Month: April 19, 2019 10:14 am

KYIV – Attempted coup suspect Nadiya Savchenko, a lawmaker, and her alleged co-conspirator Volodymyr Ruban were released from custody on April 15 after their pre-trial detention term expired and wasn’t extended in a Brovary city district court. 

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – The Ukrainian Cultural Center of Hamilton, Ontario, was destroyed by a fire that began in the early hours of Saturday, April 13.Yura Ivanovo and his wife, Larysa Zariczniak, were among the first on the scene at 3 a.m. that morning after receiving a phone call about the disaster, when the center had filled with heavy smoke.

On April 10 at 10 p.m., fireworks lit up the Moscow sky and a gun salute thundered through the city (Vzglyad, April 10). Gun salutes are a traditional way to commemorate important, mostly military-connected Russian holidays, but April 10 was a working Wednesday and not a marked-out holiday.

It seems logical that, given the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military frequently plays a significant role in political life. The presidential election of 2019 is, therefore, no exception. Almost all major candidates have to some degree used themes of war and the military in their campaigns. Pro-Russian candidates were focused more on plans toward peace in order to juxtapose themselves against the hawkish (in their opinion) policies of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko. 

KYIV – Addressing the Kyiv Security Forum on April 12, Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church noted the ongoing informational war in Ukraine, whose goal is to fragment society and create antagonism.

“…We have overcome our disagreements in the past. And we must overcome our differences now. Because we will need our Alliance even more in the future. 

In 1908, the 10th Convention of the Ukrainian National Association (then known as Ruskyi Narodnyi Soyuz) was held in Philadelphia on July 7-10 with 121 delegates participating. (The name of the fraternal organization was changed in 1914 to Ukrainian National Association.)

If that headline doesn’t catch your attention, well, then you must not know who Joseph Stalin is. The leader of the USSR from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953 was responsible for killing more than 20 million people. His rule was marked by repressions, purges, show trials, the Great Terror, labor camps, the Gulag, man-made famines, genocides. Stalin was the mastermind behind the Holodomor, during which millions in Ukraine were subjected to death by forced starvation and through which he sought to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Stalin was responsible also for the 1944 genocidal deportation of another nation, the Crimean Tatars, from their homeland.

Thirty years ago, on April 26, 1989, Ukraine commemorated the third anniversary of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear power station disaster with an official rally in Kyiv at the Dynamo soccer stadium that attracted an estimated crowd of tens of thousands. 

Following is the Paschal letter of the Permanent Conference of Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops Beyond the Borders of Ukraine.“Yesterday I was crucified with Him… Yesterday I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him… Yesterday I died with Him; today I am made alive with Him… Yesterday I was buried with Him; today I am raised up with Him… Let us offer to Him Who suffered and rose again for us our complete selves – the possession most precious to God and most proper…

During the first round of the presidential election on March 31, Ukrainians were impressed by photos from election points around the world. Hundreds of Ukrainians were photographed queuing up to exercise their right to vote and select the country’s next president.

I am a student at the National University of Ostroh Academy in the Rivne region of Ukraine, and currently I am spending the spring semester as an exchange student at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y. I am a native of Mykolaiv and a Ukrainian citizen. On March 31, I voted for the very first time in my life: I am 18, so I have the right to vote for the president of Ukraine.