LETTER TO THE EDITOR (03/25/01)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Leaders should clarify relationship with Tryzub

Dear Editor:

I would like to follow up my earlier letter in The Ukrainian Weekly (February 18) with more disturbing news from Ukraine. As many of us now know, demonstrations against President Leonid Kuchma on Friday, March 9, led to violence at the monument to Taras Shevchenko, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVS) and the Presidential Administration Building.

This is the second time in independent Ukraine's history (the first was in June 1995 at the funeral of Patriarch Vasyl Romaniuk) that violence has occurred. On both occasions it would seem that the authorities deliberately staged a provocation to discredit the national democratic opposition.

Leaders of Ukraine Without Kuchma, such as Taras Chornovil and Oleksander Moroz, have alleged that they had planned to hold peaceful demonstrations on March 9. But, violence erupted when MVS personnel and members of the OUN(b)/KUN paramilitary organization Tryzub mingled with the demonstrators and began to throw eggs, rocks and at least one Molotov cocktail at the militia. Members of Tryzub were dressed in civilian clothes but admitted to reporters and deputies who they were.

This involvement by Tryzub as agents provocateurs is indeed strange because Slava Stetsko, the head of both OUN(b) and KUN, spoke against President Kuchma at the monument to Shevchenko at the same time as other leaders of the Ukraine Without Kuchma group. One can only deduce from this that either OUN(b)/KUN are supporting both President Kuchma and the opposition, or Tryzub is no longer under the control of OUN(b)/KUN and has been bought out by the authorities.

It would be good if the leaders of OUN(b)/KUN could clarify the situation.

Taras Kuzio
Toronto

The letter-writer is affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies at York University.

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