Stop Disgracing Ukraine!
Events of the past several days show that those in power have ignored the Ukrainian people’s will by staging an unprecedentedly cynical, dirty presidential campaign, falsifying the turnout and trying to make their protege the next president.
The coming to power of Viktor Yanukovych, who has rudely divided Ukraine by regional, lingual, religious, and other distinctions, who has sown the seeds of hatred and discord, would inflict irreparable damage on our people, on our nation-state.
The international consequences would be especially gruesome; Ukraine would be isolated on the world arena, its Euro-Atlantic aspirations would suffer a shattering fiasco, and it would be forced to become part of a new Eurasian empire, gradually losing its sovereignty and its status as an international legal entity.
As a Ukrainian writer, physician, politician, statesman, and diplomat representing Ukraine as its ambassador to the United States, Canada, Israel, and Mexico, I wish hereby to declare: Stop turning Ukraine’s foreign service into a team of serfs catering to the private interests of its corrupt leadership! Stop disgracing our Fatherland, making it a laughingstock in the world!
I call on all my colleagues, diplomats, to support the newly elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, to support the freedom, independence, glory, and dignity of Ukraine!
In the context of what has taken place in Ukraine of late, I am also alarmed to witness what is happening to The Day, this all-Ukraine organ reflecting the people’s intellectual and patriotic stand.
I resolutely support the principled stand taken by its staff and its Editor-in-Chief Larysa Ivshyna.
No one will ever be able to turn The Day into a night!
