While sitting in his dorm room at College of the North Atlantic in Stephenville last weekend, Volodymyr Vasylevskyi had a stressful time watching what was unfolding in his native country of Ukraine.
The young man is an international student in the Film and Video Production program at the college’s Bay St. George Campus.
His father was in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, protesting the police violence that had taken place in the country. Luckily, as he later learned, his dad had left about an hour before the burning of the main building of internal affairs.
Vasylevskyi’s brother Ivan was volunteering with the Red Cross during the clashes in Independent Square, while his friend Constantine was also involved in the protests.
He was in contact with family through Skype and was extremely worried about them while the events were taking place. His family lives in Zhytomyr, a city located about 130 kilometres from Kyiv.
Vasylevskyi said the events that led up to last weekend’s clashes go back to when Ukrainian President Victor Yanokvych stated he would sign a trade deal with the European Union at a summit in Lithuania on Nov. 29, 2013.
However, the week before the summit Yanokvych’s government refused to sign the deal and that’s when protests began resulting in riot police beating residents, mostly students.
He said his parents and people from other regions protested the police actions, then the question about an alliance with the European Union came into play. People from the West, North and Central Ukraine want an independent country, which the Southern and Eastern sections are more closely related with Russia.
But Vasylevskyi said after mass killings, even people in those regions don’t want to live in a country where the government kills its own people.
“Now its more about the dignity of this country,” he said of Ukraine.
Vasylevskyi said former president Yanokvych ran away because he was afraid that people would kill him.
He said the city he is from had no violence and the main problem was in the capital, but he did note that one city, Sevastopol in the southern region of Crimia, was toppled.
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Vasylevskyi said this is a city that wants to separate from Ukraine, but it’s his personal opinion that the people there are influenced by the propaganda of the Russian government to the point of Russian President Vladimir Putin thinking this city belongs to Russia.
“(Putin) wants now to save the parts of Ukraine he thinks belongs to Russia,” he said. “As of Wednesday there was Russian military in Sevastopol. Putin thinks he is a king and wants to build a modern Russian empire by taking over some parts of the Ukraine.”
Vasylevskyi said the two main reasons for the protests were to force the president and his corrupt government to resign, and now to have a full new slate of people in parliament. The people are still there in the capital to ensure this happens.
“The problem now is that Russian President Putin still wants to rule Ukraine, but personally I think nothing will happen in Southern Ukraine and people will want to be with an independent Ukraine and not with Russia,” he said.
Vasylevskyi said there will be an election in the country on May 25 and, although he would like to see all new faces in parliament, he fears that most of them will be the same and a lot of problems that formerly existed will exist.
He plans to complete his program during the next 18 months at College of the North Atlantic and stay around for the summer. After completing the program he hopes to get some Canadian work experience, then hopefully go back and work in his native country of Ukraine.
Twitter: WS_FrankGale
