rebellious movement for the great contribution to Ukraine's
freedom? The Red Army veterans will rebel in return? I doubt that.
Is it normal that the bulk of former concentration camps prisoners haven't
been yet rehabilitated by the independent Ukraine. In most cases the
argument presented by security forces is jokingly cynical: "You were
detained with the weapon in your hands, thus you resisted detention and
thus you cannot be rehabilitated".
By the way, that was the reason why, till the end of 1900s, the Office of
Public Prosecutor refused to rehabilitate Stefan Kuybida, the father of Lviv
ex-mayor. It was legal paradox - for two cadences the person, who was de
jure the son of people's enemy, run the city, and quite successfully, one
should admit.
To reconcile the veterans from the top was also a mistake (it's like jingo
Gerasimov against nationalist Zelenchuk). They should make peace in the
village they live, in the streets they meet every day, queuing up in the
shops.
But even these steps should be taken on a regional level where these two
categories of veterans actually live. I don't understand why raise this
questions at veterans meeting in Donetsk, Crimea and Sevastopol? Isn't
their reaction evidently negative? Why didn't you ask them about Crimean
Tatar police battalions?
To end it up, I'll give an example form my journalistic experience. Back in
USSR times, then a young student, I decided to write an article about
veterans to a local newspaper.
I had my own reasons to do that: to mention my grandpa in the article, the
man who participated in Berlin's storming, who was just an ordinary soldier
of the armoured division of the 1st Belarus Front. The man who led a life of
a typical peasant.
Having come to the village council I checked up the veterans' card index
and was stunned by orders and medals; it turned out that in a small village
there lived people honored by Orders of Glory, Patriotic War and Red Star.
But the secretary cooled down my boyish passion: "Don't write about this
one. And about that one as well. So what, that he has the Order of the Red
Star? He fought for URA, then joined the Red Army and then came back to
join guerillas". I'll add this: the man joined URA in 1946, having hidden
his Order.
My grandpa knew the guy and was getting along well with him, as well with a
number of others (some of them were even his relatives) who, having served
their sentences, came back to the village. And I'm absolutely sure: should
my grandpa be alive now he wouldn't have to make peace with nationalists.
Not even by a presidential order. - 30 -
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LINK: http://www2.pravda.com.ua/en/archive/2005/may/10/2.shtml
===============================================================
15. "PARADING AGAINST RECONCILIATION"
President Yushchenko's initiative to reconcile Soviet veterans and veterans
of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has been repulsed, but the issue is likely
to trouble future Victory Day celebrations.
OP-ED: By Ivan Lozowy, Transitions On Line (TOL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Wed, 11 May 2005
KYIV, Ukraine | On the surface, the parade on 9 May of World War II veterans
down Khreshchatyk, the central street of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, was orderly
and festive. As they had each year for many years, groups of veterans from
different regions of Ukraine marched past onlookers, who cheered
sporadically.
But the calm on what is officially known as Victory Day was preceded by a
flurry of discussion in the media about the possibility that veterans from
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known by its Ukrainian acronym UPA), which
was based mainly in western Ukraine and fought both the Nazis and the
Soviet army, would march in the official parade on Khreshchatyk.
The UPA's participation was mooted after President Viktor Yushchenko in
March publicly called for reconciliation between the UPA and Soviet Red Army
veterans. Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko proposed a new format for
this year's Victory Day celebrations, replacing the veterans' march with
military bands and free food and drink for veterans on Khreshchatyk.
These proposals were denounced by the leaders of the principal organization
of Red Army veterans. The Communist Party, who in the past has traditionally
joined the parade marchers, chimed in, trying to whip up a frenzy of
indignation at the government's purported plans - plans never in fact
expressed by government officials - to include UPA veterans in the
festivities.
In the end, the Soviet veterans won out, the parade was reinstated, UPA
veterans were excluded, and - as in previous years - at the tail end of the
official procession came several hundred Communist leaders and activists,
a good number of them prominently displaying portraits of Stalin.
The uneasy truce that resulted in the 9 May parade masks the long and
complex history not only of Ukraine, but of its relations with its
neighbors, Russia in particular. And it is a truce that may not survive
until Victory Day 2006, for this may prove to have been the last UPA-free
parade. Indeed, if Tomenko's plan is revived, it may prove to have been
the last parade.
