KIEV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian neurosurgeon has been killed in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata during battles between rebels and government forces.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said the doctor was killed by a shell while leaving his home on Wednesday.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, during a visit to the Ukrainian capital Kiev, said the doctor's wife was severely wounded by the shell.
He says "my deepest condolences for that couple. This is not just a couple, this is what Ukrainian people are showing to humanity, to the world."
The foreign ministry on Thursday expressed concerns that some Ukrainians living in Libya have disregarded the ministry's warning to leave the country immediately.
The ministry says 19 Ukrainians were evacuated Sunday from Misrata.
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Sunday, 10 April 2011
War, Stalin and memory
Questions of history prompt heated debate and stir powerful emotions in Russia, as in all post-Communist countries. Many attempts have been made to settle the problems of the past, but none was seen through to the end. It invariably turned out that the time was not right because of political instability, an economic crisis, or social problems.
On February 1, the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, a consultative body comprising representatives of human rights organizations and NGOs, submitted a draft program on memorializing the victims of the totalitarian regime and on national reconciliation to President Dmitry Medvedev.
As expected, it sparked an intense public reaction. The document, whose authors believe that the past century was a time of tragedies and crimes committed by Russians against Russians, has provoked a wave of Soviet nostalgia. It is clear that some people find it impossible to view Russian history objectively as an inalienable part of European and global history. However, the debate this document has stirred could prove useful in that it concerns the key question of the heritage a nation should draw on when formulating its future trajectory.
The ideological confusion of the past two decades has produced a strange aberration in society. Although Russian history boasts a myriad of glorious episodes, many people associate its might and successes solely with Josef Stalin. This could be due to certain forces’ conscious, deliberate efforts to nurture a sense of contemporary Russia’s inadequacy and a yearning for the “great power” we have lost. But there are also objective reasons for this.
For example, part of society still cannot reconcile itself to the humiliating economic and geopolitical position into which Russia was plunged after the end of the Soviet Union. This only drives them into a trap. By upholding their country’s honour and dignity they also defend a leader whose crimes before his own people and other nations are both undeniable and unforgivable.
Ascribing victory in World War II to Stalin, rather than to the multiethnic, multinational Soviet peoples, leads to a complete dead end. It inseparably links victory to the actions of one of the most merciless regimes in Russian history.
Deliberations about Russia’s tragic dialectic could be interesting from the philosophical viewpoint, but politically they are a no-win option. Russia’s unwillingness to confront the whole truth about its 20th century history (which is much more complicated than simply “for” or “against”) hints at an inferiority complex.
This is unacceptable for a country that did not lose that war and which has solid reasons to consider itself one of the few fully sovereign world powers capable of dealing with internal problems without foreign assistance.
Russia could propose establishing an International Memory Institute, as the presidential council has suggested, to pool the efforts of all post-Soviet and post-Communist countries in assessing the past and also act as a counterweight to similar, but clearly anti-Russian, institutes established in other countries.
If Moscow takes the lead on this, the project could become the consolidating factor in the post-Soviet space.
Above all, Russia needs to rely on its historical tradition as a whole, and stop focusing on a very short period of its past as it searches for a new political identity
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Ukraine Unveils Nazi Records On Looting, Could Help Trace Stolen Works Back To Rightful Owners
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine on Wednesday made public records chronicling Nazi looting from Holocaust victims across Europe, in an online release that a prominent reparations group says could help trace stolen works of art to their rightful owners.
Ukraine's State Archives posted some 140,000 pages of documents from the Kyiv headquarters of Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi minister in charge of occupied Soviet territories.
The records cover Nazi looting from 1940 to 1944 in Belgium, northern France, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the occupied Soviet territories, and relate to plunder from Jewish communal and private collections, Soviet museums, libraries and other sources.
"Sixty-five years after the end of the war, our knowledge of the extent of Nazi plunder is still incomplete," Julius Berman, chairman of the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said in a statement.
"With the publication of these records, we can help facilitate rightful restitution of looted objects and fill in the gaps in this important piece of history," he said.
The documents are currently available only through a Russian-language search engine. There are plans to translate the website into Ukrainian, German, and English, Wesley A. Fisher, the director of resesarch with the Claims Conference, said.
The Ukrainian collection is the largest stockpile of Rosenberg's records, which were scattered after the war, and are also stored in 29 locations in nine countries, including the Federal Archives of Germany and the U.S. National Archives.
By providing online access to the Nazi files, Ukraine's State Archives has joined an international project to post records related to the looted cultural property that already includes state archives in the United States, Germany, Britain and France.
Earlier this month, representatives of the Claims Conference, Germany's Federal State Archives and Ukraine's State Archives took part in a formal signing ceremony on the release.
Ukraine's State Archives posted some 140,000 pages of documents from the Kyiv headquarters of Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi minister in charge of occupied Soviet territories.
The records cover Nazi looting from 1940 to 1944 in Belgium, northern France, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the occupied Soviet territories, and relate to plunder from Jewish communal and private collections, Soviet museums, libraries and other sources.
"Sixty-five years after the end of the war, our knowledge of the extent of Nazi plunder is still incomplete," Julius Berman, chairman of the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said in a statement.
"With the publication of these records, we can help facilitate rightful restitution of looted objects and fill in the gaps in this important piece of history," he said.
The documents are currently available only through a Russian-language search engine. There are plans to translate the website into Ukrainian, German, and English, Wesley A. Fisher, the director of resesarch with the Claims Conference, said.
The Ukrainian collection is the largest stockpile of Rosenberg's records, which were scattered after the war, and are also stored in 29 locations in nine countries, including the Federal Archives of Germany and the U.S. National Archives.
By providing online access to the Nazi files, Ukraine's State Archives has joined an international project to post records related to the looted cultural property that already includes state archives in the United States, Germany, Britain and France.
Earlier this month, representatives of the Claims Conference, Germany's Federal State Archives and Ukraine's State Archives took part in a formal signing ceremony on the release.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Polish President Visits Ukraine To Honor Soviet Victims
KIEV, Ukraine -- Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski will visit the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday to commemorate the 1940 massacre of about 4,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police NKVD.
Komorowski, who was elected president following the death of former president Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash in western Russia in April, will attend a memorial mass and wreath-laying ceremony along with Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
According to declassified WWII documents, Soviet leadership approved a proposal by NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria, dated March 5, 1940, to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps.
The executions took place in various parts of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The largest massacre occurred in the Katyn forest near the Russian city of Smolensk.
In Ukraine, the Soviet secret police took the Polish officers from the Starobelsk camp near Kharkiv, shot them in the inner NKVD Kharkiv prison and buried their bodies outside of the city.
The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers, police and civilians taken prisoner during the 1939 partitioning of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, remains one of the most painful issues in Russian-Polish relations.
Komorowski, who was elected president following the death of former president Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash in western Russia in April, will attend a memorial mass and wreath-laying ceremony along with Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
According to declassified WWII documents, Soviet leadership approved a proposal by NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria, dated March 5, 1940, to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps.
The executions took place in various parts of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The largest massacre occurred in the Katyn forest near the Russian city of Smolensk.
In Ukraine, the Soviet secret police took the Polish officers from the Starobelsk camp near Kharkiv, shot them in the inner NKVD Kharkiv prison and buried their bodies outside of the city.
The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers, police and civilians taken prisoner during the 1939 partitioning of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, remains one of the most painful issues in Russian-Polish relations.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Historian Doubts Demjanjuk's Wartime Account
MUNICH, Germany -- A U.S. military historian on Wednesday testified in the trial of the retired Ohio autoworker accused of being a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp and expressed doubt about John Demjanjuk's account of his whereabouts in the last years of World War II.
