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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: We have spoken repeatedly about the Nazi tract “Serpent’s Walk,” in which the Third Reich goes underground, buys into the opinion-forming media and, eventually, takes over.
Hitler, the Third Reich and their actions are glorified and memorialized.
Something similar is happening today in Ukraine.
In 2015, a book was published, examining the life of Stepan (also transliterated as “Stephan”) Bandera, the Ukrainian fascist and Third Reich ally whose political heirs ascended to power in Ukraine through the Maidan coup. CORRECTION: Mr. Emory, working from memory, misidentified the publication in which Daniel Lazare’s article appeared. It was Jacobin Magazine, not Counterpunch.
We have repeatedly made the point that the dimensions of official lying in the West were of truly Orwellian proportions–documented World War II history was being dismissed as “Russian propaganda” or “Kremlin propaganda.”
” . . . But thanks to Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe’s Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist, it now seems clear: those terrible Russians were right. . . Although Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third Reich as no more than ‘tactical,’ an attempt to pit one totalitarian state against another, it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fascist regime had in Slovakia or Ante Pavelic’s in Croatia. . . .”
Indeed. This is the point we have been making for many years.
The Ukrainian government continues its reversal of the documented history of World War II: An exhibit celebrating “Ukrainian independence” revels in the OUN/B, Nazi-allied forces that ascended in Ukraine after the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union.
” . . . . An exhibition inside the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada last week glorified the leading Ukrainian Nazi collaborators of World War II. . . . ‘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. . . .”
In addition, the official salute of the OUN/B is set to become the official salute of the Ukrainian army. ” . . . . ‘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. . . . 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. . . .”
Not only has the UPA salute become the official salute of the Ukrainian army, but it has become the official salute of the police as well. ” . . . . Also, the law on the National Police was amended. According to it, when the police officers are in line for the greeting of the leader or senior officer, when they hear the salute ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ they reply ‘Glory to Heroes’. The same actions take place during the parting. . . .”
As discussed in FTR #‘s 1004 and 1014, the fascist Svoboda Party’s militia, C14, and the Nazi Azov Battalion’s National Druzhyna militia have been incorporated into the Ukrainian police establishment. This is not surprising since Vadim Troyan, the former Deputy Commander of the Azov Battalion became: head of the Kyiv police, acting head of the National Police and then Deputy Interior Minister to OUN/B acolyte Arsen Avakov, the main patron of the Azov Battalion.
C14’s police cadre has conducted another ethnic cleansing raid against Roma, while receiving favorable coverage from major Ukrainian media: ” . . . . 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. . . . 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. . . .”
Additional perspective on the physical, political and historical reality underlying the salute “Glory to Ukraine–Glory to the Heroes” is the slogan’s display on a monument to the massacre of the 600 residents of the Polish town of Janowa Dolina by the UPA. ” . . . . On the night of April 22–23 (Good Friday), 1943, the Ukrainians from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, together with local peasants, attacked Janowa Dolina. Some 600 people, including children and the elderly, were brutally murdered (see Massacres of Poles in Volhynia). Most homes were burned to the ground and the settlement deserted. The perpetrators, commanded by Ivan Lytwynchuk (aka Dubowy) exercised rare cruelty. Poles, unprepared and caught by surprise, were hacked to death with axes, burned alive, and impaled (including children). The murderers did not spare anyone, regardless of age and sex. German garrison, numbering around 100 soldiers, did not act and remained in its barracks. After the first wave of murders, the Ukrainian nationalists started searching the hospital. They carried its Ukrainian patients away from the building, while Polish patients were burned alive.[2] Dr Aleksander Bakinowski, together with his assistant Jan Borysowicz, were hacked to death on the square in front of the hospital. In several cases, Ukrainians were murdered for trying to hide their Polish neighbours. Petro Mirchuk, Ukrainian historian, counted several hundred massacred Poles, with only eight UPA members killed. . . .”
To put the salute of the brutal murderers of the residents of the town on a monument commemorating the massacre is surreal.
It is stunning to take stock of the open celebration of the OUN/B’s Nazi alliance by the institutions of the Maidan government, including celebrations of atrocities like Janowa Dolina:
- President Petro Poroshenko laid a wreath at the site of the Babi Yar Massacre, honoring the OUN/B. The Schutzmannschaft, who did much of the dirty work at Babi Yar, were culled from the ranks of the UPA, the military wing of the OUN/B.
- The city of Lviv (Lvov) in Western Ukraine has established Skhukhevychfest, to honor Roman Schukhevych, who led the Nachtigall Battalion in their massacre of the Jewish citizens of that city. The “fest” coincides with the date of the commencement of the execution. To get some idea of what they are celebrating, examine this photographic essay of the pogrom. The OUN/UPA pogromists specialized in what were called “street humiliations”–the stripping, exhibiting and sexual abuse of female victims of the violence. It seems that the #MeToo movement missed this one!
- Ukraine has established a government ministry to stand World War II history on its head–the Orwellian-titled Institute of National Memory.
- The lustration laws forbid negative commentary about the UPA or the OUN/B.
Key Ukrainian national security personnel have given hard proof of their Nazi orientation, including:
- Former Ukrainian intelligence officer Vasily Vovk, who called for the extermination of Ukraine’s Jews on his Facebook page. (Vovk was in charge of the “investigation” of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.)
- In FTR #1024, we noted that Anatoliy Matios–Ukraine’s top military prosecutor and pivotally involved in the investigation of the Maidan sniper attacks, has manifested Nazi-style anti-Semitism.
The program concludes with two items that exemplify the focus of FTR #1021 FascisBook: (In Your Facebook, Part 3–part‑3/A Virtual Panopticon, Part 3.)
Marjana Batjuk, posted birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on her Facebook page on April 20 (Hitler’s birthday). She also taught her students the Nazi salute and even took some of her students to meet far right activists who had participated in a march wearing the uniform of the the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. ” . . . A public school teacher in Ukraine allegedly posted birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on Facebook and taught her students the Nazi salute. Marjana Batjuk, who teaches at a school in Lviv and also is a councilwoman, posted her greeting on April 20, the Nazi leader’s birthday . . . . She also took some of her students to meet far-right activists who over the weekend marched on the city’s streets while wearing the uniform of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, an elite Nazi unite with many ethnic Ukrainians also known as the 1st Galician. . . .”
That was back in April. Flash forward to today and we find a sudden willingness by Facebook to ban people for post Nazi content . . . except it’s Eduard Dolinsky getting banned for making people aware of the pro-Nazi graffiti that has become rampant in Ukraine: ” . . . . He says that some locals are trying to silence him because he is critical of the way Ukraine has commemorated historical nationalist figures, ‘which is actually denying the Holocaust and trying to whitewash the actions of nationalists during the Second World War.’ . . . . Ironically, the activist opposing antisemitism is being targeted by antisemites who label the antisemitic examples he reveals as hate speech. ‘They are specifically complaining to Facebook for the content, and they are complaining that I am violating the rules of Facebook and spreading hate speech. So Facebook, as I understand [it, doesn’t] look at this; they are banning me and blocking me and deleting these posts.’ . . . .”
Facebook’s policy on such issues should be more carefully scrutinized: ” . . . . Facebook has been under scrutiny recently for who it bans and why. In July founder Mark Zuckerberg made controversial remarks appearing to accept Holocaust denial on the site. ‘I find it offensive, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think they’re doing it intentionally.’ . . . .”
1. The fundamental standing of Eastern European history on its head continues, with a Ukrainian parliament exhibition glorifying the OUN/B and the UPA.
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.
2. “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.
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”. . . .
3. It’s official: Ukraine’s parliament just approved the bill making “Glory to Ukraine!” the official military salute. Also, the law on the the National Police was also amended to make “Glory to Ukraine!” the official greeting and parting for Ukraine’s police officers.:
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the draft law #9036 that provides the implementation of the military salute “Glory to Ukraine!” and the reply “Glory to Heroes!” at the second reading and generally. 271 MPs voted in the affirmative as 112 Ukraine broadcasted.The salute “Glory to Ukraine!” and the reply “Glory to Heroes!” is provided in the drill regulations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Moreover, the ritual of the raising of the state flag of Ukraine was regularized in the statute of the internal service of the Armed Forces. According to the current legislation, during the delivery of the flag, a person welcomes the personnel with its receiving and the soldiers reply with tripled “Glory”. The law provides that during the delivery of the flag, a person welcomes the personnel with the words “Glory to Ukraine!” and they reply “Glory to Heroes!”.
During the elaboration of the law for the second reading, a word “comrade” was replaced by “Mr. or Madam” in the statute of the internal service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and drills charter of the forces.
Also, the law on the National Police was amended. According to it, when the police officers are in line for the greeting of the leader or senior officer, when they hear the salute “Glory to Ukraine!” they reply “Glory to Heroes”. The same actions take place during the parting. . . .
4. Additional perspective on the physical, political and historical reality underlying the “Glory to Ukraine–Glory to the Heroes” is the slogan’s display on a monument to the massacre of the 600 residents of the Polish town of Janowa Dolina by the UPA.
“Janowa Dolina Massacre;” Wikipedia
The Janowa Dolina massacre took place on 23 April 1943 in the village of Janowa Dolina, (now Bazaltove, Ukraine) during occupation of Poland in World War II. Before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of the Polish Second Republic, Janowa Dolina was a model settlement built in the Kostopol County of the Wołyń Voivodeship by workers of the Polish State Basalt Quarry. The town was inhabited by 2,500 people. Its name, which translates as the “Jan’s Valley” in Polish, came from the Polish king Jan Kazimierz, who reportedly hunted in the Volhynian forests, and after hunting — rested on the shore of the Horyń (Horyn) River. The town was destroyed during World War II by Ukrainian nationalists who murdered most of its Polish population including women and children. . . .