THE WAR THAT PERSISTS
The street the veterans paraded down on 9 May, Khreshchatyk, was so named
because Ukrainians believe that here, where the street crosses the Dnipro
river, over a thousand years ago the Kyivan Rus prince Volodymyr (Vladimir,
as Russians know him) forcibly christened the Ukrainian people in AD 988.
Kyiv's Khreshchatyk is thus viewed as the holy of holies not only by
Ukrainians but also by Belarusians and Russians as the wellspring of Eastern
Slav culture.
Victory Day also ties Ukraine closely to Russia, for it was as citizens of
the Soviet Union that Ukrainians fought Nazi Germany's armies and, by
official accounts, suffered the loss of millions of lives. The thousands of
surviving Red Army veterans from World War II - or the Great Patriotic War
as it is usually referred to in Ukraine and Russia - are fiercely proud of
their role in driving Germany's armies out of Ukraine.
It is a pride that colors their relationship with independent Ukraine. As
these veterans point out, they swore an oath to defend the Soviet Union and
their medals of courage and bravery were issued not by Ukraine, but by a
state which no longer exists. Small wonder that, at best, their attitude
towards Ukraine is ambivalent.
Yet this standard view of Ukraine's role in World War II - as a uniformly
loyal supporter of the Soviet Union and the Soviet war effort - is now being
challenged. Chief among the challenges to that view is the role of the UPA,
whose veterans emphasize that they fought specifically for Ukraine's
independence. They reject accusations propagated during the Soviet era
that the UPA collaborated with the Germans and proudly recall that some
units of the UPA were still fighting Soviet troops in 1952.
Official recognition of the UPA is probably only a matter of time, but
Yushchenko's calls this year for reconciliation seem to have been
ill-prepared, coming late in the day and failing to directly address the
possibility of the UPA taking part in the parade.
It was no surprise, then, that representatives of the two sides, groups that
had fought against and killed each other, were largely unresponsive to
Yushchenko's calls for reconciliation. Red Army veterans called on the UPA
to repent for its role in the war. The UPA, though some veterans speak of
their fight for independence - both from the Nazis and from the Soviet
Union - as their main achievement, is primarily concerned with gaining state
recognition of their role as a combatant army in the war against fascism.
To this day, those who fought under its colors do not enjoy official status
as veterans and the benefits that brings. Only one small veterans'
association, headed by parliamentarian Ihor Yukhnovsky, accepts veterans
from both sides as members and stands firmly on a position of
reconciliation.
In a speech to veterans on 9 May, Yushchenko expressed his regret at the
continued rift between Ukraine's old soldiers. "In our hearts we have
forgiven the Germans, the Japanese, the Poles; we have perhaps forgiven
everyone who was on the other side of the trenches," he said. "But we have
not succeeded in forgiving ourselves. The veterans of the Great Patriotic
War, unfortunately, have so far not extended their hands to the veterans of
the UPA."
TROUBLED NEIGHBORS - STALIN'S CRIMES AGAINST UKRAINE
The reconciliation between veterans touches upon relations between Ukraine
and Russia. Unlike citizens of the Baltic states, for instance, Ukrainians
do not agree that the Soviet Army's victory in World War II replaced one
occupation by another, since much of Ukraine, part of the Russian Empire,
had swiftly been incorporated into the Soviet Union after the civil war that
followed the Russian Revolution.
Ukrainians, however, generally do not share Russians' nostalgic penchant for
rehabilitating former Soviet leaders, chief among them Stalin. It was Stalin
who presided over the "Holodomor," as Ukrainians refer to the man-made
famine of 1932-1933, during which anywhere from seven to 10 million
people died of starvation brought about by forced collectivization and the
deliberate withholding of food stocks from the population.
During the Soviet era, mention of the Holodomor was suppressed and it was
an American, Dr. James Mace, who was chiefly responsible for collecting
evidence and eyewitness accounts from survivors.
Writing in a Ukrainian newspaper in 2003, Mace explained to Ukrainians his
role in researching the Holodomor with the words, "I was chosen by your
dead." He had, in practice, been chosen by the U.S. Congress, which
appointed him to head, from 1986 to 1990, a special research project, the
U.S. Commission on the Ukrainian Famine. Today Ukrainian historians
generally agree with the commission's findings that in Ukraine the famine
largely encompassed only areas settled by Ukrainians.
