The Ukrainian Weekly (https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/tag/premium/page/17/)
KYIV – Ukrainian-Belarusian relations further deteriorated this week as both sides imposed sanctions on one another following the forced landing on May 23 of a passenger plane in Minsk where an exiled Belarusian journalist and his Russian girlfriend were detained.
KYIV – An Odesa appeals court on May 31 acquitted Serhiy Sternenko and Ruslan Demchuk on charges of robbing and torturing local deputy Serhiy Shcherbych in the spring of 2015. The court, however, handed Mr. Sternenko a one-year suspended sentence for possession of an illegal weapon. It also upheld a lower court’s kidnapping verdict against Mr. Sternenko.
WASHINGTON – As President Joseph Biden prepares for the upcoming G-7 and NATO summits with U.S. allies and European partners, as well as a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) penned a letter to Mr. Biden outlining the concerns of the Ukrainian American community.
TORONTO – The late professor Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky passed into eternity as a result of the COVID-19 virus. A brother, uncle, brother-in-law, founder and benefactor of the Kule Folklore Centre and the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Mr. Medwidsky was 84.
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators recently travelled to Kyiv, where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other government officials. The group – U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and co-chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, and Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who also sit on the same committee – urged Ukrainian officials to strengthen democratic institutions, clamp down on corruption and reduce the influence of oligarchs. The group also sought to assure Mr. Zelenskyy that Washington would continue to provide help countering Russian aggression.
Twenty years ago, on June 10, 2001, the editorial of that issue of The Ukrainian Weekly announced the release of the second volume of “The Ukrainian Weekly 2000” that covered the 1970s through the 1990s, as a supplement to Volume I (1933-1960s, published in 2000) of the series.
A little more than a month ago, in mid-April, I came across an article on the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) titled “War of Unreality” that struck a deep, personal nerve. The piece, authored by ECFR Fellow Gustav Gressel, was written as both an observation and a warning. The observation was that Russia was engaged in creating an “alternate reality” – constantly positing a narrative of current events that flatly contradicted the way that the West (read the global community of democracies) thought about the world. The warning was that Russia’s attempts at ontological contrariness would sooner or later have dire consequences.
As a volunteer at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland, I often come across some curious items. Consider, for example, a 1950s membership application to join the “Organization of Elderly Ukrainians” in Detroit, Mich.; “eligibility beginning at age 40…”
KYIV – Ukraine-2050 President Eugene Czolij met virtually on May 31 with Mikheil Saakashvilli, the head of the Reforms Executive Committee of the National Reforms Council of Ukraine and the third president of Georgia, to discuss the need for concrete reforms in Ukraine and future cooperation on the issue.
NEWARK, N.J. – The Charitable Fund of St. John’s Church in Newark, N.J., is entering its 12th year, and it can safely be said that this has been a learning experience for everyone involved in the projects for the fund, be it here in the United States or in Ukraine.