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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Supplementing previous coverage of the Ukrainian crisis, this broadcast further explores the role of Nazi formations and individuals in the security services of that benighted country. In addition, the broadcast highlights developments in Ukraine’s military industry and burgeoning international security alliances.
The Kiev city government recently gave C14 –Svoboda’s paramilitary cadre literally named after the white supremacist ’14 words’ slogan – the right to establish a “municipal guard” to patrol the streets there. ” . . . . But connections between law enforcement agencies and extremists give Ukraine’s Western allies ample reason for concern. C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kiev, and at least 21 operate in other cities. . . .”
The C14 police formations cracking down on political activists, including LGBT and anti-war proponents.
It is not surprising that C14 militia members have used their office to attack and harass Roma, one of the “out” groups that have been the focus of social oppression/genocide from the Third Reich’s above-ground manifestation through the present resurgence of fascism in Europe.
C14 and the municipal patrol duties they have been granted in Kiev have provided a platform to attack the Roma, with the full support of local authorities ( including the police and the media.) ” . . . . the police appear to see no need to take action and merely state that they have received no complaints. It is also alarming how many Ukrainian media (such as TSN, Channel 5) have simply reported this ‘raid’ effectively in Mazur’s words, without considering what threats must have been used to ‘persuade’ around 15 families to leave their makeshift homes in such haste. If Mazur is telling the truth, then the measures to remove the Roma families who had reportedly come to Kyiv from Transcarpathia in search of work were the result of collaboration between C14 members of the so-called ‘Municipal Guard’ and the Holosiyiv District Administration. . . .”
In addition, the C14 cadre are:
- Apparently functioning as something of a “freikorps,” serving as punitive muscle for important donors from the private sector. ” . . . . On 26 February 2018, C14 posted an advertisement on their Facebook page which quite openly offered their services as thugs to regular donors. This said that ‘C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.’ . . .”
- Working in conjunction with Nazis from the large Nazi milieux in Russia and Belarus. ” . . . . On 19 January 2018, C14 activists prevented the traditional remembrance gathering for Sevastopol journalist Anastasia Baburova and Russian lawyer Stanislav Markelov, murdered in Moscow in 2009 by neo-Nazi Russian nationalists. The claim that those honouring the two slain anti-fascists were ‘separatists’ was preposterous, and Volodymyr Chemerys, one of the organizers of the remembrance event, asserts that they were confronted not only by C14 thugs, but by Russian and Belarusian neo-Nazis. . . .”
- Receiving tactical, logistical assistance from uniformed police authorities. ” . . . . They instead detained eight people who had come to honour Baburova and Markelov. The police involved later tried to claim that there had been no detention, and that the activists had been ‘invited’ to the police station. There was no suggestion that the ‘invitation’ could have been turned down. The detained activists reported later that they had been ‘hunted down’ by the far-right thugs after leaving the police station. A member of the Human Rights Information Centre who spoke with them believes that the thugs could have only discovered which station the activists were being held in from the police themselves. . . .”
The Nazi Azov Battalion is also spawning civil police formations as well.
Ukrainian fascist organizations have powerful political protection, because of the close relationship between Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (an important backer of the Azov Battalion) and figures like Azov leader Andriy Biletsky and Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official.
Avakov’s Peoples’ Party is the main partner in the parliamentary coalition led by Poroshenko’s Bloc. Should Petro Poroshenko decided to challenge Avakov and, as a result, the growing role of these neo-Nazi militias, his governing coalition might collapse.
” . . . . In an ideal world, President Petro Poroshenko would purge the police and the interior ministry of far-right sympathizers, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to Azov leader Andriy Biletsky, as well as Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official. But Poroshenko would risk major repercussions if he did so; Avakov is his chief political rival, and the ministry he runs controls the police, the National Guard and several former militias. . . .”
” . . . . Avakov’s Peoples’ Party status as the main partner in Ukraine’s parliamentary coalition increases Avakov’s leverage over Poroshenko’s Bloc. An attempt to fire Avakov could imperil Poroshenko’s slim legislative majority, and lead to early parliamentary elections. Given Poroshenko’s current unpopularity, this is a scenario he will likely try to avoid. . . .”
Former Azov Battalion commander Vadim Troyan was a point element in the assumption of police duties by Azov Battalion and C14. He became acting head of the National Police after the resignation of Khatia Dekonoidze. ” . . . . Vadim Troyan, who takes over as Acting Head, is not politically independent and therefore unsuited to the post. Doubts about the former Azov Battalion commander’s suitability for high police posts were first expressed after his appointment as head of the Kyiv regional police and they remain of concern. . . .”
Troyan is now Arsen Avakov’s Deputy Interior Minister. ” . . . . The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed the first Deputy Head of the National Police Vadym Troyan as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. . . . ”
The milieu of the Azov Battalion has influential proponents in the U.S.
The same smear machine that targeted former Rep. John Conyer’s over his opposition to arming the neo-Nazi Azov battalion is turning its focus on Rep. Ro Khanna (Democrat from California) after Khanna ensured that the ban on funds going to arming or training the Azov Battalion remained in place in the congressional spending bill that passed a couple weeks ago. In a particularly disgusting op-ed in The Hill, Kristofer Harrison – a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and who also happens to a co-founder of a company that specializes in Russian “information warfare,” with offices in Washington and Kyiv – declared that Khanna’s characterization of the Azov Battalion as neo-Nazi in nature is ridiculous and part of a big lie pushed by Putin.
We note again that Harrison–whom we have noted attacked John Conyers as “Putin’s Man in Congress”–relies on Roman Zvarych for his exoneration of the Azov Battalion. In addition to being the spokesman for Azov, Zvarych was:
- Minister of Justice under Viktor Yuschenko.
- Minister of Justice under both Tymoshenko governments.
- An adviser to Petro Poroshenko.
- In the 1980’s, the personal secretary to Jaroslav Stetzko, the wartime head of the Nazi collaborationist government in Ukraine. Stetzko implemented Nazi ethnic cleansing in Ukraine during World War II.
Next, we revisit the issue of the sniper attacks during the Maidan demonstrations, covered at length in FTR #‘s 982 and 993. In what appears to be a faction fight in the Ukrainian fascist milieu, former Ukrainian far-right folk hero Nadia Savchenko has echoed the charge that Svoboda Party’s parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy was involved with the sniper attacks during the Maidan coup. Pushed on her charge, she equivocated that it was a different member of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament.)
In a development that could light a match to the Ukrainian/Russian tinderbox, Ukraine is angling toward NATO membership.This is to be evaluated against the background that Ukraine has now tested a new cruise missile and is employing Tony Tether, the former head of DARPA to augment its weapons development programs. DARPA is also directly aiding Ukraine.
Among the nations most hospitable to the post-World War II OUN/B diaspora is Canada, a NATO member.
In FTR #948, we noted that Canada’s Foreign Minister Christia Freeland’s grandfather, Michael Chomiak was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator. (“Foreign Minister” is the Canadian equivalent of Secretary of State. Freeland describes her grandfather as a major influence on her.) Now, four Russian diplomats have been expelled from Canada for telling the truth about Chomiak and Freeland.)
In conclusion, we note that the “PropOrNot” group attacked Robert Parry after his death. (Mr. Emory interviewed Robert Parry a number of times. Parry was one of the few journalists in the U.S. willing to tell the truth about the OUN/B successor organizations and their profound presence in Ukraine.) In FTR #943, we noted the presence of PropOrNot in the OUN/B milieu.
1a. The Kiev city government recently gave C14 –Svoboda’s paramilitary cadre literally named after the white supremacist ’14 words’ slogan – the right to establish a “municipal guard” to patrol the streets there. ” . . . . But connections between law enforcement agencies and extremists give Ukraine’s Western allies ample reason for concern. C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kiev, and at least 21 operate in other cities. . . .”
They’re also cracking down on political activists, including LGBT and anti-war proponents.
As the article below also notes, Ukrainian fascist organizations have powerful political protection, because of the close relationship between Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and figures like Azov leader Andriy Biletsky and Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official.
Avakov’s Peoples’ Party is the main partner in the parliamentary coalition led by Poroshenko’s Bloc. Should Petro Poroshenko decided to challenge Avakov and, as a result, the growing role of these neo-Nazi militias, his governing coalition might collapse.
” . . . . In an ideal world, President Petro Poroshenko would purge the police and the interior ministry of far-right sympathizers, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to Azov leader Andriy Biletsky, as well as Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official. But Poroshenko would risk major repercussions if he did so; Avakov is his chief political rival, and the ministry he runs controls the police, the National Guard and several former militias. . . .”
” . . . . Avakov’s Peoples’ Party status as the main partner in Ukraine’s parliamentary coalition increases Avakov’s leverage over Poroshenko’s Bloc. An attempt to fire Avakov could imperil Poroshenko’s slim legislative majority, and lead to early parliamentary elections. Given Poroshenko’s current unpopularity, this is a scenario he will likely try to avoid. . . .”
“Commentary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem” by Josh Cohen; Reuters; 03/19/2018
As Ukraine’s struggle against Russia and its proxies continues, Kiev must also contend with a growing problem behind the front lines: far-right vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and even violence to advance their agendas, and who often do so with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies.
A January 28 demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order,” illustrates this threat. While the group’s Kiev launch was peaceful, National Militia members in balaclavas stormed a city council meeting in the central Ukrainian town of Cherkasy the following day, skirmishing with deputies and forcing them to pass a new budget.
Many of the National Militia’s members come from the Azov movement, one of the 30-odd privately-funded “volunteer battalions” that, in the early days of the war, helped the regular army to defend Ukrainian territory against Russia’s separatist proxies. Although Azov usesNazi-era symbolism and recruitsneo-Nazis intoits ranks, a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit condition of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing militias such as Azov and Right Sector stepped into the breach, fendingoff the Russian-backed separatists while Ukraine’s regular military regrouped. Though, as a result, many Ukrainians continue to regard the militias with gratitude and admiration, the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology that will endanger Ukraine in the long term. Since the Crimean crisis, the militias have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces, but some have resisted full integration: Azov, for example, runs its own children’s training camp, and the careers section instructs recruits who wish to transfer to Azov from a regular military unit.
According to Freedom House’s Ukraine project director Matthew Schaaf, “numerous organized radical right-wing groups exist in Ukraine, and while the volunteer battalions may have been officially integrated into state structures, some of them have since spun off political and non-profit structures to implement their vision.”Schaaf noted that “an increase in patriotic discourse supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has coincided with an apparent increase in both public hate speech, sometimes by public officials and magnified by the media, as well as violence towards vulnerable groups such as the LGBT community,” an observation that is supported by a recent Council of Europe study.
In recent months, Ukraine has experienced a wave of unchecked vigilantism. Institute Respublica, a local pro-democracy NGO, reported that activists are frequently harassed by vigilantes when holding legal meetings or rallies related to politically-controversial positions, such as the promotion of LGBT rights or opposition to the war. Azov and other militias have attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, foreign students and Roma. Progressive activists describe a new climate of fear that they say has been intensifying ever since last year’s near-fatal stabbing of anti-war activist Stas Serhiyenko, which is believed to have been perpetrated by an extremist group named C14 (the name refers to a 14-word slogan popular among white supremacists). Brutal attacks this month on International Women’s Day marches in several Ukrainian cities prompted an unusually forceful statement from Amnesty International, which warned that “the Ukrainian state is rapidly losing its monopoly on violence.”
