Author: Askold S. Lozynskyj

This month a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives titled “Countering Foreign Propaganda  and Disinformation Act of 2016.” The two co-sponsors, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, (R-Ill.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), made no secret of the fact that the thrust of the bill involves Russian disinformation about Ukraine. To say that action on...

In the course of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt – suffering from many ailments, as well as Soviet infiltration of his administration and the Department of State – sought a “modus vivendi” with Joseph Stalin. Having just experienced the results of a similar course by his British brothers acting through Foreign Minister Neville Chamberlain...

The recent unveiling of the Holodomor Memorial in Washington was an important event in the history of the Ukrainian nation as a whole, as well as the Ukrainian diaspora. Naturally it renewed much discussion of this tragedy of the Ukrainian people which took place more than 80 years ago. Some of the discussion centered on...

As a representative of a newspaper accredited at the United Nations in New York, I wrote to the press representative of the Russian Permanent Mission to the U.N. to request its statement on the recent raid by Russian armed and masked police on the Ukrainian Library of Literature in Moscow. The raid was followed by...

On July 14, a Russian court in the Oryol region sentenced 42-year-old Alexander Byvshev, a Russian provincial town schoolteacher of German and sometime poet, to 300 hours of community service and banned him from teaching for two years. The sentence came on a single charge of writing and publishing on the Internet a poem titled...

A year after Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation, a celebratory President Vladimir Putin admitted that Crimea was of interest to him prior to the so-called referendum that had been the ostensible basis for annexation. Mr. Putin boasted that the subject of Crimea’s return to Russia came up when he acted in February 2014...

The obvious prime suspect in the recent execution-style slaying of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has announced to the world that he personally is spearheading the investigation. Vladimir Putin has declared this a political killing, suggesting a CIA plot, Ukrainian complicity to cause division within Russia, an Islamic jihad as retribution for Mr. Nemtsov’s support...

Hope springs eternal. In Ukrainian circles that cliché is no longer relevant when referring to Ukraine-Russia relations. Many in the West are still naive or, perhaps, idealistic enough to lend credence to promises made by Russian leaders or their henchmen. However, the list of the believers is diminishing. Despite cynicism, lessons learned from the past...

Citing international documents, conventions or treaties when dealing with Russia is an exercise in futility. A more meaningful task would be locating a single international convention or treaty that Russia and/or its predecessor the USSR have not violated in large part or ignored entirely. Conventions and treaties nonetheless remain international norms of a civilized international...

The Crimean peninsula was in the news in mid-December. Its so-called prime minister,  Aksyonov, had traveled with his new boss, Vladimir Putin, to India for some type of negotiations involving economic cooperation between India and Crimea. India remains one of very few countries willing to enter into bilateral relations with Mr. Putin and Russia. The...

Questioning the significance of security through NATO membership has become a tactic of Russia appeasers. The purported logic for this argumentation is twofold:  nothing has disturbed Vladimir Putin more than NATO expansion; and nothing would exacerbate the current Ukraine-Russia crisis more than NATO membership for Ukraine.  In any event, the appeasers suggest, NATO membership is...