Category Archives: news

Biden & Yushchenko visit Holodomor memorial, talk women and churches at a bar and split a Coke (Updated)

Yesterday after landing in Kyiv, US VP Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko went to a Holodomor memorial to lay candles and plant trees. After that they headed to the pub where they had a traditional American Coca-Cola. While Yushchenko was talking about Ukraine’s beautiful churches, Biden was overheard saying:

I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That’s my observation.

Full article is available at Ukrainian Pravda (now with an English Translation via Google)

Update: The NY Daily News has posted their top 10 hottest Ukrainian women, but I think they have missed TV actress and Ivano-Frankivsk native Oksana Lada who’s been on the Sopranos (that had a little Ukrainian in the final episodes), 30 Rock and CSI Miami.

US VP Joe Biden arrives in Ukraine

Photo: Biden in Ukraine, Dipping Bread into Salt

From the Washington Post:

KIEV, July 20 – US Vice-President Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine on Monday to reassure its leaders Washington has not forgotten the ex-Soviet republic following President Barack Obama’s push to improve ties with neighboring Russia.

…

"This is the balancing trip by Biden to Obama’s Moscow visit but the balance is very different to that under the Bush administration," said Christopher Granville of Trusted Sources, an emerging market research firm in London.

"It is the vice-president making the balancing trip and not the president, after all."

…

Biden is expected to signal support for Ukraine but the Obama administration is less strident than Bush in backing Yushchenko’s NATO bid.

At the bottom of the article it lists additional reporting by a Moscow correspondent and you can see that reflected in some of the suspicious wording in the article:

A snap poll by the English-language Kyiv Post found that 66 percent of respondents wanted Biden to tell Ukraine’s leaders: "Get your act together" while only 5 percent suggested "Resist Russia with all your might."

The author uses a newspaper website poll (as opposed to a more credible Angus Reid poll) to downplay the Russian threat.

President Viktor Yushchenko, vaulted to power in the 2004 Orange Revolution, has angered Moscow with an aggressive bid for Ukraine to join NATO and his promotion of Ukrainian nationalism.

There’s been a recent trend by Russian media to erase the Orange Revolution – labeling it ‘so-called’ as to downplay its importance and inferring Yushchenko was somehow placed into leadership by a coup as opposed to the reality that was a re-vote from a rigged election. And nationalism is just media slang for xenophobia.

Anyways, we’ll see what Biden does in Ukraine and on Wednesday he leaves for Georgia.

Update – UNIAN reports on what Biden is doing in Ukraine:

As UNIAN reported earlier, during the visit it is planned that Joe Biden will meet with President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko.

It is expected that V. Yushchenko and J. Biden will honour a memory of victims of Holodomor (the Great Famine) in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

It is also planned that J. Biden will deliver  a speech before the representatives of business circles of the Ukraine.

Lennikov and the KGB – what the media does not want you to know

Last week we gave you the facts about the Lennikov case so you can be informed while left-wing media snuffs out important details in an attempt to keep this KGB spy in Canada, defying the law and a judge order deportation. Some outlets are saying that he feared for his life and was conscripted into the KGB, while claiming he committed no crime acting as an agent for a spy agency that claimed tens of millions of lives in enslavement and murder. But what the media is telling you is quite different than what was testified before a court (emphasis mine):

For anyone interested in this case, I encourage you to read the Federal Court judgment against Lennikov, which at least provides the bare-bones facts. You can find it here:

http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/en/2007/2007fc43/2007fc43.html

You’ll find a lot of intriguing information there, including:

Lennikov did not fear for his personal safety if he refused to join the KGB, testifying that “he did not really fear for his life, but more for his career propects” if he turned the job down.

– His career did prosper after taking the job, as Lennikov was twice promoted within the KGB, rising to the ranks of Senior Lieutenant and Captain.

Continue reading Lennikov and the KGB – what the media does not want you to know

Ukrainians ‘nasty anti-Semites,’ Ignatieff quoted in flyer

From Winnipeg Free Press

Michael Ignatieff once viewed Ukrainians as "nasty anti-Semites," according to a flyer distributed by a Conservative cabinet minister.

Vic Toews has resurrected allegations the Liberal leader is anti-Ukrainian in a flyer sent to communities in his Manitoba riding with large Ukrainian populations.

From the Winnipeg Sun:

Toews, whose parents and grandparents were born in Ukraine, said yesterday the Grit leader’s written comments are shocking — particularly in light of Canada’s large Ukrainian population.

"How could he call them anti-Semites, and on that basis say they shouldn’t have their own nation because it’s somehow an artificial nationality?" Toews told the Winnipeg Sun.

"To deny the entire existence of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, it’s just astounding."

 

Continue reading Ukrainians ‘nasty anti-Semites,’ Ignatieff quoted in flyer

Lennikov hides in church to avoid deportation, call for action to remove all KGB from Canada

For a man who spent a career with the KGB and enforcing its rules, Mikhail Lennikov has a lot of trouble following them from a Canadian judge: Get out of Canada – no spies allowed! If your knowledge of the KGB only comes from movies, it was the Soviet Union’s secret police – out living Nazi’s Gestapo police by 60 years and killed and enslaved more innocent people than Hitler by an order of magnitude!

The facts speak for themselves:

  • Lennikov, a former leader of the Communist Youth League, was recruited into the KGB in 1982 after leaving university and worked first as a translator than as a spy for Japanese businesses.
  • He left the KGB in 1988, and left Russia in 1995 for Japan.
  • He came to Canada in 1997 on a student visa without disclosing his KGB past (otherwise he would have never been admitted).
  • Applying for permanent residency in the Fall of 2008, Lennikov’s background as a KGB officer was disclosed and their application was denied under Section 34 (1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, deemed a security risk and his family ordered to be deported:

    34. (1) A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on security grounds for
    (a) engaging in an act of espionage or an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;
    (b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government;
    (c) engaging in terrorism;
    (d) being a danger to the security of Canada;
    (e) engaging in acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada; or
    (f) being a member of an organization that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in acts referred to in paragraph (a), (b) or (c).

  • March 2009 -  Lennikov’s wife and son were granted permanent residency in March on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
  • June 1 2009 – A judge denied the appeal of Lennikov, disputing the man’s claim his life would be at risk in Russia as he would be considered a traitor.
  • June 3 2009 – Lennikov was ordered to board a flight for Vladivostok, Russia, but has taken sanctuary with his family at First Lutheran Church by Rev. Richard Hergesheimer.
  • Since then there hasn’t been many updates, besides some opportune political photo-ops.

Continue reading Lennikov hides in church to avoid deportation, call for action to remove all KGB from Canada