On Nov 23, while people throughout the world joined Ukrainians in remembering the Victims of Holodomor 1932-1933 and in protesting against the government’s about-face on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, around 150 extreme rightwing racists held a march through Lviv.

With presidential elections on the horizon and ongoing attempts by the Party of the Regions to play the “anti-fascist” card, attention to the launching of a new “Assembly of National Minorities” seems warranted..

Two Crimean Tatar Mosques have burned down in the Crimea and witnesses say that they have found signs of arson The Mufti of the Muslims of Crimea Hajji Emirali Ablaev has called on Muslims to remain calm and called the arson attacks attempts to provoke interreligious conflict.

On moves heightening division within the country, demonstrated even in controversial changes to the history syllabus and a book, published with local authority funding, which repeats Soviet lies about the Crimean Tatars. .

The independent student union Direct Action [Pryama Diya] has reported what it calls the latest attack on one of its activists and asserts that this is the latest attack in a wave of extreme rightwing violence.

With the arrival of Hasidic pilgrims to Uman just over a week away, concern is strong regarding the Orthodox cross recently erected in a place of religious significance to the pilgrims. The actions seem clearly directed at provoking conflict and inciting inter-ethnic and inter-faith enmity..

Problems, like prices, have a tendency to rise. Not always, however, and as well as decreasing, they can also mutate. This makes anti-Semitic mindsets of any kind especially dangerous and easily manipulated.

Unlike administrative resource, thugs and cynical "antifascist" rhetoric, imagination was in short supply at the 18 May “antifascist demonstration” in Kyiv. While VO Svoboda ideological consistency does not make its bigoted views any more palatable, the Party of the Regions was still stupendously uncovincing

The Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine [Vaad] and the Congress of National Communities have issued a joint statement regarding the supposed “anti-fascist” demonstration planned for 18 May.

The Mejlis is angered over the decision of the Crimean Parliament to to boycott the traditional celebration of Khydyrlez and organize their own festivities falling right on the days marking the 69th anniversary of the signing by Stalin of the decree ordering the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

The Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust has been vandalized for the second time in the last year, as well as a memorial plaque to Menachim Mendlu Shnerson

The Crimean leadership, almost certainly with encouragement from above, seem hellbent on fuelling confrontation with potentially tragic consequences

The Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and Inter-Ethnic Relations has called on President Yanukovych to intervene in the conflict between the Crimean government and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People

In Mykolaiv the Memorial to Victims of the Holocaust was defiled (with a foul word daubed over the memorial plaque, while in the Crimea the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the Crimea was daubed with a swastika, five-pointed star and foul language

Present actions by the Simferopol and Crimean authorities appear aimed at using traditional remembrance events marking the Deportation on 17 - 18 May to provoke discord and disturbances

Highly worrying moves afoot in the Crimea suggest that concern back in November 2011 over the President’s quite staggering promotion of Anatoly Mohylyov to the post of Prime Minister of the Crimea was extremely well-founded

In Simferopol one of the influential activists of the Crimean Tatar national movement and official of the Kurultay or National Assembly of the Crimean Tatar People, Kurtseyit Abduplayev has been attacked and brutally beaten

Recent electoral success of the rightwing VO Svoboda Party and the obvious benefits to the ruling Party of the Regions have prompted considerable speculation, while attempts to play hero to the far-right xenophobes suggest the influence of other players, including at least one Kremlin-supported organization

Viacheslav Likhachev’s monitoring of anti-Semitism in Ukraine is especially valuable as he places each given year within a broader context making it possible to assess how accurate are the frequent claims of sharp increases in anti-Semitism, etc.

Justified concerns about the rightwing VO Svoboda Party may have concentrated of late on its members’ revolting displays of anti-Semitism. They should not end there, and the opposition would do well to recall that the party’s platform is light years away from freedom and democracy