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More on OUN/B Influence on the Ukrainian Political Opposition

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COMMENT: The ongo­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis in the Ukraine is–to an increas­ing extent–being couched in Orwellian rhetoric in the West.

With a shrill amen cho­rus dis­cussing the “anti-Demo­c­ra­t­ic,” and/or “extreme” nature of the Yanukovich gov­ern­men­t’s response to mur­der­ous behav­ior on the part of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, we are being treat­ed to a fun­da­men­tal per­ver­sion of polit­i­cal cog­ni­tion.

FACT: armed ele­ments of the oppo­si­tion coali­tion opened fire on gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty forces, killing a num­ber of them.

FACT: Nowhere on earth are secu­ri­ty forces going to react benign­ly to the use of dead­ly force on mem­bers of their ranks.

QUICK: What U.S. police or mil­i­tary forces would NOT shoot back, if fired upon?

We note, again, that the polit­i­cal forces ranged in oppo­si­tion to Yanukovich are in coali­tion with ele­ments such as Swo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor, both of which are evolved from the OUN/B fas­cists of Stephan Ban­dera.

Staffing Waf­fen SS units and Ein­satz­grup­pen (the mobile killing squads that per­formed Hitler’s liq­ui­da­tions fol­low­ing the Nazi inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union), the OUN/B was a fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion and its lead­ing fig­ures were war crim­i­nals of the first order.

In a pre­vi­ous post about the Ukrain­ian cri­sis, we not­ed the inti­mate net­work­ing between Swo­bo­da, Pravy Sek­tor and the “mod­er­ate forces” of Ms. Tim­o­shenko and Mr. Klitschko.

Both the U.S. and Ger­man gov­ern­ments open­ly net­worked with the coali­tion that inco­po­rat­ed the OUN/B‑linked ele­ments, with OUN/B war crim­i­nals work­ing both for Amer­i­can and Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices. The Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion incor­po­rat­ed OUN/B lead­ers in the cab­i­net.

The lat­est post from german-foreign-policy.com notes the Vitali Klitschko has endorsed the pos­si­ble use of force, rely­ing on the OUN/B‑evolved mil­i­tants as, in effect, enforcers.

(Note that german-foreign-policy.com could use finan­cial sup­port for its Eng­lish-lan­guage edi­tion, ide­al­ly in the form of month­ly sus­tain­ers.)

For back­ground on the Ukrain­ian cri­sis check out some pre­vi­ous posts on the sub­ject, as well as fol­low­ing links in the arti­cles.

UPDATE: “Van­field” informs us of an arti­cle that fea­tures obser­va­tions by an unnamed senior Euro­pean politi­cian, who iden­ti­fies 23 dif­fer­ent extrem­ist par­ties in the Ukraine, rep­re­sent­ing about 40 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. (The sto­ry also takes note of the fact that Yanukovich–like a LARGE per­cent­age of world lead­ers, was cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent. So was George W. Bush. Cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence is not a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for fas­cism.)

“At All Costs;” german-foreign-policy.com; 2/19/2014.

EXCERPT: Yes­ter­day, the day after the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor held delib­er­a­tions with two lead­ers of the Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion, protests in Kiev esca­lat­ed into bloody con­fronta­tions. Demon­stra­tors, uncon­di­tion­al­ly spon­sored by Ger­many and oth­er west­ern coun­tries for months, began, over the past few days, to arm them­selves with firearms and ammu­ni­tion. Two police offi­cers were shot to death dur­ing yes­ter­day’s upris­ing. This esca­la­tion into a bloody con­fronta­tion fol­lowed on the heels of gov­ern­ment com­pli­ance with a fun­da­men­tal demand of the demon­stra­tors, just as it seemed that a de-esca­la­tion was about to begin — to the tac­ti­cal dis­ad­van­tage of the “Ger­mans’ man” in Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, who has been call­ing for the pres­i­dent to resign. Klitschko, who flew to Berlin Mon­day, to dis­cuss the next steps, threat­ened an even more bloody esca­la­tion and declared, that he does not “rule out the use of force in the evac­u­a­tion of the Maid­an.” One of the orga­ni­za­tions he is rely­ing on is explic­it­ly named after Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, who had car­ried out mass-mur­der of Sovi­et Jews. Esca­la­tion strate­gies, such as those cur­rent­ly imple­ment­ed in Kiev, are not alien to Ger­man for­eign pol­i­cy.

