Maidan

You and I are long-standing friends, of course, based on our shared compassion and concern for fellow human beings in venues where we can find an honest opportunity to make a positive difference in as many lives as possible. However, my view is largely from ground-level in Russia and Ukraine, and you know as well as anyone the difficulties I've encountered from this end while you've held down the fort in London.

From what I see and FEEL in Ukraine, Ukrainians are mostly very kind, gentle, and truly decent people who are still stunned from such as the sadistic abuses of the Soviet era, not least the Holodomor during Stalin's heyday. Few families in Ukraine were unaffected by Stalin's terror. It's very difficult to relate this to Westerners, even to a close friend such as you are. It's not something that can be expressed so much in words as in just living here and FEELING the culture in Ukraine day-to-day. The only way I can describe it is a lingering feeling of shock, pain, fear, but now with a real, genuine sense of new hope.

President Yushchenko's own father, for example, was a prisoner of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau. In his statement to joint session of US Congress on April 6, he said "I am a son of a nation that survived the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century, the Holodomor famine that took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians and the Holocaust." ( http://eng.maidanua.org/node/249 )

Given the worst of the worst that our countries -- UK and US -- have had to endure even given 9/11 in the US and Nazi V-1 and V-2 bombings of London and the UK during WW2, our national experiences pale in comparison to the relative percentage of lives lost to terrorism in the Ukrainian Holodomor alone. Thus, neither of us can really feel and fully understand the spiritual weariness of Ukrainians.

Consequently, it comes as little surprise to me that Ukrainians might seem a bit slow on the uptake and understanding of what people like you and I are trying to do solely for the sake of humanity with the borders of Ukraine. Ukrainians have been abused and terrorized for so long, by their own government, such that I think it is inevitable that it will take time, patience, and things as simple as love and commitment -- even though from "foreign" friends -- before Ukrainians can recover from abuses, horrors, and tragedies that you and I cannot truly understand.

I see very, very good people day in and day out who are now hopeful, but the previous pain and struggles from so many years persist in attitude and spirit. By default, that puts people like you and me as leaders in offering hope and direction to Ukrainians at the grassroots level while at the same time lobbying for support at the national level in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. That latter task is now nearing successful completion, due to massive lobbying efforts by many on the US side who have finally come to understand who Ukrainians really are and what the nation of Ukraine is really about.

Suspicion and skepticism about trying to improve life, via foreigners of any nationality, are the norm I see, and which surprises me not at all. Given the ignorance of our own countries' oversight and ignorance of a horror as great as the Ukrainian Holodomor, I can well understand why Ukrainians in their heart and soul are slow on the uptake of anything we might have to offer to improve lives in Ukraine.

What we are attempting will take time, and the greatest of patience before we have any right to hope or expect that we are, or might be, truly friends to Ukrainians. In the end, love will overcome, and I believe that my US compatriots from the US Peace Corps continue to lobby behind-the-scenes for the best interests of Ukrainians whom they have learned to love and respect exactly as I have.

Our efforts are just beginning. Earning respect, trust, and above all genuine love, takes time, patience, and commitment. I am here in Ukraine as long as it takes, and at this point as far as I can see, for the remainder of my life. That's all I can offer on my end, and I hope it might be enough to at least begin to make some real progress towards what I know you and I are both committed to.

Terry
Kharkiv

Sorry for going off topic:

Dear Terry Hallman & Jeff Mowatt,

I am wondering - just who are you guys? Are you US gov't officials? Or regular guys trying to make a difference? I would honestly like to join you, to help make a difference in my homeland. I currently live in Canada because my parents moved here in search of a better life. I have many ideas on how to get the people moving, and many ideas to develop Ukraine further. I'd be very glad if either you Terry, or Jeff could contact me. I sent an email to T.Hallman@p-ced.com but did not get a reply.

So, Terry or Jeff, please contact me.

E-mail: amorozuk@sympatico.ca

Andriy,
I assure you I am NOT a US government official, nor an official of any other government. I am far too outspoken. If anything, I've contributed to quite a few grey hairs among US government officials over the years, due to my very independent and assertive stance as a US citizen. But that is just as democracy should be: freedom to speak out, even causing grey hair among my beloved (sometimes) government representatives.


Jeff and I are friends. He is a Brit, for which I have long since forgiven him after a bit of a war starting in 1776 and even after Brits went to the trouble to burn down the US White House circa 1812 during Madison's presidency (and which many of us in the US still haven't forgotten, even though it's now almost 200 years ago.)


I don't know why your email to the address you mentioned didn't go through. I'll check it. Otherwise, you can also use webconsult_2000@yahoo.com or newswire@yahoo.com .


Regards,
Terry E. Hallman
Kharkiv, Ukraine

Not at all Andriy, I've just mailed you with all our secrets. Everyone else has to keep guessing.

Jeff

Oksana,

Please forgive my delay in responding.  I have been back and forth between Kharkiv and Kyiv during this past week, or preparing for back-and-forth to Kyiv.  Things are happening very quickly now in Ukraine, as I�m sure you probably understand.  I beg you forbearance,  and truly appreciate your kind remarks.  I will answer your questions, and concerns, in serial order.

