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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment

Intro­duc­tion: Devel­op­ments in Ukraine con­tin­ue to con­form to the par­a­digm set forth in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, in which the SS go under­ground in the after­math of World War II, build up their eco­nom­ic mus­cle, buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media, infil­trate the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, and–following a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents in the U.S. which cause the dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law–take over the Unit­ed States.

Cen­tral to this takeover is the use of the Nazi-con­trolled main­stream media to fun­da­men­tal­ly revise his­to­ry in a pro-Hitler fash­ion.

In Ukraine, the insti­tu­tion­al heirs to the OUN/B Nazi allies are cement­ing their con­trol over that strate­gic coun­try, strength­en­ing their strate­gic grip over West­ern polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pol­i­cy and, through that con­trol, suc­cess­ful­ly manip­u­lat­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age of events in Ukraine and his­tor­i­cal por­tray­al of World War II and the Third Reich in a fash­ion that would make Hitler proud.

(We have cov­ered the ascen­sion of the OUN/B heirs in the Ukraine in a num­ber of pro­grams: FTR #‘s 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 783, 784, 794, 800, 803, 804, 808, 811, 817, 818, 824, 826, 829.)

As the 70th anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of Auschwitz by the Sovi­et Union approach­es, Russ­ian pres­i­dent Putin has been exclud­ed from the cer­e­mo­ni­al obser­va­tion of that event!

Putin’s exclu­sion exem­pli­fies the per­ver­sion of pol­i­cy and his­to­ry atten­dant on the Nazi ascen­sion to pow­er in Ukraine.

As will be dis­cussed below, much of the Auschwitz staff was com­posed of OUN/B per­son­nel. The direct, insti­tu­tion­al suc­ces­sors to the OUN/B are in pow­er in Kiev.

Note Ukrain­ian offi­cial Arseniy Yat­senyuk’s state­ment: “We all remem­ber well the Sovi­et inva­sion of Ukraine and Ger­many.” He is talk­ing about World War II!

Yat­senyuk is an impor­tant part of the renascent Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment now rul­ing Ukraine. As dis­cussed by George Elia­son, declas­si­fied U.S. FOIA doc­u­ments con­firm that the OUN/B and the close­ly-allied Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations con­sti­tut­ed an OUN/B Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment-in-exile. The Maid­an coup of 2014–itself a well-doc­u­ment­ed covert operation–brought that gov­ern­ment to pow­er.

We present a coura­geous­ly accu­rate op-ed piece by Chris Marten­son in the main­stream Mar­ket Watch blog that cor­rect­ly notes that the West (and the Unit­ed States in par­tic­u­lar) are wag­ing war against Rus­sia.

Part and par­cel to that is an orga­nized NATO effort to pro­pa­gan­dize on behalf of the pro-Nazi gov­ern­ment in Ukraine and its West­ern-sup­port­ed poli­cies. One won­ders if this will ulti­mate­ly entail efforts against those hardy few in the West will­ing to swim against the daunt­ing cur­rent of Ser­pen­t’s Walk-style pro­pa­gan­da.

Among the events being effec­tive­ly neu­tral­ized in main­stream media cov­er­age of the Ukraine cri­sis is the delib­er­ate cut-off of bad­ly-need­ed enti­tle­ments to elder­ly res­i­dents of East­ern Ukraine. This is a war crime that endan­gers the lives of hun­dreds of thou­sands!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The use of rel­a­tivis­tic lan­guage by West­ern media, char­ac­ter­iz­ing doc­u­ment­ed his­tor­i­cal fact as “Russ­ian” or “Krem­lin” pro­pa­gan­da; review of the rejec­tion by the EU, the U.S., Cana­da and Ukraine of a res­o­lu­tion intro­duced in the U.N. Gen­er­al Assem­bly that con­demns the cel­e­bra­tion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors; the sub­tle, revi­sion­ist pro-Nazi rhetoric of Ger­man pres­i­dent Joachim Gauck; the prob­a­bil­i­ty that a West­ern­er–pos­si­bly an American–will head the Ukraine’s “anti-cor­rup­tion” bureau.

1a. With war­fare con­tin­u­ing in East­ern Ukraine, Russ­ian pres­i­dent Putin has been “dis­in­vit­ed” to the 70th anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of Auschwitz. That lib­er­a­tion was effect­ed by Sovi­et troops. As will be dis­cussed below, much of the Auschwitz staff was com­posed of OUN/B per­son­nel. The direct, insti­tu­tion­al suc­ces­sors to the OUN/B are in pow­er in Kiev.

Note Ukrain­ian offi­cial Arseniy Yat­senyuk’s state­ment: “We all remem­ber well the Sovi­et inva­sion of Ukraine and Ger­many.”

“Lib­er­a­tion with­out Lib­er­a­tors”; german-foreign-policy.com; 1/16/2015.

Through their vir­tu­al dis­in­vi­ta­tion, EU coun­tries are pre­vent­ing the Russ­ian pres­i­dent from par­tic­i­pat­ing at the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 70th anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of Auschwitz. The high­est rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the coun­try, whose army had halt­ed the mass mur­der in the Ger­man exter­mi­na­tion camp Jan­u­ary 27, 1945, is there­by exclud­ed from the com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­monies. How­ev­er, Ger­many’s pres­i­dent, will par­tic­i­pate. Joachim Gauck had already used his speech on the 75th anniver­sary of Ger­many’s inva­sion of Poland, to mas­sive­ly stir up sen­ti­ments against Moscow and to trans­form the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Nazi crimes into an appeal for clos­ing ranks against Rus­sia. In his mem­oirs, Gauck described Red Army sol­diers, who had lib­er­at­ed Ger­many, as beings “with Asian facial fea­tures,” “reek­ing of Vod­ka,” who “req­ui­si­tioned and stole.” A few years ago, he com­plained, “the occur­rence of the Ger­man Judeo­cide has been inflat­ed to a unique­ness,” because “cer­tain milieus of post reli­gious soci­eties” were seek­ing “a cer­tain shud­der in face of the unspeak­able.” In 2010, he was quot­ed say­ing, he “won­ders how much longer we Ger­mans want to nur­ture our cul­ture of cha­grin.”

“Just Like Nazi Troops”

The com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 70th anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of the Ger­man Auschwitz exter­mi­na­tion camp had been the focus of polit­i­cal intrigues already last year. At the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 60th anniver­sary of its lib­er­a­tion, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s par­tic­i­pa­tion was still tak­en for grant­ed. After hav­ing suf­fered severe loss­es, the Sovi­et Army reached Auschwitz Jan­u­ary 27, 1945, putting an end to the ghast­ly mur­ders Ger­mans were com­mit­ting. First attempts to exclude Putin from the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 70th Anniver­sary were made in Poland in the sum­mer 2014. A par­lia­men­tar­i­an was quot­ed say­ing that the Red Army “had been an aggres­sor” in WW II, “just like Nazi troops,” which is why the Russ­ian Pres­i­dent should only be allowed to make a “pen­i­ten­tial pil­grim­age” to Poland.[1] At the time, Bro­nisław Komorows­ki could see noth­ing wrong with Putin’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Auschwitz com­mem­o­ra­tion. How­ev­er, anti-Russ­ian forces have pre­vailed and the Russ­ian Pres­i­den­t’s invi­ta­tion was can­celled through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels. Accord­ing to reports, Poland’s Prime Min­is­ter Ewa Kopacz has also cam­paigned to pre­vent Putin from par­tic­i­pat­ing at a par­al­lel com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny in Prague. This would exclude the pres­i­dent of the coun­try, whose army had lost more than a mil­lion sol­diers just to lib­er­ate the Ger­man Reich and the Pol­ish ter­ri­to­ries under Ger­man occu­pa­tion.

