UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER IS NOT JEWISH, PAPER FINDS

Segodnya, Kiev
1 Sep 05

Transport Minister Yevhen Chervonenko has issued a statement saying
Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko is Jewish and should be more concerned
about the welfare of Jews in Ukraine. A newspaper has found, however,
that Tymoshenko is not at all likely to be Jewish, especially in
light of her own observations on her genealogy. The following is the
text of the article by Yevhen Chalenko and Yevhen Ikhelson, entitled
“The Jewish scandal in the government”, published in the Ukrainian
newspaper Segodnya on 1 September:

It is clear that the opposition within our government, where
the president [Viktor Yushchenko] sent “unique boys and girls”,
has got so far that they have pulled that lethal card out of their
sleeves – the Jewish card. And it was Minister of Transportation
and Communications Yevhen Chervonenko who pulled it out – an ethnic
Jew himself. The minister’s press service related a statement by Mr
Chervonenko which was surprising in all respects – in it he judges
Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko for her lack of an official, defined
position on the recent beating of Jewish students in Kiev. The most
interesting thing is how he judges her! We quote: “The minister (that
is, Chervonenko – author), as a member of the government is very
surprised that such a reaction (meaning one like the president had –
author) did not come from the government and the prime minister of
Ukraine. All the more since Yuliya Tymoshenko’s mother is Jewish and
her father is an Armenian. It was exactly the Jews and the Armenians
who have experienced the biggest genocides.”

It is not clear why Chervonenko decided to “stamp” his boss and tell
the entire country about her Jewish roots. No explanations were given
in the press service of the Transport Ministry, where they only
said the minister was on vacation. However, we remind our readers
that relations between Tymoshenko and Chervonenko have never been
easy. Public spats have not been uncommon. As far as the “Jewish
question” then of course from the point of view of the national
interests of the country, it does not matter what ethnic group the
prime minister belongs to – what is important is that he does his
work well. However, since the minister has touched on the issue,
we decide to get to the bottom of it.

The magazine Korrespondent once published a questionnaire filled out
by Yuliya Tymoshenko herself back in Soviet times and in which she
wrote that her father (Volodymyr Abramovych Grigyan) was Latvian and
she herself was Ukrainian. The magazine also published the surname,
name and patronymic of her mother – Lyudmyla Mykolayivna Nelepova
(Telehyna after marriage). In December 2004, answering a question
from an Azerbaijani journalist in Kiev, Tymoshenko said the following:
“My father’s side is Latvian for 10 generations and on my mother’s side
everyone is Ukrainian,” pointing out that she had no ties to Armenians.

At the same time, as Segodnya was told by one of the leaders of the
Armenian Union in Ukraine [AUU], our prime minister’s maiden name comes
from the name Grigoriy and is very widespread in Armenia. He also told
Segodnya that there is a rumour in Yerevan [the capital of Armenia]
that Tymoshenko allegedly studied a short time in that city in school
No 147. They say her father brought her there. The AUU representative
also told Segodnya that as far as he knew, the prime minister had
never shown any interest in the Armenian Diaspora in Ukraine.

We also decided to find out whether Yuliya Tymoshenko takes part in
the life of the Latvian Diaspora, and called the secretary of the
Latvian embassy, Viktoria Karamane. She answered Segodnya by saying
she did not have the right to comment. She also added that there was
no official organization in Ukraine that united people from Latvia.

And what about the Jews? Eduard Dolynskyy, the acting director of
the United Jewish Community in Ukraine in answering a question from
Segodnya on Jewish roots, laughed saying that he had never heard of
“that”. The Rabbi of the central synagogue in Kiev, Moshe Asman, told
Segodnya that he had no information on the Jewish heritage of Yuliya
Tymoshenko or her participation in the life of the Jewish community
in either Kiev or Dnipropetrovsk [where she comes from].

That is, it is not clear where Yevhen Chervonenko saw Jewish blood in
Ms Tymoshenko’s past, although as a fellow Dnipropetrovsk native he
could know more about her. We remind our readers that in the Jewish
tradition a child is considered a Jew if his mother is Jewish.