Following its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine set forth on its development as a distinct sovereign state with democratic ideals. This project has been set back dramatically after the recent election of Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine. He and his government have consolidated power rapidly and ruthlessly, moving the country towards semi-authoritarianism. At the same time they have shifted the country’s orientation strongly back toward the orbit of Russia. Dr. Shcherbak examines these dramatic new developments.

Dr. Yuri Scherbak is an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine and a First Vice-President of the National Academy on Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. He began his political career in 1987 after Chornobyl catastrophe when he became leader of Ukrainian Greens. Dr. Scherbak initiated and led the first parliamentary investigation of the Chornobyl accident and the nuclear catastrophes in Semipalatinsk and in the Urals. He founded and became the leader of the Ukrainian Green Movement (organization which united more than 200 Ukrainian NGOs) in 1988 (it became the Green Party in 1990). Dr. Scherbak later was Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel, the United States, Mexico, and Canada (March 2000 till May 2003). In 2004-2006 Dr. Scherbak worked as Adviser to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine).An eyewitness to the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, Dr. Yuri Scherbak wrote the sensational expose documentary novel Chornobyl. The novel was published in English in 1989. Dr. Scherbak also wrote extensively on the Stalinist man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. In 1998 Harvard University Press published Dr. Scherbak’s book “The Strategic Role of Ukraine”.

As a writer, Yuri Scherbak is a well-known novelist who has authored 20 books of prose, plays, poetry, and essays and more than 200 publications and interviews on medical, ecological, political and historical issue. He is a member of Ukraine’s Writer’s Union and Cinematographers’ Union, and was on the executive board of the Writers’ Union from 1987 to 1989. He was been awarded medals and prizes in literature, medicine, and for his work as a Ukrainian statesman.