Bruce W. Menning told the Munich state court Wednesday that Demjanjuk's claim he went to the Austrian city of Graz late in 1944 to join a Ukrainian force fighting the Soviets under German command was "implausible" as the group only came through the Austrian city in March 1945.
But defense attorney Ulrich Busch rejected Menning's testimony, saying his account of historical events was partly wrong.
Demjanjuk, who was deported from the U.S. to Germany in May 2009, is being tried on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He denies the charges and says he was never a camp guard.
The defense maintains Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in prison camps himself.
Menning, an expert on the history of the Soviet Union who taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas, also questioned other details of Demjanjuk's account.
He said that Demjanjuk's claim he spent some 18 months until October 1944 as a German prisoner of war at a camp in Chelm, Poland, was highly implausible.
Menning said on Tuesday the Germans moved the camp away from the front line by May 1944, from Chelm at the Ukrainian border to Skierniewice in the west of the country.
The historian previously testified as an expert in 1981, when the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked after the Justice Department alleged he hid his past as the notorious Treblinka guard "Ivan the Terrible."
He was extradited to Israel, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988, only to have the conviction overturned five years later as a case of mistaken identity.
Defense attorney Busch said on Tuesday that Menning was not an expert on the Russian or Ukrainian forces allied with Nazi Germany, such as the Shandruk or the Vlasov army. He asserted that Menning was wrong to claim those forces didn't exist until 1945.
He said they were gathering their men months before they officially started their duty — suggesting Demjanjuk could have joined those fighters in 1944 as he claims.
Bruce W. Menning told the Munich state court Wednesday that Demjanjuk's claim he went to the Austrian city of Graz late in 1944 to join a Ukrainian force fighting the Soviets under German command was "implausible" as the group only came through the Austrian city in March 1945.
But defense attorney Ulrich Busch rejected Menning's testimony, saying his account of historical events was partly wrong.
Demjanjuk, who was deported from the U.S. to Germany in May 2009, is being tried on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He denies the charges and says he was never a camp guard.
The defense maintains Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in prison camps himself.
Menning, an expert on the history of the Soviet Union who taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas, also questioned other details of Demjanjuk's account.
He said that Demjanjuk's claim he spent some 18 months until October 1944 as a German prisoner of war at a camp in Chelm, Poland, was highly implausible.
Menning said on Tuesday the Germans moved the camp away from the front line by May 1944, from Chelm at the Ukrainian border to Skierniewice in the west of the country.
The historian previously testified as an expert in 1981, when the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked after the Justice Department alleged he hid his past as the notorious Treblinka guard "Ivan the Terrible."
He was extradited to Israel, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988, only to have the conviction overturned five years later as a case of mistaken identity.
Defense attorney Busch said on Tuesday that Menning was not an expert on the Russian or Ukrainian forces allied with Nazi Germany, such as the Shandruk or the Vlasov army. He asserted that Menning was wrong to claim those forces didn't exist until 1945.
He said they were gathering their men months before they officially started their duty — suggesting Demjanjuk could have joined those fighters in 1944 as he claims.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Ukraine's Sevastopol Commemorates Holocaust
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- The Crimean city of Sevastopol on Sunday commemorated those 4,200 Crimean Jews and an residents of the Crimean Peninsula slaughtered by the Nazi German in 1942, Ukraine's Unian news agency said.
The rally-requiem was opened by a sad Jewish melody and continued with a prayer by Sevastopol's Chief Rabbi Benyamin Volf.
Representatives of local social and cultural organizations participated in the ceremony.
The Nazis gathered together Jews and other city residents at a Sevastopol's stadium in July 1942 and told them they would be taken out of the city for agricultural work. However, Nazis shot down all these people.
The slaughter occurred on July 12. The next days Nazis searched out for other Jews who ducked for cover.
Friday, 28 May 2010
2 War Veterans Relive Historic Day on Elbe
The 93-year-old American and the 86-year-old Russian had never laid eyes on each other until Thursday afternoon. But they greeted each other like old friends.
U.S. Sergeant William Duane Bush came to Moscow to raise a vodka toast with Soviet Colonel Grigory Prokopyev to a historic day in 1945 when their countries' armies linked up on the Elbe River in Germany to crush Nazi forces.
"We knew that there should be a meeting but didn't know when and where," Prokopyev said, recalling the union on April 25, 1945.
In the last days of World War II, Nazi Germany was caught between the Soviet army, marching from the east, and the Western Allies, coming from the West. The two armies met on the Elbe, near Torgau, Germany, in an event that became a symbol of brotherhood-in-arms between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Bush and Prokopyev didn't meet personally on the Elbe River. But 65 years later at the Moscow office of the Russian Committee of Veterans, they repeated what the Soviet and American soldiers did back at the Elbe: They exchanged presents, drank vodka and established friendship.
"Signs were agreed for the two armies: The Americans were to shoot with green flares, and the Soviets with red ones. But the American troops didn't happen to have any green flares that day," Prokopyev said.
The U.S. troops had to make an improvised American flag by painting red stripes on a white sheet and waving it above a Torgau castle, Prokopyev said. The Soviet side responded with red flares.
"It was a very emotional meeting. We wondered who those American guys were, and they were interested in knowing who we were," Prokopyev said. "We communicated with gestures, smiles and hugs. There were no photographers, no journalists, no interpreters, but thankfully we were well-supplied with alcohol."
Prokopyev recalled that the soldiers met on the bank of the river, where they spread their mantles and drank together.
The first toast was for victory — which came two weeks later — and the second was for the leaders: Josef Stalin and Harry Truman. "The Americans were good at drinking vodka. … We couldn't understand each other, but we were having fun," Prokopyev said.
At the end of the historic meeting, the troops exchanged ruble and dollar bank notes with their addresses scribbled on them, he said.
Bush, a native of Nebraska, said he wanted to drink vodka with the Russians again, this time at the office of the Russian Committee of Veterans. Like 65 years ago, he and Prokopyev raised their first toast to victory.
"I think it's great that you people remember the veterans. In our country, we are almost forgotten," Bush said.
Prokopyev, who attended a reunion of the troops on the Elbe in April, said only one American veteran had shown up this year.
"Most of the U.S. troops are too old to travel, most of them are over 90," said Nathan Hunt, a great-nephew of Bush who helped arrange his great-uncle's trip to Moscow.
"The Committee of Veterans was interested in arranging such a meeting because it might be the last-ever meeting of the American and Russian soldiers who were at the Elbe River," said Hunt, who chairs the national board of the Canada Eurasia Russia Business Association.
Bush, a sergeant in the 134 Regiment of the 35th Division, said he wore his uniform Thursday for the first time since the 1970s.
"This is my first visit to Russia and for the first time abroad since 1945," said Bush, who was accompanied by his family. "And I'm very glad to be here."
The two veterans were welcomed by Soviet Air Force Marshal Alexander Yefimov, 87, who presented them with special medals.
"It was a general victory, a mutual victory," Yefimov said of the end of World War II. "I think it was a war of our politicians. We soldiers had been friends, and we remained friends."
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Kyiv sees Victory Day parade of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian troops
On May 9, a parade of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian troops took place on Khreschatyk Street and Independence Square in Kyiv to mark the 65th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War
At 10:02, the Chief of the General Staff/Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ivan Svyda started his round to greet the troops participating in the parade.
At 10:15, the honor guard of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry brought to Independence Square the national flag of Ukraine and the Victory Flag. The standards of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ukrainian fronts, the Ukrainian Partisan Front, 60 battle flags of military units which liberated the territory of Ukraine and countries of Eastern, South-Eastern and Central Europe from the Nazi invaders were brought to Independence Square too.