. . . . In June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Janowa Dolina was added to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. As Volhynia was the area of activity for various Ukrainian nationalist groups whose aim was to cleanse the land of Poles and Jews, the settlement’s fate was inevitable. On the night of April 22–23 (Good Friday), 1943, the Ukrainians from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, together with local peasants, attacked Janowa Dolina. Some 600 people, including children and the elderly, were brutally murdered (see Massacres of Poles in Volhynia). Most homes were burned to the ground and the settlement deserted.
The perpetrators, commanded by Ivan Lytwynchuk (aka Dubowy) exercised rare cruelty. Poles, unprepared and caught by surprise, were hacked to death with axes, burned alive, and impaled (including children). The murderers did not spare anyone, regardless of age and sex. German garrison, numbering around 100 soldiers, did not act and remained in its barracks. After the first wave of murders, the Ukrainian nationalists started searching the hospital. They carried its Ukrainian patients away from the building, while Polish patients were burned alive.[2] Dr Aleksander Bakinowski, together with his assistant Jan Borysowicz, were hacked to death on the square in front of the hospital. In several cases, Ukrainians were murdered for trying to hide their Polish neighbours. Petro Mirchuk, Ukrainian historian, counted several hundred massacred Poles, with only eight UPA members killed. . . .
5. The mainstreaming of vigilante 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, Roma were driven out of the area around the Southern Railway Station in Kyiv. Bondar posted a video of raid on his Facebook page on October 24, which he titled “A purge of gypsies at the capital’s railway station”. That same day, the TSN.ua news broadcast reported on the raid, where the newscaster virtually parrots part of Bondar’s video and never mentions the ethnicity of the targets. The feature is simply titled: ‘Police and civic activists tried to clean the capital’s station of thieves’:
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. . . .
6. Next is an article about a Ukrainian school teacher in Lviv, Marjana Batjuk, who posted birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on her Facebook page on April 20 (Hitler’s birthday). She also taught her students the Nazi salute and even took some of her students to meet far right activists who had participated in a march wearing the uniform of the the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.
Batjuk, who is a member of Svoboda, later claimed her Facebook account was hacked, but a news organization found that she has a history of posting Nazi imagery on social media networks.
A public school teacher in Ukraine allegedly posted birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on Facebook and taught her students the Nazi salute.Marjana Batjuk, who teaches at a school in Lviv and also is a councilwoman, posted her greeting on April 20, the Nazi leader’s birthday, Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told JTA. He called the incident a “scandal.”
She also took some of her students to meet far-right activists who over the weekend marched on the city’s streets while wearing the uniform of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, an elite Nazi unite with many ethnic Ukrainians also known as the 1st Galician.
Displaying Nazi imagery is illegal in Ukraine, but Dolinsky said law enforcement authorities allowed the activists to parade on main streets.
Batjuk had the activists explain about their replica weapons, which they paraded ahead of a larger event in honor of the 1st Galician unit planned for next week in Lviv.
The events honoring the 1st Galician SS unit in Lviv are not organized by municipal authorities.
Batjuk, 28, a member of the far-right Svoboda party, called Hitler “a great man” and quoted from his book “Mein Kampf” in her Facebook post, Dolinsky said.She later claimed that her Facebook account was hacked and deleted the post, but the Strana news site found that she had a history of posting Nazi imagery on social networks.
She also posted pictures of children she said were her students performing the Nazi salute with her.
…
Education Ministry officials have started a disciplinary review of her conduct, the KP news site reported.
Separately, in the town of Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, Dolinsky said a swastika and the words “heil Hitler” were spray-painted Friday on a monument for Holocaust victims of the Holocaust. The vandals, who have not been identified, also wrote “Death to the kikes.”
In Odessa, a large graffiti reading “Jews into the sea” was written on the beachfront wall of a hotel.
“The common factor between all of these incidents is government inaction, which ensures they will continue happening,” Dolinsky said.
———-
7. That was back in April. Flash forward to today and we find a sudden willingness to ban people for post Nazi content…except it’s Eduard Dolinsky getting banned for making people aware of the pro-Nazi graffiti that has become rampant in Ukraine:
Eduard Dolinksy, a prominent Ukrainian Jewish activist, was banned from posting on Facebook Monday night for a post about antisemitic graffiti in Odessa. Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said he was blocked by the social media giant for posting a photo. “I had posted the photo which says in Ukrainian ‘kill the yid’ about a month ago,” he says. “I use my Facebook account for distributing information about antisemitic incidents and hate speech and hate crimes in Ukraine.”
Now Dolinsky’s account has disabled him from posting for thirty days, which means media, law enforcement and the local community who rely on his social media posts will receive no updates.
Dolinsky tweeted Monday that his account had been blocked and sent The Jerusalem Post a screenshot of the image he posted which shows a badly drawn swastika and Ukrainian writing. “You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked from using this feature,” Facebook informs him when he logs in. “The block will be active for 29 days and 17 hours,” it says. “To keep from getting blocked again, please make sure you’ve read and understand Facebook’s Community Standards.”
Dolinksy says that he has been targeted in the past by nationalists and anti-semites who oppose his work. Facebook has banned him temporarily in the past also, but never for thirty days. “The last time I was blocked, the media also reported this and I felt some relief.
It was as if they stopped banning me. But now I don’t know – and this has again happened. They are banning the one who is trying to fight antisemitism. They are banning me for the very thing I do.”
Based on Dolinsky’s work the police have opened criminal files against perpetrators of antisemitic crimes, in Odessa and other places.
He says that some locals are trying to silence him because he is critical of the way Ukraine has commemorated historical nationalist figures, “which is actually denying the Holocaust and trying to whitewash the actions of nationalists during the Second World War.”
Dolinksy has been widely quoted, and his work, including posts on Facebook, has been referenced by media in the past. “These incidents are happening and these crimes and the police should react.
The society also. But their goal is to cut me off.”
Ironically, the activist opposing antisemitism is being targeted by antisemites who label the antisemitic examples he reveals as hate speech. “They are specifically complaining to Facebook for the content, and they are complaining that I am violating the rules of Facebook and spreading hate speech. So Facebook, as I understand [it, doesn’t] look at this; they are banning me and blocking me and deleting these posts.”
He says he tried to appeal the ban but has not been successful.
“I use my Facebook exclusively for this, so this is my working tool as director of Ukrainian Jewish Committee.”
Facebook has been under scrutiny recently for who it bans and why. In July founder Mark Zuckerberg made controversial remarks appearing to accept Holocaust denial on the site. “I find it offensive, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think they’re doing it intentionally.” In late July, Facebook banned US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for bullying and hate speech.
In a similar incident to Dolinsky, Iranian secular activist Armin Navabi was banned from Facebook for thirty days for posting the death threats that he receives. “This is ridiculous. My account is blocked for 30 days because I post the death threats I’m getting? I’m not the one making the threat!” he tweeted.
…
When will you put the download version up?
@Sue–
It will be up in about a week.
Best,
Dave
Here’s a story that should hammers home to Americans one of the dangers of the systematic coddling of the Ukrainian government’s embrace of neo-Nazi and fascists: The FBI arrested four members of a California-based neo-Nazi group, Rise Above Movement (RAM). They’re charged with a series of violent attacks in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino, California, in 2017. The Huntington Beach rally happened to be a pro-Trump rally. The neo-Nazis were, of course, there in support of Trump.
Four other members of RAM were arrested earlier in October in connection with charges over the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, VA, “Unite the Right” march.
Here’s where Ukrainian neo-Nazi, government supported Ukrainian neo-Nazis, come into the story: according to the FBI, three of recently arrested RAM member had traveled to Germany, Italy, and Ukraine in the spring of this year to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday. And according to the FBI, this trip wasn’t just about celebrating Hitler. It was also about network with European neo-Nazis. And one of those European neo-Nazis just happened to be Olena Semenyaka, described as a leading figure within the fascist, neo-Nazi scene in Eastern Europe and an important voice within the Militant Zone and National Corps organizations and the Pan-European Reconquista movement, all of which have ties to the Azov Battalion. Recall that Noationa Corp (or National Corpus) is the political wing of the Azov Battalion.
Semenyaka has also acted as a spokesperson for Right Sector. In 2014, Semenyaka was openly inviting non-Ukrainian neo-Nazis to join Right Sector, declaring that “even modern Nazi sympathizers will find their place in our broad ranks” and that Right Sector’s most important current task is to “liberate” Ukraine “from collaborators, separatists and marionettes of Russia and the West.” So just as RAM may have been recruiting during its trip to Europe, you have to wonder if Semenyaka was trying to recruit them too. It’s all one big horrible Nazi family.
And it doesn’t sound like was an unusual meeting with American neo-Nazis and the Azov Battalion: According to the FBI, Azov has participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacist organizations. You have to wonder how intense to the radicalization must be to radicalize a organization that’s already white supremacist, but that’s what the FBI describes.
So if it wasn’t already totally obvious to Americans that official embrace of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is a really, really stupidly dangerous thing for the American government to support, hopefully the fact that those Ukrainian neo-Nazis are training and further radicalizing US neo-Nazis will help make that clear:
“Robert Rundo, a 28-year-old Huntington Beach, California, resident, 29-year-old Michael Paul Miselis, of Lawndale, California, and 25-year-old Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beach went to Germany, Italy and Ukraine in spring 2018 not only to celebrate, but also to meet with European white supremacist groups, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint against Rundo unsealed this week.”
