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FTR#1231 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 4

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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#1231 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the war in Ukraine. 

As men­tioned by Mr. Emory in the last pro­gram, the war and its atten­dant cov­er­age has had the effect of the mytho­log­i­cal “Philoso­phers’ Stone” of the alchemists, cre­at­ing an alchem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of this coun­try, its polit­i­cal cul­ture and cit­i­zen­ry, the EU and UK, their polit­i­cal cul­tures and cit­i­zen­ry and much of the world into the Orwellian his­tor­i­cal per­ver­sion being enact­ed by the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

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.

An 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!”

Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the phys­i­cal, polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty under­ly­ing Via­tro­vy­ch’s revi­sion­ism is 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. . . .”

The over­all them of this series is encap­su­lat­ed in a let­ter from Glenn Pinchback–an Oper­a­tions Offi­cer at Fort Sill, Okla­homa to Jim Gar­ri­son in con­nec­tion with the lat­ter’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.”

In con­clu­sion, the feel­ings I have are best expressed through a poem I have read in a num­ber of pro­grams:

“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robin­son Jef­fers

That pub­lic men pub­lish false­hoods
Is noth­ing new. That Amer­i­ca must accept
Like the his­tor­i­cal republics cor­rup­tion and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for set­ting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these peo­ple, those war­riors.
This repub­lic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them ges­tic­u­lat­ing,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the pas­sion­ate
Man plays his part; the cold pas­sion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Cat­ul­lus, you know,
To lam­poon these crude sketch­es of Cae­sar. You are far
From Dan­te’s feet, but even far­ther from his dirty
Polit­i­cal hatreds.

Let boys want plea­sure, and men
Strug­gle for pow­er, and women per­haps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

1a. 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.

An 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. . . .”

“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. . . .

1b. Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the phys­i­cal, polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty under­ly­ing Via­tro­vy­ch’s revi­sion­ism is 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. . . .”

2.  June 30th was been estab­lished as a com­mem­o­ra­tive cel­e­bra­tion in Lvov [Lviv]. It was on June 30, 1941, when the OUN‑B announced an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state in the city of Lviv. That same day marked the start of the Lviv Pograms that led to the death of thou­sands of Jews.

June 30th is also the birth­day of Roman Shukhevych, com­man­der of the Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion that car­ried out the mass killings. The city of Lviv is start­ing “Shukhevy­ch­fest” to be held in Lviv on June 30th, com­mem­o­rat­ing the pogrom and Shukhevy­ch’s birth­day. Shukhevych was named a “Hero of the Ukraine” by Vik­tor Yuschenko.

In past posts and pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Volodomir Vya­tro­vich, head of the Orwellian Insti­tute of Nation­al Remem­brance. He defend­ed Shukhevych and the pub­lic dis­play­ing of the sym­bol of the Gali­cian Divi­sion (14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion.)

In oth­er, pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions of the return of Ukrain­ian fas­cism, we not­ed that the Svo­bo­da Par­ty’s mili­tia is called Com­bat 14, named after the “14 words” mint­ed by David Lane, the Amer­i­can neo-Nazi who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the killing of Den­ver talk show host Allan Berg.

He passed away on June 30th, trig­ger­ing numer­ous demon­stra­tions, includ­ing sev­er­al in Ukraine.

June 30th appears to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant day for the OUN/B suc­ces­sors and Nazis who are in pow­er in Ukraine.

We also note, in pass­ing, the silence of the Israeli gov­ern­ment in this regard. Indi­vid­ual Jews and Israelis have tak­en note of the resur­gence of the OUN/B and the UPA, with all of their lethal his­tor­i­cal prej­u­dices. The Netanyahu gov­ern­ment, in par­tic­u­lar, main­tained an elo­quent and reveal­ing silence.

“Ukraine City to Hold Fes­ti­val in Hon­or of Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tor Whose Troops Killed Jews”; Jew­ish Tele­graph Agency; 06/28/2017

The Ukrain­ian city of Lviv will hold a fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor on the anniver­sary of a major pogrom against the city’s Jews.

Shukhevy­ch­fest, an event named for Roman Shukhevych fea­tur­ing music and the­ater shows, will be held Fri­day.

Eduard Dolin­sky, the direc­tor of the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee, in a state­ment called the event “dis­grace­ful.”

On June 30, 1941, Ukrain­ian troops, includ­ing mili­ti­a­men loy­al to Shukhevych’s, began a series of pogroms against Jews, which they per­pe­trat­ed under the aus­pices of the Ger­man army, accord­ing to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Sny­der and oth­er schol­ars. They mur­dered approx­i­mate­ly 6,000 Jews in those pogroms.

The day of the fes­ti­val is the 110th birth­day of Shukhevych, a leader of the OUN‑B nation­al­ist group and lat­er of the UPA insur­gency mili­tia, which col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis against the Sovi­et Union before it turned against the Nazis.

Shukhevy­ch­fest is part of a series of ges­tures hon­or­ing nation­al­ists in Ukraine fol­low­ing the 2014 rev­o­lu­tion, in which nation­al­ists played a lead­ing role. They brought down the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovuch, whose crit­ics said was a cor­rupt Russ­ian stooge.

On June 13, a Kiev admin­is­tra­tive court par­tial­ly upheld a motion by par­ties opposed to the ven­er­a­tion of Shukhevych in the city and sus­pend­ed the renam­ing of a street after Shukhevych. The city coun­cil approved the renam­ing ear­li­er this month.

In a relat­ed debate, the direc­tor of Ukraine’s Insti­tute of Nation­al Remem­brance, Vladimir Vya­tro­vich, who recent­ly described Shukhevych as an “emi­nent per­son­al­i­ty,” last month defend­ed the dis­play­ing in pub­lic of the sym­bol of the Gali­cian SS divi­sion. Respon­si­ble for count­less mur­ders of Jews, Nazi Germany’s most elite unit was com­prised of Ukrain­ian vol­un­teers.

Dis­play­ing Nazi sym­bols is ille­gal in Ukraine but the Gali­cian SS division’s sym­bol is “in accor­dance with the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion of Ukraine,” Vya­tro­vich said. . . .

3. The over­all them of the pro­grams to be pre­sent­ed in this long series is cap­tured in an obser­va­tion made by Glenn Pinch­back.

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 86–87.

. . . . Gar­ri­son did not pro­vide an expla­na­tion for all of the [David Fer­rie] note’s sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, he did know the mean­ing of “fly­ing Barag­o­na in the Beech.” “Beech” refers to the mod­el of Fer­rie’s air­plane, a Beechcraft. Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . .

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.” The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

Discussion

8 comments for “FTR#1231 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 4”

  1. This one large­ly speaks for itself. The Inter­cept first broke this (sigh), but it appears that Busi­ness Insid­er has talked to Meta spokes­peo­ple and they con­firmed that Meta is now allow­ing posts prais­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion. The rest of the media is not cov­er­ing this. Let’s not for­get that recent coverup I men­tioned of the Meta direc­tor who was caught sex­ting young boys and fired from his job! Is Meta get­ting some kind of quid pro quo? If they play ball with the US on Ukraine “dis­in­for­ma­tion”, do they get a spe­cial perk with US-con­trolled search engines on the Jer­ren Miles sto­ry? I mean, Duck­Duck­Go (my ref­er­ence point as it is the one I use and the LEAST com­pro­mised of the major search engines) is play­ing along. I’m sure google, bing, and the rest are as well.

    The LGBT advo­ca­cy group where he was a board mem­ber not only removed him from cur­rent web­sites, but even went back to 2019 to remove a men­tion of him on the host com­mit­tee for an event held at that time. But the web nev­er for­gets… if you archive prop­er­ly.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20210514074440/https://www.eqca.org/equality-awards/san-francisco-2019–2/

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/facebook-is-reversing-its-ban-on-posts-praising-ukraines-far-right-azov-battalion-report-says/ar-AAUiIo7

    Face­book is back­track­ing on a ban it placed on users prais­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a far-right para­mil­i­tary force with­in the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard.

