FEMEN Breast Protest Pokes Fun at Azarov

Hardly a week passes by without FEMEN doing boobs and circuses.

This week, they target PM Azarov's broken Ukrainian, rampant misgovernment and outrageous sexism.

Specifically, they elaborate on the PM’s hilariously mangled version of the Ukrainian word for bloodsuckers that he uttered last week in a finger-pointing speech.



He should have said кровососи (krovososy) but came out with кровосісі (krovosisi), which sounds like bloody titties.

FEMEN, in turn, seized the opportunity to produce a collection of mock body art, enshrouded in feminine mystique.







Sources:
http://femen.livejournal.com/66090.html
http://www.youtube.com/user/FEMENmovement
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/focus/4c0e3b6836199/
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2010/06/2/5099399/

Zatulin’s Man: Make Russian Official or Kiss Ukraine Goodbye

Either my way or the highway.

Vladimir Kornilov, Zatulin’s franchisee in Ukraine, doesn’t mince words.

Kornilov: Of course, sooner or later we'll have to put this reality into law as well. At any rate, sooner or later there will be two official languages in Ukraine, or there will be no state of Ukraine in these borders.

What about the Baltics? Should they have two official languages too?

Video embedded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/158795.html
Original source: http://tvi.ua

No More Russian-to-Ukrainian Dubbing on National TV

1tv.com.ua is becoming an affiliate of www.1tv.ru.

If you’re a post-Soviet-born Ukrainian who lives in Ukraine, you better learn Russian. Why? Because the Russians, Russified Ukrainians and some other people who have lived in Ukraine for generations don’t want to learn Ukrainian. Fair enough?



Take the National Television Company of Ukraine (NTCU). Neither its president, Yevhen Benkendorf, nor its vice president, Walid Harfouch, speaks Ukrainian.

Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk does speak Ukrainian, and God knows how much he hates it. In a bid to preserve the legacy of Russification, he wants to stop mandatory dubbing of foreign language movies into Ukrainian.

He has already revoked mandatory Ukrainian language exams for students completing their bachelor degrees. He says it’s the European way.

Well, the French would disagree, and so would some Germans.



Back to Ukraine, the list of reforms goes on:

No more Institute of National Security Problems
No more National Institute of International Security
No more interministerial NATO membership preparations сcommission
No more Euro-Atlantic integration center
No more rallies without arrests

Congratulations Rick Davis, Paul Manafort, Phil Griffin and the Appeasement Institute in Ukraine! You’ve just won your magic Pobeda ride!






Buckle up, Uncle Sam!

Medvedev, Yanukovych Pissed in Translation

Misspell one letter and you have signing that sound like peeing.

It happened at the Medvedev-Yanukovych press conference, dubbed in Russian and Ukrainian. Instead of saying підписують (pidpysuyut: Ukr. are signing), the announcer uttered підпісують (pidpisuyut: broken Ukr. are peeing on something).

Russian version: The President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, from the Russian side, and the President of Ukraine, Viktor Fiodorovich Yanukovich, from the Ukrainian side, are signing a joint statement.

Ukrainian version: The President of the Russian Federation, Dmytro Anatoliyovych Medvedev, from the Russian side, and the President of Ukraine, Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, from the Ukrainian side, are peeing on a joint statement.

It remains the norm for the media and governments of the two countries to translate rather than transliterate Ukrainian (Ukraine-based) and Russian (Russia-based) names. Thus, Dmitry (Rus) translates into Dmytro (Ukr) and Volodymyr (Ukr) into Vladimir (Rus).

The spelling czars in the Western media often rely on Russian-to-English transliterations of Ukrainian (Ukraine-based) personal and geographic names:

Yanukovich instead of Yanukovych
Gritsenko instead of Hrytsenko
Tyagnibok instead of Tyahnybok
Kiev instead of Kyiv

Spelling idiosyncrasies abound in political Ukraine as well.

Tymoshenko, who learned Ukrainian in her ‘30s, finds it hard to spell the и in Янукович and Литвин: it’s always Yanukoveech and Leetveen to her.

Yushchenko speaks a little bit of surzhyk here and there, punctuated with his trademark colloquial verb endings and arrogant second person informal pronouns.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Yanukovych plays down his March 1 visit to Brussels:

I was invited to [visit] Brussels on March 1 and I was invited to visit Russia on March 5. It couldn't have been done otherwise. The first days of the president's work are always difficult in terms of where to go, and I'm gaining experience. But as they used to say, “All pathways lead to Moscow.”

“You better send us salo,” Putin retorts, replying to Yanukovych’s suggestion that Ukraine send some cranky politicos to Russia as examples of instability.

The good news: In his attempt to renegotiate the whorrible Tymoshenko-Putin gas agreement, Yanukovych hasn’t sold out the pipeline yet.

The brotherly news: Yanukovych promised to make Russian a regional language in exchange for “one or two” Ukrainian-language channels being allowed to air in Russia.

