Author: Lubomyr Luciuk

“And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” Luke 23:34 At the invitation of Anthony Rota, the Speaker of the Canadian House of Com­mons, Yaroslav Hunka went to Ottawa on September 22 to witness the visit of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When The Jewish Daily Forward subsequently reported that Mr....

I hated her the first time I saw her. That was in 1989. It was definitely not a case of “love at first sight.” She was there every time I visited. I couldn’t avoid seeing her. I would tell the locals about how ugly this gal was, how even glimpsing her triggered an atavistic rage...

Yes, I know, the West sent weapons. But we did so in dribbles. What we provided was never quite what Kyiv asked for, nor was what we sent ever delivered when it was needed the most. Seems as if the game plan was to give just enough to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose, but...

We don’t know a lot. I’m guessing the three men never met in life. Two were buried in the summer of 1915. In February 1916, the third man died. They might have known each other before they got to Kingston, Ontario, but since we don’t know where they came from or when they arrived, there’s...

The following is an edited excerpt from the introductory pages of “Enemy Archives: Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement: Selections from the Secret Police Archives,” Montreal and Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. The book was co-edited by Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk and Dr. Volodymyr Viatrovych, both of whom have been distinguished with Ukraine’s...

It was masterful. Presented before Congress and not in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mother tongue, it was delivered after he first made a perilous front-line visit to the defenders of the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and it was followed by a trans-Atlantic flight. In Washington, Ukraine’s Moses then gave his sermon on the Capital mount....

My mother was just a teenager when the Nazis kidnapped her, one of millions of Ukrainians enslaved by Hitler’s legions. Even so, I’d say she was lucky. She survived. Millions of Ukrainians did not. Another victim, whom I befriended much later in life, was Stefan Petelycky. A Ukrainian nationalist, he was captured and spent the...

Being craven, he crept in just after midnight. It was Tuesday, August 10, 2021. As a trespasser, he was clever enough to know that you don’t show your face when you’re out committing a crime. He wore a mask. What he did next has been called a hate crime. It was pre-meditated, and his action...

Ukraine is not new. As my colleague Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi recently demonstrated in an incisive essay, “Ukraina Redux” (see https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/ukraina-redux-on-statehood-and-national-identity/), Ukrainians have attempted to forge a state of their own over the course of several centuries. Repeatedly their struggle for independent statehood has been thwarted by predacious, indeed rapacious, neighbors. This first happened in...

When Ukrainians first began arriving in Canada, 131 years ago, they weren’t recognized for who they were, instead being called “Ruthenians” or by regional terms like “Galicians” or “Bukovynians.” Lured here with promises of freedom and free land, they were also not always appreciated. Editorialists at the Daily Herald in Calgary, for example, approvingly cited...

A bloodied shirt, tattered pants, leather shoes sliced open and flesh shaved off by razor-wire are what I endured while getting a closer look at South Ossetia, a Russian-occupied region of Georgia. This rendering took place under the gaze of a nearby Russian watchtower, whose inhabitants thankfully chose not to sally forth. Meanwhile their Georgian...

His creator made him ferocious. He was cast as strong and defiant, facing his foes. When made, he was given no name because, in those bygone days, anyone approaching him knew exactly what he stood for. Even in our time he remains known as “the king of beasts,” the lion. So, from whenever he first...