Though parts of Russia, Central Asia, and the North Caucasus were affected
by the famine, there is a general acceptance in Ukraine that Ukrainians were
singled out for decimation (a view underpinned by, for example, findings
that Russian villages on the Ukrainian border did not suffer famine and that
Ukrainian-populated areas of the North Caucasus suffered as severely as
Ukraine proper). In 2002, Ukraine's parliament recognized the Holodomor
as an act of genocide. One year later, so did the parliament of Canada.
The Holodomor's chief perpetrator, Stalin, also oversaw a period of
repression when tens of thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals and the
nation's leading cultural, civic, and political figures were shot or
otherwise murdered by the KGB's predecessor, the NKVD. While there
appears to be a creeping rehabilitation of Stalin in Russia, Ukraine's
government - and Yushchenko in particular - is showing an interest in
greater exposure of Stalin's crimes, including the Holodomor.
Challenging Ukrainian views toward World War II relates directly to
Ukraine's attitude towards Russia. In late April, Russia's ambassador to
Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was asked by a Ukrainian reporter if Russia
intended to apologize for the Holodomor. He replied in the negative,
suggesting instead that Georgia should apologize, given that Stalin was
from there.
The very fact that Russia's ambassador to Ukraine could be asked such a
question would have been unthinkable even half a decade ago. Despite, or
perhaps even partially because of, their long joint history, Ukraine and
Russia appear to be moving ever farther apart. Tension between the two
countries has centered on a host of issues: the status of Russia's Black Sea
fleet on the Crimean peninsula, border demarcation, trade barriers, oil and
gas supplies. Ukraine also wishes to join the European Union and NATO,
events Russia's President Vladimir Putin said would "cause problems."
Yushchenko's initial plans not to attend the 9 May celebrations in Moscow
stirred up debate as well, with Soviet veterans' organizations insisting
that Yushchenko accept Putin's invitation. He acquiesced and used the
occasion to announce the formation of a joint committee, charged with
reviewing economic cooperation, security issues, and international and
humanitarian cooperation. Yushchenko's stated reason for originally
declining the invitation to attend Moscow's Victory Day parade was his
obligation to attend Ukraine's own celebrations. In the event, he attended
both.
HISTORY'S DEAD HAND
The problems in evaluating World War II, the Holodomor and other significant
events in Ukraine's history have been brought to the fore by Ukraine's
status as an independent state and its consequent search for its place in
the world. Ukraine's attitudes toward World War II - and inevitably, as a
result, towards Russia - have slowly been changing over the past 14 years,
but some decades-old stereotypes have barely been affected. However,
following Yushchenko's election to the presidency, attitudes may be entering
a stage of greater flux. There is now a general expectation that old
stereotypes will undergo serious revision.
Some are trying to face the changes in attitudes head-on. Writing recently
in the Internet magazine Ukrayinska Pravda, several authors claim that a
series of myths are beginning to be advanced following the changes in the
Ukrainian political landscape wrought by the Orange Revolution in 2004.
Seemingly anxious to prevent Ukrainians from distancing themselves from the
fight against Nazi Germany because of the Soviet dictatorship, the authors
declared that 9 May was not a victory by Stalin or the communist regime but
by the Ukrainian people, and that Victory Day should not be "given away" to
Russia.
Some commentators on this year's Victory Day have suggested that the
problem of reconciliation between the veterans will pass away within several
generations. But that may prove optimistic, since the problems in evaluating
World War II, the Holodomor, and other significant events in Ukraine's
history will not go away. - 30 -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ivan Lozowy is a TOL correspondent and also runs an Internet newsletter,
"The Ukraine Insider." LINK: http://www.tol.cz;
E-mail: lozowy@voliacable.com
===============================================================
16. FORWARD TO VE DAY
Our memory wars will never end, but a common future is possible
COMMENTARY: Timothy Garton Ash in Warsaw
The Guardian, London, UK, Thursday May 12, 2005
After a continent-wide round of commemorations to mark the 60th anniversary
of the end of the second world war in Europe, it's clear that the peoples of
Europe have a shared past, but not a common one.