Firearms and Ammu­ni­tion

In the course of yes­ter­day’s bloody esca­la­tion of the protests, sev­er­al police offi­cers and demon­stra­tors were killed in Kiev. As was con­firmed by news reports, there have been clear indi­ca­tions since some time that some of the demon­stra­tors in Kiev had begun arm­ing them­selves. It was report­ed that for days, a group call­ing itself the “First Hun­dred Group in Kiev of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists” were pub­licly ask­ing for “ammu­ni­tion or mon­ey to buy it.”[1] Just pre­vi­ous­ly, the Berlin-sup­port­ed leader of the oppo­si­tion, Vitali Klitschko, called for form­ing mili­tias. Yes­ter­day, the fas­cist-inter­spersed, vio­lence-prone, “Right Block” called on all oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment in the pos­ses­sion of firearms to come to the Maid­an. In their attempt to storm the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment, gov­ern­ment oppo­nents broke through police bar­ri­cades and set police cars on fire. Heavy clash­es erupt­ed between the armed demon­stra­tors and police. Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans seek­ing to flee the build­ing were clubbed in their cars; the office of the gov­ern­ing par­ty was set on fire. Where­as demon­stra­tors claim that ambu­lances were imped­ed by the police in action, the wound­ed appar­ent­ly were not treat­ed because of the bar­ri­cades set up by the demonstrators.[2] Dur­ing the night, the sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed fur­ther.

Col­lab­o­ra­tors in Nazi Mur­der

This esca­la­tion into a bloody con­fronta­tion occurred the day after oppo­si­tion lead­ers Arseniy Yat­senyuk and Vitaly Klitschko had had an audi­ence in Berlin’s Chan­cellery, where they dis­cussed with Angela Merkel the next steps the gov­ern­ment oppo­nents should take. The plea by the “First Hun­dred Group in Kiev of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists” for ammu­ni­tion could not have not been known to them at the time of their meet­ing. The plea had not been made clan­des­tine­ly, but was pub­licly dis­played on a poster. Appar­ent­ly, nei­ther the Chan­cel­lor nor the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs had insist­ed that fur­ther offen­sive protest demon­stra­tions be held back, to avoid the worst, until the arms buildup of the oppo­si­tion could be reversed. On the con­trary, as usu­al, the Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter crit­i­cized “the vio­lence” in Kiev, gen­er­al­ly and specif­i­cal­ly that ema­nat­ing from state forces. The fact that the demon­stra­tors, under the lead­er­ship Berlin’s Klitschko, is large­ly com­prised of fas­cists, is not even men­tioned in the Ger­man gov­ern­ment dec­la­ra­tion. The “First Hun­dred Group in Kiev of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists,” for exam­ple, is a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence to the “Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists,” who, at the side of Nazi Ger­many’s Wehrma­cht, helped invade the Sovi­et Union and, among oth­er crimes, active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in Nazi mass mur­ders of Jews. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[3]) . . .

. . . . The esca­la­tion in Kiev came at pre­cise­ly the point, where the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment accept­ed a cen­tral demand of the pro­tes­tors, declar­ing an amnesty for the arrest­ed demon­stra­tors. “Signs of a slight relax­ation of ten­sions” were “not to be over­looked,” accord­ing to reports in the Ger­man media,[6] which then indi­cat­ed that spe­cial units of the police were being pulled back and law enforce­ment offi­cers had begun dis­man­tling bar­ri­cades and tow­ing away burned out police cars. How­ev­er, this also removed the means of lever­age for all those who, like “the Ger­man’s man” in Kiev, Klitschko — sought to force Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych to resign. Out of the esca­la­tion into vio­lent con­fronta­tion, the Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter now con­cludes that “Europe’s restraint, exer­cised in its deci­sion to impose per­son­nel sanc­tions” — on politi­cians in Kiev — “will cer­tain­ly now be reconsidered.”[7] Wash­ing­ton recent­ly crit­i­cized Berlin and the EU for not hav­ing put enough pres­sure on the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. . . . .

“Tea With Neo-Nazis: The Vio­lent Nation­al­ism in Ukraine” by Dr. Inna Rogatchi; Israel Nation­al News; 2/21/2014.

EXCERPT: Dur­ing these [May 2014] elec­tions, pan-Euro­pean ultra-right rad­i­cals will try to hijack Europe once again; and the sit­u­a­tion has not been this seri­ous in Europe since pre-WWII.

The most wor­ri­some and large­ly over­seen fac­tor of the ongo­ing Ukrain­ian tragedy, to me, is the mighty pres­ence among the oppo­si­tion hard-core mil­i­tants from ultra-right nation­al­is­tic par­ties and move­ments there. The threat which is posed by those forces shall be not under-esti­mat­ed, espe­cially in the con­text of rapid­ly ris­ing ultra-nation­al forces all over Europe, a new ugly ‘fash­ion’ of nowa­days. . . .

. . . .

But today, 75 years after the Holo­caust began, there is no way of play­ing igno­rance as a lead card, one that is actu­ally cov­er­ing indif­fer­ence, often sim­ple cow­ardice, and a strange­ly aloof atti­tude towards the recent­ly risen clear and pal­pa­ble threat of deter­mined race hatred sweep­ing over all of Europe, – about which nei­ther the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, or the Coun­cil of Europe, nor any oth­er sup­pos­edly pow­er­ful inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion is doing any­thing real to stop and erad­i­cate as they should.

