Odesa’s authorities have demonstrated their traditional diligence in complying with Moscow’s “insistent request” that an end be put to the activity of the Chechnya Information Bureau functioning under the auspices of the local Rukh office. Volodymyr Karliuk, chairman of the information committee of the regional state administration, was the first to report that extraordinary measures had been taken, actually issuing a public warning to the Rukh leadership via the local media. The document reads, in part, that “this publication (Rukh Digest — Author) is being issued without being registered in keeping with established procedures, thus transgressing Article 11 of the Law of Ukraine On the Print Media (Press) in Ukraine.” Although the author reminds that the guilty party must be brought to account for this transgression, the authorities have thus far been content with recommending that “Odesa regional organization of the Ukrainian Popular Movement, Rukh, stop putting out its unregistered periodical, The Truth about the War in Ichkeria (Chechens call their republic Ichkeria — Ed.)
Viktor Tsymbaliuk, candidate of sciences in philosophy, leader of the regional Rukh organization, and cofounder of the publication in question, told
The Day that he had a talk with SBU Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Halai who warned that “The regional Rukh leadership may have problems registering its organization at the local level unless they close the Chechnya Information Bureau.” Mr. Tsymbaliuk also stated that he had been sternly warned: the regional Rukh organization would be considered “illegitimate for the next several of months, until its official registration, with all the attendant consequences.”
This is eloquent evidence of what one of the Rukh founding members in Ukraine described as “Moscow instructions in the form of requests” being complied with in Odesa “at once and with the utmost diligence,” as they were before Ukraine’s independence. In contrast to the Odesa regional state administration’s commitments in registering the local Rukh organization. “We submitted uniform standard documents for registration on January 18 in Odesa oblast, as we did in all the other oblasts. Unlike Zhytomyr, Poltava, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Lutsk, and other cities where all regional Rukh organizations are registered, Odesa’s regional department of justice, headed by SDPU(o) activist Lisohorov has refused to register our local party organization under all kinds of pretexts.”
