Putin’s father fought for Nazis: Suvorov

In 2003, Polish media reported that KGB defector Victor Suvorov (Vladimir Rizun) found documents and pictures in London which show that the Russian president’s father served in the Nazi-collaborating army led by Russian general Vlasov. Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin was apparently captured by British forces, but not before he helped crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. (In the photo above, Putin’s father is identified as the man on the far left.) Russian media spun the story to say that Putin Sr. was really like beloved Soviet fictional television hero Otto von Stirlitz, a Russian agent who had infiltrated the Nazi security service.

Original articles see:

http://www.kp.ru/daily/23089/5494/

http://www.compromat.ru/main/putin/vlasovets.htm

http://art-of-arts.livejournal.com/125325.html

Kremlin smears Yushchenko’s dad (again)

It appears that the Kremlin has launched (or reinvigorated) yet another smear campaign against president Yushchenko. The target of this campaign is Yushchenko’s father Andriy who was a POW in Auschwitz during WW2.

On April 14, the Regnum website reported that a book entitled Andrei Yushchenko: Personality and “the legend” by “Israeli historian” Yuri Vilner has hit the bookstores in the Russian capital. In it Vilner claims that Andrei Yushchenko lied about his WW2 activities, was a “polizei” of Nazi concentration camps and an informer to the Nazis.

Vilner apparently said that the “biography of the Ukrainian president’s father has become one of the most discussed topics in Ukraine in recent years.” The last time this reporter saw the issue raised was during the 2004 presidential elections in propaganda leaflets limited, for some reason, to the eastern regions of Ukraine.

Vilner claims that “most documents of the captive camps and concentration camps having to do with the name of Andrei Yushchenko are archived … mostly in the territory of Russia.” Reading between the lines: “the FSB’s specialists will have no problem fabricating documents about Andrei Yushchenko and present them as the real thing as they have in the cases of Yaroslav Stecko and John Demjaniuk in the past.”

I guess this historian has never heard of Yad Vashem’s archives or the 68 million Holocaust documents that have been digitized by Bad Arolsen Holocaust archives and the International Tracing Service in Germany.

The timing of Vilner’s book is arguably not accidental: it comes just a little over 3 weeks before the commemoration of the “Day of Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” celebrated every year on May 9.


Vilner’s PR courtesy of the Kremlin:
http://www.regnum.ru/english/986276.html


Information about Bad Arolsen Holocaust archives:
http://judaism.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=judaism&cdn=religion&tm=1&gps=175_310_1087_649&f=00&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.its-arolsen.org/english/index.html

http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=8298&TM=67180.92

41: 28 candidates and counting

(image from pravda.com.ua)

The Kyiv election commission has already registered 28 (!) candidates for the capital city mayoral race – but that’s not all. Commission head Halyna Bilyk said the commission has until April 19th to register all candidates: “around 140” submitted applications by the April 15 deadline.

In other news, the New York Times ran a piece about heavyweight boxing champ and mayoral candidate Vitali Klitschko. The article includes a poll conducted by the “Institut Goroda” described as an “analytical research center in Kiev” by journalist Vincent Mallozi. This reporter has never heard of the Institute and efforts to find a website for “Institut Goroda” or “Institut Mista” (as it would be in Ukrainian), proved fruitless. That poll suggests the following breakdown:

Klitschko 29.8%
Chernovetsky 14.6
Omelchenko 9.0

Other poll results revealed in Kyiv on Tuesday, by another unrecognizable polling organization, suggests the following breakdown (poll conducted March 22-26, 2,006 respondents, 2.2% error margin according to the UNIAN news agency:

Undecided 18.5%
Klitschko 17
Turchynov (Tymoshenko) 16.6
Chernovetsky 16.1
Horbal (Regions) 7.1
Pylypyshyn (Lytvyn) 4.8
Katerynchuk (Orange-ish) 2.9
Martyniuk (Commie) 2.8

Also on Tuesday Orthodox Archbishop Pavel denied that he will run for any political force in the elections. But the Communist Party’s press service showed the media a handwritten declaration by His Eminency that suggests the prelate was seriously considering running for political office. (copy of letter above)

44: Orthodox bishop to run for Regions, not Communists

The head of the Party of the Regions Kyiv city organization Vasyl Horbal announced the “first five” on his political force’s list for the snap Kyiv city council elections. Horbal will head the list that also incude:

2. Dmytri Tabchnyk (neo-Soviet historian, proponent of federalism)
3. Inna Bogoslovska (formerly of pro-Kuchma, Pinchuk-backed political projects)
4. Vladika Pavel (see below)
5. Mikhail Reznikovich (on-again-off-again director of the awkwardly-named Lesia Ukrayinka Russian Language Drama Theater, where Tabachnyk’s wife Tetyana Nazarova works as an actress.)