At 10:20, the participants in the Victory Day military parade sang the national anthem of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych delivered his speech on the occasion of the holiday.
At about 10:30, started the parade of military vehicles, trucks, and cars dated back to the times of the Great Patriotic War. Troops wearing the military uniform of the Soviet Army of 1941-1945 marched on Khreschatyk Street and Independence Square too.
The column was led by a legendary T-34 tank with the symbol of the Victory Flag on its turret. The tank was followed by ZIS-5, GAZ-67, and Willis cars and M-72 motorcycle.
Infantry, tank-men, navy, partisans, and women soldiers marched on Khreschatyk Street then.
The ceremonial march of modern troops started at 10:45.
The drummer-company of the Kyiv Military School after Ivan Bohun opened the parade of the active forces.
The company was followed by officers carrying the Flag of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and flags of kinds of troops of Ukraine. The parade unit of the Novorossiysk-Kyiv regiment of the President of Ukraine and the 45th detached guard regiment of special forces of the airborne troops of Russia marched there after.
The Belarusian troops and officers of the National Defense University of Ukraine followed them.
Military orchestras closed the parade.
Participating in the Victory Day military parade were 2,664 troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other Ukrainian armed formations, 75 Russian and 130 Belarusian troops.
On May 9, 2010, Ukraine, as well as other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, celebrates the 65th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
At 10:02, the Chief of the General Staff/Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ivan Svyda started his round to greet the troops participating in the parade.
At 10:15, the honor guard of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry brought to Independence Square the national flag of Ukraine and the Victory Flag. The standards of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ukrainian fronts, the Ukrainian Partisan Front, 60 battle flags of military units which liberated the territory of Ukraine and countries of Eastern, South-Eastern and Central Europe from the Nazi invaders were brought to Independence Square too.
At 10:20, the participants in the Victory Day military parade sang the national anthem of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych delivered his speech on the occasion of the holiday.
At about 10:30, started the parade of military vehicles, trucks, and cars dated back to the times of the Great Patriotic War. Troops wearing the military uniform of the Soviet Army of 1941-1945 marched on Khreschatyk Street and Independence Square too.
The column was led by a legendary T-34 tank with the symbol of the Victory Flag on its turret. The tank was followed by ZIS-5, GAZ-67, and Willis cars and M-72 motorcycle.
Infantry, tank-men, navy, partisans, and women soldiers marched on Khreschatyk Street then.
The ceremonial march of modern troops started at 10:45.
The drummer-company of the Kyiv Military School after Ivan Bohun opened the parade of the active forces.
The company was followed by officers carrying the Flag of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and flags of kinds of troops of Ukraine. The parade unit of the Novorossiysk-Kyiv regiment of the President of Ukraine and the 45th detached guard regiment of special forces of the airborne troops of Russia marched there after.
The Belarusian troops and officers of the National Defense University of Ukraine followed them.
Military orchestras closed the parade.
Participating in the Victory Day military parade were 2,664 troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other Ukrainian armed formations, 75 Russian and 130 Belarusian troops.
On May 9, 2010, Ukraine, as well as other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, celebrates the 65th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Heads of Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian presidential administrations to celebrate Victory Day in Sevastopol
Heads of Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian presidential administrations are to hold a working meeting and take part in the celebration of the Victory Day on May 9 in Sevastopol.
The press service of the head of state told Interfax-Ukraine on Saturday that the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the Russian presidential administration Serhiy Naryshkin and head of the Belarusian presidential administration Vladimir Makei will lay flowers to the Glory stele at the Sapun-Gora memorial on Sunday. They will be presented at the parade and meet veterans on the Prymorsky Avenue.
"Heads of presidential administrations plan to discuss preparations for a meeting of Viktor Yanukovych, Dmitry Medvedev and Alexander Lukashenko on the border of the three states and improvement of cooperation between presidential administrations of the three countries at a working meeting,".
The press service of the head of state told Interfax-Ukraine on Saturday that the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the Russian presidential administration Serhiy Naryshkin and head of the Belarusian presidential administration Vladimir Makei will lay flowers to the Glory stele at the Sapun-Gora memorial on Sunday. They will be presented at the parade and meet veterans on the Prymorsky Avenue.
"Heads of presidential administrations plan to discuss preparations for a meeting of Viktor Yanukovych, Dmitry Medvedev and Alexander Lukashenko on the border of the three states and improvement of cooperation between presidential administrations of the three countries at a working meeting,".
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Thousands to rally in Moscow for May Day
Tens of thousands of Russian Communists, nationalists and supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling party prepared to rally on Saturday across Moscow to mark May Day.
Around 40,000 demonstrators are expected in Moscow despite drizzle and overcast skies, and Russian media reports put the nationwide total at around 1.7 million, from the Far East on the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Russia's Communist Party, the country's second biggest party, cherish May 1 -- known as International Workers Day in the Soviet era -- and large crowds of mostly pensioners are expected to hoist red banners and march through the capital.
The Communists, whose leaders avoid harsh criticism of Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev, will begin the rally calling for an immediate end to capitalism near the statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in the city centre.
Former chess master Garry Kasparov, who has become one of the Kremlin's harshest critics and heads a democratic, pro-western opposition movement, has called for a "Day of Wrath".
"The May 1 Day of wrath will be of a non-party, civil nature, and people of various political views can take part," a statement on site www.kasparov.ru said.
Though the Moscow government has allowed Russian nationalists calling for an end to immigration to rally, along with the Communists and two pro-Kremlin parties, Kasparov's party has been banned from protests.
His Other Russia movement relies mainly on street protests -- often broken up by police -- and online campaigning to get its message across.
Around 40,000 demonstrators are expected in Moscow despite drizzle and overcast skies, and Russian media reports put the nationwide total at around 1.7 million, from the Far East on the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Russia's Communist Party, the country's second biggest party, cherish May 1 -- known as International Workers Day in the Soviet era -- and large crowds of mostly pensioners are expected to hoist red banners and march through the capital.
The Communists, whose leaders avoid harsh criticism of Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev, will begin the rally calling for an immediate end to capitalism near the statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in the city centre.
Former chess master Garry Kasparov, who has become one of the Kremlin's harshest critics and heads a democratic, pro-western opposition movement, has called for a "Day of Wrath".
"The May 1 Day of wrath will be of a non-party, civil nature, and people of various political views can take part," a statement on site www.kasparov.ru said.
Though the Moscow government has allowed Russian nationalists calling for an end to immigration to rally, along with the Communists and two pro-Kremlin parties, Kasparov's party has been banned from protests.
His Other Russia movement relies mainly on street protests -- often broken up by police -- and online campaigning to get its message across.
Monday, 31 August 2009
Putin condemns Nazi-Soviet pact
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has condemned the Nazi-Soviet pact signed a week before Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland as "immoral".
In a piece for the Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza, he also expressed sorrow over the massacre of Polish army officers by Soviet forces at Katyn in 1940.
His words are seen as a bid to ease tensions with Poland over World War II.
But he also argued the Munich agreement signed by France and Britain wrecked efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance.
Mr Putin is among several statesmen attending a service in the Polish port city of Gdansk on Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of Poland's invasion.
"Our duty is to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past in Polish-Russian relations," said Mr Putin in the article, which was also published on the Russian government website.
"Our duty... is to turn the page and start to write a new one."
Memories of the 1939 pact - in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany essentially agreed to carve up Poland and the Baltic States between them - have long soured Moscow's relations with Poland and other east European states.
Within a month of the pact being signed, Soviet troops had invaded and occupied parts of eastern Poland.
