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Prytulak   InfoUkes Posting   23-Sep-1997   Aid to Ukraine (from the United States)
Date:  Tue, 23 Sep 1997 21:10:00 -0700
To:  [email protected]
From:  Lubomyr Prytulak
Subject:  Aid to Ukraine (from the United States)

I regret that my posting "Japanese aid to Ukraine" of earlier today, may have hurt the feelings of the Ukrainian Students Club in Calgary.  But do we want to stick our heads in the sand when the news from Ukraine is disappointing?  I think that we will be able to take remedial action only if we view the situation realistically.

In fact, it is not only Japan but the United States as well that has singled Ukraine out for especially niggardly treatment:

According to Ambassador Morningstar's own report to Congress, Ukraine is receiving the third lowest per capita assistance among the 12 new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.  In addition, of the funds allocated for the nations of the NIS, the rate of expenditure for Ukraine is [also] the third lowest.  In other words, the Clinton administration has decided to spend the mandated level of assistance to Ukraine as slowly as possible.  If the delay was due to the slow pace of economic reform in Ukraine, ... then how does one explain the high rate of expenditure for countries such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan (a Communist country) and other NIS nations that are light years behind Ukraine in economic reform.  ... Credits and insurance ... to Russia (three times the size of Ukraine) has been 10 times the amount provided to Ukraine.  ...  Russia received over five times the amount of benefit from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that Ukraine received.  (Eugene M. Iwanciw, Letter to the editor, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 27, 1996, p. 7)

I made the suggestion in my "Japanese aid to Ukraine" posting that Ukraine's monumental corruption may have something to do with it, and that Russia might be treated with greater consideration because it had nuclear weapons.  Were these suggestions unreasonable?

I might add now that I think that the negative image that has been painted of Ukrainians may have stuck in the minds of policy-makers as well, and may also have something to do with the small aid that is given to Ukraine. Ukrainians have allowed the image of themselves as Nazi collaborators � and often, to quote Morley Safer himself, as "worse than the Nazis" � to be painted.  Might it be the case that policy makers tend to decide that a people that were worse than the Nazis deserve less aid than others?  Maybe all my postings objecting to the calumniation of Ukraine are not so irrelevant to the contemporary wellbeing of Ukraine after all?

Lubomyr Prytulak


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