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Update on the OUN‑B and the Ukrainian Crisis

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: The tur­moil engulf­ing the Ukraine con­tin­ues, with the “Gray Lady”–as the New York Times is known, show­ing her CIA pet­ti­coats.

Although it remains this coun­try’s best news­pa­per, the Times has long been the CIA’s #1 pro­pa­gan­da asset.

A recent Times sto­ry about the Ukraine was remark­able for its lack of his­tor­i­cal insight. (We acknowl­edge that the author may well have been sin­cere­ly igno­rant of the nature of the polit­i­cal ele­ments about which he wrote.)

In a past post, we high­light­ed the Nazi and fas­cist roots of the protest move­men­t’s van­guard, those forces hav­ing evolved from the OUN/B of Stephan Ban­dera.

We note that Yuriy Shukhevych is described in sym­pa­thet­ic terms, as the vic­tim of Sovi­et oppres­sion. There is brief ref­er­ence to the fact that his father Roman led the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army against the U.S.S.R.

What is not men­tioned is the fact that his father led the Ein­satz­gruppe “Nightin­gale” that exter­mi­nat­ed the Jew­ish ghetoin Lvov (“also known as “Lviv” or “Lem­berg”).

That work was done as part of the real­iza­tion of the Final Solu­tion with­in the U.S.S.R., fol­low­ing the Nazi inva­sion in 1941.

The unit that the elder Shukhevych com­mand­ed was under the exec­u­tive super­vi­sion of S.S. offi­cer Theodor Ober­lan­der, who lat­er became the Min­is­ter for Expellees under Chan­cel­lor Kon­rad Ade­nauer.

 Roman Shukhevych and Stephan Ban­dera were named heroes of the Ukraine under Pres­i­dent Yuschenko, whose wife Yka­te­ri­na had pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed the top OUN/B front in the Unit­ed States.

Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko Yuschenko had pre­vi­ous­ly been deputy head of Pres­i­den­tial Liai­son under Ronald Rea­gan.

On the last two sides of AFA #1, we dis­cussed the fact that the OUN/B (whose mil­i­tary cadre was the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army) con­tin­ued the gueril­la war­fare begun under the Third Reich for years after the for­mal close of World War II, pro­long­ing the com­bat until the ear­ly 1950’s.

They con­tin­ued the com­bat under the aus­pices of the fledg­ling CIA, hav­ing been recruit­ed by Frank Wis­ner’s OPC and Allen Dulles.

In effect, they sim­ply switched uni­forms.

For more details about this polit­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, check out the pre­vi­ous post on the Nazi and fas­cist roots of the Ukrain­ian cri­sis and the links con­tained there­in.

“A Ukraine City Spins Beyond the Gov­ern­men­t’s Reach” by Andrew Hig­gins; The New York Times; 2/16/2014.

EXCERPT: . . . . The oppo­si­tion has also sought to ease ten­sions, with a lead­ing oppo­si­tion par­ty, Svo­bo­da, say­ing on Sat­ur­day that it was ready to end its occu­pa­tion of Kiev City Hall. But oth­er groups like Right Sec­tor, a coali­tion of hard-line forces with deep roots in west­ern Ukraine, said seized build­ings should remain occu­pied until Mr. Yanukovych resigned and all crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against pro­test­ers were halt­ed. . . .

. . . . The archi­tec­ture traces the city’s past, from the colon­nad­ed relics of the Haps­burg Empire, to the man­sions of long-gone Pol­ish nobles and the homes of van­ished Jew­ish and Armen­ian traders. [The Jews “van­ished” cour­tesy of the elder Shukhevy­ch’s charges–D.E.]. . .

. . . . Offer­ing inspi­ra­tion and advice has been Yuriy Shukhevych, a blind vet­er­an nation­al­ist who spent 31 years in Sovi­et pris­ons and labor camps and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army against Pol­ish and then Sovi­et rule.

