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FTR#1230 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 3

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ March 3, 2022Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

­­­FTR#1230 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Oleh Tihany­bok, leader of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion Svo­bo­da.

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of the Ukraine War and the ascent of the OUN/B Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors to posi­tions of pow­er in Ukraine, we note the fol­low­ing:

  1. Actor Ash­ton Kutch­er tweet­ed sup­port for Ukraine, where his wife, Mila Kunis, was born.
  2. “. . . . A Mem­ber of the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment from the far-right Svo­bo­da Par­ty [Igor Mirosh­nichenko] … sneer­ing­ly pro­claimed that [Kunis] was not Ukrain­ian but a zhy­dov­ka. This deeply hurt­ful slur for a Jew was an alarm­ing gut­ter effort to inject Jew-hatred into the accept­able bounds of main­stream Ukrain­ian dis­course. . . .”
  3. Many key min­is­te­r­i­al posts in the new Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment have been filled by Swo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor, the polit­i­cal heirs to the OUN/B. The super­vi­sion of the mil­i­tary and the judi­cial process is under the sway of those par­ties. ” . . . . The man fac­ing down Putin’s aggres­sion as sec­re­tary of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Secu­rity and Defence Coun­cil is Andriy Paru­biy. He over­sees nation­al secu­rity for the nation hav­ing pre­vi­ously served as secu­rity com­man­dant dur­ing the anti-gov­ern­ment protests in Kiev. . . . Over­see­ing the armed forces along­side Paru­biy as the Deputy Sec­re­tary of Nation­al Secu­rity is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sec­tor . . . .The new Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Olek­sandr Sych is a mem­ber of the far-right Svo­boda par­ty . . . . Svo­boda now con­trols the ecol­ogy and agri­cul­tural min­istry with Andriy Mokhnyk, the deputy head of Svo­boda, run­ning ecol­ogy and Ihor Shvai­ka as agri­cul­ture min­is­ter. . . . ‘There are sev­en min­is­ters with links to the extreme right now. It began with Svo­boda get­ting 10 per cent of the vote in the last elec­tion, it is cer­tainly a con­cern in the long run.’ . . . . Svo­boda mem­ber Oleh Makhnit­sky is now act­ing pros­e­cu­tor gen­eral. . . .”
  4. Vasi­ly Vovk (the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion of the shoot-down of MH 17) summed up the find­ings of his “inves­ti­ga­tion”: ” . . . . ‘I am con­fi­dent that this mis­sile sys­tem was deliv­ered from the ter­ri­to­ry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion with a high-skilled crew — most like­ly a crew of well-trained offi­cers, of course from Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry,’ he said. . . .” 
  5. A more com­plete under­stand­ing of Vovk’s polit­i­cal incli­na­tions can be gleaned from this: ” . . . .Vovk – a gen­er­al who holds a senior reserve rank with the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine, the local suc­ces­sor to the KGB – wrote that Jews ‘aren’t Ukraini­ans and I will destroy you along with [Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Jew­ish law­mak­er Vadim] Rabi­novych. I’m telling you one more time – go to hell, zhi­di [kikes], the Ukrain­ian peo­ple have had it to here with you.’ ‘Ukraine must be gov­erned by Ukraini­ans,’ he wrote. . . .”
  6. The Azov Bat­tal­ion’s Nation­al Druzhy­na mili­tia was award­ed the job of elec­tion mon­i­tor­ing by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in their recent elec­tions. ” . . . . They are the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Nation­al Mili­tia, street vig­i­lantes with roots in the bat­tle-test­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion that emerged to defend Ukraine against Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratists but was also accused of pos­si­ble war crimes and neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies. 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. . . .”
  7. Azov has gained influ­ence with­in the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or through Vadim Troy­an, the for­mer deputy com­man­der of Azov who is now deputy min­is­ter of the inte­ri­or. ” . . . . The deputy min­is­ter of the Interior—which con­trols the Nation­al Police—is Vadim Troy­an, a vet­er­an of Azov and Patri­ot of Ukraine. . . .  Today, he’s deputy of the depart­ment run­ning US-trained law enforce­ment in the entire nation. Ear­li­er this month, RFE report­ed on Nation­al Police lead­er­ship admir­ing Stepan Bandera—a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and Fas­cist whose troops par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Holocaust—on social media. The fact that Ukraine’s police is pep­pered with far-right sup­port­ers explains why neo-Nazis oper­ate with impuni­ty on the streets. . . .”
  8. There has been a series of sus­pi­cious deaths of oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal fig­ures and crit­ics of the Poroshenko/Maidan regime in Ukraine. One won­ders of the “Euro­pean Union val­ues” sup­pos­ed­ly being man­i­fest­ed in Ukraine includes sys­tem­at­ic polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion of the oppo­si­tion, a pos­si­bil­i­ty that must be con­sid­ered in this con­text. Recall that the deputy com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion became chief of police in Kiev in this time frame.
  9. There is no more sig­nif­i­cant aspect of the “Azov man­i­fes­ta­tion” than the Azov-spon­sored ISG con­fer­ences, which have includ­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty fig­ures from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries who–apparently–share Azov’s geopo­lit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. ” . . . . a large share of the for­eign speak­ers from Poland, Lithua­nia, and Croa­t­ia had a (para-)military back­ground, among them advi­sor to the Pol­ish Defence Min­is­ter Jerzy Tar­gal­s­ki and retired Brigadier Gen­er­al of the Croa­t­ian Armed Forces Bruno Zor­i­ca.[156] Among the talk­ing points of Pol­ish mil­i­tary edu­ca­tor Damien Duda were ‘meth­ods of the prepa­ra­tion of a mil­i­tary reserve in youth orga­ni­za­tions’ and the ‘impor­tance of para­mil­i­tary struc­tures with­in the frame­work of the defence com­plex of a mod­ern state.’ . . . It also includ­ed ‘mil­i­tary attach­es of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions from the key coun­tries in the region (Poland, Hun­gary, Roma­nia and Lithua­nia). . . .”
  10. In numer­ous broad­casts, we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA. We con­clude the pro­gram with intro­duc­to­ry dis­cus­sion of the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry. We will con­tin­ue with this analy­sis in the next pro­gram.

1a. Ash­ton Kutch­er tweet­ed sup­port for Ukraine, where his wife, Mila Kunis, was born.

“Ash­ton Kutch­er tweets sup­port for Ukraine, home coun­try of wife Mila Kunis” by Jay Croft; CNN; 2/26/2022.

Celebri­ties and polit­i­cal fig­ures have been voic­ing sup­port for Ukraine since Rus­sia invad­ed this week.

Now comes anoth­er famous face with a per­son­al con­nec­tion to the besieged nation, actor Ash­ton Kutch­er.

“I stand with Ukraine,” the star tweet­ed late Fri­day. . . .

Oleh Tihany­bok, leader of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion Svo­bo­da.

1b. Nev­er under­es­ti­mate a “Half A Man.”

“Ukrain­ian Anti-Semi­tism and Mila Kunis: Com­pli­cat­ed by Face­book, Dic­tio­nar­ies” by Drew Grant; The Observ­er; 2/07/13.

A Mem­ber of the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment from the far-right Svo­bo­da Par­ty [Igor Mirosh­nichenko] … sneer­ing­ly pro­claimed that [Kunis] was not Ukrain­ian but a zhy­dov­ka. This deeply hurt­ful slur for a Jew was an alarm­ing gut­ter effort to inject Jew-hatred into the accept­able bounds of main­stream Ukrain­ian dis­course.

. . . . The most dis­turb­ing aspect of the sto­ry was the reac­tion from the Ukrain­ian min­istry, which claimed that there is noth­ing wrong with call­ing Kunis the female ver­sion of a “dirty Jew,” because the word is in their dic­tio­nary. . . .

2b.  “MH17 Inves­ti­ga­tors Reveal an Exhaust of a Russ­ian-built BUK Mis­sile Was Found at the Crash Site” by Charles Miran­da; news.au.com; 6/7/2016.

. . . . Ahead of its release Ukraine’s for­mer top SBU secu­ri­ty ser­vices offi­cial Vasyl Vovk, who until June last year was the country’s chief inves­ti­ga­tor on the multi­na­tion­al probe, said he knew who was respon­si­ble but con­ced­ed it was not con­clu­sive.

“I am con­fi­dent that this mis­sile sys­tem was deliv­ered from the ter­ri­to­ry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion with a high-skilled crew — most like­ly a crew of well-trained offi­cers, of course from Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry,” he said. . . .

2b. In a long series of pro­grams and posts over the last four years, we have chron­i­cled the re-insti­tu­tion of the OUN/B World War II-era fas­cists as the foun­da­tion­al ele­ment of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in that regard is the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, the SBU.