I�m more Germanic/American background than Anglo/American.  I also have Anglo/Irish blood, but that's as close as I come to Anglo.

Should the time ever arrive that a nice Ukrainian girl is brave enough to deal with my life on a daily basis without too much worry, I would be delighted to have a Ukrainian wife.  My being the political animal that I am, marriage to a nice Ukrainian girl who has the strength to deal with my unrelenting �assertiveness� (and that�s putting it mildly) toward freedom and human decency would be for me a private gift from God.  

I�ve done as much as I can for Russia.  I understand that FSB does not take kindly to anyone doing things for Russian citizens to make the lives of ordinary Russian citizens better.  Nothing has changed since Chekist/NKVD/KGB days in that regard.  People like me don�t fit in regardless of nationality, but with a US passport I�m not so easily shot, imprisoned, or disappeared.  So be it.  I will never shut up, and that alone drives half of FSB crazy while encouraging the other half.  

In Ukraine, it encourages seventy percent of SBU (my estimate, which I�m willing to discuss once again with SBU over beer and a good meal as long as they�re paying), and irritates the remainder.  The (Russian) woman I loved most recently was once an FSB agent, but she couldn�t get anything past me.  So now we�re apart, I remain single, and now insist even to God on a Ukrainian wife.

I hope that answers that part of questions.

Next, regarding investing in Ukraine, for the moment I agree with your advisors. This is the time to let things settle down and stabilize a bit.  Ukraine is in the midst of an extraordinary transition, the likes of which the modern world has rarely seen.  I daresay that almost nobody on earth knows what to make of what just happened in Ukraine via the Orange Revolution.  To me, even now, having been here through all of it and encouraging it on a strictly personal level quite some time before it came to pass, Ukraine�s revolution stands in my mind as one of the rarest of miracles.  While in Kharkiv�s tent camp, local militsia and SBU both questioned me as to why I was there.  I told them that I was watching history in the making, and they understood.  They not only did not give me any problems, they also made sure that I was absolutely safe and protected.  They knew and I knew and everyone in the tent camp knew what was going on and why I was there and why ALL of us were there (on the Orange side, at least) : solidarity among people insisting on honesty and freedom with the same passion in all of our souls.  It made no difference where we were born, most in Ukraine and me in the US.  We ALL understood, and stood shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm and hand in hand.  It was during that time that I knew I would take a Ukrainian wife, and no other, at some point if ever.  

It was just after that time that I grasped the new investment potential in Ukraine: give things a little time to settle down and stabilize, start small and grow.  I am certain that Ukraine will prove to be among the very best investment climates in the world.  I say this from very, very hard work, careful examination, tough experience, and with abiding, passionate love FROM most Ukrainians along the way � excluding former government entities in general, and government entities in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in particular.  

I respectfully suggest that if Kyiv continues to ignore ARC, problems such as the recent Russian naval invasion of Feodosia will not only increase but will also become routine policy of Russia toward Crimea and where possible upward to the rest of Ukraine, eastern flank first.  I know how Russian foreign policy thinking is going in Kremlin�s near-abroad hopes, and I know extremely well who controls it: Russian FSB.  At such time as this threat is effectively and finally countered and stopped, Ukraine will then become a safe investment climate with predictable, reliable investment calculations heading full speed to solid European integration.  Kremlin will remain quite active in trying to prevent that because Russia (Moscow) cannot qualify until such questions as Ryazan are finally and clearly answered once and for all.  Kremlin believes the Ryazan question has quietly disappeared.  

It has not.  

Until the time that Ukraine fully shakes off Russian provocation (and US hegemony, to be clear and fair), I must agree with your investment advisors: be very careful, start small and do litmus testing, and look to grow your investments on that basis.  

Regarding growth in Georgia, take one guess as to who is actively impeding and interfering in Georgia�s new democracy � despite Georgia�s increasing insistence that they get their military bases OUT of Georgia, so far to no avail.

Kremlin has not surrendered its near-abroad policy, nor its hopes for continuation of CIS, nor its provocation in northern Georgia, nor its provocation on the north-eastern slice of Moldova.  I say this will full awareness and acknowledgment of my own government�s adventurous hegemony in this same region of the world.  

And I say this: Ukraine is Ukraine, and Ukraine has clearly demonstrated beyond any doubt that she is neither US nor Russian.  Once both of those sides are gently pressed clear to that understanding, then Ukraine will emerge and manifest her enormous economic, political, social � and above all, spiritual � potential.

We are watching a miracle continuing, a miracle in the making, Oksana.  I believe we should consider ourselves very, very fortunate even to be aware of it.  Patience is the watchword for investment, with due caution, but also with due hope.  I�ve already bet my life on that.

With very best wishes and regards,

Terry Hallman

Kharkiv, Ukraine

(Sorry -- somehow posted twice. Removed one copy...
T.H.)