Announcement

**stephencureatzj** · 7th December 2013, 19:40

Thank you Hannia for posting these articles!! I too have been following what's going on in Ukraine. I'm a third generation Ukrainian Canadian, and the language has been lost with my grandfather and I'm desperately trying to pick it up for the sake of my son and daughter. My great grandfather came here in 1899 and left behind turmoil and his family, and if he only knew just what his departure meant for this family here....we never went through the Holodomor, or WW2, and all the years of fighting for it's freedom even up until this very moment, we have not had to endure that. As I try to understand what's going on in Ukraine, because I'm so far removed from it, I cannot help but feel a deep sadness that penetrates my blood, the same oppression that is occurring in Ukraine isn't different for many of the Ukrainian families here in Canada, including mine that lost their roots in the early 1900's as they were forced to work camps in WW1, and then not allowed to speak the language. Canada has come a long way since then, and we have a thriving Ukrainian community, but it isn't easy for all of us with Ukrainian heritage, some families didn't lose the language that mine did.

I say all this just to highlight how appreciative I am toward Hannia. These posts simply scratch the surface for helping educate someone like myself on what's happening to my family in Ukraine that I've never met face to face after 70 plus years of lost contact. I'm in contact with them because of people like Hannia who helped me look in the right places and learn enough about my roots to sincerely search them out and have great success in doing so. I want to understand who I am, I want to understand what's going on in the homeland I've never known.

Hannia, once again, I'm grateful for your input. You haven't posted on here in some time and it is so good to see your name grace the pages of this forum. I do hope that for all of us searching for our roots that we will see more of you here, as your are an incredible woman and an amazing resource to us all. My prayers are with you, and with Ukraine as the fight continues.

"We pray you, God Unique, watch over Ukraine, and with your kindness and gifts endow our people. Give us freedom. Give us good fortune. Give good light. God, give happiness to the people and many, many years of life"!

"Ukraine will never die, nor its glory, nor its freedom. Young brethren, good fortune will yet smile on us. Our foes will perish like dew in the sun, Brethren, we shall yet govern in our country........We shall give our soul and body for our freedom...".

Blessings to you all!

**ukieoz** · 7th December 2013, 22:15

Hi Hannia
As far as I am concerned you wrong I am very active in Ukrainian affairs especially in Fb This board just struggles through and has been like that for sometimes But Thank you for posting interesting things and renew interest in all things Ukrainian including nasty politics but as always Russians only impose temporarily then another round of fighting will follow sooner or later right now is Euro Maidan and I am here with you all .

**Sandra Merchant** · 8th December 2013, 13:46

I'm watching this very closely, as a friend and I are hoping to visit our ancestral villages in Crimea this coming May. We have many friends and relatives with ties to Ukraine, especially Crimea and western regions.

**Hannia** · 8th December 2013, 22:07

Please consider signing White House Petition, notwithstanding your ethnicity or citizenship. Thank you !

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...mbers/h58Fz30V
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Kiev Protesters Toppled Lenin Statue

**Hannia** · 9th December 2013, 00:56

Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, is the epicenter for increasingly violent protests over what many see as a fight for the future of the country. The protests, which began in November and brought hundreds of thousands into the streets, were sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych's decision not to sign an association agreement with the European Union, after coming under intense pressure from Russia.

Moscow, pointing to deep linguistic, economic, and cultural ties, sees Ukraine as part of its historic sphere of influence, and aspires to include Ukraine as part of a new economic trade bloc called the Eurasian Economic Community. Many Ukrainians, chafing under what they see as Russian patronizing imperialism, have hoped membership in the EU, or even in NATO, would help counterbalance Russia’s influence, and bring greater prosperity.

- Mike Eckel, Staff writer
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Ukraine protests: Not quite a million, but no end in sight - CSMonitor.com

**Hannia** · 10th December 2013, 21:54

Ukrainian Jews Join Nationalists in Protest of President Viktor Yanukovych – Forward.com

NDP calls for protection of democratic rights in Ukraine | Canada's NDP / NPD du Canada

**Hannia** · 11th December 2013, 05:29

BBC News - Kiev riot police retreat after storming protest bastions

**Hannia** · 12th December 2013, 06:07

Ukrainian riot police withdraw from Kyiv's Independence Square | News | DW.DE | 11.12.2013

**mimm746** · 12th December 2013, 23:55

Dear Hannia,

Hello again. We've met in the past. I though you should know that a rumor is going around that people are being imported to Kiev to help start a riot this weekend. Please go Carpatho-rusyns.org to read what has been written.