    The Inter­cept first report­ed the news.
    Praise for the group, which is the armed wing of the coun­try’s white nation­al­ist Azov move­ment, was banned in 2019 under Face­book’s Dan­ger­ous Indi­vid­u­als and Orga­ni­za­tions pol­i­cy. The plat­form had clas­si­fied the group along­side oth­ers such as the Ku Klux Klan and Islam­ic State.
    A 2016 report by the OHCHR found that Azov sol­diers had raped and tor­tured civil­ians dur­ing the 2014 Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine.
    The mem­os seen by The Inter­cept, how­ev­er, also acknowl­edge the group’s ide­ol­o­gy, and list­ed the fol­low­ing post as an exam­ple of unac­cept­able con­tent, accord­ing to the out­let: “Well done Azov for pro­tect­ing Ukraine and it’s white nation­al­ist her­itage.”
    The bat­tal­ion itself will still be banned from using Face­book to pub­lish posts or recruit mem­bers, while images of its uni­form and ban­ners will still be banned as hate sym­bols.

    “For the time being, we are mak­ing a nar­row excep­tion for praise of the Azov Reg­i­ment strict­ly in the con­text of defend­ing Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine Nation­al Guard,” a spokesper­son from Face­book’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Meta, told Insid­er.

    NOTE: Per­haps the most shock­ing thing to me has been the all out anti-RUSS­IAN assault in media, not to be con­fused with anti-PUTIN or anti-“current gov­ern­ment” sen­ti­ment. No, it’s a war on all things Russ­ian! Soon we’ll see a bunch of ANTIFA goons danc­ing around a fire of Russ­ian nest­ing dolls and bot­tles of Russ­ian dress­ing. The only “cred­i­ble” sources on this in the Eng­lish lan­guage that I could find are Newsweek and Rea­son Mag­a­zine. While I loathe them both, they usu­al­ly don’t make stuff like this up. Wish I had a bet­ter source… but, hey, nobody’s cov­er­ing it!

    https://www.newsweek.com/college-backtracks-banning-teaching-dostoevsky-russian-1684080

    A uni­ver­si­ty in Italy has back­tracked on a deci­sion to post­pone a course about the work of Russ­ian author Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky fol­low­ing a back­lash.
    Ital­ian writer Pao­lo Nori post­ed a video on Insta­gram on Tues­day say­ing he had received an email from offi­cials at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Milano-Bic­oc­ca, in Milan, inform­ing him of the deci­sion to post­pone his course fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine.
    “Dear Pro­fes­sor, the Vice Rec­tor for Didac­tics has informed me of a deci­sion tak­en with the rec­tor to post­pone the course on Dos­to­evsky,” the email said, accord­ing to Nori’s video.
    “This is to avoid any con­tro­ver­sy, espe­cial­ly inter­nal­ly, dur­ing a time of strong ten­sions.”
    …Nori went on: “I real­ize what is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine is hor­ri­ble, and I feel like cry­ing just think­ing about it. But what is hap­pen­ing in Italy is ridicu­lous.”
    “Not only is being a liv­ing Russ­ian wrong in Italy today, but also being a dead Russ­ian, who was sen­tenced to death in 1849 because he read a for­bid­den thing. That an Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ty would ban a course on an author like Dos­to­evsky is unbe­liev­able,” he said.

    NOTE: Snopes used to be a real­ly good “fact-check­er” web­site that was fair­ly unbi­ased and non-par­ti­san. The details are murky, but there was a seri­ous bat­tle with­in for con­trol and own­er­ship that went on for most of the 2010s. Now they fol­low a “CIA Lib­er­al” line and con­tin­u­al­ly dis­tort the “facts”. They are now owned by a com­pa­ny named “Sovrn”, of all fuck­ing things, that also owns Salon. Salon was found­ed by David Tal­bot, but he has not been involved with the site for many years. While they actu­al­ly have some decent info in this arti­cle, the pur­pose is to min­i­mize the role Azov and Nazis play with­in the larg­er Ukrain­ian sit­u­a­tion and it is all about these two para­graphs.

    https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/02/what-is-ukraines-azov-battalion/

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion is a real extrem­ist group that became (and still is) a fac­tion in Ukraine’s nation­al guard, but to equate them with the “Kyiv regime” is to vast­ly over­state their size and influ­ence.
    To say that the Azov group is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ukraine’s over­all defense or gov­ern­ment is false, because it makes up a small per­cent­age of Ukraine’s total mil­i­tary defense, and Ukraine’s nation­al gov­ern­ment sys­tem is a democ­ra­cy.

    NOTE: The Ukraini­ans are try­ing to get cryp­to exchanges to cut off the Rus­sians entire­ly. Note that this Ukrain­ian min­is­ter is push­ing not only to tar­get cryp­to of the Russ­ian elite, but to “sab­o­tage ordi­nary users”. So far, most of the exchanges appear to be telling them to pound sand.

    https://www.zdnet.com/finance/blockchain/ukraine-asks-cryptocurrency-firms-to-block-russian-users/

    Ukraine has request­ed major cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchanges restrict the activ­i­ties of Russ­ian account hold­ers. Mykhai­lo Fedorov, the Vice Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion of Ukraine, tweet­ed the appeal on Feb­ru­ary 27, ask­ing that “all major cryp­to exchanges block address­es of Russ­ian users.”
    It’s cru­cial to freeze not only the address­es linked to Russ­ian and Belaru­sian politi­cians but also to sab­o­tage ordi­nary users,” Fedorov said.

    NOTE: When Oba­ma turned over con­trol of ICANN (used to assign IP address­es to names), I thought it was an incred­i­bly fool­ish thing to do. How­ev­er, in this case, it may be a good thing as I don’t trust the Biden Admin to NOT use ICANN as a weapon if we were still ful­ly in con­trol of it. Note also that the CIA con­trol of Anony­mous has tak­en full flight and they claimed to have tak­en down rt.com (it’s now back up). Eas­i­est group in the world to infil­trate: all you need is a Chi­nese-made Guy Fawkes mask, a web­cam and a voice scram­bler. Bin­go! You’re Anony­mous! I had noticed this devel­op­ment a few years back when you would see the main Anony­mous twit­ter account fol­low­ing CIA par­ty line, while off­shoot Anony­mous groups like Anony­mous Scan­di­navia were high­ly skep­ti­cal of the US maneu­vers in East­ern Europe, Syr­ia, etc.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/icann-rejects-ukraines-request-to-block-russia-from-the-internet/

    Fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion, Ukraine had asked the Inter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for Assigned Names and Num­bers (ICANN) to revoke Rus­si­a’s top-lev­el domains (TLD), such as .ru, .рф, and .su be revoked along with the nation’s asso­ci­at­ed Secure Sock­ets Lay­er (SSL) cer­tifi­cates. The request came from Andrii Nabok, ICAN­N’s Ukrain­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and Mykhai­lo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime min­is­ter and min­is­ter of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

    Now, ICANN has replied: No.

    The let­ter from Göran Mar­by, ICAN­N’s CEO and pres­i­dent, tried to soft­en the blow, “ICANN stands ready to con­tin­ue to sup­port Ukrain­ian and glob­al Inter­net secu­ri­ty, sta­bil­i­ty, and resilien­cy.” But, a no is a no.
    Fedorov had also asked that RIPE NCC, the region­al Inter­net reg­istry for Europe, the Mid­dle East, and parts of Cen­tral Asia, with­draw Rus­sia and its Local Inter­net Reg­istries (LIR) rights to use their assigned IPv4 and IPv6 address­es and to block their DNS root servers.
    RIPE had turned down this request ear­li­er. The RIPE NCC Exec­u­tive Board stat­ed that “the means to com­mu­ni­cate should not be affect­ed by domes­tic polit­i­cal dis­putes, inter­na­tion­al con­flicts or war. This includes the pro­vi­sion of cor­rect­ly reg­is­tered Inter­net num­ber­ing resources.”
    These moves come as no sur­prise. Ear­li­er, peo­ple with both inter­net orga­ni­za­tions and relat­ed groups had made it clear they did­n’t want to grant Ukraine’s request
    Andrew Sul­li­van, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Inter­net Soci­ety, warned that if ICANN has grant­ed Ukraine’s request it might cause “ ‘Splin­ter­net’ – the splin­ter­ing of the Inter­net along geo­graph­i­cal, polit­i­cal, com­mer­cial, and/or tech­no­log­i­cal bound­aries.” This frag­ment­ing would have mas­sive neg­a­tive effects, while also set­ting dan­ger­ous prece­dents. Sul­li­van said: “The calls to cut Rus­sia off from the Inter­net are a slip­pery slope, as the ‘Splin­ter­net’ is the antithe­sis of how the Inter­net was designed and meant to func­tion. We must resist these calls, no mat­ter how tempt­ing they may be.”

