Month: April 20, 2018 7:30 am

PHILADELPHIA – The Vatican Information Service announced on April 16 that the Holy Father has accepted the resignation for medical reasons of the Most Rev. Stefan Soroka, archbishop of Philadelphia for Ukrainians and metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the U.S.A. 

Pope Francis has declared the Archeparchy of Philadelphia as “sede vacante.” Bishop Andriy Rabiy has been appointed by Pope Francis as the apostolic administrator of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia until the appointment of the new archeparch.

Always a misnomer, albeit a deliberate one, Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in and surrounding the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk…...

The Ukrainian legislature on April 5 appealed to the international community to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2…...

KYIV – U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) visited Ukraine during the first week of April, meeting with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko and other Ukrainian leaders, as well as think tanks and other opinion leaders, and visited a forward combat outpost near the line of contact in Donetsk to see firsthand evidence of Russian aggression on the eastern border. 

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Earlier this year, Svoboda Press released the Almanac of the Ukrainian National Association for 2018, which is dedicated to the centennial of the Ukrainian Revolution and the establishment of the Ukrainian National Republic.

The Ukrainian-language volume’s editor is Petro Chasto, a longtime member of the Svoboda editorial staff who has been in charge of the successful Almanac projects since the year 2000, always finding fascinating topics and authors for readers’ enjoyment.

There’s been a flurry of news reports lately about a new gas pipeline project that is meant to bring gas from Russia to Europe across the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 is touted by Gazprom – which is majority owned by the Russian government – as “a direct link between Gazprom and the [sic] European consumers.” Gazprom also claims: “It will also ensure a highly reliable supply of Russian gas to Europe.” The pipeline’s 1,200-kilometer route will take it from Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region of Russia to Greifswald in Germany; plans are for the pipeline to be completed by next year. Germany and Finland have already green-lighted the construction of the pipeline, and permits are expected to be issued soon by Sweden and Denmark, which also are affected by its under sea route.

Eight years ago, on April 26, 2010, the Zoloti Vorota corporation, which included the Sevastopolbud company, noted that the number of transactions with buyers from Russia over the previous two months had increased in Sevastopol by 20-30 percent (which at the time was four to five apartments a month). 

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says that Kyiv is preparing the documents necessary to formally leave the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, thus making official what has long been a de facto condition and reducing still further the size of a structure Moscow has long counted on to advance its interests.

In 1991, 11 former Soviet republics formed the CIS and shortly thereafter Georgia was forced to join, a decision it reversed after Vladimir Putin invaded that country in 2008. Moldova is on the way out as well. With Ukraine’s departure, the CIS will be reduced to nine – Russia plus Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Central Asian countries.

The current conflict between Russia and the West provides an opportunity to create an International Day of Memory of the…...

It appears that the patience of many Western states with Russia has run its course. The mood will undoubtedly have…...

I suspect most Ukrainian Americans, including myself, grew up in the United States not giving much thought to Belarus, Ukraine’s…...

On Thursday, March 8, the National Press Club hosted the ninth U.S.-Ukraine Security Dialogue in Washington, the latest collaborative effort by the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR), the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA). The conference aimed to bring the best and latest information about Ukraine’s National Security Strategy into the mainstream conversation about international affairs in the United States. A story in the April 15 issue of this newspaper summarized the first half of the conference; a summary of the afternoon sessions follows.