Zelenskiy's Party Solidifies Its Mandate for Change
Will the Results Echo the People's Voice?
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With Ukrainians going to the polls on July 21, 2019, the results yielded an overwhelmingly impressive score of support for President Zelenskiy's party, Servant of the People - in fact, the win was the highest for any in Ukraine's post-Soviet history, with 43.9%, since Ukraine had gained independence in 1991. Now, the new government must deliver on its promises of meaningful reforms.
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Highlights This Week
Ukraine's Election Wrap - Servant of the People Wins a Mandate for Change - What's Next?
BioUkraine Update - Featured Travel Grant Recipients
Pylyp Orlyk Institue for Democracy - What is Crimean Solidarity?
This Week In History - The Ukrainian Flag is Raised Over Kyiv
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Servant of the People Wins a Mandate for Change - What's Next?
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From Radio Free Europe's/Radio Liberty's Ukrainian Service
Ukrainian voters were determined to clean house on July 21, rejecting many controversial individuals who had seemed entrenched in Ukrainian politics.
The strong result for Servant of the People for the snap parliamentary elections in Ukraine, underscores Ukrainians' desire for a break with established politicians and parties that have failed to improve the quality of life for Ukraine's citizens.
It also gives President Zelenskiy - who won the presidency in April 2019 in a landslide victory - more power in choosing outsiders to occupy key government positions.
“With the presidency, parliament, prime minister, and cabinet now under his control, Volodymyr Zelensky will have little excuse for not pushing through a reform agenda to boost Ukraine’s deflated economy,” said Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.
Click here
to read the article, 'Another Big Win for Zelenskiy' by the USUF's Kateryna Smagliy.
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After the Elections, What Comes Next in Ukraine?
by Adrian Karmazyn
The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation participated in a discussion titled A Readout of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Election: What Comes Next in Kyiv at the German Marshall Fund under the auspices of the Transatlantic Task Force on Elections and Civil Society in Ukraine. The featured speakers, who participated by video link from Kyiv, included Hanna Hopko, Eugene Czolij, Iryna Bekeshkina and Taras Shevchenko.
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Click the video link above to watch,
A Readout of Ukraine's parliamentary Elections: What Comes Next in Kyiv?
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BioUkraine Update - Featured Travel Grant Recipients
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USUF Biotech Initiative Travel Grants Put to Work Assisting Ukrainian Scientists in Furthering Their Research
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By USUF Staff
Volodymyr Shablii
At the poster session, Volodymyr Shablii presented his work to demonstrate the development of effective cryopreservation technologies for human placental tissue as a rich source of stem cells. This work can provide the creation of a placental tissue bank for the needs of regenerative medicine. The results of the research were of interest to biobanks/cryobanks and companies involved in the production of ATMs based on MSC. The next step is to patent the technology.
Svitlana Bilous
Svitlana Bilous, a recipient of a travel grant through the US-Ukraine Foundation Biotech Initiative, participated in the
IUFRO Tree Biotechnology 2019 Meeting
hosted by North Carolina State University.
The 2019 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference is the biennial meeting on genomics, molecular biology and biotechnology of forest trees, associate with the
IUFRO Working Party 2.04.06
(Molecular Biology of Forest Trees).
At the conference, Svitlana Bilous presented on scientific developments in biotechnology for the propagation of tree plants, including centuries-old trees.
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Above: Volodymyr Shablii, a US-Ukraine Foundation
Biotech Initiative Emerging Biotech Leader of 2018,
was awarded a travel grant to attend a professional
event in the United States.
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Above:
Svitlana Bilous is an Associate Professor in
In 2018 she was one of 24 young scientists recognized
by the US-Ukraine Foundation Biotech Initiative
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Students of the Junior Academy of Sciences of
Ukraine continue to shine and win competitions
around the world. They're also learning new skills
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Ukrainian Students Shine at the Genius Olympiad in Oswego, NY
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By USUF Staff
Students from 75 countries participated in the event, with the Ukrainian team competing in Science against 800 projects submitted by students from around the world.
Andriy Horbonos from Dnipro took second place for his invention of a material that could improve the properties of super-capacitors by increasing capacity and charging speed.