Ukraine is not the only country that must contend with a resurgent far right. But Kiev’s recent efforts to incorporate independent armed groups into its regular armed forces, as well as a continuing national sense of indebtedness to the militias for their defense of the homeland, make addressing the ultranationalist threat considerably more complicated than it is elsewhere. According to Schaaf and the Institute Respublica, Ukrainian extremists are rarely punished for acts of violence. In some cases — such as C14’s January attack on a remembrance gatheringfor two murdered journalists — police actually detain peaceful demonstrators instead.
To be clear, the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is a hornets’ nest of fascists are false: far-right parties performed poorly in Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections, and Ukrainians reactedwith alarm to the National Militia’s demonstration in Kiev. But connections between law enforcement agencies and extremists give Ukraine’s Western allies ample reason for concern. C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a “municipal guard” to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kiev, and at least 21 operate in other cities.
Combat helmets of the Azov Battalion.
In an ideal world, President Petro Poroshenko would purge the police and the interior ministry of far-right sympathizers, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to Azov leader Andriy Biletsky, as well as Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official. But Poroshenko would risk major repercussions if he did so; Avakov is his chief political rival, and the ministry he runs controls the police, the National Guard and several former militias.
As one Ukrainian analyst noted in December, control of these forces make Avakov extremely powerful and Poroshenko’s presidency might not be strong enough to withstand the kind of direct confrontation with Avakov that an attempt to oust him or to strike at his power base could well produce. Poroshenko has endured frequent verbal threats, including calls for revolution, from ultranationalist groups, so he may believe that he needs Avakov to keep them in check.
Avakov’s Peoples’ Party status as the main partner in Ukraine’s parliamentary coalition increases Avakov’s leverage over Poroshenko’s Bloc. An attempt to fire Avakov could imperil Poroshenko’s slim legislative majority, and lead to early parliamentary elections. Given Poroshenko’s current unpopularity, this is a scenario he will likely try to avoid.
Despite his weak position, Poroshenko still has some options for reducing the threat from the far right. Though Avakov controls the Ukraine’s police and National Guard, Poroshenko still commands Ukraine’s security and intelligence services, the SBU, and could instruct the agency to cut its ties with C14 and other extremist groups. Poroshenko should also express public support for marginalized groups like the Roma and LGBT communities, and affirm his commitment to protecting their rights.
Western diplomats and human rights organizations must urge Ukraine’s government to uphold the rule of law and to stop allowing the far right to act with impunity. International donors can help by funding more initiatives like the United States Agency for International Development’s projects
supporting training for Ukrainian lawyers and human rights defenders, and improving equitable access to the judicial system for marginalized communities. . . .
1b. C14 and the municipal patrol duties they have been granted in Kiev have provided a platform to attack Roma, with the full support of local authorities ( including the police and the media.) ” . . . . the police appear to see no need to take action and merely state that they have received no complaints. It is also alarming how many Ukrainian media (such as TSN, Channel 5) have simply reported this ‘raid’ effectively in Mazur’s words, without considering what threats must have been used to ‘persuade’ around 15 families to leave their makeshift homes in such haste. If Mazur is telling the truth, then the measures to remove the Roma families who had reportedly come to Kyiv from Transcarpathia in search of work were the result of collaboration between C14 members of the so-called ‘Municipal Guard’ and the Holosiyiv District Administration. . . .”
In addition, the C14 cadre are:
- Apparently functioning as something of a “freikorps,” serving as punitive muscle for important donors from the private sector. ” . . . . On 26 February 2018, C14 posted an advertisement on their Facebook page which quite openly offered their services as thugs to regular donors. This said that ‘C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.’ . . .”
- Working in conjunction with Nazis from the large Nazi milieux in Russia and Belarus. ” . . . . On 19 January 2018, C14 activists prevented the traditional remembrance gathering for Sevastopol journalist Anastasia Baburova and Russian lawyer Stanislav Markelov, murdered in Moscow in 2009 by neo-Nazi Russian nationalists. The claim that those honouring the two slain anti-fascists were ‘separatists’ was preposterous, and Volodymyr Chemerys, one of the organizers of the remembrance event, asserts that they were confronted not only by C14 thugs, but by Russian and Belarusian neo-Nazis. . . .”
- Receiving tactical, logistical assistance from uniformed police authorities. ” . . . . They instead detained eight people who had come to honour Baburova and Markelov. The police involved later tried to claim that there had been no detention, and that the activists had been ‘invited’ to the police station. There was no suggestion that the ‘invitation’ could have been turned down. The detained activists reported later that they had been ‘hunted down’ by the far-right thugs after leaving the police station. A member of the Human Rights Information Centre who spoke with them believes that the thugs could have only discovered which station the activists were being held in from the police themselves. . . .”
A prominent activist from the far-right C14 organization has boasted on his Facebook page about an operation which resulted in Roma families fleeing their camp on Lysa Hora in Kyiv. Despite the fairly unveiled hints in Serhiy Mazur’s two Facebook posts, as well as clear signs that the Roma fled without taking children’s clothing, etc., the police appear to see no need to take action and merely state that they have received no complaints. It is also alarming how many Ukrainian media (such as TSN, Channel 5) have simply reported this ‘raid’ effectively in Mazur’s words, without considering what threats must have been used to ‘persuade’ around 15 families to leave their makeshift homes in such haste.
If Mazur is telling the truth, then the measures to remove the Roma families who had reportedly come to Kyiv from Transcarpathia in search of work were the result of collaboration between C14 members of the so-called ‘Municipal Guard’ [«???????????? ?????»] and the Holosiyiv District Administration. As reported, this ‘Municipal Guard’, which is headed by Serhiy Bondar from C14, signed a memorandum of cooperation with both the Holosiyiv District Administration and the Holosiyiv National Police back in December 2017.
In his report on 19 April and elsewhere, Mazur omits two letters in order to use a term now generally felt to be offensive when referring to Roma.
He says that the Roma have “occupied Lysa Hora” and that there are more of them this time “and of their rubbish”.
Together with representatives of the Holosiyiv administration, he says, they “presented an ultimatum to leave the prohibited territory of the park by TOMORROW.
If they don’t carry out this demand, they will be asked in a different way to go. Within the framework of the law”.
Mention of the law here seems on a par with semi-avoidance of offensive labels, and lacks any credibility. If the local administration is entitled to issue an ultimatum, it should then approach law enforcement officials if the ultimatum is ignored.
Any ‘other’ methods hinted at in Mazur’s post are either not the business of C14 activists or are a code term for means of duress which are assuredly not lawful.
The rest of the post is simply offensive. If, which can be disputed, it falls within the boundaries of free speech, such effective incitement to enmity and prejudice against any ethnic or other group is certainly unacceptable from top representatives of an organization which is working with a public authority.
On 21 April, Mazur stated in a post that there were no longer any Roma (not the term he uses) on Lysa Hora.
“Yesterday they did not carry out the demand, and only some left the camp in the park. However after convincing lawful arguments, the others also decided to leave the prohibited territory. “ The C14 activists then “cleaned up almost all the rubbish” and burned the tents.
If the so-called “convincing arguments” had been lawful, it seems unlikely that the Roma families would have left children’s clothes and food items behind.
Journalist Yevhen Savateyev told Hromadske Radio that “it looks as through the people who were living in this camp were forced to flee and didn’t even take most-needed items”.
He says that there were around 15 makeshift shacks, each ‘housing’ one family.
According to Zola Kondurfrom the Chirikli Roma Foundation, there has been an issue over this camp for the last four years.She says that the people living there wanted to integrate and to cooperate with the authorities, however other residents of the district demanded that the Roma not be allowed onto minibus public transport and in shops. The pretext giving was that the residents feared being infected with tuberculosis, although Kondur points out that a medical examination did not find any tuberculosis or AIDs among the inhabitants of the camp.
She accuses the Holosiyiv District Administration of not being willing to involve the social services and does not accept that the camp, positioned deep inside the nature reserve at Lysa Hora and hard to find, was disturbing anybody.
This was not C14’s first such ‘raid’. Mazur reported on 18 April that the previous day “good people carried out a raid of the Railway Station which had been almost totally occupied by Gy..ies”. There are the usual offensive claims about “the negative demonstrations of behaviour from the Roma” that their “walk” had supposedly curtailed. Mazur also reports that they “checked for documents and tickets. A day or two and there won’t be any of them here”, and asks why such ‘patrols’ are not carried out by the police. . . .
. . . . Mazur ends his post by claiming again that they are not fighting “Gy..ies”, only “the negative demonstrations of behaviour of their representatives”, and invites others to join them. He has promised other such ‘raids’ as those against the Roma on Lysa Gora.
There are compelling grounds for demanding an investigation by the law enforcement bodies into all of these ‘raids’ by C14 vigilantes. If the methods used to disperse the camp on Lysa Hora was indeed carried out together with the Holosiyiv District Administration, an investigation would seem appropriate, as well as some serious consideration as to whether such ‘cooperation’ can be legitimately continued.
Questionable ‘partnership’
C14 calls itself a ‘nationalist’ organization and denies that it is neo-Nazi.Vyacheslav Likhachev, who has been monitoring far-right movements in Ukraine for well over a decade, is unconvinced. He points out that the C14 activists who occupied the Kyiv City Administration building during Euromaidan covered it with neo-Nazi banners and graffiti.
C14 activists try to present themselves as fighting ‘separatists’, ‘titushki’ or paid thugs (who worked closely with the police under the regime of Viktor Yanukovych), as well as corrupt courts, etc.
Their rationale for determining who are ‘separatists’, or more generally who to fight, gives considerable grounds for concern.
On 19 January 2018, C14 activists prevented the traditional remembrance gathering for Sevastopol journalist Anastasia Baburova and Russian lawyer Stanislav Markelov, murdered in Moscow in 2009 by neo-Nazi Russian nationalists. The claim that those honouring the two slain anti-fascists were ‘separatists’ was preposterous, and Volodymyr Chemerys, one of the organizers of the remembrance event, asserts that they were confronted not only by C14 thugs, but by Russian and Belarusian neo-Nazis.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the events that day was the total failure of the Kyiv police to react adequately to the aggressive behaviour of those opposing the remembrance gathering.
They instead detained eight people who had come to honour Baburova and Markelov. The police involved later tried to claim that there had been no detention, and that the activists had been ‘invited’ to the police station. There was no suggestion that the ‘invitation’ could have been turned down.
The detained activists reported later that they had been ‘hunted down’ by the far-right thugs after leaving the police station. A member of the Human Rights Information Centre who spoke with them believes that the thugs could have only discovered which station the activists were being held in from the police themselves.
C14 has been involved in attacks on activists taking part in the annual Equality March (Kyiv Pride), rights activists, on an art exhibition and even protesters with strictly socio-economic demands. Their members may have been among the 50 young far-right louts who on 26 March 2018, descended on events linked to the Kyiv Docudays Film Festival, demolishing posters promoting tolerance and diversity abd trying to stop a panel discussion on far-right movements.
There are other reasons for concern over any cooperation by other local authorities or the police with C14. Back in December 2012 under the Viktor Yanukovych regime, Yevhen Karas and his C14 mates organized an attack on rights activists and others protesting against a repressive legislative bill which proposed the same ban on so-called ‘propaganda of homosexuality’ as was passed in neighbouring Russia. It was mainly the protesters who were detained by police.
C14 has been involved in various acts of violence, and there are indeed reports that they attacked members of another local group on 13 December 2017, with two people from that group ending up hospitalized with gun wounds. It seems likely that the conflict was about establishing their power over a particular area.