Among the recent devel­op­ments in the oper­a­tions of the OUN/B‑related ele­ments in Ukraine is the post­ing of a call for the erad­i­ca­tion of Ukraine’s Jews. The call was made by Vasi­ly Vovk – a senior offi­cer in the SBU, for­mer head of the SBU’s inves­tiga­tive unit and head of the SBU’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the MH17 probe. (Vovk’s pro­nounce­ment casts fur­ther doubt over the MH17 inves­ti­ga­tion.)

The SBU appears to have been involved with the killing of an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who had report­ed on how mili­tia com­man­ders were evad­ing pun­ish­ment for their crimes short­ly before his car was blown up. 

Pravy Sek­tor asso­ciate Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko had been the head of the SBU (Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice) since the Maid­an Coup, up until his ouster in June of 2015. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he had oper­at­ed the orga­ni­za­tion along the lines of the OUN/B.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, he had served in that same capac­i­ty under Vik­tor Yuschenko, see­ing the out­fit as a vehi­cle for rewrit­ing Ukraine’s his­to­ry in accor­dance with the his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism favored by the OUN/B.

Very close to Pravy Sek­tor head Dymitro Yarosh, Naly­vaichenko employed Yarosh while serv­ing in the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment.  Yarosh claims that the two col­lab­o­rat­ed on “anti-ter­ror­ist” oper­a­tions con­duct­ed against eth­nic Rus­sians.

“Ukrain­ian Gen­er­al Calls for Destruc­tion of Jews” by Sam Sokol; The Jew­ish Chron­i­cle; 5/11/2017.

“I’m telling you one more time – go to hell, kikes”, wrote  a senior offi­cer affil­i­at­ed to the intel­li­gence ser­vices.

In the lat­est of a series of high­ly pub­lic anti­se­mit­ic state­ments by promi­nent fig­ures in Ukraine, a retired Ukrain­ian gen­er­al affil­i­at­ed with the country’s intel­li­gence ser­vices this week called for the destruc­tion of his country’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

In a post since delet­ed from Face­book, Vasi­ly Vovk – a gen­er­al who holds a senior reserve rank with the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine, the local suc­ces­sor to the KGB – wrote that Jews “aren’t Ukraini­ans and I will destroy you along with [Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Jew­ish law­mak­er Vadim] Rabi­novych. I’m telling you one more time – go to hell, zhi­di [kikes], the Ukrain­ian peo­ple have had it to here with you.”

“Ukraine must be gov­erned by Ukraini­ans,” he wrote. . . .

. . . . Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, direc­tor of the state-run Insti­tu­tion for Nation­al Mem­o­ry accused Jew­ish activist Eduard Dolin­sky of fab­ri­cat­ing anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents for mon­ey.

Via­tro­vych is also run­ning a pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign white­wash­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA), a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist mili­tia, in the Holo­caust.

In 2015 the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment passed a law pro­hibit­ing the den­i­gra­tion of the UPA and oth­er groups which fought for the country’s inde­pen­dence. . . .

3. 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.

Com­bat hel­mets of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

4a. Azov’s Druzhy­na mili­tia was award­ed the job of elec­tion mon­i­tor­ing by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in their recent elec­tions. ” . . . . They are the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Nation­al Mili­tia, street vig­i­lantes with roots in the bat­tle-test­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion that emerged to defend Ukraine against Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratists but was also accused of pos­si­ble war crimes and neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies. 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. . . .”

4b. Azov  has gained influ­ence with­in the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or through Vadim Troy­an, the for­mer deputy com­man­der of Azov who is now deputy min­is­ter of the inte­ri­or. ” . . . . The deputy min­is­ter of the Interior—which con­trols the Nation­al Police—is Vadim Troy­an, a vet­er­an of Azov and Patri­ot of Ukraine. . . .  Today, he’s deputy of the depart­ment run­ning US-trained law enforce­ment in the entire nation. Ear­li­er this month, RFE report­ed on Nation­al Police lead­er­ship admir­ing Stepan Bandera—a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and Fas­cist whose troops par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Holocaust—on social media. The fact that Ukraine’s police is pep­pered with far-right sup­port­ers explains why neo-Nazis oper­ate with impuni­ty on the streets. . . .”

4c. There has been a series of sus­pi­cious deaths of oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal fig­ures and crit­ics of the Poroshenko/Maidan regime in Ukraine. One won­ders of the “Euro­pean Union val­ues” sup­pos­ed­ly being man­i­fest­ed in Ukraine includes sys­tem­at­ic polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion of the oppo­si­tion, a pos­si­bil­i­ty that must be con­sid­ered in this con­text. Recall that the deputy com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion became chief of police in Kiev in this time frame.

“Mys­te­ri­ous Deaths in Ukraine” by William Blum; Con­sor­tium News; 4/3/2015.

. . . . Mean­while, in the same time peri­od in Ukraine, out­side of the pro-Russ­ian area in the south­east, the fol­low­ing was report­ed:

–Jan. 29: For­mer Chair­man of the local gov­ern­ment of the Kharkov region, Alex­ey Kolesnik, hanged him­self.

–Feb. 24: Stanislav Mel­nik, a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion par­ty (Par­tia Regionov), shot him­self.

–Feb. 25: The May­or of Meli­topol, Sergey Val­ter, hanged him­self a few hours before his tri­al.

–Feb. 26: Alexan­der Bor­di­u­ga, deputy direc­tor of the Meli­topol police, was found dead in his garage.

–Feb. 26: Alexan­der Peklushenko, for­mer mem­ber of the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, and for­mer may­or of Zapor­izhi, was found shot to death.

–Feb. 28: Mikhail Chechetov, for­mer mem­ber of par­lia­ment, mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion par­ty (Par­tia Regionov), “fell” from the win­dow of his 17th floor apart­ment in Kiev.

–March 14: The 32-year-old pros­e­cu­tor in Odessa, Sergey Mel­nichuk, “fell” to his death from the 9th floor.

The Par­tia Regionov direct­ly accused the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in the deaths of their par­ty mem­bers and appealed to the West to react to these events. “We appeal to the Euro­pean Union, PACE [Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly of the Coun­cil of Europe], and Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions to imme­di­ate­ly react to the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine, and give a legal assess­ment of the crim­i­nal actions of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, which cyn­i­cal­ly mur­ders its polit­i­cal oppo­nents.”. . . .

4d. There is no more sig­nif­i­cant aspect of the “Azov man­i­fes­ta­tion” than the Azov-spon­sored ISG con­fer­ences, which have includ­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty fig­ures from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries who–apparently–share Azov’s geopo­lit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. ” . . . . a large share of the for­eign speak­ers from Poland, Lithua­nia, and Croa­t­ia had a (para-)military back­ground, among them advi­sor to the Pol­ish Defence Min­is­ter Jerzy Tar­gal­s­ki and retired Brigadier Gen­er­al of the Croa­t­ian Armed Forces Bruno Zor­i­ca.[156] Among the talk­ing points of Pol­ish mil­i­tary edu­ca­tor Damien Duda were ‘meth­ods of the prepa­ra­tion of a mil­i­tary reserve in youth orga­ni­za­tions’ and the ‘impor­tance of para­mil­i­tary struc­tures with­in the frame­work of the defence com­plex of a mod­ern state.’ . . . It also includ­ed ‘mil­i­tary attach­es of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions from the key coun­tries in the region (Poland, Hun­gary, Roma­nia and Lithua­nia). . . .”

  1. As dis­cussed dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1096 and 1097, the Azov Bat­tal­ion is in the lead­er­ship of the revival of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept.” . . . . In this con­text of reha­bil­i­ta­tion of inter­war heroes, ten­sions with Rus­sia, and dis­il­lu­sion with Europe over its per­ceived lack of sup­port against Moscow, the geopo­lit­i­cal con­cept of Inter­mar­i­um could only pros­per. It has found its most active pro­mot­ers on the far right of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, among the lead­er­ship of the Azov Bat­tal­ion. . . .”
  2. Azov’s Inter­mar­i­um Sup­port Group has held three net­work­ing con­fer­ences to date, bring­ing togeth­er key fig­ures of what are euphem­ized as “nation­al­ist” orga­ni­za­tions. In addi­tion to focus­ing on the devel­op­ment of what are euphem­ized as “nation­al­ist” youth orga­ni­za­tions, the con­fer­ence is stress­ing mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion and pre­pared­ness: ” . . . . In 2016, Bilet­sky cre­at­ed the Inter­mar­i­um Sup­port Group (ISG),[152] intro­duc­ing the con­cept to poten­tial com­rades-in-arms from the Baltic-Black Sea region.[153] The first day of the found­ing con­fer­ence was reserved for lec­tures and dis­cus­sions by senior rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous sym­pa­thet­ic orga­ni­za­tions, the sec­ond day to ‘the lead­ers of youth branch­es of polit­i­cal par­ties and nation­al­ist move­ments of the Baltic-Black Sea area.’ . . . . It also includ­ed ‘mil­i­tary attach­es of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions from the key coun­tries in the region (Poland, Hun­gary, Roma­nia and Lithua­nia). . . .”
  3. Azov’s third ISG con­fer­ence con­tin­ued to advance the mil­i­tary net­work­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ear­li­er gath­er­ings, involv­ing mil­i­tary offi­cials from East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries and includ­ing the neces­si­ty of giv­ing mil­i­tary train­ing to what are euphem­ized as “nation­al­ist” youth orga­ni­za­tions. Note the con­tin­ued man­i­fes­ta­tion in the “new” Croa­t­ia of Ustachi polit­i­cal cul­ture. ” . . . . On Octo­ber 13, 2018, the ISG orga­nized its third con­gress. Besides the Ukrain­ian hosts, a large share of the for­eign speak­ers from Poland, Lithua­nia, and Croa­t­ia had a (para-)military back­ground, among them advi­sor to the Pol­ish Defence Min­is­ter Jerzy Tar­gal­s­ki and retired Brigadier Gen­er­al of the Croa­t­ian Armed Forces Bruno Zor­i­ca.[156] Among the talk­ing points of Pol­ish mil­i­tary edu­ca­tor Damien Duda were ‘meth­ods of the prepa­ra­tion of a mil­i­tary reserve in youth orga­ni­za­tions’ and the ‘impor­tance of para­mil­i­tary struc­tures with­in the frame­work of the defence com­plex of a mod­ern state.’ . . . .”