Video embedded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/151572.html
Original source: http://www.vesti.ru

Yanukovych Sends His New Year/Christmas Greetings

If you live in the land of the “Ukrainian Bell Carol” but speak Russian only, he’s your man.

Presidential candidate Yanukovych: New Year and Christmas are again coming to our house — with goodness, with hope, with faith that we all will be better off. I know we can overcome the difficulties. We’ll find ways to happy and joyful. Our kids will be growing up healthy. There will be tranquility and abundance in our every family. Accord, peace and prosperity will again rule supreme in our state.

0:00-0:33

He forgot to mention one of his elixirs of tranquility and abundance:

• Paid Hr. 16.24 ($3.12) for a 184 sq m apartment in 2003;
• Traded it for a 384 sq m apartment (using his mother-in-law's ID) in 2003;
• Sold it for Hr. 33,416,350 ($7M) in 2008;
• Put Hr. 2,674,910 ($334K) on his 2009 tax returns as a gain on the sale of real estate.

One Mezhyhirya is never enough.

Anyway, z Rizdvom Khrystovym! Merry Christmas!





Video uploaded from:
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/143817.html
Original source:
http://inter.ua
http://www.1tv.com.ua

Putin Refers to Holodomor Memorial as ‘Someplace,’ Jokes About Yushchenko-Saakashvili Meeting

Two high-level/high-humor meetings took place in Ukraine on Thursday.

When Yushchenko met with Saakashvili in Kyiv, he spoke Ukrainian and misspelled Medvedev’s first name and patronymic as Анатолій Дмитрович (Anatoly Dmytrovych).

In Russian, that would be Анатолий Дмитриевич (Anatoly Dmitriyevich), an ass-backwards version of Дмитрий Анатольевич (Dmitry Anatolyevich).

Ukrainian President Yushchenko: Today, I made an appeal to the Russian President, Анатолій Дмитрович [Anatoly Dmytrovych]...uh...that they [gas agreements] be reviewed and canceled because their motive is not based on organizing symmetric market relations of two businesses regarding the issue at hand.

Spokeswoman Iryna Vannykova: Mr. President, you misspoke slightly. You said Анатолій Дмитрович [Anatoly Dmytrovych] when you should have said Дмитро Анатолійович [Dmytro Anatoliyovych]. I don’t know if it’s worth telling you...

Yushchenko: Oh...
Vannykova [to Yushchenko]: OK, let’s wrap it up then.

Vannykova [to reporters]: OK, colleagues, thank you! The press conference is over. Thanks!

For some reason, Yushchenko chose not to correct himself even after his whispering spokeswoman quickly approached him about it.

When Tymoshenko met with Putin in Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine, later in the day, the two spoke Russian.

Putin didn’t behave like a guest. He behaved like a czar. And Tymoshenko behaved like his sweetheart.

Asked about Yushchenko and Saakashvili — and their pilgrimage to the Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv — Putin paraded his sense of Berlusconi 2.0 humor.

Poking fun at Yushchenko’s support of Saakashvili in the Russia-Georgia of 2008, Putin built a cascade of jokes. One of them even had a Pushkin quote interpolated into it.

Putin’s joke about the danger that Saakashvili and his nervous tie-munching behavior could pose to Yushchenko elicited an outburst of laughter and admiration from Tymoshenko. See for yourself.

Russian PM Vladimir Putin: Uh...what our colleagues were doing, I have no idea, but I think that...uh...two presidents always have things to talk about: to discuss somethin', to go someplace* [smiles]: “The warriors recalled their days bygone, and all the battles they never won.”** Maybe that was that [audience explodes with laughter]. We...we’re going together to...we’re now going to...to a dinner...my colleague has invited me...to...I’d say we’ll be talking about...about Chekhov. Well...that’s it, I guess. Oh yes, what else can I advise and recommend? Uh...the two presidents would better have their dinner — should they have dinner — with their ties off.*** Ties cost a lot now. Heaven forbid...you know what I’m talking about [audience explodes with laughter].

Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko [gets excited, addresses Putin by patronymic]: Vladimirovich, I definitely can have dinner with my tie off!

Putin: Yep!
Tymoshenko: Hahaha!

Putin: Ha, lest the guests will...gobble up Yushchenko’s tie!

*Reflects on Yushchenko and Saakashvili visiting the Holodomor Memorial, an issue in the reporter's question [full video available here];

**Quotes from Alexander Pushkin’s The Song of Oleg the Wise [verse translation mine];

***Refers to Saakashvili’s tie-munching behavior.

Bravo! This comes as a sequel to the famous “mazurik” joke that Putin cracked about Yushchenko while meeting with Tymoshenko in Moscow in October 2008.

Putin and Tymoshenko should finally coin the term humor diplomacy.

Let's say Merkel goes to Russia and takes a pot shot at the Siege of Leningrad and the million of Russians who perished in the famine. Meanwhile, Hu goes to New York, Washington or Jerusalem and pokes fun at 9/11 and the Holocaust. How's that for a start?