**Hannia** · 13th December 2013, 05:56

Behind Ukraine’s protest are memories of Moscow’s famine

Commentators have framed the demonstrations in terms of competing economic interests, geopolitical intrigues, Russian-speaking eastern vs. Ukrainian-speaking western Ukraine, and Russian-Ukrainian relations. Yet these analyses don’t explain why so many Ukrainians are protesting this time. At the heart of their outrage is an emphatic rejection of what many Ukrainians see as Soviet-style rule. Explaining why they are in the streets, the protesters occasionally mention economics, but more often they say, “to live in a normal, civilized country,” “so that our children can live with human dignity,” or “to be free to travel, to work and to live our lives.”

The Soviet legacy of authoritarianism and terror is not so easily shed. The most devastating chapter was the Holodomor - the Famine of 1932-33, when Soviet authorities forcibly removed grain and foodstuffs from farmers, many who had resisted collectivization. Borders were closed to prevent people from seeking food beyond Ukraine. Many millions of Ukrainians were starved to death. Joseph Stalin launched an assault on Ukrainian cultural leaders as well, murdering and exiling thousands of artists, intellectuals, and clergy. The Holodomor was a demographic and cultural catastrophe for Ukraine, exacerbated by Soviet Russification policies.

Oksana Zabuzhko, one of Ukraine's best-known writers, believes that today’s corrupt Ukrainian state is a direct consequence of the 1933 genocide, when the most ruthless prospered. “Those who stole the most during the Holodomor made out the best. And indeed, in independent Ukraine, those adept at stealing managed to take hold of the collective farm,” Ms. Zabuzhko told me. “That is, all of Ukraine, from which they’ve plundered, carrying the wealth back to ‘their own house.’ Our current leadership, the third generation, is not capable of having a different, state-centered ‘managerial’ mentality. And whether the house in question is a hut with a pigsty or an offshore account on the Cayman Islands is purely a quantitative, not a qualitative, difference.”

For three generations, to mention the word “famine” was taboo; the Soviets denied that the Holodomor had taken place until the end of the USSR. Only then did archives become accessible that illuminated its scope and intentionality.

Yet the administration of President Viktor Yanukovich is engaged in diminishing the significance of the Holodomor. This year, staff at the Institute of National Memory in Kiev produced a book, the central thesis of which echoes Soviet-era Cold War propaganda - that the Holodomor was conceived as a means to discredit the USSR. Similarly, Russia refuses to accept the Holodomor as a Ukrainian rather than a general Soviet tragedy, and leaked diplomatic documents have shown that Russian officials have threatened post-Soviet countries should they recognize the Holodomor as a genocide.

Fear, and in particular, fear before authority, is the most enduring impact of the Holodomor, according to psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, president of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association and former Soviet dissident. In an interview weeks before the protests, he said: “It lingers in the consciousness of our Ukrainian people, who are still not free.” It would take another generation, he added, for Ukrainians to be rid of it.

The first generation to come out of the shadows of the Holodomor has arrived. Born after the fall of the Soviet Union, they are as likely to have spent time in Paris or Munich as in Moscow. They differ from their parents in other ways. They are completely at home with social media, and they expect information to be shared, and shared quickly. When government forces beat peaceful protesters on Kiev’s maidan, or main square, authorities claimed that these special forces had been clearing out hooligans impeding the assembly of a huge Christmas tree (or rather, New Year tree, the term used since Soviet times). But video of the brutal assault was already on the internet for all to see. At least three websites are streaming live feeds as events in Kiev unfolded

Whatever the short-term outcome of the protests, young Ukrainians will continue to press for change in their country. With a sense of identity informed by the tragedy of their country’s past, they are impatient for Ukraine to cast off its lingering Soviet ways. They see no reason why Moscow should determine their fate. They will not be satisfied until their country’s institutions guarantee democracy, rule of law, and human rights - which just happen to be criteria for joining the European Union.
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Marta Baziuk is executive director of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium at the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

Behind Ukraine’s protest are memories of Moscow’s famine - The Globe and Mail

**stephencureatzj** · 13th December 2013, 07:12

I hope and pray that Ukraine and it's people will be free! There are many hard yards ahead with reform, but if they continue to rally and stand together they have a great hope of it being achieved.....I also hope that if things get out of control and violent that other countries would actually step in and assist in the protection of the people.

**Hannia** · 15th December 2013, 01:33

Tim Snyder, author of "Bloodlands", a must read.
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Ukraine: Putin’s Denial by Timothy Snyder | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

The running commentaries at end of article cover the subject of who came first, the Ukrainian or the Russian and are they one and the same, as some here in these forums think.

