just got done lis­ten­ing to one of your pro­grams on Bush, Zap­a­ta and CIA from 1992; in it you talk excit­ed­ly about a “new” book: “The Old Boys”; I thoughtt it was so cool that you’ve been talk­ing about that book for 30 years!

Speak­ing of Zap­a­ta Oil, I read that the Koch Broth­ers stole at least 300 mil­lion dol­lars of oil from pub­lic lands and got sued and lost.

any­way, LOVE YOU DAVE, YOU’RE IN MY HEART MAN.

Here’s a pair of arti­cle about what appears to be a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-spon­sored cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion against jour­nal­ists and the use of the “Myrotvorets” group of Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-backed hack­ers:

First, here’s an arti­cle about how Belaru­sian writer and Nobel Lit­er­a­ture Prize win­ner Svet­lana Alex­ievich had to can­cel an event at the Green The­ater in Odessa due to the implied threats of vio­lence after a Ukrain­ian ‘nation­al­ist’ web­site that spe­cial­izes in iden­ti­fy­ing ‘ene­mies of Ukraine’, Myrotvorets, declared Alex­ievich one of those ene­mies. Myrotvoret­s’s ‘ene­mies of Ukraine’ announce­ment hap­pened four hours before the event. Myrotvorets removed her name from the ‘ene­mies’ list sev­er­al hours lat­er but the event remained can­celled out of an abun­dance of cau­tion:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

Belaru­sian Nobel Lau­re­ate Alex­ievich Can­cels Event In Ukraine Amid Threats

August 09, 2018 09:19 GMT

Belaru­sian writer and Nobel Lit­er­a­ture Prize win­ner Svet­lana Alex­ievich says she has can­celed her meet­ing with read­ers in the Ukrain­ian city of Ode­sa amid threats.

Alex­ievich said in a video state­ment on August 8 that she learned about threats against her and the orga­niz­ers of the meet­ing and there­fore decid­ed to can­cel the event planned at the Green The­ater in the Black Sea port city.

The Green The­ater wrote on Face­book that Alex­ievich’s name was added to a list of “ene­mies of Ukraine” by the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist web­site Myrotvorets (Peace­keep­er) four hours before Alex­ievich’s sched­uled meet­ing with read­ers on August 8.

The Myrotvorets site accused Alex­ievich of “prop­a­gat­ing intereth­nic dis­cord and manip­u­lat­ing infor­ma­tion impor­tant for soci­ety” in a speech she deliv­ered in Brook­lyn, New York, in 2016.

Although the site removed Alex­ievich’s name from the list sev­er­al hours lat­er, the writer and the the­ater decid­ed to can­cel the event “to avoid pos­si­ble risks for Alex­ievich and the audi­ence in the the­ater.”

In her video state­ment, Alex­ievich called Myrotvorets’ state­ment about her anti-Ukrain­ian stance “absolute­ly far-fetched.”

...

In her very first pub­lic state­ment after she was announced the Nobel Prize win­ner in lit­er­a­ture in 2015, Alex­ievich con­demned Rus­si­a’s annex­a­tion of Crimea in 2014, call­ing it an armed inter­ven­tion.

———-

“Belaru­sian Nobel Lau­re­ate Alex­ievich Can­cels Event In Ukraine Amid Threats”; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 08/09/2018

“The Green The­ater wrote on Face­book that Alex­ievich’s name was added to a list of “ene­mies of Ukraine” by the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist web­site Myrotvorets (Peace­keep­er) four hours before Alex­ievich’s sched­uled meet­ing with read­ers on August 8.”

Yeah, it’s prob­a­bly not safe to hold an event after a gov­ern­ment-con­nect­ed web­site declares you an ene­my of Ukraine. Specif­i­cal­ly, Myrotvorets accused Alex­ievich of “prop­a­gat­ing intereth­nic dis­cord and manip­u­lat­ing infor­ma­tion impor­tant for soci­ety”, which is a rather iron­ic accu­sa­tion com­ing from a site like Myrotvorets:

...
The Myrotvorets site accused Alex­ievich of “prop­a­gat­ing intereth­nic dis­cord and manip­u­lat­ing infor­ma­tion impor­tant for soci­ety” in a speech she deliv­ered in Brook­lyn, New York, in 2016.

Although the site removed Alex­ievich’s name from the list sev­er­al hours lat­er, the writer and the the­ater decid­ed to can­cel the event “to avoid pos­si­ble risks for Alex­ievich and the audi­ence in the the­ater.”

In her video state­ment, Alex­ievich called Myrotvorets’ state­ment about her anti-Ukrain­ian stance “absolute­ly far-fetched.”
...

And while this isn’t men­tioned in the above RFE/RL report, Myrotvorets is a gov­ern­ment-backed hack­ing crew, as we’ve seen before.

So, to get a bet­ter sense of Myrotvoret­s’s ties to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, here’s an arti­cle from two years ago about a leak of infor­ma­tion about jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the war in Ukraine. And the leak of that list appeared to have been done by gov­ern­ment-backed hack­ers and was sup­port­ed by numer­ous peo­ple in gov­ern­ment and nation­al­ist groups (includ­ing the euromaidanpress.com). the charges against the jour­nal­ists were basi­cal­ly that they had request­ed press pass­es from the sep­a­ratists republics in East­ern Ukraine (they would hack the rebels and got cor­re­spon­dences with jour­nal­ists). And, sur­prise!, that gov­ern­ment-backed hack­er group is Myrotvorets. Yep, Myro­tovorets is basi­cal­ly a Ukrain­ian-gov­ern­ment hack­er col­lec­tive.

In May of 2016, sev­er­al months before this indi­ci­dent, there was the release of a jour­nal­ist black­list. Myrotvorets was behind that list too. As the arti­cle notes, Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Affairs Arsen Avakov excused the actions by Myrotvorets, say­ing, “Those jour­nal­ists passed their per­son­al data to ban­dits from the occu­piers’ regime.” And as the arti­cle also notes, Avakov’s far right advis­er, Anton Geraschenko, is wide­ly alleged to be the men­tor of Myrotvorets:

The Dai­ly Beast

Mali­cious Leaks Make Jour­nal­ists Tar­gets in Ukraine
Secu­ri­ty ser­vices and rabid nation­al­ists in Kiev are work­ing hard to intim­i­date reporters try­ing to do their job cov­er­ing the Ukraine con­flict. The con­se­quences could be dead­ly.

Anna Nemtso­va
08.08.16 1:00 AM ET

MOSCOW — Reporters cov­er­ing the con­flict in Ukraine are in con­stant dan­ger. At least six jour­nal­ists have lost their lives in the two and a half years since the “hybrid” war there began. Dozens have been abduct­ed, dragged away by masked men, and threat­ened with exe­cu­tions.

On one of the ear­ly days of the war, on May 24, 2014, three journalists—Italian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Andy Roc­chel­li, his co-author, a human rights defend­er and jour­nal­ist Andrei Mironov, and French reporter William Roguelon drove up the road out­side of Andreyev­ka vil­lage, known for almost dai­ly fire­fights between Ukrain­ian and pro-Russ­ian rebel forces.

They were sea­soned cor­re­spon­dents. Mironov, 60, was a vet­er­an of Afghan and Chechen wars.

A few min­utes after they stopped their car to inter­view civil­ians liv­ing on the front line, there were bursts of gun­fire fol­lowed by the blast of a grenade launch­er and a mor­tar bar­rage that left Roguelon wound­ed and Roc­chel­li and Mironov dead. The mor­tar had torn off Mironov’s head.

Those of us cov­er­ing the war then said “his num­ber came up” in Ukraine as we cried over our friends, whose bod­ies were found in a ditch on the fol­low­ing day.

More than two years lat­er, the war in Ukraine goes on and on. And in the last cou­ple weeks it has inten­si­fied: dozens of sol­diers die or are injured in fresh clash­es every week. Jour­nal­ists are the wit­ness­es to this car­nage, doc­u­ment­ing the casu­al­ties both among the mil­i­tary and civil­ians suf­fer­ing from the con­flict.

But in the last few days jour­nal­ists have been hor­ri­fied, if not entire­ly sur­prised, to dis­cov­er that many peo­ple in the Kiev gov­ern­ment were out to intim­i­date them, or worse, for doing their jobs.

A group of hack­ers known to be sup­port­ed by Ukraine’s police and secret ser­vice leaked a dig­i­tal archive con­tain­ing per­son­al pho­tographs, copies of pass­ports, accred­i­ta­tions, and oth­er doc­u­ments, as well as email address­es and per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence between jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the war in the Rus­sia-backed part of Don­bas, or East­ern Ukraine.

Hack­ers called the leaked archive “The Dump.” It includ­ed pri­vate infor­ma­tion about jour­nal­ists from more than 30 inter­na­tion­al media out­lets, includ­ing CNN, the BBC, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Al Jazeera, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Radio Free Europe, and The Dai­ly Beast.

Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists and offi­cials sup­port­ing the leak—and, dis­turbing­ly, there are many—claimed that for the last two years jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the war on the rebel side were “col­lab­o­rat­ing with ter­ror­ists.”

The hacked email inbox in ques­tion belonged to Tatyana Yegoro­va, a rebel admin­is­tra­tor from the self-pro­claimed Donet­sk republic’s secu­ri­ty ser­vice. Most of the leaked emails were ask­ing Yegoro­va to give jour­nal­ists accred­i­ta­tions and press pass­es. With­out such cre­den­tials a reporter can­not pass through check­points at all, and even with that piece of paper issued by the rebels there were few guar­an­tees of pro­tec­tion for reporters, who crossed check­points dozens of times every day, fac­ing star­ing down the bar­rels of Kalash­nikovs, fac­ing deten­tions, abduc­tions, and inter­ro­ga­tions.

An attempt by some fac­tions in the Kiev gov­ern­ment to black­list so-called “col­lab­o­rat­ing” jour­nal­ists did take place once before. In May a group affil­i­at­ed with secu­ri­ty agen­cies and Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, Myrotvorets, tar­get­ed the reporters by draw­ing up black­lists.

Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Affairs Arsen Avakov excused the actions by the Myrotvorets group, say­ing, “Those jour­nal­ists passed their per­son­al data to ban­dits from the occu­piers’ regime.”

Min­is­ter Avakov’s advis­er, Anton Geraschenko (wide­ly alleged to be the men­tor of Myrotvorets) thanked it for leak­ing the per­son­al data of dozens of jour­nal­ists. But in May, unlike now, the reac­tion to the black­list­ing was imme­di­ate and sharp: Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko con­demned Myrotvorets and all its sup­port­ers. The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists sup­port­ed Pres­i­dent Poroshenko and also sup­port­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion by Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tors into the web­site that put jour­nal­ists at risk.

This time the country’s top lead­er­ship remained silent, and by Sun­day the silence had become very loud indeed.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press it was the same group, Myrotvorets, that pub­lished the per­son­al data of dozens of jour­nal­ists. And as a result of this week’s leak, reporters have received numer­ous death threats on social media.

In some envi­ron­ments, that might seem like just anoth­er troll-fest, with creeps com­ing out of the wood­work on their own, or on com­mis­sion from oth­ers. But in Ukraine, this tru­ly is a mat­ter of life and death.

“This attack on the media is very dan­ger­ous for local jour­nal­ists, because after every pub­li­ca­tion we can see a wave of hate speech—local jour­nal­ists already got mes­sages with threats,” Pol­ish jour­nal­ist Pawel Pieni­azek, who cov­ered Ukraine for Polit­i­cal Cri­tique told The Dai­ly Beast. “These kinds of lists are cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of mis­trust. I have already heard ques­tions from Ukrain­ian sol­diers about the leaks and my pres­ence on these lists.”

The Dai­ly Beast inter­viewed jour­nal­ists from nine intim­i­dat­ed pub­li­ca­tions who have watched in con­ster­na­tion as a group of Ukrain­ian state offi­cials have waged a delib­er­ate cam­paign against the free­dom of press, inspired pub­lic hate against jour­nal­ists, and jeop­ar­dized the secu­ri­ty of reporters work­ing in Ukraine.

But it’s not just the col­lec­tion of gov­ern­ment trolls in Kiev who present a prob­lem. If one down­loads The Dump, a 2.2. GB file, one could find among the emails there many reveal­ing com­ments among admin­is­tra­tors in the so-called Donet­sk People’s Repub­lic as they talk with con­tempt about jour­nal­ists and make lists of those denied press accred­i­ta­tion.

There is even some­thing in those emails about the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Don­ald Trump (who has been accused of late in the Unit­ed States of being far too cozy with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin).