    Mar­by agreed: “With­in our mis­sion, we main­tain neu­tral­i­ty and act in sup­port of the glob­al Inter­net. Our mis­sion does not extend to tak­ing puni­tive actions, issu­ing sanc­tions, or restrict­ing access against seg­ments of the Inter­net – regard­less of the provo­ca­tions.”

    While the inter­net’s offi­cial gov­er­nors are stay­ing out of the war, unof­fi­cial groups such as Anony­mous have tak­en up their cyber arms against Rus­sia. Anony­mous has claimed to have tak­en down var­i­ous web­sites, includ­ing Russ­ian oil pow­er Gazprom; Russ­ian state news agency RT; and Russ­ian and Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment agen­cies, includ­ing the Krem­lin.

    Numer­ous com­pa­nies have also joined the right against Rus­sia. For exam­ple, Microsoft Pres­i­dent Brad Smith announced that the Win­dows giant would help Ukraine against Russ­ian cyber attacks. Smith wrote that while “We are a com­pa­ny and not a gov­ern­ment or a coun­try,” Microsoft would pro­tect Ukraine from cyber­at­tacks.

    NOTE: Back to the War on Russ­ian Cul­ture… The Munich Phil­har­mon­ic tried to make its chief con­duc­tor take the equiv­a­lent of a Ukrain­ian loy­al­ty oath to keep his job. He didn’t, so they canned him. He was also dropped by the Paris Phil­har­mon­ic and a Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic show at Carnegie Hall, plus dropped by his Ger­man agent. I wish the Ger­mans every sin­gle Ukrain­ian refugee that hope­ful­ly can make their way to their coun­try and that they build a tent city in the heart of Berlin.

    https://www.thelocal.de/20220301/munich-orchestra-drops-russian-conductor-gergiev-over-ukraine/

    Acclaimed Russ­ian con­duc­tor Valery Gergiev, known to have close ties to the Krem­lin, was fired Tues­day from his job as chief con­duc­tor of the Munich Phil­har­mon­ic after fail­ing to denounce Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    “With imme­di­ate effect, there will be no fur­ther con­certs by the Munich Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra under his direc­tion,” Munich may­or Dieter Reit­er said in a state­ment.
    The dis­missal is the lat­est blow for the 68-year-old clas­si­cal music titan who has come under pres­sure from arts insti­tu­tions around Europe since Rus­sia attacked Ukraine last week, and has been dropped from a slew of pres­ti­gious con­certs.
    As well as being the prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor in Munich since 2015, Gergiev is also the chief and artis­tic direc­tor of the Mari­in­sky The­atre in Saint Peters­burg.
    He has not yet spo­ken pub­licly regard­ing Moscow’s offen­sive, but he has proven fierce­ly loy­al to Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in the past, ally­ing with him on the 2014 annex­a­tion of Crimea and a law aimed at sti­fling LGBT rights activists in Rus­sia.
    The Munich orches­tra had giv­en Gergiev until Mon­day to take a stance against Moscow’s aggres­sion, but the dead­line passed with­out a response from the con­duc­tor.
    …Gergiev had in recent days already been dropped from upcom­ing con­certs at the renowned Phil­har­monie con­cert hall in Paris and by the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
    The Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val has also cut ties with him, as has his agent in Ger­many, Mar­cus Fel­sner.

    NOTE: Of par­tic­u­lar con­cern is the war on aca­d­e­mics. I sus­pect this below state­ment results from a mix of arm-twist­ing and out­right fear on the part of its sig­na­to­ries. They do not wish to lose their cushy Uni­ver­si­ty jobs. Keep in mind, these are some of the key his­to­ri­ans of top­ics like Ban­dera and Ukrain­ian fas­cism! They aren’t naive idiots who work for CNN or get all their news from Red­dit. They know the truth, but they MUST live the lie. This is insane. Below the state­ment I have includ­ed com­men­tary from David North of the WSWS. I would pre­fer to have cit­ed some­thing more main­stream, but there is very lit­tle cov­er­age of this issue, and cer­tain­ly no cri­tique of the state­ment. I dis­agree with the WSWS on many things, but their cov­er­age of the US/NATO buildup in East­ern Europe and their under­stand­ing of the War for Earth Island are con­sis­tent­ly strong.

    https://jewishjournal.com/news/worldwide/345515/statement-on-the-war-in-ukraine-by-scholars-of-genocide-nazism-and-world-war-ii/

    As we write this, the hor­ror of war is unfold­ing in Ukraine. The last time Kyiv was under heavy artillery fire and saw tanks in its streets was dur­ing World War II. If any­one should know it, it’s Vladimir Putin, who is obsessed with the his­to­ry of that war.
    Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da has paint­ed the Ukrain­ian state as Nazi and fas­cist ever since Russ­ian spe­cial forces first entered Ukraine in 2014, annex­ing the Crimea and foment­ing the con­flict in the Don­bas, which has smol­dered for eight long years.
    It was pro­pa­gan­da in 2014. It remains pro­pa­gan­da today.
    This is why we came togeth­er: to protest the use of this false and destruc­tive nar­ra­tive. Among those who have signed the state­ment below are some of the most accom­plished and cel­e­brat­ed schol­ars of World War II, Nazism, geno­cide and the Holo­caust. If you are a schol­ar of this his­to­ry, please con­sid­er adding your name to the list. If you are a jour­nal­ist, you now have a list of experts you can turn to in order to help your read­ers bet­ter under­stand Russia’s war against Ukraine.
    And if you are a con­sumer of the news, please share the mes­sage of this let­ter wide­ly. There is no Nazi gov­ern­ment for Moscow to root out in Kyiv. There has been no geno­cide of the Russ­ian peo­ple in Ukraine. And Russ­ian troops are not on a lib­er­a­tion mis­sion. After the bloody 20th cen­tu­ry, we should all have built enough dis­cern­ment to know that war is not peace, slav­ery is not free­dom, and igno­rance offers strength only to auto­crat­ic mega­lo­ma­ni­acs who seek to exploit it for their per­son­al agen­das.
    The state­ment can be found below. If you are a schol­ar and would like to add your sig­na­ture to the list, please tweet @eugene_finkel or @izatabaro or send an email to efinkel4@jhu.edu.
    To see the lat­est addi­tions to the list of sig­na­to­ries, please see here.
    ***
    State­ment by Schol­ars of Geno­cide, Nazism and World War II
    Since Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, the armed forces of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion have been engaged in an unpro­voked mil­i­tary aggres­sion against Ukraine. The attack is a con­tin­u­a­tion of Russia’s annex­a­tion of the Crimean penin­su­la in 2014 and its heavy involve­ment in the armed con­flict in the Don­bas region.
    The Russ­ian attack came in the wake of accu­sa­tions by the Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of crimes against human­i­ty and geno­cide, alleged­ly com­mit­ted by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in the Don­bas. Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da reg­u­lar­ly presents the elect­ed lead­ers of Ukraine as Nazis and fas­cists oppress­ing the local eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion, which it claims needs to be lib­er­at­ed. Pres­i­dent Putin stat­ed that one of the goals of his “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” against Ukraine is the “denaz­i­fi­ca­tion” of the coun­try.
    We are schol­ars of geno­cide, the Holo­caust, and World War II. We spend our careers study­ing fas­cism and Nazism, and com­mem­o­rat­ing their vic­tims. Many of us are active­ly engaged in com­bat­ing con­tem­po­rary heirs to these evil regimes and those who attempt to deny or cast a veil over their crimes.
    We strong­ly reject the Russ­ian government’s cyn­i­cal abuse of the term geno­cide, the mem­o­ry of World War II and the Holo­caust, and the equa­tion of the Ukrain­ian state with the Nazi regime to jus­ti­fy its unpro­voked aggres­sion. This rhetoric is fac­tu­al­ly wrong, moral­ly repug­nant and deeply offen­sive to the mem­o­ry of mil­lions of vic­tims of Nazism and those who coura­geous­ly fought against it, includ­ing Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian sol­diers of the Red Army.
    We do not ide­al­ize the Ukrain­ian state and soci­ety. Like any oth­er coun­try, it has right-wing extrem­ists and vio­lent xeno­pho­bic groups. Ukraine also ought to bet­ter con­front the dark­er chap­ters of its painful and com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry. Yet none of this jus­ti­fies the Russ­ian aggres­sion and the gross mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Ukraine. At this fate­ful moment we stand unit­ed with free, inde­pen­dent and demo­c­ra­t­ic Ukraine and strong­ly reject the Russ­ian government’s mis­use of the his­to­ry of World War II to jus­ti­fy its own vio­lence.