 Mr. Shukhevych, 80, who lost his sight dur­ing his time in the Sovi­et gulag, helped guide the for­ma­tion of Right Sec­tor, an unruly orga­ni­za­tion whose fight­ers now man bar­ri­cades around Inde­pen­dence Square, the epi­cen­ter of the protest move­ment in Kiev.

 Mr. Sadovyy, Lviv’s may­or, said Mr. Yanukovych and his sup­port­ers had exag­ger­at­ed the risk of extrem­ism to scare peo­ple into sub­mis­sion. But he added that they should not ignore the region’s pas­sions to join Europe and to stay out of the orbit of Rus­sia, which, well into the 1950s, was still hunt­ing down Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fight­ers shel­ter­ing in the forests around the city. . . .

 

 

Discussion

2 comments for “Update on the OUN‑B and the Ukrainian Crisis”

  1. Today’s (Feb 20) Toron­to Star has an excel­lent arti­cle by Thomas Walkom (pg. A4) on the Ukraine cri­sis. It’s good to see that some­one is ques­tion­ing the actu­al nature of this ‘rebel­lion’.

    Posted by Brad | February 20, 2014, 8:33 am
  2. http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/

    Pierre Omid­yar co-fund­ed Ukraine rev­o­lu­tion groups with US gov­ern­ment, doc­u­ments show By Mark Ames On Feb­ru­ary 28, 2014 Just hours after last weekend’s ouster of Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s newest hires at nation­al secu­ri­ty blog “The Inter­cept,” was already dig­ging for the truth. Mar­cy Wheel­er, who is the new site’s “senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst,” spec­u­lat­ed that the Ukraine rev­o­lu­tion was like­ly a “coup” engi­neered by “deep forces” on behalf of “Pax Amer­i­cana”:

    “There’s quite a bit of evi­dence of coup-ness. Q is how many lev­els deep inter­fer­ence from both sides is.”

    These are seri­ous claims. So seri­ous that I decid­ed to inves­ti­gate them. And what I found was shock­ing. Wheel­er is part­ly cor­rect. Pan­do has con­firmed that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – in the form of the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) – played a major role in fund­ing oppo­si­tion groups pri­or to the rev­o­lu­tion. More­over, a large per­cent­age of the rest of the fund­ing to those same groups came from a US bil­lion­aire who has pre­vi­ous­ly worked close­ly with US gov­ern­ment agen­cies to fur­ther his own busi­ness inter­ests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evi­dence shows that US invest­ment was a force mul­ti­pli­er for many of the groups involved in over­throw­ing Yanukovych. But that’s not the shock­ing part. What’s shock­ing is the name of the bil­lion­aire who co-invest­ed with the US gov­ern­ment (or as Wheel­er put it: the “dark force” act­ing on behalf of “Pax Amer­i­cana”). Step out of the shad­ows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omid­yar. Yes, in the annals of inde­pen­dent media, this might be the strangest twist ever: Accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sures and reports seen by Pan­do, the founder and pub­lish­er of Glenn Greenwald’s gov­ern­ment-bash­ing blog,“The Inter­cept,” co-invest­ed with the US gov­ern­ment to help fund regime change in Ukraine. * * * * When the rev­o­lu­tion came to Ukraine, neo-fas­cists played a front-cen­ter role in over­throw­ing the country’s pres­i­dent. But the real polit­i­cal pow­er rests with Ukraine’s pro-west­ern neolib­er­als. Polit­i­cal fig­ures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Depart­ment, DC neo­consEU, and NATO—and the right-hand man to Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Vik­tor Yushchenko. Last Decem­ber, the Finan­cial Times wrote that Rybachuk’s “New Cit­i­zen” NGO cam­paign “played a big role in get­ting the protest up and run­ning.” New Cit­i­zen, along with the rest of Rybachuk’s inter­lock­ing net­work of west­ern-backed NGOs and cam­paigns— “Cen­ter UA” (also spelled “Cen­tre UA”), “Ches­no,” and “Stop Cen­sor­ship” to name a few — grew their pow­er by tar­get­ing pro-Yanukovych politi­cians with a well-coor­di­nat­ed anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign that built its strength in Ukraine’s regions, before mass­ing in Kiev last autumn. The efforts of the NGOs were so suc­cess­ful that the Ukraine gov­ern­ment was accused of employ­ing dirty tricks to shut them down. In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, the groups were the sub­ject of a mas­sive mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the eco­nom­ics divi­sion of Ukraine’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry in what many denounced as a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed move. For­tu­nate­ly the groups had the strength – which is to say, mon­ey – to sur­vive those attacks and con­tin­ue push­ing for regime change in Ukraine. The source of that mon­ey? Accord­ing to the Kyiv Post, Pier­rie Omidyar’s Omid­yar Net­work (part of the Omid­yar Group which owns First Look Media and the Inter­cept) pro­vid­ed 36% of “Cen­ter UA”’s $500,000 bud­get in 2012— near­ly $200,000. USAID pro­vid­ed 54% of “Cen­ter UA”’s bud­get for 2012. Oth­er fun­ders includ­ed the US gov­ern­ment-backed Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy. In 2011, Omid­yar Net­work gave $335,000 to “New Cit­i­zen,” one of the anti-Yanukovych “projects” man­aged through the Rybachuk-chaired NGO “Cen­ter UA.” At the time, Omid­yar Net­work boast­ed that its invest­ment in “New Cit­i­zen” would help “shape pub­lic pol­i­cy” in Ukraine:

    “Using tech­nol­o­gy and media, New Cit­i­zen coor­di­nates the efforts of con­cerned mem­bers of soci­ety, rein­forc­ing their abil­i­ty to shape pub­lic pol­i­cy. “… With sup­port from Omid­yar Net­work, New Cit­i­zen will strength­en its advo­ca­cy efforts in order to dri­ve greater trans­paren­cy and engage cit­i­zens on issues of impor­tance to them.”

    In March 2012, Rybachuk — the oper­a­tor behind the 2004 Orange Rev­o­lu­tion scenes, the Ana­toly Chubais of Ukraine — boast­ed that he was prepar­ing a new Orange Rev­o­lu­tion:

    “Peo­ple are not afraid. We now have 150 NGOs in all the major cities in our ‘clean up Par­lia­ment cam­paign’ to elect and find bet­ter parliamentarians….The Orange Rev­o­lu­tion was a mir­a­cle, a mas­sive peace­ful protest that worked. We want to do that again and we think we will.

    Detailed finan­cial records reviewed by Pan­do (and embed­ded below) also show Omid­yar Net­work cov­ered costs for the expan­sion of Rybachuk’s anti-Yanukovych cam­paign, “Ches­no” (“Hon­est­ly”), into region­al cities includ­ing Polta­va, Vin­nyt­sia, Zhy­to­myr, Ternopil, Sumy, and else­where, most­ly in the Ukrain­ian-speak­ing west and cen­ter. * * * * To under­stand what it means for Omid­yar to fund Oleh Rybachuk, some brief his­to­ry is nec­es­sary. Rybachuk’s back­ground fol­lows a famil­iar pat­tern in post-Sovi­et oppor­tunism: From well-con­nect­ed KGB intel­li­gence ties, to post-Sovi­et neolib­er­al net­work­er. In the Sovi­et era, Rybachuk stud­ied in a mil­i­tary lan­guages pro­gram half of whose grad­u­ates went on to work for the KGB. Rybachuk’s murky over­seas post­ing in India in the late Sovi­et era fur­ther strength­ens many sus­pi­cions about his Sovi­et intel­li­gence ties; what­ev­er the case, by Rybachuk’s own account, his close ties to top intel­li­gence fig­ures in the Ukrain­ian SBU served him well dur­ing the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion of 2004, when the SBU passed along secret infor­ma­tion about vote fraud and assas­si­na­tion plots. In 1992, after the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union, Rybachuk moved to the new­ly-formed Ukraine Cen­tral Bank, head­ing the for­eign rela­tions depart­ment under Cen­tral Bank chief and future Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Vik­tor Yushchenko. In his cen­tral bank post, Rybachuk estab­lished close friend­ly ties with west­ern gov­ern­ment and finan­cial aid insti­tu­tions, as well as pro­to-Omid­yar fig­ures like George Soros, who fund­ed many of the NGOs involved in “col­or rev­o­lu­tions” includ­ing small dona­tions to the same Ukraine NGOs that Omid­yar backed. (Like Omid­yar Net­work does today, Soros’ char­i­ty arms—Open Soci­ety and Renais­sance Foundation—publicly preached trans­paren­cy and good gov­ern­ment in places like Rus­sia dur­ing the Yeltsin years, while Soros’ finan­cial arm spec­u­lat­ed on