–“I have been six times in Ukraine dur­ing the last two months, what a tragedy is going on there”, — a senior Euro­pean politi­cian told me recent­ly.

–I asked him : “Have you noticed the activ­i­ties of ultra-right rad­i­cals there? Have you heard what they are pro­claim­ing and under which slo­gans they are ‘fight­ing for democ­racy’, so to say?”.

–“Yes, that Svo­boda ( Free­dom) par­ty, I know, it is a night­mare, by the way”.

–“Well, it is not what I would attest to as ‘by the way’”, I replied, and asked my friend fur­ther on: “That night­mare is just one of the par­ties of that direc­tion in Ukraine; do you know how many vio­lent racist move­ments in Ukraine are oper­at­ing today? Six­teen more in addi­tional to the Free­dom par­ty plus sev­en more of an extreme-rad­i­cal char­ac­ter, mak­ing it twen­ty three in total. Do you know that togeth­er with 10,44% of the seats in the cur­rent Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment occu­pied by Free­dom par­ty, those 23 more par­ties would cov­er at least 20% of the pop­u­la­tion of that huge coun­try of 45,5 mil­lion?”

– “Yes, it is very seri­ous” – my friend sud­denly sound­ed alarmed, “it should be tak­en into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, of course”.

– I con­tin­ued: “Do you know that these big Ukrain­ian rad­i­cal move­ments are work­ing in close co-oper­a­tion with and have very close ties to the infa­mous Hun­gar­ian Fas­cist Job­bik par­ty?”

– “ Real­ly?.. No, I did not know that. Oh, that’s very impor­tant. That’s real­ly bad”, and now he was thor­oughly alarmed.

My friend flew to Ukraine the next morn­ing for the sev­enth time in two months. He joined the urgent sum­mit of the for­eign min­is­ters of Ger­many, France and Poland there as the high­est lev­el of the Euro­pean diplo­macy was urgent­ly try­ing to save the sit­u­a­tion that has gone out of con­trol and beyond of the point of no return. We already know that the sum­mit was anoth­er dia­logue between the deaf and the blind.

But I do hope that as a hon­est man and an effi­cient inter­na­tional politi­cian, my friend will con­tinue to pur­sue the case that he and I were dis­cussing with mutu­ally shared seri­ous wor­ry not only for Ukraine, but regard­ing the entire face and des­tiny of Europe in the near future, after the com­ing Euro­pean elec­tions in May 2014. Dur­ing these elec­tions, pan-Euro­pean ultra-right rad­i­cals will try to hijack Europe once again; and the sit­u­a­tion has not been this seri­ous in Europe since the pre-WWII time, for a fact. . . .

. . . . In Ukraine, the Janukovich-led regime has been mas­sively cor­rupt, the pres­i­dent him­self hap­pens to be a con­victed crim­i­nal, and his clique ful­ly cor­re­sponds to those mar­vel­lous qual­i­ties. Still, it is the same Ukrain­ian peo­ple who did vote for him; the same way peo­ple in Venezuela kept vot­ing for their Orwellian pres­i­dents, one after anoth­er. Any expert on Ukraine would tell you that all the pre­vi­ous Ukrain­ian regimes were, quite sim­i­larly, utter­ly cor­rupted, as has always been the case for this coun­try. Only names and influ­en­tial groups have changed dur­ing the 22 years of the country’s inde­pen­dence, but not their slo­gans, ways and meth­ods. . . .

Discussion

4 comments for “More on OUN/B Influence on the Ukrainian Political Opposition”

  1. I feel the adjec­tive “Orwellian” is right on the mon­ey. One instance of that was on French pub­lic TV news; the anchor — the grin­ning, brain-dead talk­ing head kind — announced a report on the extrem­ists among the demon­stra­tors and I kept watch­ing out of curios­i­ty; as it turned out, there was not even an attempt at polit­i­cal analy­sis and no men­tion was made at all of any fascist/nazi affil­i­a­tions. Now bear in mind, France is a coun­try where the word “fas­cist” usu­al­ly gets thrown around quite lib­er­al­ly, for instance par­tic­i­pants in recent demon­stra­tions in France against gay mariage and adop­tion or oth­er gov­ern­ment poli­cies, no mat­ter if they were fam­i­lies or old ladies and gents, were all inevitably labelled extrem­ists or fas­cists at one point or oth­er by a part of the media. The Swiss were recent­ly den­i­grat­ed col­lec­tive­ly as extrem­ist and intol­er­ant by the inte­ri­or min­is­ter for their recent very nar­row vote (0.3% mar­gin) against imm­mi­gra­tion. Yet our medias and politi­cians don’t rec­og­nize and label a true fas­cist when there’s one right under their nose. I find this very strange, “Orwellian” is the right word, and extreme­ly wor­ry­ing.