On 26 February 2018, C14 posted an advertisement on their Facebook page which quite openly offered their services as thugs to regular donors. This said that “C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.” The organization has presumably understood that such openness rather undermines their attempts to pitch themselves as principled defenders of Ukraine, and the post is now unavailable. It can, however, be seen here, and was on the sight for several weeks. The invitation to join in C14’s ‘raids’ on Roma people at the station or in places where they are living says nothing about motives required for taking part in raids of highly-questionable legality coated in claims that incite hatred and xenophobia.
1c. In addition to C14, the Azov Battalion’s National Militia have assumed police duties in Ukraine.
Azov Civil Corps
. . . . But Ukraine observers and rights groups are sounding the alarm, because this was not a typical commencement, and the men are not police officers. They are far-right ultranationalists from the Azov movement, a controversial group with a military wing that has openly accepted self-avowed neo-Nazis, and a civil and political faction that has demonstrated intolerance toward minority groups.
“We will not hesitate to use force to establish order that will bring prosperity to every Ukrainian family!” reads a message alongside the video, published on the Facebook page of the newly formed group, called the National Militia. In the clip, they vow also to protect the nation “when government organs can’t or won’t help Ukrainian society.”
That approach could concern Western backers in Kyiv’s campaign against armed Russia-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country, where a conflict that has lasted nearly four years has killed at least 10,300 people.
Combat helmets of the Azov Battalion.
“Ukraine would be violating its international obligations under human rights law if authorities either tolerate abusive militia who undermine [the] population’s liberty, security, freedoms or provide an abusive militia with the color of law but [do] not impose on them exacting standards on use of force,” Tanya Cooper, Human Rights Watch (HRW)‘s Ukraine researcher in Kyiv, told RFE/RL in e‑mailed comments as media buzzed over the appearance of the National Militia.
Matthew Schaff, Ukraine director of the U.S.-based NGO Freedom House, told RFE/RL by phone that simply their creation “does damage to democracy in Ukraine.”
Nationalistic Agenda
Founded in 2014 as a volunteer battalion to help an overmatched Ukrainian military fight off the threat in its east, the Azov movement uses fascist symbols and has been accused by international humanitarian organizations of human rights abuses in the conflict zone.
The National Militia is an independent group that is merely the latest component of Azov’s civilian and political wing, known as the National Corpus. It is led by lawmaker and former Azov Battalion commander Andriy Biletsky, once the head of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Social-National Party, who attended the ceremony.
Azov officially founded the National Corpus in October 2016, incorporating two other nationalist groups, including Patriot Of Ukraine, which according to Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group “espoused xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideas and was engaged in violent attacks against migrants, foreign students in Kharkiv, and those opposing its views.”
That inaugural ceremony arguably had pomp more reminiscent of 1930s Germany than of postwar democracy. It included nationalist chants, raised fists, and a torchlight march through central Kyiv.
Emblem of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion
National Corpus’s political aims at the time of its creation included the restoration of Ukraine’s nuclear-power status, which was abandoned in a major boost to nonproliferation soon after the breakup of the Soviet Union; the nationalization of companies that were owned by the government when Ukraine gained independence in 1991; and the legalization of firearms for personal protection.
Its foreign policy sought to cut cultural, diplomatic, and trade ties with Russia, and urged a public discussion about restoring the death penalty in Ukraine for crimes such as treason and embezzlement of government funds.
While the National Corpus appears to draw limited support from Ukraine’s electorate — polls show it under the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament — its public presence has grown, worrying international observers and making it a favorite target for Russian propaganda. Russian state news agencies and politicians suggest the government in Kyiv’s perceived tolerance for the far-right movement makes it fascist. The Ukrainian government’s failure to aggressively challenge the group has done little to calm its critics.
Police, Or Not Police
So it came as something of a surprise on January 30 when Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has enjoyed a close relationship with the Azov movement in the past, appeared to distance himself from the group, saying in a statement posted to the ministry’s website that “in Ukraine, there is only one monopoly on the use of force — the state: the National Guard, the National Police, and the Armed Forces.”
He added, “All other paramilitary entities that try to position themselves on the streets of cities are not legal.”
Ivan Varchenko, an Avakov adviser, told Hromadske Radio that Ukrainian law provides for registration of civic organizations that assist law enforcement agencies.
Roman Chernyshov of the National Corps also tried to calm concerns, telling Hromadske Radio that its members do not bear arms.
Armed or not, as news of the National Militia spread across Ukrainian media, critics raised serious concerns about the type of order the unit may enforce on the streets of Kyiv.
“It’s the police responsibility to enforce the law on the street and hold people accountable for crimes they’ve committed,” Freedom House’s Schaaf said. “When there are groups that are roaming the streets in units like this, with slogans like this, it definitely raises concerns about what are their intentions, how they will they be implementing their visions, what rules they are trying to enforce.”
HRW’s Cooper said one of her primary concerns was who would be targeted by the group. “Members of this political party espouse intolerance towards ethnic minorities and LGBT people, so it seems completely absurd that these people would be able [and willing] to protect everyone,” she said of the Azovs.
She added, “The bottom line is that if these units are going to be carrying out any kind of policing duty, they have to be held to the exact same human rights standards as regular police: on use of force, powers of detention, nondiscrimination, etc., and they have to be trained and held accountable just like regular police are.”
Perhaps in an attempt to alleviate public concerns, Avakov insisted, “I, as a minister, will not allow for parallel structures that try to behave as alternative military formations on the streets.”
2a. Former Azov Battalion commander Vadim Troyan was a point element in the assumption of police duties by Azov Battalion and C14. He became acting head of the National Police after the resignation of Khatia Dekonoidze. ” . . . . Vadim Troyan, who takes over as Acting Head, is not politically independent and therefore unsuited to the post. Doubts about the former Azov Battalion commander’s suitability for high police posts were first expressed after his appointment as head of the Kyiv regional police and they remain of concern. . . .”
Khatia Dekonoidze has resigned from her post as Head of National Police just one year after her appointment, seemingly in frustration at the limited powers she had to carry out real reform and political interference. She also said that Vadim Troyan, who takes over as Acting Head, is not politically independent and therefore unsuited to the post. Doubts about the former Azov Battalion commander’s suitability for high police posts were first expressed after his appointment as head of the Kyiv regional police and they remain of concern. . . .
2b. Former Azov commander Troyan is now Avakov’s Deputy Interior Minister. ” . . . . The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed the first Deputy Head of the National Police Vadym Troyan as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. . . . ”
Vadim Troyan, who took over as acting head of the National Police (right)
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed the first Deputy Head of the National Police Vadym Troyan as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
“We have appointed Troyan as the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs,” Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Oleksandr Sayenko told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Feb. 8. . . .
2c. The same smear machine that targeted former Rep. John Conyer’s over his opposition to arming the neo-Nazi Azov battalion is turning its focus on Rep. Ro Khanna (Democrat from California) after Khanna ensured that the ban on funds going to arming or training the Azov Battalion remained in place in the congressional spending bill that passed a couple weeks ago. In a particularly disgusting op-ed in The Hill, Kristofer Harrison – a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and who also happens to a co-founder of a company that specializes in Russian “information warfare,” with offices in Washington and Kyiv – declared that Khanna’s characterization of the Azov Battalion as neo-Nazi in nature is ridiculous and part of a big lie pushed by Putin.
We note again that Harrison–whom we have noted attacked John Conyers as “Putin’s Man in Congress”–relies on Roman Zvarych for his exoneration of the Azov Battalion. In addition to being the spokesman for Azov, Zvarych was:
- Minister of Justice under Viktor Yuschenko.
- Minister of Justice under both Tymoshenko governments.
- An adviser to Petro Poroshenko.
- In the 1980’s, the personal secretary to Jaroslav Stetzko, the wartime head of the Nazi collaborationist government in Ukraine. Stetzko implemented Nazi ethnic cleansing in Ukraine during World War II.
Congratulations, Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑Calif.), it appears you were just duped by Russia (and bragged about it). As a result, you promoted Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s Azov Battalion being Nazis with text in the behemoth $1.3 trillion spending bill. The question is, who put you up to it?
Ukraine is not your jam. Your focus is on visiting coal mine towns, antitrust issues and, as one of Silicon Valley’s representatives, technology — all legitimate issues. Yet, even though experts on Ukraine are typically unfamiliar with the Azov Battalion, you weighed in on the issue. Of course, it is always possible that you have a secret obsession with Ukraine, but it’s more likely that some K Street swamp creature asked for a favor.
Just know, the favor was for Vladimir Putin.
…
It is ridiculous nonsense that Ukraine is beset with a bunch of Nazis. The Russians have been pushing this foolishness for a while. In Russia, if you want to discredit someone, call them a Nazi. Putin is using it to justify his war to his subjects. Russians are not particularly keen on attacking Ukraine. But if it is to free them from the yoke of Nazis, well, that’s different.
The reason why the Kremlin is using information war against the Azov Battalion, specifically, is partially because they sometimes make themselves easy PR targets. These are guys with guns fighting a Russian invasion, not a PR agency with media training. But the bigger reason is that the Azov Battalion is one of the most effective defensive units.
Russia can’t beat them on the battlefield, so they use K Street lobbyist sellouts to help cripple them. Who wants to provide guns to fascists? Nobody. That is the ruse you fell for.
You are filling illustrious shoes. In 2015, an unidentified lobbyist snookered Rep. John Conyers (D‑Mich.) to do exactly what you have done. Conyers singled out the Azov Battalion to prevent it from getting assistance in the defense appropriations bill. The Defense Department objected, and the process of correcting the mistake in Conference created yet another opening for Russian propaganda. Only, this time, the bill has been signed into law. So whatever fix you choose has to make it to the president’s desk.
The technique Russia used was a classic KGB tactic — that’s the sure tell that what duped you was a Kremlin operation. In the 1980s, the KGB used this technique to spread the falsehood that the CIA created AIDS. Somehow, they convinced an Indian medical journal to print an article “proving” the case. They then referenced that article in publications all over the world.
In this instance, the Russian active measure began with an article in a publication that should know better: Foreign Policy. John Conyers read the piece on the Congressional Record. It then spread like wildfire among lazy journalists and Russia’s network of fools, knaves and propagandists.
Naturally, correcting the mistake should be your first order of business. And Khanna, should forswear writing laws, about which you have no expertise, at the instigation of lobbyists. That is just good governance. There is also a lesson here about how massive, 2,000-plus page spending bills lend themselves to corruption.
But this need not be a black mark on your record as the process of correcting it presents an opportunity for you to help your country. Help the country smoke out the K Street sellout. Identify who played you for a fool and left you holding Putin’s dirty laundry.
Russia is attacking the U.S., and quisling K Street lobbyists are helping them. Help us identify them.
Kristofer Harrison worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. He is a co-founder and principal of ITJ Strategies, a grassroots PR consultancy, and of AMS, a company that specializes in Russian information warfare, with offices in Washington and Kyiv. The company does not do any work on behalf of the Azov Battalion or related interests.
3. In what appears to be a faction fight in the Ukrainian fascist milieu, former Ukrainian far-right folk hero Nadia Savchenko has echoed the charge that Svoboda Party’s parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy was involved with the sniper attacks during the Maidan coup. Pushed on her charge, she equivocated that it was a different member of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament.)
Lawmaker and former Russian captive Nadia Savchenko has traded incendiary accusations with senior Ukrainian authorities and faces possible arrest over what Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko alleged was a detailed plan for a devastating “terrorist” attack on parliament.