“Imag­ined Geo­gra­phies of Cen­tral and East­ern Europe: The Con­cept of Inter­mar­i­um” by Mar­lene Laru­elle and Ellen Rivera; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 3/23/2019.

5. In numer­ous broad­casts, we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA.

A recent arti­cle in For­eign Pol­i­cy (pub­lished by “The Wash­ing­ton Post” and con­se­quent­ly VERY main­stream), fur­ther devel­ops the activ­i­ties of Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, appoint­ed as head of the Insti­tute of Nation­al mem­o­ry by Vik­tor Yuschenko and then re-appoint­ed by Petro Pet­roshenko.

After the Yushc­neko gov­ern­ment left pow­er and pri­or to the Maid­an coup, Via­tro­vych was in the U.S., work­ing as a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute. This is in line with the fun­da­men­tal role of the OUN/B‑based Amer­i­can emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty in the gen­er­a­tion of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion and the Maid­an coup.

” . . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .”

Recall that Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko–Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son and a key oper­a­tive of the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can front orga­niz­tion the U.C.C.A.–and had Roman Zvarych (Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s) as his Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.

Note, also, that Ser­hiy Kvit, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion is a bird of the same feath­er as Via­tro­vych. ” 

. . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the ‘neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine’ and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. . . .’ ”

The mea­sure of the revi­sion­ism under­way in Ukraine can be gauged by this: “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”

It is depress­ing and remark­able to see such ele­ments being por­trayed as “hero­ic!”

“The His­to­ri­an White­wash­ing Ukraine’s Past” by Josh Cohen; For­eign Pol­i­cy; 5/02/2016.

. . . . Advo­cat­ing a nation­al­ist, revi­sion­ist his­to­ry that glo­ri­fies the country’s move to inde­pen­dence — and purges bloody and oppor­tunis­tic chap­ters — [Volodymyr] Via­tro­vych has attempt­ed to redraft the country’s mod­ern his­to­ry to white­wash Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups’ involve­ment in the Holo­caust and mass eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles dur­ing World War II. And right now, he’s win­ning. . . .

. . . . In May 2015, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed a law that man­dat­ed the trans­fer of the country’s com­plete set of archives, from the “Sovi­et organs of repres­sion,” such as the KGB and its dece­dent, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU), to a gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion called the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry. . . .

. . . . The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on a telling of World War II his­to­ry that ampli­fies Sovi­et crimes and glo­ri­fies Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fight­ers while dis­miss­ing the vital part they played in eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi inva­sion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. . . .

. . . . And more point­ed­ly, schol­ars now fear that they risk reprisal for not toe­ing the offi­cial line — or call­ing Via­tro­vych on his his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tions. Under Viatrovych’s reign, the coun­try could be head­ed for a new, and fright­en­ing, era of cen­sor­ship. . . .

. . . . The revi­sion­ism focus­es on two Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups: the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA), which fought to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent Ukraine. Dur­ing the war, these groups killed tens of thou­sands of Jews and car­ried out a bru­tal cam­paign of eth­nic cleans­ing that killed as many as 100,000 Poles. Cre­at­ed in 1929 to free Ukraine from Sovi­et con­trol, the OUN embraced the notion of an eth­ni­cal­ly pure Ukrain­ian nation. When the Nazis invad­ed the Sovi­et Union in 1941, the OUN and its charis­mat­ic leader, Stepan Ban­dera, wel­comed the inva­sion as a step toward Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence. [This is mod­i­fied lim­it­ed hang­out. The OUN/B was part of the Third Reich’s polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary order of battle.–D.E.] Its mem­bers car­ried out a pogrom in Lviv that killed 5,000 Jews, and OUN mili­tias played a major role in vio­lence against the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion in west­ern Ukraine that claimed the lives of up to 35,000 Jews. . . . [A street in the Lviv dis­trict has been renamed in hon­or of the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall or Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion, com­mand­ed by Roman Shukhevych (named a “Hero of Ukraine” and the father of Yuri Shukhevych, a top archi­tect of the cur­rent Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal landscape.)–D.E.]

. . . . The new law, which promis­es that peo­ple who “pub­licly exhib­it a dis­re­spect­ful atti­tude” toward these groups or “deny the legit­i­ma­cy” of Ukraine’s 20th cen­tu­ry strug­gle for inde­pen­dence will be pros­e­cut­ed (though no pun­ish­ment is spec­i­fied) also means that inde­pen­dent Ukraine is being par­tial­ly built on a fal­si­fied nar­ra­tive of the Holo­caust.

By trans­fer­ring con­trol of the nation’s archives to Via­tro­vych, Ukraine’s nation­al­ists assured them­selves that man­age­ment of the nation’s his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is now in the “cor­rect” hands. . . .

. . . . In 2008, in addi­tion to his role at TsD­VR, Vik­tor Yushchenko, then pres­i­dent, appoint­ed Via­tro­vych head of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine’s (SBU) archives. Yuschenko made the pro­mo­tion of OUN-UPA mythol­o­gy a fun­da­men­tal part of his lega­cy, rewrit­ing school text­books, renam­ing streets, and hon­or­ing OUN-UPA lead­ers as “heroes of Ukraine.” As Yuschenko’s lead­ing mem­o­ry man­ag­er — both at TsD­VR and the SBU — Via­tro­vych was his right-hand man in this cru­sade. He con­tin­ued to push the state-spon­sored hero­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the OUN-UPA and their lead­ers Ban­dera, Yaroslav Stet­sko, and Roman Shukhevych. . . .

. . . . After Vik­tor Yanukovych was elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2010, Via­tro­vych fad­ed from view. . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

. . . . The new pres­i­dent, Poroshenko, appoint­ed Via­tro­vych to head the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry — a pres­ti­gious appoint­ment for a rel­a­tive­ly young schol­ar. . . .

. . . . To that effect, Via­tro­vych has dis­missed his­tor­i­cal events not com­port­ing with this nar­ra­tive as “Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da.” [This is true of infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by any­one that tells the truth about the OUN/B heirs now in pow­er in Ukraine–they are dis­missed as “Russ­ian dupes” or “tools of the Krem­lin” etc.–D.E.] In his 2006 book, The OUN’s Posi­tion Towards the Jews: For­mu­la­tion of a posi­tion against the back­drop of a cat­a­stro­phe, he attempt­ed to exon­er­ate the OUN from its col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Holo­caust by ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing mass of his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. The book was wide­ly panned by West­ern his­to­ri­ans. Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta pro­fes­sor John-Paul Him­ka, one of the lead­ing schol­ars of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry for three decades, described it as “employ­ing a series of dubi­ous pro­ce­dures: reject­ing sources that com­pro­mise the OUN, accept­ing uncrit­i­cal­ly cen­sored sources ema­nat­ing from émi­gré OUN cir­cles, fail­ing to rec­og­nize anti-Semi­tism in OUN texts.” . . . . Even more wor­ri­some for the future integri­ty of Ukraine’s archives under Via­tro­vych is his noto­ri­ety among West­ern his­to­ri­ans for his will­ing­ness to alleged­ly ignore or even fal­si­fy his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments. “Schol­ars on his staff pub­lish doc­u­ment col­lec­tions that are fal­si­fied,” said Jef­frey Burds, a pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian and Sovi­et his­to­ry at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.“ I know this because I have seen the orig­i­nals, made copies, and have com­pared their tran­scrip­tions to the orig­i­nals.” . . .

