{"id":1583,"date":"2014-03-15T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T00:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2019-04-17T09:00:03","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T16:00:03","slug":"ukraine-and-the-russian-bully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2014\/uncategorized\/ukraine-and-the-russian-bully\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine and the Russian Bully"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"from

from www.infoplease.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be using my blog to write about politics in the Ukraine<\/a><\/strong>, but what is happening there is very dear to my heart. My grandparents and parents came from there and I\u2019ve been spending the last two years writing my <\/a><\/strong><\/span>baba’s<\/a><\/strong> story<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

For those of you who haven\u2019t been following the news, Putin, the president of Russia, and a Russian bully, has raised his power-hungry head now that his puppet, Victor <\/span>Yanukovich, <\/a><\/strong>the corrupt and former prime minister of Ukraine, fled in the night<\/a>,<\/a><\/strong> taking many valuables with him. Some estimate that he and his son have siphoned off as much as 70 billion dollars from the Ukrainian people. He left Kiev after he’d authorized soldiers to gun down peaceful protesters demonstrating against that corruption, leaving 82 people dead and countless injured.<\/p>\n

It was then that Putin struck, right when the country of Ukraine was at its most vulnerable, grieving for the loss of innocent lives and struggling to put a new government in place. He struck hard and illegally, by invading Crimea<\/a><\/strong>, an autonomous republic of Ukraine. Since then, with the Russian propaganda machine in full swing, he\u2019s also managed to seed violence in eastern Ukraine, where many Russian-speaking Ukrainians live.<\/p>\n

Though I was born in Canada, I carry the Ukrainian culture in my soul. As a child, every Sunday, my baba and I would take two buses to go to St. Mary’s the Protectress Ukrainian<\/p>\n

\"from

St. Mary’s The Protectress church in Winnipeg
from www.ukrainianchurchesofcanada.ca<\/p><\/div>\n

Greek Orthodox cathedral. There, at the end of the two-hour mass, the congregation would stand and sing the Ukrainian national anthem\u2014Ukraine Hasn\u2019t Died Yet<\/i>. To outsiders, singing that anthem in Canada might sound peculiar, but the church population was largely immigrant and what they had left behind was still very much a part of them. I had never been to the Ukraine but hearing the song sung with such passion, I couldn\u2019t help but get shivers up my back. On occasion, it brought me to tears.<\/p>\n