Zelenskyy’s foreign policy faces challenges at Normandy Four and U.N. General Assembly

KYIV – A flurry of diplomatic activity continues around events surrounding the forthcoming summit of the “Normandy Four” leaders (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine), and the separate, and now confirmed, meeting of the Ukrainian and U.S. presidents.
Ukraine’s new minister of foreign affairs, Vadym Prystaiko, indicated on September 18 that a meeting of the Normandy Four – which Ukraine had wanted to be held in September – will now probably be held in October. That same day, the White House announced that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Donald Trump next week in New York during the opening of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Ukraine’s president rejects state support for Plast scouts: What happened and what’s next

KYIV – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the law “On state recognition and support of Plast – National Scouting Organization of Ukraine,” sending it back to the Verkhovna Rada on September 4. The legislation had been approved by the previously elected Parliament at the end of May and awaited the president’s action for more than three months.
The president did not sign the law; instead, he returned it to the Parliament with his proposals. Now it is up to the recently elected new Rada to act on Ukraine’s recognition and support of this scouting organization that was founded in 1911 in Ukraine.

Australian exhibition about Holodomor on view in Kyiv

KYIV – In November 2018, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations (AFUO) launched a unique photo exhibition in Melbourne to mark 85 years since the Holodomor – Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. The exhibition honored survivors of the Holodomor who eventually came to settle in Australia.
Nine months on, the exhibition opened in Kyiv through a collaboration between the AFUO and the National Museum: Holodomor Victims Memorial. On August 22, “Voices From Across the Ocean: Holodomor Photographic Exhibition” was officially opened by Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Yevhen Nyschuk.

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Zelenskyy thanks Trump for releasing aid

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for releasing a $250 million military assistance package that the White House had previously held for review. The military aid is largely meant to train and equip Ukrainian forces as they fight against Russia-backed separatists in a war that has lasted more than five years, killed more than 13,000 people, and torn apart a large swath of eastern Ukraine. “I am thankful, I am grateful to him,” Mr. Zelenskyy said on September 13, a day after the White House dropped its resistance to the aid. Speaking at the opening of the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) meeting organized by Ukrainian tycoon Viktor Pinchuk in Kyiv, Mr. Zelenskyy said that he felt his relationship with the fellow former TV star-turned-president was “very good” and called the United States an “important strategic partner.” Last week, the White House said it would review the military aid package, apparently over corruption concerns and to ensure that it would be used to further American foreign policy interests. The aid review quickly sparked criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, where there has been strong bipartisan support for Ukraine on the issue of fighting Russian aggression since the Kremlin annexed Crimea and fomented the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine accepts Russia’s terms for prisoner release agreement

PART I: On September 7, Ukraine’s Presidential Office and the Kremlin announced a mutually agreed decision to release 35 prisoners from detention by each side. On the same day, the 35 freed citizens of Ukraine were flown from Russia to Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed them on the airport’s tarmac (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 9). Meanwhile, there is no official information on the whereabouts of the 35 freed by Ukraine as a quid pro quo. The Kremlin did not stage a media event to fly any of them to Russia.
The Kremlin and the Ukrainian Presidential Office had negotiated this mutual release agreement amid due secrecy since August 7, following Mr. Zelenskyy’s urgent plea to Russian President Vladimir Putin that day (Ukrinform, TASS, August 7). Both sides are currently negotiating for further prisoner releases.

Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister and others fear being pushed by West into bad deal with Russia

KYIV – Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister has voiced concern about the prospect of being nudged into an unfavorable agreement with Russia, telling RFE/RL that he hopes the West is pressuring Moscow as hard as it is pushing Kyiv for progress toward peace in the Donbas.
A recent flurry of diplomatic activity between Ukraine and Russia has raised fresh hope for a deal between the countries that could end the more-than-five-year war in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 13,000 people and fueled a bigger geopolitical fight between Moscow and the West.

The ‘Steinmeier formula’: possible scenarios for the upcoming Normandy-format meeting

In late August, the foreign affairs minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, said one of the preconditions to holding a high-level meeting of the Normandy Four is “the need to put down on paper the formula by the former chief of the German Foreign Affairs Ministry and current President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the “Steinmeier formula” will be discussed by state leaders during the Normandy Four meeting.
Miroslav Lajčák, the chairperson-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who is also Slovakia’s minister of foreign and European affairs, said Ukraine should use the so-called “Steinmeier plan” to have the Minsk agreements implemented.

Zelenskyy meets with freed seamen

KYIV – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the freed Ukrainian sailors who had been detained in the Russian Federation on September 12 in an informal atmosphere in the park courtyard of the Mariyinsky Palace in Kyiv. The meeting was also attended by the relatives of the sailors. Mr. Zelenskyy congratulated the servicemen on the return to their homeland and thanked the sailor’s relatives for the support they provided. “They are the same heroes as you. They did everything to bring you back, and we helped them,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. The president stressed that the operation to return the Ukrainians from Russia had been extremely difficult; many people and authorities were involved in the process and worked in a coherent manner. “It was very difficult to keep it a secret when so many people were involved,” the president said. He presented gifts of presidential watches to the sailors.

Moscow signed Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in part because it feared German-Polish attack

Moscow has long argued that Russia was forced to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 because Britain and France were not willing to join an anti-Hitler coalition. Now, it is offering an additional explanation: it says the Kremlin feared that unless it made a deal with Hitler, Germany and Poland would jointly attack the USSR.
That is the substance of documents the Russian Defense Ministry has released online under the title “A Fragile Peace on the Brink of War” (pakt1939.mil.ru), a collection that also includes Soviet reports about the enthusiasm of Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland about the chance to live in the Soviet Union.

Kremlin’s approach to World War II underlines rejection of democratic path

Many people of good will around the world have been horrified by Moscow’s Stalinist defense of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its hysterical attacks on Poland for not inviting Vladimir Putin to the commemoration of the beginning of World War II, but they have often failed to recognize what Moscow’s statements mean, Grigory Amnuel says.
Mr. Amnuel, a filmmaker, producer and politician, argues that Moscow’s statements represent the final rejection by the Putin regime of the path that democratic Russia pursued after the collapse of communism and before the rise of the power vertical dictatorship and thus put Vladimir Putin’s regime beyond the pale of civilized humanity.