Month: May 24, 2019 12:15 pm

Dissolves Verkhovna Rada, announces pre-term electionsKYIV – President Volodymyr Zelensky has moved swiftly and controversially since being sworn in as the country’s sixth post-Soviet president on May 20 in the Verkhovna Rada. 

The United Nations Security Council on May 20 rejected a Russian request to hold a meeting on a new language law in Ukraine.Russia managed to garner only four votes – from China, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and the Dominican Republic – out of the nine it needed from the 15-member council.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Honorary Patriarch Filaret (former head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate) has ignited tensions with the primate of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Metropolitan Epifaniy. The tensions have fueled speculation about the unity of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church and the impact they could have on the Tomos of autocephaly signed in 2018 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

On May 15, Ukraine’s outgoing president, Petro Poroshenko, promulgated the “Law on Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language.” The accompanying communique characterizes this law as “one of the fundamental acts in the formation of Ukrainian statehood” (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 15).

On May 18, Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide against the Crimean Tatar People. The day recalls the 1944 deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar people from their homeland. This is no formal remembrance of a tragedy somewhere back in the distant past. Today, 75 years after Joseph Stalin’s monstrous act of genocide, many Crimean Tatars are once again in forced exile; others are imprisoned in occupied Crimea or Russia for their civic activism or simply for their faith. Even remembrance in groups has been effectively banned since immediately after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea five years ago.

TORONTO – The Ukrainian World Congress on May 20 congratulated the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and noted that it was pleased to participate in the inauguration ceremony at the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv. 

…for more than four years, the Minsk agreements in their entirety have outlined a path out of Russia’s manufactured conflict in eastern Ukraine. And, for more than four years, we have watched Russia contravene the most fundamental elements of the agreements – namely, an immediate and full ceasefire along the line of contact – as Moscow continues to stoke the very conflict it started.

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Ukrainian Archbishop Borys Gudziak, a visionary leader in the Catholic Church and higher education, will be presented with the Notre Dame Award in a ceremony June 29 in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the university’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced on May 6).

Seen on the right is a photo from the 1925 Almanac (Kalendar) of the Ukrainian National Association, which featured a number of photos from the then 31-year-old fraternal organization’s branches. Seen above is the Juvenile Department (as it was called in those days) of UNA Branch 155 in Perth Amboy, N.J. Branch 155 was founded on March 20, 1907, with 20 members. Its organizers were Semen Havrysh, Kyrylo Peleshchak and Mykhailo Chumer (the names are transliterated here from Ukrainian).The 1925 Almanac of more than 200 pages (counting paid advertisements at the back of the book) was prepared by the editorial committee of the UNA; its cost was listed as 50 cents.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – The New Jersey District Committee of the Ukrainian National Association held its 2019 annual meeting here at the UNA Home Office on Monday, May 13. Representatives of UNA Branches 25, 37, 42, 133, 155, 171, 269 and 287 participated.

TROY, N.Y. – Between the “liquid sunshine” on May 11, members of the Brotherhood Society of St. Nicholas (Bratstvo) and…

Volodymyr Zelensky has now assumed office in Ukraine, receiving all the symbols of presidential authority – the bulava (mace), as well as the presidential seal, flag and collar – during the inauguration ceremony in the Verkhovna Rada.