Ukrainian

THE UNSUNG SUCCESS of the Helsinki summit was the quiet boost it gave to Ukrainian as well as Polish security. The peace of new Central European members of NATO, the summit made clear, will not be bought at the price of greater insecurity for neighboring non-members farther east.This is the not-so-hidden message of the peaceboat diplomacy that followed the summit this week as ships from the U.S. and six other NATO countries visited the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa.Joint NATO-Ukrainian naval maneuvers next August not far from Sevastopol, the Ukrainian city and naval base that the Russian parliament claims belongs to Russia, will repeat the message.

Alex Len's command of English has improved enough that Maryland made the 7-foot-1 Ukrainian center available to the media today for the first time. I will have a full-length story on Len later today with lots more details. In the meantime, here are some highlights: * Len said his game suffered last season because he had so much difficulty with the language that he couldn't always understand what plays were called. “The first three months was the hardest because I didn't know any language.

In a very small way, Mrs. Jaroslava Solhan can hold the essence of her Ukrainian homeland in the palm of her hand.And she passes the soul of her native country along to friends, family and people who know little of her country's story other than the loveliness of the patterns and symbols with which she decorates traditional Easter eggs.All year long, in her home in Curtis Bay, she turns out glowing examples of the traditional craft. There are large goose eggs, duck eggs, grade A extra-large eggs; each one with a rich and colorful coat that celebrates the season.

Running in a tight pack as he cruised through downtown streets, the zoo and the Under Armour headquarters, Stephen Muange didn't want to push the pace at Saturday's Baltimore Marathon. It wasn't because he couldn't, or even that he didn't want to. The 30-year-old just didn't know how marathons ran. Trying out the 26.2-mile race format for the first time, Muange pulled away from two other elite runners in the final mile to take first place in one of the most thrilling finishes in the event's 11-year history.

WASHINGTON -- Facing the prospect of a Ukrainian vote for independence Dec. 1, a deeply divided Bush administration is struggling to come to grips with a disintegrating Soviet Union whose vast nuclear arsenal is moving inexorably out of tight Kremlin control.The vote is expected to sever the second-largest republic from the Soviet Union. And the National Security Council staff is spearheading a major review of policy toward the Soviet Union.Until now the State Department has been seeking to preserve relations with central authorities while the Pentagon is leaning toward independence-minded republics.

Not all Easter eggs are for children.For hundreds of years, a tradition of drawing colorful eggs has continued in Ukraine. Several dozen eggs, called pysanky, dyed in the Ukrainian manner, are on exhibit at the North Carroll Public Library in Greenmount until Friday.Ukrainian eggs look painted, but the intricate leaves, flowers, animals and crosshatching are created by wax resist and layers of dye. At first, melted beeswax is drawn on the egg through a hollow brass tube called a kiska.Then the egg is dipped in a rainbow of dyes, one at a time, light to dark.

There's no mistaking the scent of borscht on the stove top, filling the room with an earthy aroma and warmth that only a simmering pot of soup can offer. Each week after services at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church on Eastern Avenue, the rich, beet-root soup is ladled into bowls and served to the faithful at coffee hour. So it's no surprise that it will be on the menu Saturday and Sunday at the 30th annual Ukrainian Festival in Patterson Park, alongside herring, stuffed cabbages, pastries and homemade breads.

Now it can be told: Six figure skating judges now admit they were laughing so hard at Ukrainian Oksana Baiul's "Joan-Fontaine-meets-the-Starship-Enterp rise" outfit that they missed her technical program and graded her on a guess.Worst that food poisoning: U.S. Olympians still reeling from recent gooey "Jackson Family Honors" awards show presented by this country's leading dysfunctional family and inadvertently picked up by satellite dish in athlete's village.Worse tha food poisoning: Skier Tommy Moe reported fighting waves of nausea after hearing Elizabeth Taylor tell Michael (clad in standard planet Romulus attire)

Voloshky, the celebrated Ukrainian folk dance ensemble, will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at North County High School. The concert is sponsored by the Performing Arts Association of Linthicum.The dance company, directed by Andrei Pap, has a repertoire of dances from every Ukrainian region.Voloshky has traveled northeastern United States and Canada since 1972, promoting Ukrainian dance and tradition and cultivating an interest in Ukrainian culture.The ensemble has developed 40 dancers who perform everything from vibrant, acrobatic dances to fluid, stylized romantic pieces.

Call it the Americanization of Masha.Or maybe the Ukrainianization of Sarah.Either way, the budding friendship between two teen-age girls shows the very personal side of a cultural exchange that is one of the largest public school programs between the United States and Ukraine.Maria "Masha" Revchuk of Kiev, 14, and Sarah Williams, 13, of Cockeysville, who were brought together by the Baltimore County program, have become "best buds" after living in each other's homes and exploring each other's countries.