Savchenko, a former military aviator who spent 22 months in Russian prisons after being detained by separatists in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, claimed on March 15 that lawmaker Serhiy Pashinskyy played a prominent role in a deadly crackdown on pro-European demonstrators during antigovernment Maidan protests that toppled Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
Speaking to journalists in front of the Security Service (SBU) headquarters in Kyiv, before she was questioned as a witness in a case against a man arrested last week on suspicion of plotting to kill President Petro Poroshenko and other officials in a series of armed attacks, Savchenko also asserted that Lutsenko covered up what she alleged was current parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy’s involvement in sniper shootings that authorities say killed dozens of people during the crackdown on the Maidan protests.
However, Savchenko said later that she meant to accuse not Parubiy but Pashinskyy, and publicly apologized to the parliament speaker for “a slip of the tongue.”
Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada swiftly responded by kicking Savchenko out of the single-chamber parliament’s national security and defense committee. Lutsenko, meanwhile, told parliament that Savchenko had planned an attack using grenades, mortars and automatic weapons.
Investigators have “irrefutable proof that Nadia Savchenko...personally planned, personally recruited, and personally gave instructions about how to commit a terrorist act here, in this chamber,” Lutsenko said. He asked the Rada to strip her of her parliamentary immunity so that she could be arrested.
Lutsenko claimed that Savchenko’s plan included destroying the Rada’s roof cupola and killing surviving lawmakers with assault-rifle fire. . . .
. . . . More than 100 protesters were killed in the 2013–14 demonstrations, centered on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnost (Independence Square) that preceded Yanukovych’s flight to Russia. Forty-eight of them were allegedly gunned down in February 2014 by snipers who Ukrainian authorities claim received direct orders from the Moscow-friendly Yanukovych.
In her remarks on March 15, Savchenko said that she saw Parubiy, who was on the antigovernment side at the time, “leading snipers into the Hotel Ukraine,” which looms over the Maidan. “I saw a blue minibus and armed people coming out of it, I have said earlier [to investigators] who those people were. Those people are now lawmakers.”
She said the deaths on the Maidan will never be thoroughly investigated, asserting that the government that came to power after Yanukovych’s downfall does not want it to happen. . . .
4. Ukraine has tested a new cruise missile.
“Ukraine Tests New Cruise Missile (VIDEO)” by Illia Ponomarenko; The Kyiv Post; 1/30/2018.
A new Ukrainian ground-based cruise missile underwent a successful test launch on Jan. 30, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov announced.
According to the Turchynov, the missile, a solely Ukrainian project designed by the Kyiv-based Luch defense development bureau, can deliver precise strikes on ground and seaborne targets.
“During the successful tests, the missile’s flight efficiency and systems operations were checked,” Turchynov said. . . .
5. Ukraine has employed Tony Tether, the former head of DARPA to upgrade its military capabilities. He may very well be the architect of Ukraine’s new cruise missile.
“What is DARPA Doing in Ukraine?” by Aaron Mehta; Defense News; 3/1/2018.
DARPA, the Pentagon’s high-tech office, is working with the government of Ukraine to develop capabilities to help Kiev in its hybrid warfare challenge.
DARPA director Steven Walker, who recently took over that job after five years as the agency’s deputy, told reporters that he had personally visited the country in 2016 for talks with Ukrainian military, intel and industry leaders.
“We did have a good visit to the Ukraine,” Walker said Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Defense Writer’s Group. “Yes, we have followed up with them, and through the U.S. European Command, we have started several projects with the Ukraine, mostly in the information space.”
“Not providing them weapons or anything like that, but looking at how to help them with information,” Walker added, before declining to go into further detail.
Ukraine has become a testing ground for hybrid warfare techniques from Russia and Russian-backed militant groups ever Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory in 2014, including disinformation campaigns. While that has allowed Moscow to test out new capabilities and techniques, it also provides an opportunity to develop counter techniques — which may benefit the U.S. and its allies in the long term.
“I think we’ve got to get better, as a country, in information warfare and how we approach info warfare,” Walker said. “I think there are capabilities there that we need to improve upon, and DAPRA is working in some of those areas.”
This is not the first tie between DARPA and Kiev. The Ukrainian government has hired Tony Tether, who led DARPA for the entirety of the George. W. Bush administration, to help lead a reorganization of their science and technology efforts, something Tether in a LinkedIn post said was necessary in part because so much of Ukraine’s S&T facilities were in the territory seized by Russia.
The former DARPA head has also consulted for the Ukroboronprom group, Ukraine’s largest defense contractor, and just a few weeks ago was added to the group’s supervisory board in a move that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko called a “symbol of effective cooperation between Ukrainian and American partners.” . . . .
7. In a development that could light a match to the Ukrainian/Russian tinderbox, Ukraine is angling toward NATO membership.
. . . . But a more recent development has implications that are rarely explored in American media, despite what it could mean for broader U.S. international relations. Ukraine is vying to take its place as NATO’s newest member state, a move that could seriously escalate tensions between Washington and Moscow beyond their current high point.
“It’s safe to say that Russia would be, and has been, opposed to NATO membership for Ukraine,” James Carden, former advisor to the State Department’s U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, said in an email exchange.
Neighboring states such as Ukraine and Georgia, Carden added, “are red lines for Russia and we should take them at their word.”
In a March Facebook post, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine’s “next ambition” on its path to membership was to seek a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Countries seeking to join NATO must go through a multi-step process that ensures the prospective member meets the alliance’s various obligations in areas ranging from military spending to law.
“This is what my letter to [NATO Secretary General] Jens Stoltenberg in February 2018 was about, where, with reference to Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, I officially [put forward] Ukraine’s aspirations to become a member of the Alliance,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.
The renewed effort to join the alliance, if successful, could further ratchet up tensions between Russia and the United States, who–in case anyone could forget–preside over the world’s two largest hydrogen bomb arsenals. . . .
. . . . Founded in 1949 as a bulwark against alleged Soviet expansionism in post-war Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization functions as a mutual defense pact between its 29 member states. Until the early 1990s, NATO existed ostensibly to counter the Soviet Union’s analogous alliance, the Warsaw Pact.
In December of last year, the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified documents which reveal that strong assurances were given to the crumbling USSR that NATO, in the words of then-Secretary of State James Baker, would not advance “one inch eastward” in the post-Soviet era.Yet between the time those promises were made, beginning in early 1990, and the present, NATO has expanded to encompass thirteen additional states, all of them in Eastern Europe. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined; in 2004 the alliance expanded to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, while Albania and Croatia followed in 2009. . . . .
8. Among the nations most hospitable to the post-World War II OUN/B diaspora is Canada, a NATO member. In FTR #948, we noted that Canada’s Foreign Minister Christia Freeland’s grandfather, Michael Chomiak was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator. (“Foreign Minister” is the Canadian equivalent of Secretary of State. Freeland describes her grandfather as a major influence on her.) Now, four Russian diplomats have been expelled from Canada for telling the truth about Chomiak and Freeland.)
We now know how the Russians have been subverting Canadian democracy. They have been propagating truthful news.
That information comes courtesy of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who on Wednesday finally explained the motive behind his government’s decision last week to expel four Russian diplomats and refuse entry to three more.
At the time, Ottawa said it was making the move in support of Britain, which blames Russia for using a deadly nerve agent to poison a double agent living in England.
But in a written statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland also said the Russians had been using their diplomatic status “to interfere in our democracy.”
How exactly the Russians had been interfering was not explained. Efforts to get more information from Freeland’s office were unsuccessful. In an interview on CBC, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said that he had to stay mum for reasons of national security. Nobody else would talk.
Then, on Wednesday,Trudeau spilled the beans. The Russians are being punished for saying that Freeland’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War.
Trudeau called this an effort “by Russian propagandists” to smear Freeland, which perhaps it was.
The only trouble with all of this is that the Russians were telling the truth. Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War.
A Ukrainian nationalist, he fled Stalin’s advancing armies in 1939 and sought refuge in what was then German-occupied Poland.
There, under the aegis of the Nazis he edited a Ukrainian-language, anti-Semitic newspaper.
I first learned of this from a front-page story in that well-known vehicle of Russian propaganda, the Globe and Mail.
The Globe got its information by interviewing Freeland’s uncle, a historian who in 1996 wrote – with some assistance from his niece – a scholarly article detailing Chomiak’s wartime activities.
Was the Russian government happy to see this being made public? I expect it was. Freeland is a vocal critic of Moscow’s heavy-handed approach to Ukraine and is currently persona non grata in Russia.
The Russian government also finds it convenient to paint all of its critics in Ukraine as unreconstructed fascists. And while Freeland is certainly no fascist, she has publicly praised her grandparents for their influence on her and for their commitment to Ukrainian independence.
Given all of that, the Chomiak story was a gift to the Russians. Soon after Freeland’s appointment as foreign affairs minister last year, pro-Moscow websites began to pick it up.
To use Trudeau’s words, Moscow was probably trying to push a “pro-Russia narrative.”
But is it illegitimate for countries to use verifiable facts to make a case?
Certainly, the West doesn’t think so when it comes to the nerve agent story. Its decision to blame Moscow for the attack is based on one fact – that the poison used was first developed in the old Soviet Union.
The possibility that some other entity might have copied it is never entertained.
Instead, the world is presented with a complicated explanation that goes something like this: After years of ignoring retired double agent Sergei Skripal, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally decides to kill him.
In order to show who is responsible, Putin has his minions use a signature Russian nerve agent. But in order to hide who is responsible, he has another set of minions vigorously deny Russian culpability.
The attack isn’t particularly successful, since Skripal is still alive.
All of this is done for no apparent reason other than pure evil. . . .
9. In FTR #943, we highlighted the Ukrainian fascist “PropOrNot” group as a contributor to the “Russia-Gate” hysteria. Now, the group has launched a posthumous attack on Robert Parry.
This completely wrong story is an appropriate tribute to Robert Parry’s legacy of spreading lies in the service of brutally corrupt regimes that are at war with us.
He is, no doubt, hot-bunking it in hell with Lord Haw-Haw. Good riddance. https://t.co/polGXBBb5m
— PropOrNot ID Service 🇺🇸 (@propornot) January 29, 2018
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
This is rather remarkable: over 50 members of the the US congress signed a letter put forth by Ro Khanna condemning the laws in Ukraine and Poland that either glorify the perpetrators of the Holocaust or downplay the role local citizens may have played. And it’s bipartisan too. You can see the letter here. It’s quite scathing, appropriately so.
So while it’s pretty clear that Rep. Khanna was going to end up on the enemies list of the various lobbying groups seeking to minimize any criticism of Ukraine’s embrace of the far right after Khanna managed to get a provision added to the 2018 congressional budget banning military aid to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, that list of ‘problem’ congress persons who aren’t towing the line on Ukraine presumably just got a lot longer:
““Ukraine’s luck of flying beneath the radar has finally run out,” Dovid Katz, the founder of the Defending History website about Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe, wrote on Twitter about the letter. “Never imagined we’d see this day.””
Yeah, it is kind of hard to believe this happened, but it it happened.
And while it mentions Poland’s new laws, the text is far far harsher on Ukraine’s laws, and appropriately so given how much further the Ukrainian government has gone towards actually glorifying the local groups that actually carried out the Holocaust:
So it will be interesting to see how the Ukrainian government (and affiliated lobbyists in the US) respond to this.
But there’s already a response from Poland’s government. As we should expect, they aren’t pleased and refute the accusation:
“Polish deputy foreign minister Bartosz Cichocki retorted Wednesday on Twitter: “Sir, I would appreciate if you indicated a single law passed in my homeland Poland (recently or not), which glorifies Nazi collaborators and/or denies Holocaust.””