"It is possible to condemn - and with good reason - the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact concluded in August 1939," wrote Mr Putin, referring to the two foreign ministers who signed the pact at the Kremlin.
It was clear today, he said, that any form of agreement with the Nazi regime was "unacceptable from the moral point of view and had no chance of being realised".
"But after all," he added, "a year earlier France and England signed a well-known agreement with Hitler in Munich, destroying all hope for the creation of a joint front for the fight against fascism."
The Munich Agreement of September 1938, widely seen as the low point of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland region.
Mr Putin added that Russian people understood "all too well the acute emotions of Poles in connection with Katyn".
In 1940 Soviet secret police massacred more than 21,000 army officers and intellectuals on Stalin's direct orders in the Katyn forest near the city of Smolensk.
Moscow only took responsibility for the killings in 1990, having previously blamed the massacre on the Nazis.
In a piece for the Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza, he also expressed sorrow over the massacre of Polish army officers by Soviet forces at Katyn in 1940.
His words are seen as a bid to ease tensions with Poland over World War II.
But he also argued the Munich agreement signed by France and Britain wrecked efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance.
Mr Putin is among several statesmen attending a service in the Polish port city of Gdansk on Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of Poland's invasion.
"Our duty is to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past in Polish-Russian relations," said Mr Putin in the article, which was also published on the Russian government website.
"Our duty... is to turn the page and start to write a new one."
Memories of the 1939 pact - in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany essentially agreed to carve up Poland and the Baltic States between them - have long soured Moscow's relations with Poland and other east European states.
Within a month of the pact being signed, Soviet troops had invaded and occupied parts of eastern Poland.
"It is possible to condemn - and with good reason - the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact concluded in August 1939," wrote Mr Putin, referring to the two foreign ministers who signed the pact at the Kremlin.
It was clear today, he said, that any form of agreement with the Nazi regime was "unacceptable from the moral point of view and had no chance of being realised".
"But after all," he added, "a year earlier France and England signed a well-known agreement with Hitler in Munich, destroying all hope for the creation of a joint front for the fight against fascism."
The Munich Agreement of September 1938, widely seen as the low point of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland region.
Mr Putin added that Russian people understood "all too well the acute emotions of Poles in connection with Katyn".
In 1940 Soviet secret police massacred more than 21,000 army officers and intellectuals on Stalin's direct orders in the Katyn forest near the city of Smolensk.
Moscow only took responsibility for the killings in 1990, having previously blamed the massacre on the Nazis.
Medvedev Blasts Ukraine, Baltic States Over WWII
MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday criticised Ukraine and the Baltic states for glorifying “Nazi accomplices”, speaking ahead of the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II.
“We are seeing some astounding trends,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Rossia state television channel. “Governments in the Baltic states and even Ukraine are now essentially pronouncing former Nazi accomplices to be their national heroes who fought for the liberation of their nations. “Of course, everyone knows what really happened, but everyone looks down in shame, so as to avoid souring relations.”Russia has repeatedly criticised former Soviet republics Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for seeking to rehabilitate anti-Communist groups that in some cases collaborated with the Nazis.Resolution: Medvedev also lashed out at a resolution passed in July by the parliamentary assembly of the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) which condemned both Nazism and Stalinism.Medvedev said the resolution had pronounced Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union “to be equally responsible for World War II” and said: “Now this, quite frankly, is a flat-out lie.” He appeared to be referring to the resolution’s assertion that both regimes brought about genocide and war crimes, and its call to establish a Europe-wide memorial day on August 23, the anniversary of a notorious Nazi-Soviet pact.Berlin and Moscow signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in 1939, paving the way for a joint invasion of Poland days later and Moscow’s seizure of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which remained Soviet republics until 1991.Despite the pact, the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941 and lost tens of millions of people in the conflict.Present-day Russia regards the Soviet role in World War II as heroic and bristles at attempts to equate the totalitarian systems of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.Tuesday marks the 70th anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, widely regarded as the start of World War II. Soviet troops invaded and occupied eastern parts of Poland less than three weeks later.
“We are seeing some astounding trends,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Rossia state television channel. “Governments in the Baltic states and even Ukraine are now essentially pronouncing former Nazi accomplices to be their national heroes who fought for the liberation of their nations. “Of course, everyone knows what really happened, but everyone looks down in shame, so as to avoid souring relations.”Russia has repeatedly criticised former Soviet republics Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for seeking to rehabilitate anti-Communist groups that in some cases collaborated with the Nazis.Resolution: Medvedev also lashed out at a resolution passed in July by the parliamentary assembly of the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) which condemned both Nazism and Stalinism.Medvedev said the resolution had pronounced Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union “to be equally responsible for World War II” and said: “Now this, quite frankly, is a flat-out lie.” He appeared to be referring to the resolution’s assertion that both regimes brought about genocide and war crimes, and its call to establish a Europe-wide memorial day on August 23, the anniversary of a notorious Nazi-Soviet pact.Berlin and Moscow signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in 1939, paving the way for a joint invasion of Poland days later and Moscow’s seizure of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which remained Soviet republics until 1991.Despite the pact, the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941 and lost tens of millions of people in the conflict.Present-day Russia regards the Soviet role in World War II as heroic and bristles at attempts to equate the totalitarian systems of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.Tuesday marks the 70th anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, widely regarded as the start of World War II. Soviet troops invaded and occupied eastern parts of Poland less than three weeks later.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
The fear factor
As Russia is commemorating the first anniversary of its short-lived war with Georgia, the press, expert community and politicians are asking the same questions: what were the war's real casualties? Was the war unavoidable? Could Russia, Georgia and the international community have behaved differently and thus avoided the tragedy? Can the war repeat itself?
Polls from Russia's leading opinion research centres reveal that the public's general appraisal of Russia's participation in the war as a painful but unavoidable step remains almost unchanged since last year. However, moral justification of the war does not translate into the general feeling of security. Until recently, most of those polled still considered the situation around the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia "tense" and "insecure" and did not exclude the possibility of another armed conflict in the area.
Polls by the All-Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM) conducted over the last five years show several main patterns among attitudes to events in Georgia. The first was one of relatively pacifistic and passive attitudes before Mikheil Saakashvili's coming to power in the year 2003. This attitude was gradually replaced by one of concern and sympathy for Ossetians as armed skirmishes on the border became widespread in 2004. The public even slipped into a jingoistic mood at the moment of the initial attack against South Ossetia's capital Tskhinval in August 2008, and the armed intervention of Russian troops was greeted with more or less general approval.
After the shock of the war was offset by the economic crisis in 2008-2009, the public remained convinced of the need to support South Ossetia, but enthusiasm for economic aid lessened somewhat. The options of political, diplomatic and military support became more popular than direct cash transfers and state-financed construction projects.
According to a poll conducted by VTsIOM among 1600 respondents at 140 locations, 60 per cent of the respondents say Russia "did the right thing" when it got involved in the fighting and only 6 per cent hold that Russia was "wrong". The most widespread justification for the war was humanitarian: people most often cited the opinion that without Russian intervention, "South Ossetians would have been slaughtered".
According to a poll conducted by another respected Russian agency, the Levada Centre, 47 per cent of Russians now consider the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia "tense", a drop of 7 per cent from last year. In the Levada poll, 54 percent of Russians think that Russian troops ought to stay in South Ossetia. Only 24 per cent think that troops should be withdrawn, with 22 per cent undecided.
The war made many Russians reconsider their attitudes toward the conflicting principles of state sovereignty and the right of nations to self-determination. The share of people supporting the right of national self-determination grew from 19 per cent in 2004 to 35 percent now, obviously reflecting popular feeling of compassion for South Ossetians. Another 34 percent think that the right of nations to self-determination should be respected "in certain circumstances" and that cases like this should be reviewed "on individual basis".