Russ­ian debt and par­tic­i­pat­ed in scan­dal-plagued auc­tions of state assets.) In ear­ly 2005, Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Yushchenko became Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, and he appoint­ed Rybachuk deputy prime min­is­ter in charge of inte­grat­ing Ukraine into the EU, NATO, and oth­er west­ern insti­tu­tions. Rybachuk also pushed for the mass-pri­va­ti­za­tion of Ukraine’s remain­ing state hold­ings. Over the next sev­er­al years, Rybachuk was shift­ed around Pres­i­dent Yushchenko’s embat­tled admin­is­tra­tion, torn by inter­nal divi­sions. In 2010, Yushchenko lost the pres­i­den­cy to recent­ly-over­thrown Vik­tor Yanukovych, and a year lat­er, Rybachuk was on Omidyar’s and USAID’s pay­roll, prepar­ing for the next Orange Rev­o­lu­tion. As Rybachuk told the Finan­cial Times two years ago:

    “We want to do [the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion] again and we think we will.”

    Some of Omidyar’s funds were specif­i­cal­ly ear­marked for cov­er­ing the costs of set­ting up Rybachuk’s “clean up par­lia­ment” NGOs in Ukraine’s region­al cen­ters. Short­ly after the Euro­maid­an demon­stra­tions erupt­ed last Novem­ber, Ukraine’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry opened up a mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Rybachuk’s NGOs, drag­ging Omidyar’s name into the high-stakes polit­i­cal strug­gle. Accord­ing to a Kyiv Post arti­cle on Feb­ru­ary 10 titled, “Rybachuk: Democ­ra­cy-pro­mot­ing non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion faces ‘ridicu­lous’ inves­ti­ga­tion”:

    “Police are inves­ti­gat­ing Cen­ter UA, a pub­lic-sec­tor watch­dog fund­ed by West­ern donors, on sus­pi­cion of mon­ey laun­der­ing, the group said. The group’s leader, Oleh Rybachuk, said it appears that author­i­ties, with the probe, are try­ing to warn oth­er non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions that seek to pro­mote democ­ra­cy, trans­paren­cy, free speech and human rights in Ukraine. “Accord­ing to Cen­ter UA, the Kyiv eco­nom­ic crimes unit of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry start­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion on Dec. 11. Recent­ly, how­ev­er, inves­ti­ga­tors stepped up their efforts, ques­tion­ing some 200 wit­ness­es. “… Cen­ter UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, accord­ing to its annu­al report for that year, 54 per­cent of which came from Pact Inc., a project fund­ed by the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment. Near­ly 36 per­cent came from Omid­yar Net­work, a foun­da­tion estab­lished by eBay founder Pierre Omid­yar and his wife. Oth­er donors include the Inter­na­tion­al Renais­sance Foun­da­tion, whose key fun­der is bil­lion­aire George Soros, and Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy, fund­ed large­ly by the U.S. Con­gress.”