Sixty years on, the memory of war here in Warsaw is still irreconcilable
with that in Moscow. But it's also utterly different from London's low-key
festival of "We'll meet again" nostalgia. Only in the recollections of
former inmates of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps does British memory
approach the horrors of daily degradation that are the stuff of everyday
Polish or Russian memory.
For Russians, the war began in 1941; for Poles and Brits, it began in 1939.
For Vladimir Putin, May 9 1945 marked the end of the Great Patriotic War,
when the Red Army almost single-handedly liberated - yes, liberated - most
of Europe from fascism. For most Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, it
marked the transition from one totalitarian occupation to another, Nazi to
Soviet.
Really, we should talk about second world wars, not the second world war.
The plural applies inside as well as between countries. I am staying here
not far from where the Warsaw ghetto used to be. The wartime memories of a
Polish Jew and a non-Jewish Pole can still be bitterly contrasting. So can
German memories. Last weekend there was a small neo-Nazi demonstration in
Berlin. The former leftwing terrorist Horst Mahler, now an extremist at the
other end of the spectrum, said the moment of German surrender in 1945
marked "the day of the death of Europe".
But Tuesday's opening of the Holocaust memorial in the very heart of Berlin
spoke for the great majority of today's Germans. They are struggling to find
a just balance between a sense of collective historical responsibility for
nazism and a proper respect for the sufferings of their own compatriots,
including those who died as a result of Anglo-American bombing or were
expelled from their homes by Russians and Poles.
Only by a great effort of collective myth-making have the French combined
the memories of the resistance France of Charles de Gaulle and the
collaborating France of Marshal Pétain. Step across the Mediterranean for a
moment, and you find the Algerians marking May 8 1945 as the anniversary of
the Sétif massacre, when a VE Day demonstration turned into a manifestation
for Algerian independence, which rapidly descended into bloodshed and a
brutal crackdown by French security forces.
A common past? Forget it! The memory wars began the day the second world war
ended. They have continued ever since. With the entry of central and east
European states into the European Union and Nato, they are being played out
in a new way. Central and east Europeans are now articulating their versions
of the past through the main organs of what we used to call "the west". In
making Putin's Red Square victory parade a mere stopover between Latvia, the
Netherlands and Georgia, George Bush has signed up to their reading of
history rather than Putin's.
Even the usually timid European commission issued a statement saying, among
sentiments more comfortable to the Russian leader: "We remember ... the many
millions for whom the end of the second world war was not the end of
dictatorship, and for whom true freedom was only to come with the fall of
the Berlin Wall."
On these warring accounts of the past, futures are built. "Who controls the
past controls the future" was the Orwellian formula for a totalitarian
regime. In Europe, we no longer live in totalitarian times - even in an
increasingly undemocratic Russia and the grim dictatorship of Belarus. So
today's milder version is "Who shapes our view of the past can influence the
future".
What is to be done? FIRST, we should recognise that it will always be so -
even when every last survivor is dead. So long as there are historical
memories, they will be contested memories.
SECOND, we must insist that there are historical facts. When any body
politic starts denying or suppressing historical facts, that is a warning
sign, like the spots indicating measles. The Soviet Union had
historiographical measles for all its life. Russia after 1991 got better.
Many Russian schoolchildren had access to a history textbook that taught
them, as is only right, about the extraordinary sacrifices of Red Army
soldiers and the civilians of cities such as Stalingrad, where, 60 years on,
they are still digging up the skeletons.
But it also mentioned Stalin's occupation of the Baltic states, his wartime
deportations of Balts and others and the contribution made by US lend-lease
equipment to the Soviet victory. Now that schoolbook has been withdrawn.
That every citizen of Europe should have full access to the facts about our
barbarous past is a precondition for the political health of this continent.
The interpretation of those facts is then free. Historians such as Richard
Overy and Norman Davies have argued persuasively that the Soviet
contribution to the defeat of Hitler has been consistently underrated in
most Anglo-American treatments of the subject. But Russia does not help its
own case by trying to suppress uncomfortable facts.
Thirdly, while we will never agree on a single version of the historical
truth about these events, we can agree on a lesson from them. This lesson
for 2005 is the promise of 1945: Never again! In order to keep that promise
to ourselves, we need to shape not a common past but a common future.