. . . . Sev­en­ty his­to­ri­ans signed an open let­ter to Poroshenko ask­ing him to veto the draft law that bans crit­i­cism of the OUN-UPA. . . .

. . . . After the open let­ter was pub­lished, the legislation’s spon­sor, Yuri Shukhevych, react­ed furi­ous­ly. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a long­time far-right polit­i­cal activist him­self, fired off a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion Ser­hiy Kvit claim­ing, “Russ­ian spe­cial ser­vices” pro­duced the let­ter and demand­ed that “patri­ot­ic” his­to­ri­ans rebuff it. Kvit, also a long­time far-right activist and author of an admir­ing biog­ra­phy one of the key the­o­reti­cians of Ukrain­ian eth­nic nation­al­ism, in turn omi­nous­ly high­light­ed the sig­na­to­ries of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans on his copy of the let­ter. . . .

. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: “We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.” Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .

 . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a “sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine” and Ban­dera as an “out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive” of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple.” More recent­ly, Viatrovych’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry pro­posed that the city of Kiev rename two streets after Ban­dera and the for­mer supreme com­man­der of both the UPA and the Nazi-super­vised Schutz­mannschaft Roman Shukhevych. . . .

6. Many key min­is­te­r­i­al posts in the new Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment have been filled by Swo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor, the polit­i­cal heirs to the OUN/B. The super­vi­sion of the mil­i­tary and the judi­cial process is under the sway of those par­ties.

“How the Far-Right Took Top Posts in Ukraine’s Pow­er Vac­uum”; Chan­nel 4 News [UK]; 3/5/2014.

The man fac­ing down Putin’s aggres­sion as sec­re­tary of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Secu­rity and Defence Coun­cil is Andriy Paru­biy. He over­sees nation­al secu­rity for the nation hav­ing pre­vi­ously served as secu­rity com­man­dant dur­ing the anti-gov­ern­ment protests in Kiev.

Paru­biy was the founder of the Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine, a fas­cist par­ty styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with mem­ber­ship restrict­ed to eth­nic Ukraini­ans.

The Social Nation­al Par­ty would go on to become Svo­boda, the far-right nation­al­ist par­ty whose leader Oleh Tyah­ny­bok was one of the three most high pro­file lead­ers of the Euro­maidan protests — nego­ti­at­ing direct­ly with the Yanukovych regime.

Over­see­ing the armed forces along­side Paru­biy as the Deputy Sec­re­tary of Nation­al Secu­rity is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sec­tor — a group of hard­line nation­al­ist street­fight­ers, who pre­vi­ously boast­ed they were ready for armed strug­gle to free Ukraine. . . .

. . . .The new Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Olek­sandr Sych is a mem­ber of the far-right Svo­boda par­ty, which the World Jew­ish Con­gress called on the EU to con­sider ban­ning last year along with Greece’s Gold­en Dawn.

The par­ty, which has long called for a “nation­al rev­o­lu­tion” in Ukraine, has endured a long march from rel­a­tive obscu­rity in the ear­ly 90s. Their dec­la­ra­tion that Ukraine is con­trolled by a “Mus­covite-Jew­ish mafia” has raised fears for the safe­ty of the country’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion.

Svo­boda now con­trols the ecol­ogy and agri­cul­tural min­istry with Andriy Mokhnyk, the deputy head of Svo­boda, run­ning ecol­ogy and Ihor Shvai­ka as agri­cul­ture min­is­ter.

Asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Lund Uni­ver­sity Pers Anders Rudling, an expert on Ukrain­ian extrem­ists, told Chan­nel 4 News that there are oth­er min­is­ters who are also close­ly in the orbit of Svo­bo­da.

“Two weeks ago I could nev­er have pre­dicted this. A neo-fas­cist par­ty like Svo­boda get­ting the deputy prime min­is­ter posi­tion is news in its own right.

“There are sev­en min­is­ters with links to the extreme right now. It began with Svo­boda get­ting 10 per cent of the vote in the last elec­tion, it is cer­tainly a con­cern in the long run.” . . . .

. . . . Svo­boda mem­ber Oleh Makhnit­sky is now act­ing pros­e­cu­tor gen­eral.

The ini­tial actions of the inter­im gov­ern­ment have includ­ed forc­ing mak­ing Ukrain­ian the only offi­cial lan­guage of the nation and mak­ing moves to remove a law which for­bids “excus­ing the crimes of fas­cism”. . . .

 

Discussion

One comment for “FTR#1230 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 3”

  1. The sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine took a turn for the grim­ly bizarre fol­low­ing reports of a the killing of a Ukrain­ian diplo­mat by Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Denis Kereev (Keriv/Kireyev) was report­ed­ly shot dead under sus­pi­cions of trea­son, with his body left in the street. Denis Kereev was one of the Ukrain­ian nego­tia­tors meet­ing with the Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion in Belarus. Yes, Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices killed its own peace nego­tia­tor. He was shot and left in the street.

    What’s the expla­na­tion? We’re get­ting con­flict­ing reports, where he was either a spy work­ing for the Rus­sians or a dou­ble agent actu­al­ly work­ing for Ukraine and mis­tak­en­ly killed. Either way, it appears Kireev’s death was just one in a wave of extra­ju­di­cial killings car­ried out by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties. Killings endorsed by Ukraine’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry in some cas­es. That was case when the head of Inte­ri­or Min­istry, Anton Gerashchenko, defend­ed the kid­nap­ping and killing of Vlodymyr Struk, the ‘pro-Russ­ian’ may­or of Kreminna in Luhan­sk. It’s worth recall­ing how Gerashchenko report­ed­ly endorsed the activ­i­ties of the Ukrain­ian ‘nation­al­ist’ hack­er group Myrotvorets which was involved with cre­at­ing ‘ene­mies of Ukraine’ lists of Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists result­ing in threats of vio­lence. Gerashchenko has a predilec­tion for extra­ju­di­cial ‘jus­tice’.

    So we have one of Ukraine’s peace nego­tia­tors killed by Ukraine as part of a wave of extra­ju­di­cial killings endorsed by Ukraine’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry. It’s a sto­ry that’s so bizarre and still large­ly unex­plained that it’s hard not to sus­pect the worst. Did ele­ments of Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices just sab­o­tage the peace nego­ti­a­tions by killing its own nego­tia­tor? As dark as that sce­nario sounds, it’s not like we don’t have plen­ty of rea­son to assume pow­er­ful forces inside Ukraine are intent on block­ing a peace agree­ment. As we’ve seen, groups like the Azov Bat­tal­ion have been open­ly threat­en­ing rev­o­lu­tion should the gov­ern­ment pur­sue peace. Open­ly threat­en­ing rev­o­lu­tion and being reward­ed with more pow­er and author­i­ty. That’s the sto­ry cov­ered in a cru­cial new Gray­zone piece. The sto­ry of how Ukraine’s pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy was elect­ed over­whelm­ing­ly on a plat­form of de-esca­lat­ing the con­flict with Rus­sia but who was forced to back down on that agen­da under the threat of a vio­lent far right rev­o­lu­tion. A very open threat, with fig­ures like Azov leader Andriy Bilet­sky vow­ing to bring thou­sands of fight­ers to oppose Zelen­skiy if he push­es peace any fur­ther. Open threats reward­ed with more author­i­ty and zero reper­cus­sions. It’s all part of the con­text that has made Ukraine’s killing of its own peace nego­tia­tor such a grim­ly bizarre mys­tery:

    Cour­t­house News

    Human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter in Ukraine grows as cease­fire efforts fal­ter

    With the war in Ukraine show­ing no signs of let­ting up, the human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter grew after efforts to allow civil­ians trapped in the con­flict fal­tered.

    Cain Bur­deau / March 5, 2022

    Peo­ple cross on an impro­vised path under a bridge that was destroyed by a Russ­ian airstrike, while flee­ing the town of Irpin, Ukraine on Sat­ur­day. What looked like a break­through cease-fire to evac­u­ate res­i­dents from two cities in Ukraine quick­ly fell apart Sat­ur­day as Ukrain­ian offi­cials said shelling had halt­ed the work to remove civil­ians hours after Rus­sia announced the deal. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghir­da)

    (CN) — Ukraine descend­ed into fur­ther may­hem and chaos on Sat­ur­day as efforts to bring relief to the mil­lions of peo­ple trapped in the war appeared to break down amid renewed fight­ing between Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian forces.

    Late on Fri­day, Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tions agreed to a ten­ta­tive cease­fire and said it was time to open human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors to allow civil­ians stuck in besieged cities a chance to flee the war.

    But hopes for large-scale relief efforts broke down Sat­ur­day as Ukraine accused Rus­sia of vio­lat­ing the cease­fire terms and con­tin­u­ing to bomb Ukrain­ian cities and even fire upon civil­ians try­ing to flee through human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors.

    Rus­sia denied such claims and accused an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate Ukrain­ian army of seek­ing to cause pan­ic and spur inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of Rus­sia by shelling evac­u­a­tion routes out of cities encir­cled by Russ­ian forces. Claims from both sides could not be inde­pen­dent­ly con­firmed.