    Posted by goelette | February 21, 2014, 1:30 am
  2. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14553#.UweM24Wmbmg

    Tea With Neo-Nazis: The Vio­lent Nation­al­ism in Ukraine
    Pub­lished: Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 21, 2014 8:45 AM
    The vio­lence in Ukraine is a show case of the pan-Euro­pean rise of race hatred. Europe is engag­ing in a risky blind­ness. Again.

    Dr. Inna Rogatchi
    The writer is pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion. Her forth­com­ing book is “Stars of Despair, Stars of Hope: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on the Holo­caust in Mod­ern Times”.

    Dur­ing these [May 2014] elec­tions, pan-Euro­pean ultra-right rad­i­cals will try to hijack Europe once again; and the sit­u­a­tion has not been this seri­ous in Europe since pre-WWII.
    The most wor­ri­some and large­ly over­seen fac­tor of the ongo­ing Ukrain­ian tragedy, to me, is the mighty pres­ence among the oppo­si­tion hard-core mil­i­tants from ultra-right nation­al­is­tic par­ties and move­ments there. The threat which is posed by those forces shall be not under-esti­mat­ed, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of rapid­ly ris­ing ultra-nation­al forces all over Europe, a new ugly ‘fash­ion’ of nowa­days.

    Ukraine now has become a trag­ic ‘show-case’ of this alarm­ing threat. The civic soci­ety world-wide sim­ply has no lux­u­ry nei­ther does it have moral right for allow­ing the rep­e­ti­tion of the Nazi-like night­mares. When the Holo­caust hap­pened, just three gen­er­a­tions back, there had been no prece­dent for such total hor­ror and absolute crime com­mit­ted non-stop for 12 years all over Europe, and – as it worth remem­ber­ing – allowed to start by the weak gov­ern­ments and inept lead­ers.

    But today, 75 years after the Holo­caust began, there is no way of play­ing igno­rance as a lead card, one that is actu­al­ly cov­er­ing indif­fer­ence, often sim­ple cow­ardice, and a strange­ly aloof atti­tude towards the recent­ly risen clear and pal­pa­ble threat of deter­mined race hatred sweep­ing over all of Europe, – about which nei­ther the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, or the Coun­cil of Europe, nor any oth­er sup­pos­ed­ly pow­er­ful inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion is doing any­thing real to stop and erad­i­cate as they should.

    –“I have been six times in Ukraine dur­ing the last two months, what a tragedy is going on there”, — a senior Euro­pean politi­cian told me recent­ly.

    –I asked him : “Have you noticed the activ­i­ties of ultra-right rad­i­cals there? Have you heard what they are pro­claim­ing and under which slo­gans they are ‘fight­ing for democ­ra­cy’, so to say?”.

    –“Yes, that Svo­bo­da ( Free­dom) par­ty, I know, it is a night­mare, by the way”.

    –“Well, it is not what I would attest to as ‘by the way’”, I replied, and asked my friend fur­ther on: “That night­mare is just one of the par­ties of that direc­tion in Ukraine; do you know how many vio­lent racist move­ments in Ukraine are oper­at­ing today? Six­teen more in addi­tion­al to the Free­dom par­ty plus sev­en more of an extreme-rad­i­cal char­ac­ter, mak­ing it twen­ty three in total. Do you know that togeth­er with 10,44% of the seats in the cur­rent Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment occu­pied by Free­dom par­ty, those 23 more par­ties would cov­er at least 20% of the pop­u­la­tion of that huge coun­try of 45,5 mil­lion?”

    – “Yes, it is very seri­ous” – my friend sud­den­ly sound­ed alarmed, “it should be tak­en into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, of course”.

    – I con­tin­ued: “Do you know that these big Ukrain­ian rad­i­cal move­ments are work­ing in close co-oper­a­tion with and have very close ties to the infa­mous Hun­gar­i­an Fas­cist Job­bik par­ty?”

    – “ Real­ly?.. No, I did not know that. Oh, that’s very impor­tant. That’s real­ly bad”, and now he was thor­ough­ly alarmed.

    My friend flew to Ukraine the next morn­ing for the sev­enth time in two months. He joined the urgent sum­mit of the for­eign min­is­ters of Ger­many, France and Poland there as the high­est lev­el of the Euro­pean diplo­ma­cy was urgent­ly try­ing to save the sit­u­a­tion that has gone out of con­trol and beyond of the point of no return. We already know that the sum­mit was anoth­er dia­logue between the deaf and the blind.

    But I do hope that as a hon­est man and an effi­cient inter­na­tion­al politi­cian, my friend will con­tin­ue to pur­sue the case that he and I were dis­cussing with mutu­al­ly shared seri­ous wor­ry not only for Ukraine, but regard­ing the entire face and des­tiny of Europe in the near future, after the com­ing Euro­pean elec­tions in May 2014. Dur­ing these elec­tions, pan-Euro­pean ultra-right rad­i­cals will try to hijack Europe once again; and the sit­u­a­tion has not been this seri­ous in Europe since the pre-WWII time, for a fact.

