Maidan

We join in grief with the whole nation which has lost their President. With those gathered near the Katyń graves we join in prayer for the dead, for the President of Rzeczpospolita Polska, his wife, for the last President of RP in Exile, for all who perished, for their families and also for Poland ..

The fact that the changes to forming a coalition signed into law yesterday after the President met with international diplomats are unconstitutional is fundamental, however so too is the undoubted mockery seen of the principle of democracy. Civic society is committed to democratic values, and would respectfully ask the international community to stop turning a blind eye to those who flout them.

Though Europe thrives, its writers and politicians are preoccupied with death. The mass killings of European civilians during the 1930s and 1940s are the reference of today's confused discussions of memory, and the touchstone of whatever common ethics Europeans may share. The bureaucracies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union turned individual lives into mass death, particular humans into quotas of those to be killed

Published on MOSES FISHBEIN WEB SITE

Leiba-Itzik Dobrovskij (ukr. Лейба-Іцик Йосифович Добровський) was born in 1910 in Olshanytsia (now in Rokytne District, Kyiv Region) into a Jewish family. Later, he lived in Kyiv. He attained a university-level education. On impressment to the Red Army on June 22, 1941, he fell into German captivity at Poltava, in October 1941, escaped and ended up in Rivne Region as a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in November 1941, and then joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), assuming an alias, ‘Valeriy’. In July 1943, Leiba-Itzik Dobrovskij was posted as a political aide to the Political Section of UPA’s North Command. While working underground from 1941 until 1944, he authored a number of well-known UPA’s appeals, in particular, the Appeal to the peoples of Asia and the Caucasus, and the political essay How Moscow's Tsarism Conquered Nations. Caught by the SMERSH in February 1944, Leiba-Itzik Dobrovsky, a soldier of UPA, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the Kyiv Garrison Court Martial.

Politicians and public officials, including the Human Rights Ombudsperson, are hurtling to defend “traditional values”, although in no hurry to define, or at very least itemize such values. Under the present regime in the RF, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is actively consolidating its position as the “State religion”. Yet what about in Ukraine?

On plans to build a centralized storage facility for spent nuclear waste from all Ukraine’s nuclear power plants in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the continuing – erroneous – belief by some of those in power, 23 years after the Chernobyl Disaster, that they can ride roughshod over people's safety and right to know

With an epidemic raging, who in their right mind would reduce the number of hospital beds, personnel and facilities for fighting the disease? Calling on all who care about their health, football and Euro-2012 to help us force the Kharkiv authorities to come to their senses

The following is not, unfortunately, about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and this is not only because the latest Moscow show trial-remake could carry an entirely real 22 year sentence for fictitious crimes. The words also apply to what has all the hallmarks of a frightening travesty of justice unfolding in Ukraine. How it is treated now will demonstrate whether the Ukrainian leadership’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law is real or for show only.

If with his visa initiatives, the Minister of Internal Affairs Yury Lutsenko wanted to convince Ukrainian nationals and others that his department is ready to maintain law and order in the country and can worthily fulfil the new role it is to take on, I rather fear he miscalculated

With a scandal over Ukraine’s failure to comply with the Aarhus Convention imminent, Ukraine’s authorities are continuing to act as though imitation of public participation and adherence to international commitments is no different from the real thing. Who are they trying to delude?