    The prospects for a cease­fire were fur­ther dam­aged by reports that a mem­ber of Ukraine’s five-per­son team of peace nego­tia­tors was killed by Ukrain­ian forces for alleged­ly being a trai­tor.

    Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian news out­lets report­ed that Denis Kireev was killed by the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine on “sus­pi­cion of trea­son.” He was among a group of top Ukrain­ian offi­cials sent by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy to sit down with Russ­ian del­e­gates to dis­cuss ways to end the con­flict. Images on social media showed he’d been shot and his body left on a street.

    Kireev’s death comes a day after media report­ed that the pur­port­ed­ly pro-Russ­ian may­or of Kreminna, Vlodymyr Struk, was found shot dead in the street after he was kid­napped from his home. The Ukrain­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry con­doned the killing, accus­ing him of work­ing with Rus­sia.

    In the last few days as the Russ­ian inva­sion has grown in scale, Ukrain­ian forces have been accused of car­ry­ing out sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions of so-called trai­tors in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

    ...

    ———–

    “Human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter in Ukraine grows as cease­fire efforts fal­ter” by Cain Bur­deau; Cour­t­house News; 03/05/2022

    “In the last few days as the Russ­ian inva­sion has grown in scale, Ukrain­ian forces have been accused of car­ry­ing out sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions of so-called trai­tors in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.”

    Are we see­ing the handy­work of Ukrain­ian death squads? It sure looks like it, with Ukraine’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry con­don­ing the exe­cu­tion of a pur­port­ed­ly pro-Russ­ian may­or:

    ...
    Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian news out­lets report­ed that Denis Kireev was killed by the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine on “sus­pi­cion of trea­son.” He was among a group of top Ukrain­ian offi­cials sent by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy to sit down with Russ­ian del­e­gates to dis­cuss ways to end the con­flict. Images on social media showed he’d been shot and his body left on a street.

    Kireev’s death comes a day after media report­ed that the pur­port­ed­ly pro-Russ­ian may­or of Kreminna, Vlodymyr Struk, was found shot dead in the street after he was kid­napped from his home. The Ukrain­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry con­doned the killing, accus­ing him of work­ing with Rus­sia.
    ...

    We have to ask: who is con­trol­ling these death squads? Was this real­ly an SBU coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence oper­a­tion? Or are we see­ing a nar­ra­tive designed to cov­er up groups like Azov run­ning out of con­trol? These are the kinds of ques­tions raised by this assas­si­na­tion. A sym­bol­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful assas­si­na­tion in terms of killing any prospect for peace in the short term.

    So as the world col­lec­tive­ly scratch­es its head try­ing to deter­mine why Ukraine just shot its own peace nego­tia­tor, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that Ukraine’s Nazis have been open­ly threat­en­ing rev­o­lu­tion in the face of real peace nego­ti­a­tions for years now. Threat­en­ing and get­ting its way, even in the face of Volodymyr Zelen­skiy’s over­whelm­ing elec­toral vic­to­ry won on a plat­form of de-esca­la­tion and peace. In oth­er words, if Kireev was indeed killed as part of a far right plot to thwart the peace nego­ti­a­tions, we’ve been warned this would hap­pen. Open­ly warned for years:

    The Gray­zone

    How Ukraine’s Jew­ish pres­i­dent Zelen­sky made peace with neo-Nazi para­mil­i­taries on front lines of war with Rus­sia

    Alexan­der Rubin­stein and Max Blu­men­thal
    March 4, 2022

    While West­ern media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jew­ish her­itage to refute accu­sa­tions of Nazi influ­ence in Ukraine, the pres­i­dent has ced­ed to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fight­ers.

    Back in Octo­ber 2019, as the war in east­ern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky trav­eled to Zolote, a town sit­u­at­ed firm­ly in the “gray zone” of Don­bas, where over 14,000 had been killed, most­ly on the pro-Russ­ian side. There, the pres­i­dent encoun­tered the hard­ened vet­er­ans of extreme right para­mil­i­tary units keep­ing up the fight against sep­a­ratists just a few miles away.

    Elect­ed on a plat­form of de-esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties with Rus­sia, Zelen­sky was deter­mined to enforce the so-called Stein­meier For­mu­la con­ceived by then-Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Wal­ter Stein­meier which called for elec­tions in the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk.

    In a face-to-face con­fronta­tion with mil­i­tants from the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion who had launched a cam­paign to sab­o­tage the peace ini­tia­tive called “No to Capit­u­la­tion,” Zelen­sky encoun­tered a wall of obsti­na­cy.

    With appeals for dis­en­gage­ment from the front­lines firm­ly reject­ed, Zelen­sky melt­ed down on cam­era. “I’m the pres­i­dent of this coun­try. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a los­er. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelen­sky implored the fight­ers.

    Pres­i­dent of Ukraine Zelen­sky has vis­it­ed dis­en­gag­ing area in Zolote today https://t.co/scFZLt45C2 pic.twitter.com/JlD1cWPQ39— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) Octo­ber 26, 2019

    Once video of the stormy con­fronta­tion spread across Ukrain­ian social media chan­nels, Zelen­sky became the tar­get of an angry back­lash.

    Andriy Bilet­sky, the proud­ly fas­cist Azov Bat­tal­ion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen”, vowed to bring thou­sands of fight­ers to Zolote if Zelen­sky pressed any fur­ther. Mean­while, a par­lia­men­tar­i­an from the par­ty of for­mer Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko open­ly fan­ta­sized about Zelen­sky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

    Though Zelen­sky achieved a minor dis­en­gage­ment, the neo-Nazi para­mil­i­taries esca­lat­ed their “No Capit­u­la­tion” cam­paign. And with­in months, fight­ing began to heat up again in Zolote, spark­ing a new cycle of vio­la­tions of the Min­sk Agree­ment.

    By this point, Azov had been for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary and its street vig­i­lante wing, known as the Nation­al Corps, was deployed across the coun­try under the watch of the Ukrain­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, and along­side the Nation­al Police. In Decem­ber 2021, Zelen­sky would be seen deliv­er­ing a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascis­tic Right Sec­tor in a cer­e­mo­ny in Ukraine’s par­lia­ment.

    ...

    But as we will see, Zelen­sky has not only ced­ed ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrust­ed them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russ­ian and Russ­ian forces.

    The president’s Jew­ish­ness as West­ern media PR device

    Hours before Pres­i­dent Putin’s Feb­ru­ary 24 speech declar­ing denaz­i­fi­ca­tion as the goal of Russ­ian oper­a­tions, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky “asked how a peo­ple who lost eight mil­lion of its cit­i­zens fight­ing Nazis could sup­port Nazism,” accord­ing to the BBC.

    Raised in a non-reli­gious Jew­ish fam­i­ly in the Sovi­et Union dur­ing the 1980’s, Zelen­sky has down­played his her­itage in the past. “The fact that I am Jew­ish bare­ly makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked dur­ing a 2019 inter­view in which he declined to go into fur­ther detail about his reli­gious back­ground.

    Today, as Russ­ian troops bear down on cities like Mar­i­upol, which is effec­tive­ly under the con­trol of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Zelen­sky is no longer ashamed to broad­cast his Jew­ish­ness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he won­dered aloud dur­ing a pub­lic address. For a US media engaged in an all-out infor­ma­tion war against Rus­sia, the president’s Jew­ish back­ground has become an essen­tial pub­lic rela­tions tool.

    Watch left & right wing fac­tions of MSM unite to declare any alle­ga­tions of Nazism in Ukraine to be Russ­ian fake news because Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky is Jew­ish. Fea­tur­ing Sen­a­tors Mar­sha Black­burn & Mark Warn­er, for­mer CIA spy Dan Hoff­man & “Ukraine Whistle­blow­er” Alexan­der Vin­d­man pic.twitter.com/vruyDUoWxv— Alex Rubin­stein (@RealAlexRubi) Feb­ru­ary 28, 2022

    A few exam­ples of the US media’s deploy­ment of Zelen­sky as a shield against alle­ga­tions of ram­pant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):

    * PBS New­sHour not­ed Putin’s com­ments on denaz­i­fi­ca­tion with a qual­i­fi­er: “even though Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky is Jew­ish and his great uncles died in the Holo­caust.”
    * On Fox & Friends, for­mer CIA offi­cer Dan Hoff­man declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrain­ian nation to denaz­i­fy — their pres­i­dent is Jew­ish after all.”
    * On MSNBC, Vir­ginia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Mark Warn­er said Putin’s “ter­mi­nol­o­gy, out­ra­geous and obnox­ious as it is — ‘denaz­i­fy’ where you’ve got frankly a Jew­ish pres­i­dent in Mr. Zelen­sky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of per­son­al jihad to restore greater Rus­sia.”
    * Repub­li­can Sen. Mar­sha Black­burn said on Fox Busi­ness she’s “been impressed with Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denaz­i­fy’ and Zelen­sky is Jew­ish.”
    * In an inter­view with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Naz­i­fy” while the news­man and for­mer Israel lob­by­ist shook his head in dis­gust. In a sep­a­rate inter­view with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistle­blow­er” and Ukraine-born Alexan­der Vin­d­man grum­bled that the claim is “patent­ly absurd, there’s real­ly no mer­it… you point­ed out that Volodymyr Zelen­sky is Jew­ish… the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty [is] embraced. It’s cen­tral to the coun­try and there is noth­ing to this Nazi nar­ra­tive, this fas­cist nar­ra­tive. It’s fab­ri­cat­ed as a pre­text.”

