Ceasefire offers opportunity for eastern Ukraine peace push, says president

Ukraine wants to build on a lull in fighting in the eastern Donbass region to push for a lasting peace settlement at a new round of four-way talks with Russia, France and Germany, 

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters. Dressed in a T-shirt and khaki trousers, Zelenskiy was speaking on a visit to the area on the 12th day of what Kyiv hopes will be a permanent ceasefire agreed with Russian-backed forces on July 27.

Reuters
Updated: 08-08-2020

|Ukraine wants to build on a lull in fighting in the eastern Donbass region to push for a lasting peace settlement at a new round of four-way talks with Russia, France and Germany, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters.

Dressed in a T-shirt and khaki trousers, Zelenskiy was speaking on a visit to the area on the 12th day of what Kyiv hopes will be a permanent ceasefire agreed with Russian-backed forces on July 27. Zelenskiy, 42, was a comic actor when he won a landslide election last year promising to end the conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people and brought Western sanctions on Russia.

Once a political novice, he has since secured prisoner exchanges with Russia and phased troop withdrawals at selected hotspots. "This is an opportunity to save our guys and continue the diplomatic dialogue," he said on Friday during a whistle-stop tour along more than 100 km (62 miles) of the frontline.

If the ceasefire holds, "the first big step has been taken, it is necessary to meet in the Normandy Format," he said, referring to the four-way talks named after the French region where they were first held. HOLDING FIRE

Zelenskiy inherited the conflict that began after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula six years ago. Ukraine says Russia then engineered quasi-separatist uprisings across a belt of eastern Ukraine that escalated into a full-scale war. Moscow denies the claim. A ceasefire agreed under Zelenskiy's predecessor in Belarus in 2015 stopped the worst of the fighting, but soldiers and civilians were still regularly killed in flare-ups.

The July 27 truce broke down within hours. But Kyiv says the shooting has been sporadic and on Thursday international monitors for the first time recorded no ceasefire violations within a daily reporting period. The next round of peace talks is due in Berlin but there is no date fixed. Kyiv wants to press for Red Cross access to its prisoners and a timeline for Russian-backed forces to withdraw.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine was willing to show flexibility on a key sticking point – giving legal special status to the Donbass region after holding local elections there, providing this stopped short of federalisation. But local elections could only take place once Russian-backed forces withdraw.

"I think this issue is very important: first security, then elections," he said. The first year of Zelenskiy's presidency was overshadowed by Ukraine's unwitting involvement in events that led to the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump had pressed Ukraine to launch an investigation into his Democratic rival for the 2020 presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden. Zelenskiy said bilateral support for Ukraine would remain strong regardless of who won the upcoming election.

"They are our partners indeed," he said. "I believe that their strategic course does not change, regardless of who is the president." (Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Mike Harrison)

PEOPLE TALK PEACE WITH ZELENSKIY
Brazil's Lula discusses peace effort with Zelenskiy in video call


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a breakfast with journalists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia

Thu, March 2, 2023 

BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he will encourage countries to join peace talks to end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

"I reaffirmed Brazil's desire to talk with other countries and participate in any initiative related to building peace and dialogue. Nobody wants war," Lula said on Twitter after the video call with Zelenskiy.

Lula will discuss the peace effort with China when he visits Beijing next month, and also with Russia, his office said in a statement. It said Zelenskiy had invited Lula to visit Kyiv.

"We discussed diplomatic efforts to bring peace back to Ukraine and the world," Zelenskiy tweeted. He said he thanked Lula for Brazil's vote in favor of the U.N. resolution last week that called for peace and demanded Moscow withdraw its troops.

Lula said Brazil backed the resolution because it defends the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The leftist Brazilian leader has been advocating the creation of a group of countries that could mediate a peaceful solution to the war.

Lula has declined to provide Ukraine with German-made artillery ammunition that Brazil has, insisting on the South American nation's policy of strict neutrality, though he has said Russia made a mistake invading a sovereign nation.

During a trip to the United States last month, Lula called for a negotiated solution to the conflict that would be achieved through the involvement of more neutral global players.

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine hit the one-year mark last week, Zelenskiy called for a summit with Latin American leaders and said he was willing to leave Ukraine to attend such a meeting.

In an interview with Time magazine last year, when he was still a presidential candidate, Lula said that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy were responsible for the conflict.

At the time, Lula said that Zelenskiy "wanted war" and, if he did not, "he would have negotiated a little more," although he reaffirmed that Russia "was wrong" to invade its neighbor.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Paul Simao and Marguerita Choy)

Ukraine’s ‘servant of the people’ is a

 Western fiction

There are far better ways to support the Ukrainian people

 than glorifying Volodymyr Zelensky

Dimitri Lascaris / July 4, 2022 / CANADIAN DIMENSION

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks under a camouflage net in a trench as he visits the war-hit Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, December 6, 2021. Image by manhhai/Flickr.

LONG READ

From the outset of Russia’s invasion in February of this year, Western elites have bestowed upon Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a level of adulation that few (if any) leaders have enjoyed.

Zelensky’s political rock star tour began with a speech to the European Parliament on March 1. He spoke with the United States Congress on March 16. By April 5, he had spoken to the parliaments of seventeen other nations—all of them closely allied with the United States.

Zelensky’s tour hit a snag on April 8. On that day, Zelensky caused an uproar among Greeks when he shared in Greece’s Parliament a video byte of a neo-Nazi soldier from the notorious Azov Battalion.

That little brouhaha was quickly swept under the Western rug.

Within the first six weeks of the war, Zelensky also addressed NATO, the G7, the European Council and the United Nations Security Council.

Western leaders and corporate media have incessantly described Zelensky as ‘Churchillian’—an epithet that was obviously intended as a compliment, despite Churchill’s well-documented racism.

George W. Bush, a war criminal who has never been held accountable for his crimes, described Zelensky as “the Winston Churchill of our times” after spending “a few minutes” chatting with the Ukrainian entertainer in a videoconference.

Australia’s former Prime Minister Scott Morrison hailed Zelensky as a “lion of democracy.”

French President Emmanuel Macron gushed that Zelensky was the “personification of honour, freedom and courage.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lauded Zelensky for his “invincible heroism.”

Since ascending to Ukraine’s presidency, what has Volodymyr Zelensky done to merit such lofty praise from such eminent people?

The political ascent of Volodymyr Zelensky

Zelensky first assumed the office of Ukraine’s presidency in May 2019, at the age of 41. Prior to that time, he had never held elected office. As explained by the Wilson Center:
Zelensky came to power in the spring of 2019 with a mandate from 73 percent of voters—rich and poor, urban and rural dwellers, Ukrainian and Russian speakers—across all regions of Ukraine. At the same time, the older generation of Ukrainian politicians, as well as the Western and Eastern political establishments, regarded him with some concern and even suspicion: a humorist and showman with no prior experience in public administration, what Zelensky might do once in office was unpredictable. The new president was not a professional politician, his team included no known diplomats and activists, and his platform was both vague and heavily populist…
Zelensky and his team of “new faces”—politicians of the generation that had grown up during the era of independence and who were not connected to the old ways of getting things done, which too often involved cronyism and deal-making—were tasked by voters to achieve three goals: (1) peace in the Donbas, (2) economic betterment for ordinary Ukrainians, and (3) a noncorrupt and responsive government.