Milana Brodovska from Odesa came in fourth for her DIY method of making dyes. She says it can be used for dyeing fabrics, wood, eggs and for watercolor paints.
Petro Voloshyn from Ternopil, who also took fourth place, worked on a project where he used optical circuits to convert information. Unlike the original quantum computers, the system doesn't require special conditions for operation.
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The Pylyp Orlyk Institute of Democracy - What is Crimean Solidarity?
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By Natalya Belitser
‘Crimean Solidarity’ emerged in early 2016 after the illegal occupation and attempted annexation by the Russian Federation in 2014 of the Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. It is not an NGO, nor is it officially registered as any kind of public association. Rather, it is a popular movement, a civic initiative initially aimed to support the families of the Crimean Muslims – mostly Crimean Tatars – falsely charged on the grounds of belonging to or organizing the groups of ‘Hizb-ut-Tahrir’. The latter is peaceful pan-Islamic movement which was, and is, legal in Ukraine but declared ‘terrorist’ by the decision of the Russian Supreme Court in 2003.
Crimean Solidarity (CS) is, perhaps, unprecedented in modern world example of courageous mass resistance to the repressions perpetrated by the occupational powers but exercised by only peaceful and non-violent means. Gradually it transformed from the de facto ‘Crimean Tatar solidarity’ into the genuine ‘Crimean Solidarity’ due to new volunteers of other ethnic origin and religious denominations.
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This Week in History - The Ukrainian Flag is Raised Over Kyiv
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By Joseph Bistransky, Intern
Arguably, a national flag is the most potent and meaningful symbol of independence and sovereignty a country (or aspiring country) can have. The simplicity and starkness of a flag flying in the sky both encapsulates the history and culture of a nation and proves by its presence that that culture has the unity and strength to defend itself from aggression and imperialism. This week marks the 29
th
anniversary of the first official raising of the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag in the country’s modern history at Kyiv City Hall on July 24, 1990.
The flag has its historical origins in the medieval coat of arms of the 12
th
century principality of Galicia-Volhynia, on the western borderlands of Kyivan Rus, which showed a golden lion on a blue background. After the fall of the kingdom to Mongol invasion, its coat of arms and corresponding colors was one of many adopted by various Cossack hosts which controlled territory in modern Ukraine for centuries afterwards.
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Above: A blue and yellow Cossack banner, an ancestor of the modern Ukrainian flag, can be seen on a pole in the upper left of Repin’s 1880 painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
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The modern two-color flag was first raised in Lviv during the 1848 revolutionary ‘Spring of Nations’, when the Ruthenian Rada in Galicia combined the medieval and Cossack colors with the bicolor/tricolor flag design popular in Europe at the time. After the revolutionary period ended, this flag remained the symbol of Ukrainian national activism in the Austrian Empire and spread to Russian-controlled Ukraine during the revolutions of 1905. When an independent Ukrainian republic was declared for the first time in 1917, this flag (or a reversed variant, more common in Western Ukraine) was used as its official national symbol.
Above: Units of the Ukrainian Galician Army with the flag, 1918.
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As the Soviet Union began to crumble in the late 1980s, once-rare public protests using the flag became more and more common, and in 1990, several towns, such as Lviv, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Drohobych, issued local ordinances allowing the flag to be used alongside the Soviet red-and-blue, all of which were overruled by the Soviet government. However, the Declaration of State Sovereignty in early July superseded Union-level laws with Ukrainian laws, allowing the flags to be displayed. Just a week later, the flag was raised at Kyiv City Hall, from where it has never been permanently removed since.
The flag would have to wait another year to fly over a fully independent state, and almost another two years, until January 1992, to be recognized by the Rada as the official flag of that state, but as soon as it ascended the flagpole, it made the promise of national sovereignty visible and tangible to the thousands who assembled to see it fly. If the Declaration made inevitable Ukraine’s legal independence, the raising of the blue-and-yellow flag in the nation’s capital made inevitable its cultural and national independence.
To the right: The blue-and-yellow bicolor raised over Kyiv a few days after the declaration of Ukrainian sovereignty, July 24, 1990.
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