    Why is it that peo­ple are so stub­born in their per­sis­tent dri­ve to reject real­i­ty? Why our brains are so weak? And our eyes so com­fort­ably blind, always and repeat­ed­ly?

    Dou­ble-Sided Hatred

    In Ukraine, the Janukovich-led regime has been mas­sive­ly cor­rupt, the pres­i­dent him­self hap­pens to be a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal, and his clique ful­ly cor­re­sponds to those mar­vel­lous qual­i­ties. Still, it is the same Ukrain­ian peo­ple who did vote for him; the same way peo­ple in Venezuela kept vot­ing for their Orwellian pres­i­dents, one after anoth­er. Any expert on Ukraine would tell you that all the pre­vi­ous Ukrain­ian regimes were, quite sim­i­lar­ly, utter­ly cor­rupt­ed, as has always been the case for this coun­try. Only names and influ­en­tial groups have changed dur­ing the 22 years of the country’s inde­pen­dence, but not their slo­gans, ways and meth­ods.

    Janukovich, a weak and inef­fec­tu­al leader, did not react ade­quate­ly when his spe­cial forces vio­lat­ed the rights of protest­ing stu­dents in ear­ly Decem­ber in what became the turn­ing point of the change from peace­ful protest into the grow­ing and uncon­trol­lable vio­lence we wit­ness now. Infa­mous “Berkut” troops and the oth­er Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty troops, their state mili­tia and the spe­cial force units are noto­ri­ous­ly anti-Semit­ic, as can be seen from their own pages in Face­book, their sites and their videos on YouTube.

    What we are hav­ing in the case of Ukraine is ugly, uncivilised and involves large groups of hard-core nation­al­ists and mil­i­tant racists – from both sides, impor­tant­ly. And this dou­ble-sided vio­lent nation­al­ism is only increas­ing the threats to nor­mal, now-ter­ror­ized cit­i­zens of Ukraine, and those who are vis­it­ing the coun­try.

    The genie of hatred has come out of the bot­tle, and it will be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to put it back. But with­out doing it, there will be no peace in that big and impor­tant coun­try. And the inflam­ma­to­ry sit­u­a­tion will threat­en all of Ukraine’s neigh­bors, from Poland to Moldo­va, includ­ing Hun­gary, Slo­va­kia, Roma­nia, all of them besides Moldo­va mem­bers of the Euro­pean Union; with Rus­sia and Byelorus­sia among the Ukrain­ian neigh­bors, as well. Who on the earth needs such threat­en­ing open fire in one’s neighbor’s court­yard?

    To han­dle smoke, one needs to extin­guish the fire. And the fire is that provoca­tive, open and dan­ger­ous ultra-rad­i­cal nation­al­ism blos­som­ing today in Ukraine.

    Racial Hatred As Yeast for Riots

    It is cru­cial to realise that sheer and ugly racism has become the yeast of the Ukrain­ian riots – from both sides, it is impor­tant to note. Why are none of the Euro­pean and West­ern world lead­ers not point­ing in that vital direc­tion? Why is it being over­looked once again?

    My close friend liv­ing in Ukraine wrote me a few days ago on how her West-based fiancée is very ner­vous about the sit­u­a­tion and ‘is pray­ing that democ­ra­cy will win in Ukraine’ – “Poor naive man”, writes my Ukrain­ian friend. If things con­tin­ue to unfold the way they are unfold­ing now, all of Europe will become poor and rid­den by race-based hatred and it may hap­pen soon.

    Neo-Nazis as ‘Free­dom Fight­ers’

    Lit­tle more than a year ago, in Autumn 2012, the ultra-right nation­al­ist, fer­vent­ly and open­ly anti-Semit­ic Free­dom par­ty received over 10% of the seats in the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment and now has a sol­id 37 seats in the 450-mem­ber gov­ern­ing body. Just over a year since the legit­imi­sa­tion of that par­ty, which ini­tial­ly proud­ly called itself a Nation­al-Social­ist par­ty, the protests in Ukraine have turned into bloody riots and are very close to civ­il war.

    Since the very begin­ning, a heav­i­ly racist ele­ment has been present in the rhetoric of the protests. Why did nobody in the West react ade­quate­ly to these non-stop procla­ma­tions of hatred and calls for vio­lence? Why did nobody speak about it in plain lan­guage, not once?

    If any of the MPs of almost any of the West­ern coun­tries – except Hun­gary, obvi­ous­ly — would allow him or her­self to imi­tate a pale shad­ow of the speech­es which were repeat­ed­ly heard from the podi­um of the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, the speech­es pro­duced by the Free­dom par­ty MPs, that West­ern par­lia­men­tar­i­an would find him or her­self in jail instant­ly.