It’s quite a vacation for a neo-Nazi: celebrating Hitler’s birthday with European neo-Nazis. But RAM’s neo-Nazi networking was limited to these personal meetings. Federal prosecutors are also charging the four arrested men with using the internet to coordinate “combat training,” recruit members and organize riots. Neo-Nazi networking has a lot of options these days:
The charges over the Huntington Beach violence stem from a pro-Trump rally, where these RAM members split off from the main pro-Trump group and attacked a number of counter-protesters, including two journalists:
And this is the second group of individuals arrested from RAM in October. Another four members were arrested in connection with the Charlottesville violence last year on charges of rioting and conspiracy to riot. So RAM has clearly been doing quite a bit a networking of late, foreign and domestic:
But it’s the particular neo-Nazis that RAM met in Europe that make this such a scandalous story: they met with a leading figure in the European neo-Nazi scene who just happens to be an important voice for Azov’s National Corps. And according to the FBI, Azov is known for training and radicalizing (further radicalizing) US-based Nazi organizations:
“Bierwirth said Azov Battalion, now a piece of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for neo-Nazi symbolism and ideology and has participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacist organizations.”
And that’s what’s so disturbing about this report. It’s not just that a leading figure in Azov met with these RAM members during their ‘Hitler holiday’ in Europe. It’s that this apparently isn’t the only US-based neo-Nazi group that Azov has been meeting with and training.
It’s especially disturbing when you consider the role the US has played in training Azov. Don’t forget that it was only March of this year when Congress formally banned US funds being used to train and equip Azov, suggesting that there was 3 years when the US was actually training and equipping Azov since that practice reportedly started in 2015. So it’s entirely possible that the training RAM or other US neo-Nazi outfits have received from Azov over the past several years has indirectly came from the US military.
Of course, given the fact that Azov is now absorbed into the Ukrainian military, it’s not like the group suffers from a lack of sources for military training. Which, again, is why the acceptance in the West of Ukraine’s embrace of these neo-Nazi is so dangerously disturbing: these neo-Nazis aren’t just receiving military training. They’re sharing that training. Including with US neo-Nazis.
Here’s another story that involves a disturbing relationship between Ukraine’s state-sanctioned neo-Nazis in the police: Kateryna Handzyuk, a Ukrainian civic activist known for her criticism of the police corruption, just died several months after being attacked with sulfuric acid outside of her home in July 31st of this year. As the following article notes, it’s just one of numerous attacks on Ukraine’s civic activists this year, albeit a particularly gruesome one.
The attacker ran away and police initially called the case an act of hooliganism. Additionally, Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general and a presidential appointee, said activists were themselves partly to blame for all of these attacks because they “stir up” an “atmosphere of total hatred toward the authorities.” Keep in mind that Handzyuk accused a department head in the Kherson Regional Police of demanding a 3 percent cut from all contracts and tenders in the region in September of 2017. It resulted in a court case that she won.
On August 3, authorities arrested an initial suspect. But this individual was widely seen as a scapegoat and eventually released on August 22 after he was able to establish an alibi which was back up by a Ukrainian newspaper. By then, there were 5 new suspects who happen to be members of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, a splinter faction of Right Sector. Four of these new suspects claim that the fifth suspect, Serhiy Torbin, was the main suspect. Torbin was a former officer of Kherson police.
So it appears that a group of Right Sector neo-Nazis attacked one of Ukraine’s civic activists who was known for criticizing Kherson Region police corruption, and the leader of this group was, himself, a former Kherson police officer. After the attack, authorities first tried to blame it on hooliganism while blaming the activist community in Ukraine for bringing this violence on themselves. And it was only after an initial scapegoat had their alibi verified by a local news outlet that authorities arrested the real culprits:
“Her death comes amid a wave of attacks against Ukraine’s civic activists, with rights campaigners claiming law-enforcement agencies have failed to thoroughly investigate the cases and may even be complicit in some of the attacks.”
That’s part of what’s so disturbing about this attack: it’s not just an attack on Ukraine’s beseiged civic activist community. Ukraine’s authorities appear to, at a minimum, welcome the attack and might even have been complicit. At a minimum, the initial declaration of “hooliganism” appears to be a kind of trollish endorsement:
Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, even blamed the activists themselves for these attacks for ‘stirring up’ hatred towards authorities, presumably in reference to Handzyuk exposure of corruption in the Kherson Regional Police last year:
But Lutsenko was also presumably excusing all the other unsolved attacks Ukrainian activists since 2017. At least 55 of them:
And it was only after the initial scapegoat was release that authorities arrested 5 members of a Right Sector offshoot group, one of which was a former Kherson police officer:
Now here’s an article that discusses the initial scapegoat who was arrested. He had a pretty strong alibi: he wasn’t in Kherson at the time of the attack, which was later confirmed through an investigation by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper:
“Police arrested a suspect in the attack, Mykola Novikov, on Aug. 3. But he was widely believed to be a scapegoat. His sister said he had an alibi since he was not in Kherson at the time of the attack, which was later confirmed through an investigation by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper. On Aug. 22, police released Novikov.”
So the initial suspect, Mykola Novikov, had an alibi, but it was up to a Ukrainian newspaper to actually verify that alibi.
And now that the five Right Sector culprits have been arrested, several of them have basically admitted to the attack, while pinning the ultimate blame on a member of their group who happens to be a former Kherson officer:
As we can see, if those journalists hadn’t verified Mykola Novikov’s alibi, the actual perpetrators probably would have gone free.
So why did it take journalists to verify Novikov alibi? Well, according to the following article from August 14th (two weeks after the attack), the Kherson police simply didn’t interview people who claimed to be witnesses backing up that alibi. And also stalled on handing over documents to the SBU after the SBU got involved in the investigation:
“New and very disturbing details have emerged regarding the police investigation into the savage acid attack on Kateryna Handziuk, an adviser to the Mayor of Kherson and a civic activist known for her hard-hitting criticism of the police. Not only are the Kherson police obstructing the investigation by the SBU [Security Service], but they are also showing suspiciously little interest in interviewing people who can provide their suspected assailant with a firm alibi for 31 July, when the attack took place.”
This was situation before the Right Sector suspects were found: the Kherson police weren’t actually looking into their initial suspects alibi, nor were they cooperating with the SBU. It certainly looks like the Kherson police didn’t actually want to find the real suspects:
At the same time, the police did in fact question the campsite administrator and a barman at Novikov had indeed been camping with his sister and another couple during the time they claimed he was with them. But these witnesses couldn’t confirm that Novikov was actually there on July 31st, the day of the attack. But the couple that Novikov and his sister were camping with could indeed confirm that he was with them that day, and yet the police haven’t approached them:
In addition, after the SBU started its own investigation on August 6th, the Kherson police still hadn’t given them the police file as of the date of this report (August 14th). It’s an odd delay for such a high profile crime:
And when Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko open the SBU’s investigation after meeting with Handziuk, he appeared to describe the attack as having taken been commissioned by “by police or state agency staff, with the support of separatist organizations in the South of Ukraine, in order to destabilize the socio-political situation in this southern region of the country.” So Lutsenko appeared to be blaming in on the police and Ukrainian separatists:
Keep in mind that Lutsenko was blaming “separatist organizations in the South of Ukraine” before the Right Sector suspects emerged. Keep in mind that the Kherson region is adjacent to Crimea, so that proximity presumably had something to do with the initial suspicions that it was an act of “separatist organizations in the South of Ukraine”. But given that the neo-Nazis groups like Right Sector have been openly terrorizing Ukraine’s civic activist community for years, largely with impunity, it’s an example of how the obvious suspects in these attacks on Ukraine’s civic activist community are almost reflexively protected and coddled by Ukraine’s authorities. So while the Kherson police appeared to be trying to protect that actual perpetrators of this crime, we have to keep in mind that the SBU was also probably not very interested in discovering that this was done by Right Sector.
It’s also worth noting that protestors have been demanding that both Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Lutsenko resign in the wake of Handziuk’s death. Recall that Avakov is a patron of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and is generally seen as close to the far right. So it’s looking like the murder of Handziuk and subsequent cover up attempt is leading to a public boiling point over the Ukrainian government’s close ties and protection of groups like Right Sector that are terrorizing Ukraine’s civil society. Lutsenko offered his resignation to the parliament on November 6th after members of parliament criticized his office’s investigation of the attack on Handziuk. The parliament didn’t accept his resignation, but did vote to set up a commission to investigate Lutsenko’s investigation of Handziuk’s attack. That’s how wildly corrupt this investigation looks: even Ukraine’s parliament agreed to investigate the investigation.:
“Lutsenko announced his resignation at parliamentary hearings on Nov. 6 after members of parliament criticized his office’s investigation of the attack on activist Kateryna Gandziuk, who died two days earlier.”
Yep, Lutsenko announced his resignation following the criticism of the Handziuk attack investigation, although it looks like the resignation offer was purely a show intended to placate those demanding a parliamentary commission to investigate the murder:
Also keep in mind that Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy is, himself, a neo-Nazi who actually founded Ukraine’s National Socialist Party in 1991.
So we have the parliament stage a kind of sham vote rejecting Lutsenko’s resignation, but then the parliament also votes to create a commission investigating the attack. It’ll be interesting to see the quality of this commission. But given the attention this murder is getting, the pressure is going to be on for the parliament to produce some sort of results that don’t look like a sham, with 84 NGO signing on statement demanding Lutsenko’s resignation over the handing of this investigation and a host of other investigations that have yet to be solved, including the Maidan sniper attacks:
Don’t forget that evidence strongly suggests that the sniper attacks were carried about by the far right elements of the Maidan protests. And Lutsenko himself warned the Ukrainian public in 2016 that they will be shocked when they learn about the people involved with those attacks having ties to the Maidan protests. Also note that the murder of Pavlo Sheremet appears to have been an assassination by the SBU. So it’s going to be interesting to see what, if anything, this new parliamentary commission uncovers.
