Hot topics:

WEEKLY ROUNDUP 

30 March, 00:00

They Will Not Hunt Deer, And People Will Die of Themselves The past week was densely strewn with red-letter days: March 23 was birthday of Lviv Oblast Governor Stepan Senchuk, March 25 that of oblast Tax Administration Chief Serhiy Medvedchuk, and seventh anniversary of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). It was a coincidence that the Lviv Oblast Administration and the Railroad Administration were picketed precisely on these festive days. Fortunately, the Tax Administration and local SBU were ignored. The protests did not look festive from outside. The funniest thing on Tuesday was that some city council deputies wished to discuss their ill-considered budget with the governor. Naive people. A man is being loaded down with flowers in honor of his forty-fourth birthday, and the deputies wanted to discuss the budget deficit with him.

The Oblast State Administration made an attempt to support the student's deprived of their privileges by the weekend, but still there were pickets of the nation's future elite under its walls.

The past week saw what Ukraine (at least her western part) does not seem to have seen before. The Lviv Oblast State Administration Chief, in spite of his own birthday chores, signed a three-year moratorium on shooting deer and roe in the oblast. How very ecological! And on Monday the whole civilized world celebrated the Day of Water and Meteorologists. Out of 1,500 hectares flooded in the Lviv region on the eve of spring, only 200 are still under water. There are no residential buildings left under water. In Sokal and Horodyshche districts, cows enter barns and stand on the piles full of optimism about tomorrow. The Galician's optimism is invincible.

On Wednesday morning, manure was heaped on a nameless grave next to the Lviv cemetery of Polish eaglets, with a Polish flag stuck in and reading Death to Poles. A shame. But, curiously, the first to see this provocation was Mr. Cydik, chairman of the Polish war graves upkeep association. A provocation? But one of the local historians assumed that this nameless grave might contain the bones of Ukrainians. Death does not always bring peace.

Death. Vyacheslav Chornovil perished in a car crash near Boryspil. I do not know why I recalled a wise parable: "A man is always better than he is talked about in his lifetime and worse than he is written about in an obituary." Death again. NATO kills Serbs and is not much preoccupied with the problems of Christian morals. Russia is writhing in her great-power labor. Our national multi-vectored policy has taken Ukraine out of Asia but not brought it into Europe. Now we are somewhere in the hapless middle, both geographically and politically. We have not condemned NATO, but have expressed sympathies with the Serbs, i.e., we are again dodging raindrops, as they say here. When Parliament began to speak about possible renunciation of Ukraine's nuclear-free status, I felt ill at ease: it is sad when your country has a chance to become a laughing-stock.

By Yuri TYMCHUK, The Day

Newspaper output №:

№12, (1999)

Section

Day After Day