Ukrainians Of Buffalo & WNY

Follow all of the latest developments as they happen.

Pressure is building on Interpol ahead of a vote to choose a new chief for the international police agency, with U.S. senators and others warning against the possibility that a top Russian Interior Ministry official might become the agency's new head.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on November 19 that Budapest will continue to block meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at a ministerial level, amid a diplomatic spat between the two neighbors.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's treason trial in Kyiv has been postponed due to his hospitalization in Russia.

A planned transgender-rights rally in Kyiv was disbanded after far-right counterdemonstrators assaulted several of the event's participants on November 18. The radicals used tear gas against two female activists and assaulted Canadian journalist Michael Colborne, who was covering the protest.

Activists for transgender rights were forced to disband a demonstration in Kyiv on November 18 after counterdemonstrators assaulted several protesters and attacked a Canadian journalist trying to cover the event.

A lawyer for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych says that the ex-leader will not be able to make a final statement to a Kyiv court in his treason trial because of an injury he reportedly sustained on November 16.

Thousands of Czechs took to the streets in Prague on November 17 calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Ukraine has "no greater friend than the United States" in its struggle against "Russian aggression."

Russia has warned Ukraine that it may take measures to protect Russian ships crossing the Sea of Azov should Kyiv stop or seize any.

Kiev demonstration was interrupted by far-right protesters who threw smoke bombs into the crowd

Two activists have been attacked with pepper spray in Kiev during a transgender rights march that was interrupted by dozens of far-right protesters.

About 30 people were taking part in the demonstration in the Ukraine capital, holding rainbow flags and banners with slogans including “Transphobia must be stopped” and “If you stay silent, they will come after you too”.

Journalist @ColborneMichael took punch to face, sustained cut & had glasses broken by far-right radicals while covering today’s transgender rights rally as police not only stood by but physically removed activists from city-sanctioned event. cc @pressfreedom @RSF_EECA @OSCE_RFoM pic.twitter.com/UZyn7aKdee

Continue reading...

‘I remember the horror,’ says Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize-winner, who lived through the 1986 nuclear disaster

Serhii Plokhy, who on Wednesday won the Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize for Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, always intended to write about the world’s worst nuclear disaster, not least because he lived through it. “I was there at the time,” he says of his days as a young university lecturer living 500km downstream from the explosion at the Ukrainian nuclear plant in 1986 that contaminated vast swaths of Europe, worrying if the waters of the Dnieper River had been contaminated. “I remember the horror.”

Former classmates were directly affected by the radiation released by the explosion, and he suffered from an inflamed thyroid he believes may have been the result of exposure. Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union in 1986, and the disaster had such an impact on the country that the 61-year-old Plokhy, now professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, felt he should tell its story. But he was almost too close to it; the testimonies of survivors were too emotional, too powerful. As a historian, he felt he lacked critical distance.

Related:Chernobyl nuclear disaster – in pictures

Continue reading...

Campaigner’s death sparks protests and EU concern about violence against civil society

A Ukrainian anti-corruption activist has died from wounds caused by an acid attack, sparking local protests and concern from European officials over growing violence against civil society.

Kateryna Handzyuk’s investigations into police graft and political corruption in her native Kherson, a Black Sea port, had angered local officials. In late July, a man doused her with a litre of sulphuric acid when she left her house.

Continue reading...