Yet people are not always sure what Russia and South Ossetia should do with their newly formed alliance and South Ossetia's de facto independence from Georgia. One thing is certain: Russians do not want to see South Ossetia a part of Georgia again, as only 3 percent of respondents supported this solution.
Reactions of politicians to the events of last summer reflect a certain vagueness of public perceptions. "I have no doubt that Russia had to get involved in the conflict," said Sergei Mitrokhin, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party. "I don't think it was right to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries [but] I have no doubt, and international experts confirm, that it was Saakashvili who organised the provocation."
As usual in Russian history, the question, "Who is to blame?" is answered much more eagerly than the question, "What is to be done?"
Polls from Russia's leading opinion research centres reveal that the public's general appraisal of Russia's participation in the war as a painful but unavoidable step remains almost unchanged since last year. However, moral justification of the war does not translate into the general feeling of security. Until recently, most of those polled still considered the situation around the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia "tense" and "insecure" and did not exclude the possibility of another armed conflict in the area.
Polls by the All-Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM) conducted over the last five years show several main patterns among attitudes to events in Georgia. The first was one of relatively pacifistic and passive attitudes before Mikheil Saakashvili's coming to power in the year 2003. This attitude was gradually replaced by one of concern and sympathy for Ossetians as armed skirmishes on the border became widespread in 2004. The public even slipped into a jingoistic mood at the moment of the initial attack against South Ossetia's capital Tskhinval in August 2008, and the armed intervention of Russian troops was greeted with more or less general approval.
After the shock of the war was offset by the economic crisis in 2008-2009, the public remained convinced of the need to support South Ossetia, but enthusiasm for economic aid lessened somewhat. The options of political, diplomatic and military support became more popular than direct cash transfers and state-financed construction projects.
According to a poll conducted by VTsIOM among 1600 respondents at 140 locations, 60 per cent of the respondents say Russia "did the right thing" when it got involved in the fighting and only 6 per cent hold that Russia was "wrong". The most widespread justification for the war was humanitarian: people most often cited the opinion that without Russian intervention, "South Ossetians would have been slaughtered".
According to a poll conducted by another respected Russian agency, the Levada Centre, 47 per cent of Russians now consider the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia "tense", a drop of 7 per cent from last year. In the Levada poll, 54 percent of Russians think that Russian troops ought to stay in South Ossetia. Only 24 per cent think that troops should be withdrawn, with 22 per cent undecided.
The war made many Russians reconsider their attitudes toward the conflicting principles of state sovereignty and the right of nations to self-determination. The share of people supporting the right of national self-determination grew from 19 per cent in 2004 to 35 percent now, obviously reflecting popular feeling of compassion for South Ossetians. Another 34 percent think that the right of nations to self-determination should be respected "in certain circumstances" and that cases like this should be reviewed "on individual basis".
Yet people are not always sure what Russia and South Ossetia should do with their newly formed alliance and South Ossetia's de facto independence from Georgia. One thing is certain: Russians do not want to see South Ossetia a part of Georgia again, as only 3 percent of respondents supported this solution.
Reactions of politicians to the events of last summer reflect a certain vagueness of public perceptions. "I have no doubt that Russia had to get involved in the conflict," said Sergei Mitrokhin, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party. "I don't think it was right to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries [but] I have no doubt, and international experts confirm, that it was Saakashvili who organised the provocation."
As usual in Russian history, the question, "Who is to blame?" is answered much more eagerly than the question, "What is to be done?"
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Biden, Georgia, Ukraine And War
KIEV, Ukraine -- Officially, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Ukraine and Georgia this week to balance President Barack Obama’s warming relations with Russia and reassure Kiev and Tbilisi that Washington still supports their aspirations to join NATO (but in slow motion, please). Unofficially, his mission is to try to prevent another war in an unstable region that Russia regards as its backyard.
If that sounds over-dramatic, it’s not because hostilities look imminent in either country. Georgia is licking its wounds from last year’s August war over South Ossetia. Ukraine is mired in domestic power struggles ahead of a presidential election next January.And Moscow, while determined to reassert its influence in the former Soviet republics, has enough on its hands with the severe economic fallout from the financial crisis. A major Russian military exercise in the region was well flagged in advance and passed off without leaving raised troop levels or unusual military activity.The European Union monitoring mission deployed in Georgia after the conflict to build confidence reports that the situation on the boundaries of the Russian-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is broadly calm, with regular talks and a hotline between the Russian command and the EU team used to defuse occasional incidents.The Georgian government has agreed with the EU to limit the activities of its army and police force in the area, while the Russians have replaced troops in South Ossetia with professional border guards. That reduces the risk of an incident over smuggling or stray cattle escalating into armed conflict. Georgia wants to involve the United States in the monitoring mission.The EU has also diplomatically delayed the publication of a report it is compiling on the origins of the war until after next month’s first anniversary.However, both Moscow and Tbilisi consider there is unfinished business. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not hide his desire to get rid of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and reverse the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia and the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine that overthrew post-Soviet rulers more pliant towards the Kremlin.Saakashvili is not resigned to the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, nor to an indefinite wait for NATO membership. In Ukraine, there is the slow-burning fuse of a 2017 deadline for the closure of Russia’s main Black Sea naval base in the Crimea, and the status of the Russian-speaking majority in that region, some of whom have been given Russian passports. And there are frequent disputes over Russian gas supplies.Biden, a forthright but seasoned foreign policy specialist, has a delicate task to calibrate his public and private messages in Kiev and Tbilisi. The Obama administration has put the explosive issue of Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership on the back-burner, recognising that it is a red rag to Russia and deeply divisive in the alliance (as well as in Ukraine). Washington neo-conservatives view this as appeasement, but it is common sense.Biden needs to reaffirm the West’s commitment to the territorial integrity and political support for democracy in both countries, while privately urging Saakashvili to focus on democratic governance reforms at home (which the president anticipated in a broadcast on Monday) and avoid provocations with the Russians.The Vice President needs to privately tell Ukraine’s divided leaders that their feuding and failure to tackle corruption are doing more to destroy their country’s prospects than any Kremlin-backed destabilisation.That leaves some hard strategic questions unanswered. What would Washington do if an incident in Abkhazia or South Ossetia rekindled armed conflict between Russia and Georgia? How would the United States and the EU respond if unrest erupted in another potential flashpoint, such as Moldova, after a fiercely contested parliament election on July 29? What could the West do if Russia stepped up issuing passports to Russian-speakers in Crimea?The Obama administration may have chosen to emphasise common ground and mutual interests such as nuclear arms control in improving relations with Russia, but the contest over what Moscow calls its “near abroad” is far from over.