Turned against Rus­sia

The anti-Russ­ian instru­men­tal­iza­tion of the mem­o­ry of Ger­man crimes against human­i­ty is mak­ing head­way with Putin’s vir­tu­al dis­in­vi­ta­tion. Already on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2014, Ger­man Pres­i­dent Joachim Gauck used his memo­r­i­al address in Gdan­sk — com­mem­o­rat­ing the 75th Anniver­sary of the Ger­man inva­sion of Poland — to stir up anti-Russ­ian sen­ti­ments. Refer­ring to the Ukraine con­flict, Gauck accused Rus­sia of giv­ing a high­er pri­or­i­ty to “a quest for pow­er,” rather than to “main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty and peace.” Com­plete­ly blot­ting out west­ern sup­port for the Ukrain­ian putsch and the civ­il war, while ignor­ing all the wars waged by the West from Yugoslavia to Iraq on up to Libya, Gauck alleged that Rus­sia had “vio­lat­ed inter­na­tion­al law” and “annexed for­eign territory.”[2] Allud­ing to Great Britain and France’s appro­ba­tion for Ger­many’s occu­pa­tion of parts of Czecho­slo­va­kia in Octo­ber 1938, tar­get­ing Rus­sia, Gauck declared, “his­to­ry teach­es us that ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­ces­sions often whet the appetite of the aggres­sors.” The com­mem­o­ra­tion of Nazi crimes was there­by trans­formed into an appeal to close ranks against Rus­sia, which Ger­many had invad­ed.

A “Cul­ture of Cha­grin”

On var­i­ous occa­sions before becom­ing pres­i­dent, Gauck, who, unlike Rus­si­a’s Pres­i­dent Putin, will be present at Auschwitz Jan­u­ary 27, had made pub­lic state­ments show­ing how he views Ger­many’s 1945 lib­er­a­tion and the Shoah. In his mem­oires, he wrote on the sub­ject of Ger­many’s lib­er­a­tion, that it arrived as “hor­ri­ble news,” he depict­ed the Red Army sol­diers as beings “with Asian facial fea­tures,” reek­ing “of vod­ka,” who “req­ui­si­tioned and stole” and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly raped women.[3] 2006, Gauck remorse­ful­ly claimed that there is “a ten­den­cy toward sanc­ti­fy­ing the Holo­caust,” where­in “the occur­rence of Ger­man Judeo­cide is inflat­ed to a unique­ness that ulti­mate­ly escapes com­pre­hen­sion and analy­sis.” “Cer­tain milieus of post-reli­gious soci­eties” were per­sis­tent­ly search­ing “for the dimen­sion of the absolute, a cer­tain shud­der in face of the unspeak­able.” This could also be achieved by “the absolute evil” and is “para­dox­i­cal­ly of psy­cho­log­i­cal advantage.”[4] Gauck has stat­ed sev­er­al times that “the Ger­mans” would be well advised to change their approach to his­to­ry. In the fall of 2010, he mused, “I ask myself, how much longer do we Ger­mans want to nur­ture our cul­ture of chagrin.”[5] This was after he had pos­i­tive­ly respond­ed to the ques­tion whether “the major­i­ty of the Ger­mans” are mature enough for a “reori­en­ta­tion toward their own vic­tims, the reori­en­ta­tion toward the patri­ot­ic.” “That’s how I see it.”[6]

Broad Brush

Until he was inau­gu­rat­ed pres­i­dent, Gauck­’s his­tor­i­cal views were crit­i­cized in Ger­man pub­lic opin­ion, For exam­ple, he has a knack for using the “broad brush,” in ref­er­ence to his remarks on the “Black Book of Communism.”[7] Gauck had writ­ten that “the com­mu­nists had also made them­selves unpop­u­lar, when they ... approved Poland’s west­ward acqui­si­tion of ter­ri­to­ry and there­by Ger­many’s loss of its east­ern ter­ri­to­ries.” “To both the natives and the expellees, this loss of the home­land was con­sid­ered a great injus­tice, which the com­mu­nists sealed in 1950, by rec­og­niz­ing the Oder-Neisse as the new Ger­man-Pol­ish border,”[8] alleges Gauck. In the con­flict over the “Cen­tre against Expul­sions,” he took the side of the pres­i­dent at the time, Eri­ka Stein­bach, who was sharply crit­i­cized for her his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist state­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Poland. Gauck is quot­ed on the Ger­man League of Expellees’ (BdV) web­site say­ing, Berlin is most cer­tain­ly the best loca­tion for a “Cen­tre against Expul­sions.” It blends in, because Berlin is where “there are var­i­ous ‘topogra­phies of ter­ror,’ the loca­tion of the Wannsee Con­fer­ence and the Stasi Head­quar­ters, the for­mer seat of gov­ern­ment of brown and red despots.”[9]

Yat­senyuk’s “Sovi­et Inva­sion”

Gauck­’s Auschwitz speech and Putin’s dis­in­vi­ta­tion coin­cide with Berlin’s open coop­er­a­tion with the fas­cist suc­ces­sors of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors to stage a pro-west­ern coup in Kiev. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[10]) The Kiev gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed their anti-Russ­ian stand­points, which are also increas­ing­ly hav­ing an influ­ence on the Ger­man debate where they dove­tail with old anti-Russ­ian sen­ti­ments. Arseniy Yat­senyuk recent­ly caused a stir with his inter­view on Ger­man tele­vi­sion. He lit­er­al­ly alleged, “We all remem­ber well the Sovi­et inva­sion of Ukraine and Ger­many.”[11] This state­ment has remained unchal­lenged.

[1] Stre­it in Polen über Ein­ladung Putins zu Auschwitz-Gedenken 2015. www.tt.com 09.05.2014.
[2] Gedenk­feier zum deutschen Über­fall auf Polen 1939. www.bundespraesident.de 01.09.2014.
[3] Joachim Gauck: Win­ter im Som­mer, Früh­ling im Herb­st. München 2009. See Hans-Rüdi­ger Minow: Der Zug der Erin­nerung, die Deutsche Bahn und der Kampf gegen das Vergessen.
[4] Joachim Gauck: Welche Erin­nerun­gen braucht Europa? www.robert-bosch-stiftung.de. See The Con­sen­sus Pres­i­dent.
[5] “Mutige Poli­tik­er ziehe ich vor”. www.sueddeutsche.de 30.09.2010.
[6] Gauck: Erin­nerung an Vertrei­bung leugnet nicht den Nazi-Ter­ror. www.dradio.de 31.08.2006.
[7] Daniela Dahn: Ges­pal­ten statt ver­söh­nt. www.sueddeutsche.de 10.06.2010.
[8] Stéphane Cour­tois et al.: Das Schwarzbuch des Kom­mu­nis­mus. Unter­drück­ung, Ver­brechen und Ter­ror. München 1998.
[9] www.z‑g-v.de.
[10] See Vom Stig­ma befre­it
[11] www.facebook.com/tagesschau/posts/10152968920374407

1b.  The U.S. was one of three coun­tries to vote against a U.N. res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors as “free­dom fighters”–something the U.S. has been pro­mot­ing since the end of World War II. Ger­many and the EU nations abstained.

Ukraine itself and Cana­da were the oth­er coun­tries that vot­ed against the res­o­lu­tion. The OUN/B dias­po­ra and its influ­ence in the GOP and intel­li­gence ser­vices of the U.S. is the pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion to be weighed in con­nec­tion with this dis­grace­ful episode.

The large OUN/B  dias­po­ra pop­u­la­tion in Cana­da undoubt­ed­ly has much to do with that nation’s behav­ior in this con­text.

“Hon­or­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tors;” german-foreign-policy.com; 11/26/2014.

The Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many has refused to vote in favor of a Unit­ed Nations res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Nation­al Social­ism and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion. Last week, the Third Com­mit­tee of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly passed a res­o­lu­tion strong­ly crit­i­ciz­ing the edi­fi­ca­tion of memo­ri­als to Nazi func­tionar­ies and the styl­iza­tion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors as “free­dom fight­ers.” Ger­many and the oth­er EU nations abstained, the USA, Cana­da, and Ukraine vot­ed against the doc­u­ment, with 115 nations vot­ing in favor. Berlin and Brus­sels use the excuse of not want­i­ng to sup­port a res­o­lu­tion ini­ti­at­ed by Rus­sia. In fact, a vote in favor of the doc­u­ment would have caused hefty dis­putes with­in the EU, and between the EU and impor­tant allies. With grow­ing fre­quen­cy, noto­ri­ous Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors are being pub­licly hon­ored in such EU coun­tries as Hun­gary or the Baltic coun­tries and in Ukraine, in some cas­es by offi­cials of the respec­tive gov­ern­ments.