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/04/acad-m04.html

    His­to­ri­ans capit­u­late to war pro­pa­gan­da over Ukraine
    David North

    4 March 2022

    The war is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing impact on his­to­ri­ans. There are entire­ly prin­ci­pled and left­wing grounds upon which the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine should be opposed, and which do not require adapt­ing to the US-NATO coverup of fas­cism in Ukraine’s past and present.
    But, unfor­tu­nate­ly, even his­to­ri­ans who have writ­ten major works on the fas­cist Stepan Ban­dera, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN‑B) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA) are renounc­ing their own schol­ar­ship to suit the needs of the US-NATO pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign.

    The “State­ment on Ukraine by schol­ars of geno­cide, Nazism and WWII” is a dis­grace­ful exam­ple of the intel­lec­tu­al and moral capit­u­la­tion of sig­nif­i­cant seg­ments of the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty to the demands for his­tor­i­cal fal­si­fi­ca­tion.
    The state­ment begins with a ref­er­ence to World War II, bizarrely attack­ing Putin for being “obsessed with the his­to­ry of that war,” as if it is abnor­mal for a Russ­ian pres­i­dent to be “obsessed” with a cat­a­stro­phe that cost the lives of approx­i­mate­ly 30 mil­lion Sovi­et cit­i­zens.
    One must assume that the statement’s sig­na­to­ries, who have devot­ed their pro­fes­sion­al lives to the study of geno­cide, are also “obsessed with the his­to­ry of that war,” whose cen­tral event was the Holo­caust in which Ban­dera and OUN‑B played a crit­i­cal role.
    The statement’s sig­na­to­ries declare: “We do not ide­al­ize the Ukrain­ian state and soci­ety. Like any oth­er coun­try, it has right-wing extrem­ists and vio­lent xeno­pho­bic groups. Ukraine also ought to bet­ter con­front the dark­er chap­ters of its painful and com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry.”
    In the con­text of its his­to­ry, this state­ment is indeed an ide­al­iza­tion of the Ukrain­ian state and soci­ety. Ukraine is not “like any oth­er coun­try” which has “right-wing extrem­ists and vio­lent xeno­pho­bic groups.”

    Sup­port­ers of far-right par­ties car­ry torch­es and ban­ner with a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera reads ‘Noth­ing was stopped the idea when its time comes’ dur­ing a ral­ly in Kiev, Ukraine, Tues­day, Jan. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
    As the his­to­ri­ans know, despite the hor­rif­ic geno­ci­dal crimes com­mit­ted by the OUN, under the lead­er­ship of their “Provid­nyk” (fuehrer) Stepan Ban­dera, the lega­cy of the fas­cist nation­al­ists con­tin­ues to exert an immense polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al influ­ence in Ukraine.

    Among the statement’s sig­na­to­ries is the his­to­ri­an Grze­gorz Rossolińs­ki-Liebe, who is the author of an impor­tant 652 page schol­ar­ly work, titled Stepan Ban­dera: The Life and After­life of a Ukrain­ian Nationalist—Fascism, Geno­cide, and Cult.
    Rossolińs­ki-Liebe’s book, Stepan Ban­dera: The Life and After­life of a Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist — Fas­cism, Geno­cide, and Cult
    This book not only doc­u­ments the crimes com­mit­ted by Bandera’s move­ment. Rossolińs­ki-Liebe also exam­ined his cult-like sta­tus among broad seg­ments of con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian soci­ety.
    In the after­math of the dis­so­lu­tion of the USSR, he writes: “Many mon­u­ments devot­ed to the vic­tims of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists or to heroes of the Sovi­et Union were replaced with mon­u­ments devot­ed to Ban­dera and the OUN and UPA ‘heroes.’
    “Ban­dera and Ukrain­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary nation­al­ists again became impor­tant ele­ments of west­ern Ukrain­ian iden­ti­ty.
    “Not only far-right activists but also the main­stream of west­ern Ukrain­ian soci­ety, includ­ing high-school teach­ers and uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors, con­sid­ered Ban­dera to be a nation­al hero... whose mem­o­ry should be hon­ored for his strug­gle against the Sovi­et Union.”
    Rossolińs­ki-Liebe made the fol­low­ing sig­nif­i­cant and trou­bling obser­va­tion: “The post-Sovi­et mem­o­ry pol­i­tics in Ukraine com­plete­ly ignored demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and did not devel­op any kind of non-apolo­getic approach to his­to­ry.”

    How is this damn­ing com­men­tary on the post-Sovi­et intel­lec­tu­al life of Ukraine rec­on­ciled with the statement’s cyn­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal­ly apolo­getic ref­er­ence to “inde­pen­dent and demo­c­ra­t­ic Ukraine”?
    Rossolińs­ki-Liebe also called atten­tion to the sig­nif­i­cant inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions forged by Bandera’s fol­low­ers with the Unit­ed States and oth­er impe­ri­al­ist pow­ers dur­ing the Cold War.
    Iaroslav Stets’ko, who “had writ­ten let­ters to the Fuhrer, the Duce, the Poglavnik [the top Croa­t­ian Nazi], and the Caudil­lo [Fran­co], ask­ing them to accept the new­ly pro­claimed Ukrain­ian state, was in 1966 des­ig­nat­ed an hon­orary cit­i­zen of the Cana­di­an city of Win­nipeg.”
    The his­to­ri­an con­tin­ues: “In 1983 he was invit­ed to the Capi­tol and the White House, where George Bush and Ronald Rea­gan received the ‘last pre­mier of a free Ukrain­ian state,’” i.e., which had exist­ed under the con­trol of the Third Reich.
    “On 11 July 1982,” recalls Rossolińs­ki-Liebe, “dur­ing Cap­tive Nations’ Week, the red-and-black flag of the OUN‑B, intro­duced at the Sec­ond Great Con­gress of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in 1941, flew over the Unit­ed States Capi­tol.

    “It sym­bol­ized free­dom and democ­ra­cy, and not eth­nic puri­ty and geno­ci­dal fas­cism. Nobody under­stood that it was the same flag that had flown from the Lviv city hall and oth­er build­ings, under which Jew­ish civil­ians were mis­treat­ed and killed in July 1941...”
    Giv­en the his­to­ry of Ukrain­ian fas­cism and its tru­ly sor­did con­tem­po­rary sig­nif­i­cance, the apolo­get­ics in which the his­to­ri­ans are engaged is as con­temptible as it is cow­ard­ly.
    The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is engaged in its own pro­pa­gan­da-style fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry, which must be exposed. Putin—a bit­ter oppo­nent of the inter­na­tion­al­ism of the Octo­ber Revolution—counterpoises Russ­ian nation­al­ism to Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism.
    The com­pet­ing nation­al­ist nar­ra­tives must be exposed—in the inter­ests of unit­ing Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian work­ers in a com­mon strug­gle against the US-NATO impe­ri­al­ists, their fas­cist allies with­in Ukraine, and cor­rupt regime of cap­i­tal­ist restora­tion in Rus­sia.

    Posted by cinque anon | March 7, 2022, 12:03 pm
  2. What hap­pened to Kono­top? It’s a ques­tion that’s been grow­ing for days fol­low­ing a flur­ry a reports from the region in North­east­ern Ukraine. First we got reports of an ulti­ma­tum issued to Kono­top by Russ­ian forces. Russ­ian troops hold­ing hand grenades met with the may­or of Kono­top and issued a sur­ren­der ulti­ma­tum under the threat of Russ­ian artillery. The may­or then relayed the ulti­ma­tum to a crowd, ask­ing the peo­ple if they want­ed to give in to the Russ­ian demands or fight on. The crowd chant­ed to fight on, with the may­or express­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with that sen­ti­ment.

    We haven’t received any updates on the state of Kono­top for five days. But we have received updates from the region with reports of a human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor being opened in the city of Sumy. Kono­top is locat­ed North­west of Sumy in the Sumy Oblast. Will this human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor pass through Kono­top? What is the world going find there? A pile of rub­ble?

    These are some of the key ques­tions loom­ing over the fate of the peo­ple of Kono­top. But part of what makes the fate of Kono­top such an omi­nous ques­tion has to do with the iden­ti­fy of that may­or. Because it turns out the may­or of Kono­top, Artem Semenikhin, is a mem­ber of Svo­bo­da and an unam­bigu­ous open neo-Nazi. As we’ll see, short­ly after he was elect­ed in 2015, res­i­dents of Kono­top were shocked to find their may­or dri­ving around in a car bear­ing the “14/88” neo-Nazi numerol­o­gy. He also replaced a pic­ture of then-Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko in his office with a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera. True to form, he even refused to fly the city’s offi­cial flag at the open­ing meet­ing of the city coun­cil because he object­ed to the star of David embla­zoned on it (the flag also has a Mus­lim cres­cent and a cross). Artem Semenikhin’s behav­ior may have shocked some res­i­dents in 2015, but he’s still may­or in 2022, lead­ing the city dur­ing this siege.

