Month: December 13, 2019 6:24 am

CHICAGO – The voice message was from a Canadian woman, an author of many books on Ukrainian themes. She was going to be in the area in the fall and wanted to do an event for the Chicago Ukrainian young people.
I called her back and the story unfolded. This author didn’t speak Ukrainian, she had the improbable name of Marsha, yet she had written more than 20 bestselling books and half of them were on Ukrainian historical themes. Her name was Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. Partway through that first conversation, I realized that I had been using one of her books for Holodomor education. That book is “Dosyt” – “Enough” in English.

KREMENETS, Ukraine – The annual Ukraine Little League (LL) Baseball Championship returned to Kremenets, Ternopil Oblast in 2019. The Volyn Lyceum hosted the 20th annual Country Championships on June 2-6 for players age 10 to 12.
Seven all-star teams competed for the right to represent Ukraine at the European Regional Championships in July in Kutno, Poland. A total of 84 players arrived to showcase their skills in the hopes of capturing the Ukraine Little League banner as champions. The Self Reliance (N.Y.) Federal Credit Union once again was the lead sponsor of this event for the children of Ukraine.

“Sweet Darusya: A Tale of Two Villages,” by Maria Matios; Michael Naydan and Olha Tytarenko (translators). New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2019. 224 pp. ISBN: 9781947980938. $16.
A new and dynamic translation of prominent Ukrainian writer Maria Matios’s novel “Sweet Darusya” has been released by Spuyten Duyvil of New York. The work – described by writer Andrei Kurkov as “the best contemporary Ukrainian novel written since Ukrainian Independence in 1991” – has been translated by Michael Naydan and Olha Tytarenko.

“Seven Signs of the Lion,” by Michael M. Naydan. London: Glagoslav Publications, 2016. 344 pp. ISBN: 978-1-911414-17-9 (paperback), $27.
The novel “Seven Signs of the Lion” is a magical journey to the city of Lviv. A mix of magical realism, travelogue, adventure novel and love story, it is a fragmented work about a mysterious and mythical place.
On his journey to self-realization, the hero of the novel, Nicholas Bilanchuk, encounters many unique and enigmatic characters who help him on his quest to find the seven signs of the lion in the multicultural and medieval “city of lions,” Lviv.

“Philipovna: Daughter of Sorrow,” by Valentina Gal. Toronto: MiroLand Publications, 2019.  277 pp.  ISBN: 978-1-77183-369-1 (paperback), $25.
The novel “Philipovna: Daughter of Sorrow” describes how, in the early 1930s, tactics of deliberate starvation and denial of basic rights were used to force the people of Ukraine to surrender to the Stalinist regime.  The story is told through the eyes of a young girl who witnessed the brutal results of what has been called a “crime against humanity.”  In carefully measured prose, Valentina Gal recreates the daily lives of those who suffered – and endured.
Valentina Gal, born in Hamilton, Ontario, is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and was born blind.  She is a distinguished graduate of McMaster University.

“A Biography of a Chance Miracle,” by Tanja Maljartschuk, translated by Zenia Tompkins. Kumamoto, Japan: Cadmus Press, 2018. 238 pp. ISBN: 978-4-908793-41-7 (paperback), $20.
The novel “A Biography of a Chance Miracle” tells the story of Lena, a young girl growing up in the bureaucracy-ridden and nationalistic fictional western Ukrainian city of San Francisco. An outcast due to her unwillingness to scorn everything Russian, her propensity for befriending forlorn creatures, her aversion to the status quo and her fear of living a meaningless life, Lena sets forth on a mission to defend the abused, be they canine or human. Armed with an arsenal of humor, stubbornness, chutzpah and no shortage of imagination, her successes are minimal but, in the process of trying to save San Francisco’s humanity, she may end up saving her own.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On November 10 at the historic Lyceum, now a museum in Old Towne, Alexandria, Va., The Washington Group Cultural Fund presented a concert featuring a number of Ukrainian artists living in the Washington area.
Co-director of the Cultural Fund Christine Lucyk welcomed a capacity audience in the performance hall. In introducing Spiv-Zhyttya, she pointed out that a cappella singing is a Ukrainian tradition spanning over two centuries. Consisting of 14 singers ably led by Oksana Lassowsky, the group began informal singing in 2011. It has become much in demand in the Mid-Atlantic states and often sings at the Embassy of Ukraine.

KYIV – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s rating has fallen sharply, according to the most recent surveys. It plummeted from 73 percent in September to 52 percent at the end of November. Nevertheless, he still appears to retain significant backing and to enjoy impressive support for his attempts to activate a peace process with Russia.
As the end of 2019 approaches, several recent public surveys reveal what the key concerns and hopes are.
The first half of the year was preoccupied with elections. First, the two rounds of presidential polls, on March 31 and April 21, followed by parliamentary elections on July 21. A political newcomer, Mr. Zelenskyy scored a landslide victory over the incumbent, President Petro Poroshenko, by a margin of 73.22 percent to 24.45 percent of the votes, and his Servant of the People party captured a majority of 254 of the 424 seats contested.

OTTAWA – Arguably the most influential member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet as his foreign affairs minister during his Liberal government’s first term in office, Chrystia Freeland now serves as his chief lieutenant following her November 20 appointment as Canada’s deputy prime minister – a role unlikely to dramatically shift the Ukrainian Canadian parliamentarian’s attention away from her ancestral homeland, according to the Canadian-based president of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC).
“She understands Ukraine and Russia better than any Western politician globally, and is viewed by other foreign ministers as the key point-person on Ukraine,” said Paul Grod in an interview. “She has a deep interest in Ukraine, and has expressed to me that she will still have a role in the Canada-Ukraine relationship – but to what extent, we’ll see.”

KYIV – On Friday, November 29, passers-by near the Cabinet of Ministers building saw a group of about 40 young people with banners, signs and props who were demonstrating to call attention to climate change issues. “Change the system, not the climate,” read one placard. These young Ukrainians are a part of the global movement Fridays for Future, and that day they were protesting together with their peers in 159 countries all over the world.
It was also the day of the fourth Global Climate Strike, a coordinated series of worldwide protests. This time, some 3,500 events occurred on the same day – at least four of them in Ukraine. Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv and Odesa hosted climate strikes to send a message to the authorities.

The massive spontaneous eruption of street protests in East Germany 30 years ago culminated in the breach of the ominous Berlin Wall, and that breakthrough determined the end of the Soviet system and collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) two years later. Today, the Russian leadership is keen to celebrate occasions that fit a new “patriotic” historical narrative – and the fall of the Berlin Wall conspicuously does not fit.
Thus, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov instead traveled to Kirkenes, in northern Norway, to mark the anniversary of the Arctic town’s liberation by the Soviet Red Army and to warn Oslo against relying on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies for its defense – underscoring the current large-scale deployment of Russian submarines in the North Atlantic (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 30).

Zelenskyy denies reports of quid pro quo

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denied in an interview with several magazines that there had been a quid-pro-quo deal with U.S. President Donald Trump to investigate the latter’s political rival, ex-Vice-President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. “I definitely did not speak with President Trump in such a way, like, ‘you give me this, I give you that,’ “ Mr. Zelenskyy said in an interview with Time magazine, Germany’s Der Spiegel, France’s Le Monde, and Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza on December 2. Mr. Trump is accused of pressuring the Ukrainian president during a July 25 call to investigate the Bidens for corruption. During the call, President Trump, a Republican, asked his Ukrainian counterpart to look into 2020 Democratic front-runner and former Vice-President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, who had been a hired board member of a controversial Ukrainian energy company.