If that sounds over-dramatic, it’s not because hostilities look imminent in either country. Georgia is licking its wounds from last year’s August war over South Ossetia. Ukraine is mired in domestic power struggles ahead of a presidential election next January.And Moscow, while determined to reassert its influence in the former Soviet republics, has enough on its hands with the severe economic fallout from the financial crisis. A major Russian military exercise in the region was well flagged in advance and passed off without leaving raised troop levels or unusual military activity.The European Union monitoring mission deployed in Georgia after the conflict to build confidence reports that the situation on the boundaries of the Russian-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is broadly calm, with regular talks and a hotline between the Russian command and the EU team used to defuse occasional incidents.The Georgian government has agreed with the EU to limit the activities of its army and police force in the area, while the Russians have replaced troops in South Ossetia with professional border guards. That reduces the risk of an incident over smuggling or stray cattle escalating into armed conflict. Georgia wants to involve the United States in the monitoring mission.The EU has also diplomatically delayed the publication of a report it is compiling on the origins of the war until after next month’s first anniversary.However, both Moscow and Tbilisi consider there is unfinished business. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not hide his desire to get rid of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and reverse the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia and the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine that overthrew post-Soviet rulers more pliant towards the Kremlin.Saakashvili is not resigned to the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, nor to an indefinite wait for NATO membership. In Ukraine, there is the slow-burning fuse of a 2017 deadline for the closure of Russia’s main Black Sea naval base in the Crimea, and the status of the Russian-speaking majority in that region, some of whom have been given Russian passports. And there are frequent disputes over Russian gas supplies.Biden, a forthright but seasoned foreign policy specialist, has a delicate task to calibrate his public and private messages in Kiev and Tbilisi. The Obama administration has put the explosive issue of Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership on the back-burner, recognising that it is a red rag to Russia and deeply divisive in the alliance (as well as in Ukraine). Washington neo-conservatives view this as appeasement, but it is common sense.Biden needs to reaffirm the West’s commitment to the territorial integrity and political support for democracy in both countries, while privately urging Saakashvili to focus on democratic governance reforms at home (which the president anticipated in a broadcast on Monday) and avoid provocations with the Russians.The Vice President needs to privately tell Ukraine’s divided leaders that their feuding and failure to tackle corruption are doing more to destroy their country’s prospects than any Kremlin-backed destabilisation.That leaves some hard strategic questions unanswered. What would Washington do if an incident in Abkhazia or South Ossetia rekindled armed conflict between Russia and Georgia? How would the United States and the EU respond if unrest erupted in another potential flashpoint, such as Moldova, after a fiercely contested parliament election on July 29? What could the West do if Russia stepped up issuing passports to Russian-speakers in Crimea?The Obama administration may have chosen to emphasise common ground and mutual interests such as nuclear arms control in improving relations with Russia, but the contest over what Moscow calls its “near abroad” is far from over.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
The Heart of Hitler’s Darkness: Ukraine
Nazi Germany’s greatest war crime is the Holocaust, of course, but the genocides against Ukrainians and Belarussians constitute a close second. And yet, while the Holocaust is common knowledge, few know much about the extermination of Ukrainians and Belarussians —and Germans may know about this least of all. The tragedy of these peoples’ suffering in the war has been compounded by the world’s almost complete ignorance and indifference.
That lamentable condition may be about to change, if only among professional historians. In a ground-breaking article that was published in the July 16 issue of The New York Review of Books, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder describes in excruciating detail just how Nazi policy was directed at exterminating first the Jews and then the Slavs. Since Belarus and Ukraine were occupied for almost four years, they suffered enormous population losses.
According to Snyder, “Half of the population of Soviet Belarus was either killed or forcibly displaced during World War II: nothing of the kind can be said of any other European country. … The peoples of Ukraine and Belarus, Jews above all but not only, suffered the most, since these lands were both part of the Soviet Union during the terrible 1930s and subject to the worst of the German repressions in the 1940s. If Europe was, as Mark Mazower put it, a dark continent, Ukraine and Belarus were the heart of darkness.”
The devastation that affected both countries is even greater when one considers their experiences in the Stalinist 1930s and in World War I. Ukraine lost at least 3 million people in the genocidal famine of 1933. Both countries also served as the main killing fields of the Eastern Front during World War I (1914-18), the Civil War in Russia (1918-21) and the Polish-Russian War (1919-21).
According to a recent study of the Moscow-based Institute of Demography, Ukraine suffered close to 15 million “excess deaths” between 1914 and 1948:
• 1.3 million during World War I
• 2.3 million during the Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War, and the famine of the early 1920s
• 4 million during the genocidal famine of 1933
• 300,000 during the Great Terror and the repressions in Western Ukraine
• 6.5 million during World War II
• 400,000 during the post-war famine and the destruction of the Ukrainian nationalist movement
Ukraine and Belarus experienced nearly 40 consecutive years of relentless death and destruction, starting in 1914 and ending with Stalin’s death in 1953. Although Soviet Russia bears a great deal of responsibility for the killing, the lion’s share falls on Germany.
And yet Germany, which so assiduously remembers its crimes during the Holocaust, has still to build one monument to the millions of Belarussians and Ukrainians its armies killed in the 20th century.
How can this blindness be explained?
Partly, it’s a function of ignorance. The German media devote almost no coverage to Belarus and Ukraine. It is also partly because Germans just don’t “see” these countries.
Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll’s 1949 novel “The Train Was Punctual” provides a good example of this cultural mindset. The novel describes a young German soldier’s return to the front in southern Ukraine. As he travels eastward from his furlough, he traces his route on a map and “visits” various cities, towns and villages in Ukraine. He speaks of Poles and Jews and Russians in great detail, but he doesn’t mention Ukrainians once, even though they formed the vast majority of the country and were the people whose farms he and his comrades probably plundered on a daily basis. Imagine a trip through the American South without a single reference to the black population.
But why don’t Germans “see” people who are so manifestly there? To some degree it’s because the “Untermenschen have remained Untermenschen” — economically underdeveloped peoples with silly cultural practices who either can’t get their political act together (Ukraine) or are proud to be Europe’s only dictatorship (Belarus).
The more important explanation is that German elites have traditionally viewed their neighbors to its east through the prism of great-power politics. Russia is big and strong and therefore demands respect. Its ruler may be a dictator, and its policies may be neo-imperialist, but these matters are easily overlooked. Former German Chancellor Gerard Schröder still managed to describe former President Vladimir Putin as a “true democrat” at precisely the time that Putin was doing all he could to crush Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Poland may be prone to polnische Wirtschaft (the derisive term for Poles’ inability to do things efficiently), but they’re right next door and have to be dealt with.
That lamentable condition may be about to change, if only among professional historians. In a ground-breaking article that was published in the July 16 issue of The New York Review of Books, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder describes in excruciating detail just how Nazi policy was directed at exterminating first the Jews and then the Slavs. Since Belarus and Ukraine were occupied for almost four years, they suffered enormous population losses.
According to Snyder, “Half of the population of Soviet Belarus was either killed or forcibly displaced during World War II: nothing of the kind can be said of any other European country. … The peoples of Ukraine and Belarus, Jews above all but not only, suffered the most, since these lands were both part of the Soviet Union during the terrible 1930s and subject to the worst of the German repressions in the 1940s. If Europe was, as Mark Mazower put it, a dark continent, Ukraine and Belarus were the heart of darkness.”
The devastation that affected both countries is even greater when one considers their experiences in the Stalinist 1930s and in World War I. Ukraine lost at least 3 million people in the genocidal famine of 1933. Both countries also served as the main killing fields of the Eastern Front during World War I (1914-18), the Civil War in Russia (1918-21) and the Polish-Russian War (1919-21).
According to a recent study of the Moscow-based Institute of Demography, Ukraine suffered close to 15 million “excess deaths” between 1914 and 1948:
• 1.3 million during World War I
• 2.3 million during the Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War, and the famine of the early 1920s
• 4 million during the genocidal famine of 1933
• 300,000 during the Great Terror and the repressions in Western Ukraine
• 6.5 million during World War II
• 400,000 during the post-war famine and the destruction of the Ukrainian nationalist movement
Ukraine and Belarus experienced nearly 40 consecutive years of relentless death and destruction, starting in 1914 and ending with Stalin’s death in 1953. Although Soviet Russia bears a great deal of responsibility for the killing, the lion’s share falls on Germany.
And yet Germany, which so assiduously remembers its crimes during the Holocaust, has still to build one monument to the millions of Belarussians and Ukrainians its armies killed in the 20th century.