A Polish student from the town of Oswiecim - that is, Auschwitz - explained
on German television the other day, in excellent German, that his
Polish-German-Jewish bridge-building work was aimed not at the old-fashioned
goal of "reconciliation", but at building a "common future". Exactly so. And
that's what we are doing, with the spread of freedom and the enlargement of
the European Union.
The trouble is that we Europeans are leaving it to President Bush to tell
this story for us. And he spoils it, both because of the crude Manichean
tones of his rhetoric, and because his advocacy associates the great story
of the spread of freedom in Europe too closely with the policies of a
particular US administration. So why don't we tell it for ourselves?
The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili - leader of his country's "rose
revolution" in 2003 - has said we are witnessing a "second wave" of
liberation, inside the former Soviet Union, starting with Georgia and
Ukraine. Speaking on CNN the other day, he corrected himself, suggesting
it was really a "third wave". I make it the fourth.
The first wave rolled over western and northern Europe in 1944-45; the
second swept through southern Europe, starting in Portugal in 1974; the
third liberated central Europe, starting in Poland in 1980 and reaching the
Baltic states in 1991; now the fourth wave, if wave it is, may be building
in eastern Europe.
I remember seeing in Berlin, the day after the Berlin Wall came down, a
fresh graffito: "only today is the war really over". Now we are waiting for
the day when we read those same words scrawled on a Moscow wall, in a
democratic Russia finally liberated from the weight of the past. That would
be the ultimate VE Day. - 30 -
===============================================================
17. WAS WORLD WAR II WORTH IT?
OP-ED: By Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Cause
Vienna, Virginia, Wednesday, May 11, 2005
In the Bush vs. Putin debate on World War II, Putin had far the more
difficult assignment. Defending Russia's record in the "Great Patriotic
War," the Russian president declared, "Our people not only defended their
homeland, they liberated 11 European countries." Those countries are,
presumably: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, East Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Finland.
To ascertain whether Moscow truly liberated those lands, we might survey the
sons and daughters of the generation that survived liberation by a Red Army
that pillaged, raped and murdered its way westward across Europe. As at
Katyn Forest, that army eradicated the real heroes who fought to retain the
national and Christian character of their countries.
To Bush, these nations were not liberated. "As we mark a victory of six
decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox," he said: For much of Eastern
and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E day
marked the end of fascism, but it did not end the oppression. The agreement
in Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated,
the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of
millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the
greatest wrongs in history."
Bush told the awful truth about what really triumphed in World War II east
of the Elbe. And it was not freedom. It was Stalin, the most odious tyrant
of the century. Where Hitler killed his millions, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh,
Pol Pot and Castro murdered their tens of millions. Leninism was the Black
Death of the 20th Century.
The truths bravely declared by Bush at Riga, Latvia, raise questions that
too long remained hidden, buried or ignored. If Yalta was a betrayal of
small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we
venerate Churchill and FDR? At Yalta, this pair secretly ceded those small
nations to Stalin, co-signing a cynical "Declaration on Liberated Europe"
that was a monstrous lie.
As FDR and Churchill consigned these peoples to a Stalinist hell run by a
monster they alternately and affectionately called "Uncle Joe" and "Old
Bear," why are they not in the history books alongside Neville Chamberlain,
who sold out the Czechs at Munich by handing the Sudetenland over to
Germany? At least the Sudeten Germans wanted to be with Germany. No
Christian peoples of Europe ever embraced their Soviet captors or Stalinist
quislings.
Other questions arise. If Britain endured six years of war and hundreds of
thousands of dead in a war she declared to defend Polish freedom, and Polish
freedom was lost to communism, how can we say Britain won the war? lf the
West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe,
and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious,
as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?
In 1938, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain
refused. In 1939, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Poland. Chamberlain
agreed. At the end of the war Churchill wanted and got, Czechoslovakia and
Poland were in Stalin's empire. How, then, can men proclaim Churchill "Man
of the Century"?
True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from
Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland
and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only
invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany - on
behalf of Poland.
When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France - hundreds of
thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires - was World
War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of
the Elbe were lost anyway? If the objective of the West was the destruction
of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to
liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler
in.