One of the intim­i­dat­ed jour­nal­ists, Piotr Andrusieczko from the Pol­ish Gaze­ta Wybor­cza, said that Dump was part of a larg­er cam­paign “by Ukraine’s law enforce­ment agen­cies and nation­al­ists, who did not like it that jour­nal­ists from all over the world cov­ered both sides of the con­flict.”

Reporters who had been risk­ing their lives crawl­ing in trench­es with both Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and rebel sol­diers, believed they were doing their jobs, being wit­ness­es, telling the true sto­ry about the dev­as­tat­ed areas dur­ing the two-year-long cri­sis. Many jour­nal­ists had begun to report from Donet­sk long before Kiev start­ed refer­ring to it as “ter­ror­ist con­trolled” ter­ri­to­ry.

What Myrotvorets has done in recent days is to dis­trib­ute the leaked emails while lam­bast­ing jour­nal­ists for “coop­er­a­tion with ter­ror­ists” just because they received press accred­i­ta­tions on the ene­my side of the front line.

Reporters and advo­cates for free­dom of speech are con­cerned that this hate mon­ger­ing could endan­ger jour­nal­ists on either side of the front line.

But to many in Ukraine, who clear­ly are not con­cerned about the future of free­dom of the press, the con­dem­na­tion and endan­ger­ment of jour­nal­ists seems some­how appro­pri­ate.

The leaked data was “a good thing,” said Alya Shan­dra, the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Euro­maid­an­press, an online mag­a­zine found­ed as a grass­roots resource after the pro-EU rev­o­lu­tion in 2014.

Euro­maid­an­press media “strives to be the go-to bridge between Ukraine and the Eng­lish-speak­ing world,” the magazine’s web site says.

Shan­dra told us: “What Myrotvorets has done is very valu­able. They showed how the pro­pa­gan­da machine works in Donet­sk— that is much more impor­tant than any per­son­al data of jour­nal­ists,” she said. “Besides, jour­nal­ists are not as endan­gered as Ukraini­ans attacked by the sep­a­ratists army in the east,” Shan­dra said.

What Shan­dra does not under­stand, it seems, is that her pub­li­ca­tion broke the country’s law, vio­lat­ed the rights of jour­nal­ists it also humil­i­at­ed the pres­i­dent of Ukraine, who very clear­ly con­demned Myrotvorets at a news con­fer­ence in Kyiv on June 3, for pub­lish­ing the data of more than 4,000 jour­nal­ists and for attack­ing reporters.

What inter­na­tion­al media expect­ed from Pres­i­dent Poroshenko was to pro­tect reporters, who clear­ly are under attack.

Last month, some­body assas­si­nat­ed one of Ukraine’s most respect­ed reporters, the founder of a school for jour­nal­ism, Pavel Sheremet, right in the cen­ter of Kiev, a few meters away from the Ger­man embassy.

Sheremet worked for a local radio and Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da (Ukrain­ian Truth), a news­pa­per.

Ear­li­er this month anoth­er Ukrain­skaya Prav­da jour­nal­ist, Yeka­te­ri­na Ser­gatsko­va, received threats from noto­ri­ous right-wing nation­al­ist Dmytro Korchin­sky: after she pub­lished an inter­view about Ukrain­ian Secu­ri­ty Ser­vices tor­tur­ing pris­on­ers. Ser­gatsko­va came to live in Ukraine from Crimea in 2014; the jour­nal­ist renounced her Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship.

Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko per­son­al­ly grant­ed Ser­gatsko­va her Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen­ship. “I received threats from Korchin­sky, after I pub­lished an inter­view with a man about SBU tor­tur­ing him in their prison in Kram­a­torsk; that was when some­body wrote to me on Face­book: ‘Die, crea­ture,’” Ser­gatsko­va told The Dai­ly Beast.

“Korchin­sky, who coop­er­ates with state secu­ri­ty agen­cies, threat­ened me on his Face­book page,” Diane Ser­gatsko­va said that the pres­i­dent should have not have grant­ed me my cit­i­zen­ship, that I should not be work­ing as a jour­nal­ist in Ukraine.” Hra­madske TV edi­tor-in-chief Natalia Gumenyuk also expressed con­cerns: “We con­stant­ly receive threats and insults from offi­cials.”

...

On Fri­day, Euro­maid­an­press repub­lished a link to the entire leaked archive on their web­site, again.

“The leak is anoth­er exam­ple of how obliv­i­ous some indi­vid­u­als and groups are when they put jour­nal­ists at risk in the con­flict zone,” an AP jour­nal­ist who asked not to be named told The Dai­ly Beast. “The pub­li­ca­tion is a dis­gust­ing attempt to divide reporters into good and bad.”

Human Rights Watch defend­ers rec­om­mend­ed that jour­nal­ists whose per­son­al data was leaked fight for their rights through the legal sys­tem. “We are con­sid­er­ing tak­ing the abusers who pub­lished the leaked data to court,” says Timur Olevsky, a pre­sen­ter at Cur­rent Time, a part of Radio Free Europe media group based in Prague. “The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is silent because the min­istry of inte­ri­or affairs obvi­ous­ly is involved this cam­paign against free­dom of speech.”

Clear­ly, nobody in Ukraine was seri­ous about pun­ish­ing the group intim­i­dat­ing jour­nal­ists by dis­trib­ut­ing their per­son­al infor­ma­tion. The pros­e­cu­tors’ inves­ti­ga­tion was for­got­ten and Myrotvorets was giv­en a green light to con­tin­ue attack­ing jour­nal­ists work­ing in Ukraine.

Ear­li­er this week, inte­ri­or min­istry advi­sor Anton Gerashchenko declared that from now on Myrotvorets would be a “reg­is­tered media” out­let.

“Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov and his advi­sor Gerashchenko are the worst rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ukrain­ian offi­cials,” said Oliv­er Car­roll, a reporter who has cov­ered the war exten­sive­ly. “They are cre­at­ing a smoke screen between the country’s soci­ety and gov­ern­ment, and that smoke is the jour­nal­ists.”

———-

“Mali­cious Leaks Make Jour­nal­ists Tar­gets in Ukraine” by Anna Nemtso­va; The Dai­ly Beast; 08/08/2016

“But in the last few days jour­nal­ists have been hor­ri­fied, if not entire­ly sur­prised, to dis­cov­er that many peo­ple in the Kiev gov­ern­ment were out to intim­i­date them, or worse, for doing their jobs.”

That was the unfor­tu­nate news jour­nal­ists had to report in Aug­sut of 2016: the Kiev gov­ern­ment appears to be out to intim­i­date them.

And a key part of that gov­ern­ment intim­i­da­tion cam­paign appears to revolve around the use of the Myrotvorets hack­ing col­lec­tive:

...
A group of hack­ers known to be sup­port­ed by Ukraine’s police and secret ser­vice leaked a dig­i­tal archive con­tain­ing per­son­al pho­tographs, copies of pass­ports, accred­i­ta­tions, and oth­er doc­u­ments, as well as email address­es and per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence between jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the war in the Rus­sia-backed part of Don­bas, or East­ern Ukraine.

Hack­ers called the leaked archive “The Dump.” It includ­ed pri­vate infor­ma­tion about jour­nal­ists from more than 30 inter­na­tion­al media out­lets, includ­ing CNN, the BBC, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Al Jazeera, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Radio Free Europe, and The Dai­ly Beast.

Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists and offi­cials sup­port­ing the leak—and, dis­turbing­ly, there are many—claimed that for the last two years jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the war on the rebel side were “col­lab­o­rat­ing with ter­ror­ists.”
...

This was a replay of a sim­i­lar intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against jour­nal­ists con­duct­ed in May of 2016 that also involved Myrotvorets. Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Affairs Arsen Avakov defend­ed it at the time by say­ing, “Those jour­nal­ists passed their per­son­al data to ban­dits from the occu­piers’ regime.” Keep in mind that the jour­nal­ists were basi­cal­ly ask­ing for press pass­es from the rebels. That was what land­ed them on the “ene­mies list”:

...
An attempt by some fac­tions in the Kiev gov­ern­ment to black­list so-called “col­lab­o­rat­ing” jour­nal­ists did take place once before. In May a group affil­i­at­ed with secu­ri­ty agen­cies and Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, Myrotvorets, tar­get­ed the reporters by draw­ing up black­lists.

Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Affairs Arsen Avakov excused the actions by the Myrotvorets group, say­ing, “Those jour­nal­ists passed their per­son­al data to ban­dits from the occu­piers’ regime.”
...

And Avakov’s far right advis­er, Anton Geraschenko, is wild­ly alleged to be the men­tor of Myrotvorets:

...
Min­is­ter Avakov’s advis­er, Anton Geraschenko (wide­ly alleged to be the men­tor of Myrotvorets) thanked it for leak­ing the per­son­al data of dozens of jour­nal­ists. But in May, unlike now, the reac­tion to the black­list­ing was imme­di­ate and sharp: Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko con­demned Myrotvorets and all its sup­port­ers. The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists sup­port­ed Pres­i­dent Poroshenko and also sup­port­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion by Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tors into the web­site that put jour­nal­ists at risk.

This time the country’s top lead­er­ship remained silent, and by Sun­day the silence had become very loud indeed.
...

And it was Myrotvorets that was behind the hack and sub­se­quent release of that August 2016 “ene­mies list”:

...
Accord­ing to an arti­cle by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press it was the same group, Myrotvorets, that pub­lished the per­son­al data of dozens of jour­nal­ists. And as a result of this week’s leak, reporters have received numer­ous death threats on social media.
...

Dis­turbing­ly, it’s not just Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials who sup­port­ed Myrotvoret­s’s actions. Euro­maid­an­press, was ful­ly sup­port­ive and even repub­lished the black­list:

...
In some envi­ron­ments, that might seem like just anoth­er troll-fest, with creeps com­ing out of the wood­work on their own, or on com­mis­sion from oth­ers. But in Ukraine, this tru­ly is a mat­ter of life and death.

“This attack on the media is very dan­ger­ous for local jour­nal­ists, because after every pub­li­ca­tion we can see a wave of hate speech—local jour­nal­ists already got mes­sages with threats,” Pol­ish jour­nal­ist Pawel Pieni­azek, who cov­ered Ukraine for Polit­i­cal Cri­tique told The Dai­ly Beast. “These kinds of lists are cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of mis­trust. I have already heard ques­tions from Ukrain­ian sol­diers about the leaks and my pres­ence on these lists.”

The Dai­ly Beast inter­viewed jour­nal­ists from nine intim­i­dat­ed pub­li­ca­tions who have watched in con­ster­na­tion as a group of Ukrain­ian state offi­cials have waged a delib­er­ate cam­paign against the free­dom of press, inspired pub­lic hate against jour­nal­ists, and jeop­ar­dized the secu­ri­ty of reporters work­ing in Ukraine.

...

What Myrotvorets has done in recent days is to dis­trib­ute the leaked emails while lam­bast­ing jour­nal­ists for “coop­er­a­tion with ter­ror­ists” just because they received press accred­i­ta­tions on the ene­my side of the front line.

Reporters and advo­cates for free­dom of speech are con­cerned that this hate mon­ger­ing could endan­ger jour­nal­ists on either side of the front line.

But to many in Ukraine, who clear­ly are not con­cerned about the future of free­dom of the press, the con­dem­na­tion and endan­ger­ment of jour­nal­ists seems some­how appro­pri­ate.

The leaked data was “a good thing,” said Alya Shan­dra, the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Euro­maid­an­press, an online mag­a­zine found­ed as a grass­roots resource after the pro-EU rev­o­lu­tion in 2014.

Euro­maid­an­press media “strives to be the go-to bridge between Ukraine and the Eng­lish-speak­ing world,” the magazine’s web site says.

Shan­dra told us: “What Myrotvorets has done is very valu­able. They showed how the pro­pa­gan­da machine works in Donet­sk— that is much more impor­tant than any per­son­al data of jour­nal­ists,” she said. “Besides, jour­nal­ists are not as endan­gered as Ukraini­ans attacked by the sep­a­ratists army in the east,” Shan­dra said.

What Shan­dra does not under­stand, it seems, is that her pub­li­ca­tion broke the country’s law, vio­lat­ed the rights of jour­nal­ists it also humil­i­at­ed the pres­i­dent of Ukraine, who very clear­ly con­demned Myrotvorets at a news con­fer­ence in Kyiv on June 3, for pub­lish­ing the data of more than 4,000 jour­nal­ists and for attack­ing reporters.

What inter­na­tion­al media expect­ed from Pres­i­dent Poroshenko was to pro­tect reporters, who clear­ly are under attack.