Horbal said that some Communists were the source of earlier rumors that the Orthodox Church hierarch was planning to run for the Marxists-Leninists, According to news.liga.net. In the March 2006 elections, the Regions won 16 of 120 seats in Kyiv city council.
Recall that Karl Marx stated that “religion is the opiate of the people” and that Lenin’s Bolsheviks spent 70 years pillaging churches, re-opening them as atheist museums and killing million of clergy and laity.
His Eminence Pavel (Lebid) is the Archbishop of Vyshgorod (just outside Kyiv) and the Father Superior at the “Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra,” a.k.a. the Monastery of the Caves, guarded by warrior monks from the Rus Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

The word “cave” is a handy mnemonic for remembering how to pronunce Ukraine’s capital city name in the Ukrainian language. “Cave” is to “Kyiv” what “key-ev” or “key-eff” is to “Kiev.”
To further extend the allegory of “Kyiv-Cave” one need not look beyond Plato’s Republic to understand what is happening in Ukrainian politics: before finding the truth, one needs separate it from the false reality and the manufactured truth. With the voters as the cavemen.

1.2 mln "Ukrainian Canadians" -- 2006 Census data

Preliminary numbers are now available from the 2006 Census of Canada. Some relevant figures for the Ukrainian community are as follows.

1,209,085 Canadians identified themselves as being of Ukrainian or partial Ukrainian heritage, compared to 1,071,060 in 2001. Of these respondents, 300,590 (compared to 326,200 in 2001) claimed to be single origin Ukrainian Canadians, and 908,495 claimed to be multiple origin (744,860 was the total in 2001).

The number of single origin Ukrainians has declined as mixed marriages continue to transform the make-up of Canadian society as a whole, according to my source.

The number of Ukrainians by province, listed in descending order, with the 2001 figures given brackets, is as follows:

Ontario, 336,355 (290,925)
Alberta, 332,180 (285,725)
British Columbia, 197,265 (178,885)
Manitoba, 167,175 (157,660)
Saskatchewan, 129,265 (121,740)
Quebec, 31,855 (24,030)
Atlantic Provinces, 11,675 (9,175)

In terms of cities,

Edmonton, 144,620
Toronto, 122,510
Winnipeg, 110,335
Vancouver, 81,725
Calgary, 76,240
Saskatoon, 38,825
Hamilton, 27,080
Montreal, 26,150
Regina, 25,725
Ottawa-Gatineau, 21,520
St. Catharines, 20,990
Thunder Bay, 17,620
Victoria, 15,020
Kelowna, 13,425
Oshawa, 12,555
London, 10,765
Kitchener, 10,425
Windsor, 9,725
Greater Sudbury, 7,585
Halifax, 4,030.

The urban sprawl known as the Greater Toronto Area includes Mississauga with 18,960, Oakville 6,430, Burlington 6,990, and Vaughn 5,005 for GTA total of nearly 160,000, some 26,000 more than in Edmonton.

Photo of Bandera family, late 1930s

courtesy of Baba Oksana (far right) in Stryj. The blonde boy in the center is Bohdan, the youngest of four Bandera brothers, whose exact fate is unkown...

51: Poll shows Chernovetsky with 33%

Chernovetsky leads race, according to the results of yet another poll released on Friday April 4:

Chernovetsky 31.8%
Klitschko 20.8
Undecided 17
===========
Omelchenko 5.8
Against all 4.8
Lutsenko 3.6
Katerynchuk 3.2
Tomenko 1.4
Turchynov 1.4
Other <1%

Results presented by Nikolai Churylov, director of the “Socis” Center of political and marketing research.

Churylov said that 33.3% of respondents think that Chernovetsky will stay on as mayor, while 20.4% think that Klitschko will win the title.

The poll of 2,000 Kyivans was conducted March 27 to April 3 and has 2.2% error margin, according to Socis.

Churylov’s 32% is high compared to Vyshnyak’s 25% for the incumbent. Both men however agree that Chernovestky will come out on top.

Churylov has been a darling of the municipal pro-Chernovetsky media holding run by media master Kazbek Bektursynov since at least September of last year, when the two men declared that 66% of capital city residents are “completely satisfied that they are living in Kyiv today.”

See: “Kyivans disappoint sociologists in the pro-Chernovetsky” Khreshtatic newspaper
http://www.kreschatic.kiev.ua/art/1190836709.html

Socis site: http://www.socis.kiev.ua/