Ukrainian speakers, please?

Hi guys, my a cappella group is performing several Christmas pieces but we would like to perform "Carol of the Bells" not as "Carol of the Bells" but rather as the original Ukrainian "Щедрик." I have therefore been wrangled into transliterating the Ukrainian lyrics into the Latin alphabet, but as a proficient Russian speaker, this isn't my problem specifically. My main issue is on the actual phonetic level. Скажите пожалуйста, I am wondering:

• what the difference between і and и is (Wikipedia tells me that the former is /i/ and the latter is /ɪ/, but I had kind of assumed that if anything, it would be the reverse, and is it really /ɪ/ and not /ɨ/?)
• how в is pronounced (Wikipedia tells me /w/ or an approximation, is this really true?)
• how palatalized, if at all, щ and ч are, and if not, how you distinguish щ from ш, if at all
• whether or not е is /jɛ/ as in Russian, or just /ɛ/?

It would be most helpful if I could either receive information using IPA or examples specifically from Russian, not from English. (I am a native English speaker, but I will best understand any comparisons you draw by comparing the Ukrainian phonemes to those of a close linguistic relative, you know?)

Спасибо, or the Ukrainian equivalent...