Oh, by the way, Mr. Putin, thank you for your generosity! It’s a huge relief you won’t fine Ukraine based on those whorrible “we take, you pay” terms of the gas deal that you and Tymoshenko had signed last January.

You may now take off your tie and take your sweetheart to the finest restaurant in town.

Make yourself at home!

Videos uploaded from:
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/139665.html
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/139650.html
Original sources:
http://blogs.telekritika.ua
http://5.ua

Russia to Ukraine: No Demand for Ukrainian Schools Among 2.9M Ukrainians Living in Russia

In the excerpts below, Andrey Nesterenko, a Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry representative, explains the absence of Ukrainian-language schools in Russia:

It can probably be explained by the similarity of Eastern Slavic languages and cultures, by a common history (Kyivan Rus, the Moscow state, the Russian Empire, the USSR) and by the same Orthodox Christian faith.

Due to the causes mentioned, there are no schools in the Russian Federation where the entire curriculum is taught in the Ukrainian language.

Russian Federation citizens of the Ukrainian ethnicity and Russians with Ukrainian citizenship are in different ethnocultural situations.

Attempts at comparing their positions by merely counting, for instance, the number of Russian schools in Ukraine and Ukrainian schools in Russia are illegitimate.

Illegitimate? Really?

So the 2.9 million “Russian Federation citizens of the Ukrainian ethnicity” eagerly assimilate and simply don’t want to preserve their language and culture. By contrast, not only do the 8.3 million “Russians with Ukrainian citizenship” want to preserve their mother tongue, but many of them also want to never ever learn Ukrainian.

Why? Could it be that Russia’s big brotherly attitude toward Ukraine aims at perpetuating the centuries-long Russian superiority/Ukrainian inferiority complex?

Bottom line,

The policy Russia offers to Ukrainians living in Russia: melting pot
The policy Russia demands for Russians living in Ukraine: multiculturalism

Well, multicountryism would be more accurate.

Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/4/29/94016.htm

Ukrainophobe Gets Cow Tongue and Change

The charming young man who received a carton of kefir to his chest for arguing that Ukraine should speak with one tongue — Russian — got another rough ride in Kyiv.

This time, it was Bratstvo badasses who did the job. In full view of the cameras, they donated a cow’s tongue and a pile of coins to Mykola Levchenko, Secretary of the Donetsk City Council.

Bratstvo activists: Here’s the money, here’s the tongue, and, finally, learn Russ…Ukrainian because Russian is a Turkish dialect of the language that our ancestors spoke. Learn Ukrainian!
Mykola Levchenko: I’m very pleased you did it. Thanks! Come on, come on! Empty your pockets. Come on, come on!

Bratstvo activists: Don’t push people toe-to-toe just because of the language.
Mykola Levchenko: We really need this money.

Narrator: All in all, they tossed about 25 hryvnias on Levchenko’s table and lap, all of it in 10-kopiyka coins. The official made towers out of them, but didn’t take them with him. The whereabouts of the tongue remain unknown.

Russian as a Turkish dialect of Old Ukrainian vs. Ukrainian as a Polish dialect of Old Russian represent the two opposite poles in the oft-unprofessional debate among ultra-nationalists.

Bratstvo adheres to — or, rather, experiments with — an eclectic ideology that mixes Ukrainian nationalism, Marxism, Christianity and anti-Orangism. Dmytro Korchynsky recently launched a talk show on the Chernovetsky-controlled TRK Kyiv.

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/86493.html

Say YES to the Referendum!
Question 1 (check-marked): Do you agree that the official languages in Ukraine should be Ukrainian and Russian?

Which Language Is Second to None in Donbas?

When asked whether making Russian a second official language will hurt Ukrainian speakers, Viktor Yanukovych stated:

Абсолютно ні. Ось психологія людини така, я ж знаю, я народився, жив, виріс у Донбасі. Якщо до тих людей буде шанобливе ставлення і до мови, якою вони говорять, я вам скажу, піде прогрес. Піде процес у бік української мови, і ситуація змінюватиметься на краще".

"Потрібно вчити. Ось внук у мене вільно розмовляє українською. Сини - один краще, другий гірше, ну, вони не вивчали українську мову. Але прищеплювати у людей ненависть до російської мови? Я вважаю, що це неправильно".

Absolutely not. It’s how the mind works, I know this, for I was born and grew up in Donbas. If these people are treated with respect, including the language they speak, then I’ll tell you there will be progress. The process will move in favor of the Ukrainian language, and things will change for the better.

We should study it. Now, my grandson has full command of Ukrainian. As for my sons, one is more fluent and the other is less fluent; well, they didn’t study the language. But should one inculcate people with hatred toward Russian? I think it’s wrong.

According to the 2001 census, Ukrainians make up 56.9 percent of the Donetsk oblast population. Nationwide, some 77.8 percent identify themselves as Ukrainians, while only 67.5 consider Ukrainian their native language.

Question: Which of the two languages needs protection?

Sources: Ukrayinska Pravda, UNIAN, Korespondent, State Committee on Statistics, Party of Regions Official Site