And that’s probably going to be how Poland officially deals with these charges going forward: by refuting charges that weren’t actually made.
Because as we’ve seen, the problem with Poland’s now law isn’t that it denies the Holocaust or glorifies the collaborators. The problem is that it basically makes it illegal to point out that many locals took part in the Holocaust, and if you point this out in Poland you’re committing a crime.
So if someone in Poland was to actually point out to Poland’s deputy foreign minister how Poland’s law denies aspects of the Holocaust, specifically the significant role played by the local populace, they would potentially be facing a prison sentence. Hence the condemnation.
Superb and thorough update about the past & current machinations in Ukraine. Thanks to both you Dave & Pterrafractyl for your astute research. This horrific story must be kept alive, especially now that few know of the worsening escalations by the Ukraine Junta military against the Donbas, but now being directed under NATO advisors.
Well, this was inevitable: The mayor of the West Ukrainian town of Skole, Vlodimyr Moskal, just went on a tirade during a lecture before the city councilmen that was basically a rehash of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He called Ukaine’s Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, a “Muscovite Jews”, and quoted Henry Ford about Jewish schemes for world domination. World domination that uses cosmopolitanism and liberalism as a tool to destroy all nations. So, as is often the case for rants of this nature, while it was primarily anti-Semitic in nature it was also using anti-Semitism as a means of attacking anyone who isn’t a far right zealot.
The following article also notes another disturbing recent incident, when an employee of Ukraine’s consulate in Hamburg, Germany, blamed Jews for World War II on Facebook, saying “death to the anti-fascists” on his private Facebook page. And bunch of other recent anti-Semitic incidents. It’s a reflection of the rate at which incidents of this nature are taking place in Ukraine: when there’s an article about some new anti-Semitic act all the other recent acts need to be included just to provide context.
And as we’ll see in the second article below, it appears Moskal gave this rant at a conference of the Dontsov Scientific and Ideological Center, which is name after Dmytro Dontsov, the chief theorist behind the development of Ukrainian Integral Nationalism which formed a theoretical basis for OUN-UPA. So Moskal, along with a bunch of city councilmen, were apparently attending an event at this center, pointing towards problems with the local government of Skole that go beyond Moskal.
And when questioned about his tirade, Moskal responds by citing the work of Vladimir Vyatrovich and Ukaine’s Institute for National Memory, saying:
And that’s what was inevitable about this: If your country creates an official revisionist history institution dedicating to whitewashing the history of Nazi-allied movements, at some point all that whitewashing is going to create a body of ‘evidence’ that Ukrainian politicians like Moskal can cite to justify what amounts to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
“The mayor of the village of Skole, located 60 miles southwest of Lviv, inveighed against Jews during a recent lecture before city councilmen. Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, posted a video on Facebook of Mayor Vlodimyr Moskal’s address on Monday.”
That was the audience of the mayor’s tirade: the city councilmen.
And it was tirade that explicitly said Jews are plotting to kill off all non-Jews using liberalism and cosmopolitanism:
Adding context to the presences of fascist sympathizers in Ukraine’s government, the article also mentions a recent incident where a Ukrainian consulate employee in Hamburg, Germany, blamed Jews for WWII and declared “death to the anti-fascists” on Facebook:
Then, to add more context, the article points out a number of other recent anti-Semitic incidents, including the hundreds of people in Lviv who attended a commemoration for WWII Waffen SS unit and featuring Nazi symbols. Keep in mind that Skole is nearby Lviv:
And these recent incidents are merely the latest in a wave of neo-Nazi acts following a Maidan revolution that swept in a government that not only largely tolerates such acts but went on to glorification Ukraine’s WWII Nazi collaborators and make it illegal to deny their “heroism”:
So in that context it should come as no surprise that Moskal appears to have given this speech at the Dontsov Scientific and Ideological Center and ended up citing Ukraine’s Institute for National Memory as evidence of the truth of his claims:
“Evidence continues to mount that the noxious far-right, state-supported memory politics of Volodymyr Viatrovych’s “Ukrainian Institute of National Memory” are directly leading to growing antisemitism in Ukraine.”
Yep, it turns out creating a state-run historical revisionism institute dedicating to whitewashing and glorifying Nazi collaborators might normalize Nazi ideologies. Imagine that:
And not surprisingly, the venue for his speech appeared to be the Dontsov Scientific and Ideological Center, named after the ideological godfather of the OUN-UPA:
And notice how he didn’t limit his “Muscovite Jews” slur to Volodymyr Groysman. He basically called the Ukrainian government as a whole the “Moscow-Jewish authorities”:
He cites the state-run historical revisionist institute as providing evidence of a Jewish plot to destroy society while simultaneously declaring the current government to be run by Muscovite Jews. It’s a snapshot of Ukraine’s zeitgeist.
So what’s the next act of open Nazi loving going to be from Ukraine’s politicians? We’ll see, but if the far right ends up following through with is long-standing pledge to “march on Kiev” and overthrow the government it’s pretty clear the mayor of Skole will be marching with them.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-teacher-allegedly-praises-hitler-performs-nazi-salute-with-students/
Ukrainian teacher allegedly praises Hitler, performs Nazi salute with students
Jewish community leader says ‘government inaction’ leading to increase in anti-Semitic incidents
By JTA
24 April 2018, 3:54 am 0
NOTE PRINTED IN: The Times of Israel
A public school teacher in Ukraine allegedly posted birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on Facebook and taught her students the Nazi salute.
Marjana Batjuk, who teaches at a school in Lviv and also is a councilwoman, posted her greeting on April 20, the Nazi leader’s birthday, Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told JTA. He called the incident a “scandal.”
Batjuk also took some of her students to meet far-right activists who over the weekend marched on the city’s streets while wearing the uniform of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, an elite Nazi unite with many ethnic Ukrainians also known as the 1st Galician.
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Displaying Nazi imagery is illegal in Ukraine, but Dolinsky said law enforcement authorities allowed the activists to parade on main streets.
Batjuk had the activists explain about their replica weapons, which they paraded ahead of a larger event in honor of the 1st Galician unit planned for next week in Lviv.
The events honoring the 1st Galician SS unit in Lviv are not organized by municipal authorities.
Batjuk, 28, a member of the far-right Svoboda party, called Hitler “a great man” and quoted from his book “Mein Kampf” in her Facebook post, Dolinsky said. She later claimed that her Facebook account was hacked and deleted the post, but the Strana news site found that she had a history of posting Nazi imagery on social networks.
She also posted pictures of children she said were her students performing the Nazi salute with her.
Dolinsky called the veneration of SS soldiers whom some historians say participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles “an outrageous desecration of the memory of the victims.”
Ukrainian Education Ministry officials have started a disciplinary review of her conduct, the local KP news site reported.
Separately, in the town of Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, Dolinsky said a swastika and the words “heil Hitler” were spray-painted Friday on a monument for Holocaust victims of the Holocaust. The vandals, who have not been identified, also wrote “Death to the kikes.”
In Odessa, a large graffiti reading “Jews into the sea” was written on the beachfront wall of a hotel.
“The common factor between all of these incidents is government inaction, which ensures they will continue happening,” Dolinsky said.
Here’s a pair of article that highlight an asymmetry in how Western societies perceive the potential risks associated with people traveling to join, say, ISIS, and later returning home vs the risk of someone going off to join a Ukrainian neo-Nazi unit. It also highlights how the Ukrainian government’s formal acceptance of its neo-Nazi units facilitates this:
First, here’s an article that talks about a quirk in Australia’s laws on citizens joining foreign conflicts. Under Australian law, anyone who participates in acts merely with the intention of engaging in hostile activities faces life in jail. That makes it illegal to join ISIS or even the Kurds in Syria. But joining a Ukrainian neo-Nazi volunteer unit is completely legal under Australian law. Why? Because taking arms alongside an army on their soil is legal. And don’t forget, all those neo-Nazi Ukrainian ‘volunteer units’ are basically part of the Ukrainian army at this point. Even Right Sector. And Ukraine even passed a law in 2015 to let foreigners formally serve in the armed forces on a contractual basis. So the framework is in place for foreigners to travel to Ukraine and join a neo-Nazi battalion with the official blessing of the Ukrainian government, which means Australia and any countries with similar laws intended to prevent people from joining up with extremist militant groups that promote violent totalitarian ideologies probably need to update their laws when it comes to Ukraine:
“When Australian former Neo-Nazi and registered gun owner Ethan Tilling flew into Brisbane this year, he was returning under the radar of Australian authorities with newfound combat experience from a brutal and forgotten war.”
Yep, those neo-Nazis and extremists going off to fight in the Ukrainian conflict don’t necessarily stay in Ukraine. And if they return they’re going to return with an abundance of new combat experience. It’s one of the reasons the conflict in Ukraine has become to right-wing extremists what the war in Syria was for jihadists:
In Australia’s case, this loophole available to neo-Nazis and other far right extremists is largely created by two factors: it’s legal to join an army on their soil and Ukraine is more than happy to accept foreign fighters at this point:
So Ethan Tilling go searching for an army to join, finds a YouTube video from the Georgian National Legion, an international unit of foreign fighters in Ukraine, and ends up on the front lines. As one expert describes it, this basically living ‘the dream’ for extremists. A dream of having a war right next door to Europe ... to prepare themselves for a war back at home:
And then there’s Jared Benneit, a former member of the Royal Australian Air Force who ended up traveling to Ukraine to fight for the overtly neo-Nazi outfit Right Sector:
“The ABC does not suggest Mr Bennet is an extremist.” LOL!
And this is why people are sounding the alarm on this massive neo-Nazi loophole in Australia’s laws: There really are neo-Nazis getting very real training and for Australians it’s completely legal thanks to Ukraine’s ready embrace of such figures:
And with that story from Australia in mind, here’s a chilling reminder of just how potentially dangerous these extremist training grounds could end up being for a society: So you know that story about the Atomwaffen member, Devon Arthurs, who ended up shooting his neo-Nazi roommates, Andrew Oneschuk and Jeremy Himmelman, and claimed they were plotting terror attacks including using mortars to attack a nuclear plant and trigger a nuclear meltdown in Florida for the purpose of creating a Fourth Reich? Well, guess which foreign conflict one of those murdered neo-Nazi roommates, Andrew Oneschuk, was about to join while in high school before his parents intervened and stopped him: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:
“Andrew Oneschuk and Jeremy Himmelman had been living in Tampa, Florida, for two weeks when, on Friday, May 19th, 2017, their roommate Devon Arthurs picked up an AK-47 rifle and shot them at close range. Oneschuk had just turned 18. Himmelman was 22. They’d been staying in a lush gated community near the University of South Florida, in a two-bedroom, terra-cotta condo rented by their fourth roommate, 21-year-old Brandon Russell, a rich kid from the Bahamas who worked at a gun shop and served in the Florida National Guard. Oneschuk, a prep-school dropout, was hoping to become a Navy SEAL. Himmelman also considered the military, though he was more of a drifter. Eighteen-year-old Arthurs, a pale, freckled kid who sometimes called himself “Khalid,” was unemployed and spent most of his time playing video games. All four had met one another online, in forums and chat rooms popular with the more extreme segment of the so-called alt-right.”
So Andrew Oneschuks, one of the murdered neo-Nazi roommates, was hoping to becoming a Navy SEAL. But as we saw, he was also one-eighth Ukrainian and began chatting with the Ukrainian fighters and their allies in 2014 while still a freshman in high school. And by January 2015, Oneschuks had a plan for joining the Azov Battalion. He bought a fake passport and a one-way ticket to Kiev. It was only a day before the flight that his parents found out and prevented it:
Keep in mind that Oneschuks had barely turned 18 when he was killed, so he was clearly under 18 when his parents stopped him from traveling to Kiev. If he had been over 18, on the other hand, it’s hard to see what would have stopped him.
