January 15, 2015

At long last, historical justice

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Reading Ukrainian history, one would easily begin to have doubts.

Yet 2014 seems to be the year that Ukraine’s karma began to turn for the better. Several salient examples come to mind.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left behind many who could not adapt to the new realities. Among those disturbed individuals is Natalia Maksymets, a councilwoman in the Luhansk City Council and chief editor of the Communist Party’s oblast newspaper, Soviet Luhanshchyna. In 2010, she made national headlines when announcing that she was preparing to host a banquet on the last Saturday in November, which is Holomodor Victims Remembrance Day.

“Tomorrow, while some mentally ill Holodomorivtsi are lighting candles in their windows to honor the dead, we are gathering our old friends and holding a feast,” she wrote on her blog. “The boys will handle the marinated pork shashlyk (kebabs), since they’re in charge of drinks, and the girls will experiment with all kinds of salads and pastries with ice cream. We will eat, joke and even dance.”

My blood boiled while reading these words. But my Christian faith referred me to the Apostle Paul’s assuring words, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath.”

Needless to say, Ms. Maksymets isn’t dancing these days. Gangs of armed terrorists roam the streets of Luhansk, committing many of the same crimes as the Bolsheviks before them. In a September post on Facebook, she said she was getting paid by the Communist Party in food rations, instead of cash. She’s among the lucky ones, apparently.

Unconfirmed news reports have indicated that hundreds have starved to death – mostly pensioners – in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since the outbreak of war.

Meanwhile, more than half of the population in the occupied territories is now entirely dependent on food aid as the Kyiv government has frozen wages, pensions and other social payments, reported Amnesty International in late December.

Certainly, the Kyiv government – and the Ukrainian people – should be doing everything they can to provide food to starving people (in “humanitarian convoys” that don’t carry weapons).

But as a journalist, I can’t help but remark about the irony of hunger setting over the Ukrainian region where the Holodomor was most fervently denied. This brings to mind the suffering residents of Crimea, where Holodomor denial was also quite prevalent.

Back in October, Crimean State Council Head Vladimir Konstantinov said he would submit complaints to international agencies about the Kyiv government cutting supplies of drinking water from the Northern Crimean Canal on the territory of the Kherson Oblast.

He referred to the situation as a “vodomor.” Again, there’s a certain irony that Mr. Konstantinov was prompted to acknowledge the Holodomor, yet not until his own people were threatened with suffering. From what I understand, however, Kyiv hasn’t cut off the canal’s supplies.

Donbas residents and Crimeans suffered numerous tragedies last year as a result of their ignorance, or denial, of Ukrainian history.

In welcoming the Russians – amid their fantasies of higher pensions, kovbasa at 2 rubles per kilo and 30-day paid vacations – it didn’t occur to them that the same tactics of conquest applied by the Communists against Ukrainians would be employed against them.

Yet sure enough, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a resolution in mid-September recommending that Donbas refugees taking shelter in Crimea be transported to Siberia, the Russian Far East and the Russian Extreme North.

Those refugees eager to “explore” the Russian Far East weren’t much impressed, as it turned out. All that was offered in the exotic Republic of Buryatia was shelter in a children’s rehabilitation center, “tea without sugar and spoiled spread” for their bread, according to a Russian television news report.

“It’s the first time in my life I saw people rejoice over toilet paper,” said a local resident who bought hygienic products for the refugees with her own money. The report showed the refugees begging for “at least a shack to live in.”

Yet a larger irony surrounds Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a war against the Ukrainian people and create a frozen conflict, aiming to ruin the Ukrainian economy.

No doubt, his strategy has worked. The Ukrainian government is literally broke and entirely dependent on the next IMF loan. Yet what the Russian ruler didn’t expect was that his own economy would be devastated in the process.

Since the start of the Crimea invasion, the ruble has lost more than 40 percent of its value, the oil on which the Russian economy is dependent has lost more than half its value, inflation has reached its highest rate in five years, and economists the world over are predicting a collapse in the Russian economy in the next year or two.

It has been said that Ukraine’s biggest enemies were most responsible for the emergence of Ukrainian statehood. That’s the greatest irony of all.

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks merged the eastern and central regions into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922. Joseph Stalin brought the western regions into the fold following World War II (at the expense of millions of casualties and exiles). Then Nikita Khruschev attached Crimea.

Now Vladimir Putin has done what no Ukrainian leader was capable of doing since independence was achieved in 1991, which is unite all Ukrainians like never before, regardless of language, ethnicity or religion.

Thanks to Mr. Putin’s military invasion, Ukrainian independence is guaranteed for decades to come.

Yes, indeed. It’s been a very long time coming, but God seems to be answering the prayers of Ukrainians that have been uttered for decades. And He’s been doing it using the hands of Ukraine’s enemies.

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