As I Write This...

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

As I write this, Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine, sits in jail, sentenced to seven years of imprisonment by what most believe was a kangaroo court.

Protests were heard from Washington, DC and Ottawa to Brussels. Even Moscow was upset. Moscow? Yes, Moscow, Yulia’s erstwhile partner in her alleged misdeeds while presiding over a natural gas deal. Fined the equivalent of $188 million in damages, Yulia faces more charges from the Yanukovych regime in the months ahead.

How could the Orange Revolution have gone so terribly wrong? How could Viktor Yushchenko, Tymoshenko’s compatriot during a transcendent moment in modern Ukrainian history, have turned on her so egregiously? I was part of the official US delegation to President Yushchenko’s inauguration in January 2005. I was in the diplomatic stands when over a million people from all over Ukraine braved the cold, and stood motionless as the new President spoke of his hopes for the future. The crowd was chanting “Yushchenko, Yushchenko”. Today, his popularity is less than 5%.

The former President took no sides during the 2010 runoff election between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych. He advised the Ukrainian people to vote for “none of the above.” Yanukovych beat Tymoshenko by a mere 3 percent. At Tymoshenko’s subsequent trial, Yushchenko was a prosecution witness.

In a column titled “Ukraine Returns to a Dark Past”, Speigel Online reporter Erich Follath asked Yushchenko about the Tymoshenko verdict. “I don’t see a show trial”, he said. Claiming that he was a work horse while Yulia was more of a “show horse”, Yushchenko claimed that maintaining power was her ultimate goal. After he testified, the judge asked Yulia if she had any questions for the witness. “No” said the defendant, “I wouldn’t want to destroy the last illusion of our Orange Revolution”. “They didn’t deign to look at each other,” writes Follath. “This is the Ukrainian dream couple in a Ukrainian version of Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses: In the final scene, amidst their ruined relationship and shards of broken glass, Ukraine is the real loser.”

Is the Tymoshenko melodrama finally over? Russia Watch correspondent Jim Brooke seems to think so. In his column titled “Ukraine’s Faded Evita”, he suggests that the salad days of the Orange Revolution have long since faded. Polls show her popularity has been severely damaged. “In Kyiv before the verdict, writes Mr. Brooke, “everyone I asked seems to have tuned out Yulia and her three month trial.” I don’t believe it. I don’t believe we’ve heard the last of Yulia.

As I write this, Dmytro Tabachnyk still holds the grandiose title of Minister of Education, Science and Sports in Ukraine, a big job for a little man. Tabachnyk has denied that the Holodomor was genocide. He continues to rewrite history textbooks for the lower grades to make them more in keeping with Russian elementary school textbooks. Tabachnyk continues to intimidate university rectors.

Last October, Tabachnyk’s ham-fisted curtailment of academic freedom was a topic of discussion during a conference sponsored by the Kyiv-Mohyla University. “Universities cannot be barricaded,” declared John Tefft, US Ambassador to Ukraine. “They play a leading role in society.” Stanislav Nikolayenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Education from 2005 to 2007, stated that “without freedom and democracy in Ukraine’s universities, there will be no Ukraine.” Gigi Tevzadze, Rector of the Ilia Chavchavadse University in Tbilisi, Georgia, explained the different understandings of university autonomy between the West and former Soviet republics. “Autonomy in the latter still means government interference,” he said. “Fear remains a fundamental problem in Ukraine not only in education, but also in society as a whole”, declared Rev. Dr. Borys Gudziak, Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv.

As I write this, Viktor Yanukovych remains President of Ukraine. His scheduled October trip to Brussels to discuss European integration was cancelled by the European Union. This led some Regionnaires to suggest embracing the “Russian Bear”. Why not? Same language, same religion, same culture. Why leave one’s comfort zone?

As I write this, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is preparing the ground for a Eurasian Union, a trade bloc, to compete with the European Union. Vlad wants to restore Russia to its past imperial status. Without Ukraine, that is impossible.

As I write this, Europe itself is on the brink of collapse. The United States is preoccupied with its own economy. Ukraine is not even on their radar screen.

So where do we go from here? Suggestions: continue to keep Yanukovych’s feet to the fire by engaging Canadian governmental support; have faith in Ukraine’s youth. I have just read Ihor Bardyn’s “Newsletter” reviewing thirty years of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program. It is young people-interns like those involved with CUPP who represent the future of Ukraine, not the troglodytes destroying Ukraine today. Ukraine is a survivor nation. Ukraine will rise again!