Zelensky’s electoral platform was, to put it mildly, a bit vague: he was so evasive in his campaign that, several days before Ukrainians began to vote, twenty Ukrainian news outlets issued a statement calling on Zelensky to stop avoiding the media.
The presidential comedian

Zelensky pursued a career in comedy from a young age. At 17, he performed a crotch-grabbing dance routine in the KVN comedy competition.

He later earned a law degree from the Kyiv National Economic University, but did not go on to practice law. Instead, he pursued a career in comedy.

Between the completion of his law degree and Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election, Zelensky appeared in numerous Ukrainian movies and starred in Servant of the People, a television series in which Zelensky played the role of Ukraine’s president.

When Zelensky switched from playing Ukraine’s president to being Ukraine’s president, Ukraine was a deeply troubled nation. It was the poorest country in Europe. It was notoriously corrupt. It was embroiled in a civil war in which as many as 13,000 Ukrainians had died. Its government had lost control of large swathes of Ukrainian territory. It was mired in a tense conflict with Russia.

Serving as president of a stable, peaceful and prosperous country is difficult enough. Serving as leader of a nation as troubled as Ukraine is a monumental challenge, and it was a challenge for which Zelensky was spectacularly unqualified.

Zelensky had no experience or formal training in economic management, no experience or formal training in public administration, no experience serving in any elected capacity, and no experience with military command.

If you needed brain surgery, would you hire your gardener to do it? A career comedian was no more qualified to be Ukraine’s president than a gardener would be to perform surgery on your brain. Don’t get me wrong, I respect comedians. For a long time, I’ve admired George Carlin, but I never thought that Carlin was qualified to be president of the United States.
Does life really mimic art?

It’s often said that life mimics art.

In Zelensky’s case, that’s not entirely accurate.

In Servant of the People, Zelensky donned the mantle of an anti-corruption champion, but according to the widely cited Transparency International (TI), corruption levels in Ukraine remained essentially the same in the first two years of Zelensky’s term. On a scale of 0-100 (in which zero equals the highest level of perceived corruption and 100 equals the lowest level of perceived corruption), TI accorded to Ukraine a corruption score of 30 in 2019. In 2021, Ukraine scored 32.

In September 2021, the European Court of Auditors issued a report in which it concluded that “grand corruption was still a key problem in Ukraine.”

In June of this year, a poll funded by the Wall Street Journal found that 85 percent of Ukrainians believe that corruption among Ukraine’s high officials and the wealthy is a “major threat” to Ukraine’s security.

In October of last year, the Pandora Papers revealed that, days before his election, Zelensky himself had been dealing in undisclosed offshore holdings. As reported by the Guardian:
On the campaign trail, Zelenskiy pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid their assets offshore. The message worked. Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote and now sits in a cavernous office in the capital, Kyiv, decorated with gilded stucco ceilings. Last month, he held talks with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
The Pandora Papers, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation however, suggest Zelenskiy is rather similar to his predecessors.
The leaked documents suggest he had—or has—a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote.
Zelenskiy has not commented on the claim despite extensive attempts by the Guardian and its media partners to reach him. His spokesperson Sergiy Nikiforov messaged: “Won’t be an answer.”
The files reveal Zelenskiy participated in a sprawling network of offshore companies, co-owned with his longtime friends and TV business partners. They include Serhiy Shefir, who produced Zelensky’s hit shows, and Shefir’s older brother, Borys, who wrote the scripts. Another member of the consortium is Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend. Bakanov was general director of Zelenskiy’s production studio, Kvartal 95.
All are associated with Zelenskiy’s home town in southern Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih. After winning power, Zelenskiy brought these close allies into government. Bakanov became head of Ukraine’s SBU security agency. Zelenskiy made Serhiy Shefir his first assistant, an unpaid role that involves handling the president’s daily schedule. A fourth member of this close-knit group, Andriy Yakovlev, is a film director and Kvartal 95 producer.


The Guardian also noted that, since entering politics, Zelensky had been “dogged by claims he is under the influence of Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire whose TV channel screened Zelenskiy’s show.”

During the campaign, Zelensky’s opponents alleged $41 million from Kolomoisky entities found its way between 2012 and 2016 into offshore firms belonging to Zelensky and his circle. According to Politico:
Kolomoisky’s media outlet also provides security and logistical backup for the comedian’s campaign, and it has recently emerged that Zelenskiy’s legal counsel, Andrii Bohdan, was the oligarch’s personal lawyer. Investigative journalists have also reported that Zelenskiy traveled 14 times in the past two years to Geneva and Tel Aviv, where Kolomoisky is based in exile.

In 2020, the US Justice Department accused Kolomoisky of stealing billions from a bank he owned and laundering this money all over the world. The next year, the US government imposed sanctions on Kolomoisky in connection with the alleged fraud, although the ‘sanctions’—a travel ban on Kolomoisky and members of his family—were farcical. After all, would Kolomoisky desire to travel to the United States when its government accuses him of having perpetrated a gigantic fraud?

Not only does Kolomoisky stand accused of fraud, he is also one of several Ukrainian oligarchs who have funded the far-right, neo-Nazi-linked Azov Battalion.
A “lion of democracy”?

Under Zelensky, Ukraine’s government has aggressively suppressed free speech and political pluralism.

In early 2021, Zelensky signed a decree banning three ‘pro-Russian’ television channels. According to Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, “the channels are considered [in Ukraine] to be pro-Russian messengers anchored in the nation’s war-scarred east as well as its south.”

The Ukrainian Union of Journalists reacted harshly to Zelensky’s ban, stating “the deprivation of access to Ukrainian media for an audience of millions without a court … is an attack on freedom of expression.”

An owner of one of the banned channels was said to be Taras Kozak, a lawmaker and member of the Ukrainian political party, Opposition Platform — For Life (OP-FL). At the time of Zelensky’s channel ban, Kozak’s party was the largest opposition party in the Ukrainian Parliament. Not anymore: Ukraine’s “lion of democracy” banned OP-FL in March of this year, along with ten other ‘pro-Russian’ and left-wing parties.

The eleven political parties banned by Zelensky include the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the libertarian Party of Shariy, which is led by the popular Youtube blogger, Anatoly Shariy.

Zelensky’s government also arrested two youth communist leaders and accused them of conspiring to overthrow the government. Following their arrest, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a UN-recognized global alliance of progressive youth organizations, stated “After being persecuted, repressed, kidnapped, and tortured by the…Ukrainian Security Service, now their right to defense from the accusations [against them] is being violated.

None of the eleven parties banned by Zelensky is a far-right party. Evidently, Zelensky doesn’t regard Neo-Nazis as a threat to Ukrainian democracy.

This month, a Ukrainian court upheld Zelensky’s ban. It also ruled that OP-FL’s assets will be confiscated by the Ukrainian State Treasury.

Prior to Russia’s invasion, several opinion polls showed OP-FL leading hypothetical parliamentary elections or finishing second. When Russia launched its invasion, OP-FL condemned it.

It is important to understand that, while 78 percent of the people living in Ukraine are ethnically Ukrainian, 17 percent of Ukraine’s population is ethnically Russian. It should surprise no one that ethnically Russian Ukrainians might feel an affinity toward Russia. Does that affinity disentitle these Ukrainian citizens to free speech or political representation? A genuine Ukrainian democracy would not treat ethnic Russians as second-class citizens.