    Our last reports out of Kono­top last week was about how the open neo-Nazi may­or was lead­ing the city in refus­ing to sub­mit to Russ­ian demands. What hap­pened there? We’ve had no updates since, but the fact that this town has an open Nazi as the may­or does not bode well giv­en the stat­ed goal of “de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion”. With a human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor poten­tial­ly lead­ing through the area we might get an update. A poten­tial­ly very omi­nous update that could give us a pre­view of how direct con­flict between Russ­ian forces and Ukrain­ian towns led by open Nazis could play out as this con­flict con­tin­ues to boil over.

    Ok, first, here’s a NY Times arti­cle from last week about the siege of Kono­top and the ulti­ma­tum issued to the city by Russ­ian sol­diers hold­ing grenades. An ulti­ma­tum relayed to the com­mu­ni­ty by May­or Semenikhin, who is not once referred to in the arti­cle as a far right extrem­ist but instead depict­ed as just a patri­ot­ic may­or stand­ing up to Russ­ian aggres­sion:

    The New York Times

    May­or in Ukraine asks his city’s res­i­dents whether they wish to fight or sur­ren­der.

    Dmitriy Khavin, David Bot­ti and Ainara Tiefen­thäler
    March 2, 2022

    The city of Kono­top, in north­east­ern Ukraine, was the scene of a tense con­fronta­tion between res­i­dents and Russ­ian troops, who the may­or said had threat­ened to destroy the city if it didn’t sur­ren­der.

    Footage ver­i­fied by The New York Times showed sev­er­al Russ­ian sol­diers walk­ing through an angry crowd accom­pa­nied by the city’s may­or, Artem Semenikhin, near Konotop’s City Coun­cil build­ing. One of the sol­diers held a grenade in each hand above his head as he walked. The footage appeared to have first sur­faced online Wednes­day, but it was unclear when the events actu­al­ly look place.

    “Shame,” sev­er­al peo­ple shout­ed at the sol­diers. “Don’t walk around show­ing your grenade off,” said one per­son, using a pro­fan­i­ty. The Russ­ian sol­diers even­tu­al­ly drove away.

    Anoth­er video showed Mr. Semenikhin stand­ing on a con­crete planter out­side the City Coun­cil build­ing and address­ing the crowd. He said the Russ­ian sol­diers had told him they would “raze the city to the ground with their artillery” if the res­i­dents did not sur­ren­der. He then asked the crowd whether they want­ed to sur­ren­der or fight. The response was over­whelm­ing­ly in favor of fight­ing.

    “I am too,” Mr. Semenikhin said. “But the deci­sion has to be unan­i­mous because their artillery is already trained on us.”

    ————-


    May­or in Ukraine asks his city’s res­i­dents whether they wish to fight or sur­ren­der.” by Dmitriy Khavin, David Bot­ti and Ainara Tiefen­thäler; The New York Times; 03/02/2022

    “Anoth­er video showed Mr. Semenikhin stand­ing on a con­crete planter out­side the City Coun­cil build­ing and address­ing the crowd. He said the Russ­ian sol­diers had told him they would “raze the city to the ground with their artillery” if the res­i­dents did not sur­ren­der. He then asked the crowd whether they want­ed to sur­ren­der or fight. The response was over­whelm­ing­ly in favor of fight­ing.

    That was more or less the last update we got from Kono­top. Faced with a ulti­ma­tum from Russ­ian artillery, the may­or was lead­ing the town in resis­tance.

    What hap­pened in the fol­low­ing days? It would be a big ques­tion for any town fac­ing a siege. But as the fol­low­ing 2015 arti­cle makes clear, Artem Semenikhin is no ordi­nary may­or. He’s a neo-Nazi who bare­ly tries to hide his sym­pa­thies. In oth­ers, he’s the per­fect per­son to ensure the con­flict in Kono­top is as intense as pos­si­ble:

    The Jerusalem Post

    Local Jews in shock after Ukrain­ian city of Kono­top elects neo-Nazi may­or
    Vio­lence from Svo­bo­da par­ty activists a con­cern for some in small north­ern city.

    By SAM SOKOL
    Pub­lished: DECEMBER 21, 2015 17:41
    Updat­ed: DECEMBER 22, 2015 02:55

    Two months after local elec­tions were held across Ukraine, res­i­dents of the small north­ern city of Kono­top are express­ing shock and dis­may over the behav­ior of new­ly cho­sen May­or Artem Semenikhin of the neo-Nazi Svo­bo­da par­ty.

    Accord­ing to reports, Semenikhin dri­ves around in a car bear­ing the num­ber 14/88, a numero­log­i­cal ref­er­ence to the phras­es “we must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the pic­ture of Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko in his office with a por­trait of Ukrain­ian nation­al leader and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera; and refused to fly the city’s offi­cial flag at the open­ing meet­ing of the city coun­cil because he object­ed to the star of David embla­zoned on it. The flag also fea­tures a Mus­lim cres­cent and a cross.

    Svo­bo­da, known as the Social-Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine until 2004, has been accused of being a neo-Nazi par­ty by Ukrain­ian Jews and while par­ty lead­ers have a his­to­ry of mak­ing anti-Semit­ic remarks, their rhetoric has toned down con­sid­er­ably over the past years as they attempt­ed to go main­stream.

    While it man­aged to enter main­stream pol­i­tics and gain 36 out of 450 seats in the Rada, Ukraine’s par­lia­ment, the party’s sup­port seemed to evap­o­rate fol­low­ing the 2014 Ukrain­ian rev­o­lu­tion, in which it played a cen­tral role. It cur­rent­ly holds six seats in the leg­is­la­ture.

    The par­ty man­aged to improve its stand­ing dur­ing recent munic­i­pal elec­tions, how­ev­er, obtain­ing some 10 per­cent of the vote in Kiev and gar­ner­ing sec­ond place in the west­ern city of Lviv. For the most part, how­ev­er, Svo­bo­da is far from the major wor­ry for Ukrain­ian Jews that it was only two years ago.

    “It is a sad, but a real­i­ty when anti-Semi­tes are being elect­ed in local gov­ern­ing bod­ies, even may­ors pro­mot­ing hate and intol­er­ance.

    Kono­top is a clear case,” said Eduard Dolin­sky of the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee.

    For the Jews of Kono­top, how­ev­er, wor­ries per­sist, with Ilya Bezruchko, the Ukrain­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the US-based Nation­al Coali­tion Sup­port­ing Eurasian Jew­ry, say­ing he believed res­i­dents, who gen­er­al­ly get along well with local Jews, vot­ed for Semenikhin because he pro­ject­ed an image of some­one who could bring change and reform a cor­rupt sys­tem.

    How­ev­er, Semenikhin him­self has a his­to­ry of fraud, hav­ing been arrest­ed for pos­ing as an elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny work­er in order to extract pay­ments from busi­ness­es in Kiev in 2012, Bezruchko charged.

    Bezruchko, whose late grand­fa­ther was the head of the com­mu­ni­ty and whose moth­er cur­rent­ly works for the city coun­cil, said Semenikhin and his assis­tant have left angry com­ments on his Face­book page in response to crit­i­cal arti­cles that the Jew­ish activist had post­ed on his blog.

    He claimed that some­one close to the may­or claimed that he would be hos­pi­tal­ized if he returned to the city from Kiev, where he cur­rent­ly lives, and that the may­or him­self post­ed to say that his moth­er was cor­rupt and should be fired from her job.

    “The reac­tion of [the] com­mu­ni­ty is shock. Peo­ple are shocked it could hap­pen in [a] city and nobody believed it could hap­pen here but it hap­pened some­how,” com­mu­ni­ty activist Igor Nechayev told The Jerusalem Post by phone Mon­day.

    While there have been a cou­ple of instances of anti-Semit­ic graf­fi­ti over the past decade and one occa­sion­al­ly hears ref­er­ences to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries iden­ti­fy­ing Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal lead­ers as Jews, for the most part, rela­tions between the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and their non-Jew­ish neigh­bors are cor­dial, he said.