Deep Con­cern

The UN res­o­lu­tion express­es its “deep con­cern about the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, in any form, of the Nazi move­ment, neo-Nazism, and for­mer mem­bers of the Waf­fen SS orga­ni­za­tion.“As exam­ples the doc­u­ment names erect­ing mon­u­ments and memo­ri­als and hold­ing pub­lic demon­stra­tions in the name of the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Nazi past but also by “attempt­ing to declare such mem­bers and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coali­tion and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazi move­ment par­tic­i­pants in nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ments.” The res­o­lu­tion explic­it­ly “empha­sizes that any com­mem­o­ra­tive cel­e­bra­tion of the Nazi regime, its allies and relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions, whether offi­cial or unof­fi­cial” should be pro­hib­it­ed by UN mem­ber states. The res­o­lu­tion espe­cial­ly express­es its con­dem­na­tion “of any denial or attempt to deny the Holo­caust.”[1]

Nazi Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion not reject­ed

Last Fri­day, when the Third Com­mit­tee of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly put the res­o­lu­tion to a vote, the Ger­man Ambas­sador to the UN found him­self unable to cast his vote in favor. All oth­er EU nations also abstained, along with coun­tries, depen­dent, in one way or the oth­er, on the EU, such as Andor­ra, Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina or Mali. Ukraine, the Unit­ed States, and Cana­da vot­ed point­blank against the res­o­lu­tion. The lat­ter two coun­tries are shel­ter­ing rather influ­en­tial Ukrain­ian exile com­mu­ni­ties, char­ac­ter­ized by for­mer Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors of the “Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists” (OUN). The rea­son gen­er­al­ly giv­en last Fri­day was that they did not want to sup­port a res­o­lu­tion ini­ti­at­ed by Rus­sia. The Sovi­et Union — of which Rus­sia had been its core — was the coun­try account­ing for the most casu­al­ties from Nazi ter­ror — 27 mil­lion. How­ev­er, had Ger­many and the oth­er EU nations vot­ed in favor of the res­o­lu­tion, it would have nec­es­sar­i­ly caused hefty dis­putes. Today, col­lab­o­ra­tors, who had joined the Nazis in the war against Moscow, are com­mem­o­rat­ed in sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries.

In the Strug­gle against Rus­sia

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of Ukraine, where, since ear­ly 2012, Ger­man orga­ni­za­tions have been work­ing — and inten­sive­ly so, since 2013 — to incor­po­rate the Svo­bo­da Par­ty and its affil­i­at­ed forces into an anti-Russ­ian alliance of orga­ni­za­tions. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[2]) Svo­bo­da hon­ors the OUN and par­tic­u­lar­ly its com­man­der Stepan Ban­dera, who is very pop­u­lar through­out West Ukraine. In 1941, Ban­der­a’s mili­tias active­ly sup­port­ed Nazi Ger­many in its attack on the Sovi­et Union. Svo­bo­da also hon­ors the “Ukrain­ian Par­ti­san Army” (UPA), which, in the wake of the Ger­man war of exter­mi­na­tion, had par­tic­i­pat­ed in mass mur­ders of Euro­pean Jews.[3] In the course of the Maid­an protests, both this par­ty and oth­er fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions, receiv­ing vig­or­ous sup­port from Ger­many, were play­ing a grow­ing role. Con­se­quent­ly, since the end of Feb­ru­ary, Svo­bo­da has had sev­er­al min­is­ters in the Ukrain­ian putsch regime. Today, fas­cist bat­tal­ions are among the most res­olute com­bat­ants in East Ukraine’s civ­il war. Some of their com­man­ders have been elect­ed to par­lia­ment in the Ver­chov­na Rada on elec­toral tick­ets of the par­ties form­ing the future gov­ern­ment. At the begin­ning of the month, an activist of the fas­cist “Right Sec­tor” and deputy com­man­der of the fas­cist “Asov Bat­tal­ion,” had been named police chief of the Dis­trict of Kiev. In their strug­gle against Rus­sia, Ukraine is unin­hib­it­ed­ly devel­op­ing the tra­di­tions of its anti-Sovi­et Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion — at the side of Ger­many.

Free­dom Fight­ers

Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors are also being hon­ored in EU mem­ber coun­tries, for exam­ple, in the Baltic nations. Reg­u­lar com­mem­o­ra­tion hon­or parades for the Waf­fen SS, spon­sored by their nation­al Waf­fen SS vet­er­ans are orga­nized in Esto­nia, Latvia, and Lithua­nia. In Latvia, one of the most recent march­es was held last spring, with approx. 2,000 par­tic­i­pants — which, in pro­por­tion to the size of the pop­u­la­tion, would cor­re­spond to a demon­stra­tion of 80,000 in Ger­many. Observers point out that in Riga’s state-run Lat­vian “Occu­pa­tion Muse­um” the Lat­vian Waf­fen SS mili­tias are referred to as “free­dom fight­ers” in the strug­gle against Moscow. Orga­niz­ers of the Waf­fen SS memo­r­i­al march are invit­ed to schools to teach cours­es in “patriotism.”[4] The “All for Latvia” nation­al alliance par­ty, which has con­sis­tent­ly been in the gov­ern­ment since 2011, sup­ports these memo­r­i­al parades. The par­ty recur­ring­ly rais­es the issue of the depor­ta­tion (“repa­tri­a­tion”) of the coun­try’s Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty. One of the par­ty’s lead­ers had once declared that the Russ­ian minor­i­ty — near­ly one quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion — are “occu­piers” or “ille­gal colo­nial­ists.” A crit­i­cal appraisal of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion is not wel­come in this coun­try. As the his­to­ri­an Maris Ruks notes, Lat­vian schol­ars risk “set­backs in their careers, if they engage in too detailed research into the Holocaust.”[5] In the cur­rent con­fronta­tion with Rus­sia, the Baltic coun­tries are among the EU’s most aggres­sive forces.

Hitler’s Part­ner is being reha­bil­i­tat­ed

Also in Hun­gary fas­cist tra­di­tions are becom­ing more preva­lent. Show­case exam­ples are the new memo­ri­als to the “Reich’s Deputy” and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Mik­lós Hor­thy, which have been inau­gu­rat­ed since 2012. After chang­ing the name “Free­dom Square” to “Hor­thy Square,” in April 2012, in Gyöm­rö, near Budapest, a Hor­thy stat­ue was erect­ed in the vil­lage of Kere­ki in south­ern Hungary.[6] A Hor­thy com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque was installed on its premis­es of the Calvin­ist Col­lege in Debre­cen in May 2012. Oth­er memo­ri­als have fol­lowed. For exam­ple, in June 2013 in the East Hun­gar­i­an vil­lage of Hen­ci­da [7] and in Novem­ber of the same year right in Budapest. “Hitler’s Hun­gar­i­an part­ner is being reha­bil­i­tat­ed,” wrote Ger­man press organs back in 2012, atten­tive­ly not­ing that, at Hitler’s side, Hor­thy had led Hun­gary “into war against the Sovi­et Union.”[8] How­ev­er, cur­rent­ly, Hun­gary is not one of those coun­tries tak­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly aggres­sive stand toward Rus­sia. The reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors extends far beyond Hor­thy. Since the 1990s, there have been many com­mem­o­ra­tive plaques ded­i­cat­ed to the eth­nic, anti-Semit­ic writer, Albert Wass, who had been a loy­al fol­low­er of Hor­thy and the Nazi Reich. His writ­ings have been as accept­ed into the coun­try’s cur­ricu­lums as those of Jozsef Nyiro, who still in 1944 was active in the Nazi Arrow Cross Party.[9] Hun­gary’s “Job­bik” Par­ty — which polled 20.5 per­cent in the April 6, 2014 elec­tions, its great­est suc­cess ever — stands in the tra­di­tion of the Arrow Cross Par­ty.