**Hannia** · 17th December 2013, 19:06

TIME MAGAZINE (USA)

Europe
How to Explain What’s Happening in Ukraine

The conflict that we are seeing today stems from a deadly famine that Stalin engineered back in 1932.
By Andrea Chalupa Dec. 17, 2013
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In Ukraine, the nationalistic West is Ukrainian-speaking and welcomes the EU, while the Russian-speaking East, where current president Victor Yanukovcyh rose to power, sees the Kremlin as an indispensable ally and wants to remain outside the EU. This has given rise to massive demonstrations vowing to overthrow the government, police brutality, and the president’s urgent meetings with the Kremlin. A civil war or an official breakup of the country is a very real possibility. To better understand the origins of this conflict, one must realize that this divide is not natural, but rather stems from murderous work by Joseph Stalin and one of the largest Western media cover-ups in history.

East Ukraine was once as nationalistic and Ukrainian-speaking as Western Ukraine is today. The dramatic transformation of the area was a result of ethnic cleansing. In 1932, a famine engineered by Stalin killed up to an estimated 10 million people, mostly in East Ukraine. Beginning in 1933, the Soviets replaced them with millions of deported Russians. Western Ukraine was then part of Poland, and spared. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the word “genocide,” used the Ukrainian famine as an example.

Despite scholarly evidence and public protests, Yanukovych toes the Kremlin line that the famine was not genocide. Coincidentally, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the famine, known as the Holodomor—Ukrainian for “death by hunger.” The toppling and beheading of the statue of Lenin in Kyiv was more than sending a message to Putin—it was an act of retribution for Soviet atrocities. Ukraine suffered far worse under Stalin than Russia, according to Timothy Snyder, professor of History at Yale University and author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

Stalin engineered the famine to rid himself of a stubborn enemy. Ukrainians had fought for their independence during the Russian Revolution, and for a short time, they had beaten back the Reds. What’s more, Ukraine, being the “Bread Basket of Europe,” had a rich and ancient culture of farmers, who wanted to hold on to their language, their land, and their identity. As a civilization, Ukraine is a thousand years older than Moscow. For Stalin, as for Putin today, this would be a very hard back to break.

Beginning in 1932, Stalin sent in soldiers from Russia to seize the agriculture industry in Ukraine. Impossible production quotas were set, and the overzealous soldiers made sure every single ounce of grain went to meeting those quotas. Homes were searched, soldiers used spikes to stab the earth looking for buried grain, Kulaks—rich landowning farmers—were rounded up and deported to Siberia, and the poorer, less established farmers who stayed behind were forced to join the newly built collective farms.

The Orwellian tactics accelerated. Soviet soldiers destroyed cooking utensils, ovens, and killed pets—anything that could provide nourishment. With the borders of Ukraine sealed by the military, starving Ukrainians, wandering blind and delirious from hunger, were trapped to die a slow, excruciating death.

In Moscow, the Western journalists knew what was going on. Lucky refugees, who had managed to escape, fled to the city to beg for food, to trade wedding rings for bread. “They gathered faster than the police could clear them away,” wrote UPI reporter Eugene Lyons in his confessional memoir Assignment in Utopia. Meanwhile, the West continued to believe that the Soviet Union was the Workers’ Paradise. Leading intellectuals, most notably George Bernard Shaw, willfully ignorant, flocked to Moscow and declared the Soviet Union a utopia. As Lyons wrote, “Every correspondent, each in his own measure, was guilty of collaborating in this monstrous hoax on the world.”

A naïve twenty-seven year old Welsh journalist named Gareth Jones entered Ukraine, where he witnessed the ravaged countryside and interviewed survivors. His eyewitness account shocked the world. Much like the Kremlin controls the media in Moscow today, it pressured American and British journalists to publish articles damning Jones a liar. “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition,” Walter Duranty wrote in the New York Times. Ever a social ringmaster, Duranty lived in a luxurious apartment inside the Kremlin, was beloved internationally as “Our Man in Moscow,” and had just won the Pulitzer Prize. Who would the world believe? Jones was silenced, and two years later murdered, research suggests, by the KGB.

For Ukrainians, EU-membership means more than economic opportunities and mobility. It is about distancing themselves from Putin, who is said to revere Stalin, the very dictator who tried to erase Ukraine, and managed to partition it, at least politically. If that weren’t enough, just this past week, Putin tightened his control of the press by shutting down Russia’s leading news agency, RIA Novosti. This is just another chilling reminder of the Holodomor to the Ukrainian people, and a reason why they continue to protest in arctic temperatures to get away from his grasp.

