If Sheptytsky had known

The Internet shows photos of a posh manor that belongs to Ukrainian ex-president Leonid Kuchma’s daughter. The pictured residence is one the world’s richest houses (ranking 10th), just trailing behind Abramovich’s estate which ranks 9th. We could have left this unnoticed, for we are accustomed to the fact that the “golden loaf of bread” is not so much an object as a phenomenon and essence of the Ukrainian oligarchy, but the immeasurable luxury of this building is an interesting touch to a different subject. On November 18, Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk will be awarded one more medal in Kyiv – the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine and the Ukrainian-Jewish Contact have conferred the Andrei Sheptytsky Prize on him.

I am convinced that all who know Andrei Sheptytsky’s life story will be outraged, to put it mildly, at the word line Pinchuk – Kuchma –Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky is not just a legend – he is a pillar of our statehood, even though he was a metropolitan. People like him form the idea of a country and a nation. He was a giant who did not cease to work even in a Soviet prison camp, saying that he could at last not be distracted by everyday fuss and fully devote himself to God and book reading. Sheptytsky was part of a powerful stream of a personality, which forms the river of the people. If a nation has this kind of people, nobody will question this nation’s right to exist. For this reason, the enemy has always tried to vilify, as it was in the case of Mazepa, or to diminish the role of such figures, to devaluate their significance, or to cross them off the schoolbooks, as if tearing an unsubdued gene from blood. Whenever we see the names of Sheptytsky and Pinchuk next to each other, what do we think above all? We think that someone has exceeded the limits.

Andrei Sheptytsky is a model of, particularly, true Christian benefaction. During the genocide of Jews, he did, at his own risk, very much to save as many representatives of this ancient people as possible. No wonder history has brought our nations together again now, when many Jews are defending Ukrainian statehood from Putin’s aggression. What is more, they are defending it not only financially, but also at the cost of their own blood in the counter-terrorism operation, the many instances of which I know personally – not to mention the universally known behavior of the main “Jew-Banderaites” thanks to whom neither Dnipropetrovsk nor Odesa were surrendered. The synergy of interests brings about real and effective resistance.

And what has Mr. Pinchuk, the son-in-law of a negotiator at the notorious Minsk talks, done to help our military? He did not even speak of this, unlike another Donetsk-based oligarch. This is perhaps out of his line because the pro-Russian Kuchma, whom Putin after all appointed to negotiate with himself, will reap no benefit from this. The president, whom only his aptest pupil, the odious Yanukovych, managed to outstrip as far as shameful judicial problems are concerned, has reaped a benefit from something else.

Pinchuk performed the role of Kuchma’s matchmaker in his relationship with the Western world, when he was building bridges between him and Europe and the US. Culture, ostentatious charity, concerts of well-known stars, art centers, summits, and roundtables stood out against the backdrop of total corruption in the country, where everything was on sale, horrible murders and mysterious suicides. It will be recalled that the Gongadze case still remains unsolved. To be more exact, it only came to convicting the crime perpetrators Oleksii Pukach and his henchmen. As for those who ordered the crime, there is still no answer from the juridical viewpoint, although society has known the truth for a long time. The Melnychenko tapes, too, provide answers to many questions. The very name of Heorhii Gongadze, whose death became a symbol of the regime, has somewhat overshadowed the other murdered journalists whose names everybody can see on a bronze plaque near the League of Ukrainian Journalists on Khreshchatyk. The dates of their deaths fall on the period of Kuchma’s rule.

This does not mean, of course, that the then president ordered all of those murders, but he did quite a lot to turn Ukraine into a country of manors and shanties, sold-out national interests, and murdered patriots. The Maidan events last February are only one of the consequences of the rule of… no, not Yanukovych because the           latter is also a consequence. The source of these tragedies is well in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Kuchma really knew how to simulate the “stability” which a lion’s share of Ukrainians is so much nostalgic about. Something was built, the Constitution was adopted, some laws were enacted, but each of these items needs a separate analysis. Crony capitalism pure and simple… A system seemed to have emerged, which differed from the “roaring 1990s,” a system under which your loyalty and a bagful of money could help you assume the office of governor. Even now there are people who associate Kuchma’s rule with predictability. All this is the result of our short memory and deep-seated fear of the unknown – it’s better to go to the execution block, but in the right way.

And now some journalists, who cover themselves with Gongadze’s name as if it were a label, drink wine at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) annual meeting, where not a single strategic problem of Ukraine was solved in addition to whitewashing Kuchma’s reputation. Deaths are turning into logos, ex-presidents are surrendering territories of Ukraine at dubious negotiations, wine is flowing, and photo cameras are festively flashing at the “strategies” that resulted in the loss of Yalta itself and, after all, the European vector. Incidentally, about active citizenship... Hanna Hopko, who was invited to this year’s YES held, for a well-known reason, in Kyiv, refused to take part in it, addressing an open letter to Poland’s ex-president Aleksander Kwasniewski. By the way, the latter is chairman of the YES supervisory board. In her letter, Hanna clearly explained what caused her to refuse and urged Kwasniewski himself to shun this event. The explanation is simple           – the goals the YES really pursues differ from the ones that it declares. Was there a journalist who took notice of this action of Hanna Hopko, a public activist at the time and a politician now? The public and the media got off with awkward silence. Are they really unaware of the essence of events? Or are they trying to write “correctly,” bypassing ticklish matters? Or are our media people so much concerned about pragmatic search for easy money that they are ready to put blinkers on their eyes? Kuchma is being whitewashed, blemish after blemish, while the country is steadily sinking into the mire of treason and corruption. Symbolically, the so-called Yalta European Strategy, launched by Pinchuk, has begun to rot in the very name of it, for the word “Yalta” no more applies. Next is the word “European”? As a result of these “strategies,” we have lost our own, while the world has finally ceased to trust us, a country that surrenders its interests by itself. Will Europe be tackling our problems and defending our interests when we sit down at the same table with bandits? Will NATO be helping us as we are leaving our equipment to the enemy in the Donbas fields? Who will need us if we “lustrate” competent and professional people and, at the same time, elect to parliament the people who only recently voted for the notorious “January 16 laws”?

This absurdity has been created by concrete persons. In this absurdity, they absolutely legally built their posh manors and “baked” golden bread loaves. They celebrate their birthdays in Corsica, while some other guys shiver with cold in battlefield trenches. This contrast between rich men and beggars, Pinchuk and Sheptytsky, cannot lead to “stability.” Reincarnating such personalities as Kuchma is bound to result in something tragic. A painful presentiment is rife outside the YES room and the Andrei Sheptytsky Prize award ceremony. This mood permeates the subway and bus stops, the tenement halls and kitchens of ordinary Ukrainians. These sentiments are spreading in the abovementioned trenches and among the volunteers who are, for some reason, not awarded the prize named after our spiritual hero Sheptytsky. We are walking towards the execution block in line with someone’s “strategies” in a masquerade that goes on in spite of the lost land and thousands of deaths.