So as we can see, the murder of Kateryna Handziuk is a particularly grim example of the extent which Ukraine’s government has embraced and protected the far right groups terrorizing the country, but still only one of many examples. Which is a particularly grim situation for Ukraine.
The Associated Press has a report on one of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi military training youth camps. In this case it’s a Svoboda youth camp, with kids as young as 8 years old. The children at the camp are taught never to aim guns at people, but are also taught that “separatists, little green men, occupiers from Moscow” aren’t people so it’s fine to aim at them.
But the dehumanizing propaganda isn’t limited to Russian and separatists. They are also teaching the children to battle “challenges that could completely destroy” European civilization. Challenges like LGBT rights, which they are told are perversions of “the modern Bolsheviks who have come to power in Europe”. The article doesn’t give other examples of these “challenges” to European civilization but given the neo-Nazi ideology at work here it’s a safe bet that human rights in general are seen as a ‘challenge’. So as we can see, these Ukrainian children are being taught that Russians and non-far right Europeans are enemies of European civilization that these children must go to war against:
“The campers, some clad in combat fatigues, carefully aim their assault rifles. Their instructor offers advice: Don’t think of your target as a human being.”
Don’t think of your target as a human being. That’s the kind of training these kids are getting. And dehumanizing their targets isn’t just a mental trick they’re told to employ in order to get over any qualms they might have about shooting someone. They’re literally getting indoctrinated into far right ideologies that tell the kids Russians and separatists aren’t actually human:
But it’s not just the Russians these kids are taught to dehumanize and view as existential threats to Ukraine. European human rights, like LGBT rights, are seen as “perversions of modern Bolsheviks who have come to power in Europe” that could completely destroy European civilization:
And not how the teenagers playing a guitar with a “White Europe is Our Goal” had a sticker of a bomb hitting a mosque. Given the lack of any large scale Muslim migration into Ukraine, it highlights how white supremacist narratives being fed to these kids are part of a pan-European narrative. They aren’t just fighting for a “White Ukraine”, but a “White Europe”. You have to wonder if this is a reflection of the influence of the non-Ukrainian neo-Nazis who have come to Ukraine in recent years to fight in these neo-Nazi ‘volunteer battalions’. It also highlights how the rest of Europe shouldn’t expect the consequences of the promotion of neo-Nazi ideologies in Ukraine to stay in Ukraine:
Finally, the article mentions how Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports earmarked about $150,000 to fund neo-Nazi youth camps that aren’t focused on military training but instead purely promoting a ‘nationalist’ neo-Nazi ideology:
What the article left out is that one of the groups to get those youth camp funds was C14, the group literally named after the ’14 words’ white supremacist slogan minted by American neo-Nazi David Lane. Which, again, highlights how the strains of neo-Nazi ideology getting aggressively pushed onto Ukraine’s youth aren’t far right ideologies focused only on Ukrainian ‘nationalism’. Instead, what we’re seeing is Ukraine being turned into a hub for the international white supremacy movement. It’s one of the grand ironies of the use of the term ‘nationalism’ these days: it’s almost always used as a euphemism for transnational movement with global ambitions. A transnational movement that Europe is going to have to be dealing with for decades to come. These neo-Nazi kids are going to grow up and become adult neo-Nazis, after all. Adult neo-Nazis with a “White Europe” goal and military training.
The question of ‘who started it’ is once again central to the situation in Ukraine now that Russian seized three Ukrainian ships and Ukraine responded by declaring martial law. And while this is widely being reported in the West as some sort of planned provocation by the Kremlin, possibly in anticipation of a new military conflict, the following analysis in bne Intellinews raises a number of important questions of which side ‘started it’.
As the article points out, from a political analysis standpoint the obvious beneficiary of this incident is Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s wildly unpopular president who is facing reelection in March and badly trailing his rival, Yulia Tymoshenko. As the article also points out, boosting Poroshenko’s chances makes little sense from the Kremlin’s perspective because they would likely prefer Yulia Tymoshenko to win instead simply because she would be more likely to cut a deal with Kremlin.
The article also makes this important observation about how Western governments likely view the choice between Tymoshenko and Poroshenko: Tymoshenko has made opposition to the IMF’s austerity demands one of her key popular rallying cries. In other words, if Tymoshenko wins, the ongoing Western-backed austerity policies could be at risk which, in turn, could put Ukraine’s access to IMF credit at risk. And if Tyoshenko gets Ukraine kicked off of the IMF’s line of credit the only other realistic alternative creditor is Ukraine’s traditional creditor: Russia. So it’s not just the Poroshenko-allied bloc of politicians who have a strong incentive to see Poroshenko win in the upcoming elections. Ukraine’s Western allies who have long been pushing the country to impose harsh austerity on the public (under the auspices of ‘anti-corruption’ campaigns) also have a big incentive to see Poroshenko defeat Tymoshenko. And that all would make a Kremlin plot to increase the military tensions with Ukraine months before those elections a rather odd and highly unstrategic move.
The article also notes some discrepancies with the actual audio and video evidence of the incident presented by the Ukrainians: The 2003 agreement Russia and Ukraine signed over the Kersh passage to the Sea of Azov requires that ships coordinate their passage with Russian authorities and take on a pilot to help them navigate the straits due to the fact that the Kerch straits are full of shallows and rocks and difficult to navigate. The right of passage is not automatic or guaranteed and Ukrainian ships are obliged to comply with the protocols. When Ukraine moved military frigates through the Kersh straits back in September there was no problem.
This time, however, Russia is claiming that the three ships didn’t hail Kersh port for permission and didn’t respond to hails from the Russian coastguard when they approached Russian territorial waters. The Russians further claim that the ramming of the tug boat took place in Russia’s undisputed territorial waters on the eastern side of the straits. The article notes that there are multiple conflicting reports on where the ramming took place, but that navigation records should be able to clear this up because ship locations are carefully tracked due to the dangerous nature of the straits.
The Ukrainians have subsequently released audio of the Russian ships talking to each other by radio. The audio depicts panicked Russian captains trying to decide what to do. Additionally, the Russian captains describe Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as being panicked too. “[Russian Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev is panicking,” claims one of the Russians on the audio, adding, “We should assault them. We have to destroy them,” and “It seems that the president is in control of all of that sh it.” The reference to “the president” is presumably Putin. So it sounds like both Medvedev and Putin were directly involved in deciding the response and it was a somewhat panicked response. The Russian captains then discuss the arrival of 10 men with “incredible physical skills” within the hour, which is in reference to the Russian Special Operations troops who actually boarded and seized the Ukrainian ships. As the article points out, if this was indeed a Russian provocation it would be surprising if the Kremlin was actually panicking about it.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, claim that the Ukrainian ships did actually hail the Kersh authorities and did ask for permission to pass through the strait. So we don’t have a situation where Russia is asserting new powers and authority over the strait that wasn’t previously agreed to. Instead, it’s a situation where Russia is claiming that the Ukrainian ships broke the existing rules and Ukraine is claiming the rules were adhered to. One of the sides is simply lying about what happened. Interestingly, as the article notes, the Ukrainian side released audio of the Russian captains speaking over the radio, but no audio of the Ukrainian captains asking for permission. So while there’s no conclusive evidence of what exactly transpired, there should be conclusive evidence in the form of radio audio but the Ukrainian side hasn’t presented that evidence for some reason:
“But there is a question that has to be asked: if Russia is to blame then why would Russian President Vladimir Putin give such an obvious political gift to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko when he is so obviously in such deep political trouble?”
Who benefits? It’s the big question looming over all of this. And it’s hard to ignore the political reality that Petro Poroshenko has benefited immensely at just the right time for his political future. And that obvious benefit to Ukraine’s president, and the fact that the Kremlin would likely prefer Poroshenko’s opponent win in the upcoming elections, makes this a highly suspicious incident:
Adding to the suspicions is the fact that Russia and Ukraine are making very different claims about what exactly transpired. Russia claims that Ukrainian vessels never hailed the Kerch port for permission and didn’t respond to hails from the Russian coastguard. The Ukrainians are saying the opposite happened. They hailed the Kerch port as required and asked for permission. So someone is lying:
So who is lying? Well, based on the audio evidence the Ukrainians provided of the Russian captains it would appear that the Russian side was genuinely panicked, with the panic reaching up to Prime Minister Medvedev. Curiously, though, the Ukrainian side hasn’t released the audio of its own captains hailing the Kerch port. It’s an odd omission given that they already released the audio of the Russian captains and especially given that such audio would conclusively prove what the Ukrainians are asserting is true:
And then there’s the fact that this incident is guaranteed to bolster the chances of Petro Poroshenko leading heading into the March elections. And between Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, the Kremlin would almost certainly prefer Tymoshenko simply because she might cut a deal and her anti-IMF posturing raises the possibility that Ukraine will half to go crawling back to Russia for credit if the IMF cuts off Ukraine’s credit line:
So how much might the IMF and the West fear a Tymoshenko victory? Well, as the following article bne Intellinews from July describes, Tymoshenko has been campaigning on opposition to some of the key IMF demands. Demands like deregulating land sales so Ukraine’s agricultural sector can be sold off to foreign investors. Pension cuts demanded by the IMF were described as “financial genocide” by Tymoshenko last year. And that strategy of decrying the IMF-demanded austerity has propelled Tymoshenko into first place in the polls, which should give the IMF and its Western backers plenty of reason to prefer Poroshenko over Tymoshenko:
“Still it seems that populist rhetoric can apparently work miracles with political ratings and Tymoshenko is a master of the barbed jibe and an appeal to the people’s gut feelings. In recent years, the braided rabble-rouser and other members of her party have used every opportunity to denounce unpopular measures implemented by the government, as part of their promises to the nation’s main donor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other backers. And the IMF has proven a rich vein of issues for Tymoshenko to mine.”