Baltimore-trained artist Nestor Topchy put a new spin on Easter eggs at a workshop yesterday that brought participants ranging from children to grandmothers to the Johns Hopkins University's Evergreen House. The eggs were not exclusively the province of Easter, however, but the Ukrainian decorated sort. Topchy had some wooden ones adorned with geometric patterns hanging from his Byzantine gold-leaf icon paintings on display there. Now a resident of Houston, Topchy was a child when he learned pysanky, the ancient egg-painting craft, from his mother -- and both of them shared their knowledge with about 30 people at Evergreen.

The finish for Saturday's Under Armour Baltimore Marathon will be between Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium, but the outcome might have been determined last month on the landbridge between the Black and Caspian seas, in the foothills of the north Caucasus region of Russia. Mykola Antonenko prepared to defend the Baltimore Marathon title he won last year by training in Kislovodsk, a popular destination in the Caucasus. He's coming from a training environment also used by Ilona Barvanova, a fellow Ukrainian who was the women's runner-up in Baltimore last year.

There's no mistaking the scent of borscht on the stove top, filling the room with an earthy aroma and warmth that only a simmering pot of soup can offer. Each week after services at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church on Eastern Avenue, the rich, beet-root soup is ladled into bowls and served to the faithful at coffee hour. So it's no surprise that it will be on the menu Saturday and Sunday at the 30th annual Ukrainian Festival in Patterson Park, alongside herring, stuffed cabbages, pastries and homemade breads.

MOSCOW -- After months of tough negotiations, pro-Western parties that led Ukraine's Orange Revolution reached agreement yesterday on restoring a coalition that would return former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to power. "We won democracy for Ukraine by approving this decision today," Tymoshenko told parliament as she and other coalition leaders announced the agreement. The country's new parliament faces a Saturday deadline to approve the deal, which could fall apart because of tensions within the coalition.

Leena BhaduriHauck removed a white egg from a carton and drew an outline of a design on it with a pencil. Next, she dropped the egg into a yellow dye and set a cooking timer for five minutes. When the timer dinged, she removed the egg and placed it on a drying rack. She sat down at the dining room table in her Street home and lit a tall yellow candle. Then she picked up a kistka, a tool used to apply beeswax to eggs, and ran the end of it through the candle flame. She filled the tip of the kistka with wax, ran it through the flame again and tested the wax on a small piece of paper.

KIEV, Ukraine -- Less than a year and a half after President Viktor A. Yushchenko rose to power in a historic contest filled with clashes over corruption and fraud, voters head into parliamentary elections today in which the tone is much closer to the nuanced politics expected of a democracy. The pro-Western coalition that brought Yushchenko victory through the Orange Revolution has broken up into competing factions. That sets the stage for a three-way race featuring the Party of Regions, headed by Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian former prime minister who lost in the 2004 presidential race, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

When Yuliya Korkh, a 22-year-old Ukrainian refugee, sat down to decipher her textbooks on nursing, she had an unlikely study partner -- her father. Yesterday, father and daughter graduated from Towson University with nursing degrees, ending a six-year odyssey that began when they fled their native country with $200, a little English and a lot of hope. "Do I look great?" asked Leonid Korkh, 47, modeling his mortarboard yesterday in his Northwest Baltimore apartment. "Father and daughter, same hats," Yuliya answered with a grin.

Baltimore-trained artist Nestor Topchy put a new spin on Easter eggs at a workshop yesterday that brought participants ranging from children to grandmothers to the Johns Hopkins University's Evergreen House. The eggs were not exclusively the province of Easter, however, but the Ukrainian decorated sort. Topchy had some wooden ones adorned with geometric patterns hanging from his Byzantine gold-leaf icon paintings on display there. Now a resident of Houston, Topchy was a child when he learned pysanky, the ancient egg-painting craft, from his mother -- and both of them shared their knowledge with about 30 people at Evergreen.

On December 12, 2005 TROCHYN KARPUS; beloved husband of the late Katherine (nee Azkova) Karpus' devoted father of William Karpus and his wife Diane and Anthony Karpus and his wife Florence; dear grandfather of William and Matthew Karpus, Jennifer Dyer, Christopher Linda and Kimberly Karpus. Panahyda Services will be held at the family owned LILLLY AND ZEILER INC., FUNERAL HOME, 1901 Eastern Avenue on Tuesday at 6 P.M. Divine Liturgy at St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Wednsday at 1 P.M. Interment in St. Andrew's Cemetery, S. Boundbrook, N.J. on Thursday.

For the winner of the Baltimore Running Festival's women's half-marathon, the future was definitely a thing of the past. Last week, Natalya Berkut of Ukraine won the Boston Half-Marathon, and yesterday she continued her winning stride with a 1-hour, 15-minute, 12-second first-place finish in Baltimore. "I know I can win both of them now," said Berkut, 30. "I train good every day." Berkut, who broke away at mile 9 in the Boston race, led here from start to finish. Although her time in Boston was nearly 5 minutes faster, she said she had a smoother time here.