    * * * * What all this adds up to is a jour­nal­is­tic con­flict-of-inter­est of the worst kind: Omid­yar work­ing hand-in-glove with US for­eign pol­i­cy agen­cies to inter­fere in for­eign gov­ern­ments, co-financ­ing regime change with well-known arms of the Amer­i­can empire — while at the same time hir­ing a grow­ing team of soi-dis­ant ”inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists” which vows to inves­ti­gate the behav­ior of the US gov­ern­ment at home and over­seas, and boasts of its unique­ly “adver­sar­i­al” rela­tion­ship towards these  gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions. As First Look staffer Jere­my Scahill told the Dai­ly Beast

    We had a long dis­cus­sion about this inter­nal­ly; about what our posi­tion would be if the White House asked us to not pub­lish some­thing…. With us, because we want to be adver­sar­i­al, they won’t know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?

    Of the many prob­lems that pos­es, none is more seri­ous than the fact that Omid­yar now has the only two peo­ple with exclu­sive access to the com­plete Snow­den NSA cache, Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras. Some­how, the same bil­lion­aire who co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclu­sive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the inde­pen­dent media dare voice a skep­ti­cal word about it. In the larg­er sense, this is a prob­lem of 21st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can inequal­i­ty, of life in a bil­lion­aire-dom­i­nat­ed era. It is a prob­lem we all have to con­tend with—PandoDaily’s 18-plus investors include a gag­gle of Sil­i­con Val­ley bil­lion­aires like Marc Andreessen (who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omid­yar) and Peter Thiel (whose pol­i­tics I’ve inves­ti­gat­ed, and described as repug­nant.) But what is more imme­di­ate­ly alarm­ing is what makes Omid­yar dif­fer­ent. Unlike oth­er bil­lion­aires, Omid­yar has gar­nered noth­ing but uncrit­i­cal, fawn­ing press cov­er­age, par­tic­u­lar­ly from those he has hired. By acquir­ing a “dream team” of what remains of inde­pen­dent media — Green­wald, Jere­my Scahill, Wheel­er, my for­mer part­ner Matt Taib­bi — not to men­tion press “crit­ics” like Jay Rosen — he buys both silence and fawn­ing press. Both are incred­i­bly use­ful: Silence, an absence of jour­nal­is­tic curios­i­ty about Omidyar’s activ­i­ties over­seas and at home, has been pur­chased for the price of what­ev­er his cur­rent all-star indie cast cur­rent­ly costs him. As an added bonus, that same invest­ment buys silence from expo­nen­tial­ly larg­er num­bers of des­per­ate­ly under­paid inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists hop­ing to some­day be on his pay­roll, and the under­fund­ed media watch­dogs that sur­vive on Omid­yar Net­work grants. And it also buys laugh­able fluff from the likes of Scahill who also boast­ed to the Dai­ly Beast of his boss’ close involve­ment in the day to day run­ning of First Look.

    “[Omid­yar] strikes me as always sort of polit­i­cal, but I think that the NSA sto­ry and the expand­ing wars put pol­i­tics for him into a much more promi­nent place in his exis­tence. This is not a side project that he is doing. Pierre writes more on our inter­nal mes­sag­ing than any­one else. And he is not micro­manag­ing. This guy has a vision. And his vision is to con­front what he sees as an assault on the pri­va­cy of Amer­i­cans.”

    Now Wheel­er has her answer — that, yes, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary groups were part-fund­ed by Uncle Sam, but also by her boss — one assumes awk­ward fol­low up ques­tions will be asked on that First Look inter­nal mes­sag­ing sys­tem. Whether Wheel­er, Scahill and their col­leagues go on to share their con­cerns pub­licly will speak vol­umes about First Look’s much-trum­pet­ed inde­pen­dence, both from Omidyar’s oth­er busi­ness inter­ests and from Omidyar’s co-investors in Ukraine: the US gov­ern­ment.

    Posted by Vanfield | February 28, 2014, 2:11 pm

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