Ukraine Abroad
Oct 29, 2008 at 21:49Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, part-owner of the murky RosUkrEnergo gas trader slated for extinction under a new Russian-Ukrainian natural gas deal, is raising eyebrows for his involvement in British politics.
The Guardian newspaper of London reported on Oct. 25 that Pauline Neville-Jones, described as a key Conservative Party foreign policy adviser, has her office sponsored by Robert Shetler-Jones, a close associate of Firtash.
Shetler-Jones, however, told the newspaper: “All donations have come from me personally or from my United Kingdom company, Scythian Ltd., of which I am a shareholder. These donations reflect my personal support for the Conservative Party and were not made in consultation with Dmitry Firtash or at his request.”
The newspaper then went on to detail Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s objections to RosUkrEnergo as “overcharging the country” and having links to organized crime. “There were allegations that Firtash had links with Semyon Mogilevich, an alleged mafia chief who had been arrested in Moscow, but the claims were strongly denied in statements issued on behalf of Firtash by Shetler-Jones,” the Guardian reported.
RosUkrEnergo is 50 percent owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom and 50 percent by Firtash and Ivan Fursin.
New York Times exposes Luzhkov's meddling
The Oct. 26 Sunday edition of The New York Times featured a front-page story citing Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s meddling in the affairs of Russia’s neighbors to promote the Kremlin brand of nationalism.
According to the story: “Over the past decade, Luzhkov, 72, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars from Moscow’s well-padded city budget in Russia’s ‘near abroad,’ several city officials said. He has supported pro-Russian separatists in Moldova, built highways in rebellious Georgian enclaves and constructed housing for the Russian military on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine.”
Luzhkov’s keen interest in stirring up Russian separatism in Crimea was highlighted.
“Ukraine’s leadership is showing an absolutely clear tendency toward the suppression of all things Russian — the Russian language, Russian culture, Russian literature, Russians on their territory,” Luzhkov said in August, according to the newspaper.
The Times went on to write: “In Sevastopol, a city of 350,000, Mr. Luzhkov has constructed a branch of the Moscow State University, Russian Orthodox cathedrals, schools, a sports complex and other facilities. Military personnel with the Black Sea fleet refer to their housing as Luzhki because Luzhkov built thousands of apartments for them. He has proposed spending another $2 billion on real estate development in Crimea. [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin has said that Russia respects Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but he has not disavowed the separatists or Luzhkov. In fact, after Luzhkov was barred from Ukraine in May, the Kremlin lashed back.”
Movie revives horror of mass Soviet army rapes
A new German film, “A Woman in Berlin,” is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers. “It depicts the horror of the Red Army’s capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April and May 1945,” according to London’s Daily Mail on Oct. 25.
Hundreds of thousands of German women were raped after the end of World War II by the Soviet army, which included many Ukrainian men. Historians say rape was condoned by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin during war “as a method of rewarding the soldiers and terrorizing German civilians.”
'The Unknown Woman' is Ukrainian housekeeper
A new thriller called “The Unknown Woman,” starring Russian actress Xenia Rappoport, is getting good reviews. Rappoport plays Irena, “a Ukrainian housekeeper for hire with a savage past that we see initially via flashbacks.”
“Irena will do anything, even push an old lady down the stairs, to get closer to an affluent family in the new Italian thriller,” according to the Washington Times newspaper, which also says the movie is “filled with blunt sexuality.” The plot, according to www.movieweb.com, involves Irena risking “everything in her quest to uncover the truth about the family. Like an intricately constructed jigsaw puzzle, 'The Unknown Woman' reveals piece by piece the enigma of Irena’s past.”
Nazi collaborator loses Canadian citizenship
A Canadian federal court upheld the government’s decision to revoke the Canadian citizenship of a former Nazi collaborator, saying he had been a member of a wartime unit that was “the very epitome of brutal,” according the National Post newspaper in Ontario, Canada.
Helmut Oberlander was an ethnic German living in Ukraine when Nazi troops recruited him for his language skills. He spoke German, Russian and Ukrainian.
The National Post reported: “The court recognized that Oberlander had said he had worked with the German forces out of fear but still found he had participated in war crimes as a member of Einsatzkommando 10A, part of a special police task force that operated ‘mobile killing units’ and executed over two million people, mostly civilians, including Jews, Communists, Roma, the disabled and others, the court said. Oberlander surrendered to American troops and was held at a British prisoner of war camp before coming to Canada in 1954. Canadian authorities caught up with him in 1995.”