So that almost happened: the American neo-Nazi who was apparently plotting terror attacks in Florida before he was killed by his roommate almost managed to join the Azov Battalion. And sure, there’s a decent chance that Oneschuks would have been killed in Ukraine and unable to bring is combat skills back to Florida. But there’s probably a better chance that he would have survived.
It’s all a reminder that, for all the understandable concern about people joining jihadist groups like ISIS and returning home to carry out a violent extremist goals, those understandable concerns are far less understandable if they’re limited to jihadists.
Well, this is turning out to be a typically bizarre story coming out of Ukraine: It turns out a successful assassination on dissident Russian journalist residing in Ukraine, Arkady Babchenko, was all a hoax. A hoax perpetrated by the SBU in cooperation with Babchenko. The whole thing was revealed a day after reports about Babchenko’s demise.
So why did the SBU arrange for the fake assassination of a journalist? According to the SBU, this was all done in order to expose the culprits behind a vast Russian plot. The alleged Russian plot was apparently going to involve the assassination of Babchenko and 29 other people in Ukraine, along with some sort of additional terror attacks. Two people were arrested as part of this plot. A middleman allegedly in contact with Russian security services who was tasked with finding a hitman. The putative hitman was also arrested.
The middleman was reportedly also supposed to purchase a large quantity of weapons and explosives, including 300 AK-47 rifles and “hundreds of kilos of explosives.” So this sounds like more than just an assassination plot.
And who is this middleman and hitman? This, of course, is where things get weird. While we don’t know very much about these two individuals there are some details available. Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), described the middleman as a former separatist fighter in eastern Ukraine according to one of the articles below. On the surface, that sounds like a description of someone who had been previously fighting for pro-Russian separatists. But the hitman allegedly hired by this middleman is described as a former “volunteer Ukrainian soldier”, and that terminology is typically used to describe a member of a militia unit like the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
So did the SBU catch wind of a Moscow plot to arrange for a former separatist fighter to find some contract killers for a mass assassination campaign and did this former separatist fighter end up hiring a former far right soldier to do the actual killing? Well, it gets weirder. Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat, has been looking over the Facebook page of the alleged middleman and it’s apparently filled with Nazi iconography and pictures of the guy giving Nazi salutes. And it’s notable that the individual Toler has identified does indeed have a strong resemblance to one of the suspect sketches released by Ukraine’s interior ministry (see sketch here).
That same figure appears to have been identified as Hierodeacon Arystrakh, aka Alexei Zymbalyuk, who is a member of Right Sector, although there appears to be some confusion over whether or not he was the hitman or the middleman.
And as we’ll see below, there’s also a report that the hitman himself actually went to the SBU and revealed the whole thing two months ago after the middleman hired him. Arkady Babchenko himself says he was informed of this assassination plot two months ago and told about this hoax plan a month ago.
So, to summarize what we know about this:
1. The killing of Babchenko was a complete hoax but treated as completely real until the next day.
2. The alleged Kremlin plot involved the Russian security services contacting a Ukrainian to act as a middleman who would hire a hitman to kill Babchenko. And this was to be just the first killing in a list of 30 people on hit list.
3. The middleman may be a former separatist fighter in eastern Ukraine according to one report.
4. But according to Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler, the middleman appears to have a Facebook page filled with Nazi symbols and pictures of himself in Nazi poses.
5. At the same time, another person appears to have identified this same person as Hierodeacon Arystrakh, aka Alexei Zymbalyuk, who is a member of Right Sector and referred to him as the alleged hitman.
6. According to one report, the hitman himself approached the SBU two months ago after the middleman tried to contact him.
7. Ukraine’s authorities say the fake assassination needed to take place in order to identify all the people involved.
8. This was all a prelude to a much larger terror plot requiring 300 AK-47s and large quantities of explosives.
And that all raises the obvious question: Does any of this make sense?
Ok, so start this off, let’s take a look at Babchenko’s remarks on the operation during the stunning news conference revealing the hoax:
““I’d also like to thank the Ukrainian Security Service for saving my life. ... This operation has been prepared for two months. I was told about this a month ago.”
So Babchenko initially states at the press conference that the operation has been prepared for two months and he was informed about this a month ago. Later he states that he was told about this assassination plot two months ago:
And regarding the question of whether or not the hitman or middleman was working with the SBU, note how Babchenko refers to authorities arresting “the guy”. Not “the guys”:
And note how Babchenko claims that the evidence collected by this operation includes evidence of a much larger terror plot:
Ok, now lets look at an RFE/RL article with comments from Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). Hrytsak refers to “a suspected organizer” being detained. He doesn’t refer a second detained person. And note how the article says Hrytsak described the detained individual as “a former separatist fighter in eastern Ukraine”. So was fighting separatists or a member of the separatists? It’s unclear at this point:
“Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), shocked reporters at the SBU headquarters in Kyiv on May 30 when he announced that journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko was still alive, a day after Ukrainian authorities announced he had been killed by a gunman outside of his Kyiv apartment.”
So did Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of the SBU, tell the world about this hoax operation. For starters, that Ukrainian intelligence sources learned about the plot several months ago (so it’s up to a 3 month timeframe at this point)
Also note how Hrytsak appeared focused on the middleman, further indicating the hitman was working with the SBU (although the article below has some comments from Hrytsak about the hitman). And this middleman is described as “a former separatist fighter in eastern Ukraine”:
Ok, now let’s take a quick look at a Daily Beast story that contains a bit of information on the alleged hitman. According to the article, the hitman is “a former Ukrainian volunteer soldier”, which is the kind of language typically used to describe someone in a group like Azov Battalion or Right Sector:
“Apparently a former Ukrainian volunteer soldier had received $15,000 to kill Babchenko. The head of SBU Vasily Gritsak told reporters that the detention of the assassin helped to prevent dozens of other contract killings in Ukraine, that the list of potential victims included at least 30 names.”
A “former Ukrainian volunteer soldier”. That’s the initial description we got of the hitman. And he was indeed detained, which Hrytsak (Gritsak) characterizes as helping to prevent dozens of other contract killings in Ukraine. So during this initial press conference both the middleman and hitman are characterized as being ‘caught’ by the SBU. And, in fact, the whole point of the hoax assassination was to find the real would-be “killer”
So, according to this story, the SBU arranged for a fake assassination of Babchenko to...expose the real would-be assassin?! That, uh, doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. Unless, of course, the hitman was in fact working for the SBU the whole time. And sure enough, that’s what’s getting reported by a journalist who is described as a close friend of the “hitman”:
““The ‘hitman’ has indeed participated in the Anti-Terrorist Operation [ATO] for a long time. The organizer ordered the killing of Arkady Babchenko, trying to manipulate his patriotic sentiments. Having received the [journalist’s] profile, the man immediately turned to the SBU. It happened about two months ago. The SBU opened a criminal case, and the ‘assassin’ went to get the advance payment, having recording devices on him,” journalist Rodion Shovkoshytnyi, a close friend of the “hitman,” told Espresso TV on May 31.”
So according journalist Rodion Shovkoshytnyi, described as a “close friend” of the alleged hitman, the hitman immediately turned to the SBU about two months ago after the middleman tried to order the assassination. Now, granted, this journalist is the hitman’s “close friend”, so we have to take his word with a big grain of salt. But at the same time, how on earth could a fake assassination make any sense at all UNLESS THE HITMAN WAS IN ON IT?! So of course the hitman was in on it. This whole story makes absolutely no sense unless that’s the case.
But even if the hitman was in on it, there’s still quite a bit that doesn’t make sense. Especially since it looks like either the hitman or middleman was a neo-Nazi member of Right Sector. But in either case, this plot doesn’t make sense.
And then there’s the much larger terror plot that was apparently part of all of this: the alleged planned purchase of 300 AK-47s and large quantities of explosives:
“Details of the precise threat to Babchenko’s life were murky. Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of the SBU, said Russia’s spy agencies had contacted a middleman, identified only as G, and paid him $40,000 to arrange the murder. The middleman in turn approached a former Ukrainian volunteer soldier to carry out the hit, together with additional “terrorist acts”, he said.”
Assassination in additional “terrorist acts”. That’s allegedly what the Russian secret services hired this unnamed middleman to do. And those terrorist acts apparently involved a large number of people because 300 AK-47s were part of the plan, along with hundreds lf kilos of explosives:
Hmmm...does it make sense that the Russian secret services hired a east Ukrainian separatist to carry all this out, and that guy, in turn, hired a Right Sector — a group that almost defines itself in its hatred of Russia — to be the hitman to carry out what was to be merely the first killing in what was to be a mass terror campaign? Because that seems like a remarkably far-fetched story on many levels.
So what’s going on here? That’s extremely ambiguous at this point and we’re probably just going to have to wait and see what additional information comes out. But there is one very notable other story that might provide part of the explanation: Recall how, back in March, it was learned that far right Ukrainian war hero, Nadia Savchenko, was alleged by Ukrainian authorities a plotting a devastating terror plot on Ukraine’s parliament? Well, that was 2–3 months, right around the time the SBU allegedly got its intelligence about about this new alleged Moscow-directed assassination/terror plot. So is it possible that we’re looking a Ukrainian operation that’s effectively trying to address the Savchenko terror plot but do it under the guise of busting a Russian terror plot so as not to overly piss off Ukraine’s far right? It seems like a stretch, but probably not nearly as much of a stretch as the explanation Ukraine’s security services just gave the world for its hoax assassination.
And the plot thickens. Specifically, the plot around the bizarre hoax killing of dissident Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko:
So it turns out that the ‘hitman’ and ‘middleman’ in BOTH claim to have been working for the Ukrainian intelligence services. We also have confirmation on their identities.
The ‘hitman’ was indeed Alexei Zymbalyuk/Oleksiy Tsimbalyuk, a former monk and a deacon in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He actually changed his religious affiliation from the Russian Orthodox Church. And, yes, he’s a member of Right Sector, or at least has photos of himself on his Facebook page in green combat fatigues with a Right Sector patch. There’s also a 10 minute documentary about him that appeared online in January 2017 where he called killing separatists an act of mercy. Ukrainian intelligence services initially denied his claims that he had been working with them all along but later acknowledged this was true.
The ‘middleman’, Boris L. Herman, is perhaps even more interesting. Herman claims in court that he has also been working for Ukraine all along, although it sounds like Ukrainian officials currently deny this (just as they did for the ‘hitman’ before later confirming his claims). But Herman is also claiming that there really was a Moscow-based assassination scheme. According to Herman, “I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives in Moscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turned out that he works for a Putin foundation precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine.” This was apparently six months ago.
Herman does actually give a somewhat coherent explanation for why a fake killing had to take place: it was only after the ‘killing’ of Babchenko that his Russian contact gave him the list of 30 more names.
Intriguingly, according to Herman’s lawyer, Herman is the executive director of Schmeisser, a Ukrainian-German joint venture that specializes in making sights for sniper rifles. Schmeisser is also the only arms manufacturer in Ukraine NOT owned by the government according to Herman’s lawyer, although that doesn’t appear to actually be the case (the League of Private Defense Industries of Ukraine was formed in late 2016, for example).