    How­ev­er, while the may­or attempts to make sure his state­ments nev­er cross over into out­right anti-Semi­tism, many things he says can be inter­pret­ed in such a way, he con­tin­ued. As an exam­ple, he referred to a recent state­ment by Semenikhin in which the may­or refused to apol­o­gize for anti-Jew­ish actions tak­en by far-right nation­al­ists in World War II, inti­mat­ing that it was because those respon­si­ble for the Holodomor famine of the 1930s were large­ly Jew­ish.

    The Holodomor was a man­made famine that came about dur­ing the col­lec­tiviza­tion of agri­cul­ture in the Sovi­et Union and which led to the starv­ing deaths of mil­lions. Ukraini­ans con­sid­er it a geno­cide.

    “The com­mu­ni­ty is dis­cussing the sit­u­a­tion and they under­stand that the may­or is bal­anc­ing between anti-Semi­tism— – he isn’t cross­ing a red­line with state­ments but say­ing bor­der things that can be under­stood as anti-Semit­ic,” he explained.

    While the Jews are not scared, Nechayev said they are wary because “Svo­bo­da has a lot of activists [and] fight­ers in the region, and [they] can be dan­ger­ous.”

    Many of the community’s mem­bers are elder­ly and there aren’t many young activists. How­ev­er he said, mem­bers of the city coun­cil who have been approached by mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty seem in agree­ment regard­ing the may­or, with sev­er­al indi­cat­ing that he has insuf­fi­cient expe­ri­ence and will not last long in the job.

    Speak­ing to the Post, Vyach­eslav Likhachev, an anti-Semi­tism researcher affil­i­at­ed with the Vaad of Ukraine and the Euro-Asian Jew­ish Con­gress, said “Ukraini­ans are afraid of the Russ­ian threat, not the threat of nation­al rad­i­cal­ism,” and that “Semenikhin has suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed him­self an image of a defend­er of Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence, and vot­ers were able to sup­port him, not pay­ing atten­tion to the rad­i­cal­ism of his views.

    ...

    ———-

    “Local Jews in shock after Ukrain­ian city of Kono­top elects neo-Nazi may­or” by SAM SOKOL; The Jerusalem Post; 12/21/2015

    “Accord­ing to reports, Semenikhin dri­ves around in a car bear­ing the num­ber 14/88, a numero­log­i­cal ref­er­ence to the phras­es “we must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the pic­ture of Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko in his office with a por­trait of Ukrain­ian nation­al leader and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera; and refused to fly the city’s offi­cial flag at the open­ing meet­ing of the city coun­cil because he object­ed to the star of David embla­zoned on it. The flag also fea­tures a Mus­lim cres­cent and a cross.”

    He’s not hid­ing it. Dri­ving around with a 14/88 car isn’t sub­tle. At the same time, it sounds like Semenikhin has been hold­ing back his extrem­ism some­what. At least he was in 2015:

    ...
    Svo­bo­da, known as the Social-Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine until 2004, has been accused of being a neo-Nazi par­ty by Ukrain­ian Jews and while par­ty lead­ers have a his­to­ry of mak­ing anti-Semit­ic remarks, their rhetoric has toned down con­sid­er­ably over the past years as they attempt­ed to go main­stream.

    ...

    How­ev­er, while the may­or attempts to make sure his state­ments nev­er cross over into out­right anti-Semi­tism, many things he says can be inter­pret­ed in such a way, he con­tin­ued. As an exam­ple, he referred to a recent state­ment by Semenikhin in which the may­or refused to apol­o­gize for anti-Jew­ish actions tak­en by far-right nation­al­ists in World War II, inti­mat­ing that it was because those respon­si­ble for the Holodomor famine of the 1930s were large­ly Jew­ish.

    ...

    Speak­ing to the Post, Vyach­eslav Likhachev, an anti-Semi­tism researcher affil­i­at­ed with the Vaad of Ukraine and the Euro-Asian Jew­ish Con­gress, said “Ukraini­ans are afraid of the Russ­ian threat, not the threat of nation­al rad­i­cal­ism,” and that “Semenikhin has suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed him­self an image of a defend­er of Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence, and vot­ers were able to sup­port him, not pay­ing atten­tion to the rad­i­cal­ism of his views.
    ...

    Is Semenikhin still both­er­ing to hide his extrem­ism in 2022? Well, we got a hint from an inter­view that was con­duct­ed last week on the PBS New­sHour, where he told the inter­view­er that ““We are ready to fight till the end — till the vic­to­ri­ous end — to defeat these Russ­ian cock­roach­es”. You can see a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera in the back­ground:

    When Russ­ian troops came into the office of the may­or of Kono­top, Ukraine, he escort­ed them out and made sure they drove away.“We are ready to fight till the end — till the vic­to­ri­ous end — to defeat these Russ­ian cock­roach­es,” he tells @nickschifrin. https://t.co/KS5DIvofpZ pic.twitter.com/BqoU7NLL0c— PBS New­sHour (@NewsHour) March 3, 2022

    That’s the guy who is going to be lead­ing the city of Kono­top in its resis­tance. A resis­tance that’s pre­sum­ably going on right now. So what hap­pens when an open neo-Nazi leads a city’s resis­tance to this Russ­ian inva­sion fought under the pre­tense of “de-Naz­i­fy­ing” Ukraine? That’s the hor­ri­ble ques­tion we’re pre­sum­ably going to get answers on soon.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 8, 2022, 4:50 pm
  3. @Pterrafractyl–

    My ongo­ing theme/metaphor of the war and its atten­dant cov­er­age as a kind of Philos­pher’s Stone alchem­i­cal­ly trans­form­ing the U.S., West­ern and much of East­ern Europe into the equiv­a­lent of Via­tro­vy­ch’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry with this video, post­ed on twit­ter and fea­tured in a “Con­sor­tium News” arti­cle by Patrick Lawrence.

    The May­or of Kono­top was inter­viewed on PBS New­shour and pre­sent­ed as a hero, while the pic­ture of Stephan Ban­dera behind him was delib­er­ate­ly blurred out.

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1499771677143707658

    https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/08/patrick-lawrence-the-casualties-of-empire/

    What fun!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | March 9, 2022, 3:57 pm
  4. Fol­low­ing up on the mys­tery of the fate of the Ukrain­ian town of Kono­top, it turns out there has been some report­ing on what hap­pened fol­low­ing the stand­off between Russ­ian sol­diers. First, recall how the city was fac­ing a Russ­ian ulti­ma­tum to sur­ren­der, cul­mi­nat­ing in a meet­ing on March 2 between the Russ­ian forces and the Kono­top author­i­ties, includ­ing the may­or of the Kono­top Artem Semenikhin, an open neo-Nazi who drove around town in “14/88” car after being elect­ed in 2015. Semenikhin then relayed the demands to the pub­lic, ask­ing if they want­ed to sub­mit to the demands or fight on. The crowd appeared to choose to fight on, and that was more or less the end of the sto­ry. Or at least that was the gist of the bulk of the Eng­lish-lan­guage report­ing we got out of Kono­top.

    But as we’ll see, there was a rather sig­nif­i­cant update to that tense stand­off from March 2. An update that was report­ed but basi­cal­ly ignored in the wave of Eng­lish-lan­guage reports in the days that fol­lowed cel­e­brat­ing Semenikhin’s defi­ance in the face of the Russ­ian threats. It turns out the Russ­ian forces and Kono­top arrived at a truce on March 2: there would be no mutu­al provo­ca­tion. “We will not shoot at them. They will remain in their posi­tions. Unob­struct­ed pas­sage of pub­lic trans­port and ser­vices, ambu­lances, food, human­i­tar­i­an goods will be pro­vid­ed,” accord­ing to the head of the Sumy Region­al State Admin­is­tra­tion Dmytro Zhyvyt­sky.

    So how is it that this truce was bare­ly report­ed in the Eng­lish lan­guage press at the same time Semenikhin’s defi­ance was being cel­e­brat­ed? There was plen­ty of report­ing on the fight­ing that led up to the truce. The open defi­ance of Artem Semenikhin was wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed. But the truce itself some­how got lost in the report­ing (along with any men­tion of Semenikhin’s open embrace of Nazi sym­bol­ism).

