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INTERVIEW: Prof. Alexander Motyl on Ukraine’s struggle with survival

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KYIV – Rutgers University-Newark political science professor Alexander Motyl is known for swimming against the tide when it comes to speaking about post-Maidan Ukraine. All is not lost and not everything is “doom and gloom,” his writings and observations often say. Unlike many of his Ukrainian and Western contemporaries, Prof. Motyl insists that Ukraine is historically in the best position since the 17th century to forge a stronger state entity, one that can consolidate democracy in five years, to become economically and socially prosperous, and Westernize in the coming years. 

On October 13, the professor, novelist and poet spoke with The Ukrainian Weekly via an online messenger service, sharing his views on Ukraine’s new law on education, the situation in the Donbas and Ukraine’s options in the ongoing war being waged by Russia. After earning his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1984, Prof. Motyl embarked on an academic and teaching career. The Ukrainian American has earned a reputation for having expertise on “Ukraine, Russia and the USSR,” according to the World Affairs Journal.

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Kyiv moves to label Russia as aggressor in Donbas war

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KYIV – Ukraine last week took a legislative step closer to reflect the fact that Russia is waging war against this nation of 42.5 million people – an unprovoked invasion that saw Crimea annexed and 3 percent of the easternmost Donbas region occupied by Kremlin-led forces nearly four years ago.

On October 6, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law in the first of two readings that names Russia as an aggressor state pursuant to international conventions and enables the armed forces to better defend the nation’s sovereign territory.

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Daughter of Oscar winner Jack Palance talks about heritage during first visit to Ukraine

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LVIV – As Holly Palance neared her ancestral village of Ivane-Zolote in Ternopil Oblast on September 15, she couldn’t help noticing how much the lush green, hilly countryside resembled the rural coal-mining area of Pennsylvania where her father grew up and once worked, and where she would visit her grandparents on trips from Los Angeles. “In those days, in the 1950s-1960s, in the mines [in rural Pennsylvania]… there were a lot of Ukrainians. It was a very different world,” she told The Ukrainian Weekly in Lviv on September 18, as she spoke of her Ukrainian ancestry. To her surprise, standing at the entrance to the hamlet of 450 people, was the village head of Ivane-Zolote, educators from the local school and its pupils, who were eagerly awaiting her arrival. They were all dressed in traditional Ukrainian attire holding a ritual bread known as “korovai, nestled on an equally elaborate embroidered “rushnyk,” or ritual cloth.

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Poroshenko to make repeat bid for U.N. peacekeepers in Donbas

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KYIV – Historically, Ukraine has been in the top tier of contributors to United Nations peacekeeping missions in conflict zones worldwide. Now, one of the intergovernmental body’s truce contingents might land in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has waged an unprovoked war since April 2014, a month after it illegally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was to leave Kyiv on September 15 to attend the 72nd session of the U.N. General Assembly, and he plans to address the U.N. Security Council next week. At the podium, post-Soviet Ukraine’s fifth president is scheduled to repeat the proposal he made more than two years ago: to send U.N. peacekeepers to the war-torn easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk amid two internationally brokered ceasefires that never took hold since February 2015. Then, the West, namely Germany and France – which were integral in cementing a truce between Kyiv and Moscow – weren’t keen on the idea.

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Ukraine’s Donbas war veterans fight invisible foe of post-combat stress

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KYIV – Vasyl Bondar faced a new foe when he came home from a tour of duty in a Ukrainian naval forces unit that included nearly nine months in the frontline Donetsk Oblast town of Shyrokyne where he often faced shelling from Russian-led forces.

Returning to civilian life in November 2016, the 42-year-old native Kyivan started fighting an enemy that was at once invisible and elusive.

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Back-to-school ceasefire fails to take hold as Europe braces for Zapad military drills

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KYIV – When the school year resumes on September 1, the more than 200,000 children living in the Donbas war zone will face life-threatening conditions. More than 54,000 children live in the Ukrainian government-controlled part of easternmost Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts alone, according to the United Nations. Like other interim truces within the larger Minsk peace agreement, the back-to-school ceasefire that was supposed to come into force at midnight on August 25 has failed to hold. Despite backing from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke by telephone on August 22, fighting continues along the 450-kilometer demarcation line in the war-torn area comprising 3 percent of Ukraine’s dismembered territory. One Ukrainian fighter from a volunteer unit has been killed so far, according to activists helping the war cause, and at least four have been wounded.

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Despite sanctions, Russia further quashes dissent, human rights in occupied Crimea

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KYIV – The persecution of ethnic Ukrainians, Crimean-Tatars and Russians who take pro-Ukrainian stances by the occupying Kremlin regime in Crimea continues unabated and is reaching anomalous proportions.

“Neglect of human rights [on Ukraine’s territory of Crimea] is coming to an unprecedented scale, cynicism and absurdity,” said Crimean Tatar leader and lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev on August 9.

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Canadian Ukrainian goes from Big Four firm to Lviv hotelier

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KYIV – There’s a history of people becoming entrepreneurs after turning 40. Robin Chase was 42 when she co-founded ZipCar, a car-sharing company whose business model is helping define the so-called new economy. Henry Ford was 40 when he started manufacturing automobiles. Giorgio Armani was 41 when he introduced his haute couture line of clothing. In turn, Canadian Ukrainian Roman Tatarsky was two weeks shy of his 41st birthday when he and his wife, Kristina, opened On the Square Guesthouse, an 11-room bed and breakfast (B & B) in historic Lviv’s Market Square, or Rynok, five years ago.

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Tillerson confirms U.S. support for Ukraine, appoints special envoy for peace negotiations

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KYIV – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit on July 9 re-affirmed America’s consistent policy toward helping Ukraine preserve sovereignty amid a prolonged war with Russia that has killed more than 10,100 people and severed 7 percent of the country’s territory.

Speaking after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Mr. Tillerson said that Washington’s goal is to “restore Ukraine’s territorial… integrity.”

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Moscow’s hand seen in three deaths in car blasts of Ukrainian servicemen

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KYIV – Three high-ranking Ukrainian service personnel have been killed in car explosions in the past three months, leading some experts to believe that Russia is specifically targeting an emerging cadre of proven field leaders. Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Col. Yuriy Voznyi became the latest victim on June 27. A passenger vehicle in which he was sitting exploded in the Kostiatynivka district of Donetsk Oblast, according to the SBU. The military prosecutor’s office is investigating the death and has classified it as a terrorist act.