If it was to keep Hitler out of Western Europe, why declare war on him and
draw him into Western Europe? If it was to keep Hitler out of Central and
Eastern Europe, then, inevitably, Stalin would inherit Central and Eastern
Europe. Was that worth fighting a world war - with 50 million dead?
The war Britain and France declared to defend Polish freedom ended up
making Poland and all of Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism. And
at the festivities in Moscow, Americans and Russians were front and center,
smiling - not British and French. Understandably.
Yes, Bush has opened up quite a can of worms. - 30 -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.theamericancause.org/a-pjb-050511-ww2.htm
===============================================================
18. BRUSSELS'S BETRAYAL OF UKRAINIAN DEMOCRACY
By Phillip Giddings, Phillipgiddings@aol.com, UK,
The Action Ukraine Report, Wash, D.C., Thursday, May 12, 2005
Assert Ukraine's right to be taken seriously as a potential member of the
European Union. Please sign the petition and spread the word!
http://www.petitionthem.com/default.asp?sect=detail&pet=1756
"The courage of teenagers who camped in Bankova Street within yards of
heavily armed Ukrainian police, shames the politicians who sit 1000 miles
away in Brussels, rejecting the possibility of Ukraine's future membership
of the European Union because they're scared of the Russians."
Please note that the petition calls for Ukraine to get pre-accession status
as a potential member State of the EU; not a neighbour, and not yet a full
member. The difference is, pre-accession countries get serious funds for
democratic development, and neighbour States get Mickey Mouse money.
There is no reason why Ukraine cannot be upgraded to a pre-accession
country now, ahead of the official EU accession talks which President
Yushchenko hopes to be ready to commence in three years.
http://www.president.gov.ua/eng/topics/prior_eurochoice/321513924.html
http://www.president.gov.ua/eng/activity/327519321.html
Yet, the EU is currently point-blank refusing to sit on the other side of
the negotiating table, even in three years' time. Hence the need for a
worldwide public campaign which puts rockets underneath the Commission
and Council of Ministers from point-blank range.
Ukraine's current neighbourhood status with the EU is more congruent with
a country in North Africa or central Asia than the heart of Europe; and
fundamentally the same as it was when Kuchma was in power. Since the Orange
Revolution, this has not only become unfair and undeserved, but also
potentially dangerous. Yushchenko's Government is struggling with a hugely
ambitious action plan for democratic reforms
(http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en/publish/articleart_id=12854890&cat_id=12853974)
which is financed on a boot string and vulnerable to setbacks and failure.
The problem is, fear of the Russians continues to dictate EU policy towards
Ukraine. That is, at best inertia and, at worst, cynically using Ukraine as
an expendable bargaining chip to appease the Kremlin. We are talking about
a bloc of governments that could not even be bothered to sponsor enough
international election observers to monitor last year's crucial Ukrainian
presidential elections properly. And Ukraine's continued marginalisation as
a 'neighbour State' amounts to yet another betrayal.
The western powers' official refusal to recognise the Kuchma-Yanukovych
regime after the Orange Revolution had started, was merely the
minimum-required opportunistic rhetoric for public consumption. By itself,
that would have done Ukrainians as much good as it did for the people of
Belarus: we threw the toys out of the pram and Lukashenko cried all the way
to the Kremlin. Where was the international community during the long, dark
years -- even weeks and days -- before the Orange Revolution, when the
Ukrainian democratic opposition stood alone?
Call me naive, but the whole point of being citizens in a democracy is that
we are supposed to stand a chance of changing all this by exercising
people-power, with a good old-fashioned petition, adapted to the Internet
age. A recent opinion survey of EU citizens indicated that Ukraine's
membership bid is supported by most of us, and by more of us than the
numbers who approve the addition of any of the current accession countries.
However, politicians dismiss opinion polls which tell them what they don't
want to hear; hence the need for a public campaign.
But the poll results are encouraging: with a probable majority among the
people of Europe, including Ukraine, and the Ukrainian diaspora in North
America, and with enough volunteers promoting it widely enough, this
petition could get at least a million signatures.
Does anybody have Mr Soros' email address? - 30 -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Giddings, Petition author and British international election observer
in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections and Orange Revolution (with
the delegation of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America).
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