    It’s the kind of sto­ry, or lack of a sto­ry, that hints at what could end up being one of Putin’s biggest strate­gic blun­ders in start­ing this con­flict: if the idea was the invade Ukraine and then sue for peace on his desired terms, that’s the kind of plan that could only work if there was­n’t already a counter-plan to drawn Rus­sia into a long drawn out cost­ly occu­pa­tion. Yes, the town of Kono­top appears to have desired peace and got that peace fol­low­ing the nego­ti­a­tions. Yet no one is cel­e­brat­ing it. Quite the oppo­site. This sto­ry of a suc­cess­ful peace nego­ti­a­tion got mem­o­ry-holed. It’s more than a lit­tle omi­nous.

    Ok, first, here’s a CNN piece from March 2 with one of the few Eng­lish-lan­guage reports acknowl­edg­ing that the stand­off of Kono­top was appar­ent­ly resolved lat­er that day:

    CNN

    Local author­i­ties in Ukrain­ian town claim deal was struck after defy­ing Russ­ian forces

    From Tim Lis­ter and Julia Kesa in Kyiv and Anas­ta­sia Gra­ham-Yooll in Lon­don
    7:42 a.m. CST, March 2, 2022

    A con­fronta­tion between Ukrain­ian civil­ians and Russ­ian forces in the town of Kono­top end­ed with a defi­ant mes­sage from the town’s may­or and — accord­ing to the Ukrain­ian side — an agree­ment to pre­serve peace.

    Kono­top is a small town in the north­east­ern region of Sumy.

    Social media video ver­i­fied by CNN shows a Russ­ian del­e­ga­tion emerg­ing from city hall to be con­front­ed by an angry crowd. One of the Rus­sians appears to hold up two hand grenades as he returns to his vehi­cle, while onlook­ers shout abuse and jos­tle the Rus­sians, chant­i­ng “shame.”

    His vehi­cle and a Russ­ian infantry fight­ing vehi­cle then left.

    The Sumy region­al author­i­ties report­ed that “in Kono­top, the invaders came to nego­ti­ate with city author­i­ties. Accord­ing to May­or Artem Semenikhin, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary came out and told him to sur­ren­der the city. They threat­ened to fire artillery on the city.”

    But the may­or “explic­it­ly defied threats,” the author­i­ties said.

    Video of the may­or address­ing a crowd showed him say­ing: “They are giv­ing me these terms now: If we start resist­ing, they will shell the city with artillery. If you vote for it, we will fight back! Who votes to fight back?”

    There is a shout of approval, while some in the crowd said women and chil­dren should be evac­u­at­ed.

    “I’m vot­ing for fight­ing back. But the deci­sion has to be tak­en by every­one, because the artillery is aimed at us,” he said.

    Lat­er, Dmytro Zhyvyt­sky, head of Sumy region mil­i­tary admin­is­tra­tion, said an arrange­ment had been reached with the Rus­sians.

    “The con­ver­sa­tion between my rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the mil­i­tary admin­is­tra­tion and Rus­sians in Kono­top last­ed about 12 min­utes,” Zhyvyt­sky said.

    “The agree­ment is as fol­lows: There can be no ques­tion of any change of gov­ern­ment. They are inter­est­ed in law and order. There won’t be any move­ment of troops. The Ukrain­ian flag is in its place,” he said.
    “There is an agree­ment that we will not shoot and there will be no mutu­al provo­ca­tions. They remain in their posi­tions. Unob­struct­ed pas­sage of pub­lic trans­port and ser­vices, ambu­lances, vehi­cles with food, human­i­tar­i­an goods will be pro­vid­ed,” he con­tin­ued.
    “To ensure secu­ri­ty in the city and con­trol, our vol­un­teers will addi­tion­al­ly build check­points in Kono­top,” he said.

    There has been no word from the Russ­ian side about such an agree­ment.

    ...

    ———–

    “Local author­i­ties in Ukrain­ian town claim deal was struck after defy­ing Russ­ian forces” by Tim Lis­ter, Julia Kesa, and Anas­ta­sia Gra­ham-Yooll; CNN; 03/02/2022

    ““The con­ver­sa­tion between my rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the mil­i­tary admin­is­tra­tion and Rus­sians in Kono­top last­ed about 12 min­utes,” Zhyvyt­sky said.”

    It’s the 12-minute meet­ing that nev­er was. At least that how it seemed based on the report­ing of these events. And at the end of that 12-minute meet­ing, the two sides reached the kind of agree­ment that one would expect to be wide­ly tout­ed as a kind of break­through giv­en the sit­u­a­tion: the Russ­ian forces agreed to no change in the gov­ern­ment. The Ukrain­ian flag would still fly:

    ...

    “The agree­ment is as fol­lows: There can be no ques­tion of any change of gov­ern­ment. They are inter­est­ed in law and order. There won’t be any move­ment of troops. The Ukrain­ian flag is in its place,” he said.
    “There is an agree­ment that we will not shoot and there will be no mutu­al provo­ca­tions. They remain in their posi­tions. Unob­struct­ed pas­sage of pub­lic trans­port and ser­vices, ambu­lances, vehi­cles with food, human­i­tar­i­an goods will be pro­vid­ed,” he con­tin­ued.
    “To ensure secu­ri­ty in the city and con­trol, our vol­un­teers will addi­tion­al­ly build check­points in Kono­top,” he said.

    ...

    This was the report­ing on the morn­ing of March 2. Flash for­ward to the evening of March 3, and we see the fol­low­ing PBS New­sHour piece that includes an inter­view of Semenihkin, and yet no men­tion at all about the truce that was reached. Or the fact that Semenihkin is an open neo-Nazi. These fact appar­ent­ly did­n’t fit the nar­ra­tive:

    PBS New­sHour

    Russ­ian forces bom­bard tar­gets across Ukraine as offi­cial warns ‘worst is yet to come’

    Mar 3, 2022 6:55 PM EST

    Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has yield­ed unceas­ing pic­tures of hor­ror across much of the coun­try, as Rus­si­a’s scorched-earth cam­paign against civil­ians and non-mil­i­tary tar­gets came into focus in the face of dogged resis­tance from Ukraine’s mil­i­tary and its cit­i­zen­ry. That cam­paign has also com­pelled the largest refugee flight with­in Europe since World War II. Nick Schifrin reports from Lviv.

    Read the Full Tran­script

    Judy Woodruff:

    “The worst is yet to come” — those omi­nous words today from a French offi­cial after Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron held a 90-minute call with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

    Day eight of Putin’s war on Ukraine yield­ed unceas­ing pic­tures of hor­ror from the north, south, and east of the coun­try, this as the Russ­ian scorched-earth cam­paign against civil­ians and non-mil­i­tary tar­gets came into focus, in the face of dogged resis­tance from Ukraine’s mil­i­tary and its cit­i­zens.

    That cam­paign has also com­pelled the largest refugee flight with­in Europe since the Sec­ond World War. More than one mil­lion Ukraini­ans have now fled their homes for the safe­ty of neigh­bor­ing nations to the west.

    From Lviv in Ukraine’s west, Nick Schifrin again begins our cov­er­age.

    Nick Schifrin:

    The ruins of a res­i­den­tial build­ing in a sub­urb of Kyiv now Moscow’s bat­tle­field of choice. Ukraine won the two-day bat­tle for Borodyan­ka. Russ­ian vehi­cles still line the main road, but vic­to­ry earned at appalling cost; 15,000 peo­ple used to live in a neigh­bor­hood best known for an air­field and sky­div­ing club, now reduced to rub­ble by indis­crim­i­nate Russ­ian shelling on civil­ian tar­gets and those film­ing the tar­geters.

    Far­ther north from Kyiv, Cherni­hiv also under siege by Russ­ian airstrikes, the tar­gets clear­ly a neigh­bor­hood of homes. The region­al gov­er­nor said, in addi­tion to hous­es, Russ­ian airstrikes hit two schools. Dozens died. First respon­ders try to save who they can, and sal­vage what’s left.

    Else­where, Rus­sians have rolled in. The south­ern city of Kher­son is the largest and most strate­gic city under Russ­ian con­trol.

    Zain­ish Hus­sain filmed Russ­ian sol­diers out­side of his apart­ment. He knew it was risky.

    Zain­ish Hus­sain, Res­i­dent of Ukraine: I think I should stop record­ing before some­body shoots me on my hand.

    Nick Schifrin:

    The Rus­sians are try­ing to take over more cities, includ­ing the North­east­ern city Kono­top, 150 miles east of Kyiv. The may­or is Artem Semenikhin.

    Artem, can you tell us what hap­pened when Russ­ian troops came into your office?