    And to make the cus­tom­ary Ukrain­ian sur­re­al­ism entire­ly bleak, today the Free­dom par­ty leader has become one of the three most vis­i­ble, offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized lead­ers of the Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion. To accept it is the same as sign­ing a decree that “from today on, we are once again liv­ing hap­pi­ly in a bar­bar­ian age”.

    The Ger­man gov­ern­ment seems to be the only one that has made a dis­tinc­tion between the leader of the bla­tant neo-Nazis and the (accept­able to the West) oth­er Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion lead­ers. Ger­many clear­ly has no alter­na­tive about that.

    But what about every oth­er West­ern gov­ern­ment, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion who are so very active – and so very unsuc­cess­ful – in solv­ing the Ukrain­ian dra­ma? Are they deaf? Blind? Illit­er­ate? Not inter­est­ed in details, most prob­a­bly — hur­ry­ing up in a non-stop shut­tling to inter­me­di­ate the peace process in Ukraine which comes across as anoth­er fias­co, so far; very sim­i­lar to the Egypt­ian and Thai­land ones.

    In 2012, the Anti-Defama­tion League offi­cial­ly list­ed the Ukrain­ian Free­dom par­ty as a neo-Nazi par­ty. How it is pos­si­ble in the civilised and post WWII world that this par­ty is accept­ed as part of an offi­cial oppo­si­tion and a part­ner in the nego­ti­a­tions attend­ed by any­one who is not Nazi or a neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy sup­port­er? Euro­pean and West­ern lead­ers do owe us the answer to that sim­ple ques­tion.

    The Right Sec­tor of Armed Debauch­ers

    Peo­ple who are fol­low­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine, know that the noto­ri­ous Free­dom par­ty looks almost like church choir boys in com­par­i­son with 23 more ultra-right rad­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine, sev­er­al of them recent­ly unit­ed into the Right Sec­tor Alliance com­prised of high­ly aggres­sive mil­i­tants. The cur­rent real­i­ty is that those thou­sands of mil­i­tants are well equipped with weapons and ammu­ni­tion and are deter­mined to run the war, accord­ing to their leader’s repeat­ed state­ments. It is those peo­ple who have hap­pi­ly tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for mul­ti­ple acts of arson, increas­ing dai­ly ter­ror and lim­it­less vio­lence. It is those peo­ple who beat severe­ly a new­ly appoint­ed offi­cial in Volyn, put him on his knees, hand-cuffed him pub­licly in the city square, and brought his fam­i­ly to stand in front of him. Those peo­ple call them­selves fight­ers for free­dom. Is this the def­i­n­i­tion of free­dom with which the Euro­pean lead­ers are hap­py?

    These are not ‘sep­a­rate acci­den­tal cas­es’ as we are hear­ing in some offi­cial com­ments. This is the posi­tion and prac­tice of the absolute­ly real, seri­ous, large, well orga­nized and well pre­pared sec­tor of the Ukrain­ian pro­test­ers, and this truth shall be realised and act­ed upon with­out delay.

    There is no secret con­cern­ing the real polit­i­cal agen­da and pro­grams of ultra-nation­al­ist par­ties in Ukraine – there is noth­ing close to Euro­pean val­ues and goals there. One just should open exist­ing doc­u­ments and hear what the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of those par­ties pro­claim dai­ly. They are sharply anti-Euro­pean, and high­ly racist. They have noth­ing to do with the val­ues and prac­tices of the civ­i­lized world. Why are the Euro­pean lead­ers embrac­ing such forces so indis­crim­i­nate­ly?..

    The Threat to Ukran­ian Jew­ry

    Ukrain­ian Jew­ry is fac­ing a real and seri­ous threat, and it is sim­ply chill­ing to write about it on the eve of com­mem­o­rat­ing the 70th anniver­sary of the destruc­tion of Hun­gar­i­an Jew­ry. The Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment is putting the com­mem­o­ra­tion on the back burn­er, expect­ed­ly, but unac­cept­ably.

    Twen­ty five years ago, in 1989, there were almost a half a mil­lion Jews in Ukraine. In just over a decade, 80% of them left the coun­try. This fact alone tells a lot about the country’s atti­tude and atmos­phere vis a vis Jews. Ten years lat­er, that num­ber had dimin­ished by a third. Now, less than 70,000 Jews are cit­i­zens of Ukraine, accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics.

    That enor­mous shrink­ing of the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion is one of the most tan­gi­ble char­ac­ter­is­tics of the inde­pen­dent Ukraine, one has to face it. And now there is pal­pa­ble and increas­ing dan­ger to the Jew­ish peo­ple and Jew­ish insti­tu­tions in the coun­try. The world com­mu­ni­ty should become vig­i­lant and alert to this threat. It should act imme­di­ate­ly in order to pre­serve and guar­an­tee nec­es­sary safe­ty to those peo­ple and insti­tu­tions. There is no ‘tomor­row’ for that.

