3,500 at World Forum in Kyiv

The Fourth World Forum of Ukrainians took place in Kyiv on August 18-20.  3,500 delegates, from 43 countries, including Canada, attended.

President Victor Yushchenko was reportedly heckled when he addressed the delegates on the first day of the forum. 

In his one-hour address, Yushchenko called on diaspora Ukrainians to work together “to see Ukraine free, its citizens well-to-do, and the powers democratic."

Many of the delegates were recently disenchanted by the decision of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party to form a coalition with the pro-Russian Party of Regions and to agree to the appointment of his former adversary, Victor Yanukovych, as Prime Minister.

Yushchenko defended his decision to work with Yanukovych saying the choice was either “conflicts, uncertainty, economic decline and collapse…or the table of negotiation and understanding.”

The speech of the President of the Ukrainian World Congress, Askold Lozynskyj, of the United States, reportedly received the loudest applause. 

Addressing Yushchenko and Yanukovych, who was not present as he chose to take a trip to Russia instead, Lozynskyj said:  “Mr. President, Mr. Premier, when you are in Moscow, remember that Moscow took away our children, church, language and bread.”

After his speech, the Union of Orthodox Citizens of Ukraine called on Yanukovych to make Lozynskyj a “persona non grata.”  They accused him of “publicly insulting Orthodox believers” when he stated that the “Ukrainian Orthdox Church-Moscow Patriarchate is an organization that exists solely to serve the interests of Moscow, and not God.”

In the lead-up to the forum, Yushchenko met Ukrainian diaspora leaders, including Lozynskyj, in the village of Novi Bezradychi, where the Ukrainian President expressed his views on cooperating with the diaspora and on recent political events in Ukraine.