Yes, IMF-bashing has literally been the secret to Tymoshenko’s political success recent years. And it’s not just generic IMF-bashing but actual bashing of the IMF’s specific austerity and deregulation demands. Like pension cuts and opening up Ukraine’s agricultural land to international investors:
And these fears that a Tymoshenko victory could lead to a conflict with the IMF “raises the question of an ultimate lender in foreign currency if the private lending market should be closed.” In other words, given how Ukraine is basically reliant on the IMF at this point, what’s going to happen if Tymoshenko wins and ultimately drives the IMF and international creditors out of Ukraine:
And one answer to that question of “an ultimate lender in foreign currency if the private lending market should be closed” is obviously “Russia”. And that, again, is part of why it would be such an odd move by the Kremlin to intentionally create this military incident just months before the Ukrainian elections when the Kremlin’s preferred candidate is already in the lead.
At the same time, keep in mind that even if Tymoshenko’s party wins the upcoming elections, they’ll almost certainly be forced into a governing coalition with parties like Svoboda, Right Sector, and the Azov Battalion. So it’s not like there would necessarily be a massive shift in Ukraine’s policies. But driving a wedge between Ukraine and the IMF is still a pretty big prize.
So we’ll see what the ultimate fallout of this is, but as the following interview from September of the US envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, makes clear, part of that response is likely to included more military aid for Ukraine in the form of naval military aid:
“The United States is considering sending more lethal weaponry to Kyiv to build up its naval and air defenses, Washington’s special envoy for Ukraine said, as concerns mount that Russia may be stepping up operations in coastal waters.”
More lethal military aid for Ukraine. That was what US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was predicting just a couple of months ago. And Ukraine’s like of naval defense capabilities in the Sea of Azov was the area that Volker predicted Washington would be focusing on next:
So this naval incident also happens to be the perfect trigger for more US military aid for Ukraine. This time it’s going to be lethal maritime naval aid.
Here’s a followup on the disturbing recent report about American neo-Nazis in the Rise Above Movement (RAM) traveling to Europe to network with European neo-Nazis. Recall how one of the groups they met with was the Azov Battalion, and how the FBI has accused Azov of radicalizing and providing military training to American white supremacists. So according to the following RFE/RL report, it sounds like Azov has ambitions that go far beyond training American neo-Nazi. The group wants to create a coalition of European neo-Nazi groups, with Azov at its core.
As Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, told RFE/RL, “We think globally.” And expanding the “Azov movement” abroad is one of the group’s goals.
It also sounds like the training Azov is providing these foreign neo-Nazi groups goes beyond military training. It also included training in the propaganda techniques used to mainstream Azov, including setting up youth camps. When American neo-Nazi Greg Johnson recently gave a speech at an Azov gathering he declared that, “this is not a speaking tour, it’s a listening tour. I really want to learn how maybe we can do things better in the United States and Western Europe.” Semenyaka also asserted that when the RAM members recently visited, “they came to learn our ways” and “showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has.” Semenyaka denies any military training was provided.
The article also points out how Azov has been consciously attempting to downplay its over neo-Nazism without compromising its core neo-Nazi ideals for the purpose of expanding its popular appeal and bringing the movement into the mainstream.
Interestingly, Michael Skillt, the Swedish white nationalist sniper who was one of the first foreign fighters to join Azov, appears to have soured somewhat on the group, arguing that it should have avoided the over neo-Nazi image and attempted to find common cause with more mainstream right-wing European movements. We also learn that Skillt is currently running a private intelligence agency in Kyiv.
Ominously, Semenyaka asserts that Azov cozying up to Europe’s mainstream conservative parties is next on Azov’s agenda, with the plan of turning these mainstream European conservatives into potential sympathizers for the purpose of getting Ukraine allowed into the European Union. As Semenyaka puts it, “If crises like Brexit and the refugee problem continue, in this case, partnerships with nationalist groups in Europe can be a kind of platform for our entry into the European Union.” So Azov clearly has big ambitions for the mainstreaming of its movement across the West:
“For the Ukrainians, too, the benefits extended outside the ring. It marked a step toward legitimizing Azov among its counterparts in the West and set in motion what appears to be its next project: the expansion of its movement abroad.”
Yep, the invitation of American neo-Nazis wasn’t just an isolated disturbing story. It’s was a story about the growing international ambitions of Azov. As Semenyaka puts it, “We think globally”:
And those international ambitions include teaching Azov’s international neo-Nazi counterparts the techniques the group has used to successfully mainstream itself in Ukraine. Techniques that American neo-Nazi Greg Johnson was keen to learn:
And while Semenyaka insists there was no military training, one of the techniques the American neo-Nazis came to learn was the creation of youth forces:
But it’s not just neo-Nazis traveling to Ukraine to learn Azov’s strategies. Azov’s members are increasingly traveling across Europe. As Semenyaka puts it, “it’s possible for far-right leaders to come to power now and — we hope — form a coalition,” and Azov, “wants a position at the front of this movement.”:
At the same time Azov is working to form this coalition of Western neo-Nazi groups, its working to rebrand itself as a more mainstream conservative movement “without compromising some of our core ideas”:
Interestingly, Swedish white nationalist sniper, Michael Skillt, argues that Azov has made a mistake in so openly embracing a neo-Nazi ideology instead of positioning itself as a more mainstream ‘populist’ far right conservative movement. But Semenyaka counters that winning over the mainstream far right European movements is next on Azov’s agenda, with the goal of using the backing of these movements to get the political support necessary to win Ukraine’s admission into the European Union:
So that’s a snapshot of Azov’s current ambitions and plans to achieve those ambitions: network with Western neo-Nazis while simultaneously work on developing a more ‘mainstream’ image that doesn’t scare too many people. Then network with more mainstream far right European parties. Then use the popular support from those more mainstream far right European movements to get the political support needed to admit Ukraine into the European Union. So it’s literally a neo-Nazi plan to unify and popularize Europe’s neo-Nazis for the purpose of getting Ukraine into the EU. It’s a pretty ambitious plan, and based on the wild successes of neo-Nazis around the world these days, it’s hard to argue that it’s overly ambitious.
Here’s the latest sad example of the ongoing and widespread embrace of Stepan Bandera and his fellow WWII Nazi collaborators as unimpeachable national heroes in Ukraine. It also ties in to the acid attack murder of Ukrainian activist Kateryna Handziuk in a rather bizarre way:
First, recall how the July 31st, 2018, acid attack on Handziuk was initially blamed on “hooliganism” by the Kherson Regional police investigating the attack. Also recall how Handziuk had previously accused a department head in the Kherson Regional Police of demanding a 3 percent cut from all contracts and tenders in the region in September of 2017. It resulted in a court case that she won. Then, on August 3rd, an individual, Mykola Novikov, was arrested as a suspect but was widely believed to be a scapegoat. Novikov hahad an alibi about his whereabouts the day of the attack but the police in the region of Kherson didn’t investigate that alibi. He was eventually released on August 22, which is after five new suspects were arrested. These five individuals were all members of the the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, a splinter faction of Right Sector. Four of these new suspects claim that the fifth suspect, Serhiy Torbin, was the main suspect. Torbin was a former officer of Kherson police.
Flash forward to February 11th and we have the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine naming the head of the Kherson Regional Council, Vladyslav Manher, as a suspect in the attack. Manher is a member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s party.
Here’s were it all gets extra weird and sad. On February 9th, there was a protest at a campaign rally for Yulia Tymoshenko. Dozens of members of the neo-Nazi group C14 show up at this rally and attempt to unfurl a banner that read “Who Killed Katia Handziuk?” At a forum attended by President Pedro Poroshenko the same day, someone had his banner with the same slogan ripped apart by police. There’s video of this where officers are seen throwing some of the neo-Nazis to the ground. One officer is heard shouting, “On the ground, Banderite!” and that use of “Banderite” in a negative say sparked a national outcry. And now the chiefs of police across Ukraine are going on social media and declaring themselves Banderites.
So we have five people associated with a neo-Nazi Right Sector offshoot charged with the murder of Handziuk. They appear to have been hired by a corrupt member of the Kherson regional police and questions remain about how far up the chain of command the ultimate responsibility lies for who ordered the attack. Then, months later, as suspicions fall on the Vladyslav Manher, the head of the Kherson Regional Council, we have members of a different neo-Nazi group, C14, show up at a rally demanding justice in the investigation of Handziuk. A police officer is caught on video using “Benderite” with negative connotations and now police across Ukraine are declaring themselves Banderites.
Ok, here’s an article around the February 11th announcement by Ukraine’s prosecutors that Vladyslav Manher, the head of the Kherson Regional Council, was now a suspect in the case. The prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, also announced that more state and law enforcement officials could be implicated, although evidence is still lacking. As one commentator in the article notes, given how Manher is cooperating, the whole thing has the look of a political arrangement, where Manher acts as the political fall guy to take the political heat off of his party and gets a light prosecution in exchange for accepting responsibility and avoiding the prosecution going further up the chain:
“The two criminal charges involve acting as the organiser of a crime and premeditated murder. Manher organised the killing, hired the five perpetrators and provided the funds, the prosecutor general’s report said, according to the pravda.com.ua news site. Manher committed his crimes motivated by his personal animus towards Handziuk, who was an activist against illegal logging in the region, from which his local criminal syndicate earned illegal profit, the report said.”
