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FTR #907 Update on Ukraine

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [6].

 

Intro­duc­tion: As indi­cat­ed, this pro­gram brings up to date our long-run­ning cov­er­age of the cri­sis in Ukraine. Much of the analy­sis cen­ters on the role of the long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States in the sus­tain­ing and pro­jec­tion of Ukrain­ian fas­cism over the years and around the world.

The broad­cast begins with cov­er­age of the dra­mat­i­cal­ly revi­sion­ist nature of Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry.

In numer­ous broad­casts [7], we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite [8] of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA.

A recent arti­cle in For­eign Pol­i­cy [9] (pub­lished by the CFR and con­se­quent­ly VERY main­stream), fur­ther devel­ops the activ­i­ties of Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, appoint­ed as head of the Insti­tute of Nation­al mem­o­ry by Vik­tor Yuschenko [10] and then re-appoint­ed by Petro Pet­roshenko.

After the Yushc­neko gov­ern­ment left pow­er and pri­or to the Maid­an coup, Via­tro­vych was in the U.S., work­ing as a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute. This is in line with the fun­da­men­tal role of the OUN/B‑based Amer­i­can emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty in the gen­er­a­tion of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion and the Maid­an coup.

 . . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

Recall that Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko [11]–Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son and a key oper­a­tive of the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can front orga­niz­tion the U.C.C.A.–and had Roman Zvarych [12] (Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s) as his Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.

Note, also, that Ser­hiy Kvit, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion is a bird of the same feath­er as Via­tro­vych.  . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive [13] to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine” and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. . . .’ ”

The mea­sure of the revi­sion­ism under­way in Ukraine can be gauged by this: “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed [14]: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”

It is depress­ing and remark­able to see such ele­ments being por­trayed as “hero­ic!”

Via­tro­vy­ch’s sojourn in the U.S. in between terms serv­ing as head of the Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry opens a vista on the high­ly impor­tant, long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian fas­cist pres­ence in the Unit­ed States. Serv­ing as a Fifth Col­umn in the run-up to World War II, the Ukrain­ian exile com­mu­ni­ty in the U.S. was wed­ded to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and the GOP.

We begin our explo­ration of the Ukrain­ian pres­ence in the U.S. with review of the Pelypenko affair. A Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Priest, Pelypenko was also an agent of Ger­man intel­li­gence. Fol­low­ing the Hitler-Stal­in Pact, Pelypenko piv­ot­ed from his sup­port for Nazi Ger­many to sup­port for the U.S., which he saw as a bet­ter tick­et back into Ukraine.

 ” . . . . Hitler’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union renewed the enthu­si­asm of some of the Ukraini­ans for Nazism and an entire Waf­fen-SS divi­sion, com­prised of Ukrain­ian troops, was formed (and even­tu­al­ly many of these reset­tled in the Unit­ed States after the war). This his­tor­i­cal episode has oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions, for it led to the for­ma­tion of sev­er­al impor­tant lob­by groups that agi­tat­ed for polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary resis­tance against the Sovi­ets under the gen­er­al rubric of “cap­tive nations” orga­ni­za­tions such as the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL). The Pelypenko affair reveals the extent of the Amer­i­can Nazi net­work and the inten­tion of its per­pe­tra­tors to over­throw the US gov­ern­ment and install a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that would remove Jew­ish and “Com­mu­nist” influ­ence at all lev­els of Amer­i­can life. . . .”

Much of the pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt of the 1942 anti-fas­cist clas­sic Sab­o­tage: The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca [15], deal­ing with the pro­found Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Note that the Ger­man Gen­er­al Staff was devel­op­ing the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra as a vehi­cle for con­quest in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty was an impor­tant part of this Fifth Col­umn, deeply involved in Axis espi­onage and sab­o­tage.

Note the gen­e­sis of the OUN as an exten­sion of the Ger­man order of bat­tle. ” . . . . The inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of spies and sabo­teurs which Kono­valetz set up under the super­vi­sion of the Intel­li­gence Depart­ment of the Ger­man War Office went by the name of Ukra­jin­s­ka Orga­ni­zace Nacional­is­tov (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), com­mon­ly referred to as the OUN.

Wher­ev­er there were Ukrain­ian communities–in Sovi­et Rus­sia, France, Roma­nia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, South Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States–Colonel Kono­valet­z’s emis­saries trav­eled at the expense of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment and estab­lished OUN cells. Spe­cial schools for OUN mem­bers were opened in Ger­many, where the stu­dents were care­ful­ly trained in the arts of espi­onage, sab­o­tage and assas­si­na­tion. The first of these schools was found­ed by the Ger­man War Office in Danzig around 1928. Ger­man intel­li­gence offi­cers act­ed as instruc­tors.

The OUN stu­dents were taught the var­i­ous meth­ods of steal­ing mil­i­tary secrets, mak­ing bombs, blow­ing up fac­to­ries and car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal mur­ders. Cours­es in reg­u­lar Ger­man army train­ing were also part of the cur­ricu­lum. OUN grad­u­ates from this Danzig school destroyed scores of fac­to­ries and farms by sab­o­tage fires and explo­sions in Poland dur­ing the years 1928–31. They also assas­si­nat­ed a num­ber of promi­nent Pol­ish politi­cians before the Pol­ish author­i­ties final­ly arrest­ed sev­er­al OUN ter­ror­ists and impris­oned or exe­cut­ed them. The remain­ing OUN mem­bers were tem­porar­i­ly with­drawn from Poland and were put to work, with oth­er of Kono­valet­z’s fol­low­ers, in the Nazi Par­ty in Ger­many. When Hitler came to pow­er, a cen­tral acad­e­my for the OUN was found­ed in Berlin. The Nazis spared no expense in build­ing this acad­e­my and sup­ply­ing it with expert instruc­tors and sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment. The acad­e­my’s address is 75 Meck­lens­bur­gis­che Strasse, Berlin. Its title is ‘School for Espi­onage, Sab­o­tage and Ter­ror­ism.’ . . . .”

The pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can branch of the OUN was titled Svo­bo­da, a word that trans­lates as “free­dom” in sev­er­al East­ern Euro­pean lan­guages. “. . . . With Myshuha at its head, Svo­bo­da was con­vert­ed into an organ of Axis pro­pa­gan­da and a medi­um for con­vey­ing instruc­tions to ODWU spies. The Svo­bo­da offices at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, became a clear­ing house for espi­onage direc­tives com­ing in from Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. For many years, these direc­tives have been reg­u­lar­ly reach­ing the Svo­bo­da offices by mail from Span­ish and South Amer­i­can “drops,” or through the spe­cial “couri­ers” of the Axis spy sys­tems. Liai­son offi­cers from Ger­many and Japan made their head­quar­ters at 83 Grand Street when they vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States. Senyk-Gribi­wisky’s mail was always sent to this address. Here cer­tain Axis agents paid their last calls before sail­ing for Europe, and from here, they were accom­pa­nied to the pier where last con­fi­den­tial words were exchanged, to remain as sealed secrets until “couri­ers” arrived with fur­ther orders. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. In numer­ous broad­casts [7], we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite [8] of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA.

A recent arti­cle in For­eign Pol­i­cy [9] (pub­lished by the CFR and con­se­quent­ly VERY main­stream), fur­ther devel­ops the activ­i­ties of Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, appoint­ed as head of the Insti­tute of Nation­al mem­o­ry by Vik­tor Yuschenko [10] and then re-appoint­ed by Petro Pet­roshenko.

After the Yushc­neko gov­ern­ment left pow­er and pri­or to the Maid­an coup, Via­tro­vych was in the U.S., work­ing as a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute. This is in line with the fun­da­men­tal role of the OUN/B‑based Amer­i­can emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty in the gen­er­a­tion of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion and the Maid­an coup.

 . . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

Recall that Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko [11]–Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son and a key oper­a­tive of the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can front orga­niz­tion the U.C.C.A.–and had Roman Zvarych [12] (Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s) as his Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.

Note, also, that Ser­hiy Kvit, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion is a bird of the same feath­er as Via­tro­vych.  . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive [13] to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine’ and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. . . .’ ”

The mea­sure of the revi­sion­ism under­way in Ukraine can be gauged by this: “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed [14]: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”

It is depress­ing and remark­able to see such ele­ments being por­trayed as “hero­ic!”

“The His­to­ri­an White­wash­ing Ukraine’s Past” by Josh Cohen; For­eign Pol­i­cy; 5/02/2016. [9]

. . . . Advo­cat­ing a nation­al­ist, revi­sion­ist his­to­ry that glo­ri­fies the country’s move to inde­pen­dence — and purges bloody and oppor­tunis­tic chap­ters — [Volodymyr] Via­tro­vych has attempt­ed to redraft the country’s mod­ern his­to­ry to white­wash Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups’ involve­ment in the Holo­caust and mass eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles dur­ing World War II. And right now, he’s win­ning. . . .

. . . . In May 2015, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed a law [20] that man­dat­ed the trans­fer of the country’s com­plete set of archives, from the “Sovi­et organs of repres­sion,” such as the KGB and its dece­dent, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU), to a gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion called the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry [21]. . . .

. . . . The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on a telling of World War II his­to­ry that ampli­fies Sovi­et crimes and glo­ri­fies Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fight­ers while dis­miss­ing the vital part they played in eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi inva­sion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. . . .

. . . . And more point­ed­ly, schol­ars now fear that they risk reprisal for not toe­ing the offi­cial line — or call­ing Via­tro­vych on his his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tions. Under Viatrovych’s reign, the coun­try could be head­ed for a new, and fright­en­ing, era of cen­sor­ship. . . .

. . . . The revi­sion­ism focus­es on two Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups: the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA), which fought to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent Ukraine. Dur­ing the war, these groups killed [22] tens of thou­sands of Jews and car­ried out a bru­tal cam­paign of eth­nic cleans­ing that killed as many as 100,000 Poles. Cre­at­ed [23] in 1929 to free Ukraine from Sovi­et con­trol, the OUN embraced [24] the notion of an eth­ni­cal­ly pure Ukrain­ian nation. When the Nazis invad­ed the Sovi­et Union in 1941, the OUN and its charis­mat­ic leader, Stepan Ban­dera, wel­comed [25] the inva­sion as a step toward Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence. [This is mod­i­fied lim­it­ed hang­out. The OUN/B was part of the Third Reich’s polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary order of battle.–D.E.] Its mem­bers car­ried out a pogrom in Lviv [26] that killed 5,000 Jews, and OUN mili­tias played a major role in vio­lence against the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion in west­ern Ukraine that claimed the lives of up to 35,000 Jews. . . . [A street in the Lviv dis­trict has been renamed [27] in hon­or of the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall or Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion, com­mand­ed by Roman Shukhevych (named a “Hero of Ukraine” and the father of Yuri Shukhevych, a top archi­tect of the cur­rent Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal landscape.)–D.E.]

. . . . The new law [28], which promis­es that peo­ple who “pub­licly exhib­it a dis­re­spect­ful atti­tude” toward these groups or “deny the legit­i­ma­cy” of Ukraine’s 20th cen­tu­ry strug­gle for inde­pen­dence will be pros­e­cut­ed (though no pun­ish­ment is spec­i­fied) also means that inde­pen­dent Ukraine is being par­tial­ly built on a fal­si­fied nar­ra­tive of the Holo­caust.

By trans­fer­ring con­trol of the nation’s archives to Via­tro­vych, Ukraine’s nation­al­ists assured them­selves that man­age­ment of the nation’s his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is now in the “cor­rect” hands. . . .