How can this blindness be explained?
Partly, it’s a function of ignorance. The German media devote almost no coverage to Belarus and Ukraine. It is also partly because Germans just don’t “see” these countries.
Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll’s 1949 novel “The Train Was Punctual” provides a good example of this cultural mindset. The novel describes a young German soldier’s return to the front in southern Ukraine. As he travels eastward from his furlough, he traces his route on a map and “visits” various cities, towns and villages in Ukraine. He speaks of Poles and Jews and Russians in great detail, but he doesn’t mention Ukrainians once, even though they formed the vast majority of the country and were the people whose farms he and his comrades probably plundered on a daily basis. Imagine a trip through the American South without a single reference to the black population.
But why don’t Germans “see” people who are so manifestly there? To some degree it’s because the “Untermenschen have remained Untermenschen” — economically underdeveloped peoples with silly cultural practices who either can’t get their political act together (Ukraine) or are proud to be Europe’s only dictatorship (Belarus).
The more important explanation is that German elites have traditionally viewed their neighbors to its east through the prism of great-power politics. Russia is big and strong and therefore demands respect. Its ruler may be a dictator, and its policies may be neo-imperialist, but these matters are easily overlooked. Former German Chancellor Gerard Schröder still managed to describe former President Vladimir Putin as a “true democrat” at precisely the time that Putin was doing all he could to crush Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Poland may be prone to polnische Wirtschaft (the derisive term for Poles’ inability to do things efficiently), but they’re right next door and have to be dealt with.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Nazi-Run Camp Where Demjanjuk Allegedly Worked
BERLIN, Germany -- The Sobibor extermination camp, where retired autoworker John Demjanjuk is alleged to have served as a guard, was built by Nazi officers in occupied Poland in 1942 and razed 18 months later.
In the time it was operational, some 250,000 Jews, Gypsies and political prisoners were murdered in its gas chambers.The first trains carrying mostly Austrian, Czech and Polish Jews from the nearby Lublin Ghetto began arriving in May 1942. SS officers forced the men, women and children to leave their belongings aboard, undress and report to the what they were told were "washing rooms" — the gas chambers.After the doors closed, gas from a diesel engine was pumped into the room to suffocate those inside, killing up to 1,300 people at once. Camp inmates removed gold teeth, valuables and cut off hair from the bodies before burning the corpses.Later, guards also killed those inmates forced to work at the camp, located near Nazi-occupied Poland's eastern border with Ukraine.Franz Stangl ran the camp for the first six months, overseeing some 30 SS officers as well as Ukrainian guards. Before arriving at Sobibor, Stangl headed a euthanasia center in Austria where Nazis sent physically and mentally disabled people to be killed. He was later put in charge of the Treblinka death camp.In October 1943, Sobibor prisoners staged an uprising, and hundreds successfully escaped the camp. Days later, SS head Heinrich Himmler ordered guards to tear down the camp and plant the area over with pine trees.In 1965, a monument to the victims of Sobibor was built on the site of the former camp and the ashes of those killed were gathered together in a symbolic mound-mausoleum.A museum was built on the site in 1993.Sobibor, like Auschwitz, was one six extermination camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland, along with Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek and Treblinka.
In the time it was operational, some 250,000 Jews, Gypsies and political prisoners were murdered in its gas chambers.The first trains carrying mostly Austrian, Czech and Polish Jews from the nearby Lublin Ghetto began arriving in May 1942. SS officers forced the men, women and children to leave their belongings aboard, undress and report to the what they were told were "washing rooms" — the gas chambers.After the doors closed, gas from a diesel engine was pumped into the room to suffocate those inside, killing up to 1,300 people at once. Camp inmates removed gold teeth, valuables and cut off hair from the bodies before burning the corpses.Later, guards also killed those inmates forced to work at the camp, located near Nazi-occupied Poland's eastern border with Ukraine.Franz Stangl ran the camp for the first six months, overseeing some 30 SS officers as well as Ukrainian guards. Before arriving at Sobibor, Stangl headed a euthanasia center in Austria where Nazis sent physically and mentally disabled people to be killed. He was later put in charge of the Treblinka death camp.In October 1943, Sobibor prisoners staged an uprising, and hundreds successfully escaped the camp. Days later, SS head Heinrich Himmler ordered guards to tear down the camp and plant the area over with pine trees.In 1965, a monument to the victims of Sobibor was built on the site of the former camp and the ashes of those killed were gathered together in a symbolic mound-mausoleum.A museum was built on the site in 1993.Sobibor, like Auschwitz, was one six extermination camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland, along with Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek and Treblinka.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Victory Day In Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine -- History’s arguments over who did what to whom during World War II will probably never end. But as the 64th anniversary of the Allied Victory is celebrated, this weekend, the world would do well to remember that no country suffered more than Ukraine to achieve this awful triumph.
An estimated eight million Ukrainians were killed during the war, civilians and soldiers, and another two million went in exile abroad or were jailed. In all, a quarter of the nation’s people were lost, industries were left in ruins, cities and villages destroyed.The surrender of Nazi Germany did not liberate Ukrainians from all their oppressors. Ukrainians still had a murderous Josef Stalin to contend with until his death in 1953. They had to wait until 1991 for the tottering Soviet Union to collapse.Living on the main battleground between Hitler and Stalin, the 20th century’s worst mass murderers, forced awful choices on Ukrainians.Millions sided with Stalin; a much smaller number went with Hitler. But the dominant emotions of most Ukrainians were probably survival, the desire to be rid of both dictators and a deep longing to build an independent nation.Anyone who played a role in combat is well into their 80s now. Most of these survivors were low-level soldiers or cannon fodder for the enemy.While war criminals deserve punishment to this day, Ukraine’s leaders would do well to take a more statesman-like approach to these lingering disputes while pressing for a full accounting of historical events. They should look for ways to strengthen national unity, rather than lead the name-calling bandwagon over who was a “Nazi” or a “Communist” during World War II.Let us also hope that no nation’s people will have to choose again between a Hitler or a Stalin.
An estimated eight million Ukrainians were killed during the war, civilians and soldiers, and another two million went in exile abroad or were jailed. In all, a quarter of the nation’s people were lost, industries were left in ruins, cities and villages destroyed.The surrender of Nazi Germany did not liberate Ukrainians from all their oppressors. Ukrainians still had a murderous Josef Stalin to contend with until his death in 1953. They had to wait until 1991 for the tottering Soviet Union to collapse.Living on the main battleground between Hitler and Stalin, the 20th century’s worst mass murderers, forced awful choices on Ukrainians.Millions sided with Stalin; a much smaller number went with Hitler. But the dominant emotions of most Ukrainians were probably survival, the desire to be rid of both dictators and a deep longing to build an independent nation.Anyone who played a role in combat is well into their 80s now. Most of these survivors were low-level soldiers or cannon fodder for the enemy.While war criminals deserve punishment to this day, Ukraine’s leaders would do well to take a more statesman-like approach to these lingering disputes while pressing for a full accounting of historical events. They should look for ways to strengthen national unity, rather than lead the name-calling bandwagon over who was a “Nazi” or a “Communist” during World War II.Let us also hope that no nation’s people will have to choose again between a Hitler or a Stalin.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
All quiet on the Chechen front
The end of anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya is either a happy conclusion to a bitter conflict or a final concession to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov as he cements his position as feudal chief of the fractious territory. Or perhaps it's simply an anti-crisis measure aimed at plugging a fiscal black hole as the petrodollars start to dry up.
Russian papers took a mixed view of the government's decision to end the raft of legal, economic and travel restrictions on Chechnya and withdraw federal forces charged with stamping out terrorism and insurrection.