...

On Fri­day, Euro­maid­an­press repub­lished a link to the entire leaked archive on their web­site, again.

“The leak is anoth­er exam­ple of how obliv­i­ous some indi­vid­u­als and groups are when they put jour­nal­ists at risk in the con­flict zone,” an AP jour­nal­ist who asked not to be named told The Dai­ly Beast. “The pub­li­ca­tion is a dis­gust­ing attempt to divide reporters into good and bad.”
...

And, of course, we can’t for­get that this all hap­pened a month after the assas­si­na­tion of Pavel Sheremet:

...
Last month, some­body assas­si­nat­ed one of Ukraine’s most respect­ed reporters, the founder of a school for jour­nal­ism, Pavel Sheremet, right in the cen­ter of Kiev, a few meters away from the Ger­man embassy.

Sheremet worked for a local radio and Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da (Ukrain­ian Truth), a news­pa­per.
...

Keep in mind that evi­dence has sub­se­quent­ly come out indi­cat­ing the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices were behind Sheremet’s assas­si­na­tion.

So that’s all a big reminder that the gov­ern­ment-backed intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against jour­nal­ists in Ukraine using the Myrotvorets hack­ers con­tin­ues. Although it’s unclear if any actu­al hack­ing took place in this lat­est inci­dent against Svet­lana Alex­ievich. They’re appar­ent­ly just jump­ing straight to com­pil­ing ene­mies lists at this point.

@Pterrafractyl–

Some­thing worth keep­ing in mind in con­nec­tion with this excel­lent com­ment:

As dis­cussed in FTR #981, Anton Geraschenko is also a key fig­ure in traf­fick­ing the “Russ­ian hacks” meme at the heart of the Rus­sia-Gate psy-op.

https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-981-the-ukrainian-fascist-foundation-of-the-russia-gate-psy-op/

Best,

Dave Emory

Here’s the lat­est string of news that shock­ing­ly unshock­ing at this point in Ukraine’s descent into the offi­cial embrace of Nazism: the June 30, 941 dec­la­ra­tion of an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state by Stepan Ban­dera was offi­cial­ly cel­e­brat­ed in an exhib­it in the Ukrain­ian Rada recent­ly. The orga­niz­ers of the even were as fol­lows:
1. The All-Ukrain­ian char­i­ta­ble Sobor­nist foun­da­tion
2. Inter­na­tion­al char­i­ta­ble Jaroslav Stezko foun­da­tion. Jaroslav Stezko, of course, led the OUN from 1968 until his death. Stezko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary, Roman Zvarych, became the spokesman for the neo-Nazi Azov bat­tal­ion.
3. MP Jury Shuchevich. Jury Shukhevych, hap­pens to be the son of Roman Shukhevych — who led the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion in a pogram against the Jews of Lviv also start­ing on June 30, 1941.

The exhi­bi­tion includes blown-up images from pro-Nazi news­pa­pers dat­ed June 1941 herald­ing “the Act of estab­lish­ing the Ukrain­ian state”, along with large images of Ban­dera, Shukhevych, and Stezko who all are pre­sent­ed as heroes. Also, many of the doc­u­ments at the exhi­bi­tion open­ly glo­ri­fy Nazism.

As the arti­cle notes, asked recent­ly by the Kyiv Post if it’s not “too much glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists?”, Jury Shukhevych replied by bring­ing up Jews who turned in oth­er Jews: “It’s a very com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion which has to be exam­ined in full detail. But what about those Jews? Those ones who were in Juden­rats, and who were after their own peo­ple in ghet­tos? I saw it with my own eyes. But Jews don’t like to talk about it.” Yes, when asked about the role peo­ple like his father played in the holo­caust, Jury appeared to try and deflect blame onto the Jews. That’s the kind of guy he is.

The arti­cle also note that a sim­i­lar exhi­bi­tion called Fight­ers for the Ukrain­ian State opened at the Nation­al His­to­ry of Ukraine Muse­um in Kiev at the same time.

So the Ukrain­ian Rada had the son of the guy who led a WWII pogram against the Jew of Lviv orga­nize an exhib­it held in the par­lia­men­tary build­ing itself to cel­e­brate the dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence that took on the same day the pogram start­ed. And that was just one of the exhibits offi­cial­ly glo­ri­fy­ing Ukraine’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor heroes. Which is more or less what we should expect from Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment at this point:

IsraelNationalNews.com

Exhi­bi­tion in Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment glo­ri­fies Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors

Months after hun­dreds march streets of Lvov com­mem­o­rat­ing 75th anniver­sary of SS divi­sion’s cre­ation.
Mordechai Sones, 08/07/18 20:05

An exhi­bi­tion inside the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, the Rada last week glo­ri­fied the lead­ing Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors of World War II.

Infor­ma­tion on the exhi­bi­tion is avail­able on the Ukraine Par­lia­men­t’s offi­cial web­site in Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian, but on the Rada’s Eng­lish-lan­guage web­site the infor­ma­tion is absent.

The Ukrain­ian site says, “A spe­cial exhi­bi­tion has been orga­nized in the par­lia­ment of Ukraine in Kiev. The dates of the exhi­bi­tion: July 3- July 6, 2018. The name of the exhi­bi­tion: Cel­e­brat­ing the Restora­tion of the Ukrain­ian State­hood, June 30, 1941–2018.

“The orga­niz­ers of the exhi­bi­tion: All-Ukrain­ian char­i­ta­ble Sobor­nist foun­da­tion, Inter­na­tion­al char­i­ta­ble Jaroslav Stezko foun­da­tion, MP Jury Shuchevich.”

Jaroslav Stezko was leader of Stepan Ban­der­a’s Orga­ni­za­tion of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) mil­i­tary brigades from 1968 until his death. A fer­vent Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, in 1941 dur­ing the Nazi Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, he was self-pro­claimed tem­po­rary head of the osten­si­bly inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment declared by Stepan Ban­dera. Stet­sko was the head of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations from the time of its foun­da­tion until 1986, the year of his death.

MP Jury Shuchevich is the octo­ge­nar­i­an son of Roman Shuchevich, who was the one of the lead­ers of the infa­mous the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion. SS Cap­tain Roman Shuchevich was award­ed the Nazi Iron Cross for his “exploits” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War in Ukraine and was an Abwehr agent from 1926.

“The fact that the son of the polit­i­cal leader of the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion and the bear­er of the Nazi Iron Cross is the most respect­ed – accord­ing to Ukrain­ian author­i­ties – mem­ber of their par­lia­ment is telling all by itself,” wrote co-founder and Pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion Dr. Inna Rogatchi. “He spent many decades in the Sovi­et Gulag and is clear­ly moti­vat­ed against any­thing Russ­ian – he even added a new Ukrain­ian name to his exist­ing name of Jury. But it’s ridicu­lous to see how a per­son­al vendet­ta has dri­ven the pol­i­cy of a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 45 mil­lion.

“Rec­og­nized in his coun­try as a polit­i­cal heavy-weight, Jury Shuchevich was asked recent­ly by the very pro-gov­ern­men­tal Kyiv Post Eng­lish-lan­guage news­pa­per, ‘is it not too much glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, with the his­tor­i­cal­ly known record of their activ­i­ties?’ The senior MP of the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment respond­ed: ‘It’s a very com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion which has to be exam­ined in full detail. But what about those Jews? Those ones who were in Juden­rats, and who were after their own peo­ple in ghet­tos? I saw it with my own eyes. But Jews don’t like to talk about it’.”

...

The exhi­bi­tion shows blown-up images from pro-Nazi news­pa­pers dat­ed June 1941 herald­ing “the Act of estab­lish­ing the Ukrain­ian state”, after Nazi Ger­many occu­pied Ukraine. There are also enlarged images of doc­u­ments issued by the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing bod­ies at the time, and large por­traits of the lead­ing Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors — Ban­dera, Shuhe­vich, Stezko, and Kono­valetz who all are pre­sent­ed as heroes. The col­ors of the exhi­bi­tion are those of the cur­rent Ukrain­ian flag.

The exhi­bi­tion’s stand fea­tures the fol­low­ing text from the Act of the Estab­lish­ing of the Ukrain­ian State dat­ed June 30, 1941:

“3. New­ly estab­lished Ukrain­ian State will close­ly co-oper­ate with Nation­al Social­ist Great Ger­many under the lead­er­ship of its Leader Adolf Hitler build­ing the New Order in Europe and the world”.

This text has become the clas­sic doc­u­ment on the Nazi char­ac­ter of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists and their bod­ies.

Many oth­er doc­u­ments at the exhi­bi­tion open­ly glo­ri­fy Nazism.

At the exhi­bi­tion’s open­ing, cur­rent lead­ers of Ukraine’s nation­al­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions spoke, along with open­ly pro-Nazi MP Jury Shuchevich, son of the SS cap­tain and the com­man­der of the Nachti­gall divi­sion Roman Shuchevich.

In his open­ing speech, MP Jury Schuchevich said: “The fact of us hav­ing an inde­pen­dence today, in truth, is a huge cor­ner­stone of the edi­fice called today the Ukrain­ian State. That huge cor­ner­stone was laid into this edi­fice by this very strug­gle (of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists) and by these very peo­ple (Ukrain­ian Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors), and I beseech you all very much to vis­it this exhi­bi­tion which the Con­gress of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists is car­ry­ing on in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this date.” In any oth­er offi­cial sources the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the pro-Nazi Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists Con­gress is not men­tioned.

The offi­cial site of the Ukraine Par­lia­ment said: “In the begin­ning of the Sec­ond World War, OUN under Stepan Ban­der­a’s lead­er­ship start­ed prepar­ing for re-estab­lish­ing Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence. As the Ger­man-Bol­she­vic War (Nazi term for WWII used today by Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment) ignit­ed, mobile OUN groups went to Ukraine to estab­lish there Ukrain­ian pow­er.

“On June 30th, Nachti­gall divi­sion under the com­mand of Roman Shuchevich and OUN group under the com­mand of Jaroslav Stazko entered Lvov with their first aim to announce re-estab­lish­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood. The Act of re-estab­lish­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood declared the inde­pen­dent pol­i­cy of Ukraine. By it, it has been stat­ed to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the Ukrain­ian peo­ple is con­tent nei­ther with an impe­r­i­al occu­pa­tion, nor with a com­mu­nist one ... it will con­tin­ue its strug­gle to the end.”

Upon enter­ing Lvov, the Nachti­gall divi­sion and OUN forces ini­ti­at­ed and con­duct­ed the unprece­dent­ed­ly hor­rif­ic mas­sacre of Lvov’s Jews known in his­to­ry as Lvov mas­sacre of June-July, 1941 in which at least sev­en-thou­sand Jews were bar­bar­i­cal­ly mur­dered. The exhi­bi­tion in Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment opened on July 3rd, the peak day of the hor­ren­dous Lvov mas­sacre, the one of the most ter­ri­ble geno­cides of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

At the same time, a sim­i­lar exhi­bi­tion called Fight­ers for the Ukrain­ian State opened at the Nation­al His­to­ry of Ukraine Muse­um in Kiev. That exhi­bi­tion was cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly vis­it­ed by Vice Prime Min­is­ter Vyach­eslav Kir­ilenko, as stat­ed on the Ukraine gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial web­site, who said: “It’s only rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly when we start­ed to get famil­iar with his­to­ry works, art works cel­e­brat­ing UPA (Ukrain­ian Patri­ot­ic Army, Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors and war crim­i­nals). It was a long way for Ukraine to rec­og­nize UPA, which is our com­mon his­to­ry.”

Dr. Rogatchi respond­ed to the exhi­bi­tion: “Just imag­ine that inside the Bun­destag today there would be a non-crit­i­cal exhi­bi­tion demon­strat­ing in full seri­ous­ness and with pride the Third Reich news­pa­pers from 1941 on col­or­ful big stands with cap­tions com­ment­ing that those slo­gans, poli­cies, events, doc­u­ments, and peo­ple who per­pe­trat­ed them were all ‘assur­ing and strength­en­ing Ger­many’s Inde­pen­dence and state­hood.

“Imag­ine the same thing at any par­lia­ment of any Euro­pean coun­try or 90% of the coun­tries world-wide, for that mat­ter. Imag­ine this being done at the Unit­ed Nations or UNESCO. They’d be called lunatics, quite cor­rect­ly.