. . . . In 2008, in addi­tion to his role at TsD­VR, Vik­tor Yushchenko, then pres­i­dent, appoint­ed Via­tro­vych head of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine’s (SBU) archives. Yuschenko made the pro­mo­tion of OUN-UPA mythol­o­gy a fun­da­men­tal part of his lega­cy, rewrit­ing school text­books, renam­ing streets, and hon­or­ing OUN-UPA lead­ers as “heroes of Ukraine.” As Yuschenko’s lead­ing mem­o­ry man­ag­er — both at TsD­VR and the SBU — Via­tro­vych was his right-hand man in this cru­sade. He con­tin­ued to push the state-spon­sored hero­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the OUN-UPA and their lead­ers Ban­dera, Yaroslav Stet­sko, and Roman Shukhevych. . . .

. . . . After Vik­tor Yanukovych was elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2010, Via­tro­vych fad­ed from view. . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

. . . . The new pres­i­dent, Poroshenko, appoint­ed [8] Via­tro­vych to head the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry — a pres­ti­gious appoint­ment for a rel­a­tive­ly young schol­ar. . . .

. . . . To that effect, Via­tro­vych has dis­missed [29] his­tor­i­cal events not com­port­ing with this nar­ra­tive as “Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da.” [This is true of infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by any­one that tells the truth about the OUN/B heirs now in pow­er in Ukraine–they are dis­missed as “Russ­ian dupes” or “tools of the Krem­lin” etc.–D.E.] In his 2006 book [30]The OUN’s Posi­tion Towards the Jews: For­mu­la­tion of a posi­tion against the back­drop of a cat­a­stro­phe, he attempt­ed to exon­er­ate the OUN from its col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Holo­caust by ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing mass of his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. The book was wide­ly panned [31] by West­ern his­to­ri­ans. Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta pro­fes­sor John-Paul Him­ka, one of the lead­ing schol­ars of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry for three decades, described it [32] as “employ­ing a series of dubi­ous pro­ce­dures: reject­ing sources that com­pro­mise the OUN, accept­ing uncrit­i­cal­ly cen­sored sources ema­nat­ing from émi­gré OUN cir­cles, fail­ing to rec­og­nize anti-Semi­tism in OUN texts.” . . . . Even more wor­ri­some for the future integri­ty of Ukraine’s archives under Via­tro­vych is his noto­ri­ety among West­ern his­to­ri­ans for his will­ing­ness to alleged­ly ignore or even fal­si­fy his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments. “Schol­ars on his staff pub­lish doc­u­ment col­lec­tions that are fal­si­fied,” said Jef­frey Burds, a pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian and Sovi­et his­to­ry at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.“ I know this because I have seen the orig­i­nals, made copies, and have com­pared their tran­scrip­tions to the orig­i­nals.” . . .

. . . . Sev­en­ty his­to­ri­ans signed [33] an open let­ter to Poroshenko ask­ing him to veto the draft law that bans crit­i­cism of the OUN-UPA. . . .

. . . . After the open let­ter was pub­lished, the legislation’s spon­sor, Yuri Shukhevych, react­ed [34] furi­ous­ly. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a long­time far-right polit­i­cal activist him­self, fired off a let­ter [34] to Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion Ser­hiy Kvit claim­ing, “Russ­ian spe­cial ser­vices” pro­duced the let­ter and demand­ed that “patri­ot­ic” his­to­ri­ans rebuff it. Kvit, also a long­time far-right activist [35] and author of an admir­ing biog­ra­phy one of the key the­o­reti­cians of Ukrain­ian eth­nic nation­al­ism, in turn omi­nous­ly high­light­ed the sig­na­to­ries of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans on his copy of the let­ter. . . .

. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed [14]: “We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.” Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .

 . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive [13] to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a “sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine” and Ban­dera as an “out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive” of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple.” More recent­ly, Viatrovych’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry pro­posed that the city of Kiev rename [36] two streets after Ban­dera and the for­mer supreme com­man­der of both the UPA and the Nazi-super­vised Schutz­mannschaft Roman Shukhevych. . . .

2. Via­tro­vy­ch’s sojourn in the U.S. in between terms serv­ing as head of the Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry opens a vista on the high­ly impor­tant, long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian fas­cist pres­ence in the Unit­ed States. Serv­ing as a Fifth Col­umn in the run-up to World War II, the Ukrain­ian exile com­mu­ni­ty in the U.S. was fused on to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the Anti-Bol­se­vik Bloc of Nations, the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and the GOP.

We begin our explo­ration of the Ukrain­ian pres­ence in the U.S. with review of the Pelypenko affair. A Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Priest, Pelypenko was also an agent of Ger­man intel­li­gence. Fol­low­ing the Hitler-Stal­in Pact, Pelypenko piv­ot­ed from his sup­port for Nazi Ger­many to sup­port for the U.S., which he saw as a bet­ter tick­et back into Ukraine.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 97. [37]

 . . . . Alex­ei Pelypenko was ordained in 1915 and in the 1930s, he worked as a teacher in Munich dur­ing the time of the Third Reich. By 1937, he was in Argenti­na, work­ing for the local Gestapo chief, and by 1940 was in Val­paraiso, Chile, still work­ing for the Nazis. As a Ukrain­ian, he was opposed to the occu­pa­tion of his coun­try by the Rus­sians and as a priest, he was opposed to Com­mu­nist athe­ism. Many Ukraini­ans saw in Hitler a viable alter­na­tive to the regime in Moscow and were orga­niz­ing them­selves into a rev­o­lu­tion­ary force to sup­port the Nazis at the time of their inva­sion of Rus­sia. How­ev­er, these same Ukraini­ans were dis­il­lu­sioned when the Hitler-Stal­in pact was signed and it appeared that Rus­sia and Ger­many would work togeth­er, thus rob­bing the Ukraini­ans of any hope of lib­er­a­tion.

Hitler’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union renewed the enthu­si­asm of some of the Ukraini­ans for Nazism and an entire Waf­fen-SS divi­sion, com­prised of Ukrain­ian troops, was formed (and even­tu­al­ly many of these reset­tled in the Unit­ed States after the war). This his­tor­i­cal episode has oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions, for it led to the for­ma­tion of sev­er­al impor­tant lob­by groups that agi­tat­ed for polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary resis­tance against the Sovi­ets under the gen­er­al rubric of “cap­tive nations” orga­ni­za­tions such as the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL). The Pelypenko affair reveals the extent of the Amer­i­can Nazi net­work and the inten­tion of its per­pe­tra­tors to over­throw the US gov­ern­ment and install a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that would remove Jew­ish and “Com­mu­nist” influ­ence at all lev­els of Amer­i­can life.

