A press release published by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation press office on November 28, 3023 announced important news: “Ukrainian History: A Global Initiative” received the support of 90 distinguished historians, including Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder, professor of history and director of the Ukrainian Institute of Harvard University Sergei Plokhy and professor of history of the Ukrainian Catholic University Yaroslav Gritsak. An important event was the presentation of the project on November 27 at the British Museum.
Using innovative interdisciplinary approaches and applying new technologies, he will seek new empirical and conceptual understanding of Ukraine's place in world history. Topics that will be explored include the beginnings of human settlement, the spread of Indo-European languages, the relationship between classical Greece and the Black Sea region, Viking Age Europe, the relationship between Byzantium and Kiev, and contemporary issues of nation-building and empire. This should help to find answers to such fundamental questions as “Who are we?”, “How was the nation possible?”
It is noted that the project will unite about 50 Ukrainian and 40 foreign scientists. Over the course of three years, they will develop nearly 70 themes, exploring their connections and interdependencies.
Aren't the plans too ambitious: over the course of three (!?) years, almost 70 topics (?) will be developed, “exploring their connections and interdependence” (?).
The question inevitably arises: what is the source base of the project? How perfect is the command of the Ukrainian language by the 40 foreign participants in the project? Are they able to familiarize themselves in detail with the array/corpus of already existing publications about Ukraine? Is there a threat of using biased Moscow sources and books, etc.?
The one who attracts the most attention in this publicized story is businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk, a man with a far from impeccable reputation, who is the initiator and founder of this rather controversial project.
Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University, director of the Institute of Historical Research of Lviv National University. Franko Yaroslav Gritsak notes: “It is very important that the financial and academic sides are separated.”
This is good. But we are talking about something else. About “money that doesn’t smell”, about reputational losses. For some reason, Professor Gritsak is not surprised by the origin of the funds for the implementation of the project:
“... for me, Pinchuk is a person who invests a lot in non-political projects - cultural and historical. As for the origin of the money, you can look at almost every patron of the arts and ask where he got this money from.”
And further: “I don’t know if I myself am provided with some kind of payment, because as co-director of the academic council I do not claim this. But I know that the authors will have fees for this work, because good work should be paid. I can’t imagine what kind of money this is, but I assume it’s a lot.”
Ukrainian soldiers sacrifice their lives and health, courageously defending their Motherland at the front. But scientists (domestic and foreign) spend no money, on a charitable basis, in their free time from their main work, to write for the Western world a popular history of Ukraine, which is bleeding in the War of Independence?
During the presentation of the project, Timothy Snyder noted that considerable funds are needed to organize the work of hundreds of researchers, but they, they say, will write in their articles what they see fit.
Sic! NEEDED FOR UKRAINE? On what scale and who exactly will determine/evaluate this “need”? Can we imagine what the final scientific work of the participants in this “Ukrainian History” will look like?
In December 2018, four award winners from the Ukrainian English-language publication Kyiv Post refused the Top 30 Under 30 award in protest against the award's sponsor, Viktor Pinchuk, linking him to the case of murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze.
At the same time, the head of the “Building Ukraine Together” movement, Yuriy Didula, said:
“Viktor Pinchuk’s values directly contradict our values, and contradict the values of Ukraine that we are trying to build. We will not be whole with ourselves if we accept this award. Therefore, thank you, but we are building a slightly different Ukraine than the one represented by Victor Pinchuk.”
Let us remember Mr. Firtash, who made a significant donation to UCU. And where is this “philanthropist” now? The Ukrainian Catholic University, presumably, was not interested in the origin of the funds and the far from impeccable reputation of the donor.
“Money does not smell” is a popular Latin expression attributed to the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who imposed taxes on public restrooms in order to replenish the state treasury. Over time, the imperial initiative justified itself - the state budget of Rome received an additional source of funding. In other words, any means are suitable for making a profit. Perhaps due to this somewhat controversial circumstance, the world annually celebrates World Toilet Day on November 19th. But that's true. By the way, as they say...
Journalist Pavel Vuets recalls that Pinchuk regularly made contributions to the account of the Clinton family foundation, but at the same time he got into a story with the financial support of a rival of the Democrats, the future US President Donald Trump, which interested the FBI. “The American press wrote that in September 2015, the Ukrainian billionaire made a donation of $150 thousand in exchange for Trump’s 20-minute speech via video link at the Yalta European Strategy conference (an event Pinchuk has been organizing for almost 20 years).”
The Ukrinform agency reported in September 2019 that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk paid at least $5.7 million for the services of American lobbyists and British PR specialists to improve the reputation of President Viktor Yanukovych in the West in 2012.
It is worth recalling that it was Victor Pinchuk who invited the odious Putin propagandist Dmitry Kiselev and political strategist Timofey Sergeytsev, who was allegedly involved in the creation of a scandalous video about the division of Ukrainians into three classes during the 2004 elections, to Ukraine. On April 3 last year, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published his Ukraine-hating article, “What Russia Should Do to Ukraine.” In it, the author promulgated the ideas of destroying Ukraine as a state, introducing repression and ethnic cleansing against the Ukrainian people, as well as genocide of Ukrainians.
Doesn't Victor Pinchuk understand people? Hardly.
