Month: May 13, 2021 10:46 pm

KYIV – In an attempt to combat Russian propaganda over “the Red Army’s glorious victory” during World War II, the Ukrainian government has in recent years largely shifted toward adopting Western traditions that commemorate the end of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his closest entourage sometimes raise public expectations of what the United States can deliver to Ukraine to unrealistically high levels. Furthermore, they tend to discount the close relationship between what the U.S. is actually delivering to Ukraine and the latter’s own performance on economic and governance reforms. These twin tendencies of Mr. Zelenskyy’s team can generate public disappointment after undue expectations, confronting the U.S. with a problem of expectation management in Ukraine (see Part One in Eurasia Daily Monitor, June 6).

The United States recently conducted a virtual training exercise with partners from Ukraine to help domestic security services, law enforcement and first responders identify, respond to and investigate assassinations involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is part of a series of engagements the Department of State is conducting across Europe.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv on May 6 to reaffirm Washington’s political, economic and security support for Ukraine. That same day Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, spoke to an international audience online about Ukraine’s NATO ambitions.

Since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014 and its subsequent involvement in destabilizing southeastern Ukraine, Russia’s Armed Forces frequently conduct force generation close to the border. In March, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered a snap inspection of combat readiness across Russia’s system of Joint Strategic Commands (Obyedinennyye Strategi­ches­koye Komandovanie – OSK)/Military Districts (MD), with the movement of troops and heavy equipment especially close to Ukraine’s border.

KYIV – The Holy Fire from the annual miracle at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem that marks Christ’s Resurrection was brought to Ukraine on May 1 by Archbishop Agapit of Vyshhorod. The miracle in Jerusalem appears annually during the Holy Saturday services, which are led by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, headed by Patriarch Theophilos III.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office has asked a Kyiv court to set bail at more than 300 million hryvnyas ($10.8 million) for Kremlin-friendly tycoon and politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who along with another pro-Russian lawmaker is under suspicion of treason.

KYIV – The Ministry of Culture and Informational Policy of Ukraine, the National Holodomor-Genocide Museum, the Ukrainian World Congress and the International Charitable Foundation of the Holodomor Museum signed a Memorandum of Partnership on April 22 to create and develop phase two of The National Holodomor-Genocide Museum with the intention of fully opening the museum for visitors in November 2023, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor.

On May 11 the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) conducted a search of the Kyiv home of Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, politician and millionaire who is widely regarded to be sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin is, after all, godfather to Mr. Medvedchuk’s daughter and Mr. Medvedchuk has long been known to harbor sympathy for the Kremlin even before Ukraine’s ongoing war against pro-Russian and Russian-backed separatists began in the east of the country.

Forty-five years ago, on May 14-16, 1976, some 10,000 to 15,000 people from as far as Canada and California attended the inaugural Ukrainian Street Fair that was held on Seventh Street in Manhattan, between Second and Third Avenues in the neighborhood known as Little Ukraine.

The Putin system is in certain respects “not a state in the traditional sense,” according to noted Russian economist and political commentator Vladislav Inozem­tsev. Instead, it is a corporation that acts to enrich a circle of people around the ruler however much that leads to the impoverishment of the people. But because it is a corporation rather than a state, it can’t be easily destroyed but must be outlasted.

I recently observed a semi-academic conference regarding Ukraine’s security and the EU and NATO. The conference was academic in that it was hosted by an institution of higher learning, but only semi since none of the speakers or moderator were academics. This is a trend today to make academia seem more relevant.