Pelypenko even­tu­al­ly decid­ed that work­ing for the Amer­i­cans for a Com­mu­nist-free bloc in East­ern Europe made more sense than wait­ing for Hitler to lib­er­ate his coun­try. He con­tact­ed the FBI direct­ly in 1940, and offered his sup­port in infil­trat­ing the Nazi net­works that he knew exist­ed in the Unit­ed States.

What he had to tell them was noth­ing short of astound­ing. . . .

3. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt of the 1942 anti-fas­cist clas­sic Sab­o­tage: The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca, deal­ing with the pro­found Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Note that the Ger­man Gen­er­al Staff was devel­op­ing the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra as a vehi­cle for con­quest in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty was an impor­tant part of this Fifth Col­umn, deeply involved in Axis espi­onage and sab­o­tage.

Note the gen­e­sis of the OUN as an exten­sion of the Ger­man order of bat­tle. The pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can branch of the OUN was titled Svo­bo­da, a word that trans­lates as “free­dom” in sev­er­al East­ern Euro­pean lan­guages.

Svo­bo­da is the name of one of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor par­ties cur­rent­ly admin­is­ter­ing Ukraine. The speak­er of the Rada, the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, is a mem­ber of this par­ty.

Sab­o­tage! The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca by Michael Say­ers and Albert E. Kahn; Harp­er Broth­ers [HC]; 1942; pp. 80–96. [38]

In 1938, a sen­sa­tion­al series of kid­nap­pings occurred in New York City. A num­ber of well-to-do per­sons were seized by a mys­te­ri­ous gang, which blind­fold­ed them, gagged them, and took them by car to a secret hide­out in the city. Ran­soms rang­ing from $100,000 to $200,000 were demand­ed. In cer­tain cas­es the kid­napped vic­tims were tor­tured to make them write plead­ing notes to their rel­a­tives and friends. One of the vic­tims, Nor­man Miller, who had been forced to pay $15,000 ran­som, remem­bered that while he had been held cap­tive, he had heard church bells ring­ing and the sound of bil­liard balls had been led, blind­fold­ed, by his kid­nap­pers. These clues helped the police to locate the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Home, “a mutu­al ben­e­fit soci­ety” at 217–19 East 6th Street, New York City, as the place that fit­ted Miller’s descrip­tion.

On Novem­ber 2, 1938, the police raid­ed the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Home. In the base­ment, they found a tor­ture cham­ber, its walls pit­ted with bul­let holes. They also found a Ger­man-made machine gun and oth­er weapons. The police dug up the base­ment floor and came upon human bones. One of the kid­napped men, Arthur Fried of White Plains, had died under the tor­ture. His body had been stuffed in the heat­ing fur­nace, and the bones lat­er hid­den under the base­ment floor.

The four gang­sters who made up the kid­nap­ping gang were arrest­ed. Two of them were sen­tenced to life-impris­on­ment. The oth­er two, Demetrius Gula and Joseph Saco­da, were con­vict­ed of mur­der and exe­cut­ed in the elec­tric chair at Sing Sing.

One high­ly sig­nif­i­cant fact not men­tioned at the tri­al was that Gula and Saco­da were both mem­bers of a Berlin-direct­ed Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion known as the ODWU. At the time no one thought of con­nect­ing these bru­tal kid­nap­pers with the Nazi espi­onage-sab­o­tage machine in the Unit­ed States. . . .

The Berlin-direct­ed ODWU again hov­ered just behind the head­lines when, ear­ly in 1941, a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can cap­tain in the Unit­ed States Army was court­mar­tialed and deprived of his com­mis­sion for betray­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to a for­eign agent. This cap­tain was the leader of an ODWU unit in Penn­syl­va­nia. The for­eign agent in the case had been Omelin Senyk-Gribi­wisky, a Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist who had come from Berlin in 1931 to found the ODWU in the Unit­ed States. . . .

Anoth­er hint of the inner nature of the ODWU came on July 13, 1940, when the New York police arrest­ed a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can named William Piz­nak on charges of vio­lat­ing the Sul­li­van Law. In a base­ment store­room of Piznak’s res­i­dence at 225 East 95th Street, detec­tives of the New York sab­o­tage squad found a ver­i­ta­ble arse­nal which includ­ed two machine guns, tear gas grenades, rifles, sets of brass knuck­les, a trench knife and 1,112 rifle car­tridges of assort­ed cal­ibers.

William Piznak’s broth­er, Michael Piz­nak, is an attor­ney of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist Asso­ci­a­tion, an old Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can soci­ety, which the ODWU has sought to infil­trate and dom­i­nate. Until short­ly before the police raid, the two Piz­nak broth­ers lived togeth­er in the house which con­tained the base­ment arse­nal. The usu­al­ly cau­tious attor­ney, Michael Piz­nak revealed his own polit­i­cal pro­cliv­i­ties at a Ukrain­ian meet­ing in Belvedere Park, New York, on July 1, 1938, when he declared: “Now Hitler calls the youth to orga­nize. Now, also, Mus­soli­ni calls the youth to orga­nize. And now, we, the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, too, must call the youth to orga­nize!”

In August 1940, the Het­man, anoth­er Berlin-direct­ed Ukrain­ian orga­ni­za­tion, staged a pub­lic Storm Troop demon­stra­tion in Chica­go. The “Order of the Day,” issued by the Chica­go Het­man “Dis­trict Com­mand,” called upon “the uni­formed Male Youth Hun­dreds” to appear “armed with rifles” . . .

There are close to one mil­lion Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans in the Unit­ed States. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of them are pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic; but a Naziphile minor­i­ty make up the ODWU and the Het­man, two of the most dan­ger­ous espi­onage-sab­o­tage orga­ni­za­tions in the world. . . .

