Voices of Ukraine

On March 20, 2014, the world woke up to the shocking news that in his infinite wisdom Russia’s Putin had imposed sanctions on not less than nine US politicians. From now on, these hidden Banderovytes and anti-Semites would be barred from doing business in Russia, have assets in Russian banks, or visiting the places of the Gulag. Hell, they probably would not even be allowed to trade in Russian Rubles!

Most of the world was in shock; my overruling feeling was one of dismay. Yes, I am not a US politician, but over the past 35 years I have been actively involved in promoting bourgeois human rights in Russia and in territories that belong to the Russian “Lebensraum”. I have allowed myself to sink to the level of an anti-Soviet activist, and in 2003 gratefully accepted citizenship of the renegade state of Lithuania that in violation of…

By Robert van Voren

For many years I wondered how my uncle must have felt in 1938-1939, when dark clouds were gathering over Europe. My namesake Robert van Voren was then 21 years old, out of secondary school and studying to be an engineer in Delft, The Netherlands. He was a bit of a loner, cycling across Europe on an old-fashioned black Dutch bike and observing how the continent was changing rapidly. One of his trips brought him to Finland, where he watched Soviet planes fly over Vyborg as an omen of the Finish-Soviet War that would soon break out and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Europe was on the brink of war.

Whatever he felt, he was upset enough to join the Dutch resistance almost immediately after the German invasion in May 1940. For more than three years he would falsify documents for Jews and British pilots, help…

Today is a noteworthy day. Exactly 120 days ago a few hundred people set up a tiny protest camp on Kyiv’s Independence Square. On November 21, this small group of people was outraged at the sudden about-face of the Azarov government, and its refusal to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Treaty. I returned to Kyiv on Sunday November 24 (after a short teaching assignment in Lviv) to participate in a fairly substantial demonstration: the first Sunday “viche”. We were pleased that upwards of 50 thousand came out to protest on that day. How far we’ve come since!

Looking back on the past 120 days, I feel like I’ve lived 5 years! I suspect many others feel the same…