Summing up the fifth session of the intergovernmental Ukrainian- German commission dealing with settlers of German origin held in Odesa on May 22-23, Vice Premier of Ukraine Mykola Zhulynsky and special representative of the German federal government Johann Wehlt, signed a joint communiqu О containing coordinated approaches to the solution of the problem of settlers.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Zhulynsky specified, “The German families that arrived in 1993-1995 from Russia and other CIS countries have settled in six regions, mostly in Odesa and Transcarpathian oblasts. 206 cottages and apartment houses were built for the settlers at the expense of the Ukrainian state budget, and the German government funded the construction of another 132 buildings in the areas where the sellers reside compactly. The Bundestag appropriated DM 130,000 in 2000, particularly for the settlement of German families in the Odesa region.”
And, with due account of the necessity for the Germans to revive their ethnic identity in all Ukrainian regions, the German government, according to Mr. Wehlt, has allocated about DM 3 million for expanding the network of German cultural centers, altering the social infrastructure, and supporting the entrepreneurial structures in which the settlers are involved. At the Odesa meeting, the two sides discussed and found a common approach, as Mr. Wehlt added, to the solution of “the problem of employment and accelerated acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship by the settlers, as well as expansion of the network of cultural and educational institutions in the places of their residence.” Having no Ukrainian citizenship, the newly-arrived Germans are unable to take part in land sharing and exercise certain other rights, which in turn causes many to wish to continue their migration to Germany and look on Ukraine only as a way station from Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian republics to Germany.
Editor’s note: The German settlers are by no means newcomers to Ukraine but the descendants of colonists who settled here in the eighteenth century and were exiled because of their ethnic origin by the Soviet regime during World War II. In this sense, they have as much right to consider this country their homeland as anybody else.