Pinchuk's role for Ukraine is still not defined. The question of whether Victor Pinchuk is a friend or enemy of Ukraine is not closed. He continues to be a dark horse despite his philanthropic projects.
Former Head of the Secretariat of President Yushchenko Oleg Rybachuk doubts Pinchuk's sincerity. Before Euromaidan, Rybachuk says, “when there was all this pressure from Russia, and he had business in both Crimea and Russia, he did not really encourage Ukraine’s movement into the EU. His idea was that becoming a member of the EU would be a mistake for Ukraine. So he was looking for some kind of compromise."
The search ended in scandal. “Victor Pinchuk’s “compromises” are proposals to Kyiv primitively assembled in the Kremlin” is the title of my article published on the electronic pages of Radio Liberty on January 5, 2017.
A few eloquent fragments from this material: “A striking confirmation of the existing collaboration among the largest rich men of Ukraine was the scandalous article by Viktor Pinchuk in The Wall Street Journal. On December 29, just before the new year 2017, “Ukrainian industrialist and philanthropist” (Mr. Pinchuk is a Ukrainian industrialist and philanthropist) shared his more than contradictory thoughts (the very title of the material is worth it: “Ukraine must make painful compromises for the sake of peace with Russia ") on the pages of an influential American publication. The subtitle of the article is also quite provocative: “Crimea should not stand in the way of an agreement that will end the war.” <…> Victor Pinchuk states:
“We must also make it clear that we are ready to accept the gradual easing of sanctions against Russia as we move closer to solving the problems that stand in the way of building a free, united, peaceful Ukraine, protected from external threats.”
According to Victor Pinchuk, Crimea
“must not stand in the way of an agreement that will fairly end the war in the east.”
What “fair basis” are we talking about? Because, according to the author’s logic, Ukrainians should now forget about the occupied peninsula and despite the fact that in the east of Ukraine there are no conditions for holding fair elections,
“We may have to ignore this fact and still hold local elections.”
<…..>
Victor Pinchuk proposes that Ukraine “build an alternative security system and adopt a position of neutrality as our immediate prospect for the future.”
One can only imagine the reaction of our front-line soldiers to this manifestation of collaborationism, to this, in fact, “an invitation to surrender” (Refat Chubarov). <...> Victor Pinchuk thinks that “...Donald Trump’s sympathy for Ukraine can become the basis for constructive negotiations, signing agreements and ultimately a peaceful settlement.”
But why is a refined esthete, Anglophile and philanthropist suddenly campaigning for the postponement of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union? Why is there no reaction from the power elite to the essentially capitulatory ideas of Mr. Pinchuk?
<…>
From the penultimate paragraph of Victor Pinchuk’s article, one can learn that, despite the author’s
“painful compromises” (they, they say, will save Ukrainian lives), “we must again declare that Ukraine can be a participant in solving its own problems, as well as participate in confronting global challenges - in the ranks of a broad international coalition.”
The phrase about Ukraine, which “can be a participant in solving its own problems”, is especially “touching”!”
This is not a confirmation of the open collaboration of the son-in-law of the second President of Ukraine, who was aggressively whitewashed from the case of the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, specially hiring the International Detective Agency Kroll, attracting leading Western consultants to turn his relative into a victim of political persecution.
When Victor Pinchuk says that the scientific process he initiated will provide “many refutations of Russian distortions of history,” then for some reason Tomas Schuman comes to mind, aka Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB officer who fled to the West, who for a long time operated under the roof of the APN (Press Agency "Novosti"), in his publications describing the insidious and effective method of carrying out ideological sabotage of the USSR in relation to countries that needed to be weakened or conquer. Now it (the technique) is widely used by Putin’s intelligence services. Ukraine daily feels the enemy’s information attacks and his crude propaganda.
PS
Ten years ago, I received a letter from the respected Levko Lukyanenko (to a certain extent, it was a kind of review by a famous politician of my article “The System, or Where Are the Reasons for Our Failures”) in which he, in particular, spoke about a very instructive episode from his life:
“In February-March 1992, the Verkhovna Rada adopted laws on small privatization, large privatization, foreign economic activity, etc. The chairman of the TV and Radio Company Okhmakevich invited me as the chairman of the URP and offered to buy a television channel for 50 thousand dollars. He says: “You will speak to the whole of Ukraine for 16 hours, whatever your Republican Party wants.” I didn’t buy the URP. We didn’t have that kind of money and couldn’t find it. Others had and bought. It seems it was Lauder... So, the Ukrainian people were and still remain the object of alien, mostly hostile ideological indoctrination.”
So here it is. At that time, there was no Ukrainian philanthropist who would allocate $50,000 (only $50,000!) for the promotion of Ukrainian culture? Why didn’t they consult with Bogdan Gavrilyshyn, or turn to such famous philanthropists as Konstantin Temertey or Petr Yatsik in Canada or Alexey Voskoboynik in the USA?
The Ukrainian democrats of that time obviously forgot about the famous military testament of the Chinese philosopher and strategist Sun Tzu:
“The highest art of war is not to fight on the battlefield, but to defeat the enemy by destroying all moral values in the enemy country.”
Now this fundamental principle of subversion is used almost daily against Ukraine by Putin’s Russia.