The order to murder Handziuk was driven by Manher’s personal animus towards her for her activism’s disruption of his illegal logging operations. That’s the official explanation at this point, although the prosecutor hinted at more state and law enforcement officials being implicated:
As one observer notes, the fact that Manher is cooperating completely gives the whole announcement the feel of a political arrangement: Manher takes the blame for a relatively light punishment (and a likely end to the investigation):
Adding to the political feel of this announcement, it happened two days after dozens of C14 members attended a Yulia Tymoeshenko rally and attempted to unfurl a “Who Killed Katia Handziuk?” banner before police stopped them:
And as the following article tragically describes, in the days following that police crackdown on the C14 members, police across Ukraine are declaring themselves Banderites in response to the backlash over an officer calling one of the C14 members “Banderite” as an insult:
“Across social media, Ukrainian police and law enforcement officials are apologizing for one officer’s slur aimed at far-right ultranationalists and making it known: They, too, are “#Banderites.” Or, to be clear, supporters of militant Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.”
#Banderites: a leading candidate for worst hashtag ever given the historic and contemporary context.
And that meme was embraced across of Ukraine just one day after a riot-police officer was videoed throwing a C14 member to the ground during their “Who ordered the attack on Handzyuk?” protest at a Tymoshenko rally. That’s how “politically incorrect” it is to anything other than glorify Bandera in Ukraine these days:
And while both C14 and Right Sector are no doubt smitten with this response, it’s probably not the kind of ‘justice’ Katia Handziuk would have hoped for if she hadn’t already been murdered by a bunch of neo-Nazis-for-hire.
A Kiev shopping mall with a staircase that lights up with LED messages displayed a rather unwelcoming message on Monday: the LED lights displayed a large Nazi flag at the Horodok(Gorodok) Gallery. The mall is located on Stephen Bandera Avenue, which used to be Moscow Avenue until the name was changed in 2016. Footage of the display was posted on social media. And it may not have actually intended to be an unwelcoming message because it was displayed several hours before a torchlight parade through Kiev of several hundred far right ‘nationalists’. What’s the mall’s explanation for this? They claim they were hacked. So the mall on the street named after Ukraine’s most celebrated national hero — who also happened to be a Nazi collaborator — suddenly shows a Nazi flag hours before a neo-Nazi torchlight parade and the explanation is a hacking. And, sure, it’s possible the mall’s LED system was hacked, which would be disturbing. But it’s also very plausible there was no hacking given the broader context of the popular embrace of Nazism in Ukraine:
“They show shoppers climbing up and down the staircase, whose middle-section stairs feature a large swastika locked in a white rhombus encircled by red, similar to Nazi Germany’s flag. The street where the shopping mall is located is named for Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who briefly collaborated with Nazi Germany in its fight against Russia.”
And this large Nazi flag imagery just happened to appear hours before several hundred nationalists marched through Kiev carrying torches:
But the mall officials would like to assure us that they had nothing to do with this and were the victims of a hack:
And as the following article notes, it’s not just the mall officials who are falling back on the “we were hacked” explanation. Government officials in Kyiv are also asserting that not only was the mall’s LED system hacked, but that Russia did it as part of a Russian hybrid information warfare campaign. No evidence was given for how the government officials arrived at this conclusion:
“We regard this outrageous incident with the hacker attack in the Gorodok Gallery shopping mall as part of a hybrid information warfare, which Ukraine has faced since 2014 and in which the Russian Federation uses all possible measures of propaganda.”
This is how widly cynical Ukraine’s embrace of neo-Nazi ‘nationalism’ is at this point: the government embraces neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, Azov, and C14 at the same time it casts officially enshrines the nationals’ Nazi collaborators who carried out much of the Holocaust in Ukraine as national heros. And the current chairman of the parliament is Andriy Parubiy, the co-founder of Ukraine’s National Socialist party. But if a swastika pops up it’s clearly Russians hybrid information warfare.
Here’s an article about the rise of the far right in Ukraine that does a remarkable job detailing the numerous and multi-faceted examples of the capture of Ukrainian society and government by far right forces and ideologies. The list includes:
* The elevation of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion that was formally incorporated into Ukraine’s armed forces yet remains a neo-Nazi battalion.
* Azov is now engaged in policing with its National Druzhina street patrol units that have engaged in anti-Roma pogroms
* Azov’s campaign to turn Ukraine into an international hub of white supremacy
* Andriy Parubiy’s role in creating Ukraine’s Nazi Party that he continues to embrace and that’s routinely ignored as he has become the parliament speaker
* The deputy minister of the Interior—which controls the National Police—is a veteran of Azov, Vadim Troyan
* Government sponsorship of historical revisionism and holocaust denial though agencies like Ukrainian Institute of National Memory
* Torchlight parades are now normal
* Within several years, an entire generation will be indoctrinated to worship Holocaust perpetrators as national heroes
* Books that criticize the now-glorified WWII Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are getting banned
* Public officials make threats against Ukraine’s Jewish community with no repercussions
* The neo-Nazi C14’s street patrol gangs are both responsible for anti-Roma pograms and also the recipient of government funds to run a children’s educational camp. Last October, C14 leader Serhiy Bondar was welcomed at America House Kyiv, a center run by the US government
* It’s open season on the LGBT community and far right groups routinely attack LGBT gatherings
* Ukraine is extremely dangerous for journalists and the government has supported the doxxing and intimidation of journalist by the far right like Myrovorets group
* The government is trying to repeal laws protecting the many minority languages used in Ukraine
And yet, as the article notes at the end, its many examples were just a small sampling of what has transpired in Ukraine since 2014:
“These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.”
Yes, these stories about the capture of Ukraine by the far right aren’t coming out of Russia media. This is all based on Western reports. Reports that are subsequently largely ignored. Like all the reports about how Ukraine’s military has an official neo-Nazi formation: the Azov Battalion. Which was actually being trained by the US military at one point. And one of the goals of this officially accepted military outfit is to turn Ukraine into an international hub of white supremacy:
Then there’s the story about how the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Parubiy, founded and led multiple neo-Nazi organization and has never renounced his past. On the contrary, he declared in 2016 that his “values” haven’t changed at all from that past. And this is one of the figures who frequently represents Ukraine in other government capitals. Like Washington DC. And the deputy minister of the interior (which controls the National Police) is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of the Azov Battalion:
And we can’t forget all of the stories about the Ukrainian government’s official glorification of Nazi collaborators and holocaust denial. Or the fact that far right torchlight parades are regular events now and soon there’s going to be an entire generation of Ukrainian children will have been indoctrinated in this environment:
And as part of that official government revisionism and the glorification of the Nazi collaborators who carried out the Holocaust in Ukraine, there’s the official government book bannings of any books that challenge this new official history. Including the banning of a book about the Nazis’s suppression of literature because it happened to mention Symon Petliura role in the slaughtering of Jews. Recall how, back in 2016, Ukraine observed a national minute of silence in honor of Petliura on the 90th anniversary of his assassination:
Unsurprisingly given the political climate, we find Ukrainian public officials, including security officials, repeatedly making threats against the Jewish community with no repercussions:
And there’s the attacks on Roma, the press, the LGBT community, and minority languages on top of all of that. And as the article notes at the end, these examples are only a tiny fraction of Ukraine’s slide toward intolerance. And as the article also note, because this is all happening in the context of Ukraine as a ‘democracy-spreading’ project backed by the US , the message being sent to governments across the globe (and future governments) is that the US is totally cool with all of this:
“By tolerating neo-Nazi gangs and battalions, state-led Holocaust distortion, and attacks on LGBT and the Roma, the United States is telling the rest of Europe: “We’re fine with this.” The implications—especially at a time of a global far-right revival—are profoundly disturbing.”
And don’t forget that is isn’t just the US implicitly telling Europe that “we’re fine with this.” The EU has largely been fine with it too. What’s happened in Ukraine really does have the West’s collective stamp of approval. A stamp of approval in the form of a collective silence about what has actually transpired in Ukraine over the last 5 years. In other words, the Ukrainian historical revisionism taking place today isn’t just taking place in Ukraine and includes the ongoing revision of some very recent history.
Haaretz had a recent piece on the Azov Battalion that highlights why the whitewashing of the nature of this neo-Nazi group is so dangerous: The Haaretz reporter traveled to a bulding in Kiev called the Cossack House and asked the people there about how Azov wants to be seen by the world. The interviewer spoke with Azov’s international secretary, Olena Semenyaka. Recall how Semenyaka was previously a spokesperson for Right Sector and has been described as a leading figure within the fascist, neo-Nazi scene in Eastern Europe and an important voice within the Militant Zone and National Corps organizations and the Pan-European Reconquista movement. Semenyaka, of course, insists that Azov is not neo-Nazi at all and is merely “nationalist”. She also claims that instances of Azov members – including herself – giving Hitler salutes and being pictured with neo-Nazi imagery aren’t what they seem. Instead, she claims it was just “trolling” in order to counter Russian propaganda, an explanation is itself obvious trolling. When you say something in a manner that’s intended to be taken seriously even though people can’t possibly take it seriously that’s trolling and that’s exactly what Semanyaka appears to be doing. She also claimed that the use of neo-Nazi or far right imagery by Azov ended a while ago which, again, is obvious trolling given that their group’s symbol was used by the Waffen SS.
