The Ukrainian Weekly (https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/author/admin/page/20/)
Following the 2020 U.S. elections, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the nation’s largest representative body of Americans of Ukrainian descent, issued a statement expressing to newly elected officials that Ukrainian Americans are united in their belief that a democratic and independent Ukraine is in the national security interests of the United States.
This May 18, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the representative organization of nearly 2 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, joins with the Ukrainian World Congress, the worldwide assembly of Ukrainian organizations representing over 20 million people; the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people; and the government of Ukraine; to pause in a moment of remembrance for the innocent victims of the crime of genocide committed against the Crimean Tatar people by Josef Stalin’s soviet henchmen in 1944.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), co-chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European and Regional Security Cooperation, issued the following statement after Congress received the mandatory report from the State Department concerning sanctionable activities by builders of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The Biden administration has announced that it will cite U.S. national security interests and waive congressionally-imposed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 AG holding company and its CEO, Mattias Warnig.
A story on page 9 of this week’s issue of The Ukrainian Weekly provides yet another example of the amazing work that members of our Ukrainian diaspora continue to take on despite the difficult circumstances surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Fifty years ago, on May 28, 1971, Archbishop-Major Josyf Cardinal Slipyj was set to arrive in Toronto, but was denied a permit by the Vatican. Reports of the Vatican refusal began to appear nearly a week before the scheduled visit, and the story was carried by numerous newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.
Nearly a week ago, I asked you all to keep our God-loving Archbishop Daniel in your prayers over the following days because he had been hospitalized with severe pain in his abdomen. His Eminence had similar issues shortly after his arrival in the United States of America nearly 25 years ago, when he developed serious stomach pains because of the complete change of diet that he experienced at the time.
Seventy-seven years ago on May 18, Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars from their homeland in dramatic fashion, and every year since Crimean Tatars have marked this anniversary. Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is repeating Stalin’s crime but in slow motion, raising the question of what the anniversary of his actions will be.
Fifty years ago, I was in the city of Philadelphia on the other side of the fence of a special ceremony at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral there: the elevation of two relatively young Ukrainian priests to bishops. I did not know the two men, but I was opposed to their elevation because I felt, as did many others particularly of the patriarchate persuasion, that their designation should have been made by the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church at the time, Cardinal Josef Slipyj, and not the Pope.
Three draft bills have been tabled in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada to abolish the so-called ‘Crimea’ Free Economic Zone that has, since 2014, discriminated against Ukrainians from Crimea while also providing mechanisms for collaboration with the Russian occupation regime. Critics of the law, like prominent Crimean journalist Valentina Samar, are convinced that the law was pushed through to serve big business, and it seems very likely that moves to remove it will encounter stiff resistance.
Dear Editor:
One might think that U.S. President Joe Biden’s green light to Russian President Vladimir Putin to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a result of the recent computer terror against Colonial Pipeline.