Month: April 30, 2021 2:07 am

Thirty-five years ago, the word Chornobyl first entered our lexicon and left an indelible mark on the world’s consciousness.  This catastrophe, the largest nuclear accident in history, had monumental health, environmental, social, political and economic consequences that linger to this day.

The recent buildup of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine once again brought the question of Ukraine’s path to NATO to the forefront. Even though Russia decided to pull back their troops, the threat remains constant. One can only speculate whether this simply was a military exercise whose goals were completed, as Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claims, or whether Russian President Vladimir Putin actually blinked, as some pundits would have us believe.

CHICAGO – To mark the 35th anniversary of the tragic disaster at Chornobyl, the Belarusian community of Chicago hosted a tree-planting event in memory of the victims of the nuclear disaster on the morning of April 25. The Park District of Chicago supplied tree saplings and bushes, which were planted on the beach at Toughy Ave. and Lake Michigan. 

  SOUTH BOUND BROOK, N.J. – The Saint Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Society in 2020 marked its 30th anniversary since it…...

CHICAGO – The ongoing capital campaign, “Building Our Faith Together, in Unity and with Gratitude,” of the St. Nicholas Eparchy began nearly two years ago on May 12, 2019. It was undertaken to sustain the long-term viability of the St. Nicholas Eparchy and to restore the 114-year-old Cathedral in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, particularly the cupolas and roof.  Considerable progress has been made in the eparchy’s effort to raise funds for the project, as campaign donations have surpassed $2.4 million.

It was only a little over a decade ago that a 12-year-old girl in Oshawa, Ontario, suffered through the trauma associated with being told by a teammate to, “Shut up, you stupid n-----,” in a hockey arena’s dressing room. This, of course, was not the first time Saroya Tinker experienced the disgust of racism. The first times go back to when she was a little girl on the ice who was occasionally shunned by her fellow skaters, made to sit in a certain area of the dressing room and not always included in off-ice activities. Sometimes the racism was more covert and ignorant, like the time her Ukrainian Canadian mother, Mandy, was asked which girl was her daughter, and when she pointed Tinker out, she was told, “Crossbreeds make the best athletes.” Tinker, whose father is Jamaican, still has difficulty comprehending that the episode really happened.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Ukrainian investment company Concorde Capital announced on March 14 an internal IPO for the Ukrainian soccer club NK (Narodniy Klub) Veres Rivne, based in Rivne. This is the first time in 15 years that such a move has occurred in Ukraine and the first time that a professional Ukrainian team is to be publicly listed.

KYIV – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy challenged his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to a meeting in the war zone of eastern Ukraine as the country’s warring neighbor has now amassed more military forces than when it first invaded in 2014-2015 amid a high-intensity war.

In addition to deploying 120,000 troops around Ukraine’s state border and in occupied Crimea, Moscow has limited maritime traffic through the Azov and Black seas, and vastly reduced the supply of diesel fuel, a critical component of the country’s industrial economy.

KYIV – To mark the 35th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident on April 26, the nonprofit European Institute of Chornobyl is holding a series of events to commemorate and raise awareness about the fallout that will include discussions, lectures, a musical concert and an evening memorial vigil.

LVIV – After one of the harshest periods of COVID-19 in Ukraine, the country appears to have passed a peak of the pandemic. A forecast from the National Academy of Sciences shows that mortality from COVID-19 is in a final phase of the plateau, with a decrease in mortality expected in the coming days.  The government, however, has decided to continue a national quarantine until June 30, preparing for the possibility of a new spike in cases after Easter, though the first batches of Pfizer vaccines under the COVAX initiative arrived in Ukraine.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered Russian troops to start returning to their permanent bases following extensive military drills in annexed Crimea that heightened tensions with the West over Moscow’s major military buildup near Ukraine.

“I believe the objectives of the snap inspection have been fully achieved. The troops have demonstrated their ability to provide a credible defense for the country,” Mr. Shoigu was quoted as saying on April 22 by the RIA news agency.

On April 16, in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in person and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who joined by video-link midway through the conversation.

The three leaders’ shared goal at this juncture is to defuse the perceived threat of Russian military action against Ukraine. The Kremlin has orchestrated this war scare by concentrating massive forces near Ukraine’s borders and in occupied Crimea, with high publicity and dire rhetorical threats. The aim is to intimidate Ukraine into compliance with the 2015 Minsk “agreements” and have Berlin and Paris ratify that compliance through the quadripartite Normandy process (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France).