Weeks before the invasion, Zelensky launched an attack on another political opponent, Petro Poroshenko. The “chocolate king” served as Ukraine’s President from 2014 to 2019 and lost to Zelensky in the 2019 election. He is one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men. He acquired his riches by being, in the words of the Financial Times, one of the “quick movers in the post-Soviet years.”

No one can plausibly accuse Poroshenko of being ‘pro-Russian.’ Poroshenko has called Putin a “fascist” and a “pathological liar.” He insists that NATO membership for Ukraine would have shielded Ukraine from Russia. Shortly after Zelensky’s election in 2019, Poroshenko went so far as to join protests against Zelensky’s (supposed) plan to make peace with Russia.

At the beginning of this year, Zelensky’s administration accused Poroshenko of “high treason” for allegedly helping to organize the sale of large amounts of coal from the war-torn eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass in 2014 and 2015. Prosecutors say that these sales helped to finance Russian-backed ‘separatists.’ Zelensky also accused Poroshenko of fleeing Ukraine to avoid arrest.

In January of this year, while out of the country, Poroshenko called the charges “bullshit” and said he would return to Ukraine to face the charges. According to Politico:

Some Western diplomats have expressed dismay that Poroshenko chose to come to Brussels this week and draw attention to Ukraine’s bitter political in-fighting at just the moment that NATO allies were confronting Russia over its huge military build-up along the Ukrainian border.

In the statement, Podolyak [an adviser to Zelensky] said Poroshenko was not above the law and suggested that Ukrainian authorities would resist any external pressure to drop the charges against Poroshenko because that would mean interfering with an independent investigation….

He added, “Unfortunately, Petro Poroshenko simply uses foreign journalists to create pretexts for personal PR in Ukraine and to show in his media that he supposedly has a ‘good press’ and ‘a lot of things to do’ in Europe. One of the basic principles of any democratic state is the equality of all citizens before the law and the courts. We would not want Europe to return to the times when the high political or economic status of a particular person, including the ex-president, puts him above the law and frees him from the need to comply with court orders.”

Despite its lofty, law-and-order rhetoric, Zelensky’s administration folded to foreign pressure like a cheap suit. In February of this year, the Globe and Mail reported that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland both called Zelensky and persuaded him not to arrest and imprison Poroshenko. Since then, and despite the gravity of the charges against him, Poroshenko has remained a free man. He has appeared frequently on Western television to denounce Russia’s invasion and demand more weapons for Ukraine’s devastated military.

What are we to make of Zelensky’s capitulation to foreign pressure? Either the charges against Poroshenko were trumped up for the purposes of neutralizing Zelensky’s primary political opponent, or Zelensky has sacrificed equality before the law, which (to borrow the words of Zelensky’s adviser) is “one of the basic principles of any democratic state.”

Either way, Ukraine’s “high treason” fiasco raises serious questions about Zelensky’s commitment to the rule of law.

Torture and gender-based violence in Ukraine

For many years, Ukraine’s security services have engaged in torture. During Zelensky’s term as President, the use of torture has remained widespread.

In Amnesty International’s annual country report on Ukraine for 2021, Amnesty stated “impunity for torture and other ill-treatment in general remained endemic. Investigations into more recent allegations remained slow and often ineffective.”

With respect to gender-based violence—another chronic human rights issue in Ukraine—Amnesty’s 2021 Ukraine report stated:
Gender-based violence and discrimination—particularly against women—and domestic violence remained widespread. Support services for the survivors as well as legislative and policy measures intended to combat domestic violence, although improved in recent years, remained insufficient. No progress was made in ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on combating and preventing violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention).

Neoliberalism on steroids

In 2019, Zelensky defeated Poroshenko in a landslide, with 73 percent of the popular vote.

By the time of Russia’s invasion in February of this year, Zelensky’s approval rating had plummeted to 31 percent.

In a lengthy, April 2022 interview given to The Grayzone Project, Olga Baysha, a Ukrainian sociologist and academic who authored Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, attributed Zelensky’s fall from grace to his fervour for radical neoliberalism. As she explained:
The basic argument presented in my recent book is that the astonishing victory of Zelensky and his party, later transformed into a parliamentary machine to churn out and rubber-stamp neoliberal reforms (in a “turbo regime,” as they called it), cannot be explained apart from the success of his television series, which, as many observers believe, served as Zelensky’s informal election platform. Unlike his official platform, which ran only 1,601 words in length and contained few policy specifics, the 51 half-hour episodes of his show provided Ukrainians with a detailed vision of what should be done so that Ukraine could progress.

The message delivered by Zelensky to Ukrainians through his show is clearly populist. The people of Ukraine are portrayed in it as an unproblematic totality devoid of internal splits, from which only oligarchs and corrupted politicians/officials are excluded. The country becomes healthy only after getting rid of both oligarchs and their puppets. Some of them are imprisoned or flee the country; their property is confiscated without any regard to legality. Later, Zelensky-the-president will do the same towards his political rivals.

Interestingly, the show ignores the theme of the Donbass war, which erupted in 2014, a year before the series started being broadcast. As the Maidan and Russia-Ukraine relations are very divisive issues in Ukrainian society, Zelensky ignored them so as not to jeopardize the unity of his virtual nation, his viewers, and ultimately his voters.

Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization,” and “normalization.” It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc. Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions, an increase in utility tariffs, and so on.

Zelensky betrayed not only his populist message, but also his promise to pursue peace

To the credit of the Ukrainian people, they elected Zelensky in a landslide due largely to Zelensky’s vow to pursue peaceful relations with Russia, but Zelensky betrayed that promise. How did he do so? Let us count the ways:Like his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky failed to implement the Minsk accords, which were designed to end the civil war in Donbas by according to that region political autonomy within Ukraine.
Knowing full well that Ukraine’s admission into NATO was the brightest of red lines for Russia’s government, Zelensky clamoured loudly for NATO membership. His government went so far as to threaten openly to acquire nuclear weapons if Ukraine was not admitted to NATO. Zelensky’s government enthusiastically collaborated with Western powers to render Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. One year into Zelensky’s Presidency, NATO declared Ukraine to be a “partner country.” During Zelensky’s first two years in office, NATO trained at least 10,000 Ukrainian troops annually through classes, drills and exercises. In May 2021, Ukraine and NATO launched “Operation Sea Breeze” (two weeks of massive military exercises in the Black Sea), and did so only six days after Russian armed forced had fired warning shots and dropped four bombs in the path of HMS Defender, a British warship that had provocatively entered the territorial waters off Crimea, claimed by Russia. Less than three months later, Ukraine and numerous NATO states officially started more military exercises in Ukraine under the moniker “Rapid Trident 21,” which featured, for the first time, “battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order.” The avowed aim of “Rapid Trident 21” was “to increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability” between NATO and Ukrainian military forces.

In early 2021, Zelensky’s government adopted a decree which left no ambiguity as to its determination to retake Crimea by military means.

As reported by Jacques Baud, a retired Colonel in Swiss intelligence who served in Ukraine in NATO training operations, artillery shelling of the population of the Donbass increased dramatically (according to daily reports of OSCE observers in the region) in the week prior to Russia’s invasion.

Zelensky worsened strains with Russia by banning ‘pro-Russian’ Ukrainian television stations in 2021.

An honest and comprehensive assessment of Zelensky’s record leads inexorably to the conclusion that, not only did he fail to fulfill his electoral promise of pursuing peace with Russia, but he adopted policies that dramatically increased the risk of military conflict.