“Counter Insur­gency”

This is hard­ly an exhaus­tive list of EU coun­tries pub­licly hon­or­ing Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors. In Croa­t­ia, for exam­ple, mon­u­ments to Nazi oppo­nents were destroyed, while, streets were being named after Mile Budak, the fas­cist Ustasha’s lead­ing pro­pa­gan­dist and, for awhile, Croa­t­i­a’s For­eign Min­is­ter dur­ing the peri­od of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion. In Italy’s Affile, to the east of Rome, a mau­soleum to the fas­cist war crim­i­nal, Rodol­fo Graziani was inau­gu­rat­ed in 2012. Graziani, who had ini­tial­ly been engaged in “counter insur­gency” in Libya, ordered hostages shot and used poi­soned gas in Ethiopia. Toward the end of the war, he was hav­ing Ital­ians exe­cut­ed for refus­ing to col­lab­o­rate with the Nazi pup­pet regime in Salò. Had Ger­many and the oth­er EU coun­tries not refused to vote in favor of last Fri­day’s UN res­o­lu­tion, they would — had they tak­en the doc­u­ment seri­ous­ly — be fac­ing seri­ous con­flicts with one anoth­er and with their close allies, e.g. their part­ners in Ukraine.

[1] Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly: Six­ty-ninth ses­sion of the Third Com­mit­tee. Agen­da item 66 (a): Elim­i­na­tion of racism, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, xeno­pho­bia and relat­ed intol­er­ance. A/C.3/69/L.56/Rev.1. 19.11.2014.
[2] See A Broad-Based Anti-Russ­ian Alliance, Ter­min beim Botschafter and Juschtschenkos Mythen.
[3] See Zwis­chen Moskau und Berlin (IV).
[4] See Tag der Kol­lab­o­ra­teure and “Lib­er­a­tion Fight­ers” and “Occu­pi­er”.
[5] Frank Bren­dle: Inter­na­tion­al gegen SS-Ver­her­rlichung. www.neues-deutschland.de 17.03.2014.
[6] Györ­gy Dalos: Hor­thy im Hoch. www.nzz.ch 03.07.2012.
[7] Job­bik und Neue Ungarische Garde wei­hen neues Hor­thy-Denkmal ein. pusztaranger.wordpress.com 23.06.2013.
[8] Paul Jan­dl: Hitlers ungarisch­er Part­ner wird reha­bil­i­tiert. www.welt.de 05.06.2012.
[9] See Ein pos­i­tives Ungarn-Bild.

“Thou­sands of Ukraine Nation­al­ists March in Kiev” by Dim­it­ry Zaks [Agence France Presse]; Yahoo News; 1/1/2015.

Thou­sands of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists held a torch­light pro­ces­sion across Kiev on Thurs­day in hon­our of a 1940s anti-Sovi­et insur­gent brand­ed by Moscow as a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor whom Europe must reject.

The march on what would have been Stepan Ban­der­a’s 106th birth­day moved along the same streets on which hun­dreds of thou­sands ral­lied for three months last win­ter before oust­ing a Moscow-backed pres­i­dent.

Some wore World War II-era army uni­forms while oth­ers draped them­selves in the red and black nation­al­ist flags and chant­ed “Ukraine belongs to Ukraini­ans” and “Ban­dera will return and restore order”.

“The Krem­lin is afraid of Ban­dera because he sym­bol­is­es the very idea of a com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent Ukraine,” Lidia Ushiy said while hold­ing up a por­trait of the far-right icon at the head of the march.

Ban­dera is a myth­i­cal but immense­ly divi­sive fig­ure in Ukraine whom some com­pare to Cuba’s Che Gue­vara.

His move­men­t’s slo­gan — “Glo­ry to Ukraine! Glo­ry to the heroes!” — was also the catch­phrase of last year’s pro-Euro­pean revolt.

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in March called that upris­ing’s lead­ers “the ide­o­log­i­cal heirs of Ban­dera, Hitler’s accom­plice dur­ing World War II.”

Ban­dera was the ide­o­log­i­cal patron of resis­tance fight­ers who fought along­side invad­ing Ger­man forces dur­ing World War II. . . .

3. One of the rel­a­tive­ly few media peo­ple deal­ing with the sub­stance of the Ukraine is George Elia­son. Ear­ly last year, he asked a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion:

“Is the Rebel­lion in Ukraine Real­ly Aimed at Cre­at­ing a Nation­al Social­ist State?” by George Elia­son; OpE­d­News; 2/26/2014.

The award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Max Blu­men­thal is exact­ly right to sug­gest, as he does in his recent Alter­Net piece, that the U.S. has ties to Nazi and fas­cist pro­test­ers in Ukraine. The CIA agrees with him, and so did George Bush Sr. The only dif­fer­ence in their appraisal is the use of the term Neo-Nazi , rather than Nazi. It is just too hard for any­one to fath­om that large com­mu­ni­ties of World War II Nazis not only sur­vived, but have thrived and been pro­tect­ed all these years in Lviv (a city and provin­cial dis­trict in west­ern Ukraine), the USA, and Cana­da.

After World War II, many in the Waf­fen SS went home to their native Lviv region in the Ukraine. Oth­ers immi­grat­ed there, includ­ing mem­bers of three Waf­fen SS divi­sions: the Waf­fen SS Gali­cian, Waf­fen SS Nightin­gale, and Waf­fen SS Roland. These Hitler min­ions were bare­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and nev­er tried for crimes against humanity–although a part of their train­ing was to serve as guards in con­cen­tra­tion camps like Auschwitz. In that capac­i­ty, they were respon­si­ble for the deaths of 200,000 Jews, 100,000 Poles, and at least 150,000 Ukraini­ans.

CIA doc­u­ments cer­ti­fy what every white paper I have come across states clear­ly: Each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion that derived from the ini­tial post-war Waf­fen SS set­tle­ment in Lviv was brought up to be more com­mit­ted than the one before to mak­ing Ukraine a Nation­al Social­ist state.

Roles of the UCCA and the UWC

Two impor­tant play­ers in the unfold­ing events in Ukraine are the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca (UCCA) and the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress (UWC). The UCCA is under­stood to sup­port the West-lean­ing rebels in the con­flict, and the UWC, orga­nized as an inter­na­tion­al coor­di­nat­ing body for Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ties in the dias­po­ra, is believed to sup­port Ukraine’s inte­gra­tion into the Euro­pean Union.

How­ev­er, three sep­a­rate Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) doc­u­ments, released under the Nazi War Crimes Dis­clo­sure Act, pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion need­ed to under­stand the true objec­tives of these non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs).

The only free­dom these groups want is a Nation­al Social­ist Ukraine. . . . .

. . . . Anoth­er FOIA-released doc­u­ment goes as far as to say that the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN), led by Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence leader Sla­va Stet­sko until her death in 2003, was in fact the Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment in exile:

“OUN/B is the orig­i­na­tor and a deci­sive fac­tor in the ABN (Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations), which includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous non-Russ­ian emi­gre orga­ni­za­tions. In the USA the activ­i­ties of the ABN are con­duct­ed by....”

From the 1930s until today, these groups have been prepar­ing for the rev­o­lu­tion that is under­way.

A 2007 FOIA-released doc­u­ment enti­tled “Major Ukrain­ian Emi­gre Polit­i­cal Orga­ni­za­tions World­wide ” lists mem­ber groups in the UCCA and UWC as OUN‑B active orga­ni­za­tions at the date of pub­li­ca­tion. This doc­u­ment makes it very clear that even in the 1970s the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Social­ist polit­i­cal machine con­tin­ued to demon­strate pre-World War II aggres­sive­ness. We learn that:

“At the begin­ning of the 1970s the Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal spec­trum had many fea­tures of the pre­war Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal group­ings. The deci­sive polit­i­cal role was played by three fac­tions of the OUN (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists): OUN/B (Ban­dera), OUN/M (Mel­nyk) and OUN/z (za kor­donom — abroad).”

The doc­u­ment then goes on to dis­cuss Yaroslav Stet­sko, the hus­band of Sla­va Stet­sko and head of the Ban­dera fac­tion of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN):

“In August of 1941 Stet­sko wrote his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.... He states that although he con­sid­ers Moscow rather than Jew­ry to be the main ene­my of impris­oned Ukraine, he absolute­ly endors­es the idea of the indu­bitable harm­ful role of Jews in the enslave­ment of Ukraine by Moscow. He final­ly states that he absolute­ly endors­es the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews as opposed to assim­i­lat­ing them, and the ratio­nal­i­ty of the Ger­man meth­ods of exter­mi­na­tion.”