So, if we are to believe this story, a Putin-connected foundation decided to contact Herman, the executive of a Ukrainian-German arms manufacturer in Ukraine, to orchestrate an elaborate assassination/terror plot six months ago. Herman then contact Ukraine’s intelligence services. Then they apparently waited like 4 months before concocting this fake assassination plot. Then Herman recruited a member of Right Sector who also contacted Ukraine’s intelligence services right away. All in all, it’s definitely one of those stories where ‘less is more’ because the more we’re learning the less sense this all makes:
“Both the priest and the executive claimed to be working for Ukraine’s intelligence services. Ukrainian officials at first denied that but, in the case of the priest, subsequently reversed themselves and admitted he had played a role. They would not say what.”
Both the ‘perps’ claim to be working for Ukraine’s intelligence services. Ukrainian officials deny this, but later acknowledge that the ‘hitman’ was actually working for them all along. It’s quite a story.
And it’s not surprising that Ukrainian authorities later admitted that the ‘hitman’ was indeed working for them because he would have be one of the most implausible Russian assassins you can imagine when you look at who this ‘hitman’ actually is: A member of Right Sector:
And note how it was Tsimbalyuk himself who basically outed himself on Facebook and it was only after that that Ukrainian authorities admitted he was working for them (after an initial denial). So it’s entirely possible that the authorities never actually intended for the world to learn that the ‘hitman’ were their man:
But when it comes to the middleman, Boris L. Herman, the authorities continue to maintain he wasn’t working for them. Herman simultaneously asserts that he really was contacted six months ago by an acquaintance in Moscow who was working specifically on the destabilization of Ukraine for a Putin-affiliated foundation. So, for the purpose of maintaining the narrative that there really was an elaborate Moscow plot afoot, denying that Herman was working with Ukrainian authorities will go a long way to upholding that narrative:
““I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives in Moscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turned out that he works for a Putin foundation precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine,” Mr. Herman was quoted as saying by Interfax Ukraine, a news agency.”
Note how Herman’s explanation for why the fake assassination had to take place — so his Moscow contact could give him the list of 30 more targets — actually makes a lot more sense than the explanation the authorities gave, which is that they needed to fake the hit in order to catch Herman, the organizer of all this:
So, at this point, Herman’s story is sounding a lot more plausible than the Ukrainian authorities’ story. Especially since, as the article notes, they haven’t actually provided a coherent time line for any of this. And yet Herman’s story about his Moscow contact still doesn’t sound very plausible unless we suddenly learn something about Herman’s background that would explain why the executive of a Ukrainian defense contractor would want to orchestrate a Russian-backed assassination/terror campaign.
One of the interesting thing to note in all this is Tsimbalyuk’s explanation for why he outed himself on Facebook: He claims he did it because the video Ukrainian authorities released of Tsimbalyuk and Herman discussing the plot in vehicle didn’t hide his voice. So he determined at that there was no point in hiding his identity. But he also says he won’t do any more interviews in the near future due to a non-disclosure agreement, suggesting that he was initially planning on remaining an anonymous ‘hitman’, but only changed his mind after the authorities accidentally outed him:
“Tsymbaliuk explained his decision by the fact that after tapes with his voice, which was not disguised, were made public, he saw no point in “holing up.” ”
That sure sounds like an “oops! That wasn’t supposed to happen!” kind of scenario. But don’t plan on Tsimbalyuk giving any more information about this operation. He signed a non-disclosure agreement:
Yeah, it seems like that probably wasn’t the only non-disclosure agreement involved in all this. We’ll presumably have to wait for Ukrainian authorities to screw up some more before we learn about the rest of them.
Here’s an interesting fun fact related to the increasingly bizarre hoax assassination of Arkady Babchenko by Ukraine’s SBU: The photograph of Babchenko lying face down in a pool of blood with apparent bullet wounds in his back first appeared on the Facebook page of a former Ukrainian journalist Yevhen Lauer. Lauer claims he received it from a law enforcement source.
And as the following report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty notes, Lauer has more recently been working with Trident Group LLC, a DC-based corporate intelligence firm that specializes in consulting services for Western corporations doing business in the former Soviet republics. Trident Group is founded and staffed by for Soviet intelligence officers and appears to be a consulting firm of choice for a number of prominent US corporations doing business in that region. Its client list is largely kept a secret, although known clients include the prominent law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld (recall how one of Akin Gump’s clients was Tyumen oil, co-owned by the Alfa Group) .
So the photo of Babchenko’s ‘dead’ body first showed up on the Facebook page of a guy known to be recently working with a high-end, expensive and discrete elite corporate intelligence firm catering to Western firms operating in the former Soviet republics. It’s not exactly the kind of fun fact that’s going to reduce suspicions over this intelligence operation:
” Who actually took and staged the shot is not known. It’s not even certain that it’s Babchenko in the photo. But how it came to light and circulated in the hours after the fake killing was reported is a key element of a law enforcement sting that enlisted a former journalist, a Ukrainian lawmaker, and possibly many others.”
Yep, we can’t ignore how the now notorious fake photo actually went public when examining this mystery. And sure enough, the source of the photo only adds to the mystery: Yevhen Lauer, who told RFE/RL that he received it from a law enforcement source:
And Lauer just happens to be recently affiliated with Trident Group LLC, a prominent DC-based corporate intelligence firm specializing in helping Western corporations navigate the former Soviet Republics. The president of Trident confirms that Lauer did indeed work for his firm, although he claims to know nothing about the Babchenko operation:
So that’s pretty interesting. Now here’s a 2012 WSJ profile of Trident Group (via archive.org) that makes it clear that this firm really is an elite corporate intelligence firm with a number of significant Western clients. It also hints at Trident Group not being afraid to get ‘dirty’ when fulfilling its clients needs.
This is a good time recall closely this general description fits the profile of Black Cube, the Israeli private intelligence firm used by Cambridge Analytica for services like hacking and other dirty services for corporate clients. A corporate private intelligence firm willing that’s willing to get a little ‘dirty’ for its clients.
In other words, while Trident Group is founded and staffed by former Soviet intelligence agents, they have clearly demonstrated over the years that they can be trusted by their Western clients and part of that trust has been built on a willingness to occasionally get ‘dirty’:
“For companies investigating corruption in Russia, a former Soviet intelligence officer is the “go-to guy.””
The co-founder of Trident Group was the “go-to guy” for Western companies investigating corruption in Russia. That was the general characterization in this 2012 WSJ profile. And while most of the firm’s clients remain anonymous, those that do admit hiring Trident Group give it rave reviews:
And none of these firms appear to be concerned that they’re hiring a bunch of ex-Soviet intelligence officer with this potentially highly sensitive work. It’s something to keep in mind regarding Paul Manafort’s long-time partner Konstantin Kilimnik and the assumption that he’s a Kremlin stooge due to his Soviet-era intelligence background. The truism of ‘once a KGB agent, always a KGB’ agent isn’t actually true:
Not surprisingly given the nature of ‘corporate intelligence’ work, Koshkin acknowledges that he isn’t above ‘getting some dirt beneath his fingernails’:
““If you’re investigating a company or a situation and you want make sure there’s no corruption… in my view, you have to do what you have to do short of breaking the law or committing an unethical act.””
You have to do what you have to do. Now that’s a truism it’s hard to argue with. But also a truism that, in this context, appears to be an admission of a willingness to essentially engage in espionage. Which is the kind of service that Koshkin’s firm is more than able to provide given the number of former spies it employs:
“Koshkin honed these investigative skills in the Soviet army. After studying languages and military geography at the Military Institute of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, a famed breeding ground for KGB officers, Koshkin graduated in 1980 and began working in Africa as a military intelligence officer.”
Again, note how Kohskin’s Soviet intelligence background is basically the same as Konstantin Kilimnik’s in that they both studied languages at the Soviet Ministry of Defense. In Kilimnik’s case this is cited as proof-positive he’s a Russian agent (despite being Ukrainian and years of work for the International Republican Institute), but in Koshkin’s case those years of Soviet intelligence training are seen as an invaluable asset for his Western clients.
So that’s all something to keep in mind as this bizarre Babchenko story unfolds. And while Trident Group denies any ties to this operation, and there’s no shortage of reasons they would have for denying involvement if there was any, it’s also worth noting that one of the services Trident Group offers to clients is identifying corruption in Ukraine. So if it is the case that Trident Group is working with the Ukrainian intelligence services, that might make those the services Trident Group is offering to clients about identifying corruption associated with Ukrainian companies seem a little, well, corrupt.
Here’s a quick update on the mystery of the hoax assassination of Arkady Babchenko and the claims that this was necessarily to uncover a Moscow-directed assassination/terror plot: The ‘middleman’ in the case, Boris L. Herman/German, has given the name of the old associate person he claims contacted him about setting up the assassinations. Recall that Herman/German already claimed that, “I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives in Moscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turned out that he works for a Putin foundation precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine.” Well, that associate is apparently someone named Vyacheslav Pivovarnik. And The Bell, a Russian-language publication, has tracked down an individual by that name who does indeed appear to have ties to Herman/German. Here’s a quick overview from Meduza.io on what The Bell found:
“Using the “SPARK” business-analytics system, the newsletter The Bell dug up information about a man named Vyacheslav Pivovarnik, finding that he manages or owns shares in five Ukrainian legal entities. One of these companies is Public Security Service of Ukraine LLC, which Pivovarnik cofounded with Sergey Eremeyevich Deyev, who’s mentioned in news reports as an expert at a Russian organization called the National and International Security Foundation. This entity was headed by the Soviet general Leonid Shershnev, until he died in 2014. Shershnev founded the nationalist foundation “Russians” and the Center for Assistance to Compatriots From Novorossiya and Ukraine.”
So based on The Bell’s findings, Vyacheslav Pivovarnik manages or owns shared in five legal Ukrainian entities. But the closest connection they could find to Russian foundation is that one of the companies, Public Security Service of Ukraine LLC, was cofounded with Sergey Eremeyevich Deyev, who is reportedly an expert at a Russian organization called the National and International Security Foundation. And this organization was, until 2014, headed by Soviet general Leonid Shershnev who founded the Center for Assistance to Compatriots From Novorossiya and Ukraine. So Herman/German’s contact does have tangential ties to a pair of Russian foundations, but unless there’s some revelation about either the National and International Security Foundation or the Center for Assistance to Compatriots From Novorossiya and Ukraine being Kremlin front groups focused on destabilizing Ukraine it’s hard to see this as a confirmation of Herman’s claims.
And The Bell also found some direct links between Pivovarnik and Herman:
So at this point it looks like we can conclude that Herman knows Pivovarnik, they were business partners, and Herman is willing to publicly accuse Pivovarnik of orchestrating an assassination/terror campaign.
What can we conclude about any ties to a “Putin foundation precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine?” Well, we can also conclude that Pivovarnik co-founded a company with a guy who is an expert at a foundation that was headed, until 2014, by a former Soviet general who founded the Assistance to Compatriots From Novorossiya and Ukraine foundation. That’s pretty much it at this point.
Here’s the latest twists on the Babchenko fake murder mystery: It turns out Boris German/Herman has some mob ties. Specifically, his father, Lev Herman, was known to have deep roots to Semion Mogilevich, the top Russian mob boss (who was born in Ukraine). And according to John Herbst, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine and current director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Boris himself is also connected to Mogilevich like his father.
Interestingly, the fact that Lev Herman has these ties to Mogilevich is characterized as just a known thing in the article below and not a secret. So being the son of a known Mogilevich associate and an associate yourself apparently doesn’t hurt your chances of being the executive as a Ukrainian defense contractor these days.