    Behind the cor­po­rate media spin lies the com­plex and increas­ing­ly close rela­tion­ship Zelensky’s admin­is­tra­tion has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invest­ed with key mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal posts by the Ukrain­ian state, and the pow­er these open fas­cists have enjoyed since Wash­ing­ton installed a West­ern-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.

    In fact, Zelensky’s top finan­cial backer, the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish oli­garch Igor Kolo­moisky, has been a key bene­fac­tor of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion and oth­er extrem­ists mili­tias.

    Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi mil­i­tants unleash a wave of intim­i­da­tion

    Incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, the Azov Bat­tal­ion is con­sid­ered the most ide­o­log­i­cal­ly zeal­ous and mil­i­tar­i­ly moti­vat­ed unit fight­ing pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the east­ern Don­bass region.

    With Nazi-inspired Wolf­san­gel insignia on the uni­forms of its fight­ers, who have been pho­tographed with Nazi SS sym­bols on their hel­mets, Azov “is known for its asso­ci­a­tion with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in train­ing and rad­i­cal­iz­ing US-based white suprema­cy orga­ni­za­tions,” accord­ing to an FBI indict­ment of sev­er­al US white nation­al­ists that trav­eled to Kiev to train with Azov.

    Igor Kolo­moisky, a Ukrain­ian ener­gy baron of Jew­ish her­itage, has been a top fun­der of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled pri­vate mili­tias like the Dnipro and Aidar Bat­tal­ions, and has deployed them as a per­son­al thug squad to pro­tect his finan­cial inter­ests.

    In 2019, Kolo­moisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial bid. Though Zelen­sky made anti-cor­rup­tion the sig­na­ture issue of his cam­paign, the Pan­do­ra Papers exposed him and mem­bers of his inner cir­cle stash­ing large pay­ments from Kolo­moisky in a shad­owy web of off­shore accounts.

    When Zelen­sky took office in May 2019, the Azov Bat­tal­ion main­tained de fac­to con­trol of the strate­gic south­east­ern port city of Mar­i­upol and its sur­round­ing vil­lages. As Open Democ­ra­cy not­ed, “Azov has cer­tain­ly estab­lished polit­i­cal con­trol of the streets in Mar­i­upol. To main­tain this con­trol, they have to react vio­lent­ly, even if not offi­cial­ly, to any pub­lic event which diverges suf­fi­cient­ly from their polit­i­cal agen­da.”

    Attacks by Azov in Mar­i­upol have includ­ed assaults on “fem­i­nists and lib­er­als” march­ing on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day among oth­er inci­dents.

    In March 2019, mem­bers of the Azov Battalion’s Nation­al Corps attacked the home of Vik­tor Medved­chuk, the lead­ing oppo­si­tion fig­ure in Ukraine, accus­ing him of trea­son for his friend­ly rela­tions with Vladimir Putin, the god­fa­ther of Medvedchuk’s daugh­ter.

    Zelensky’s admin­is­tra­tion esca­lat­ed the attack on Medved­chuk, shut­ter­ing sev­er­al media out­lets he con­trolled in Feb­ru­ary 2021 with the open approval of the US State Depart­ment, and jail­ing the oppo­si­tion leader for trea­son three months lat­er. Zelen­sky jus­ti­fied his actions on the grounds that he need­ed to “fight against the dan­ger of Russ­ian aggres­sion in the infor­ma­tion are­na.”

    Next, in August 2020, Azov’s Nation­al Corps opened fire on a bus con­tain­ing mem­bers of Medvedchuk’s par­ty, Patri­ots for Life, wound­ing sev­er­al with rub­ber-coat­ed steel bul­lets.

    Break­ing! A bus car­ry­ing sup­port­ers and mem­bers of #Ukraine’s oppo­si­tion par­ty “Patri­ots For Life” was attacked by Ukrain­ian Nation­al Corps and Azov Bat­tal­ion in the east of the coun­try (Kharkov), uncon­firmed reports that some of the pas­sen­gers have been mur­dered. pic.twitter.com/O0hB2sqbRA— The Eurasian­ist ?? (@Russ_Warrior) August 27, 2020

    Zelen­sky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up col­lab­o­rat­ing with them

    Fol­low­ing his failed attempt to demo­bi­lize neo-Nazi mil­i­tants in the town of Zolote in Octo­ber 2019, Zelen­sky called the fight­ers to the table, telling reporters “I met with vet­er­ans yes­ter­day. Every­one was there – the Nation­al Corps, Azov, and every­one else.”

    A few seats away from the Jew­ish pres­i­dent was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

    Dur­ing the Maid­an “Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty” that oust­ed Ukraine’s elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plas­tered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before tak­ing shel­ter in the Cana­di­an embassy.

    As the for­mer youth wing of the ultra-nation­al­ist Svo­bo­da Par­ty, C14 appears to draw its name from the infa­mous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

    By offer­ing to car­ry out acts of spec­tac­u­lar vio­lence on behalf of any­one will­ing to pay, the hooli­gans have fos­tered a cozy rela­tion­ship with var­i­ous gov­ern­ing bod­ies and pow­er­ful elites across Ukraine.

    A March 2018 report by Reuters stat­ed that “C14 and Kiev’s city gov­ern­ment recent­ly signed an agree­ment allow­ing C14 to estab­lish a ‘munic­i­pal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effec­tive­ly giv­ing them the sanc­tion of the state to car­ry out pogroms.

    As The Gray­zone report­ed, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s rail­way sta­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Kiev police.

    The C14 Nazi ter­ror gang signed an agree­ment with the Kiev munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment to patrol its streets. This footage tak­en just a few months lat­er in 2018 shows them car­ry­ing out a pogrom against a Romani camp. pic.twitter.com/9aAA86K8TQ— Alex Rubin­stein (@RealAlexRubi) Feb­ru­ary 28, 2022

    Not only was this activ­i­ty sanc­tioned by the Kiev city gov­ern­ment, the US gov­ern­ment itself saw lit­tle prob­lem with it, host­ing Bon­dar at an offi­cial US gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 con­tin­ued to receive state fund­ing through­out 2018 for “nation­al-patri­ot­ic edu­ca­tion.”

    Karas has claimed that the Ukrain­ian Secu­ri­ty Serves would “pass on” infor­ma­tion regard­ing pro-sep­a­ratist ral­lies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sec­tor and so on.”

    “In gen­er­al, deputies of all fac­tions, the Nation­al Guard, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine and the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.

    Through­out 2019, Zelen­sky and his admin­is­tra­tion deep­ened their ties with ultra-nation­al­ist ele­ments across Ukraine.

    After Prime Min­is­ter attends neo-Nazi con­cert, Zelen­sky hon­ors Right Sec­tor leader

    Just days after Zelensky’s meet­ing with Karas and oth­er neo-Nazi lead­ers in Novem­ber 2019, Olek­siy Hon­charuk – then the Prime Min­is­ter and deputy head of Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi con­cert orga­nized by C14 fig­ure and accused mur­der­er Andriy Medved­ko.

    Zelensky’s Min­is­ter for Vet­er­ans Affairs not only attend­ed the con­cert, which fea­tured sev­er­al anti­se­mit­ic met­al bands, she pro­mot­ed the con­cert on Face­book.

    Also in 2019, Zelen­sky defend­ed Ukrain­ian foot­baller Roman Zolzulya against Span­ish fans taunt­ing him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside pho­tos of the World War II-era Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera and open­ly sup­port­ed the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Zelen­sky respond­ed to the con­tro­ver­sy by pro­claim­ing that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describ­ing him as “not only a cool foot­ball play­er but a true patri­ot.”

    In Novem­ber 2021, one of Ukraine’s most promi­nent ultra-nation­al­ist mili­ti­a­men, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appoint­ed as an advi­sor to the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed fol­low­er of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Ban­dera who led Right Sec­tor from 2013 to 2015, vow­ing to lead the “de-Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” of Ukraine.

    A month lat­er, as war with Rus­sia drew clos­er, Zelen­sky award­ed Right Sec­tor com­man­der Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo the “Hero of Ukraine” com­men­da­tion. Known as “Da Vin­ci,” Kosyubay­lo keeps a pet wolf in his front­line base, and likes to joke to vis­it­ing reporters that his fight­ers “feed it the bones of Russ­ian-speak­ing chil­dren.”