Unsurprisingly, a recent poll in Ukraine, funded by the Wall Street Journal, found that 70 percent of respondents believed that the Ukrainian government bears either “some” or a “great deal” of responsibility for the conflict with Russia.

The “lion of democracy” is as fictional as the “servant of the people”

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Western states have expended billions of dollars to prop up Zelensky’s government, both militarily and economically.

By late May, the United States alone had committed a total of US$54 billion to Ukraine, over US$30 billion of which was military-related.

Canada has committed C$1.87 billion to support Zelensky’s government. That sum does not include Canadian military aid. According to Project Ploughshares:
In response to Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Canada has announced successive shipments of military goods to the Ukrainian government. As of mid-May 2022, the value of all committed transfers was in excess of $150-million, with military aid worth a further $500-million proposed in Canada’s 2022 federal budget. The volume and speed of these government-to-government transfers, conducted by the Department of National Defence (DND), are unprecedented in recent Canadian history.

Britain has committed the equivalent of US$2.8 billion of military aid to Ukraine. Other NATO states have contributed billions more.

Despite NATO’s massive and unprecedented weapons transfers to Ukraine, Ukraine is losing this war badly. Within the past two days, Russian and LPR forces captured Lysychansk, the last major Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk. Lysychank fell within only one week of the fall of Severodonetsk>.

With every military failure, Zelensky vows to retake cities that have been lost to Russian and separatist forces, but there is little if any reason to believe that Ukraine will be able to do so.

Quite apart from the issue of Ukraine’s inability to defeat Russia, there looms a larger question: is Volodymyr Zelensky the kind of leader who merits Western support?

The fictional Zelensky is a “servant of the people” and a “lion of democracy.”

The real Zelensky is an anti-hero who has degraded whatever democracy existed in Ukraine. Moreover, Zelensky refused or failed to end the use of torture. He instituted a profoundly unpopular program of neoliberalism. He has deep ties to a shady oligarch who funded Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Perhaps worst of all, he betrayed his promise to seek peace with Russia by pursuing policies that greatly heightened the risk of war.

After all that Western governments have done to destabilize Ukraine and to use its people as cannon fodder in a proxy war with Russia, the least that we can do is to support Ukrainians in their hour of desperate need, but there are far better ways to support the Ukrainian people than glorifying and propping up Zelensky.

The West can and should provide direct and robust humanitarian aid to Ukrainians. We should embrace and care for Ukrainian refugees. And, above all, we should work tirelessly to achieve a negotiated resolution to this calamitous war.

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, human rights activist and former candidate for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. He is based in Montréal. Follow him on Twitter @dimitrilascaris.

Ukrainian president does not exclude referendum on Crimea and Donbas 

RUSSIA HELD ITS OWN IN 2014

 In Kyiv Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks by phone 

with U.S. President Joe Biden

Fri, December 10, 2021
By Natalia Zinets

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said he did not exclude holding a referendum on the future status of war-torn eastern Ukraine and the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelenskiy did not give detail on how and when a referendum could be held, but said it was one of the options to revive a stalled peace process in eastern Ukraine and end a standoff with neighbouring Russia.

Ukraine has scrambled to shore up support from Western allies in recent weeks, accusing Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops near its borders in preparation for a possible large scale military offensive.

Relations between Kyiv and Moscow collapsed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and Moscow-backed forces seized territory in eastern Ukraine that Kyiv wants back. Kyiv says some 14,000 people have been killed in fighting since then.

"I do not rule out a referendum on Donbass in general," Zelenskiy told the 1+1 television channel. "It might be about Donbass, it might be about Crimea, it might be about ending the war in general," he said. "So it may be that someone, this or that country can offer us certain conditions."

Zelenskiy has welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden taking a "personal role" in trying to end the war in eastern Ukraine. Zelenskiy said Biden had conveyed Russian reassurances that Moscow would not cause an escalation.

Zelenskiy also said he would not rule out direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia demanded on Friday that NATO rescind a 2008 commitment to Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day become members and said the alliance should promise not to deploy weapons in countries bordering Russia that could threaten its security.

Russia denies planning any attack on Ukraine but accuses Kyiv and Washington of destabilising behaviour, and has said it needs security guarantees for its own protection.

Ukraine has dismissed Moscow's demands for security guarantees as illegitimate and Zelenskiy said Biden had not tried to force concessions on him.

"We didn't talk about any compromises," he said.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Saakashvili says Ukrainian President Zelenskiy is 'against thieves'

Controversial Georgian ex-leader Mikheil Saakashvili has been offered a top government post in Ukraine, prompting anger in Tbilisi. Talking to DW, Saakashvili warned a collapse in Ukraine would threaten all of Europe.

  
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy triggered a diplomatic row with Georgia by offering the post of deputy prime minister to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, prompting Tbilisi to threaten to recall its ambassador to Kyiv on Friday.

Saakashvili's new post would be "categorically unacceptable" to Georgia, said Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia. In turn, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry commented that it was yet to receive a formal note from Tbilisi and was still regarding Georgia as a "trusted friend and ally."

From college friends to political enemies

The now 52-year-old Saakashvili took power in Georgia as a leader of a peaceful pro-Western revolution in 2003. While enjoying enormous support among voters and backing from Western countries in the early years of his presidency, his credibility was damaged when the government launched a heavy-handed crackdown against protesters in 2007. Still, Saakashvili managed to secure another term in early 2008.

Some months later, Georgia lost a brief war against Russia for control of two of its provinces. Many blamed the war on Saakashvili's miscalculations. Throughout his second term, Saakashvili's rivals continued to accuse him of trying to control the media and judiciary and of trading favors with businessmen close to his government.

The leader left Georgia for the US in 2013. In 2015, he secured Ukrainian citizenship from the country's then-president Petro Poroshenko, who was Saakashvili's friend from college. The native Georgian then started a new political career in Ukraine as a governor of Odessa.

Saakashvili and his vocal supporters eventually turned on former President Petro Poroshenko

After a year and half in power, however, Saakashvili publicly fell out with Poroshenko and accused the president of trying to sabotage an anti-corruption campaign. The ensuing political war led to many intense public incidents, including a crowd of Saakshvili's supporters spectacularly breaking him out of a police car in downtown Kyiv during a failed arrest attempt in late 2017.

With Petro Poroshenko losing the 2019 election to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the flamboyant politician is no longer targeted by the Ukrainian government.

However, Saakashvili was convicted of abuse of power in Georgia and remains a wanted man in his native country.

Read more:  Saakashvili: Georgian reformist battles Ukraine's president

'Drain the swamp'

Talking to DW's Alexandra Indyukhova on Friday, Saakashvili said he asked by Zelenskiy to "strengthen the government's capacity for reforms." Specifically, Saakashvili hopes to battle corruption and take charge of negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international institutions.

When asked about recent political developments in Ukraine, Saakashvili told DW that former President Poroshenko "was a thief and and Zelenskiy is definitely against thieves."

Ukraine's economy had been on the ropes for years, even before the coronavirus; new President Zelenskiy also has eastern rebels with Russian support and a corrupt system to contend with

"He is absolutely sincere in his desire to tackle the old system but right now either he will drain the swamp or the old system will swallow him," he added.