. . . . The Het­man oper­ates under the super­vi­sion of Alfred Rosenberg’s Aussen poli­tis­ches Amt, For­eign Polit­i­cal Office of the Nazi par­ty.

The ODWU is more pow­er­ful than the Het­man and, if pos­si­ble, more vio­lent. Both orga­ni­za­tions have built their cells in Amer­i­can indus­tri­al cen­ters. Their agents work in muni­tions plants, mines, steel foundries, air­craft fac­to­ries, ship­yards, freight­yards and docks. A num­ber of them have gained access to the Unit­ed States Army.

Both the ODWU and the Het­man are inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions with branch­es through­out Europe, Asia and North and South Amer­i­ca. Their activ­i­ties include spy­ing, sab­o­tag­ing, spread­ing pro-Axis pro­pa­gan­da and, not infre­quent­ly, com­mit­ting assas­si­na­tions. The Unit­ed States lead­ers of the ODWU and Het­man have been in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ger­man, Japan­ese and Ital­ian agents, and with spies in South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. In the spring of 1941, one of the con­fi­den­tial ODWU bul­letins ema­nat­ing from Berlin tri­umphant­ly described the sink­ing of sev­er­al British ships sab­o­taged by ODWU mem­bers in Argenti­na and Brazil. . . . .

It is remark­able that in all the lit­er­a­ture deal­ing with the world-wide machi­na­tions of the Axis, prac­ti­cal­ly no men­tion has been made of this most impor­tant aux­il­iary of the inter­na­tion­al Nazi espi­onage and sab­o­tage machine: the fas­cist Ukrain­ian fifth col­umn. Among fifth columns, it is unique in that the only land in which it can­not func­tion is its native land. Its activ­i­ties in the Ukraine were brought to an abrupt halt in 1938 when the Sovi­et author­i­ties round­ed up and exe­cut­ed its chief ring-lead­ers there. In almost every oth­er coun­try in the world, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States, this crim­i­nal and ruth­less fifth col­umn is still at work.

Just how Hitler got hold of these ter­ror­ists among the Ukraini­ans and con­vert­ed a sec­tion of them into the Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can fifth col­umn makes a sto­ry of inter­na­tion­al treach­ery and vio­lence unpar­al­leled in all the weird annals of the under­world of polit­i­cal crime. . . .

A famil­iar sight in Berlin in recent years was a lit­tle old man with a scrub­by white beard who usu­al­ly wan­dered about in over­size plus-fours. The Nazis called him “Pro­fes­sor of the Ukraine.” His name was Dr. Paul Rohrbach. Like his clos­est friend, the Nazi philoso­pher Dr. Alfred Rosen­berg, Rohrbach was a Baltic Ger­man who con­tributed some impor­tant “the­o­ries to the Nazi Par­ty.

Rohrbach was still a young schol­ar when he evolved the the­o­ry that the Ukraini­ans are a Ger­man­ic-type peo­ple and should there­fore come under Ger­man rule. To win the sup­port of the Ukraini­ans, then sub­jects of the Russ­ian Czar, the young Ger­manophile schol­ar wrote innu­mer­able pro­pa­gan­da works urg­ing the estab­lish­ment of an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine.” The idea appealed strong­ly to Kaiser Wil­helm who had his Impe­r­i­al eye on Ukrain­ian wheat and oil.

In 1918, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Kaiser estab­lished an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine” under Ger­man “pro­tec­tion.” Rohrbach was dis­patched to Kiev to act as per­son­al advis­er to Field Mar­shal Her­mann von Eich­horn, com­man­der of the Ger­man forces in the Ukraine. A Quis­ling Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was set up, head­ed by a hith­er­to unrenowned Russ­ian cav­al­ry­man named Gen­er­al Pavel Petro­vitch Sko­ropad­s­ki. The Gen­er­al, who did not know one word of Ukrain­ian, received the title of The Het­man (Head Man) of the Ukraine, and a cab­i­net was formed around him com­posed of var­i­ous Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian adven­tur­ers chiefly dis­tin­guished for their mur­der­ous records as ter­ror­ists and anti-Semit­ic pogromists.

But Rohrbach’s tri­umph was short­lived. The new­ly-formed Red Army, togeth­er with the fore­run­ners of today’s doughty guer­ril­la bands, dec­i­mat­ed the Kaiser’s armies of occu­pa­tion and drove them out of the Ukraine. Rohrbach hasti­ly packed his books and returned to Berlin along with Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki and his cut­throat cab­i­net. Field Mar­shal von Eich­horn, less for­tu­nate, was buried in the Ukraine, after he had been shot by a Ukrain­ian guer­ril­la.

Back in Berlin, Rohrbach and his friends became the pro­teges of the Ger­man High Com­mand which by the ear­ly 1920’s, was already plot­ting with the Nazi Par­ty to over­throw the Weimar Repub­lic and make a sec­ond bid for world con­quest. Cap­tain Franz von Papen joined the grow­ing cir­cle of Rohrbach’s admir­ers, and the con­cept of an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine” appealed as strong­ly to Adolf Hitler as it had for­mer­ly done to the Kaiser. The “Het­man Orga­ni­za­tion” was placed under the per­son­al super­vi­sion of Dr. Alfred Rosen­berg, the chief Nazi advo­cate of East­ward expan­sion. Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki, who could still bare­ly stut­ter in Ukrain­ian retained his title as The Het­man of the Ukraine and leader of the Het­man Orga­ni­za­tion. . . .

At this point, Colonel Nico­lai of the Intel­li­gence Ser­vice of the High Com­mand took a hand in the Ukrain­ian game. For var­i­ous rea­sons, Nico­lai felt that Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki was not the man to head the Ukrain­ian fifth col­umn. While Nico­lai did not inter­fere in any way with Alfred Rosen­berg’s orga­ni­za­tion of the Het­man appa­ra­tus, he went to orga­nize an inter­na­tion­al Ukrain­ian appa­ra­tus of his own. From the start, Nico­lai had his eye on the large Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States.

