Ukrainian Information Service (UIS) [Українська Інформаційна Служба] – an agency established in the United Kingdom for the purpose of disseminating information on events in Ukraine and related topics.
The UIS initially functioned as an adjunct to Ukrainian Publishers Limited (UPL), which was founded in 1949 by the UK branch of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderivtsi) [OUN(B)]. In the same year the UIS began to publish a periodical news bulletin under the name Ukrainian Press Service, later renamed Ukrainian Information Service (1950-1951) and Ukrainian Observer (1952-1954).
The UIS subsequently published a considerable number of press releases, leaflets and pamphlets, as well as a number of books. Its activities expanded significantly between the 1960s and the 1980s when the dissident movement in Soviet Ukraine was at its height. In 1978 the UIS was incorporated as a limited company, separate from UPL, but based at the UPL premises at 200 Liverpool Road, London N1.
After the establishment of independent Ukraine the UIS continued its activities and set up a representative office in Ukraine. In many of its publications in the 1980s and 1990s the agency figured as the Ukrainian Central Information Service. A regular Ukrainian-language bulletin covering events in Ukraine was published under this name from 1985 to 1999.
In 1993 the UIS absorbed the assets and activities of UPL, which was subsequently dissolved. Until 2003, in particular, the UIS published the Vyzvolnyi Shliakh (Liberation Path) journal, which was previously a UPL publication. The UIS also became the custodian of the Stepan Bandera Museum of the Ukrainian Liberation Struggle located at 200 Liverpool Road, and maintains the Arkhiv OUN (OUN Archive) website containing digital images of publications and other material from the archives of the OUN(B). In 2017 the UIS began to produce an English-language online bulletin entitled Weekly News From Ukraine.
Bibliography
D., ‘Ukrainska Informatsiina Sluzhba’, Vyzvolnyi Shliakh (London), 1952, no. 3, pp. 37-38
Dmytriw I., ‘Novi ustanovy u Velykii Brytanii’, Ukrainska Dumka (London), 28 September 1978, p. 3
Oleskiw, W., ‘Prezentatsiia zhurnalu “Vyzvolnyi Shliakh”’, Vyzvolnyi Shliakh (London), 1993, no. 9, pp. 1125-1128
‘Vystup Holovy Dyrektsii UIS-London Mykoly Matwijiwskoho na prezentatsii “Vyzvolnoho Shliakhu”, Ukrainska Dumka (London), 16 May 1996, p. 5
Pokalchuk, Yu., Ukraintsi u Velykii Brytanii (Lviv, 1999), pp. 61, 63-64
(A separate Ukrainian Information Service functioned in London in 1946.)