“But this is exact­ly what’s going on today inside the Ukraine Par­lia­ment, and the world’s lead­ers are shy to con­demn. Or per­haps they’re unaware of it. After all, there were ‘just’ three big stands for ‘just’ four days, and the exhi­bi­tion was­n’t pub­lic, it was inside the Par­lia­ment, and one needs jour­nal­ist accred­i­ta­tion to get inside to be hon­ored to view this sheer Nazi salu­ta­tion.

“I’d like to hear the com­ment and reac­tion of Chan­cel­lor Merkel, the big patron of the cur­rent Ukraine and its lead­er­ship to that open glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hitler and Nazism as dis­played in the par­lia­ment of Ukraine. And I hope the State of Israel won’t tol­er­ate such open dec­la­ra­tion of pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies by the par­lia­ment of Ukraine.

“By orga­niz­ing and exhibit­ing this open glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Nazism, and iden­ti­fy­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood with it as done in this exhi­bi­tion, the Ukrain­ian leg­is­lat­ing body and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sent­ed by its Vice Prime Min­is­ter who vis­it­ed the exhi­bi­tion with a sup­port­ive speech, declared to the world who they are: Fol­low­ers of the Nazis. Peri­od. And they should be treat­ed like that, world-wide and offi­cial­ly. They asked for it them­selves. Nev­er before have the Ukrain­ian pro-Nazis gone that far. When giv­en free reign they enjoy it. And Europe and the rest of the world stay silent, again. Not one or anoth­er Nazi-glo­ri­fy­ing exhi­bi­tion in the mod­ern-day Ukraine, which is a dai­ly real­i­ty there, but Europe’s and the world’s ongo­ing numb­ness regard­ing it is out­ra­geous and intol­er­a­ble,” Rogatchi said.

———-

“Exhi­bi­tion in Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment glo­ri­fies Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors” by Mordechai Sones; IsraelNationalNews.com; 08/07/2018

“The Ukrain­ian site says, “A spe­cial exhi­bi­tion has been orga­nized in the par­lia­ment of Ukraine in Kiev. The dates of the exhi­bi­tion: July 3- July 6, 2018. The name of the exhi­bi­tion: Cel­e­brat­ing the Restora­tion of the Ukrain­ian State­hood, June 30, 1941–2018.”

It’s an offi­cial cel­e­bra­tion of that June 30th, 1941, dec­la­ra­tion of state­hood. A dec­la­ra­tion that hap­pened to be declared by the lead­ing Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing ‘Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists’ at the time. So it should come as no sur­prise that this was orga­nized by the Jaroslav Stezko foun­da­tion and Jury Shukhevych, son of Roman Shukhevych:

...
“The orga­niz­ers of the exhi­bi­tion: All-Ukrain­ian char­i­ta­ble Sobor­nist foun­da­tion, Inter­na­tion­al char­i­ta­ble Jaroslav Stezko foun­da­tion, MP Jury Shuchevich.”

Jaroslav Stezko was leader of Stepan Ban­der­a’s Orga­ni­za­tion of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) mil­i­tary brigades from 1968 until his death. A fer­vent Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, in 1941 dur­ing the Nazi Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, he was self-pro­claimed tem­po­rary head of the osten­si­bly inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment declared by Stepan Ban­dera. Stet­sko was the head of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations from the time of its foun­da­tion until 1986, the year of his death.

MP Jury Shuchevich is the octo­ge­nar­i­an son of Roman Shuchevich, who was the one of the lead­ers of the infa­mous the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion. SS Cap­tain Roman Shuchevich was award­ed the Nazi Iron Cross for his “exploits” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War in Ukraine and was an Abwehr agent from 1926.

“The fact that the son of the polit­i­cal leader of the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion and the bear­er of the Nazi Iron Cross is the most respect­ed – accord­ing to Ukrain­ian author­i­ties – mem­ber of their par­lia­ment is telling all by itself,” wrote co-founder and Pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion Dr. Inna Rogatchi. “He spent many decades in the Sovi­et Gulag and is clear­ly moti­vat­ed against any­thing Russ­ian – he even added a new Ukrain­ian name to his exist­ing name of Jury. But it’s ridicu­lous to see how a per­son­al vendet­ta has dri­ven the pol­i­cy of a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 45 mil­lion.
...

This would be the same Jury Shukhevych who recent­ly deflect­ed ques­tions about the role of his father and these oth­er ‘heroes’ in car­ry­ing out the Holo­caust by blam­ing the Jews for their own slaugh­ter:

...
“Rec­og­nized in his coun­try as a polit­i­cal heavy-weight, Jury Shuchevich was asked recent­ly by the very pro-gov­ern­men­tal Kyiv Post Eng­lish-lan­guage news­pa­per, ‘is it not too much glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, with the his­tor­i­cal­ly known record of their activ­i­ties?’ The senior MP of the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment respond­ed: ‘It’s a very com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion which has to be exam­ined in full detail. But what about those Jews? Those ones who were in Juden­rats, and who were after their own peo­ple in ghet­tos? I saw it with my own eyes. But Jews don’t like to talk about it’.”
...

And the exhib­it does­n’t just cel­e­brate these promi­nent Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors. It appears to also con­tain numer­ous doc­u­ments that open­ly glo­ri­fy Nazism:

...
The exhi­bi­tion shows blown-up images from pro-Nazi news­pa­pers dat­ed June 1941 herald­ing “the Act of estab­lish­ing the Ukrain­ian state”, after Nazi Ger­many occu­pied Ukraine. There are also enlarged images of doc­u­ments issued by the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing bod­ies at the time, and large por­traits of the lead­ing Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors — Ban­dera, Shuhe­vich, Stezko, and Kono­valetz who all are pre­sent­ed as heroes. The col­ors of the exhi­bi­tion are those of the cur­rent Ukrain­ian flag.

The exhi­bi­tion’s stand fea­tures the fol­low­ing text from the Act of the Estab­lish­ing of the Ukrain­ian State dat­ed June 30, 1941:

“3. New­ly estab­lished Ukrain­ian State will close­ly co-oper­ate with Nation­al Social­ist Great Ger­many under the lead­er­ship of its Leader Adolf Hitler build­ing the New Order in Europe and the world”.

This text has become the clas­sic doc­u­ment on the Nazi char­ac­ter of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists and their bod­ies.

Many oth­er doc­u­ments at the exhi­bi­tion open­ly glo­ri­fy Nazism.
...

On the plus side, the fact that Jury’s open­ing speech includ­ed a plea for the par­lia­ment to con­tin­ue com­mem­o­rat­ing this date going for­ward sug­gests that this isn’t yet an annu­al occur­rence. Of course, there’s no rea­son at this point to assume that it won’t be an annu­al cel­e­bra­tion:

...
At the exhi­bi­tion’s open­ing, cur­rent lead­ers of Ukraine’s nation­al­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions spoke, along with open­ly pro-Nazi MP Jury Shuchevich, son of the SS cap­tain and the com­man­der of the Nachti­gall divi­sion Roman Shuchevich.

In his open­ing speech, MP Jury Schuchevich said: “The fact of us hav­ing an inde­pen­dence today, in truth, is a huge cor­ner­stone of the edi­fice called today the Ukrain­ian State. That huge cor­ner­stone was laid into this edi­fice by this very strug­gle (of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists) and by these very peo­ple (Ukrain­ian Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors), and I beseech you all very much to vis­it this exhi­bi­tion which the Con­gress of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists is car­ry­ing on in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this date.” In any oth­er offi­cial sources the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the pro-Nazi Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists Con­gress is not men­tioned.
...

Adding to the his­toric revi­sion­ism here, the par­lia­men­t’s offi­cial web­site actu­al­ly used the Nazi term (the Ger­man-Bol­she­vic War) to refer to WWII. It’s descrip­tion of the June 30th actions by the Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion also just hap­pens to make no men­tion of the Jew­ish pogram unleashed by that same group on that very day. And the exhib­it opened on July 3rd, the anniver­sary of the peak day of vio­lence of the Lviv mas­sacre:

...
The offi­cial site of the Ukraine Par­lia­ment said: “In the begin­ning of the Sec­ond World War, OUN under Stepan Ban­der­a’s lead­er­ship start­ed prepar­ing for re-estab­lish­ing Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence. As the Ger­man-Bol­she­vic War (Nazi term for WWII used today by Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment) ignit­ed, mobile OUN groups went to Ukraine to estab­lish there Ukrain­ian pow­er.

“On June 30th, Nachti­gall divi­sion under the com­mand of Roman Shuchevich and OUN group under the com­mand of Jaroslav Stazko entered Lvov with their first aim to announce re-estab­lish­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood. The Act of re-estab­lish­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood declared the inde­pen­dent pol­i­cy of Ukraine. By it, it has been stat­ed to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the Ukrain­ian peo­ple is con­tent nei­ther with an impe­r­i­al occu­pa­tion, nor with a com­mu­nist one ... it will con­tin­ue its strug­gle to the end.”

Upon enter­ing Lvov, the Nachti­gall divi­sion and OUN forces ini­ti­at­ed and con­duct­ed the unprece­dent­ed­ly hor­rif­ic mas­sacre of Lvov’s Jews known in his­to­ry as Lvov mas­sacre of June-July, 1941 in which at least sev­en-thou­sand Jews were bar­bar­i­cal­ly mur­dered. The exhi­bi­tion in Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment opened on July 3rd, the peak day of the hor­ren­dous Lvov mas­sacre, the one of the most ter­ri­ble geno­cides of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.
...

Oh, and that was just one of the exhi­bi­tions of this nature to open around this time. The Nation­al His­to­ry of Ukraine Muse­um in Kiev also had an exhib­it open­ing about “Righter for the Ukrain­ian State”, which appears to fea­ture art works cel­e­brat­ing the UPA:

...
At the same time, a sim­i­lar exhi­bi­tion called Fight­ers for the Ukrain­ian State opened at the Nation­al His­to­ry of Ukraine Muse­um in Kiev. That exhi­bi­tion was cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly vis­it­ed by Vice Prime Min­is­ter Vyach­eslav Kir­ilenko, as stat­ed on the Ukraine gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial web­site, who said: “It’s only rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly when we start­ed to get famil­iar with his­to­ry works, art works cel­e­brat­ing UPA (Ukrain­ian Patri­ot­ic Army, Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors and war crim­i­nals). It was a long way for Ukraine to rec­og­nize UPA, which is our com­mon his­to­ry.”
...

As one observ­er apt­ly put it, it would be like the Bun­destag open­ing an exhi­bi­tion cel­e­brat­ing the Third Reich. It’s lit­er­al­ly exact­ly like that. Except no one seems to care in this instance:

...
Dr. Rogatchi respond­ed to the exhi­bi­tion: “Just imag­ine that inside the Bun­destag today there would be a non-crit­i­cal exhi­bi­tion demon­strat­ing in full seri­ous­ness and with pride the Third Reich news­pa­pers from 1941 on col­or­ful big stands with cap­tions com­ment­ing that those slo­gans, poli­cies, events, doc­u­ments, and peo­ple who per­pe­trat­ed them were all ‘assur­ing and strength­en­ing Ger­many’s Inde­pen­dence and state­hood.

“Imag­ine the same thing at any par­lia­ment of any Euro­pean coun­try or 90% of the coun­tries world-wide, for that mat­ter. Imag­ine this being done at the Unit­ed Nations or UNESCO. They’d be called lunatics, quite cor­rect­ly.

“But this is exact­ly what’s going on today inside the Ukraine Par­lia­ment, and the world’s lead­ers are shy to con­demn. Or per­haps they’re unaware of it. After all, there were ‘just’ three big stands for ‘just’ four days, and the exhi­bi­tion was­n’t pub­lic, it was inside the Par­lia­ment, and one needs jour­nal­ist accred­i­ta­tion to get inside to be hon­ored to view this sheer Nazi salu­ta­tion.

“I’d like to hear the com­ment and reac­tion of Chan­cel­lor Merkel, the big patron of the cur­rent Ukraine and its lead­er­ship to that open glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hitler and Nazism as dis­played in the par­lia­ment of Ukraine. And I hope the State of Israel won’t tol­er­ate such open dec­la­ra­tion of pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies by the par­lia­ment of Ukraine.