The man cho­sen by [Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Colonel Wal­ter] Nico­lai to head this inter­na­tion­al fifth col­umn was Colonel Kono­valetz, who had served with the Kaiser’s armies of occu­pa­tion in the Ukraine. Kono­valetz was a tall, blondish man with gray, watery eyes, a mil­i­tary bear­ing, and a pas­sion for jew­els. He had earned him­self con­sid­er­able noto­ri­ety in the Ukraine as a rapist and killer. When he left with the Ger­mans in 1919, he brought out with him two large trunks loaded with loot­ed gold, sil­ver and jew­els. Hitler met him in 1922 and took an imme­di­ate lik­ing to him.

By 1930, Kono­valetz was known to the intel­li­gence bureaus of the world’s pow­ers as one of Ger­many’s lead­ing espi­onage agents. He was also work­ing for the Japan­ese Gen­er­al Staff. His var­i­ous “mis­sions” took him to every cor­ner of the Euro­pean con­ti­nent, to Asia, and to North and South Amer­i­ca.

The inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of spies and sabo­teurs which Kono­valetz set up under the super­vi­sion of the Intel­li­gence Depart­ment of the Ger­man War Office went by the name of Ukra­jin­s­ka Orga­ni­zace Nacional­is­tov (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), com­mon­ly referred to as the OUN.

Wher­ev­er there were Ukrain­ian communities–in Sovi­et Rus­sia, France, Ruma­nia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, South Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States–Colonel Kono­valet­z’s emis­saries trav­eled at the expense of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment and estab­lished OUN cells.

Spe­cial schools for OUN mem­bers were opened in Ger­many, where the stu­dents were care­ful­ly trained in the arts of espi­onage, sab­o­tage and assas­si­na­tion. The first of these schools was found­ed by the Ger­man War Office in Danzig around 1928. Ger­man Intel­li­gence offi­cers act­ed as instruc­tors. The OUN stu­dents were taught the var­i­ous meth­ods of steal­ing mil­i­tary secrets, mak­ing bombs, blow­ing up fac­to­ries and car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal mur­ders. Cours­es in reg­u­lar Ger­man army train­ing were also part of the cur­ricu­lum.

OUN grad­u­ates from this Danzig school destroyed scores of fac­to­ries and farms by sab­o­tage fires and explo­sions in Poland dur­ing the years 1928–31. They also assas­si­nat­ed a num­ber of promi­nent Pol­ish politi­cians before the Pol­ish author­i­ties final­ly arrest­ed sev­er­al OUN ter­ror­ists and impris­oned or exe­cut­ed them. The remain­ing OUN mem­bers were tem­porar­i­ly with­drawn from Poland and were put to work, with oth­er of Kono­valet­z’s fol­low­ers, in the Nazi Par­ty in Ger­many.

When Hitler came to pow­er, a cen­tral acad­e­my for the OUN was found­ed in Berlin. The Nazis spared no expense in build­ing this acad­e­my and sup­ply­ing it with expert instruc­tors and sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment. The acad­e­my’s address is 75 Meck­lens­bur­gis­che Strasse, Berlin. Its title is “School for Espi­onage, Sab­o­tage and Ter­ror­ism.” . . . .

. . . . The OUN lat­er sent [Kono­valet­z’s suc­ces­sor Omelian] Senyk-Gribi­wisky on spe­cial errands of mur­der, sab­o­tage or intrigue as far afield as Cana­da, South Africa, South Amer­i­ca, Italy and Japahn. His com­pa­tri­ots gave him a nick­name which, freely trans­lat­ed, means “Sales­man of Ter­ror.”

This was the man who arrived in the Unit­ed States in 1931 to orga­nize the ODWU–the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Rebirth of the Ukraine–which was to serve as the Amer­i­can coun­ter­part of Berlin’s OUN.

Two years lat­er, with the Nazis in pow­er, and unlim­it­ed funds at his dis­pos­al, the “Sales­man of Ter­ror” returned to the Unit­ed States to devel­op the ODWU and spread its sin­is­ter branch­es across the forty-eight states.

With Ger­man mon­ey, Senuk-Gribisky financed scores of ODWU “front” orga­ni­za­tions which mush­roomed under his expert guid­ance in the indus­tri­al cities where Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans lived. . . . .

. . . . On the last evening he spent in the Unit­ed States before leav­ing for Ger­many, Senyk-Gribi­wisky vis­it­ed an office at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, New Jer­sey. He went there to pick up con­fi­den­tial mail, which he was to car­ry to Europe, and to leave final orders for ODWU work in the Unit­ed States.

Eighty-three Grand Street, Jer­sey City, is the head­quar­ters of the pow­er­ful Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist Asso­ci­a­tion and of its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion, Svo­bo­da, which is edit­ed by Luke Myshuha, oth­er­wise known as the “Big Mouse.” . . .

. . . . In 1933, when the Nazis took over in Ger­many and start­ed their orga­ni­za­tion of the ODWU in Amer­i­ca, Myshuha became the edi­tor of Svo­bo­da. . . . .

. . . . With Myshuha at its head, Svo­bo­da was con­vert­ed into an organ of Axis pro­pa­gan­da and a medi­um for con­vey­ing instruc­tions to ODWU spies. The Svo­bo­da offices at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, became a clear­ing house for espi­onage direc­tives com­ing in from Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. For many years, these direc­tives have been reg­u­lar­ly reach­ing the Svo­bo­da offices by mail from Span­ish and South Amer­i­can “drops,” or through the spe­cial “couri­ers” of the Axis spy sys­tems. Liai­son offi­cers from Ger­many and Japan made their head­quar­ters at 83 Grand Street when they vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States. Senyk-Gribi­wisky’s mail was always sent to this address. Here cer­tain Axis agents paid their last calls before sail­ing for Europe, and from here, they were accom­pa­nied to the pier where last con­fi­den­tial words were exchanged, to remain as sealed secrets until “couri­ers” arrived with fur­ther orders. . . .

