Month: April 23, 2021 4:24 am

JENKINTOWN, Pa. – Students of St. Basil Academy in Jenkintown, Pa., participated in a virtual poetry recital contest honoring Ukrainian poetess Natalka Bilotserkivets on April 13.  The competition was organized by the Josyf Slipyj Research Center under the aegis of St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics, Inc.

Anastasiya Bloshchynska (grade 12) won the competition, while Madeline Zetick (grade 12) took second place and Natalie Hrytsay (grade 11) won third place.

PHILADELPHIA – St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Philadelphia announces a “Jackets for Children” drive that aims to collect more than 500 new winter jackets for boys and girls ages 2-8 to send to children in Ukraine.

Donations began to be collected in March, and the collection period ends in May. The jackets will be shipped in July. Readers are also invited to donate funds so jackets can be purchased on your behalf or to offset the cost of shipping.

FENCING

Ukraine’s cadets and juniors win bronze

Ukraine’s junior women’s foil team (Kateryna Budenko, Kristina Petrova, Alina Poloziuk and Olga Sopit) won bronze at the 2021 Junior and Cadet World Fencing Championships on April 3-11 in Cairo. The women’s team lost the semifinal against Russia 37-45. Anastasiia Zelentsova tied with Kim So-hui of South Korea for bronze in the junior women’s individual épée event, and Valeriia Prochenko tied for bronze with Dariya Drozd of Russia in the junior women’s individual saber event. Zelentsova lost 11-15 against Jessica Lin of the U.S.A. in the semifinal, and Prochenko lost 13-15 in the semifinal against Hayoung Jeon of South Korea.

Coming out of high school in Garfield, N.J., he was not recruited by any Division I football schools, so he settled on nearby Hofstra University, only to become a surprise star, setting numerous receiving records. He was not regarded as an NFL prospect and thus was not selected in the 1995 NFL draft. He secured a tryout with the Canadian Football League’s Baltimore Stallions, but was released after one day. He earned a long-shot walk-on opportunity with the New York Jets where he was listed 11th out of 11 on the team’s wide receiver depth chart. To add insult to injury, Wayne Chrebet was detained at the front gate on his first day of training camp by a veteran Jets security guard who did not believe Chrebet was a football player due to his smallish frame. It took a New York Jet team official to authorize him as a legitimate walk-on and gain him entrance to the training complex.

KYIV – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheduled to meet with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris on April 16 to discuss Russia’s massive troop buildup on Ukraine’s state borders.

A senior U.S. State Department official has said it is time for Ukraine to tackle corruption and weak institutions, including going after Dmytro Firtash, whose natural-gas holdings have made him one of the country’s most notorious, and powerful, oligarchs.

KYIV – For the second year in a row, the Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organizat­ion marked the anniversary of its founding on April 12 online due to pandemic restrictions. While many of the commemorations took place virtually, members of the Ukrainian parliament from the inter-factional caucus “Plast” gathered in the Verkhovna Rada to congratulate the organization on its 109th anniversary during a plenary session the following day.

The text of the following statement was released by the G-7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the High Representative of the European Union on April 12.

We, the G-7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the High Representative of the European Union are deeply concerned by the large ongoing build-up of Russian military forces on Ukraine’s borders and in illegally-annexed Crimea.

Putting military pressure on Ukraine could have seemed to the Russian leadership to be the most practical way to assert Moscow’s central role in international affairs. The standard working assumption in the Kremlin is that facing a risk of violent conflict, the disunited West would become attentive to Russian grievances and demands and opt for a compromise.

The following is the full text of a letter sent by the UCCA on April 12 to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Dear Mr. President:
The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the representative organization of the over 1.5 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, is deeply troubled and concerned with the reported potential appointment of Matthew Rojansky as Russia Director at the National Security Council. This appointment is fraught with many problems – not least of which is his belief that Ukraine is expendable to secure closer U.S.-Russia relations.

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) released the following statement on April 12.

On Saturday, April 10, the website Axios.com, citing an anonymous source, reported that Matthew Rojansky, head of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, was being considered for appointment as the new Russia director on the White House National Security Council (NSC).

The following is the full text of a letter sent by the UCCA-Illinois Division on April 12 to President Joe Biden.

Dear Mr. President:
On behalf of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America-Illinois Division, representing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian-Americans in the state of Illinois, we write this letter to express our alarm about your possible appointment of Matthew Rojansky to the position of Russia director on the National Security Council.