    Ukrain­ian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influ­ence on the eve of war with Rus­sia

    On Feb­ru­ary 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Rus­sia erupt­ed, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 deliv­ered a stem-wind­ing pub­lic address in Kiev intend­ed to high­light the influ­ence his orga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers like it enjoyed over Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics.

    Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi ter­ror gang C14’s speech from Kiev ear­li­er this month. Straight from the hors­es’ mouth, he dis­pels the many nar­ra­tives pushed by the left, the main­stream media and the State Depart­ment. pic.twitter.com/VWJqWPUGUp— Alex Rubin­stein (@RealAlexRubi) Feb­ru­ary 27, 2022

    “LGBT and for­eign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maid­an, maybe about 10 per­cent of real ide­o­log­i­cal ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight per­cent [of neo-Nazis] the effec­tive­ness [of the Maid­an coup] would have dropped by 90 per­cent.”

    The 2014 Maid­an “Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instru­men­tal role of neo-Nazis, he pro­claimed.

    Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrain­ian ultra-nation­al­ists because “we have fun killing.” He also fan­ta­sized about the balka­niza­tion of Rus­sia, declar­ing that it should be bro­ken up into “five dif­fer­ent” coun­tries.

    “If we get killed…we died fight­ing a holy war”

    When Russ­ian forces entered Ukraine this Feb­ru­ary 24, encir­cling the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary in the east and dri­ving towards Kiev, Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky announced a nation­al mobi­liza­tion that includ­ed the release of crim­i­nals from prison, among them accused mur­der­ers want­ed in Rus­sia. He also blessed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of arms to aver­age cit­i­zens, and their train­ing by bat­tle-hard­ened para­mil­i­taries like the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    With fight­ing under­way, Azov’s Nation­al Corps gath­ered hun­dreds of ordi­nary civil­ians, includ­ing grand­moth­ers and chil­dren, to train in pub­lic squares and ware­hous­es from Khar­viv to Kiev to Lviv.

    As US media cel­e­brat­ed aver­age Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens tak­ing up arms against Russ­ian troops, the ultra-nation­al­ist Azov Bat­tal­ion’s Nation­al Corps pub­lished a pro­pa­gan­da video of its fight­ers train­ing and pass­ing out arms to res­i­dents of Kharkiv, trans­form­ing them into com­bat­ants. pic.twitter.com/RVL1nyWkfw— Max Blu­men­thal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 1, 2022

    On Feb­ru­ary 27, the offi­cial Twit­ter account of the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine post­ed video of “Azov Fight­ers” greas­ing their bul­lets with pig fat to humil­i­ate Russ­ian Mus­lim fight­ers from Chech­nya.

    Azov fight­ers of the Nation­al Guard greased the bul­lets with lard against the Kady­rov orcs??????? ????? ?????????? ???????? ???? ????? ????? ???????????? ??????????????????? ?? ??? ???????? ????? https://t.co/SBQltMr4bM pic.twitter.com/A1ci7tZL8r— ??? (@ng_ukraine) Feb­ru­ary 27, 2022

    A day lat­er, the Azov Battalion’s Nation­al Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Region­al Police would begin using the city’s Region­al State Admin­is­tra­tion build­ing as a defense head­quar­ters. Footage post­ed to Telegram the fol­low­ing day shows the Azov-occu­pied build­ing being hit by a Russ­ian airstrike.

    Besides autho­riz­ing the release of hard­core crim­i­nals to join the bat­tle against Rus­sia, Zelen­sky has ordered all males of fight­ing age to remain in the coun­try. Azov mil­i­tants have pro­ceed­ed to enforce the pol­i­cy by bru­tal­iz­ing civil­ians attempt­ing to flee from the fight­ing around Mar­i­upol.

    Accord­ing to one Greek res­i­dent in Mar­i­upol recent­ly inter­viewed by a Greek news sta­tion, “When you try to leave you run the risk of run­ning into a patrol of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists, the Azov Bat­tal­ion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are respon­si­ble for every­thing.”

    Footage post­ed online appears to show uni­formed mem­bers of a fas­cist Ukrain­ian mili­tia in Mar­i­upol vio­lent­ly pulling flee­ing res­i­dents out of their vehi­cles at gun­point.

    BREAKING ?? Ukrain­ian NAZI are pre­vent­ing peo­ple from leav­ing Mar­i­upol and are shoot­ing at them.Residents of #Mar­i­upol do not move around the city, Mar­i­upol will soon be lib­er­at­ed!#EndThe­Ban­dera#StopUkraini­an­Nazism #Ukraine #Rus­sia #DPR #LPR #DNR #LPR #Don­bass pic.twitter.com/AakZGyNxQx— Deus Abscondis (@Deus_Abscondis) Feb­ru­ary 26, 2022

    Oth­er video filmed at check­points around Mar­i­upol showed Azov fight­ers shoot­ing and killing civil­ians attempt­ing to flee.

    On March 1, Zelen­sky replaced the region­al admin­is­tra­tor of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a for­mer com­man­der of the extreme right Aidar Bat­tal­ion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Don­bass region.

    Mean­while, as a mas­sive con­voy of Russ­ian armored vehi­cles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 post­ed a video on YouTube from inside a vehi­cle pre­sum­ably trans­port­ing fight­ers.

    “If we get killed, it’s fuc king great because it means we died fight­ing a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we sur­vive, it’s going to be even fuc king bet­ter! That’s why I don’t see a down­side to this, only upside!”

    ———–
    “How Ukraine’s Jew­ish pres­i­dent Zelen­sky made peace with neo-Nazi para­mil­i­taries on front lines of war with Rus­sia” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein and Max Blu­men­thal; The Gray­zone; 03/04/2022

    “Elect­ed on a plat­form of de-esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties with Rus­sia, Zelen­sky was deter­mined to enforce the so-called Stein­meier For­mu­la con­ceived by then-Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Wal­ter Stein­meier which called for elec­tions in the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk.”

    Volodymyr Zelenky was over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed on a plat­form of de-esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties with Rus­sia. That plat­form did­n’t even sur­vive his first face-to-face encounter with the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Azov com­man­der Andriy Bilet­sky open­ly threat­ened Zelen­skiy with thou­sands of fight­ers if he pur­sued his peace plat­form that got him elect­ed. That’s the point. It’s not that Zelen­skiy him­self is a Nazi. He’s not. It’s that even some­one over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed on a plat­form of de-esca­la­tion and peace was forced to capit­u­la­tion in the face of groups like Azov. It was a les­son in who ulti­mate­ly holds pow­er in Ukraine. The new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent was forced to capit­u­late on a cen­tral tenet of his plat­form in the face of the “No to Capit­u­la­tion” stance of the ‘vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions’:

    ...
    In a face-to-face con­fronta­tion with mil­i­tants from the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion who had launched a cam­paign to sab­o­tage the peace ini­tia­tive called “No to Capit­u­la­tion,” Zelen­sky encoun­tered a wall of obsti­na­cy.

    With appeals for dis­en­gage­ment from the front­lines firm­ly reject­ed, Zelen­sky melt­ed down on cam­era. “I’m the pres­i­dent of this coun­try. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a los­er. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelen­sky implored the fight­ers.

    ...

    Once video of the stormy con­fronta­tion spread across Ukrain­ian social media chan­nels, Zelen­sky became the tar­get of an angry back­lash.

    Andriy Bilet­sky, the proud­ly fas­cist Azov Bat­tal­ion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen”, vowed to bring thou­sands of fight­ers to Zolote if Zelen­sky pressed any fur­ther. Mean­while, a par­lia­men­tar­i­an from the par­ty of for­mer Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko open­ly fan­ta­sized about Zelen­sky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

    Though Zelen­sky achieved a minor dis­en­gage­ment, the neo-Nazi para­mil­i­taries esca­lat­ed their “No Capit­u­la­tion” cam­paign. And with­in months, fight­ing began to heat up again in Zolote, spark­ing a new cycle of vio­la­tions of the Min­sk Agree­ment.

    By this point, Azov had been for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary and its street vig­i­lante wing, known as the Nation­al Corps, was deployed across the coun­try under the watch of the Ukrain­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, and along­side the Nation­al Police. In Decem­ber 2021, Zelen­sky would be seen deliv­er­ing a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascis­tic Right Sec­tor in a cer­e­mo­ny in Ukraine’s par­lia­ment.
    ...