“By orga­niz­ing and exhibit­ing this open glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Nazism, and iden­ti­fy­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood with it as done in this exhi­bi­tion, the Ukrain­ian leg­is­lat­ing body and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sent­ed by its Vice Prime Min­is­ter who vis­it­ed the exhi­bi­tion with a sup­port­ive speech, declared to the world who they are: Fol­low­ers of the Nazis. Peri­od. And they should be treat­ed like that, world-wide and offi­cial­ly. They asked for it them­selves. Nev­er before have the Ukrain­ian pro-Nazis gone that far. When giv­en free reign they enjoy it. And Europe and the rest of the world stay silent, again. Not one or anoth­er Nazi-glo­ri­fy­ing exhi­bi­tion in the mod­ern-day Ukraine, which is a dai­ly real­i­ty there, but Europe’s and the world’s ongo­ing numb­ness regard­ing it is out­ra­geous and intol­er­a­ble,” Rogatchi said.

So that was how the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment cel­e­brat­ed Ukraine’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor fas­cist mil­i­tary units back in July. Here’s how they’re cel­e­brat­ing them in August: “Glo­ry to Ukraine! — Glo­ry to the Heroes!”, the same slo­gan used by the UPA, is about to become the offi­cial slo­gan of the Ukrain­ian army in a few days:

IsraelNationalNews.com

Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor greet­ing becomes offi­cial Ukraine army salute

‘Glo­ry to Ukraine! Glo­ry to the Heroes! These words and this greet­ing will become Armed Forces of Ukraine offi­cial mil­i­tary greet­ing.’

Mordechai Sones, 16/08/18 18:28

August 24th, Ukrain­ian Inde­pen­dence Day, will see a cer­e­mo­ny intro­duc­ing the coun­try’s new offi­cial army salute, as pre­scribed by Ukraine’s Pres­i­den­tial decree: Glo­ry to Ukraine! — Glo­ry to the Heroes!

“We have con­sult­ed with the Min­is­ter of Defense, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil, Gov­ern­ment and I have decid­ed that start­ing from August 24 these words will be heard for the first time as part of the offi­cial mil­i­tary parade cer­e­mo­ny on the Inde­pen­dence Day of Ukraine,” Petro Poroshenko was quot­ed say­ing on the Ukraine Pres­i­den­t’s offi­cial site.

Glo­ry to Ukraine! — Glo­ry to the Heroes! is a slo­gan of the UPA, the Ukraine Rebel Army who fought on the side of the Nazis. The slo­gans, their ori­gin, and his­to­ry are well known in Ukraine, although the Pres­i­den­t’s web­site does not make men­tion of these. Present neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary for­ma­tions estab­lished by order of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties appro­pri­at­ed the slo­gan from the end of 2013 onward. Now, the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor’s greet­ing will become the offi­cial salute in that coun­try’s army.

...

The Head of State also not­ed the new mil­i­tary greet­ings will be enshrined offi­cial­ly in the doc­u­ments after the begin­ning of the Verk­hov­na Rada’s reg­u­lar ses­sion and Par­lia­men­t’s cor­re­spond­ing deci­sion, as it requires changes in par­tic­u­lar to statutes of all Armed Forces of Ukraine troops. But after com­ple­tion of prop­er pro­ce­dures, “these words and this greet­ing will become the offi­cial mil­i­tary greet­ings of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”.

...

“When the Croats use Ustasha salutes, it’s a source of con­cern,” said Swedish his­to­ri­an Sin­ga­pore Uni­ver­si­ty senior vis­it­ing fel­low Per Rudling. “When Ukraini­ans use the OUN salute it needs to be seen in a dif­fer­ent con­text, and a dif­fer­ent stan­dard need to be employed.”

In Ger­many and Aus­tria, as in many oth­er coun­tries, the mere men­tion of such slo­gans qual­i­fy one for crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment. Ukraini­ans are proud of their Nazi asso­ci­a­tions today and are enshrin­ing them as offi­cial pol­i­cy.

“If a coun­try adopts pro-Nazi slo­gans of crim­i­nal forces, mur­der­ers who com­mit­ted numer­ous crimes of geno­cide, that coun­try is doomed,” said co-founder and Pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion Dr. Inna Rogatchi. “But the world should­n’t turn a blind eye to this, as it repeat­ed­ly does with regard to Ukraine.”

———

“Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor greet­ing becomes offi­cial Ukraine army salute” by Mordechai Sones; IsraelNationalNews.com; 08/16/2018

“August 24th, Ukrain­ian Inde­pen­dence Day, will see a cer­e­mo­ny intro­duc­ing the coun­try’s new offi­cial army salute, as pre­scribed by Ukraine’s Pres­i­den­tial decree: Glo­ry to Ukraine! — Glo­ry to the Heroes!”

It’s offi­cial. Or at least it will be offi­cial soon: The slo­gan of UPA Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors is going to be the offi­cial slo­gan of the Ukrain­ian army:

...
“We have con­sult­ed with the Min­is­ter of Defense, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil, Gov­ern­ment and I have decid­ed that start­ing from August 24 these words will be heard for the first time as part of the offi­cial mil­i­tary parade cer­e­mo­ny on the Inde­pen­dence Day of Ukraine,” Petro Poroshenko was quot­ed say­ing on the Ukraine Pres­i­den­t’s offi­cial site.

Glo­ry to Ukraine! — Glo­ry to the Heroes! is a slo­gan of the UPA, the Ukraine Rebel Army who fought on the side of the Nazis. The slo­gans, their ori­gin, and his­to­ry are well known in Ukraine, although the Pres­i­den­t’s web­site does not make men­tion of these. Present neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary for­ma­tions estab­lished by order of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties appro­pri­at­ed the slo­gan from the end of 2013 onward. Now, the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor’s greet­ing will become the offi­cial salute in that coun­try’s army.
...

So how is the world going to respond to this lat­est offi­cial insult to his­to­ry? Well, the way Swedish his­to­ri­an Per Anders Rudling puts it, when, for instance, the Croa­t­ions start using Ustasha salutes that’s obvi­ous­ly a source of con­cern. But when Ukraine starts offi­cial­ly using OUN‑B and UPA slo­gans, “it needs to be seen in a dif­fer­ent con­text, and a dif­fer­ent stan­dard need to be employed”:

...
“When the Croats use Ustasha salutes, it’s a source of con­cern,” said Swedish his­to­ri­an Sin­ga­pore Uni­ver­si­ty senior vis­it­ing fel­low Per Rudling. “When Ukraini­ans use the OUN salute it needs to be seen in a dif­fer­ent con­text, and a dif­fer­ent stan­dard need to be employed.”

In Ger­many and Aus­tria, as in many oth­er coun­tries, the mere men­tion of such slo­gans qual­i­fy one for crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment. Ukraini­ans are proud of their Nazi asso­ci­a­tions today and are enshrin­ing them as offi­cial pol­i­cy.

“If a coun­try adopts pro-Nazi slo­gans of crim­i­nal forces, mur­der­ers who com­mit­ted numer­ous crimes of geno­cide, that coun­try is doomed,” said co-founder and Pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion Dr. Inna Rogatchi. “But the world should­n’t turn a blind eye to this, as it repeat­ed­ly does with regard to Ukraine.”
...

It would be nice of Rudling expand­ing on what exact­ly he meant by that, because it sounds like he’s sug­gest­ing that this con­text (a civ­il war and con­flict with Rus­sia) makes it fine for Ukraine to offi­cial­ly exalt its Nazi collaborating/sympathizing his­toric fig­ures who per­pe­trat­ed the Holo­caust in Ukraine. And yet, if we assume Rudling was indeed assert­ing that it’s ok if Ukraine embraces Nazis because of its cur­rent con­flicts, it’s hard to ignore the real­i­ty that this appears to large­ly be the atti­tude of the almost every gov­ern­ment in world at this point. For some rea­son almost every­one is total­ly cool with Ukraine going full Nazi.

At the same time, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that one Euro­pean coun­try after anoth­er has been open­ly embrac­ing the far right in recent years with a pret­ty mut­ed out­cry over­all. So in that sense, Ukraine isn’t actu­al­ly get­ting treat­ed by a dif­fer­ent stan­dard. It’s the same stan­dard of the world not car­ing when gov­ern­ments offi­cial­ly embrace the far right. Ukraine is just fur­ther along in that embrace.

And don’t for­get that the Croa­t­ian soc­cer team actu­al­ly kicked off a mem­ber who shout­ed the “Glo­ry to Ukraine” slo­gan dur­ing a World Cup match against Rus­sia. This is, of course, the same team that invit­ed a pro-Ustasha pop singer to its World Cup cel­e­bra­tions. So, at this point, the Croa­t­ian soc­cer team, which open­ly embraced a fas­cist pop star is still more respon­si­ble regard­ing the con­dem­na­tion of creep­ing fas­cism than most gov­ern­ments around the world. This is where we are.

The gov­ern­ment of the Lviv region­al coun­cil just passed a mora­to­ri­um on all Russ­ian-lan­guage books, films, and songs in Lviv province. The move prompt­ed no short­age of out­cry from var­i­ous diplo­mats. Canada’s ambas­sador called it dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and just plain dumb while the UK’s ambas­sador agreed with Canada’s ambas­sador and declared, “I could­n’t agree more. C’mon Lviv oblast, you’re bet­ter than this... (And I say this as a fan/student of both the Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian lan­guages) #tol­er­ance #diver­si­ty.” And as the arti­cle notes, it is indeed a gen­uine­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry law giv­en that Rus­sia is still wide­ly spo­ken in Lviv province. So it looks like the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment just pulled anoth­er eth­nona­tion­al­ist stunt one would expect from a bunch of Nazis and got the pre­dictable “stop act­ing like this because that just plays into Rus­si­a’s nar­ra­tive” response from Ukraine’s West­ern back­ers.

As the arti­cle also notes, the Lviv coun­cilors back­ing the bill called on oth­er regions to take sim­i­lar mea­sures, and said they planned to appeal to Ukraine’s par­lia­ment to intro­duce a bill to ban Russ­ian con­tent across the coun­try:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

Crit­ics Blast Lviv’s Ban On Russ­ian-Lan­guage Cul­ture

Christo­pher Miller
Sep­tem­ber 20, 2018 14:52 GMT

KYIV — It’s a mea­sure some Ukraini­ans claim is nec­es­sary to fight Rus­si­a’s potent “hybrid war­fare.”

But crit­ics, includ­ing West­ern diplo­mats in Kyiv, are blast­ing a mora­to­ri­um in west­ern Ukraine on all Russ­ian-lan­guage books, films, and songs as big­ot­ed and mis­guid­ed.

Fifty-sev­en of 84 region­al coun­cilors in Lviv, regard­ed by some as Ukraine’s cul­tur­al cap­i­tal, approved the region­wide ban on Sep­tem­ber 18.

The response has been large­ly mut­ed with­in Ukraine, where there are doubts about how ener­get­i­cal­ly it will be enforced, but some influ­en­tial out­siders are ques­tion­ing the move.

Canada’s ambas­sador to Ukraine, Roman Waschuk, respond­ed by call­ing it “just plain dumb.”

“The Lviv oblast ban as for­mu­lat­ed is nar­row-mind­ed, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and #just­plain­dumb. And I say this as a dias­poric native speak­er of Ukrain­ian, and con­sis­tent advo­cate of affir­ma­tive action for cul­tur­al prod­ucts in that lan­guage — but also #diver­si­ty,” he tweet­ed.

While Ukrain­ian is the pre­dom­i­nant lan­guage in west­ern Ukraine — espe­cial­ly in Lviv, a province with around 2.5 mil­lion res­i­dents — Russ­ian is still wide­ly spo­ken there.

Rus­sia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Penin­su­la in March 2014 and has backed a con­tin­u­ing sep­a­ratist con­flict in the coun­try’s east­ern Don­bas region. Moscow has cracked down on pro-Ukrain­ian activists and closed Ukrain­ian-lan­guage schools in Crimea, and more than 10,300 peo­ple have been killed in the con­flict, which drags on despite two peace deals and mul­ti­ple attempts at a cease-fire.

Accord­ing to the motion, a copy of which was pub­lished on the coun­cil’s web­site, the mora­to­ri­um aims to “over­come the con­se­quences of pro­longed lin­guis­tic Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” and will remain in place “until the [Russ­ian] occu­pa­tion of Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ries comes to an end.”

‘Play­ing Into Moscow’s Hands’

Moscow jus­ti­fied its inva­sion of Ukraine by claim­ing that the gov­ern­ment that came to pow­er in Kyiv after street unrest sent Krem­lin-friend­ly Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych into exile was dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Ukraine’s Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Some of Kyiv’s sub­se­quent mea­sures appear to have played into its crit­ics’ hands. In Sep­tem­ber, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed into law a con­tro­ver­sial bill that made Ukrain­ian the required lan­guage of study in state schools from the fifth grade on. The bill still allows stu­dents to study their native lan­guages as a sep­a­rate sub­ject.

