Opinions Archives - Forum for Ukrainian Studies

Ukraine in search of a magician: From protests to the victory of populism

Posted on August 13, 2019August 13, 2019 by Oleksii PolegkyI

The party of President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Servant of the People,”[i] has won an absolute majority in the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council). None of the other parties in Ukraine obtained more than 40% of the candidates on their party lists, or as many winners in the single-mandate constituencies. This is a significant concentration of power, which has not yet been seen in the history of independent Ukraine. Yet it is unclear who will…

Ukraine not succeeding, but not giving up: Yaroslav Hrytsak

Posted on April 25, 2019August 29, 2019 by Yaroslav Hrytsak

This speech was given to the European Parliament in Brussels on 27 November 2018 As part of a small Ukrainian delegation, I gave a speech to the European Parliament nearly five years ago, aiming to convince MEPs that Ukraine was unlikely to break up. The Euromaidan Revolution had immediately raised, again, the “Huntingtonian” scenario of Ukraine splitting into a Ukrainophone west and Russophone east. The protests in Kyiv were presented as coming only from the…

SO-CALLED ELECTIONS IN THE “ORDLO”: WHAT’S NEXT?

Posted on March 7, 2019March 19, 2019 by Vitalii Kulyk

The so-called elections held in the occupied territories of Ukraine’s Donbas region in November 2018 once again confirmed that the Minsk Agreements, intended as a regularizing framework to contain and bring an end to the conflict, are a fiction. Neither the Russian Federation, “having committed itself to influence the relevant party,” (according to Russian interpretation of The complex of measures for the implementation of the Minsk agreements) nor representatives of the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk…

A Comedian in the Ukrainian Presidential Election: An Unusual Announcement on New Year’s Eve and Dubious “Jeansa” Tactics

Posted on February 15, 2019March 19, 2019 by Nataliia Steblyna

The change rhetoric is one of the most popular during any election, including Ukrainian ones. The incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, won the previous election with the slogan “Let’s live in a new way.” Nowadays his opponents, using the disappointment and anger of the Ukrainian people, aren’t neglecting the tradition and continue to promise a new life under their future presidency. Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular Russian-speaking showman, is one of the newest. He has not been…

Ukraine’s “island” identity: A rock of a nation, surviving all odds

Posted on February 15, 2019February 15, 2019 by Ostap Kushnir

In the mid-1930s, the Ukrainian writer Yurii Lypa compared the Ukrainian nation to an island in his book Pryznachennia Ukrainy (The Destiny of Ukraine): The Ukrainian race is an island among its neighbours, an island with its own life, its own holy things and all-human values. Foreign and imposed spiritual values are worthless, and even non-imposed values are adopted in time, only if they pass the nation’s test… The Ukrainian race is an island, and…

The Study of Ukrainian Nationalism at the University of Ottawa

Posted on December 1, 2014March 16, 2018 by Taras Kuzio

In October of this year, Ivan Katchanovski who is based at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa presented a paper to the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at his university and a second paper at the conference “Negotiating Borders: Comparing the Experience of Crimea, Europe and Ukraine” that was organized by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. The two papers have generated controversy because they are revisionist…

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