4a. Svo­bo­da mem­ber and Maid­an forces com­man­der Andriy Paru­biy has been named speak­er of the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment.

“Rada Appoints Andriy Paru­biy Its Speak­er” [AFP]; The Kiev Post; 4/14/2016. [16]

The Ukrain­ian Verk­hov­na Rada has relieved Andriy Paru­biy of his duties as first deputy par­lia­men­tary chair­man and appoint­ed him its chair­man.

The res­o­lu­tion on appoint­ing Paru­biy Rada chair­man was sup­port­ed by 284 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans at the morn­ing ses­sion on April 14.

4b. A degree of offi­cial “celebration/relief” has been expressed over the nam­ing of Petro Poroshenko’s pro­tege Volodymir Groys­man as Prime Min­is­ter of Ukraine. Part of the offi­cial sigh of relief con­cerns the fact that Groys­man is Jew­ish, as is Poroshenko.

Poroshenko’s  Jew­ish affil­i­a­tion has done noth­ing [39] to atten­u­ate his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the OUN/B heirs who came to pow­er in Ukraine.

In addi­tion to being a crony of Poroshenko, Groys­man has a “law degree” from MAUP. In addi­tion to being a diplo­ma mill, of sorts, MAUP is the point of ori­gin of the bulk of anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Among its fac­ul­ty mem­bers is David Duke. For­mer pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yuschenko [10] was on its board of direc­tors.

“New Wun­derkind Ukrain­ian PM Has Some Skele­tons in His Clos­et” by Mikhail Klikushin; The Observ­er; 4/21/2016. [17]

Last week’s res­ig­na­tion of Ukrain­ian Prime Min­is­ter Arse­ny Yat­senyuk and seem­ing­ly unex­pect­ed pro­mo­tion of the Speak­er of the Par­lia­ment Volodymir Groys­man to lead the Cab­i­net puz­zled only those who do not close­ly fol­low Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics.

Right after his can­di­da­cy was announced, the per­sona of Mr. Groysman—who is vir­tu­al­ly unknown out­side of Ukraine—got under the mag­ni­fy­ing glass the country’s friends and foes. And the more observers dug into his past, the less hope­ful they were about “the path of change” that the Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion had tried to put the coun­try on.

In May of 2014, right before the first post-Maid­an pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Ukraine, Germany’s DerSpiegel mag­a­zine wrote [40] that those want­i­ng to under­stand Petro Poroshenko should vis­it Vin­nit­sa, a provin­cial cap­i­tal of 370,000 inhab­i­tants, 124 miles from Kiev.

Vin­nit­sa is a hub of the choco­late busi­ness of the Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent, and he used to rep­re­sent the town in the Supreme Rada, the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment. Here, the Ukrain­ian bil­lion­aire pres­i­dent has two ROSHEN can­dy fac­to­ries, the back-bone of his choco­late empire. Vin­nit­sa is his home turf.

Mr. Groys­man, 38, was born and raised in Vin­nit­sa. Fif­teen years ago, he was tak­en under Mr. Poroshenko’s pro­tec­tive wing, and on mul­ti­ple occa­sions proved him­self the loy­al vicegerent of the pow­er­ful oli­garch. They’ve had a long his­to­ry together—and shared polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­ests in their shared home­town of Vin­nit­sa. . . .

. . . . In 2003, a cov­et­ed diplo­ma of a lawyer from the so-called Inter-Region­al Acad­e­my of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment (MAUP) appeared in the port­fo­lio of the ambi­tious Vin­nit­sa politi­cian.  After Mr. Groysman’s recent appoint­ment to the posi­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, Vitaly Kupriy, the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment deputy, accused him of buy­ing his lawyer’s diplo­ma for “lard.” (The expres­sion comes from a Ukrain­ian vil­lage folk char­ac­ter com­ing to Kiev with his back­pack full of home-salt­ed lard hop­ing with this sim­ple-mind­ed bribe to get accept­ed into the uni­ver­si­ty.)

“Judg­ing by the doc­u­ments, Groys­man stud­ied at the Acad­e­my only for 1.5 years [instead of usu­al 4–5]. This doesn’t look right. It looks like [his diplo­ma] was bought for ‘lard’,” he said.

As far as his for­mal edu­ca­tion is concerned—it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter if Mr. Groys­man ever stepped into the doors of this “Acad­e­my” with or with­out lard—the institution’s rep­u­ta­tion is high­ly bizarre. In 2005, for exam­ple, MAUP became world-famous for invit­ing Amer­i­can Ku Klux Klans­man David Duke to give lec­tures there; Mr. Duke lat­er received [41] his PhD degree in his­to­ry from this “Acad­e­my.” . . . .

. . . . Since 2011, the biggest danc­ing waters show in Europe, with installed foun­tains that shoot water 229 feet into the air, is in Vin­nit­sa. It is called Foun­tain Roshen on Roshen quay, named after Petro Poroshenko’s can­dy con­glom­er­ate. The arti­fi­cial water gey­sers are accom­pa­nied by a music-and-laser show that resem­ble the Bel­la­gio in Las Vegas. Tourists from all over Ukraine come to see what is con­sid­ered one of the 10 most impres­sive water shows in the world. It was built by a Ger­man com­pa­ny and cost 1.5 mil­lion euros, which was was donat­ed by Petro Poroshenko.