Adding to the trollish nature of Semenyaka’s absurdist denials is the fact that Semenyaka is scheduled for multiple talks at various far right gatherings this year. But Semenyaka’s trolling is also clearly intended to be taken seriously by Western audiences. And that’s part of why the international whitewashing of the true nature of Azov is so obscene: It’s treating blatant neo-Nazi trolling seriously and at face value:
“Take a closer look at the Azov movement and what it has been doing – and plans to do – in Ukraine and beyond, and it becomes clear: It is much more like the Nazi-friendly, budding extremist group its PR-savvy leaders are trying to convince the world it isn’t.”
It is what its PR-savvy leaders are trying to convince the world it isn’t. That’s a pretty good way to describe the Azov movement and is exemplified by its international secretary, Olena Semenyaka. She claims the group is simply a “new nationalist” movement, not a bunch of neo-Nazis. And yet these “new nationalist” sure do act exactly like old Nazis, including Hitler salutes and Seig Heil chants:
Semenyaka even gave an interview to a Finnish neo-Nazi movement last year where she blamed Israel for Europea’s refugee crisis and declared that, if Azov ever came to power, Jews with ties to international capital “would not be allowed to stay” in Ukraine. This is the woman tasked with convincing the world that Azov has nothing to do with Nazism:
But Semenyaka wants to assure us that the group isn’t anti-Semitic or has any neo-Nazi leaning at all. And during this same interview with Haaretz, the Azov literature club organizer met with the reporter and showed the postcards the group has for sale. They happen to be postcards of significant Nazi collaborators:
Semenyaka herself is already scheduled to speak at a number of far right events this year. But she assured the Haaretz reporter that all of these blatant examples of neo-Nazi behavior was just trolling and in the past:
“She says the use of what she calls “radical imagery” in the early stages of the 2014 war was merely “trolling,” hitting back at Russia in response to messages from Russian propaganda organs about all Ukrainians and their government being Nazis.”
That’s some pretty top notch trolling: neo-Nazis claiming their blatant neo-Nazi behavior, which is ongoing, was actually just trolling and in the past.
But Semenyaka’s trollish explanation isn’t simply intended to be seen as trolling. Yes, it’s clearly trolling to international far right audiences. Real Nazis must find Azov’s public face a giant hilarious joke and are no doubt amused to no end whenever Azov is described in the media as simply a ‘nationalist’ group. But this trolling that is in no way going to be taken seriously by fellow neo-Nazi is intended to be taken completely seriously by Western audiences. Azov really does want to trick as many people as possible into thinking this isn’t a neo-Nazi group but merely a ‘nationalist’ movement. So remember, the next time you read about Azov characterized as merely a ‘nationalist’ movement, somewhere a Nazi is snickering.
Check out Ukraine’s new collection of poll-watchers for the upcoming presidential election on March 31st: Azov Battalion. Or, rather, Azov’s street vigilante offshoot, the National Militia. They’ve seriously been granted permission by the Central Election Commission to officially monitor the elections.
But the election commission is apparently rethinking that decision following National Militia’s the threats of violence. According to National Militia’s spokesman, Ihor Vdovin, the group will follow the instructions of its commander, Ihor Mikhailenko, “if law enforcers turn a blind eye to outright violations and don’t want to document them.” So what were Mikahilenko’s instructions? “If we need to punch someone in the face in the name of justice, we will do this without hesitation.” Yep, the commander of the National Militia is already openly declaring that the group’s members will punch people if they see election violations. Which is obviously attempted open intimidation of the electorate. Members of the Roma or LGBT community are going to be a lot less likely to vote if they see one of the people who previously violently attacked them standing there as a poll monitor. And that’s all why the election commission is rethinking the granting of National Militia this observers status. Rethinking, but not actually rescinding.
It’s all a pretty big example of why the relative lack of electoral successes for the Ukrainian far right aren’t an accurate reflection of the growing power of these groups. For starters, part of the reason for the lack of electoral success of the far right parties is the successful co-opting of their agenda by the rest of the more mainstream parties. And that mainstream co-opting of the far right includes moves like deputizing National Militia and giving them election observer powers. In addition, as the article notes, while Azov’s political wing, National Corps, isn’t winning over the support of the broader electorate (polls put National Corps support at around 1 percent), but its slickly produced videos are winning over growing numbers of young men to the far right cause. Recall how National Corps advocates that Ukraine rearm itself with nuclear weapons.
So Azov’s National Corps may not be winning elections, but winning elections isn’t really their path to power. Growing in numbers and relying on a mix of naked shows of force and threats of violence is Azov’s path to power. And that strategy is clearly working, as evidenced by the fact that they’re currently empowered to monitor elections despite their inability to win them:
“Yet despite the controversy surrounding it, the National Militia was granted permission by the Central Election Commission to officially monitor Ukraine’s presidential election on March 31.”
Yep, despite the controversy surrounding National Militia — controversy like being an open neo-Nazi group that attacks minority groups — the group was granted by the Central Election Commission permission to officially monitor Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election. What could possibly go wrong? People getting punched by neo-Nazi election monitors, that’s what could go wrong and that’s exactly what the spokesman for National Militia threatened his group would do if they witnessed election violations that the police aren’t addressing. At least that’s the planned cover story:
These open threats of violence brought the predictable pushback by Ukraine’s authorities. But it’s the kind of pushback that isn’t expected to go beyond words of condemnation, especially given the fact that the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, is known to be far right sympathizer with close ties to Azov. National Militia will still keep its power:
But despite the fact that Azov only garners about 1 percent of popular support, according to polls, its mix-martial-arts centers have a growing appeal to Ukraine’s youths. This, in turns, fuels Azov’s torchlight street marches, like the one on March 3, when 2,000 National Militia members marched through the capital chanting “Glory to Ukraine! Death to enemies”. It’s Azov’s alternative path to power:
So as we can see, while the Ukrainian far right has long been threatening to ‘march on Kiev’ to overthrow the government and seize power, that’s already sort of happening. But instead of one big march that results in a coup, Ukraine is experiencing repeated torchlight marches through Kiev that act as shows of force and implicit threats of what might happen if Azov isn’t given more power. Ukraine’s democracy is effectively suffering a death by a thousand
cutsneo-Nazi torchlight marches.Now that Ukraine has a new president, comedic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy who won with 73 percent of the vote in the final round of Ukraine’s election, the big question about whether or not Zelenskiy can translate that popular support into meaningful reforms looms large. Highly related to that question is what kind of resistance Zelenskiy will face from the rest of the Ukrainian establishment. Highly noteworthy in the election results is the fact the highest levels of voter turnout were registered in Lviv Oblast (67%), which is also the only oblast won by Poroshenko. So Lviv, the heart of cultural far right push in Ukraine, presumably has a concentration of people who are highly upset with the results of the election.
Beyond that, given the number of articles in the Western press that have warned about Zelenskiy being under the influence of the Kremlin, the question of whether or not Zelenskiy’s government is going to be opposed by Western governments who backed Poroshenko also looms large. For example, Foreign Policy published on April 1st, days before the runoff vote that Zelenskiy was expected to win at the time, written by Alexander Motyl warning that Zelenskiy is poised to move Ukraine into the Kremlin’s orbit. Recall how Motyl is a political scientist at Rutgers University and one of the members of the Ukrainian diaspora that was a big supporter of Volodymyr Viatrovych’s government-backed revisionist history drive.
And as the following article notes, while domestic voters overwhelmingly supported Zelenskiy across almost the entire country, there was one other major group of voters outside of Lviv that overall supported Petro Poroshenko: Ukraine’s diaspora:
“Ukrainians who live abroad have strongly preferred sitting President Poroshenko to a political newcomer in this presidential election; something that stands in stark contrast to the choice of voters residing within Ukraine.”
As is the case with a number of national diasporas around the world in conflict-stricken countries, the Ukrainian diaspora and domestic voters had a very different view on the direction the country should go it. Although in terms of raw numbers only around 57,000 members of the Ukrainian diaspora globally who voted in the second round of the election (out of 18 million votes total), so it’s a relatively tiny percent of the overall vote. But in terms of influencing international policies towards Ukraine it’s a highly influential voting bloc:
So it’s going to be fascinating to see how the disappointed diaspora and the political influence they have on governments shapes the kinds of international pressures and expectations the incoming government is going to face.
In tangentially related news, remember that story about how the high school students in Baraboo, Wisconsin received national attention after they did a group Sieg Heil for their junior prom picture? Well, Eduard Dolinsky (of Defending History) just tweeted out a picture of new monuments erected by the Ukrainian Youth Union in summer camp in Baraboo, Wisconsin. They’re monuments of Simon Petlura, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera. So that gives us an idea of who the local Ukrainian diaspora voted for around Baraboo.
Isn’t this classy: the head of Ukraine’s diplomatic mission to Tel Aviv, Gennady Nadolenko, reportedly told Israeli diplomats that Israeli protests over the official state glorification of the leading Ukrainian perpetrators of the Holocaust in Ukraine are “counterproductive” and that the subject is related to “internal issues of Ukrainian politics.” This is apparently in response to a letter written by the Israeli and Polish ambassadors to Ukraine last week condemning the government-sponsored honoring of Stepan Bandera and Andryi Melnyk. This isn’t the first time Israel’s ambassador, Joel Lion, publicly protested over these state honors for major Nazi collaborators, but it does sound like it’s the first time Ukraine’s diplomats have responded to Lion’s protests in a way that’s ended up in the news. And that’s really the ‘new’ news here, since these state honors for figures like Bandera have been going on for years. Ukraine is now honoring Nazi collaborators and telling Israel to shut up about it:
“The subject is related to “internal issues of Ukrainian politics” and Israel’s protests about it are “counterproductive,” Nadolenko told Israeli diplomats, according to the new site Jewish.ru.”