    A Pre-con­di­tion for Civ­i­liza­tion

    There is no doubt that the only way out of the heav­i­ly esca­lat­ed bloody con­flict in Ukraine is through ear­ly elec­tions. With the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion there, and the gen­er­al silent accep­tance of the rad­i­cal ultra-right nation­al­is­tic par­ties and move­ments from out­side the coun­try, there is a high enough prob­a­bil­i­ty of their seri­ous gain in ear­ly elec­tions.

    Europe sim­ply can­not afford to add gaso­line to the already-start­ed fire. As Euro­pean lead­ers are so active these days try­ing to resolve the con­flict in Ukraine, they should make it absolute­ly clear to all par­ties involved that Europe and the world will not tol­er­ate legit­imiza­tion of race-hatred. This has to be the pre-con­di­tion of any fur­ther devel­op­ment in Ukraine and the com­ing ear­ly elec­tions.

    To empow­er the open­ly neo-Nazi move­ments in Europe by ignor­ing the threat they pose is an utter­ly risky busi­ness. Peo­ple should not have to pay a ter­ri­ble price – again – for the meek­ness and indif­fer­ence of their lead­ers. As Ukraine today has become the trag­ic show-case for all of Europe with regards to breed­ing and allow­ing race-hatred to become a vio­lent and uncon­trol­lable force, it is impertive to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion there in accor­dance with exist­ing inter­na­tion­al law and norms of civil­i­sa­tion.

    Nev­er again, you said?

    The writer, pres­i­dent of The Rogatchi Foun­da­tion (www.rogatchi.org) is cura­tor of the Holo­caust Exhi­bi­tion in the Ukraine. Her forth­com­ing book is “Stars of Despair, Stars of Hope: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on the Holo­caust in the Mod­ern Times”.

    Posted by Vanfield | February 21, 2014, 9:42 am
  3. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.575732

    Ukrain­ian rab­bi tells Kiev’s Jews to flee city

    Fear­ing vio­lence against Ukraine’s Jews, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty asks Israel for assis­tance with the secu­ri­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty.
    By Haaretz | Feb. 22, 2014 | 4:20 PM | 19

    Ukrain­ian Rab­bi Moshe Reuven Azman, called on Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the coun­try if pos­si­ble, fear­ing that the city’s Jews will be vic­tim­ized in the chaos, Israeli dai­ly Maariv report­ed Fri­day.

    “I told my con­gre­ga­tion to leave the city cen­ter or the city all togeth­er and if pos­si­ble the coun­try too,” Rab­bi Azman told Maariv. “I don’t want to tempt fate,” he added, “but there are con­stant warn­ings con­cern­ing inten­tions to attack Jew­ish insti­tu­tions.”

    Accord­ing to the paper’s report Azman closed the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty’s schools but still holds three dai­ly prayers. He said the Israeli embassy told mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to avoid leav­ing their homes.

    Edward Dolin­sky, head of the umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion of Ukraine’s Jews described the sit­u­a­tion in Kiev as dire, telling Maariv “We con­tact­ed For­eign Min­is­ter Avig­dor Lieber­man request­ing he assist us with secur­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.”

    Pro­test­ers in the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal claimed full con­trol of the city Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a West­ern-bro­kered peace deal aimed at end­ing the nation’s three-month polit­i­cal cri­sis.

    Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovich is still in Ukraine, a senior secu­ri­ty source told Reuters on Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing reports his res­i­dence was emp­ty and unguard­ed and his Kiev offices were in the hands of pro­test­ers.

    Cor­rec­tion (Feb. 22, 4:20 P.M.): An ear­li­er ver­sion of this report incor­rect­ly described Rab­bi Azman as the chief rab­bi of Ukraine. Azman is not the coun­try’s chief rab­bi, but one of two rab­bis chal­leng­ing the offi­cial chief rab­bi, Yaakov Ble­ich, in Kiev, and like most Chabad rab­bis, is aligned with the Krem­lin.

    Posted by Vanfield | February 22, 2014, 8:18 pm
  4. This comes from the “Strate­gic Culture.Org” web­site. I still do not under­stand who pro­duces this, but I think it is most like­ly a front for the Rus­sians.

    None-the-less, it con­tains con­cerns from the anti-neo-Nazi, antifas­cist reac­tion to the Coup in Ukraine, so here goes:

    http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/02/25/ukraine-coup-staged-new-order-established-first-steps-taken-tendencies-taking-shape.html

    (excerpts)

    Ukraine: Coup Staged, New Order Estab­lished, First Steps Tak­en, Ten­den­cies Tak­ing Shape
    Pavel DMITRIEV | 25.02.2014 | 03:00

    “The coup in Ukraine has tak­en place. The Verk­hov­na Rada of Ukraine (Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment) has vot­ed to set ear­ly pres­i­den­tial elec­tions for May 25 and done so in vio­la­tion of Con­sti­tu­tion and estab­lished order. The for­mer Pres­i­dent escaped from Kiev hav­ing betrayed his vot­ers, the par­ty, those who stood on guard of law and order and the peo­ple. Kiev and a larg­er part of Ukraine, includ­ing Volyn and Gali­cia regions, have moved under the con­trol of rebels.