4c. Note that Groys­man­’s appar­ent­ly bogus law degree came from MAUP Uni­ver­si­ty, an epi­cen­ter of Ukrain­ian anti-Semi­tism. Note, also, that the above-men­tioned Vik­tor Yuschenko was on its board of direc­tors

Orga­nized Anti-Semi­tism in Con­tem­po­rary Ukraine: Struc­ture, Influ­ence and Ide­ol­o­gy” by Pers Anders Rudling; Cana­di­an Slavon­ic Papers; Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (March-June 2006): pp. 81–118. [18]

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, Ukraine has wit­nessed a sub­stan­tial growth in orga­nized anti-Semi­tism. Cen­tral to this devel­op­ment is an orga­ni­za­tion, known as the Inter­re­gion­al Acad­e­my of Human Resources, bet­ter known by its Ukrain­ian acronym MAUP. It oper­ates a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal net­work that reach­es the very top of the Ukrain­ian soci­ety. MAUP is the largest pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Ukraine, with 57,000 stu­dents at 24 region­al cam­pus­es. MAUP is con­nect­ed to the KKK; David Duke is teach­ing cours­es in his­to­ry and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the uni­ver­si­ty. Fund­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s print­ing house pub­lish­es about 85% of the anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Until very recent­ly, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Yushchenko and For­eign Min­is­ter Tara­siuk served on its board; for­mer Pres­i­dent Kravchuk still does. This paper is a study of anti-Semi­tism in Ukraine, of its intel­lec­tu­al roots, influ­ence and strength. It traces the Sovi­et, Chris­t­ian, Ger­man and racist polit­i­cal tra­di­tions and out­lines the polit­i­cal ambi­tions of orga­nized anti-Semi­tism in post-Orange Rev­o­lu­tion Ukraine.

[42]

Emblem of the Ukrain­ian Azov Bat­tal­ion

5. Author­i­ties request­ed addi­tional secu­rity ser­vices for Odessa with ten­sions run­ning high on the sec­ond anniver­sary of the Odessa mas­sacre and the poten­tial for clash­es between the neo-Nazi Right Sec­tor and those mourn­ing the May 2 deaths. And they did indeed received addi­tional secu­rity ser­vices: the Azov Bat­tal­ion [19]!

“Ten­sions Run High in Odessa on Anniver­sary of Dead­ly Clash­es” by Shaun Walk­er; The Guardian; 5/2/2016. [19]

Huge police and secu­rity pres­ence in Ukrain­ian city two years after unrest left 48 dead and hun­dreds injured 

A huge police and secu­rity oper­a­tion has been launched to keep the calm in Odessa on Mon­day, the sec­ond anniver­sary of one of the blood­i­est days in Ukraine’s recent his­to­ry.

Two years ago, clash­es left 48 dead and hun­dreds injured in the Black Sea city. Most of the dead were pro-Rus­sia pro­test­ers who died in a fire [43] at the trade union build­ing.

Polit­i­cal and social ten­sions con­tinue to bub­ble under the sur­face. On Mon­day author­i­ties cor­doned off the area around the trade union build­ing, sur­round­ing it with police and Nation­al Guard forces and keep­ing out those who had come to pay their respects. More than 1,000 peo­ple gath­ered out­side the police cor­don, furi­ous at not being allowed in.

The Odessa gov­er­nor, Mikheil Saakashvili, said police had received infor­ma­tion about “provo­ca­tions” planned for the anniver­sary. Author­i­ties said there had been an anony­mous bomb threat ear­ly in the morn­ing and the area had been closed off for a search. Those out­side were cer­tain the bomb threat was a pre­text to pre­vent them from gath­er­ing, and no offi­cials made any attempt to keep the crowds informed about when or whether they would be let in. 

There were shouts of “Shame!” and “Fas­cists!” as the crowd became angri­er. Many peo­ple left flow­ers out­side the perime­ter and went home. At one point, a bus arrived car­ry­ing a the moth­ers of some of those who died. A group of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists shout­ed: “Glo­ry to Ukraine!” as they dis­em­barked from the bus, leav­ing the women vis­i­bly shak­en.

The events in Odessa were one of the most con­tro­ver­sial chap­ters of the peri­od that began with the Maid­an protests in Kiev in Feb­ru­ary 2014 [44]and end­ed with a sep­a­ratist upris­ing in parts of east Ukraine that received Russ­ian mil­i­tary and finan­cial back­ing.

On 2 May 2014, as pro-Russ­ian protests were grow­ing in many of the cities in south and east Ukraine, street clash­es between pro-Rus­sians and Ukraini­ans nation­al­ists end­ed with the pro-Rus­sians blocked into the five-storey Trade Unions build­ing, which was then set on fire. Dozens burned to death inside.

The deaths were por­trayed as a “fas­cist mas­sacre” by Russ­ian media, and act­ed as a recruit­ing sergeant for the sep­a­ratist cause in east Ukraine. In Kiev, Russ­ian media and secu­rity agen­cies were accused of stir­ring up and manip­u­lat­ing local dis­con­tent, furi­ous at the pro-west­ern turn Ukraine’s post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment want­ed to take.

After events in Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions led to a war and thou­sands of deaths, some have claimed the Odessa events marked a “vic­tory” over pro-Russ­ian sen­ti­ment in the city. Nation­al­ist MP Ihor Mosiy­chuk wrote on Face­book that 2 May should be a “great nation­al hol­i­day”, as it was the day in which sep­a­ratist sen­ti­ment was crushed in Odessa.

In the run-up to the sec­ond anniver­sary, Saakashvili had plead­ed with Kiev to send rein­force­ments into the city, fear­ing “provo­ca­tions” from Rus­sia or local sep­a­ratist groups. About 300 mem­bers of Azov, for­merly a vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion with many far-right mem­bers and now part of the offi­cial Nation­al Guard, were dis­patched to Odessa.

By the ear­ly evening, the day appeared to have passed more or less peace­fully, though police report­ed 14 arrests for pub­lic order offences.

Yuri Tkachev, who runs a news web­site many believe is sym­pa­thetic to the sep­a­ratist cause, said the “pro-Russ­ian” move­ment in the city was actu­ally not pro-Moscow but more anti-Kiev and against the Maid­an protest move­ment. “Of course there are peo­ple who would cheer if Putin came, but they are not the major­ity,” he said.

Odessa remains a divid­ed city, said Tkachev, but with the lead­ers of the sep­a­ratist move­ment either fled or jailed, there “are no achiev­able goals or any under­stand­ing of how to act” among their sup­port­ers.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the events has stalled. While 20 pro-Russ­ian activists are stand­ing tri­al for the riots that took place ear­lier in the day, nobody has been charged with the events in the Trade Unions build­ing that led to most of the deaths.