The former Georgian president also warned that Ukraine was on the brink of collapse because of the ongoing conflict in the east and the new economic crisis.

"This is a real challenge because if Ukraine's economy collapses, as it is projected, considering the separatist forces, the destabilizing impulses from Russia, we are facing a very dangerous situation — not [just] for us here, but for the entire European continent," he said.

Read more:  Ukraine conflict: Can the Minsk-2 peace deal with Russia be salvaged?

The Ukrainian parliament is due to vote on Saakashvili's appointment next week. However, some reports indicate that even the ruling party behind Zelenskiy is deeply divided on the issue.

dj/msh (Interfax, Ukrainski Novini, AFP)

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE

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Ukrainian officials dismissed in Zelenskiy's biggest shake-up of war

Olena Harmash and Tom Balmforth
Tue, 24 January 2023 

Deputy head of Ukraine's Presidential Office Tymoshenko before talks with the Russian delegation in Istanbul


By Olena Harmash and Tom Balmforth

KYIV (Reuters) - A slew of senior officials were dismissed on Tuesday in Ukraine's biggest political shake-up of the war so far that Kyiv said showed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in tune with his public following corruption allegations.

A long-running battle against corruption in Ukraine has taken on vital significance as Russia's invasion has made Kyiv heavily reliant on Western support and it pursues a bid to join the European Union.

The clear-out of over a dozen officials as Russia's invasion enters its 12th month came days after the arrest of a deputy minister suspected of graft and allegations that were denied by the Defence Ministry and sparked an outcry.

"The president sees and hears society. And he directly responds to a key public demand – justice for all," Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior Zelenskiy adviser, wrote on Twitter.

The outgoing officials include five regional governors, four deputy ministers and a senior presidential office official seen as close to Zelenskiy, who had announced on Monday there would be "personnel decisions - some today, some tomorrow".

Some of the changes had been planned for a while, but were precipitated by a sudden spate of negative headlines, Kyiv-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said.

"This is simultaneously an intensification of the fight against corruption, and a reaction from the president ... to critical articles in the media," Fesenko told Reuters.

Some of the announcements appeared linked to corruption accusations while others were entirely unrelated.

The shake-up was made all the more striking coming amid a deep freeze in domestic politics that has held throughout the war as political rivalries were largely set aside to focus on the fight for national survival.

'WORTHY DEED'

Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov tendered his resignation after a local media report over the weekend accused the defence ministry of paying inflated prices for supplies of food, an old trick used by corrupt officials to skim off money.

The ministry said the allegations were groundless but that the resignation of Shapovalov, who was in charge of army supplies, was a "worthy deed" that would help retain trust in the ministry.

As the shake-up unfolded in a series of announcements, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a cabinet meeting that Ukraine was making progress in its anti-corruption campaign. "It is systemic, consecutive work which is very needed for Ukraine and is an integral part of integration with the EU," he said.

The governors of the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Sumy and Kherson were among those on their way out. Technically, Zelenskiy still needs to publish a decree finalising their sacking.

The president's office said it had accepted the resignation of Kyrylo Tymoshenko as its deputy head. He gave no reason for his exit.

The 33-year-old worked on Zelenskiy's election campaign and had been in his post since 2019, overseeing the regions and regional policies. He had been criticised by local media for driving flashy cars during the invasion, though he denied wrongdoing and said the vehicles had been rented.

Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko, who had come under fire in local media for holidaying with his family in Marbella in Spain during the war, was removed from his post. Symonenko has not commented publicly on those allegations.

Zelenskiy said in his nightly speech on Monday that officials would no longer to be able to travel abroad for purposes unrelated to government work.

(Additional reporting by Max Hunder; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Timothy Heritage and Mark Heinrich)

NO FRIEND OF PUTIN
Ex-Georgian president Saakashvili poised for another political comeback in Ukraine

Ilya Zhegulev

KIEV (Reuters) - The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, said on Wednesday he had been invited to become deputy prime minister of Ukraine in charge of driving reforms, in what would mark another comeback for the maverick politician.
FILE PHOTO: Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili arrives in Kiev as his supporter shows the decree of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which restores Saakashvili's citizenship, at Boryspil International Airport outside Kiev, Ukraine May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

One of the most recognizable leaders in the post-Soviet world, Saakashvili was brought in to run the southern Odessa region of Ukraine in 2015 but fell out with the president at the time, Petro Poroshenko.

Saakashvili said he had been invited to join the government of the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose candidacy he backed in last year’s election.

He will join at a time when Ukraine faces a recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the government is trying to secure an $8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund that is contingent on Kiev’s reform performance.

“It is a great honour for me to receive from President Zelenskiy an offer to become deputy prime minister of the Ukrainian government for reform,” Saakashvili wrote on Facebook.

“We have a very difficult period ahead ... we now have more than ever to be courageous in our decisions and reforms.”

David Arakhamia, the head of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People faction, told Reuters that parliament could vote on Saakashvili’s appointment on Friday.

Arakhamia said Saakashvili was suited to a broad-ranging role in fighting corruption and that his abilities had not been properly used in Ukraine before.

Zelenskiy’s office said the president had met Saakashvili to discuss Saakashvili’s vision of how he might help Ukraine’s development.

“Mikheil Saakashvili is well known in the international arena and has already demonstrated experience of the successful implementation of reforms,” his office said.

Saakashvili had been hired to run Odessa five years ago based on his track record of fighting corruption as president of Georgia after the 2003 Rose Revolution.

He resigned as governor in 2016 and accused Poroshenko of corruption, which Poroshenko denied.

The Ukrainian authorities stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship when he was abroad, but he barged his way through a checkpoint at the Polish border to get back into Ukraine in September 2017. He was deported five months later.

Saakashvili returned to Ukraine last year after Zelenskiy restored his citizenship in one of his first official acts as president.

Alexander Rodnyansky, an economist at Britain’s Cambridge University and former adviser to the Ukrainian government, told Reuters Saakashvili’s arrival would be positive for reforms.

“I have always respected Georgia’s experience and the reforms that it has carried out, and I hope that this will not break any political balances,” he said.

WW3.0
Ukraine shows off U.S. military hardware, vows to fight off Russia




Ukraine celebrates Army Day

Mon, December 6, 2021, 
By Natalia Zinets and Matthias Williams

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday said his armed forces were capable of fighting off any Russian attack, as the country marked its national army day with a display of U.S. armoured vehicles and patrol boats.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged his "unwavering support" to Ukraine in its standoff with Moscow and will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to try to defuse the crisis. Zelenskiy is set to speak to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday.

Ukraine has accused Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops near its border in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive, raising the prospect of open war between the two neighbours.

"The servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to fulfil their most important mission - to defend the freedom and sovereignty of the state from the Russian aggressor," Zelenskiy said in a statement.

"The Ukrainian army ... is confident in its strength and able to thwart any conquest plans of the enemy," he said.

Russia has dismissed talk of a new assault on Ukraine as false and inflammatory but told the West not to cross its "red lines" and to halt the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance.

NATO MEMBERSHIP

Decked out in khaki armour and helmet, Zelenskiy flew east to shake hands with soldiers at the frontline in the Donetsk region, where Ukraine's army has fought Russian-backed forces in a conflict that Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people since 2014.

He then flew to Kharkiv, a city near Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia and a traditional centre for weapons manufacturing, to mark a delivery of tanks, armoured personal carriers and armoured vehicles made in the city's factories.