Fur­ther excerpts from “Major Ukrain­ian Emi­gré Polit­i­cal Orga­ni­za­tions World­wide” include the fol­low­ing:

” In Cana­da, in May 2010 , [Senior Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion leader Oleh] Tyah­ny­bok received the gold­en cross “for his ser­vice to Ukraine’ from the Broth­er­hood of the Vet­er­ans of the First Ukrain­ian Divi­sion of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Army, vet­er­ans of the Waf­fen SS Gal­izien....”

Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms for Ukraine : “OUN/B is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with SUM (Asso­ci­a­tion of Ukrain­ian Youth) and such civic orga­ni­za­tions as e.g. 00ChSU in the USA (Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms for Ukraine). Sim­i­lar­ly, OUN/M has its adher­ents among the mem­bers of the UNO & Ukrain­ian Nation­al Uni­ty) in Cana­da. The mem­bers and fol­low­ers of OUN/z are active in the USA in OPVBU (Asso­ci­a­tion for Free Ukraine). OUN/z, as well as 0kVUPA (Asso­ci­a­tion of For­mer Mem­bers of the UPA-Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army), rec­og­nize ZP/UHVR (For­eign Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Supreme Ukrain­ian lib­er­a­tion Coun­cil) as their rep­re­sen­ta­tive polit­i­cal body.”

OUN/B (Ban­dera fac­tion) : “After 1991, the OUN faced con­sid­er­able difficul­ties re-estab­lish­ing itself in an inde­pen­dent Ukraine. It split between the Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (KUN) in Ukraine and the émi­gré OUN/B).... No few­er than four orga­ni­za­tions claim to be the heirs to Stepan Bandera–KUN and the émi­gré OUN/B, the clan­des­tine “Tryzub imeni Ban­dery (“Tri­dent”), and VO Svo­bo­da, whose ide­ol­o­gy was inspired by Stet­s’ko’s ide­ol­o­gy of “two rev­o­lu­tions,” one nation­al and one social.”

Pravy Sek­tor

Trizub (Tri­dent) is the Nation­al­ist group lead­ing the fight­ing today. Its leader, Dmitri Yarosh, has been one of the few voic­es peo­ple only want­ed to hear in pass­ing until today. He has the only hon­est voice of the rev­o­lu­tion. From the begin­ning he stat­ed he is here to lead the war.

“The recent events in Ukraine show that the rev­o­lu­tion­ary way of gain­ing Free­dom, Jus­tice and Well­be­ing leaves no alter­na­tives for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple,” Yarosh said. In this sit­u­a­tion, indis­tinct posi­tions of the lead­ers of the par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion par­ties and their fear to make rev­o­lu­tion have forced me to assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process and for all relat­ed events–in par­tic­u­lar, for the events that hap­pened in Ukraine ear­li­er, are hap­pen­ing now, and, what is most impor­tant, for those that will shape the future of our State.”

Dmitri Yarosh is quot­ed as say­ing that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment only has the pow­er giv­en to it by the far-right Pravy Sek­tor group–which rejects the orig­i­nal pro­test­ers’ goal of clos­er links to the Euro­pean Union and demands instead “nation­al rev­o­lu­tion.” Fur­ther, Yarosh states that the new gov­ern­ment will only be in pow­er as long as he him­self decides it will.

How much pow­er does Yarosh actu­al­ly wield? Ask Yulia Tymoshenko, the for­mer prime min­ster whose lead­er­ship Pravy Sek­tor rejects. Ask Arseniy Yat­senyuk , now being con­sid­ered for the posi­tion of Pre­mier in Ukraine’s new gov­ern­ment, and the man the West has pinned its hopes for sta­bil­i­ty on. What does it take to make a World Cham­pi­on look demure? Ask Vitali Kitschko, the pro­fes­sion­al box­er who has announced he will run for the pres­i­den­cy of the new gov­ern­ment.

Who is run­ning the rev­o­lu­tion? Ask Dmitri Yarosh, who in a video stat­ed clear­ly that Ukraine is only the begin­ning. Europe is next.

Stepan Ban­dera (1909–1959), for­mer head of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, once advo­cat­ed three ways of deal­ing with non-Ukraini­ans.

“It’s very sim­ple. You deal with them as com­rades — and this is for those who fight with you for Ukraine, regard­less of their nation­al­i­ty. You deal with them in a tol­er­ant way — for those who live on the land and do not oppose our strug­gle; thus, we treat them nor­mal­ly, Ukraine has a place for all. The third way of deal­ing with them is in a hos­tile way — and this is for those who oppose the Ukrain­ian peo­ple’s nation­al lib­er­a­tion strug­gle.”

And, as Dmitri Yarosh has said, “This is how it is in any state; any peo­ple takes exact­ly these posi­tions.”

Fund­ing

Today, the same allied forces that fought for the Third Reich in World War II are set­ting up a Nazi Ukraine. It’s beyond belief. The Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca (UCCA), the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress (UWC), and asso­ci­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions are pow­er­ful lob­by­ing groups. They have suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied the U.S. Con­gress to pro­vide unques­tion­ing sup­port for their view of Ukraine. Their influ­ence may be the result of the suc­cess they had in the cold war against the Sovi­ets .

Go to any of their chap­ter web­sites. All the asso­ci­at­ed groups are sup­port­ing the so-called “Maid­an” oppo­si­tion move­ment (named after Kiev’s cen­tral square where the protests picked up steam) by donat­ing them­selves and by solic­it­ing dona­tions from the pub­lic. The peo­ple mak­ing the dona­tions are prob­a­bly not aware that the mon­ey will fund, among oth­er things, the Trizub (Tri­dent) group led by Dmitri Yarosh.

For any of the lead­ers of these groups to say they are not sup­port­ing and fund­ing Nation­al Social­ism (Nazism) in Ukraine is a slap in the face of real­i­ty.

Iron­i­cal­ly, this year marks the 70th anniver­sary of D‑Day.

4. Over a month ago, Kiev began imple­ment­ing a new strat­egy in the civ­il war: cut off East Ukraine’s pen­sions and social ser­vices entire­ly:

“Cash Cut to Ukraine Rebel Areas in Risky Strat­egy” by Peter Leonard and Balint Szlanko; AP Big Sto­ry; 11/25/2014.

For hours, small crowds in Donet­sk hud­dle hope­fully in the cold around cash machines that nev­er get filled, as artillery rum­bles in the dis­tance.

Mon­ey is run­ning short in the rebel heart­land since the gov­ern­ment announced this month that it will sus­pend bank­ing ser­vices as it piles on the pres­sure. Almost all ATMs have stopped work­ing and the remain­der are expect­ed to stop oper­at­ing over the next two weeks.

The move is part of Ukraine’s plan to suf­fo­cate its sep­a­ratist foe, now that its cost­ly mil­i­tary cam­paign has foundered. Author­i­ties say they are also with­draw­ing all state ser­vices from rebel areas, although hos­pi­tal and school work­ers in the rebel strong­hold of Donet­sk say it has been a while since they last saw fund­ing any­how.

Yet if the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko hopes to turn peo­ple in east­ern Ukraine against the sep­a­ratist lead­er­ship, evi­dence on the ground sug­gests the strat­egy may only be hard­en­ing their resolve.

“What Poroshenko is say­ing to us is: ‘You are no longer Ukraini­ans. You won’t get pen­sions, you won’t get social pay­ments. When you croak, then we’ll stop this war against you,’” said Donet­sk retiree Geor­gy Sharov. “But I don’t want to go to Ukraine and beg for their mer­cy.”

The lines have typ­i­cally formed in front of cash machines belong­ing to state sav­ings bank Oshchad­bank, which han­dles pen­sions and social sup­port pay­ments.

“Even they don’t always have mon­ey,” said Donet­sk res­i­dent Sergei Smo­tovsky, stand­ing out­side a branch of the bank. “The worst thing is that not only can you not get social pay­ments. You can’t even with­draw mon­ey that you earned, your salary.”

Even though cash machines don’t work, account-hold­ers wait from ear­ly morn­ing until lunchtime in the hope that bank work­ers will top them up, but the doors to the banks often remain firm­ly shut.