    Zelen­skiy lat­er made anoth­er attempt to come to some sort of peace with Ukraine’s extrem­ist mili­tias, bring­ing togeth­er the lead­ers of var­i­ous groups, includ­ing C14 leader Yehven Karas
    . As we’ve seen not only has C14 been run­ning chil­dren’s sum­mer camps using gov­ern­ment funds, but it’s been grant­ed the author­i­ty to con­duct munic­i­pal patrols. Author­i­ty that was imme­di­ate­ly used to vio­lent­ly attack Roma com­mu­ni­ties with the bless­ing of Kiev’s police. C14 is a pre­view of what a ful­ly Naz­i­fied Ukraine would look like:

    ...
    Fol­low­ing his failed attempt to demo­bi­lize neo-Nazi mil­i­tants in the town of Zolote in Octo­ber 2019, Zelen­sky called the fight­ers to the table, telling reporters “I met with vet­er­ans yes­ter­day. Every­one was there – the Nation­al Corps, Azov, and every­one else.”

    A few seats away from the Jew­ish pres­i­dent was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

    ...

    A March 2018 report by Reuters stat­ed that “C14 and Kiev’s city gov­ern­ment recent­ly signed an agree­ment allow­ing C14 to estab­lish a ‘munic­i­pal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effec­tive­ly giv­ing them the sanc­tion of the state to car­ry out pogroms.

    As The Gray­zone report­ed, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s rail­way sta­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Kiev police.

    ...

    Karas has claimed that the Ukrain­ian Secu­ri­ty Serves would “pass on” infor­ma­tion regard­ing pro-sep­a­ratist ral­lies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sec­tor and so on.”

    “In gen­er­al, deputies of all fac­tions, the Nation­al Guard, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine and the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
    ...

    Days after that Novem­ber 2019 attempt to come to some sort of peace with the ‘vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions’, we find Zelen­sky and the deputy head of his office, Olek­siy Hon­charuk, appear­ing onstage at a C14 neo-Nazi con­cert. Flash for­ward to Novem­ber 2021, and neo-Nazi Dmytro Yarosh is being appoint­ed as an advi­sor to the Com­mand-in-Chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Lat­er, in Feb 2022, we have report C14’s leader boast­ing about how he enjoys killing and pin­ing about break­ing Rus­sia up into five coun­tries. Again, these are the kinds of sto­ries that reveal who is actu­al­ly infor­mal­ly hold­ing the pow­er in Ukraine. And as we can see, that infor­mal pow­er in held by these groups in the form of a gen­er­al vio­lent threat against the gov­ern­ment if it pur­sues peace. For eight years we’ve watched these extrem­ists large­ly lose at the bal­lot box...while still end­ing up get­ting their way and grow­ing in pow­er and influ­ence. That’s a sign of real pow­er:

    ...
    Just days after Zelensky’s meet­ing with Karas and oth­er neo-Nazi lead­ers in Novem­ber 2019, Olek­siy Hon­charuk – then the Prime Min­is­ter and deputy head of Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi con­cert orga­nized by C14 fig­ure and accused mur­der­er Andriy Medved­ko.

    Zelensky’s Min­is­ter for Vet­er­ans Affairs not only attend­ed the con­cert, which fea­tured sev­er­al anti­se­mit­ic met­al bands, she pro­mot­ed the con­cert on Face­book.

    ...

    In Novem­ber 2021, one of Ukraine’s most promi­nent ultra-nation­al­ist mili­ti­a­men, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appoint­ed as an advi­sor to the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed fol­low­er of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Ban­dera who led Right Sec­tor from 2013 to 2015, vow­ing to lead the “de-Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” of Ukraine.

    A month lat­er, as war with Rus­sia drew clos­er, Zelen­sky award­ed Right Sec­tor com­man­der Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo the “Hero of Ukraine” com­men­da­tion. Known as “Da Vin­ci,” Kosyubay­lo keeps a pet wolf in his front­line base, and likes to joke to vis­it­ing reporters that his fight­ers “feed it the bones of Russ­ian-speak­ing chil­dren.”

    ...

    On Feb­ru­ary 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Rus­sia erupt­ed, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 deliv­ered a stem-wind­ing pub­lic address in Kiev intend­ed to high­light the influ­ence his orga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers like it enjoyed over Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics.

    ...

    Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrain­ian ultra-nation­al­ists because “we have fun killing.” He also fan­ta­sized about the balka­niza­tion of Rus­sia, declar­ing that it should be bro­ken up into “five dif­fer­ent” coun­tries.
    ...

    And less than a week ago, we learn that for­mer Aidar Bat­tal­ion com­man­der Max­im Marchenko was installed as the new region­al admin­is­tra­tor of Odessa. How many more extrem­ist com­man­ders will be installed in posi­tions of pow­er as this con­flict plays out? We’ll see:

    ...
    On March 1, Zelen­sky replaced the region­al admin­is­tra­tor of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a for­mer com­man­der of the extreme right Aidar Bat­tal­ion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Don­bass region.

    Mean­while, as a mas­sive con­voy of Russ­ian armored vehi­cles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 post­ed a video on YouTube from inside a vehi­cle pre­sum­ably trans­port­ing fight­ers.

    “If we get killed, it’s fuc king great because it means we died fight­ing a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we sur­vive, it’s going to be even fuc king bet­ter! That’s why I don’t see a down­side to this, only upside!”
    ...

    Final­ly, we have to acknowl­edge the fact that one of the real­i­ties bind­ing pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy to these extrem­ist bat­tal­ions is the fact that they all have a com­mon major spon­sor: Igor Kolo­moisky. Yes, Kolo­moisky is Jew­ish, and yes, he’s one of the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi bat­tal­ions. Life can be com­pli­cat­ed. Kolo­moisky Jew­ish­ness does­n’t negate their pro­fessed Nazi beliefs, just as Zelen­skiy’s sta­tus as a Jew isn’t some­how erase the real­i­ties of how pow­er is held and wield­ed in Ukraine:

    ...
    In fact, Zelensky’s top finan­cial backer, the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish oli­garch Igor Kolo­moisky, has been a key bene­fac­tor of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion and oth­er extrem­ists mili­tias.

    ...

    Incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, the Azov Bat­tal­ion is con­sid­ered the most ide­o­log­i­cal­ly zeal­ous and mil­i­tar­i­ly moti­vat­ed unit fight­ing pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the east­ern Don­bass region.

    ...

    Igor Kolo­moisky, a Ukrain­ian ener­gy baron of Jew­ish her­itage, has been a top fun­der of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled pri­vate mili­tias like the Dnipro and Aidar Bat­tal­ions, and has deployed them as a per­son­al thug squad to pro­tect his finan­cial inter­ests.

    In 2019, Kolo­moisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s pres­i­den­tial bid. Though Zelen­sky made anti-cor­rup­tion the sig­na­ture issue of his cam­paign, the Pan­do­ra Papers exposed him and mem­bers of his inner cir­cle stash­ing large pay­ments from Kolo­moisky in a shad­owy web of off­shore accounts.

    When Zelen­sky took office in May 2019, the Azov Bat­tal­ion main­tained de fac­to con­trol of the strate­gic south­east­ern port city of Mar­i­upol and its sur­round­ing vil­lages. As Open Democ­ra­cy not­ed, “Azov has cer­tain­ly estab­lished polit­i­cal con­trol of the streets in Mar­i­upol. To main­tain this con­trol, they have to react vio­lent­ly, even if not offi­cial­ly, to any pub­lic event which diverges suf­fi­cient­ly from their polit­i­cal agen­da.”

    ...

    Accord­ing to one Greek res­i­dent in Mar­i­upol recent­ly inter­viewed by a Greek news sta­tion, “When you try to leave you run the risk of run­ning into a patrol of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists, the Azov Bat­tal­ion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are respon­si­ble for every­thing.”

    Footage post­ed online appears to show uni­formed mem­bers of a fas­cist Ukrain­ian mili­tia in Mar­i­upol vio­lent­ly pulling flee­ing res­i­dents out of their vehi­cles at gun­point.

    ...

    Oth­er video filmed at check­points around Mar­i­upol showed Azov fight­ers shoot­ing and killing civil­ians attempt­ing to flee.
    ...

    So if Kolo­moisky is the pri­ma­ry spon­sor of groups like Azov, and even uses them for per­son­al ends, could we argue that Kolo­moisky is the ulti­mate pow­er bro­ker in Ukraine? Again, life is com­pli­cat­ed, but ask the ques­tion: if Igor Kolo­moisky cut off finan­cial resources to the Azov Bat­tal­ion and ordered them to dis­band, would they? Of course not, but Kolo­moisky would have a very vio­lent new ene­my. It’s anoth­er aspect of how real pow­er is held and wield­ed in Ukraine: The pow­er of groups like Azov is, in part, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ukraine’s far right extrem­ists and its most pow­er­ful indus­tri­al­ists. The fact that the most pow­er­ful of those indus­tri­al­ists, Kolo­moisky, was also the pri­ma­ry backer of Zelen­skiy is a reflec­tion of this under­ly­ing pow­er dynam­ic. A pow­er dynam­ic hos­tile to both minor­i­ty rights and the pop­u­lar will.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 7, 2022, 4:35 pm

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