Standing in front of rows of soldiers, tanks and planes on the city's main square on Monday evening, Zelenskiy trumpeted the ways in which Ukraine's military had equipped itself with the help of NATO allies.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that now aspires to join the European Union and NATO, has received Javelin anti-tank missiles from the United States, sophisticated drones from Turkey and signed a deal with Britain to build ships and new naval bases on Ukraine's southern coast.

Several cities across Ukraine are marking the 30th anniversary of the creation of an independent military after winning independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Today, together with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, I am here in Kharkiv on Freedom Square," Zelenskiy said in an address.

"This is significant, because freedom for us is the greatest value," he said, adding: "it is a symbol of our state, all of Ukraine, which was defended from Russia's aggression in 2014 by our soldiers and continues to be defended by them today."

Kyiv, Lviv and the southern port city of Odessa displayed U.S.-made Humvees. In Odessa, there was also a ceremony to hand over two recently delivered U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats intended to bolster Ukraine's navy.

Ukraine has urged NATO to accelerate its entry into the military alliance and said Moscow had no right to veto such a move. NATO's leadership has been supportive but said Ukraine must carry out defence reforms and tackle corruption first.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Paul Simao)

Trudeau apologises for inviting Waffen-SS Galicia Division veteran to Canadian Parliament

Ukrainska Pravda
Wed, September 27, 2023



Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologised on Wednesday, 27 September, on behalf of the state for inviting a veteran of the SS Galicia division to the Canadian Parliament during the visit of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Source: European Pravda, referring to CBC

Details: In a brief statement to reporters, Trudeau said he and all those present in Canada's parliament "deeply regret having stood by and applauded" 98-year-old SS Galicia veteran Yaroslav Hunka.

"It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust," he said, adding that Yaroslav Hunka's celebration was "deeply, deeply painful" to Jews, Poles, Roma, the LGBT community, and other groups that were exterminated by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

In addition, Zelenskyy, who was on a visit to Ottawa, was pictured applauding for Hunka, and Russian propagandists have used this image to their advantage. Trudeau added that "Canada is deeply sorry" for the incident.

Earlier, Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of Canada, announced his resignation over the scandal involving the invitation of the 98-year-old veteran.

Reference: The Waffen-SS Galicia Division was formed in 1943 by German troops who recruited Ukrainians to fight against the Red Army. The Nuremberg trials and the so-called Deschênes Commission, set up in Canada in the 1980s, did not confirm the involvement of the division's members in war crimes. Nevertheless, the division has been blamed for punitive Wehrmacht operations against Poles and Jews.

Trudeau Apologizes to Zelenskiy Over Parliament’s Nazi Invite

Brian Platt
Wed, September 27, 2023 at 12:48 PM MDT·1 min 



(Bloomberg) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country is “deeply sorry” for putting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the position of unknowingly applauding a veteran who served in a Nazi unit.

“This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed parliament and Canada,” Trudeau told reporters on Wednesday.

“I also want to reiterate how deeply sorry Canada is for the situation this put President Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian delegation in,” he said. “It is extremely troubling to think that this egregious error is being politicized by Russia and its supporters to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for.”

The veteran, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, had been invited to sit in the parliamentary gallery during Zelenskiy’s speech on Friday. Anthony Rota, the speaker of the House of Commons, issued the invitation and introduced Hunka as a Ukrainian Second World War veteran “who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians.”

It was later revealed Hunka served with the 1st Galician division, a unit of the German military’s Waffen-SS.

The story was quickly pounced on by Russian diplomats and state-controlled media. Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to justify his invasion of Ukraine as aiming to “de-Nazify” the country, even though Zelenskiy himself is Jewish.

Rota profusely apologized for the invitation, stressing that neither Trudeau nor Zelenskiy was aware of it ahead of time. On Tuesday, Rota announced he would resign as speaker over the fiasco.

Trudeau said everyone who stood and applauded Hunka “did so unaware of the context.”

“It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, and it was deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people.”

Trudeau apologizes for recognition of Nazi unit war veteran in Canadian Parliament

ROB GILLIES
Updated Wed, September 27, 2023 at 3:05 PM MDT·2 min read
33

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologizes for the events surrounding Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy's visit at a media availability in Ottawa, Ontario, on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. Trudeau apologized Wednesday for Parliament’s recognition of Yaroslav Hunka, who fought alongside the Nazis during last week’s address by Zelenskyy.

 (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)


TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized Wednesday for Parliament’s recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis during last week’s address by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trudeau said the speaker of the House of Commons, who resigned Tuesday, was “solely responsible” for the invitation and recognition of the man but said it was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada.

“All of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” Trudeau said before he entering the House of Commons. “It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, and was deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people.”

Trudeau repeated the apology in Parliament.

Just after Zelenskyy delivered an address in the House of Commons on Friday, Canadian lawmakers gave 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka a standing ovation when Speaker Anthony Rota drew attention to him. Rota introduced Hunka as a war hero who fought for the First Ukrainian Division.

Observers over the weekend began to publicize the fact that the First Ukrainian Division also was known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, or the SS 14th Waffen Division, a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis.

“It is extremely troubling to think that this egregious error is being politicized by Russia, and its supporters, to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for," Trudeau said.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that the standing ovation for Hunka was “outrageous," and he called it the result of a “sloppy attitude" toward remembering the Nazi regime. Russian President Vladimir Putin has painted his enemies in Ukraine as “neo-Nazis,” although Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust.

Speaker of the House Anthony Rota stepped down on Tuesday after meeting with the House of Commons’ party leaders, and after all of the main opposition parties called on him to resign.

House government leader Karina Gould said that Rota invited and recognized Hunka without informing the government or the delegation from Ukraine, and that his lack of due diligence had broken the trust of lawmakers.

In an earlier apology on Sunday, Rota said he alone was responsible for inviting and recognizing Hunka, who is from the district that Rota represents. The speaker’s office said it was Hunka’s son who contacted Rota’s local office to see if it was possible if he could attend Zelenskyy’s speech.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies has called the incident "a stain on our country’s venerable legislature with profound implications both in Canada and globally.”

Trudeau apologizes for ‘embarassing’ celebration of Ukrainian veteran who fought for Nazi unit in World War II

Paula Newton, CNN
Wed, September 27, 2023 at 5:26 PM MDT·2 min read


Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized on behalf of Canada’s parliament Wednesday, referring to the “deeply embarrassing” incident last week that saw the chamber applaud a Ukrainian veteran who fought for a Nazi military unit during World War II.

“This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed parliament and Canada. All of us who were in this House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” said Trudeau in a media briefing in Ottawa Wednesday.

Trudeau also recognized diplomatic damage done to the visiting Ukrainian delegation in attendance that day, which included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“I also want to reiterate how deeply sorry Canada is for the situation this put President Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation in. It is extremely troubling to think that this egregious error is being politicized by Russia and its supporters to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for,” he said.

On Friday, following an address by Zelensky, House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota lauded veteran Yaroslav Hunka as a Ukrainian-Canadian war hero who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russian aggressors then, and continues to support the troops today.”

Hunka, 98, received an extended standing ovation.

But in the days since, human rights and Jewish organizations have said that Hunka served in a Nazi military unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division was part of the Nazi SS organization declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946, which determined the Nazi group had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada in a statement condemned the Ukrainian volunteers who served in the unit as “ultra-nationalist ideologues” who “dreamed of an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.”

