Turning the pages back...

August 6, 1989

Twenty-five years ago The Ukrainian Weekly reported that the proposal to open a U.S. Consulate in Kyiv (then spelled Kiev) had advanced another step with the passage on July 21, 1989, by the Senate of the State Department Authorization Bill for fiscal year 1990. A similar authorization bill, H.R. 1487, had passed the House of Representatives on April 12 of that year.

Provisions were made in the Senate bill for the opening of a U.S. Consulate in Kyiv, pending a reciprocity agreement with the Soviets for a similar facility in New York City. Reporting on this new development in an article for The Ukrainian Weekly, Walter Bodnar noted that conferees from both the House and Senate were to meet after the August congressional recess to iron-out the differences in their respective bills prior to presentation for the president's signature.

A consulate in Kyiv, wrote Bozhena Olshaniwsky, president of Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine, "would afford us direct access to such events as park demonstrations, elections, striking coal miners and struggles to prevent Chornobyl-type ecological disasters that affect the entire world." She added, "We reiterate the importance of a U.S. presence in Ukraine - the largest non-Russian Soviet republic, and we ask that the members of the Senate team hold fast to the less restrictive Senate language in the bill."

At various intervals in the previous 15 years attempts had been made to establish a U.S. consulate in Kiev but, for one reason or another the opening never occurred. Former president Jimmy Carter imposed sanctions on the Soviets for invading Afghanistan. Then the Kyiv consulate opening was delayed due to the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident.

Finally, in early 1991 the United States dispatched an advance team to open the Consulate in Kyiv. And, when Ukraine's independence was proclaimed that year in August, the United States already had a diplomatic presence there.

Source: "Kiev Consulate idea advances with passage of Senate bill," by Walter Bodnar, The Ukrainian Weekly, August 6, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 32.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 1, 2004, No. 31, Vol. LXXII

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