Some Ukrain­ian politi­cians expressed their dis­con­tent, includ­ing Yev­geniy Murayev, a law­mak­er from the For Life oppo­si­tion par­ty. “As politi­cians and mem­bers of par­lia­ment are sup­posed to do, I speak the state lan­guage [Ukrain­ian] and use it to com­mu­ni­cate in mat­ters of the state,” he wrote on Face­book.

“But the rest of the time I do not use it in prin­ci­ple,” he added, as a sign of protest against what he called the gov­ern­men­t’s “cul­tur­al war.”

The pas­sage of the mora­to­ri­um on Russ­ian-lan­guage con­tent came as the city of Lviv opened its 25th annu­al book forum, the slo­gan for which is “Mar­ket of Free­dom.”

Judith Gough, the British ambas­sador to Kyiv, joined Waschuk in blast­ing the move, which she sug­gest­ed was intol­er­ant. “I could­n’t agree more. C’mon Lviv oblast, you’re bet­ter than this... (And I say this as a fan/student of both the Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian lan­guages) #tol­er­ance #diver­si­ty.”

...

‘How Things Have Changed’

Despite the mora­to­ri­um, it is unlike­ly that Russ­ian books will dis­ap­pear from store shelves or Russ­ian films will be inac­ces­si­ble, espe­cial­ly giv­en their avail­abil­i­ty online.

The coun­cil’s motion does not explain how it plans to enforce the mora­to­ri­um.

The Lviv coun­cilors who sup­port­ed the mea­sure called on oth­er regions to take sim­i­lar mea­sures, adding that they planned to appeal to the Verk­hov­na Rada, Ukraine’s par­lia­ment, to intro­duce a bill to ban Russ­ian con­tent across the coun­try.

Ukraine has already banned pop­u­lar Russ­ian social net­works and blocked the import of sev­er­al Russ­ian books.

It land­ed in hot water when a his­to­ry of the Bat­tle of Stal­in­grad authored by British his­to­ri­an and best­selling author Antony Beevor was dis­cov­ered to be among them.

Lament­ing the deci­sion of the Lviv region­al coun­cil and per­haps fear­ing a turn­ing point in Ukraine, Yuliya Kom­s­ka, the Ukrain­ian-born author of books about the Cold War and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Ger­man at Dart­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty, recalled a time when there was sup­port for lan­guage diver­si­ty from west to east. It showed itself when a Yanukovych-era law allow­ing minori­ties to intro­duce their lan­guages in regions where they rep­re­sent­ed more than 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion looked set to be repealed in Feb­ru­ary 2014, she explained in a tweet.

“My home­town, Lviv, switched to Russ­ian for a day, in protest. Donet­sk, then unoc­cu­pied, to Ukrain­ian,” she wrote. “Things could­n’t be more dif­fer­ent now.”

———-

“Crit­ics Blast Lviv’s Ban On Russ­ian-Lan­guage Cul­ture ” by Christo­pher Miller; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 09/20/2018

“But crit­ics, includ­ing West­ern diplo­mats in Kyiv, are blast­ing a mora­to­ri­um in west­ern Ukraine on all Russ­ian-lan­guage books, films, and songs as big­ot­ed and mis­guid­ed.”

Gee, that’s not wild­ly divi­sive an inflam­ma­to­ry or any­thing: a com­plete ban on all Russ­ian-lan­guage books, films, and songs. This was backed by 57 of the 84 regions coun­cilors and the response with­in Urkaine has been large­ly mut­ed despite the fact that Russ­ian is still wide­ly used in the region:

...
Fifty-sev­en of 84 region­al coun­cilors in Lviv, regard­ed by some as Ukraine’s cul­tur­al cap­i­tal, approved the region­wide ban on Sep­tem­ber 18.

The response has been large­ly mut­ed with­in Ukraine, where there are doubts about how ener­get­i­cal­ly it will be enforced, but some influ­en­tial out­siders are ques­tion­ing the move.

...

While Ukrain­ian is the pre­dom­i­nant lan­guage in west­ern Ukraine — espe­cial­ly in Lviv, a province with around 2.5 mil­lion res­i­dents — Russ­ian is still wide­ly spo­ken there.
...

The diplo­mat­ic response was the typ­i­cal “see no evil, hear no evil, sud­den­ly call out evil when it’s too obvi­ous to ignore, go back to not see­ing or hear­ing evil” kind of response we should expect at this point:

...
Canada’s ambas­sador to Ukraine, Roman Waschuk, respond­ed by call­ing it “just plain dumb.”

“The Lviv oblast ban as for­mu­lat­ed is nar­row-mind­ed, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and #just­plain­dumb. And I say this as a dias­poric native speak­er of Ukrain­ian, and con­sis­tent advo­cate of affir­ma­tive action for cul­tur­al prod­ucts in that lan­guage — but also #diver­si­ty,” he tweet­ed.

...

Judith Gough, the British ambas­sador to Kyiv, joined Waschuk in blast­ing the move, which she sug­gest­ed was intol­er­ant. “I could­n’t agree more. C’mon Lviv oblast, you’re bet­ter than this... (And I say this as a fan/student of both the Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian lan­guages) #tol­er­ance #diver­si­ty.”
...

And as we should also expect, it’s being frames as “play­ing into Moscow’s hands”, as opposed to sim­ply being a reflec­tion of the extrem­ist eth­nona­tion­al­ist that has gripped much of the nation and stands in the way of an mean­ing­ful peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process:

...
‘Play­ing Into Moscow’s Hands’

Moscow jus­ti­fied its inva­sion of Ukraine by claim­ing that the gov­ern­ment that came to pow­er in Kyiv after street unrest sent Krem­lin-friend­ly Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych into exile was dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Ukraine’s Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Some of Kyiv’s sub­se­quent mea­sures appear to have played into its crit­ics’ hands. In Sep­tem­ber, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed into law a con­tro­ver­sial bill that made Ukrain­ian the required lan­guage of study in state schools from the fifth grade on. The bill still allows stu­dents to study their native lan­guages as a sep­a­rate sub­ject.

Some Ukrain­ian politi­cians expressed their dis­con­tent, includ­ing Yev­geniy Murayev, a law­mak­er from the For Life oppo­si­tion par­ty. “As politi­cians and mem­bers of par­lia­ment are sup­posed to do, I speak the state lan­guage [Ukrain­ian] and use it to com­mu­ni­cate in mat­ters of the state,” he wrote on Face­book.

“But the rest of the time I do not use it in prin­ci­ple,” he added, as a sign of protest against what he called the gov­ern­men­t’s “cul­tur­al war.”

The pas­sage of the mora­to­ri­um on Russ­ian-lan­guage con­tent came as the city of Lviv opened its 25th annu­al book forum, the slo­gan for which is “Mar­ket of Free­dom.”
...

“Some of Kyiv’s sub­se­quent mea­sures appear to have played into its crit­ics’ hands.” LOL! Yeah, some of the stuff Kyiv does sure plays into its crit­ics’ hands. Like mak­ing Andriy Paru­biy — a co-founder of of Ukraine’s Nation­al Social­ist par­ty in the 90’s — the cur­rent speak­er of the par­lia­ment. That def­i­nite­ly ‘played into Moscow’s hands’. It’s fun­ny how these far right ‘oop­sies’ keep hap­pen­ing.

And note how the law the Lviv region­al coun­cil passed states that the ban will remain in effect “until the [Russ­ian] occu­pa­tion of Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ries comes to an end”:

...
Rus­sia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Penin­su­la in March 2014 and has backed a con­tin­u­ing sep­a­ratist con­flict in the coun­try’s east­ern Don­bas region. Moscow has cracked down on pro-Ukrain­ian activists and closed Ukrain­ian-lan­guage schools in Crimea, and more than 10,300 peo­ple have been killed in the con­flict, which drags on despite two peace deals and mul­ti­ple attempts at a cease-fire.

Accord­ing to the motion, a copy of which was pub­lished on the coun­cil’s web­site, the mora­to­ri­um aims to “over­come the con­se­quences of pro­longed lin­guis­tic Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” and will remain in place “until the [Russ­ian] occu­pa­tion of Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ries comes to an end.”
...

Keep in mind that these moves that appear to explicite­ly be tar­get­ing Russ­ian speak­ers were some of the main cat­a­lysts for gen­er­at­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for the sep­a­ratists move­ments in the first place. So the Lviv region­al coun­cil just passed a law that expires once a last­ing peace is achieved while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mak­ing that last­ing peace a lot less like­ly.

And this high­ly inflam­ma­to­ry law might not be lim­it­ed to the Lviv region. Its back­ers are already call­ing on oth­er regions to take sim­i­lar mea­sures and are push­ing to make it a nation­al law:

...
‘How Things Have Changed’

Despite the mora­to­ri­um, it is unlike­ly that Russ­ian books will dis­ap­pear from store shelves or Russ­ian films will be inac­ces­si­ble, espe­cial­ly giv­en their avail­abil­i­ty online.

The coun­cil’s motion does not explain how it plans to enforce the mora­to­ri­um.

The Lviv coun­cilors who sup­port­ed the mea­sure called on oth­er regions to take sim­i­lar mea­sures, adding that they planned to appeal to the Verk­hov­na Rada, Ukraine’s par­lia­ment, to intro­duce a bill to ban Russ­ian con­tent across the coun­try.

Ukraine has already banned pop­u­lar Russ­ian social net­works and blocked the import of sev­er­al Russ­ian books.

It land­ed in hot water when a his­to­ry of the Bat­tle of Stal­in­grad authored by British his­to­ri­an and best­selling author Antony Beevor was dis­cov­ered to be among them.
...

And note that when Yuliya Kom­s­ka, the Ukrain­ian-born author of books about the Cold War and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Ger­man at Dart­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty, laments how much more sup­port for diver­si­ty there used to be and recalls how Lviv switched to Russ­ian for a day in protest when sim­i­lar mea­sures looked like­ly to pass in 2014, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that she’s actu­al­ly refer­ring to one of the very first things the post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment did and which strong encour­age sep­a­ratist sen­ti­ments at the time:

...
Lament­ing the deci­sion of the Lviv region­al coun­cil and per­haps fear­ing a turn­ing point in Ukraine, Yuliya Kom­s­ka, the Ukrain­ian-born author of books about the Cold War and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Ger­man at Dart­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty, recalled a time when there was sup­port for lan­guage diver­si­ty from west to east. It showed itself when a Yanukovych-era law allow­ing minori­ties to intro­duce their lan­guages in regions where they rep­re­sent­ed more than 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion looked set to be repealed in Feb­ru­ary 2014, she explained in a tweet.

“My home­town, Lviv, switched to Russ­ian for a day, in protest. Donet­sk, then unoc­cu­pied, to Ukrain­ian,” she wrote. “Things could­n’t be more dif­fer­ent now.”
...

So it’s worth tak­ing a quick look back on how that late-Feb­ru­ary 2014 move by the post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment to rescind a 2012 law that would have allowed Russ­ian to be treat­ed by an offi­cial lan­guage (and any oth­er lan­guage spo­ken by 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of a region) not only fueled the sep­a­ratists in the break­away regions like Donet­sk, but also made the pop­u­la­tion of Crimea strong­ly against the new gov­ern­ment. When peo­ple won­der why such a high per­cent­age of Crimea’s pop­u­la­tion actu­al­ly sup­port­ed the ref­er­en­dum to join Rus­sia, it was stuff like the move to re-ban Russ­ian, pushed by Svo­bo­da and its far right allies, right after the col­lapse of the Yanukovych gov­ern­ment that appeared to con­firm their worst fears:

Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor

Is it too late for Kiev to woo Russ­ian-speak­ing Ukraine?

A series of mis­steps may mean the new gov­ern­ment in Kiev has lost what influ­ence it had in Ukraine’s Rus­sia-friend­ly south­ern regions.

By Sabra Ayres Cor­re­spon­dent
Sev­astopol, Ukraine
Feb­ru­ary 28, 2014

With Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces now in Crimea and the region­al gov­ern­ment claim­ing loy­al­ty to impeached Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, it looks as if the new gov­ern­ment in Kiev may have already lost any influ­ence it had in Ukraine’s south­ern regions.

But if Kiev los­es the most­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tions in the east as well as the south, many say much of the fault will be at the hands of the lead­ers of the antigov­ern­ment protests in Kiev and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion lead­ers, who have done very lit­tle to woo vot­ers in these regions. As a result, the coun­try is now more deeply divid­ed than it ever has been its 23 years of inde­pen­dence.