Rota has resigned his post amid the fallout, and Poland’s Minister of Education has published a letter saying that he is taking steps towards Hunka’s possible extradition.

Poland's Foreign Ministry calls SS Galicia veteran's appearance at Canadian Parliament shameful
Ukrainska Pravda
Wed, September 27, 2023 



Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk has described the honouring of Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old veteran of the Waffen-SS Galicia division, by the Canadian Parliament as shameful.

Source: European Pravda, citing the Polish press agency PAP

Details: "The Canadian parliament's honouring of a Ukrainian who fought in the ranks of the SS Galicia division was shameful and indicates a great lack of knowledge about the Second World War," Mularczyk said.

"It is shameful that the officials of the Canadian Parliament were not aware of the historical facts regarding the Waffen-SS. This is a clear demonstration of gaps in the knowledge of the history of the Second World War," he added.


Mularczyk said that when he travels abroad, he often encounters a lack of understanding of what went on in Eastern Europe during the Second World War.

"Few people know about Poland's losses and the fact that Poland did not receive compensation for them," the diplomat said.

"I am saddened by the lack of knowledge that has occurred in Canada," Mularczyk said. He noted, however, that the overall situation could help Canada become an ally of Poland in seeking reparations from Germany.

Reminder:

Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of Canada, announced his resignation on Tuesday amid the scandal involving the invitation of 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka to Parliament for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech last week.

The Speaker was called on to resign by colleagues and members of the government after it emerged that he had invited 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka to Parliament during Zelenskyy's visit to Canada last week. Rota presented him as a World War II veteran who fought against the Russians.

Ukrainska Pravda is the place where you will find the most up-to-date information about everything related to the war in Ukraine. 

Canada House Speaker resigns after celebrating Ukrainian veteran who fought for Nazi unit in World War II
Paula Newton, CNN
Wed, September 27, 2023

Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons Anthony Rota resigned his post Tuesday, days after he praised a Ukrainian veteran who fought for a Nazi military unit during World War II.

On Friday, following a joint address to parliament by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Rota lauded Yaroslav Hunka, 98, as a Ukrainian-Canadian war hero who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russian aggressors then, and continues to support the troops today.”

But in the days since, human rights and Jewish organizations have condemned Rota’s recognition, saying Hunka served in a Nazi military unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

“This house is above any of us, therefore I must step down as your speaker,” Rota said in parliament Tuesday afternoon, reiterating his “profound regret for my error.”

“That public recognition has caused pain to individuals and communities, including the Jewish community in Canada and around the world, in addition to survivors of Nazi atrocities in Poland, among other nations,” Rota, who is a member of the Liberal party, added. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

Rota’s recognition of Hunka last week prompted a standing ovation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the incident “deeply embarrassing.”

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division was part of the Nazi SS organization declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946, which determined the Nazi group had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada in a statement condemned the Ukrainian volunteers who served in the unit as “ultra-nationalist ideologues” who “dreamed of an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes hands with House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on last Friday in Ottawa.

 - Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images

Recognizing Hunka was “beyond outrageous,” B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn said, adding, “We cannot allow the whitewashing of history.”

“Canadian soldiers fought and died to free the world from the evils of Nazi brutality,” he said.

Rota apologized in a statement Sunday and on the floor of parliament Tuesday, when he said he had “become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to recognize this individual.”

Rota took full responsibility, saying it was his decision alone to acknowledge Hunka, who Rota said is from his electoral district.

“No one – not even anyone among you, fellow parliamentarians, or from the Ukrainian delegation – was privy to my intention or my remarks prior to their delivery,” he said.

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
‘People are coming out alive’: Survivors emerge from bombed Mariupol theatre, says local MP

By Latika Bourke
March 17, 2022 — 

Authorities in Mariupol say people are coming out alive after successfully hiding in a bomb shelter at the theatre where hundreds of people, including children, were sheltering, prompting hopes of a miracle in the besieged Ukrainian city.

Sergiy Taruta, the local MP, announced the news on Facebook, which was translated by an official adviser to the Ukrainian government on Telegram.

Photo released by Donetsk Regional Civil-Military Administration Council shows the Mariupol Drama Theatre damaged after shelling.

CREDIT:AP

“After a terrible and scary night of uncertainty on the morning of the 22nd day of the war, finally good news from Mariupol!” Taruta wrote.

“The bomb shelter withstood! The blockages began to be dismantled and people are coming out alive!”

The number of casualties and survivors is still unknown as the amount of rubble and debris created by the attack had made any recovery impossible. A search effort is now under way.



Private satellite firm Maxar released an image showing the word “children” written in Russian outside the theatre which was the target of a Russian attack on Wednesday.

Ukraine has said the bombing of the civilian target is yet another war crime committed by the Russians.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden for the first time said Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal.”


The Mariupol Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Monday, with the word “children” painted on the ground at the front and back of the building.

CREDIT:MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/AP

In his latest video update, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the death toll was still unknown.

“In Mariupol, besieged Mariupol, Russian aircraft purposefully dropped a huge bomb on the Drama Theatre in the city centre,” he said.

“Hundreds of people were hiding from the shelling there, the building was destroyed.

“Our hearts are broken by what Russia is doing to our people, to our Mariupol, to the Donetsk region,” he said.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it was a “lie” that Russia had bombed the theatre.

“Russia’s armed forces don’t bomb towns and cities,” she told in a briefing.

Repeated attempts to create humanitarian green corridors to allow citizens to escape have been frustrated by the Russians.

This occurred again this week, according to Zelensky, when citizens trapped in Mariupol were trying to escape but shelled upon by the Russians.

He said it was only by a “miracle” that no-one was hurt. He said that 6000 citizens managed to flee including 2000 children.

Guernica (Picasso) - Wikipedia

 

First Thing: Zelenskiy likens Mariupol assault to Leningrad siege

Clea Skopeliti 

THE GUARDIAN

MARCH 17,2022

Good morning.

The Ukrainian president has drawn parallels between Russia’s siege of the southern city of Mariupol and that of Leningrad during the second world war, as Russian forces continued to shell Kyiv.

“Citizens of Russia, how is your blockade of Mariupol different from the blockade of Leningrad during world war two?” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Wednesday, referring to the German blockade of the city now called St Petersburg, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. “We will not forget anyone whose lives were taken by the occupiers.”

Zelenskiy’s remarks came after Joe Biden significantly toughened his rhetoric against Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president a “war criminal”. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Biden’s comments were “unacceptable and unforgivable”.

How many have been killed in Mariupol? Local officials estimated that more than 2,500 people had been killed but the shelling meant the dead could not be counted. More than 400,000 were either without access to running water, food and medical supplies or struggling with a dwindling amount.

Russia launched an airstrike on a theatre in Mariupol where hundreds of displaced people were believed to have been sheltering. Zelenskiy said it was unclear how many had died or been injured.

What is the US doing? It will send an extra $800m in security assistance to Ukraine, including 800 anti-aircraft systems, 9,000 anti-armour systems, 20m rounds of ammunition and drones.

