Getting a Bead on Diaspora Life
Ukrainians have long been a people in motion and no country has been as welcoming to them as Canada, especially in the last century. Ksenia Karpenko talked with a diaspora couple from Edmonton.
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Cherkassy
For all the travelling we do around Ukraine, we’ve never really seen much of the countryside because we always travel by train, which, while being an easy and affordable option, usually means travelling by night when there’s not much to see, so this time we got hold of a car and decided to head to Cherkassy for the day.
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A prominent Russian art dealer was hospitalised last weekend following a skinhead attack on his gallery which saw youths smash paintings by ethnic Georgian artists and beat the owner Marat Guelman. While recovering from his injuries Guelman was understandably keen to play down talk of any official involvement, but admitted that the day before the attack his gallery had been visited by customs officials who confiscated a series of unflattering caricatures featuring President Putin, President Bush and Osama bin Laden and threatened him with prosecution under laws prohibiting insulting the President of Russia. Human rights groups, themselves under fire from the Kremlin over tricky new registration processes designed to keep meddling foreigners out of Russia’s affairs, have accused the Kremlin of stirring up xenophobia at a time of growing attacks on foreigners in Russia. The Sova centre, which monitors hate crimes, said that 39 people have been killed so far in Russia in racially motivated murders, while hundreds more have been seriously injured. (www.timesonline.co.uk)

Local rockers Tanok Na Maidani Kongo are set to team up with BBC Ukrainian service to offer English language lessons! Beginning in November, ‘Rock English’ will be broadcast in 24 lessons, with Faggot and Fozzy joined by teachers from the British Council for the eight minute language sessions.

Scandal has enveloped a recent hunting trip made by the King of Spain to Russia’s far east amid allegations that the monarch shot a bear which had been specially prepared with litres of vodka! The governor of Vologda region has announced an investigation into the death of the bear Mitrofan following suggestions that the creature was deliberately plied with vodka-drenched honey prior to his meet with His Majesty. Russian hunting industry insiders are no strangers to this kind of tactic - in the old days of the Kremlin coffin dodgers animals were regularly drugged up to facilitate easy shooting. Leonid Brezhnev was famous for being a bad shot, and animals he liked to hunt were often either tied to trees or plied with alcohol to dampen their survival instincts. (Reuters)

Brussels boffins have announced plans to offer support for students kicked out of Belarus universities for opposition political activities, and the plan is to send them here! They will now be offered scholarships in neighbouring Lithuania and Ukraine, those bastions of liberty in oppressed Eastern Europe. “I hope that those who study under this scheme will take home with them a greater understanding of life in a free society, and that they will maintain their hope and optimism that their country may one day enjoy these freedoms,” commented EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. (Wire reports)

A Georgian sumo wrestler participating in the Sumo World Cup currently running in Tokyo has been ordered to shave his body after complaints that the stubble is painful for other contestants. Hairy warrior Kokkai’s week-old stubble gave him an unusual edge over opponents who complained, with one Japanese fighter moaning, “The bristles are very hard and prickly. It hurts.” The 170kg Georgian has since agreed to shave regularly, but is not thrilled by the additional hassle. “My skin is very sensitive,” groaned the big man from the mountains. (Yahoo news)

It seems that you can’t go more than a week in this country without some regional council or other voting on the official status of the Russian language. Not content with the fact that for the majority of Ukrainians Russian is the de facto mother tongue, these folk seem determined to have the thing confirmed in writing as well. Personally I’ve never really been able to see what all the fuss is about. Ukrainian is a beautiful language and an important element of the national culture, but I don’t see the necessity of forcing Russian speakers to use it just to make a point. All in all it is a damned divisive issue and one which superficially separates people who are basically all in the same boat. One way out of this ‘Ukrainian or Russian’ mess would be to introduce a third element into the official language debates. I am talking, of course, about making English an official language in Ukraine. With thousands of linguistically inept expats here in Kyiv, we already have a significant English-language ethnic minority population, which, politically speaking, is a good starting position. Now all we need to do is pressure the authorities over at City Hall into accepting the need to produce everything tri-lingual, thus making the endless bureaucratic paper chases favoured by local pen pushers that little bit less of a nightmare. If English is a hit in Kyiv oblast, we could consider expanding the experiment. It would undoubtedly be a big pull with the international investment community, and give the country the biggest PR boost since the Orange Revolution. And most importantly, it might actually allow us to settle once and for all how Ukrainian names should be written in English and end the practice of adding endless Y’s, I’s and J’s all over the place!

Cheers,
Peter Dickinson,
Editor

Ninety-three year old Vasyl Kuk is one of the last surviving members of the leadership of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which fought both Nazis and Soviets during WWII and enjoyed particular infamy in the USSR. Last weekend saw the group organise a major demonstration in Kyiv to mark the anniversary of their foundation, provoking rival anti-UPA rallies and raising tensions among many Ukrainians. We asked this senior UPA man to share his thoughts on the historic events he has lived through and helped shape.

Every week we publish an unusual view of a well-known Kyiv building, monument or landmark, and ask you to try and guess what it is. Send you answers in to whatson@tmu.in.ua and you may get a mention in the next week’s issue!

Last week’s WAS IST DAS!?!
was the TSUM building on Khreschatyk

When it comes to naming the biggest star to emerge from the wreckage of the former Soviet UNI0N you can forget Klitschko, Sheva, Tatu, Kornikova and Princess Yulia; the man who takes that title is surely be faux Kazakh reporter Borat, a comedic creation of British joker Sacha Baron Cohen who is getting belly laughs all over the world for his ridiculous send up of the central Asian republic. Cohen first became notorious for his Ali G character, who played on the popularity of black street culture among young British Pakistani males, but his Borat persona has gone much further, reaching inter-governmental levels of scandal and provoking the Kazakh government to recently taking out a four-page ad in the New York Times to defend itself against the ridiculous claims made by Borat.

Hats off to the eagle-eyed folk who man the Boryspil border guard. Last week they managed to foil an attempt by an Italian citizen to smuggle a thirteen year old girl out of the country by pretending he was the child’s parent. The Italian was due to fly to Prague and told guards the girl was his daughter, but they became suspicious when she answered their inquiries in perfect Ukrainian. The man later confessed that he had been planning to hand the girl over to a woman. Border guards meanwhile have identified the victim as a Kirovograd native whose family had told her ‘listen to the man and all will be well.’ Border guards have thwarted over 2,000 similar people-smuggling attempts so far this year alone, a figure which suggests that the actual number of people being trafficked out of Ukraine and sold into slavery is far higher.

DJ Move Talks Up Alternative Clubbing
DJ Move has been in the club game for 10 years by now, having founded the Open Air Villa party series and created the KISS FM programmes ‘ Pearly Voices’ and ‘Settings’.
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