Chalupa is a Brooklyn, New York–based writer and columnist for Big Think. She studied at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and is the author of Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm. She is helping build Uncoverage, a crowd-funding platform for investigative journalists launching in January in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity. The views expressed are solely her own. You can follow her on Twitter @andreachalupa.
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**Hannia** · 17th December 2013, 19:30

JUST RELEASED BY CNN

Ukraine, Russia sign economic deal despite protests
By Laura Smith-Spark. Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Diana Magnay, CNN
updated 12:02 PM EST, Tue December 17, 2013

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Russia will buy Ukrainian debt and slash the price Kiev pays for its gas, President Vladimir Putin says, throwing an economic lifeline to its neighbor, rattled by protests calling for closer economic ties with Europe instead.

Amid a backdrop of continuous demonstrations in Kiev, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych met Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, where the deal was announced.

There, he said they agreed on a joint economic plan of action, covering areas such as industry, agriculture, defense, construction and transport.

"We need to continue our joint work of our governments, our working groups," Yanukovych said in a televised news conference.

Under the deal, Putin said Moscow would buy $15 billion in Ukrainian debt by investing in its national welfare fund.

The cost of Russian gas supplied to Ukraine was cut from more than $400 per 1,000 cubic meters to $268.50.

The deal may inflame the tens of thousands of protesters, who have poured into the streets of the Ukrainian capital for weeks, angry at Yanukovych for spurning a trade deal with the European Union last month and turning to Moscow for help.

"He (Yanukovych) did not communicate with us, so how can he sign documents on our behalf?" one protester occupying the central Independence Square, or Maidan, told CNN before the deal was announced.

Despite the sub-zero temperatures, the demonstrators opposed to closer ties with Russia have stood their ground, setting up tents and barricades, paralyzing the city center.

They were out in the tens of thousands Sunday -- the fourth weekend in a row -- urging their leaders to mend ties with Europe.

Boosting trade

The agreements are intended to reverse a decline in trade between the two nations over the past two years, the leaders said, adding that the planned cooperation would be "mutually beneficial" to both economies.

Yanukovych said the focus was on "economic areas, which is basis of our working together in a bilateral way."

"We are ready to look at the possibility of rapprochement in economic and political spheres," Putin said.

Ahead of Tuesday's talks, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov rejected claims that Ukraine was leaning toward joining Russia and two other former Soviet republics, Belarus and Kazakhstan, in a Customs Union.

"These are speculations. None of the papers we have prepared are in any way related to the Customs Union," he said.

Ukraine, Russia to sign trade road map, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov says

Economic issues

EU foreign ministers held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday in Brussels, Belgium.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Moscow should not fear "a detrimental effect on Russia" as a result of Ukraine's signature of the EU deal.

"I don't believe that the crisis in Ukraine should have a negative impact on our relations with Russia. It does mean, though, that we have to look very seriously about the way in which countries make their decision and are entitled to make their decision," she said.

Ahead of the talks, Ashton told reporters she believed the bloc could work with Yanukovych on Kiev's concerns, voiced since the Eastern European country backpedaled on signing the Association Agreement.

"We are very concerned when we look at some of the things that are being said, and my purpose in talking to President Yanukovych was to discover what these short-term economic issues are that have prevented him from signing," Ashton said.

"I feel that we can work with him to resolve those. Some of them can be done through the support of the European Union, others through financial institutions, some of them through the private sector. All of them are possible."

Stefan Fule, European commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy, said a day earlier on Twitter that efforts were being halted amid growing doubts that any deal could be done with Kiev.

Ukraine, a key transit region for Russian gas going to Western Europe, has desperately needed a cash injection.

Azarov last week told a government meeting that Ukraine was still open to signing the European integration deal, if the European Union would agree to provide financial assistance to Ukraine of around 20 billion

euros ($27.5 billion).

Future ties

Some in Europe have accused Moscow of using strong-arm tactics to try to influence Ukraine's course, but Russia denies that charge.

The tumult in Ukraine goes to the heart of its future ties with Russia and the rest of Europe.

Ukraine is split between pro-European regions in the west and a more Russia-oriented east.

The protests have unfolded since November 21, when Yanukovych changed his stance on the EU trade pact, which had been years in the making.

The demonstrators say an EU agreement would open borders to trade and set the stage for modernization and inclusion.

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Ukrainian roots are being uprooted -

Ukrainian roots are being uprooted -

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