“They don’t take our opin­ion into account on the Maid­an,” says Andrey Foman, refer­ring to Kiev’s Inde­pen­dence Square. The actor, from Sim­fer­opol, stood with demon­stra­tors out­side the Crimean par­lia­ment this week and showed sup­port for greater inte­gra­tion with Rus­sia. “This is a clash of two cul­tures now in Ukraine.”

Mr. Foman’s com­plaint of not being con­sult­ed about the gov­ern­ment reshuf­fle is a com­mon theme among Russ­ian-speak­ing Ukraini­ans. In many ways, they are right.

The antigov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions that start­ed in late Novem­ber were sparked by Mr. Yanukovych’s back­track­ing on a cam­paign promise he had made to sign a trade and asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment with the Euro­pean Union. The demon­stra­tions spi­raled into an antigov­ern­ment, anti­cor­rup­tion move­ment that called for Yanukovych’s removal. Ukraini­ans across the coun­try agree that cor­rup­tion with­in the rul­ing elite has plagued the coun­try for too long and hin­dered its devel­op­ment.

But the protests on the Maid­an evolved into a move­ment in which nation­al­ist groups devel­oped a key role. This wor­ried the Russ­ian-lean­ing east and south, which are dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized areas, where a large per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion is employed by state-sub­si­dized, Sovi­et-era indus­tries. They val­ue polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty above all else, and fear that inte­gra­tion into the Euro­pean Union will erode the basic stan­dards of liv­ing they have now. They are nos­tal­gic about the Sovi­et Union and believe many of the west­ern Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II.

Oppor­tu­ni­ty missed?

Most Maid­an sup­port­ers say that they are not anti-Russ­ian; in fact, it’s not uncom­mon to hear even the more rad­i­cal nation­al­ist groups, such as the Right Sec­tor, speak­ing Russ­ian to each oth­er. The Right Sec­tor leader, Dmit­ry Yarosh, is from the east­ern city of Dniprodz­erzhyn­sk. The issue of which lan­guage to speak has not been a focal point in the three-month long demon­stra­tions.

But Russ­ian media chan­nels – which dom­i­nate the air­waves in the east and south of Ukraine – have broad­cast dai­ly images of Mr. Yarosh and oth­er ski-masked, body-armor-clad pro­test­ers on the Maid­an, talk­ing about build­ing a new Ukraine and dis­card­ing the old, Sovi­et ways and influ­ence of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

These pic­tures over­shad­owed what most pro­test­ers on the Maid­an said was the main goal of their move­ment: Oust Yanukovych and reboot the entire cor­rupt sys­tem in order to take Ukraine toward a more pros­per­ous future, where the rule of law and human rights would be respect­ed.

Some say the oppo­si­tion lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing the Maid­an move­ment could have done more to ral­ly sup­port for such an anti­cor­rup­tion, pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment. But a lack of action in the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions on the lead­ers’ part meant the tele­vi­sion images won out.

“Nobody ever tried to com­mu­ni­cate with the peo­ple of east­ern Ukraine or Crimea,” says Sergey Chep­ik, direc­tor of the Agency of Social-Polit­i­cal Mod­el­ing, a think tank in the east­ern city of Donet­sk.

...

Lin­guis­tic mis­step

Per­haps the most obvi­ous of the new Kiev gov­ern­men­t’s mis­takes came last week, when deputies in the nation­al­ist par­ty Svo­bo­da, or Free­dom, pushed through the can­cel­la­tion of a law that gave equal sta­tus to minor­i­ty lan­guages, such as Russ­ian.

The pre­vi­ous law had allowed regions across the coun­try to use lan­guages oth­er than the offi­cial nation­al lan­guage, Ukrain­ian, on com­mer­cial signs, in schools and gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments. When it passed in 2012, it was seen as a vic­to­ry for the areas where Russ­ian was the dom­i­nant lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the east and south. The law also applied to areas in Ukraine in which oth­er lan­guages, such as Roman­ian, Hun­gar­i­an, and Tatar, are spo­ken by small­er eth­nic groups.

The can­cel­la­tion of this lan­guage law only served to infu­ri­ate Russ­ian-speak­ing regions, who saw the move as more evi­dence that the antigov­ern­ment protests in Kiev that man­aged to top­ple Mr. Yanukovy­ch’s gov­ern­ment were intent on press­ing for a nation­al­is­tic agen­da. It only deep­ened ten­sions in the Crimea, for exam­ple, where the idea that the pro­test­ers on Maid­an were rad­i­cal fas­cists.

“This was a very bad deci­sion that they made in Kiev,” says Vik­tor Neganov, a region­al advis­er in Sev­astopol for the new­ly appoint­ed inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Arsen Avakov. “It pro­voked the peo­ple here and was not nec­es­sary.”

In prac­tice, the can­cel­ing of the minor­i­ty-lan­guage pro­tec­tion law will not affect life in Sev­astopol, or the rest of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing areas of Ukraine, Neganov says. “But sym­bol­i­cal­ly, it is a big deal. It shows that they in Kiev are not tak­ing into account what peo­ple down here think are impor­tant.”

The Crimean sit­u­a­tion

As a result, any poten­tial for trust in the new gov­ern­ment has been lost in places like Sev­astopol, where this week the pop­u­la­tion declared over­whelm­ing­ly that they were pro-Rus­sia. They would not, they said, be ruled by Kiev, where nation­al­ists are try­ing to erad­i­cate their Russ­ian cul­ture, lan­guage and val­ues.

But in Crimea, there like­ly was lit­tle Maid­an lead­ers could have done to win them over. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in Sev­astopol, where the Russ­ian Black Sea Fleet is based and res­i­dents see their city as Russ­ian. When Russ­ian armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers were seen on the high­ways around this city, many greet­ed them as old friends return­ing back home.

“They should have come in a lot ear­li­er. If Yanukovych had been a real leader, he would have crushed those fas­cists in Kiev way before it got to this stage,” says Roman, a taxi dri­ver in Sev­astopol as he passed sev­er­al of the Russ­ian armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers on the high­way about 10 miles out­side of the city.

As the Russ­ian mil­i­tary pres­ence increased in Crimea Fri­day and the Ukrain­ian inte­ri­or min­istry declared it an “armed inva­sion,” the dif­fi­cul­ty Kiev faces in con­vinc­ing Sevastopol’s pop­u­la­tion of 350,000 to rec­og­nize the author­i­ty of the new cen­tral gov­ern­ment inten­si­fied.

“The present Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was formed at the square. It was done before the legit­i­mate Rada con­firmed their can­di­da­cies,” Mr. Chep­ik says. “If tomor­row there will be anoth­er Maid­an, and they will form anoth­er gov­ern­ment? Keep in mind that there are 45 mil­lion Ukraini­ans” – and they are like­ly to want a say in the process, he added.

———-

“Is it too late for Kiev to woo Russ­ian-speak­ing Ukraine?” by Sabra Ayres; Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 02/28/2014

“But if Kiev los­es the most­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tions in the east as well as the south, many say much of the fault will be at the hands of the lead­ers of the antigov­ern­ment protests in Kiev and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion lead­ers, who have done very lit­tle to woo vot­ers in these regions. As a result, the coun­try is now more deeply divid­ed than it ever has been its 23 years of inde­pen­dence.”

As was obvi­ous to any­one watch­ing the sit­u­a­tion unfold­ing at that time, the accep­tance of the far right right into the post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment more or less made the sep­a­ratist move­ment inevitable. Because it’s hard to imag­ine a more divi­sive act than have a gov­ern­ment that was large­ly sup­port­ed by Ukraine’s large Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­lace and replac­ing it with a gov­ern­ment com­prised of peo­ple who define all things Russ­ian as a nation­al threat. But that’s what hap­pened, which is why so much of what has unfold­ed in Ukraine was trag­i­cal­ly pre­dictable:

...

“They don’t take our opin­ion into account on the Maid­an,” says Andrey Foman, refer­ring to Kiev’s Inde­pen­dence Square. The actor, from Sim­fer­opol, stood with demon­stra­tors out­side the Crimean par­lia­ment this week and showed sup­port for greater inte­gra­tion with Rus­sia. “This is a clash of two cul­tures now in Ukraine.”

Mr. Foman’s com­plaint of not being con­sult­ed about the gov­ern­ment reshuf­fle is a com­mon theme among Russ­ian-speak­ing Ukraini­ans. In many ways, they are right.

The antigov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions that start­ed in late Novem­ber were sparked by Mr. Yanukovych’s back­track­ing on a cam­paign promise he had made to sign a trade and asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment with the Euro­pean Union. The demon­stra­tions spi­raled into an antigov­ern­ment, anti­cor­rup­tion move­ment that called for Yanukovych’s removal. Ukraini­ans across the coun­try agree that cor­rup­tion with­in the rul­ing elite has plagued the coun­try for too long and hin­dered its devel­op­ment.

But the protests on the Maid­an evolved into a move­ment in which nation­al­ist groups devel­oped a key role. This wor­ried the Russ­ian-lean­ing east and south, which are dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized areas, where a large per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion is employed by state-sub­si­dized, Sovi­et-era indus­tries. They val­ue polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty above all else, and fear that inte­gra­tion into the Euro­pean Union will erode the basic stan­dards of liv­ing they have now. They are nos­tal­gic about the Sovi­et Union and believe many of the west­ern Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II.
...

Also note how the fact that Dmit­ry Yarosh, leader of the neo-Nazi Right Sec­tor group, hails from the east­ern city of Dniprodz­erzhyn­sk and speaks Russ­ian was hilar­i­ous­ly cit­ed as an exam­ple of how most of the Maid­an sup­port­ers weren’t anti-Russ­ian. It was quite pos­si­bly the worst exam­ple of a non-anti-Russ­ian Maid­an sup­port the arti­cle could have picked:

...
Oppor­tu­ni­ty missed?

Most Maid­an sup­port­ers say that they are not anti-Russ­ian; in fact, it’s not uncom­mon to hear even the more rad­i­cal nation­al­ist groups, such as the Right Sec­tor, speak­ing Russ­ian to each oth­er. The Right Sec­tor leader, Dmit­ry Yarosh, is from the east­ern city of Dniprodz­erzhyn­sk. The issue of which lan­guage to speak has not been a focal point in the three-month long demon­stra­tions.

But Russ­ian media chan­nels – which dom­i­nate the air­waves in the east and south of Ukraine – have broad­cast dai­ly images of Mr. Yarosh and oth­er ski-masked, body-armor-clad pro­test­ers on the Maid­an, talk­ing about build­ing a new Ukraine and dis­card­ing the old, Sovi­et ways and influ­ence of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

These pic­tures over­shad­owed what most pro­test­ers on the Maid­an said was the main goal of their move­ment: Oust Yanukovych and reboot the entire cor­rupt sys­tem in order to take Ukraine toward a more pros­per­ous future, where the rule of law and human rights would be respect­ed.

Some say the oppo­si­tion lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing the Maid­an move­ment could have done more to ral­ly sup­port for such an anti­cor­rup­tion, pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment. But a lack of action in the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions on the lead­ers’ part meant the tele­vi­sion images won out.

“Nobody ever tried to com­mu­ni­cate with the peo­ple of east­ern Ukraine or Crimea,” says Sergey Chep­ik, direc­tor of the Agency of Social-Polit­i­cal Mod­el­ing, a think tank in the east­ern city of Donet­sk.
...

But as the arti­cle accu­rate­ly not­ed, it was the can­cel­la­tion of a 2012 law that gave equal treat­ment to minor­i­ty lan­guages like Russ­ian that infu­ri­at­ed the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions. It was a response that was com­plete­ly obvi­ous at at the time, espe­cial­ly in places like Crimea:

...
Lin­guis­tic mis­step

Per­haps the most obvi­ous of the new Kiev gov­ern­men­t’s mis­takes came last week, when deputies in the nation­al­ist par­ty Svo­bo­da, or Free­dom, pushed through the can­cel­la­tion of a law that gave equal sta­tus to minor­i­ty lan­guages, such as Russ­ian.

The pre­vi­ous law had allowed regions across the coun­try to use lan­guages oth­er than the offi­cial nation­al lan­guage, Ukrain­ian, on com­mer­cial signs, in schools and gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments. When it passed in 2012, it was seen as a vic­to­ry for the areas where Russ­ian was the dom­i­nant lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the east and south. The law also applied to areas in Ukraine in which oth­er lan­guages, such as Roman­ian, Hun­gar­i­an, and Tatar, are spo­ken by small­er eth­nic groups.