    The south-east­ern part of Ukraine and the Repub­lic of Crimea, exclud­ing the Dne­propetro­vsk region, are still loy­al to the Con­sti­tu­tion and have actu­al­ly refused to rec­og­nize the new regime. At that, it is unclear how long will the local pow­ers in the country’s south-east be able to keep the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol…
    ***
    “Until now, the sit­u­a­tion in the south-east has been under local pow­ers’ con­trol. Anti-fas­cist self-defense for­ma­tions are active­ly formed in Donet­sk, Kharkov and Lugan­sk, the pop­u­la­tion there is adamant in its desire to resist. It’s rel­a­tive­ly calm in the autonomous Repub­lic of Crimea. The legal pow­ers are strong­ly deter­mined to repel the attacks of Ban­dera move­ment gangs which spread their activ­i­ties across the coun­try like can­cer metas­ta­sis.

    The main dri­ving force of the coup is not oppo­si­tion par­ties which have rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the par­lia­ment (UDAR, Batkivshchy­na), but rather neo-Nazi mil­i­tants from Gali­cia, Kiev and the cen­tral parts of the coun­try. Well orga­nized, they did their dirty job on the streets and bar­ri­cades while the oppo­si­tion used the results of their activ­i­ties to its advan­tage.

    Now these rad­i­cal-nation­al­ist ele­ments are strong­ly com­mit­ted to the idea of hav­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the new gov­ern­ment. Though until now the inclu­sion of Ban­dera move­ment activists into the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs struc­tures has not been con­sid­ered, Min­is­ter A. Avakov said the police forces would main­tain law and order togeth­er with Pravy Sec­tor and Maid­an self-defense units. It’s easy to see that the Ban­dera movement’s goal is a “nation­al rev­o­lu­tion” mean­ing the estab­lish­ment of “rev­o­lu­tion­ary dic­ta­tor­ship” and ter­ror against dis­si­dents.

    Pravy Sec­tor is ready to pro­mote the goals of coup much fur­ther that the mod­er­ate oppo­si­tion par­lia­men­tary forces may want the process to go. The head of Maid­an neo-fas­cists post­ed an instruc­tion of the Pravy Sec­tor head­quar­ters say­ing that the Par­ty of the Regions and the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Ukraine are crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and their activ­i­ties should be stopped. The imme­di­ate aim of neo-Nazi is to get through into the par­lia­ment. If there is no ear­ly par­lia­men­tary elec­tion, they will demand it.

    A part of pop­u­la­tion is on edge, and there is some sup­port for fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy influ­enc­ing the Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics. There is blood on the hands of neo-Nazi mil­i­tants and their West­ern spon­sors – they are respon­si­ble for the Par­ty of Regions and the Com­mu­nist Par­ty offices pogroms, beat­ings up and tor­tures of pris­on­ers, killings of arm­less police­men and Berkut sol­diers.

    The gap between the Maid­an Nazi on the one hand and UDAR and Batkivshchy­na polit­i­cal par­ties on the oth­er hand has become wider. There is also a gap between the Nazi and Svo­bo­da polit­i­cal par­ty which does its best to look respectable in the eyes of Europe. The main prob­lem for the oppo­si­tion is find­ing a way to dis­band the mil­i­tants and make them dis­arm with­out the use of force.

    Svo­bo­da has already stat­ed that it won’t sup­port Yulia Tim­o­shenko as a can­di­date for the posi­tion of Prime Min­is­ter. Per­haps that was the rea­son Tim­o­shenko refused to run for the office as it was for­mal­ly stat­ed.

    Hav­ing staged the coup, the West has made Ukraine des­ti­tute of its sov­er­eign­ty. The coun­try is ruled from out­side. Wash­ing­ton and Brus­sels are con­sult­ed before tak­ing any deci­sion of sig­nif­i­cance. First of all it has rela­tion to the issue of the asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment with the Euro­pean Union. It’s worth to note that Karel De Gucht, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for Trade, con­firmed the EU readi­ness to con­clude an asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment with Ukraine. He believes the agree­ment will be signed but refused to tell the date. Accord­ing to him, the issue could be con­sid­ered after the gov­ern­ment is formed, democ­ra­cy guar­an­teed and sta­bil­i­ty restored.

    Wash­ing­ton needs the Nazi mil­i­tants to use them as a lever­age over the pow­ers in Kiev if need be. The world com­mu­ni­ty should ful­ly real­ize that Ukrain­ian Neo-Nazi have become an instru­ment of US for­eign pol­i­cy.”
    ———–

    Pret­ty strong lan­guage, not seen in oth­er sources.

    Posted by Swamp | February 24, 2014, 7:54 pm

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