MONTREAL — Helen Fotopulos, a former Montreal city councillor, who spent a month in Ukraine as a member of the Canadian delegation observing the presidential election, said the Jews she met are firmly opposed to separatism or Russian intervention in the country.
Fotopulos was stationed in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, the home of an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Jews. This city in southeastern Ukraine has become a symbol of Jewish revival in the former Soviet Union because it is the site of the Menorah, touted as the world’s largest Jewish community centre.
The massive, 22-storey structure, which was completed last year, was made possible largely with money from the Dnipropetrovsk oblast’s (region’s) governor, the Jewish business oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.
“The members of the Jewish community that I met said it would be wrong to conclude, despite Russian propaganda that it is fighting fascist elements, that they back Vladimir Putin,” said Fotopulos in an interview. Jews may speak Russian and be “Russophiles but they are not Putinophiles.
“They are pro-Ukrainian; no one I met wants to be part of the Russian federation or under Putin. Jews are fully integrated into the general population, which is much more multicultural and multi-confessional than we in Canada perceive,” said Fotopulos. That firm stance has, in some instances, “put a wedge between them and friends and family in Russia.”
After almost 20 years on city council, during which she was an executive committee member and Plateau Mont-Royal borough mayor, Fotopulos lost her Côte des Neiges seat in the election last November.
Her parents were both from Ukraine; her mother from Donetsk, the eastern city where most of the violence is taking place today, and her father, whose ancestors were Greek, from Kiev.
Fotopulos is fluent in Russian.
She was one of the long-term observers who set the groundwork for the approximately 150 other Canadians who monitored the May 25 election that brought Petro Poroshenko to power.
Dnipropetrovsk is about 450 to 500 km southeast of Kiev, and 240 km west of Donetsk oblast, a border region.
The multibillionaire Kolomoyskyi appears to be hugely popular among the Jewish and non-Jewish population, she said.
While he may not be adhering to the letter of democracy as Canadians know it, Kolomoyskyi is using his money effectively to maintain order in the region, and the people appreciate it, she said.
“Everyone is fearful that the bloodbath in the extreme east will spread.”
With a population of over one million, Dnipropetrovsk is Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, but its political influence is in some ways greater than the capital because it is an industrial and financial strength.
Kolomoyskyi’s security measures, such as checkpoints or offering rewards to apprehend separatists, are welcomed by the population, she said, because they are working. In contrast to war-torn Donetsk, all is calm in Dnipropetrovsk, Fotopulos found.
“‘He is taking care of us’ is what I heard from everyone,” she said.
Fotopulos was given a tour of the Menorah, so named because its seven towers resemble the branches of the candelabra.
Located in the heart of the city around the historic synagogue, which has been completely refurbished, Fotopulos found the structure more splendid than any photo can convey. It houses an impressive Holocaust centre and museum of Ukrainian Jewry, as well as a five- and four-star hotel, restaurants, a bank and other amenities.
“When things are quieter in Ukraine, I would recommend tourists come and stay there,” she said.
Fotopulos noted that the city was a military industrial hub in Soviet times, and was essentially closed to the world until the 1990s.
“The Jewish officials stressed that they are a united community that works as one, unlike, say, Kiev, where there are a bunch of organizations, and that runs the gamut from ultra-religious to ultra-secular,” she said.
At the same time, the Jews work collaboratively with the other cultural groups, and there is an umbrella organization of 15 ethnic communities in which it is active.