The can­cel­la­tion of this lan­guage law only served to infu­ri­ate Russ­ian-speak­ing regions, who saw the move as more evi­dence that the antigov­ern­ment protests in Kiev that man­aged to top­ple Mr. Yanukovy­ch’s gov­ern­ment were intent on press­ing for a nation­al­is­tic agen­da. It only deep­ened ten­sions in the Crimea, for exam­ple, where the idea that the pro­test­ers on Maid­an were rad­i­cal fas­cists.

“This was a very bad deci­sion that they made in Kiev,” says Vik­tor Neganov, a region­al advis­er in Sev­astopol for the new­ly appoint­ed inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Arsen Avakov. “It pro­voked the peo­ple here and was not nec­es­sary.”

In prac­tice, the can­cel­ing of the minor­i­ty-lan­guage pro­tec­tion law will not affect life in Sev­astopol, or the rest of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing areas of Ukraine, Neganov says. “But sym­bol­i­cal­ly, it is a big deal. It shows that they in Kiev are not tak­ing into account what peo­ple down here think are impor­tant.”
...

So it should have come as no sur­prise when the pop­u­lace of Crimea, which was large­ly eth­nic-Russ­ian, over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed to join Rus­sia. The new gov­ern­ment was lit­er­al­ly pass­ing laws that appeared to be aimed at them:

...
The Crimean sit­u­a­tion

As a result, any poten­tial for trust in the new gov­ern­ment has been lost in places like Sev­astopol, where this week the pop­u­la­tion declared over­whelm­ing­ly that they were pro-Rus­sia. They would not, they said, be ruled by Kiev, where nation­al­ists are try­ing to erad­i­cate their Russ­ian cul­ture, lan­guage and val­ues.

But in Crimea, there like­ly was lit­tle Maid­an lead­ers could have done to win them over. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in Sev­astopol, where the Russ­ian Black Sea Fleet is based and res­i­dents see their city as Russ­ian. When Russ­ian armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers were seen on the high­ways around this city, many greet­ed them as old friends return­ing back home.

“They should have come in a lot ear­li­er. If Yanukovych had been a real leader, he would have crushed those fas­cists in Kiev way before it got to this stage,” says Roman, a taxi dri­ver in Sev­astopol as he passed sev­er­al of the Russ­ian armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers on the high­way about 10 miles out­side of the city.

As the Russ­ian mil­i­tary pres­ence increased in Crimea Fri­day and the Ukrain­ian inte­ri­or min­istry declared it an “armed inva­sion,” the dif­fi­cul­ty Kiev faces in con­vinc­ing Sevastopol’s pop­u­la­tion of 350,000 to rec­og­nize the author­i­ty of the new cen­tral gov­ern­ment inten­si­fied.

“The present Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was formed at the square. It was done before the legit­i­mate Rada con­firmed their can­di­da­cies,” Mr. Chep­ik says. “If tomor­row there will be anoth­er Maid­an, and they will form anoth­er gov­ern­ment? Keep in mind that there are 45 mil­lion Ukraini­ans” – and they are like­ly to want a say in the process, he added.
...

Note that the 2014 can­cel­ing of that 2012 law was quick­ly rescind­ed, but the dam­age was done. And the dam­age con­tin­ues to be done with moves like what the Lviv region­al coun­cil just did.

Also note that broad sup­port for join­ing Rus­sia remains the case today among Crimea’s pop­u­lace. Now why might that be?

And in oth­er Lviv news...

It looks like the main­stream­ing of vig­i­lante neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine now includes glow­ing nation­al TV new cov­er­age: A group of C14 mem­bers, along with the ‘Kyiv Munic­i­pal Watch’ orga­ni­za­tion which is led by C14 activist Ser­hiy Bon­dar, car­ried out anoth­er raid on a group of Roma. This time they were dri­ven out of the area around the South­ern Rai­ly­way Sta­tion in Kyiv. Bon­dar post­ed a video of raid on his Face­book page on Octo­ber 24, which he enti­tled “A purge of gyp­sies at the capital’s rail­way sta­tion”. Bon­dar then back­tracked and claimed that C14 were mere­ly tak­ing videos of “gyp­sies who rob peo­ple” and that the police were the ones who actu­al­ly con­duct­ed the raid. That same day, the TSN.ua news broad­cast report­ed on the raid, where the news pre­sen­ter vir­tu­al­ly par­rots part of Bon­dar’s video and nev­er men­tions the eth­nic­i­ty of the tar­gets. The fea­ture is sim­ply enti­tle: ‘Police and civic activists tried to clean the capital’s sta­tion of thieves’:

Kharkiv Human Rights Group

Neo-Nazi C14 vig­i­lantes appear to work with Kyiv police in lat­est ‘purge’ of Roma

25.10.2018 | Halya Coy­nash

Mem­bers of the neo-Nazi C14 move­ment, togeth­er with the ‘Kyiv Munic­i­pal Watch’ civic orga­ni­za­tion which is led by C14 activist Ser­hiy Bon­dar, have car­ried out anoth­er raid, dri­ving Roma cit­i­zens out of the area around the South­ern Rail­way Sta­tion in Kyiv. The raid does not appear to have been accom­pa­nied by shock­ing images of vio­lence like some five oth­ers this year, but that is the only pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. What is much more dis­turb­ing is that the action appears to have been with the coop­er­a­tion of the police, and was essen­tial­ly giv­en glow­ing cov­er­age on a nation­al tele­vi­sion news broad­cast.

Bon­dar post­ed a video on his Face­book page on 24 Octo­ber, togeth­er with a cap­tion read­ing (in his words): “A purge of gyp­sies at the capital’s rail­way sta­tion”. He lat­er began back­track­ing, claim­ing that they had not dri­ven any­body away that they had sim­ply post­ed videos “with gyp­sies who rob peo­ple” – as their “eth­nic trade” — and that the police, to their amaze­ment, had done it them­selves.

It is worth not­ing that the above lan­guage, and worse, are used exten­sive­ly by Bon­dar and oth­er C14 activists. This is just one of the rea­sons for con­cern at indi­ca­tions that these far-right vig­i­lantes appear to be work­ing close­ly with the police. That is cer­tain­ly the impres­sion giv­en by the TSN.ua news broad­cast on 24 Octo­ber, which Bon­dar proud­ly post­ed on his FB page. It is small won­der that he was pleased since the pre­sen­ter of the fea­ture vir­tu­al­ly par­rots parts of the C14 video, with only two Roma peo­ple dri­ven out shown in a neg­a­tive light. There is one telling detail, name­ly that the tele­vi­sion pro­gram is care­ful­ly not to eth­ni­cal­ly label the peo­ple dri­ven out, with the fea­ture enti­tled: ‘Police and civic activists tried to clean the capital’s sta­tion of thieves’. It does, how­ev­er, show the activists wear­ing cam­ou­flage gear and chevrons clear­ly show­ing the C14 sym­bol, and lit­tle effort would be required to find out how C14 presents its vig­i­lante activ­i­ties, and why this orga­ni­za­tion has gained noto­ri­ety over recent months.

There may well be a prob­lem with thieves at Kyiv sta­tions, and there is lit­tle sense in clos­ing ones eyes to the fact that some of the Roma who come to Kyiv and live tem­porar­i­ly near the sta­tions are involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. Thieves should undoubt­ed­ly be stopped, but that is the task of the police, not of C14 vig­i­lantes with racist views, a a shock­ing track record and open­ly declared will­ing­ness to cause trou­ble to people’s ‘ene­mies’ for mon­ey.

There have been a min­i­mum of five attacks on Roma camps since April this year; with the last leav­ing one young man dead and a woman and child injured. All of the attacks — at Lysa Hora in Kyiv on 21–22 April; Rudne on 9 May; the Ternopil Oblast on 22 May; at Holosiyiv Park in Kyiv on 7 June and near Lviv on 24 June — seem to have been car­ried out by activists involved in far-right groups. One C14 activist, Ser­hiy Mazur, was recent­ly placed under house arrest over charges relat­ing to the attack on a Roma set­tle­ment on Lysa Hora in Kyiv.

As report­ed, there was effec­tive­ly a pogrom on April 21–22, with fam­i­lies dri­ven out and their makeshift homes burned. All of this was described in detail, albeit with euphemisms, by Mazur on his Face­book page.

The Kyiv police con­tin­ued to down­play this raid by vig­i­lantes with neo-Nazi lean­ings right up until 25 April when the Inter­net pub­li­ca­tion LB.ua post­ed a video show­ing whole fam­i­lies run­ning in ter­ror from young men, many in masks, hurl­ing stones and spray­ing gas can­is­ters in the direc­tion where fam­i­lies with some very small chil­dren were try­ing to take shel­ter. One Roma man can be seen on the video try­ing to use a thin branch in defence, but then real­iz­ing he is out­num­bered and also flee­ing. That evening the Kyiv police final­ly announced that a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion had been ini­ti­at­ed. Human rights activists are report­ed­ly work­ing to ensure that the police keep their promise and change the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the crime from ‘hooli­gan­ism’ to that of a hate crime under Arti­cle 161 of the Crim­i­nal Code.

It was notice­able, and wor­ry­ing, that in his report on 19 April, Mazur assert­ed that the C14 activists had first appeared, with an ulti­ma­tum to get out by the fol­low­ing day, togeth­er with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Holosiyiv admin­is­tra­tion.

...

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“Neo-Nazi C14 vig­i­lantes appear to work with Kyiv police in lat­est ‘purge’ of Roma”; Halya Coy­nash; Kharkiv Human Rights Group; 10/25/2018

“Mem­bers of the neo-Nazi C14 move­ment, togeth­er with the ‘Kyiv Munic­i­pal Watch’ civic orga­ni­za­tion which is led by C14 activist Ser­hiy Bon­dar, have car­ried out anoth­er raid, dri­ving Roma cit­i­zens out of the area around the South­ern Rail­way Sta­tion in Kyiv. The raid does not appear to have been accom­pa­nied by shock­ing images of vio­lence like some five oth­ers this year, but that is the only pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. What is much more dis­turb­ing is that the action appears to have been with the coop­er­a­tion of the police, and was essen­tial­ly giv­en glow­ing cov­er­age on a nation­al tele­vi­sion news broad­cast.”

This is how bad the neo-Nazi sit­u­a­tion is in Ukraine: the most dis­turb­ing aspect of these neo-Nazi vig­i­lante attacks is the grow­ing pub­lic embrace of them. An embrace that, in this instance, includ­ed the Kyiv police and the TSN.ua news broad­cast:

...
Bon­dar post­ed a video on his Face­book page on 24 Octo­ber, togeth­er with a cap­tion read­ing (in his words): “A purge of gyp­sies at the capital’s rail­way sta­tion”. He lat­er began back­track­ing, claim­ing that they had not dri­ven any­body away that they had sim­ply post­ed videos “with gyp­sies who rob peo­ple” – as their “eth­nic trade” — and that the police, to their amaze­ment, had done it them­selves.

It is worth not­ing that the above lan­guage, and worse, are used exten­sive­ly by Bon­dar and oth­er C14 activists. This is just one of the rea­sons for con­cern at indi­ca­tions that these far-right vig­i­lantes appear to be work­ing close­ly with the police. That is cer­tain­ly the impres­sion giv­en by the TSN.ua news broad­cast on 24 Octo­ber, which Bon­dar proud­ly post­ed on his FB page. It is small won­der that he was pleased since the pre­sen­ter of the fea­ture vir­tu­al­ly par­rots parts of the C14 video, with only two Roma peo­ple dri­ven out shown in a neg­a­tive light. There is one telling detail, name­ly that the tele­vi­sion pro­gram is care­ful­ly not to eth­ni­cal­ly label the peo­ple dri­ven out, with the fea­ture enti­tled: ‘Police and civic activists tried to clean the capital’s sta­tion of thieves’. It does, how­ev­er, show the activists wear­ing cam­ou­flage gear and chevrons clear­ly show­ing the C14 sym­bol, and lit­tle effort would be required to find out how C14 presents its vig­i­lante activ­i­ties, and why this orga­ni­za­tion has gained noto­ri­ety over recent months.
...

So it will be inter­est­ing to learn if the police did actu­al­ly car­ry out the raids on the Roma and C14 mem­bers mere­ly filmed the Roma, basi­cal­ly act­ing as spot­ters for the police as Bon­dar lat­er claimed and the news broad­cast par­rot­ed, or if that was just a pub­lic rela­tions move the media was hap­py to play along with. Either way it would be pret­ty damn dis­turb­ing.

AND, to top it all off, the Ukrain­ian lead­er­ship has good diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with Ben­jamin Netanyahu’s Israel.