Despite the unremit­ting fight­ing tak­ing place across Donet­sk and Luhan­sk, the two regions affect­ed by the armed sep­a­ratist con­flict, large super­mar­kets are still rea­son­ably stocked.

Sup­plies come from oth­er parts of Ukraine and cus­tomers often use bank cards to pay for shop­ping. Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment is now about to block bank cards, cut­ting off anoth­er means of sus­te­nance.

Hard-pressed recip­i­ents of state ben­e­fits have for months turned expec­tantly to the rebel gov­ern­ment for cash. Crowds of pen­sion­ers and sin­gle moth­ers assem­ble dai­ly before the sep­a­ratist head­quar­ters. When any­body in the crowd becomes espe­cially vocal, one of the gun­men guard­ing the build­ing rush­es to bun­dle them away, accus­ing them of being “provo­ca­teurs.”

The brunt of the rage, how­ever, is still direct­ed at the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

“Ukraine says Donet­sk is Ukrain­ian ter­ri­tory, and yet they came here with tanks and weapons instead of pay­ing pen­sions prop­erly,” said Donet­sk retiree Ana­toly Vis­ly. “I am a dis­abled vet­eran and I haven’t received my pen­sion for three months.”

Many pen­sion­ers have re-reg­is­tered in towns out­side rebel zones, mean­ing pay­ments have still accrued to their accounts. The chal­lenge for those peo­ple will now become mak­ing the month­ly trip to banks in gov­ern­ment-con­trolled areas, which can be cost­ly and dif­fi­cult, espe­cially for the most infirm.

Prospects for the rebels to set up a wel­fare sys­tem any time soon are bleak.

Anna Kharzhevskaya, an offi­cial with the rebel social affairs and labor min­istry, said sep­a­ratist author­i­ties have only a crude notion of how many peo­ple are eli­gi­ble for social pay­ments.

Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment has been block­ing access to state records and is try­ing to spir­it away hard copies of data­bases still in rebel-held areas, Kharzhevskaya said.

Sep­a­ratist author­i­ties say mili­ti­a­men are under instruc­tions to stop any unsanc­tioned removals of gov­ern­ment records by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties.

With­out a prop­erly func­tion­ing tax sys­tem in place, there is no imme­di­ately obvi­ous and trans­par­ent way for mon­ey to be raised. As a result, Kharzhevskaya said she could not esti­mate when her depart­ment would begin pay­ing reg­u­lar pen­sions.

...

5. Note that, accord­ing to the arti­cle below, the cut off pen­sioner accounts are report­edly still accru­ing val­ue. Pen­sion­ers just won’t be able to access those accounts unless they can leave the rebel-con­trolled regions or the war ends.

“Retirees Starve in Rebel-Held East­ern Ukraine” by Tatyana Gory­a­chova and Hal Fos­ter; USA Today; 12/25/2014.

Retirees in Donet­sk, the largest city in east­ern Ukraine held by pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists, are dying of hunger because their pen­sions have been cut off by the nation­al gov­ern­ment, rebel offi­cials and res­i­dents say.

Though Ukraine has not pub­licly dis­cussed star­va­tion deaths, it acknowl­edges there is a human­i­tar­ian cri­sis in the east­ern region because of the con­flict and blames the sep­a­ratists and Rus­sia for sup­port­ing the rebels.

The gov­ern­ment cut off pen­sions this month to peo­ple in all areas of east­ern Ukraine con­trolled by sep­a­ratists to under­cut sup­port for pro-Russ­ian rebels.

The num­ber of star­va­tion deaths in Donet­sk is hard to pin down, large­ly because the con­flict between Ukraine and sep­a­ratist forces has crip­pled gov­ern­ment func­tions in the east, includ­ing med­ical and coro­ners’ offices that record caus­es of deaths.

The siege of the city that began in August has led to 40% of the city’s 1 mil­lion peo­ple flee­ing.

Dmit­ry Pono­marenko, pas­tor of the City of Light Protes­tant church, said he believes the star­va­tion toll is in the hun­dreds, per­haps thou­sands. His assess­ment is based large­ly on accounts from parish­ioners and 300 seniors who come to his church dai­ly for a free meal. In one month, they report­ed more than 100 star­va­tion deaths of pen­sion­ers in Donet­sk, he said.

The Ukrain­ian Inde­pen­dent Infor­ma­tion Agency, cit­ing aid work­ers, report­ed that 22 seniors in Donet­sk, most­ly sin­gle men, died of hunger in Sep­tem­ber.

...

The aver­age Ukrain­ian pen­sion is mea­ger — $107 a month — but it can be the dif­fer­ence between life and death for many.

A num­ber of aid groups are fight­ing hunger in Donet­sk and oth­er cities in the war zone, includ­ing the Unit­ed Nations Food Pro­gram and the char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion of Rinat Akhme­tov, Ukraine’s rich­est man, who fled to Kiev when sep­a­ratists threat­ened to kill him. These efforts are spo­radic and lim­ited to a few thou­sand peo­ple at a time. They don’t come any­where near replac­ing the pen­sions.

The sep­a­ratists and Rus­sia have decried the pen­sion cut­off as inhu­mane. Kiev says rebels and crim­i­nals have tak­en much of the mon­ey it sends to the east­ern region.

The cut­off, announced Nov. 5, means pay­ments will no longer “be stolen by pro-Russ­ian ban­dits,” Prime Min­is­ter Arseniy Yat­senyuk said.

...

Donetsk’s may­or in exile, Alexan­der Lukyanchenko, who fled to Kiev in August after receiv­ing sep­a­ratist death threats, has crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment for the cut­off.

The only way for res­i­dents of neigh­bor­ing Donet­sk and Luhan­sk provinces to get their pen­sions back is to go to a city out­side the war zone to re-reg­is­ter for ben­e­fits. Many retirees lack the health or mon­ey to trav­el so far from their homes, Lukyanchenko said.

Yat­senyuk, the prime min­is­ter, said the pen­sions the gov­ern­ment with­holds are accru­ing for the ben­e­fi­cia­ries and will be paid once the east­ern region is free of sep­a­ratist con­trol.

Pono­marenko, the pas­tor, and oth­ers who help the retirees fear a lot more will suc­cumb to star­va­tion.

“We have only enough mon­ey to help a few pen­sion­ers who are able to walk to our church each day,” he said, adding that’s a small frac­tion of the retirees going hun­gry.

Emblem of the Ukrain­ian Azov Bat­tal­ion whose com­man­ders occu­py key posi­tions in that coun­try’s gov­ern­ment

6. “Attempt­ing to cre­ate unbear­able con­di­tions of life is a whole new ball­game... using star­va­tion of civil­ians as a method of war­fare is a war crime”:

“More than 1 Mil­lion Flee, Ukraine Close to ‘Human­i­tar­ian Cat­a­stro­phe’ ” by Kier­an Guil­bert; Reuters; 1/8/2015.

More than one mil­lion peo­ple have been dri­ven from their homes by the con­flict in Ukraine, ham­per­ing aid efforts and leav­ing the coun­try on the verge of a human­i­tar­ian cat­a­stro­phe, aid agen­cies said on Thurs­day.

The num­ber of peo­ple uproot­ed with­in Ukraine, 610,000, and of refugees who have fled to neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, 594,000, has more than tripled since August, fig­ures from the Unit­ed Nations Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­ian Affairs (OCHA) show.

The U.N. said an esti­mated 5.2 mil­lion peo­ple in Ukraine were liv­ing in con­flict zones, of whom 1.4 mil­lion were high­ly vul­ner­a­ble and in need of assis­tance as they face finan­cial prob­lems, a lack of ser­vices and aid, and harsh win­ter con­di­tions.

The con­flict between Ukraine and pro-Rus­sia sep­a­ratists, killed more than 4,700 peo­ple last year and pro­voked the worst cri­sis in rela­tions between Rus­sia and the West since the Cold War.

Denis Krivosheev, deputy direc­tor of Europe and Cen­tral Asia at Amnesty Inter­na­tional, said res­i­dents in sep­a­ratist-con­trolled Luhan­sk and Donet­sk could bare­ly afford food and med­i­cines, espe­cially vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple such as pen­sion­ers.

“While it may be too ear­ly to call this a human­i­tar­ian cat­a­stro­phe, it’s clear­ly pro­gress­ing in that direc­tion,” Krivosheev told the Thom­son Reuters Foun­da­tion by email.

