Kurylenko Under Fire By Communists31 October 2008

Ukranian actress Olga Kurylenko has been slammed by Russia’s Communist Party for “betraying” her cultural roots by starring in the new James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace.

The star plays Daniel Craig’s sidekick in the action thriller - but she has come under fire from Marxist ideologists who claim she has offended her ancestors by assisting the fictional Bond, “a man who worked for decades under the orders of (Margaret) Thatcher and (Ronald) Reagan to destroy the Ussr”.

In a direct appeal to Kurylenko via their website, the Communists of St Petersburg say: “The Soviet Union educated you, cared for you and brought you up for free but no one suspected that you would commit this act of intellectual and moral betrayal.”

I’d have to say it went quite well and I was impressed by the questions the students asked. They were 16 and 17 year olds and are studying American history this year. (I don’t seem to recall studying a year of Ukrainian history in high school.) The presentation was in English and I didn’t sense any real communication barriers and judging by their questions they seemed to understand me. Of course, they did have prepared questions and one student asked me what caused the Revolution…which was pretty much my entire presentation. Apart from that, others asked about the Minutemen (the ones during the Revolution…not the ones building a fence in Arizona), the role of the French and the Spanish, Lafayette, modern day memorials, and other good questions. I was only thrown by one question about John Salem. Wikipedia now tells me he was a freed slave who fought in the war. Now I know.

After the presentation, the teacher gave me a nice little tour of the school and gave me tea along with another teacher. Everything here either starts or ends with tea and cookies. The school was nice and not radically different than a school in the States apart from being cold and dark (they kept the lights turned off and the heat is controlled by the city and not turned on until November.)

All in all, a good time apart from the one hour and forty minute ride back home thanks to Kyiv traffic (the school was about 3 miles away.)

Overall, this visit was a much more laid back affair than the President and Secretary of State’s visit last April. I was a site officer at the airport, but since I was primarily an assistant site officer, I didn’t have a whole lot to do except stand on the tarmac for hours at a time. I did get a decent sunburn on my face though so it was totally worth it.

I don’t really have a whole lot to say about the visit. Cheney came. He didn’t want to meet with any embassy staff. He left and went to Lake Como for some vital international reason or something.

Here he is getting off his plane.

VP Cheney leaving Air Force 2

http://stripgenerator.com/strip/165496/

Peema's Birthday

First, here is the official message from the State Department regarding the issue:

While most travelers do not encounter problems with crime in Ukraine, there has been an increase in the number of hate crimes directed at ethnic and religious minorities over the past few years. Many of these incidents are conducted by “skinheads” or neo-Nazis in Kyiv, but similar crimes have also been reported throughout the country. In Kyiv, these incidents have occurred without provocation in prominent downtown areas commonly frequented by tourists. While the majority of people targeted have been of Asian, African, or other non-European descent, all travelers should exercise caution. In addition to incidents of assault, racial minorities may be subject to various types of harassment, such as being stopped on the street by both civilians and law enforcement officials. Individuals belonging to religious minorities have also been harassed and assaulted in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine.

The police and government’s slow response to hate crimes is a continuing concern. Although senior Government of Ukraine officials (including the President and Prime Minister) have publicly deplored these hate crimes and groups, Ukrainian street level law enforcement activities are unable to effectively deter hate crimes or adequately protect racial minorities. The Embassy has received numerous reports from victims of violent hate crimes, as well as from bystanders, stating that uniformed police officers observed the assaults and did nothing to prevent the attacks, to assist the victims afterward, or to investigate and apprehend the attackers. The Government of Ukraine took initial steps to address the problem in the final months of 2007 with the establishment of special law enforcement units to prevent and investigate hate crimes in Ukraine. It remains to be seen if these units will be effective.

Although the message above makes mention of senior Ukrainian government officials speaking out against the violence, just recently the Minister of the Interior, Yuriy Lutsenko, caused a stir by apparently speaking out against foreigners in Kyiv. Situations like this only add to the concerns of the minority community in Ukraine that the government does not take the situation seriously enough. The government often considers racial attacks to be “hooliganism” even if the attack escalates to murder. There have been several people stabbed to death this year (mostly Africans) and even foreign diplomats of color have been attacked.

I should note that I have never personally seen any of these attacks and while they occur far too often, it isn’t as though the streets here feel unsafe. To my understanding, many of the attacks have happened in the evening or at night and have been concentrated in a few areas. Still, there was a recent report of a black man who was stabbed while riding a city bus. And although I have never seen an attack, I have seen groups of young men wandering the streets that I would identify as skinheads and racial grafitti is common around the city.

From what I have heard, Ukraine has not reached levels of violence as bad as are found in Russia and, unlike Russia, it seems that the government is noticing the problem and trying to make steps toward improving the situation. I have never felt unsafe walking the streets of Kyiv, but I am not in the demographic these groups often target.

If you’re of an ethnic group that might be targeted (largely black, Middle Eastern, South Asian), then I would certainly suggest you do your homework and be cautious while you are here, but I also think the majority of people are never bothered and some street smarts will generally keep you safe. I imagine it is no more dangerous here then in any large American city. The difference is that if something does happen here, the resources for getting help are much more limited.