These are purely “internal issues of Ukrainian politics” and any outside criticism is “counterproductive”. That’s the official Ukrainian government stance.
Now here’s a series of articles from Ukraine’s 112 station describing how this diplomatic situation didn’t just involved comments from Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv. Ukraine’s foreign ministry was also involved. First, here’s a January 5th article about Ukraine’s foreign ministry responding to the initial Polish and Israeli criticism of the state honoring of Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators. The press secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kateryna Zelenko, explained that the honoring was about “national memory” and suggested that the criticisms from Poland and Israel were only benefiting Russia. Yep, if you criticize Ukraine’s state honoring of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, you’re helping Russia. That was the public response from Ukraine’s foreign ministry:
““The revival and preservation of the national memory of the Ukrainian people is one of the priority areas of Ukraine’s state policy. Each people and each state independently determines and honors its heroes,” Zelenko said.”
Each people and each state independently determines and honors its heroes. That was part the official foreign ministry response to Poland and Israel’s protests, which is basically a “butt out of it” official public response. Then Zelenko went on to suggest that these criticisms of the honoring of figures like Bandera shouldn’t be done because it benefits Russia. She also suggested that “civilized nations should proceed from the principle of honoring all those who have died.” So that’s where Ukraine’s public justifications for honoring Nazi collaborators is at: everyone should be honored by all governments! Only historical experts should engage in criticisms of historic figures. So Ukraine’s foreign ministry basically argued that governments categorically couldn’t justifiably criticize another government’s decision to honor historic figures:
Next, here’s an article about the Polish embassy response to the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s spokespersons statements. Basically, the Polish embassy dismissed the statements as not being official Ukrainian government statements because they didn’t show up on the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, but went on to say that if the statements had been official that would be unbelievable. The Polish embassy went on to express difficulty in believing that the foreign ministry’s spokesperson would suggest that Israeli and Polish protests were somehow benefiting Russia:
““It is hard to believe that such words could come from a Ukrainian diplomat. They have not yet been posted on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. If this were so, it would mean that Ukrainian diplomacy ranks ideologists of integral nationalism among national heroes, because of whom tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and thousands of other nations representatives fell, “the Polish embassy said.”
Mocking speculation that the words of Kateryna Zelenko couldn’t possibly reflect official diplomatic statements because they would be so ghastly if that was so. It’s quite a diplomatic diss.
Next, here’s a January 8th Ukrainian report on the actual message publicly issued by Ukraine’s foreign ministry regarding the Polish and Israeli protests. It includes a publicly issued message from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry that describes to the Polish and Israeli protests as “counterproductive”, echo the language reportedly used by Ukraine’s diplomat to Tel Aviv, Gennady Nadolenko. And, remarkably, the Foreign Ministry appears to be describing a discussion between Ukraine and Poland and Israel about actually setting up some sort of “expert level” discussion on the honoring of these figures. So Ukraine now appears to be trying to use the protest from Poland and Israel to brand its historical rehabbing of Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators as an internationally respected academic exercise:
““During the talk and in the context of the discussion of the fact of the joint statement of the ambassadors of the Republic of Poland and the State of Israel dated January 2, the attention of the Polish ambassador was drawn to the counterproductive of the public discussion on the inner issues of Ukrainian policy,” the message said.”
Yes, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement about how the “the attention of the Polish ambassador was drawn to the counterproductive of the public discussion on the inner issues of Ukrainian policy” during the diplomatic talks that following the Polish and Israeli protests. And then the ministry goes on to tout what it appears to see as a productive means of resolving this dispute: setting up a panel of historical experts:
So it sounds like we’re going to see an attempt to pit Polish historians off against the Ukrainian ‘historians’ working at the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory to debate of whether or not figures like Bandera should be glorified. And that kind of stunt, of course, can only really devolve into either a whitewashing of their actions in carrying out the Holocaust or a justification of it. Probably a bit of both. So if you thought the official Ukrainian response to the protests from Poland and Israel were obscene this time, just wait until the government-backed Ukrainian Holocaust revisionist team of ‘experts’ officially debates this topic as some sort of international dialogue. It’s going to be pretty counterproductive from a historical standpoint, although Nazis and their sympathizers will no doubt find it all very productive.
Here’s a story that, at this point, is difficult to interpret but appears to be another example of the challenges Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, faces in trying to lead a country that has officially embraced and elevated to national hero status Ukraine’s leading Nazi collaborators:
The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is being celebrated in Jerusalem this week. The celebrations include a ceremony involving leaders from around the world and speeches from individuals representing the Allies in WWII. According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry it’s the third-largest gathering of international leaders in Israel’s history, after the funerals of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
As the following article notes, Zelensky had previously confirmed that he was definitely attending the ceremony and that it was very important that he attend, although he felt it was unfair that the leader of Ukraine wasn’t also allowed to give a speech given the extent of the Holocaust that was carried out in Ukraine.
Then, yesterday, he announced that he and his delegation would not be attending the ceremony, although they would still make the trip to Jerusalem. The ostensible reason for pulling out of the ceremony was reasonable: there were reports that there was very limited seating for actual Holocaust survivors at the ceremony, only 30 out of the 800 seats at the ceremony, and around 100 survivors were hoping to attend. So some members of the Israeli delegation decided to give up their seats. Ukraine followed suit by giving the seats for its entire delegation to survivors in its announcement yesterday.
But this explanation left the organizers of the event “puzzled” because, it “was explained to the president that we have assented to survivors who approached us in recent days. Therefore, his decision is puzzling, and it is a pity to take such a step in an event entitled ‘Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.’” So it sounds like there wasn’t actually a need for additional seats for survivors when Ukraine’s delegation made this decision and they knew this.
Zelensky isn’t the only leader to pull out of the event. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has already decided to boycott the event because Poland was the site of Auschwitz and he wasn’t invited to speak while Russia’s president Putin will give a speech. In December, Putin accused Poland of colluding with the Nazis. Recall how Poland passed a law criminalizing anyone suggesting that Poles participated in the Holocaust two years ago. Also recall how one of Duda’s top advisers responded to Israel’s outrage over the that law by accusing the Jews of “passivity” during the Holocaust. That’s part of the ugly political backdrop of Duda’s refusal to attend this week’s ceremony. As the following article notes, it was speculated earlier this week that Zelensky might follow Duda’s lead in pulling out of the ceremony.
So it’s unclear what exactly happened here and what the motives were for the decision for the entire Ukrainian delegation to give up their seats at the ceremony, but it sure looks like Ukraine’s government took an opportunity to pull out of the ceremony that it didn’t have to take which is only going to raise suspicions that it was done to placate anti-Semitic audiences in Ukraine. Ok, first, here’s an article that describes how Zelensky expressed earlier this week how important it was that he attend the ceremony even if he wasn’t allowed to speak:
“But “the most important thing for each country is to honor the memory of its Holocaust victims. It’s very important to go, whether we [leaders] speak or not,” he said. “I know the Israeli side has a different format; we were not invited to speak. But in any case, I will attend this ceremony.””
That was Zelensky earlier this week: the most important thing for each country is to honor the memory of its Holocaust victims. It’s very important to go, whether he speaks or not. And yet it was rumored that he might follow the lead of Poland’s president who boycotted the event over not being invited to speak:
Also, regarding Zelensky’s detailing of the plans to start construction of a Holocaust memorial at Babi Yar, it’s worth noting that a Holocaust memorial in the city of Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine was vandalized this week, which is a reminder of the intensity of anti-Semitic pro-Nazi sentiments in Ukraine. Also note that a Babi Yar memorial already exists, but it consists of a single 6‑foot menorah near an industrial waster dump, leading to calls for a larger monument. And that memorial has be defaced numerous times since 2014. For example, it was vandalized with swastika’s in November of 2014, twice in January of 2015, and again in June of 2015 and September 2015. In May of 2016, a group burned an Israeli flag near the memorial on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Now here’s the article from yesterday about the announcement by Ukraine’s delegation that it’s pulling out of the ceremony entirely to give those seats to Holocaust survivors and the puzzlement expressed by that event organizers over the move:
““We learnt that many of the Holocaust survivors have not been able to visit the World Holocaust Forum,” Zelensky tweeted in English. “Our delegation gave them our seats, as many Israeli ministers did. These people deserve these honors most of all.””
The entire Ukrainian delegation gave up their seats for Holocaust survivors. On the one hand, that seems like a very nice gesture. But on the other hand, it has the feel of an opportunistic decision to get out of the ceremony, especially since the Ukrainians were apparently told before this decision that the Holocaust survivors who wanted to attend had been given seats:
If the Ukrainian delegation really was taking this opportunity to get out of a ceremony they would rather not attend, that raises the question of why? And the only obvious answer is that it would be politically damaging to Zelensky and he doesn’t want to risk angering Ukraine’s the powerful neo-Nazi political base.
Also recall that it was just last week when Ukraine and Israel had a diplomatic spat when Israel criticized Ukraine’s decision to honor Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera and Ukraine told Israel to stay out of it. That’s also part of the political context here: Ukraine and Israel just had a public fight over Ukraine’s insistence on celebrating the figures who led the Holocaust in Ukraine. It’s hard to imagine the pull out of this ceremony wasn’t, in part, a response to that.
And In related news, the Ukrainian parliament marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week. It was the first time Ukraine’s parliament had done so.