Mariupol: Russia accused of bombing theatre and swimming pool sheltering civilians

Ukraine authorities say hundreds of people were hiding in theatre and that convoy of cars leaving besieged city was also shelled

00:45Mariupol theatre and swimming pool where civilians sheltered lie in ruins – video

Lorenzo Tondo in Lviv and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv

Thu 17 Mar 2022 

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of further atrocities in the besieged city of Mariupol, including an airstrike on a theatre where hundreds of displaced people were believed to have been sheltering and a strike on a swimming pool where pregnant women and young children had gathered. Russian forces were also accused of shelling of a convoy of cars of civilians fleeing the city.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Wednesday that the strike on the theatre was deliberate and that the death toll was still unknown, adding: “Our hearts are broken by what Russia is doing to our people”.

He also compared the siege of the city to that of Leningrad in the second world war.

01:18Mariupol attack no different from siege of Leningrad, Zelenskiy says – video

Mariupol has been facing a humanitarian catastrophe for days, and Russia continued to rain down fire on it and other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday, even as the two sides projected optimism over efforts at peace talks to negotiate an end to the fighting.

There was no immediate confirmation of numbers of deaths or injuries in what the Mariupol city council said was a “bomb on a building where hundreds of peaceful Mariupol residents were hiding.” “We don’t know if there are any survivors,” one witness said. “The bomb shelter is also covered with debris … there are both adults and children there.”

BEFORE AND AFTER

About 1,000 civilians were allegedly hiding inside the theatre, which was designated as a shelter for the displaced, including children and elderly people.Before and after the bombing of the Drama Theatre in Mariupol

Later Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of Donetsk regional administration, claimed Russians had also targeted the Neptune swimming pool. “Now there are pregnant women and women with children under the rubble there,” he said in a post on Telegram. “It is impossible to establish the number of casualties from these strikes.”

A witness who posted a video of the aftermath of the attack said the pool had been destroyed and efforts were under way to rescue one pregnant woman trapped in the rubble.

As Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal”, local authorities in Mariupol posted an image of the city’s theatre showing it had sustained heavy damage in the attack. Russian forces had “purposefully and cynically destroyed the Drama Theater in the heart of Mariupol”, it said. Moscow denies targeting civilians and Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had not struck the building, RIA news agency said.

A satellite photograph from 14 March and released on Wednesday by Maxar Technologies showed the word “children” in large Russian script painted on the ground outside the red-roofed theatre building.

A satellite image shows Mariupol Drama Theatre before the bombing. The word ‘children’ is written in Russian in large white letters on the pavement in front of and behind the building. Photograph: Maxar Technologies/Reuters

Ukraine’s ministry of defence has described Mariupol as the worst front of the war. Mass graves have been dug on the outskirts of the city and the bodies of men, women and children have been left on the streets. More than 400,000 of its inhabitants are either without or with dwindling access to running water, food and medical supplies.

Local officials have said more than 2,500 have been killed. But the reality is that, because of the shelling, the dead cannot be counted.

Ukrainian officials also accused Russian forces of shelling a convoy of cars of civilians fleeing the city, wounding at least five people, including a child.

Local officials shared photos and videos of the aftermath of the alleged attack. “Heavy artillery of the enemy forces fired on a convoy of civilians moving along the highway towards Zaporizhzhia,” the governor of the region, Oleksandr Starukh, said in an online post.

The Ukrainian military also reported the strike in a separate statement. Work was under way to confirm the number of casualties, it said. Authorities also shared a photo of a child it said had been wounded in the attack.

More than 400 people, whom Ukrainian authorities have compared to hostages, remain trapped in a Mariupol hospital seized by Russian forces.

“It is impossible to get out of the hospital,” one employee said on the Telegram social media platform. “They shoot hard, we sit in the basement. Cars have not been able to drive to the hospital for two days. High-rise buildings are burning around … Russians rushed 400 people from neighbouring houses to our hospital. We can’t leave.”

Russian tanks move down a street on the outskirts of Mariupol. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Officials have told families to leave their dead outside in the streets because holding funerals is too dangerous.

Witnesses tell of a city in chaos, under constant bombardment, which is becoming more and more difficult to escape. Thousands of people are trying to reach the city of Zaporizhzhia, where refugees are taking shelter, but according to the Ukrainian authorities, the Russians are trying to prevent citizens from fleeing.

The regional governor, Alexander Starukh, wrote on Telegram that “Russian rockets have landed in the area of the Zaporozhye-2 railway station”.

The right bank of Mariupol, which is divided by a river, is at the centre of a vicious battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

The left bank is under Russian occupation and almost completely cut off. One of the two bridges from the left bank has been destroyed and those in contact with relatives inside the city say the second bridge is the scene of intense fighting.

A senior Ukrainian official said it was an “open question” whether a “humanitarian corridor” would be opened on Wednesday to evacuate more civilians. So far, about 20,000 people have managed to leave the encircled port city, but only if they have access to cars.

According to one woman whose parents are trapped in the town, 2,000 vehicles left on Tuesday and about 500 on Wednesday. She has not heard from her parents for four days. The Ukrainian authorities have told those with transport to leave Mariupol, but most of the trapped citizens either do not have cars or their cars have been destroyed by the shelling, three people with relatives inside the city told the Guardian.

A number of witnesses trapped in the city say the Russians are bombing radio and telecommunications towers, meaning that contacting people there has become increasingly difficult. Relatives of those living in the city desperately searching every day for news about their loved ones have been unable to find a phone signal.

“From what I’ve heard from people I’ve managed to speak to, they shot at telecommunications masts, and that’s why there has been no signal, not because the electricity was cut off,” said Iryna Bakazheriva, whose family members are stuck on the right bank of Mariupol.

She was contacted by a neighbour who left the basement and climbed to the eighth floor of his building, where a signal was available. “They are waiting for official information about an evacuation, but there is none,” said Bakazheriva.

People queue to receive food in an improvised bomb shelter in Mariupol. 

Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Hundreds of people left homeless have gathered in a large public building and have been crammed for days in the basement. “Some have developed sepsis from shrapnel in the body,” Anastasiya Ponomareva, a 39-year-old teacher who fled the city, at the start of the war, but was still in contact with friends there, told the BBC. “Things are very serious.”

“People who managed to hide in underground shelters basically live there permanently,” she said. “They practically cannot leave at all.”

Maryna Hammershmidt, whose elderly parents, sister, nieces and nephews are on the left bank, said she had heard no news from them for two weeks. On Tuesday, Hammershmidt’s sister put a sim card into an old analogue mobile phone and managed to call her.

Hammershmidt’s sister said she and the rest of her family were living in a bomb shelter with 300 other people on the left bank. They have no access to transport. Her sister said a group had tried to leave, but the car in front of them was hit by a missile, so they returned.



01:25 Children's and maternity hospital hit by Russian bombs, say Ukraine authorities – video

Hammershmidt has written to all the officials she can think of in Poland and Ukraine to increase pressure to evacuate those trapped inside the city. “They’ve abandoned a city of half a million people,” she said. “My mother is 78 and my father is 80, they are sitting in a basement. My sister is with a baby who is just one month old.”

“The left bank is completely cut off, there’s about 80,000 people
living there,” she continued. “It’s a living hell. When are they going to evacuate people?”

In a Telegram chat where about 100,000 citizens of Mariupol are collecting testimonies from relatives and friends in the city, users have reported the “the police academy is completely occupied by the Russians”.

Taking Mariupol, which is 34 miles from Russia’s border, would mark a strategic breakthrough for Vladimir Putin.

The city lies between territory held by Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014 and from where it has launched its assault on key southern towns in Ukraine.