In Izvestia, it was down to cold, hard cash. Anton Zaritovsky said his contacts "indirectly confirmed" that the end was partly "to save budget funds", while providing a powerful stimulus to the local economy.
But the figures didn't add up for other papers, with Nezavisimaya Gazeta pointing out the financial savings but warning: "The fight between local clans for budget money is another matter. The situation here is much more serious."
The happiest faces outside of the Kadyrov family were to be found on Russia Today, the English-language TV channel, which hailed a "great success" for Kadyrov and an "indicator of stability" in the republic.
Others were alarmed at the increase in power for Kadyrov - who recently told a BBC reporter he had wanted to pursue a blood feud against assassinated ex-warlord Sulim Yamadayev. Vadim Rechkalov wrote in Moskovsky Komsomolets: "Since midnight on 16 April someone who cannot be trusted has become the sole master of Chechnya. If he was an enemy, everything would be much simpler. But Ramzan is a Hero of Russia and a dangerous friend."
Former Russian soldier Arkady Babchenko, writing in Britain's Guardian newspaper, criticised it as a "purely populist" move, and warned that for Chechnya's population Kadyrov's "word is law". That may be news to the rebels who were reportedly planning a new wave of assaults on Grozny within days of the end of the military operation.
Seaside shenanigans
The Sochi election campaign turned into the final straight, with the handful of remaining riders jolted by claims of sabotage as the polling booths came into view.
According to local security chief Alexander Birillo, an unnamed candidate had invited "bandits" from far-flung parts of Russia to stir up trouble in the final days before Sunday's vote, RIA Novosti reported.
Most people suspected it was an attempt to nobble Boris Nemtsov, seen as the only opposition to United Russia's Anatoly Pakhomov.
Naturally Nemtsov turned down the Dick Dastardly role in this particular Wacky Race, urging Birillo to go and catch the bad guys instead of issuing media statements. Those so-called "bandits", he said, were electoral monitors called from out of town because the locals had been "intimidated".
And, with Kommersant reporting that Pakhomov was in line for about 60 per cent of the vote, Nemtsov - tipped to get 25 per cent - failed in his efforts to remove the acting mayor from the race with a protest to the courts about excessive campaign spending.
At the same time FSB agents uncovered a Georgian spy in the Black Sea resort. Mamuka Maisuradze will be expelled from Russia.
Russian papers took a mixed view of the government's decision to end the raft of legal, economic and travel restrictions on Chechnya and withdraw federal forces charged with stamping out terrorism and insurrection.
In Izvestia, it was down to cold, hard cash. Anton Zaritovsky said his contacts "indirectly confirmed" that the end was partly "to save budget funds", while providing a powerful stimulus to the local economy.
But the figures didn't add up for other papers, with Nezavisimaya Gazeta pointing out the financial savings but warning: "The fight between local clans for budget money is another matter. The situation here is much more serious."
The happiest faces outside of the Kadyrov family were to be found on Russia Today, the English-language TV channel, which hailed a "great success" for Kadyrov and an "indicator of stability" in the republic.
Others were alarmed at the increase in power for Kadyrov - who recently told a BBC reporter he had wanted to pursue a blood feud against assassinated ex-warlord Sulim Yamadayev. Vadim Rechkalov wrote in Moskovsky Komsomolets: "Since midnight on 16 April someone who cannot be trusted has become the sole master of Chechnya. If he was an enemy, everything would be much simpler. But Ramzan is a Hero of Russia and a dangerous friend."
Former Russian soldier Arkady Babchenko, writing in Britain's Guardian newspaper, criticised it as a "purely populist" move, and warned that for Chechnya's population Kadyrov's "word is law". That may be news to the rebels who were reportedly planning a new wave of assaults on Grozny within days of the end of the military operation.
Seaside shenanigans
The Sochi election campaign turned into the final straight, with the handful of remaining riders jolted by claims of sabotage as the polling booths came into view.
According to local security chief Alexander Birillo, an unnamed candidate had invited "bandits" from far-flung parts of Russia to stir up trouble in the final days before Sunday's vote, RIA Novosti reported.
Most people suspected it was an attempt to nobble Boris Nemtsov, seen as the only opposition to United Russia's Anatoly Pakhomov.
Naturally Nemtsov turned down the Dick Dastardly role in this particular Wacky Race, urging Birillo to go and catch the bad guys instead of issuing media statements. Those so-called "bandits", he said, were electoral monitors called from out of town because the locals had been "intimidated".
And, with Kommersant reporting that Pakhomov was in line for about 60 per cent of the vote, Nemtsov - tipped to get 25 per cent - failed in his efforts to remove the acting mayor from the race with a protest to the courts about excessive campaign spending.
At the same time FSB agents uncovered a Georgian spy in the Black Sea resort. Mamuka Maisuradze will be expelled from Russia.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Russian MP Slams Decision To Remove WWII Statue In West Ukraine
MOSCOW, Russia -- A senior Russian lawmaker blasted on Friday the decision by a regional parliament in western Ukraine to remove a Soviet-era statue to the Red Army soldier.
The assembly in Lvov passed a decision on Thursday to remove the statue from a square in Stryi and place it in a museum of Soviet totalitarianism, saying the statue had no historical or cultural value.Lyubov Sliska, deputy speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, said such decisions could only be made by a "criminal regime.""They have long turned a blind eye to Nazi marches, portraying those who massacred people as heroes," Sliska said, adding the decision revealed lawmakers' disrespect for the soldiers who liberated Ukraine.Lawmakers in the fiercely nationalistic Lvov region argued on Thursday that such statues - the monument depicts a soldier holding a sword in one hand and a child in the other - are scattered across Ukraine.Local communists said on Friday they would protest against the decision, which they said ran counter to a law making authorities responsible for the preservation of World War II monuments.Western Ukraine was the stronghold of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist group initially set up to protect ethnic Ukrainians from Poles, engaged in guerrilla fighting with Soviet troops, collaborating with Nazi Germans during the war.President Viktor Yushchenko has sought recognition for the group, and a statue to one of its founders, Stepan Bandera, was unveiled in Lvov in 2007.The relocation of the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet-era monument to the Red Army, in Estonia in 2007 sparked violent protests from ethnic Russians. One person was killed and several dozen injured in clashes with police. Moscow issued strong protests with some lawmakers calling for cutting diplomatic ties with Tallinn.
The assembly in Lvov passed a decision on Thursday to remove the statue from a square in Stryi and place it in a museum of Soviet totalitarianism, saying the statue had no historical or cultural value.Lyubov Sliska, deputy speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, said such decisions could only be made by a "criminal regime.""They have long turned a blind eye to Nazi marches, portraying those who massacred people as heroes," Sliska said, adding the decision revealed lawmakers' disrespect for the soldiers who liberated Ukraine.Lawmakers in the fiercely nationalistic Lvov region argued on Thursday that such statues - the monument depicts a soldier holding a sword in one hand and a child in the other - are scattered across Ukraine.Local communists said on Friday they would protest against the decision, which they said ran counter to a law making authorities responsible for the preservation of World War II monuments.Western Ukraine was the stronghold of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist group initially set up to protect ethnic Ukrainians from Poles, engaged in guerrilla fighting with Soviet troops, collaborating with Nazi Germans during the war.President Viktor Yushchenko has sought recognition for the group, and a statue to one of its founders, Stepan Bandera, was unveiled in Lvov in 2007.The relocation of the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet-era monument to the Red Army, in Estonia in 2007 sparked violent protests from ethnic Russians. One person was killed and several dozen injured in clashes with police. Moscow issued strong protests with some lawmakers calling for cutting diplomatic ties with Tallinn.
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