The Sept. 27 decision of the Administrative Appeals Court of Ukraine’s Supreme Court to uphold the banning of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) was “not only … a politically motivated punishment of our party, but it tramples on all the foundations of European democracy,” PSPU chairwoman and former Deputy in the Ukrainian parliament Natalia Vitrenko charged in a Sept. 30 message to her fellow party members and friends all over the world.
Her message should shock all decent people. To show that “the motive for banning the Party was based on political accusations, not on any legal substantiation,” Vitrenko quotes from the grounds for banning the party given by the Justice Ministry and Special Security of Ukraine (SBU), which included: that the PSPU opposed Ukraine joining NATO and the EU, based on the policy maintained by the PSPU since its founding in 1996, that Ukraine should maintain a “neutral, non-bloc status,” to allow for its successful development as an independent, sovereign state, within its 1991 borders, and with a guarantee of security from all leading countries in the world.
Also cited as grounds for banning the party were that it opposed the rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler’s collaborators in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and remained faithful “to Eastern Slavic culture and canonical Orthodoxy"!
Furthermore, the PSPU’s fierce and unceasing rejection of IMF policies earned it the permanent enmity of “world imperialism” and Ukrainian fascists alike, Vitrenko charged.