And the fact that Mogilevich was born in Ukraine raises an interesting regarding his organization and the Ukrainian/Russian conflict: so whose side is Mogilevich on? Has he picked a side? Is he trying to play all sides? It’s an example of a generic question that rarely gets asked with the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict: did the mafia have to pick sides, or is playing all sides an option?
This family connection to Mogilevich is seen as possibly explaining why an executive at a Ukrainian defense contractor would be allegedly approached to organized a Russian assassination/terror operation. So it’s worth keeping in mind another figure whose father was a know Mogilevich associate: Felix Sater! And as Sater’s bio and extensive work helping the FBI and CIA reminds us, just because you’re the son of a known Mogilevich associate with mob ties yourself doesn’t mean you can’t work for other governments, which is a key fun fact to keep in mind with a case like this:
“The details suggest some very dark operations, what Russian spies used to call mokroye delo, wet work, meaning contract murders or, in more antiseptic American parlance, targeted killings. There are also suggestions the plotters may have called on the services of organized crime, which is not unusual in the overlapping underworlds of intelligence and the mob.”
So it sounding like the allegations by the Ukrainian government are morphing somewhat from ‘the Russian government was behind this assassination/terror plot’ to ‘the Russian government and mafia behind this assassination/terror plot’ following the observation that Boris Herman/German’s father, Lev Herman, is known in Ukraine for deep roots to Semion Mogilevich. And we have the former US Amassador to Ukraine and current director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, John Herbst, saying that is it his “understanding” that Boris is also connected to Mogilevich like his father:
So we’ll see what sort of additional mafia ties end up getting revealed by German/Herman as this thing plays out.
And note how the initial list of 30 targeted people is now up to 47. But some Ukrainian journalists who remain suspicious of the government’s story so far are concerned that this whole “Story of 47” is being used to put even more pressure on journalists. By leaking the names of the journalists and bloggers on the list the SBU is simultaneously sending the message that the way to stay safe is to work with the security services:
and that’s another feature of the Babchenko murder hoax: a whole lot of Ukrainian journalists are going to stay in the SBU’s good side in case their name was on the list.
So along those lines, its worth noting that the list of 47 names was somehow unofficially leaked yesterday. The SBU won’t confirm the published list is real but they are opening an investigation into how it leaked so that’s basically a confirmation. And yet a number of Ukrainian journalists, including those on the list, question its credibility. They note the list is filled with the names of people critical of the Ukrainian authorities. Also, some of the journalists on the list say they were shown the real list by the SBU and this published list appears to be different from what they saw:
“The whole affair took a strange new turn on June 5 when a purported “hit list” of 47 people — mainly journalists and political activists — that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claims to have discovered during the Babchenko operation was leaked to Strana.ua, an opposition news site, and published online..”
The ‘hit list’ shows up on an opposition website. That’s a rather big ‘oops’ for an investigation of this nature. And while the SBU won’t confirm its authenticity, they basically did that by launching a criminal investigation into the unauthorized leak of “a list of persons whose details are contained” in materials related to a pretrial investigation:
And yet a number of the journalists on the list still have their doubts. Some of those doubts are due to the large number of critics of the Ukrainian authorities on the list. And three journalists who claim to have been shown the real like by the SBU spotted slight differences in the published list:
So, at this point, it sounds like Ukraine’s journalism community is probably legitimately concerned about this ‘hit list’ even if they just aren’t necessarily concerned that Mogilevich’s associates are going to be the ones doing the ‘hitting’.
And the embrace of neo-Nazi vigilantism continues: The fourth attack on a Roma camp in six weeks just took place. Live on Facebook. This time by members of the new formed Azov National Druzhyna militia, an offshoot of the Azov Battalion formed in January to patrol the streets. And, of course, Ukrainian police were just standing around approvingly watching it happen:
“The attack marks the second such incident by far-right vigilantes in Kyiv and the fourth in Ukraine in the past six weeks.”
The fourth vigilante neo-Nazi attack in six weeks. And note how they show up at the camp, give a 24 hour warning, and then show up a couple hours later to destroy it and post it all on Facebook. The attack was literally broadcast live on their Facebook page:
And you can watch a full 12 minute clip of it here, which was uploaded to Youtube by a group called “EuroMaydan”:
Note that on the YouTube posting there’s no comment by EuroMaydan condemning or supporting the action. It’s posted without comment. And the title of the video translates (via Google translate) to “National squads routed the Roma camp in Goloseevsky Park.” So if this EuroMaydan group disapproves of these attacks they aren’t making that clear.
But, as with all of these attacks, the most disturbing part is that this is clearly being done with the support of the authorities. They literally show up in the video (starting at ~10:30) casually standing around:
And this all once again highlights how Ukraine’s authorities have basically given a green light for neo-Nazi vigilantes. Although when videos of previous attacks went viral there were at least some investigations opened. Investigations that don’t appear to have gone anywhere:
“Police did nothing until a video of the attack went viral online, forcing them to open an investigation, the results of which remain unclear.”
That was the response by Ukrainian authorities back in April after a similar attack by C14 — which received approval by the Kiev city government to establish “municipal guard” to patrol the streets — and it was only after video of the attack went viral that they announced an investigation. So, not surprisingly, we’re hearing similar proclamations from the police this time:
“No one has the right to engage in illegal activities, pseudo ultimatums, or for the sake of PR to conduct demonstrative pogroms against other citizens.”
That was the statement from the police. A statement that no one should expect them to back up with action. It’s the status quo in today’s Ukraine. Talk about how no one has a right to conduct demonstrative pogroms against other citizens is just that. Talk.
Here’s a story with chilling parallels to the youth camp the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion runs: Ukraine’s Youth and Sports Ministry published a video last week showing its officials unanimously voting to fund variously organizations for “national-patriotic education projects”. Guess which groups received some of those funds: Svoboda and C14. More specifically, the money went to three far right organizations founded by members of C14 and Svoboda. The Educational Assembly, founded by C14 head Yevhen Karas; C14 Sich, founded by Volodymyr Karas, who shares the same patronymic, surname, and address as the C14 head; and Holosiyiv Hideout, whose founders include several members of Svoboda.
The Svoboda group will by about $29,200 for four festival. That alone is profoundly disturbing. But even more disturbing is what the two C14 groups got their funds for: The C14 ‘Educational Assembly’ and C14 Sich’s children’s summer camp will received about $16,900 for three children’s events. That’s right, an organization that is literally named after a white supremacist slogan has a children’s summer camp and just got state funds for three chilrden’s events:
“C14, a group whose members have openly expressed neo-Nazi views and been involved in the recent violent attacks on Romany camps in Kyiv, and the far-right affiliated Svoboda political party, are the recipients of Youth and Sports Ministry grants for “national-patriotic education projects,” according to a June 13 report by Hromadske Radio.”
Neo-nazis running “national-patriotic education projects” with state financing. That’s a thing now in Ukraine.
And, yes, it was a unanimous vote by the Youth and Sports Ministry. They apparently weren’t afraid to publicize this because they published the video of the vote on YouTube:
And it was a unanimous vote to fund four Svoboda-run festivals and three C14 children’s events:
And let’s not forget that on June 7, just a day before this unanimous vote, we had members of an Azov Battalion ‘civil patrol’ militia destroying a Roma camp live on Facebook with Ukrainian police standing around. And that attack was just the latest instance when a state-backed neo-Nazi militia destroyed a Roma camp with Ukrainian police standing by. There was also the April attack on a Roma camp by C14 with police standing around. That’s all part of the backdrop of this unanimous vote:
And note the epic trolling by the Youth and Sports Ministry when asked about this: they noted that several project that won state financing were “aimed specifically at overcoming xenophobia”. That was seriously part of their response to questions about financing neo-Nazi children’s events:
“By the way, several projects that have won are aimed specifically at overcoming xenophobia.”
Well, at least there’s some projects about overcoming xenophobia. That will presumably come in handy after all those kids getting radicalized by these state-backed neo-Nazi youth groups grow up.
And we have another attack on a Roma camp in Ukraine. This time on the outskirts Lviv. A 24 year old was stabbed to death and four others were injured, including a 10 year old boy. Seven suspects ages 16 and 17 have been arrest and a 20 year old is accused of planning the attack. So far there isn’t an indication of whether or not the suspects are members of the ‘usual suspects’ organizations like the Azov Battalion or C14. Either way, it’s pretty clear that it’s still ‘open season’ on Roma in Ukraine:
“A masked group armed with batons and other weapons targeted the camp on the outskirts of the city of Lviv shortly before midnight, according to police.”
So all we know at about the attackers at this point is that they were masked. This, of course, is very different from the last Roma attack by C14 that was proudly shown on Facebook Live with police standing around in the video. It sounds Ukraine’s neo-Nazis are learning to not openly advertise their pogroms. Which is good timing for them and their sponsors in the Ukrainian government since a person actually died in this attack:
We still might learn if these individuals were indeed involved in one of Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi organizations since it sounds like seven suspects are in custody:
But that doesn’t mean we should get our hopes up that there’s going to be any meaningful official attribution of this attack to the far right even if it turns out these individuals in custody are actually affiliated with a neo-Nazi group. Because when the government is as supportive of neo-Nazis as the current government in Ukraine is, the only people who should have their hopes up at this point is those seven suspects in custody:
So we’ll see what, if any, additional information comes out about these assailants. And given their young and the fact that they are doing what the state-sanctioned groups like Azov Battalion and C14 have been doing for months, it’s worth recalling that the Ukrainian government is now financing ‘youth events’ run by C14 and Svoboda and the Azov Battalion running a youth camp.
So you have to wonder if these assailants were past attendees of one of those neo-Nazi youth events or just radicalized young people who noticed that the government of Ukraine more or less endorses these kinds of attacks at this point and decided to do one of their own. You also have to wonder which of those scenarios is more alarming.
Here’s an article out of Ukraine that’s both a grim reminder of embrace of the ‘Protocols of Elders of Zion’-style thinking by people in power as well as a warning about the kind of people running the investigation into the 2014 sniper attacks:
Anatoliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, just gave an extensive interview where he basically said that Jews are behind all wars and want to “drown ehtnic Slavs in blood.” So the guy who would theoretically be in charge of prosecutor abuses by the Ukrainian military units fighting in the East — like the neo-Nazi ‘volunteer battalions’ — is, himself, basically a neo-Nazi. Of course.
Also recall the cryptic statement Matios made back in 2016 about the identity of the people involved with the 2014 sniper attacks: “When public learns who is involved in this, people will be very surprised.” And circumstantial evidence suggests it was one of the far right members of the Maidan protests who was involved with those sniper attacks. So that’s not exactly reassuring to learn that the chief military prosecutor who is involved in that investigation is basically a neo-Nazi:
“In an extensive interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Insider, Anatoliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which he implied that Jews want to drown ethnic Slavs in blood.”
Jews want to drown ethnic Slavs in blood. That is according to Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor. Jews are also responsible for all wars:
And Matrios is also an advocate of arming all Ukrainians:
So the guy ostensibly in charge of prosecuting crimes by all the neo-Nazi ‘volunteer’ battalions’ and one of the investigators in the sniper attacks is convinced that Jews cause all wars, which presumably means he blames Jews with the conflict in Ukraine. And he feels Ukrainians all need to be armed for self defense purposes. Self defense that presumably includes defense against Jews trying to ‘drown the Slavs in blood’.
What could possibly go wrong.
US places up to 8,500 troops on alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe amid Russia tensions
By Barbara Starr and Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 5:29 PM EST, Mon January 24, 2022
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/01/24/politics/biden-troops-europe/index.html