The pro­vi­sion of human­i­tar­ian aid was being ham­pered by pro-Kiev vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions that were increas­ingly pre­vent­ing food and med­i­cine from reach­ing those in need in east­ern Ukraine, he said.

“Attempt­ing to cre­ate unbear­able con­di­tions of life is a whole new ball­game... using star­va­tion of civil­ians as a method of war­fare is a war crime.”

The bat­tal­ions often act like “rene­gade gangs” and urgent­ly need to be brought under con­trol, Krivosheev added.

Social ben­e­fits, includ­ing pen­sions, have also become a major con­cern for those in east­ern Ukraine fol­low­ing Kiev’s deci­sion to trans­fer the pay­ments to gov­ern­ment-con­trolled areas, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said those unable to leave their homes, such as the elder­ly and the sick, and peo­ple liv­ing in insti­tu­tions were not receiv­ing the help they need­ed.

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7. A coura­geous­ly accu­rate op-ed piece was penned by Chris Marten­son for Mar­ket Watch.

“OPINION: Per­haps You Missed It: We’re at War with Rus­sia” by Chris Marten­son; Mar­ket­Watch; 1/20/2015. 

The U.S. has been wag­ing eco­nom­ic, finan­cial, trade, and polit­i­cal war against Rus­sia and even kinet­ic war-by-proxy in Ukraine. Wor­ry­ing­ly, nobody in pow­er in the U.S. or Europe real­ly seems will­ing to tell us exact­ly why.

From the Russ­ian point of view, every­thing from their plung­ing ruble to bit­ter sanc­tions to the falling price of oil are the fault of the U.S., either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly. Whether that is fair or not is irrel­e­vant; that’s the view of the Rus­sians right now. So no sur­prise, it doesn’t dis­pose them towards good­will nego­ti­a­tions with the West gen­er­al­ly, and the U.S. specif­i­cal­ly.

Recent­ly the anti-Russ­ian stance in the U.S. press has qui­et­ed down, pre­sum­ably because the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship has moved its atten­tion on to oth­er things, and that means Rus­sia is large­ly out of the U.S. news cycle. How­ev­er, there’s plen­ty of seri­ous action going on in Rus­sia and Ukraine, as well as relat­ed activ­i­ty in the U.S. that deserves our care­ful atten­tion.

The U.S. (via John Ker­ry) and NATO have steadi­ly accused Rus­sia of hav­ing fun­neled hun­dreds of tanks, armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers and oth­er heavy equip­ment to the sep­a­ratists in east­ern Ukraine.

These asser­tions bring to mind the Sher­lock Holmes case of the dog that did not bark where the absence of a piece of evi­dence leads us to a very dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion than the one the U.S. polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment would like us to believe.

The sorts of weapon­ry that NATO and the U.S. have charged Rus­sia with pro­vid­ing are vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to con­ceal from the air. Snap­ping high-res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of such war machin­ery is child’s play for today’s mil­i­tary satel­lites, and even civil­ian ones too. If the asser­tions were true, we should have seen a flood of pho­tographs of Russ­ian heavy equip­ment every step of the way as it passed into Ukraine.

But none have been offered, not even one so far. And the sim­plest expla­na­tion for this is that none exist. If they did, you can be 100% cer­tain they’d have been released and replayed over and over again on CNN until every­body and their uncle could dis­tin­guish a T‑72 tank out­line from that of a T‑64.

What con­cerns me even more than these undoc­u­ment­ed charges are two espe­cial­ly ill-con­ceived, if not overt­ly con­fronta­tion­al, pieces of leg­is­la­tion passed by the Con­gress in Decem­ber.

The first is H.Res 758 passed on Dec. 4, which, among oth­er charges, accused Rus­sia of hav­ing invad­ed Ukraine again with­out pro­vid­ing or refer­ring to any sort of evi­dence pho­to­graph­ic or oth­er­wise. Enti­tled “Strong­ly con­demn­ing the actions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, under Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, which has car­ried out a pol­i­cy of aggres­sion against neigh­bor­ing coun­tries aimed at polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion” the res­o­lu­tion is packed with a vari­ety of one-sided asser­tions and leaves no diplo­mat­ic wig­gle room for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia has a dif­fer­ent view of what has tran­spired in Ukraine. . . .

. . . . The Ukraine Free­dom Sup­port Act of 2014, or S.2828, was passed by the Sen­ate on Dec. 11. This goes even fur­ther than mere­ly con­demn­ing Rus­sia and autho­rizes the dis­tri­b­u­tion of both lethal and non-lethal mil­i­tary aid to Kiev, includ­ing sniper and assault rifles, mor­tars and shells, stinger mis­siles, anti-tank mis­siles, night vision gog­gles, radar sys­tems and a host of oth­er hard­ware items.

If the tables were turned, and it were the Russ­ian law­mak­ers pass­ing a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing the U.S. for a vari­ety of inter­na­tion­al crimes for which exact­ly zero proof was offered, and then were active­ly arm­ing a dan­ger­ous con­flict right on the U.S. bor­der, I think we all know just how ablaze with indig­ni­ty the U.S. polit­i­cal lead­er­ship would be. And right­ly so.

So is it any sur­prise that Russ­ian For­eign Min­istry spokesman Alexan­der Luka­she­vich said in response, “Both hous­es of the U.S. Con­gress have approved the Ukraine Free­dom Sup­port Act bypass­ing debates and prop­er vot­ing. The overt­ly con­fronta­tion­al mes­sage of the new law can­not but evoke pro­found regret. Once again Wash­ing­ton is lev­el­ing base­less sweep­ing accu­sa­tions against Rus­sia and threat­en­ing more sanc­tions.”

The real­ly bizarre part of this sto­ry is that I can­not yet find any cred­i­ble analy­sis or com­men­tary explain­ing exact­ly what the U.S.’s inter­ests are in Ukraine that are so com­pelling as to risk increas­ing con­fronta­tion with Rus­sia. And it both­ers a great many ana­lysts that the U.S. is on an increas­ing­ly com­bat­ive course with yet anoth­er coun­try with­out pro­vid­ing any evi­dence in sup­port of its accu­sa­tions and actions. Again.

In response, Rus­sia is rapid­ly with­draw­ing from addi­tion­al dia­log with the U.S. and Europe, while draw­ing ever clos­er to Chi­na, Turkey and India. Rus­sians feel that they are already under siege from the U.S., and that acts of war have already been com­mit­ted.

Despite being almost com­plete­ly out of the U.S. news cycle, events are in and around the Ukraine sit­u­a­tion are actu­al­ly pick­ing up pace. On Jan. 15, Ukraine Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed a decree mobi­liz­ing 50,000 new ser­vice­men to the front lines, and Rus­sia just announced that Europe will have to accept gas via Turkey as the Ukraine route is being shut down.

This sit­u­a­tion remains much more flu­id and nuanced than we’re being told by the West­ern media, with much more to this sto­ry than a short col­umn allows. Those inter­est­ed in delv­ing deep­er can read our lat­est report here.

But in short, the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting more strained, not less, and it has the very real chance of blos­som­ing into some­thing far larg­er and more dead­ly than the sparse cov­er­age in the West­ern press might imply.

If it looks like a war, acts like a war and smells like a war, it may just be a war. Every­one should be very con­cerned by these events, but espe­cial­ly Euro­pean read­ers.

8a. In keep­ing with Kiev’s new trend of hir­ing for­eign­ers for high-lev­el gov­ern­ment posi­tions, it looks like the head of Ukraine’s new anti-cor­rup­tion bureau might not be Ukrain­ian:

“For­eigner May Head Ukraine’s Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau”; Zik.ua; 1/11/2015.

Address­ing a 9‑member com­mit­tee which is to appoint 3 can­di­dates to head the Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau, Pres Poroshenko said the ACB is to oper­ate inde­pen­dently and open­ly, his Jan. 10 press ser­vice report runs.

Cor­rup­tion is Ukraine’s major ene­my today, the incum­bent stressed.

There are anti-cor­rup­tion struc­tures in the exec­u­tive and police, he stressed, but their work is not effec­tive since they are infest­ed with cor­rup­tion, Poroshenko said.

The ACB is to become an effec­tive and trans­par­ent orga­ni­za­tion. Only this will help it to gain the con­fi­dence of Ukraini­ans, he said.

The fight should be start­ed with graft, with ACB bring­ing to account­abil­ity high-lev­el offi­cials, and then pro­ceed to low-lev­el cor­rup­tion, he stressed.

The key fig­ure in the ACB is its direc­tor. He did not exclude the pos­si­bil­ity for a for­eigner to occu­py this posi­tion.

...

8b. This prob­a­bly shouldn’t be a sur­prise giv­en the oth­er for­eign­ers that have already been giv­en cab­i­net posi­tions. That, and the fact that the three-mem­ber   pan­el for select­ing the new head of the anti-cor­rup­tion bureau includes the Ital­ian head of the EU’s anti-cor­rup­tion agency:

“Coali­tion Pro­poses Ital­ian Anti-Cor­rup­tion Fight­er for Selec­tion Com­mis­sion of ACB Head”; Zik.au; 12/22/2014.

All the coali­tion fac­tions sup­port Ital­ian Jovan­ni Kesler, the direc­tor of Euro­pean anti-cor­rup­tion bureau, for mem­ber­ship of a 0‑member com­mis­sion that will choose 3 can­di­dates for Ukraine’s Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau head, Oleh Lyashko wrote in Face­book Dec. 22.

Verk­hovna Rada has to nom­i­nate 3 mem­bers of the com­mis­sion.

Of the three nom­i­nated can­di­date Pres Poroshenko will choose the ACB head.

The cab­i­net and pres­i­dent have already nom­i­nated their 6 mem­bers.

Accord­ing to the media and NGOs, the 6 are Ukrain­ian par­tiots with impec­ca­ble pub­lic record.

9. As we peruse the “jour­nal­ism” per­tain­ing to Ukraine, it is impor­tant to bear in mind that NATO is orga­niz­ing a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign to san­i­tize the delib­er­ate, pre-con­ceived re-insti­tu­tion of the OUN fas­cists in Ukraine. We won­der how extreme this is like­ly to become? Will active retal­i­a­tion be imple­ment­ed against jour­nal­ists who dare to tell the truth?

“NATO Seeks Weapons to Counter Rus­si­a’s Infor­ma­tion War” by Sam Jones; Finan­cial Times; 12/7/2014.

A casu­al con­sumer of Russ­ian media might con­clude the west­ern Ukrain­ian city of Lviv, one of the strong­holds of the country’s pro-EU upris­ing, has been over­run by vio­lent fas­cists.

So a video recent­ly uploaded to YouTube will prove dis­ap­point­ing. Called “Where are all the fas­cists in Lviv?”, it fea­tures a cor­re­spon­dent walk­ing the city’s peace­ful streets, inter­view­ing slight­ly bemused — decid­ed­ly un-mil­i­tant — shop­pers.

The online video was pro­duced and pub­lished by Nato. It is a mod­est new weapon the alliance is deploy­ing as it seeks to fight back against a Krem­lin infor­ma­tion cam­paign that is pos­ing a new wor­ry for west­ern pol­i­cy mak­ers along­side Russ­ian bombs and espi­onage.

“Rus­sia is weaponiz­ing infor­ma­tion in this cri­sis,” says James Appathu­rai, the alliance’s deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary gen­er­al for polit­i­cal affairs. “They are reach­ing deep into our own elec­torates to affect pol­i­tics.”

Nation­al intel­li­gence agen­cies in the alliance point to what they say is alarm­ing anti-Nato and anti-Euro­pean rhetoric in the Russ­ian media. The Krem­lin has been par­tic­u­lar­ly mas­ter­ful, they believe, at using a web of dis­in­for­ma­tion to gen­er­ate doubt inter­na­tion­al­ly over its huge mil­i­tary sup­port for sep­a­ratists in Ukraine.

The fear among Nato offi­cials and west­ern pol­i­cy mak­ers is that the Russ­ian cam­paign could fatal­ly frac­ture an already frag­ile Euro­pean con­sen­sus to main­tain tough eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Moscow for its behav­iour in Ukraine.

In Ger­many, for exam­ple, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel is con­tend­ing with a siz­able fac­tion sym­pa­thet­ic to Russia’s Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, whether for busi­ness or his­tor­i­cal rea­sons. Oth­er EU mem­bers also appear vul­ner­a­ble to the Krem­lin efforts to sow dis­cord, par­tic­u­lar­ly the impov­er­ished for­mer Sovi­et coun­tries in south­east Europe.

“Infor­ma­tion war­fare is the spear­head of almost every­thing Rus­sia is doing,” says Jonathan Eyal, inter­na­tion­al direc­tor at the Roy­al Unit­ed Ser­vices Insti­tute.

Nato plan­ners accept that Mr Putin “is not mad”, says Mr Eyal, and there­fore unlike­ly to rush head­long into an armed con­flict by, for exam­ple, send­ing tanks into the Baltics. “We are talk­ing about deal­ing with a long-term pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign instead.”

High-lev­el del­e­ga­tions from across Europe have begun meet­ing at Nato’s head­quar­ters in Brus­sels and in nation­al cap­i­tals to dis­cuss the chal­lenge. The Lviv video — what Russ­ian agit­prop prac­ti­tion­ers would call pokazukha, or a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic pub­lic­i­ty stunt — is one of the fruits of those meet­ings.

It has gar­nered 40,000 views so far. Most nor­mal Nato video uploads man­age few­er than 2,000. Nato insid­ers say more such mate­r­i­al should be expect­ed in the future.

There is even talk of reviv­ing cold war ghosts, such as the UK For­eign Office’s Infor­ma­tion Research Depart­ment, a secre­tive oper­a­tion to feed news of Sovi­et mis­deeds to sym­pa­thet­ic jour­nal­ists. It was shut in 1977.

But even nation­al gov­ern­ments once well-versed in Krem­li­nol­o­gy are still some­what bewil­dered by the threat.

The recent expan­sion into Britain of Moscow’s inter­na­tion­al news chan­nel RT, or Rus­sia Today, has prompt­ed a series of nation­al secu­ri­ty dis­cus­sions at some of the high­est lev­els in the British gov­ern­ment, say offi­cials. Yet pol­i­cy mak­ers are at a loss when it comes of pro­pos­als to deal with the threat they per­ceive, par­tic­u­lar­ly when no laws have been bro­ken.

“Our response to pro­pa­gan­da can’t be more pro­pa­gan­da,” says Oana Lunges­cu, Nato’s offi­cial spokesper­son.

In the mean­time, the alliance is seek­ing to try to redress a Russ­ian effort that Ms Lunges­cu says is intend­ed “to con­fuse, divert and divide”.

The alliance has also put togeth­er a new “web por­tal” called “set­ting the record straight”. It is avail­able in Russ­ian, Ukrain­ian, Eng­lish and French and fleshed out with dozens of doc­u­ments, state­ments, videos and images. One sec­tion lists 25 “myths” about the alliance cou­pled with “fac­tu­al” rebut­tals.

Anoth­er “time­line” of events com­piles links to every sin­gle Nato pro­nounce­ment, press con­fer­ence, speech or offi­cial Q&A relat­ing to Ukraine and Rus­sia since Feb­ru­ary.

Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the alliance has begun to co-ordi­nate “mes­sag­ing” among its mem­bers, a senior offi­cial said. Shared lines are now being sent out to strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions teams work­ing in the for­eign min­istries of mem­bers for use. Short­ly before the Nato sum­mit in Wales this Sep­tem­ber, the alliance also opened a new “cen­tre of excel­lence” for strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Riga, Latvia, which is intend­ed to serve as a clear­ing­house for anti-pro­pa­gan­da ideas and research.

While Nato has joined the infor­ma­tion war, many in the alliance acknowl­edge its efforts are still in their infan­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when set against a vast Russ­ian cam­paign.

“[We have] come a long way in respond­ing . . . but clear­ly it is not enough,” Mr Appathu­rai says. “There are 20 or so peo­ple in Nato’s pub­lic diplo­ma­cy team who are at work try­ing to counter an organ­ised, mul­ti-faceted, well-fund­ed Russ­ian oper­a­tion that is going on across the world.”