    Artem Semenikhin, May­or of Kono­top, Ukraine (through trans­la­tor): They were demand­ing I rec­og­nize their author­i­ty and allow them to patrol the streets, de-arm those who have weapons, and detain those who resist. In the end I told them, just as Ukrain­ian sol­diers told a Russ­ian war­ship, “Go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) your­self.”

    Nick Schifrin:

    The reject­ed Rus­sians walked out hold­ing grenades in their hands. Semenikhin actu­al­ly escort­ed them and made sure they drove away.

    And do you fear they will come back and either occu­py or try and destroy the city?

    Artem Semenikhin (through trans­la­tor):

    Yes, of course, we are con­cerned. And this con­cern is not ground­less. There’s a big unit near our town. And using the weapons they have, they could destroy our town. But we are not afraid. We are ready to fight until the end, until the vic­to­ri­ous end, to defeat these Russ­ian cock­roach­es.

    Nick Schifrin:

    After the Rus­sians left he ral­lied his, troops, civil­ians, ready to resist.

    Artem Semenikhin (through trans­la­tor):

    All of our cities are like this. All of our Ukraine is like this. We have weapons in our hands, we have armed up, and we are ready to kill occu­piers. And thanks to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca for sup­port­ing Ukraine with weapons.

    My weapon is Amer­i­can. And I think the occu­piers will be pleased that we’re killing them with Amer­i­can weapons.

    ...

    ————

    “Russ­ian forces bom­bard tar­gets across Ukraine as offi­cial warns ‘worst is yet to come’”; PBS New­sHour; 03/03/2022

    Yes, of course, we are con­cerned. And this con­cern is not ground­less. There’s a big unit near our town. And using the weapons they have, they could destroy our town. But we are not afraid. We are ready to fight until the end, until the vic­to­ri­ous end, to defeat these Russ­ian cock­roach­es.”

    That was the response Semenikhin gave to the ques­tion of whether or not he feared the Russ­ian sol­diers would return. And sure, he had plen­ty of rea­son for gen­uine con­cern. But you would think an inter­view the day after the truce was nego­ti­at­ed would actu­al­ly men­tion the truce, and maybe the terms the Rus­sians were demand­ing. Achiev­ing peace is sup­posed to be the pri­ma­ry goal here, right? And yet there was no men­tion of the truce at all. Just a cel­e­bra­tion of Semenikhin’s defi­ance. What does that tell us about the prospects of actu­al­ly arriv­ing at a truce across the coun­try?

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing piece from a cou­ple of days ago describ­ing the Krem­lin’s calls for an end to the hos­til­i­ties ‘in a moment’ if Ukraine agrees to the terms. Terms that have been dis­tilled down to rec­og­niz­ing the inde­pen­dence of Crimea, Donet­sk, Luhan­sk, and chang­ing Ukraine’s con­sti­tu­tion to guar­an­tee neu­tral­i­ty and no mem­ber­ship in NATO.

    Notably, the Krem­lin calls aren’t just for Ukraine to amend its con­sti­tu­tion to reject the pos­si­bil­i­ty of join­ing NATO. It’s to reject any aims to enter “any bloc”, which pre­sum­ably includes poten­tial future clos­er align­ment with Rus­sia too. Recall how the tus­sle over whether or not Ukraine would join an EU trade asso­ci­at­ed that led up to the 2014 Maid­an protests includ­ed the prospects of Ukraine join­ing the Russ­ian-led Eurasian Union instead. It’s a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant detail in terms of sig­nal­ing what the Krem­lin’s long-term vision is for its rela­tion­ship with Ukraine.

    The state­ments by Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov also clar­i­fy what the offi­cial stat­ed rea­son is for the “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion”: the Krem­lin claims it knew it was just a mat­ter of time before Donet­sk and Luhan­sk were attacked. So it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see what, if any, evi­dence is even­tu­al­ly put for­ward to defend those asser­tions.

    Over­all, the Krem­lin’s terms for peace at least give us a bet­ter sense of what the ‘off ramp’ could be: for­mal­ly rec­og­nize the sep­a­ratist republics and promise no future NATO prospects for Ukraine. If these real­ly are the Krem­lin’s goals — goals that don’t include the ‘de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion’ of Ukraine — it points towards a poten­tial quick end to a con­flict that oth­er­wise appears poised to drag on for years. Assum­ing the oth­er side is even remote­ly inter­est­ed in those terms, which remains a very open ques­tion:

    Reuters

    Rus­sia will stop ‘in a moment’ if Ukraine meets terms — Krem­lin

    By Cather­ine Bel­ton
    March 7, 2022 6:59 AM CST Updat­ed

    * Krem­lin says it insists on neu­tral­i­ty for Ukraine
    * Rus­sia “will fin­ish” demil­i­tari­sa­tion of the coun­try
    * Wants Kyiv to recog­nise break­away regions, loss of Crimea

    LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) — Rus­sia has told Ukraine it is ready to halt mil­i­tary oper­a­tions “in a moment” if Kyiv meets a list of con­di­tions, the Krem­lin spokesman said on Mon­day.

    Dmit­ry Peskov said Moscow was demand­ing that Ukraine cease mil­i­tary action, change its con­sti­tu­tion to enshrine neu­tral­i­ty, acknowl­edge Crimea as Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry, and recog­nise the sep­a­ratist republics of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk as inde­pen­dent states.

    It was the most explic­it Russ­ian state­ment so far of the terms it wants to impose on Ukraine to halt what it calls its “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion”, now in its 12th day.

    Peskov told Reuters in a tele­phone inter­view that Ukraine was aware of the con­di­tions. “And they were told that all this can be stopped in a moment.”

    There was no imme­di­ate reac­tion from the Ukrain­ian side.

    Rus­sia has attacked Ukraine from the north, east and south, pound­ing cities includ­ing Kyiv, Kharkiv and the port of Mar­i­upol. The inva­sion launched on Feb. 24, has caused the worst refugee cri­sis in Europe since World War Two, pro­voked out­rage across the world, and led to heavy sanc­tions on Moscow.

    But the Krem­lin spokesman insist­ed Rus­sia was not seek­ing to make any fur­ther ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims on Ukraine and said it was “not true” that it was demand­ing Kyiv be hand­ed over.

    “We real­ly are fin­ish­ing the demil­i­tari­sa­tion of Ukraine. We will fin­ish it. But the main thing is that Ukraine ceas­es its mil­i­tary action. They should stop their mil­i­tary action and then no one will shoot,” he said.

    On the issue of neu­tral­i­ty, Peskov said: “They should make amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion accord­ing to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.”

    He added: “We have also spo­ken about how they should recog­nise that Crimea is Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry and that they need to recog­nise that Donet­sk and Lugan­sk are inde­pen­dent states. And that’s it. It will stop in a moment.”

    NEW TALKS

    The out­lin­ing of Rus­si­a’s demands came as del­e­ga­tions from Rus­sia and Ukraine pre­pared to meet on Mon­day for a third round of talks aimed at end­ing Russia’s war against Ukraine.

    It began soon after Putin recog­nised two break­away regions of east­ern Ukraine, where Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists have been fight­ing Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces since 2014, as inde­pen­dent — an action denounced as ille­gal by the West.

    “This is not us seiz­ing Lugan­sk and Donet­sk from Ukraine. Donet­sk and Lugan­sk don’t want to be part of Ukraine. But it doesn’t mean they should be destroyed as a result,” Peskov said.

    “For the rest. Ukraine is an inde­pen­dent state that will live as it wants, but under con­di­tions of neu­tral­i­ty.”

    ...

    Rus­sia had been forced into tak­ing deci­sive actions to force the demil­i­tari­sa­tion of Ukraine, he said, rather than just recog­nis­ing the inde­pen­dence of the break­away regions.

    This was in order to pro­tect the 3 mil­lion Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion in these republics, who he said were being threat­ened by 100,000 Ukrain­ian troops.

    “We couldn’t just recog­nise them. What were we going to do with the 100,000 army that was stand­ing at the bor­der of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk that could attack at any moment. They were being brought U.S. and British weapons all the time,” he said.

    In the run-up to the Russ­ian inva­sion, Ukraine repeat­ed­ly and emphat­i­cal­ly denied Moscow’s asser­tions that it was about to mount an offen­sive to take back the sep­a­ratist regions by force.

    Peskov said the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine had posed a much greater threat to Russia’s secu­ri­ty than it had in 2014, when Rus­sia had also amassed 150,000 troops at its bor­der with Ukraine, prompt­ing fears of a Russ­ian inva­sion, but had lim­it­ed its action to the annex­a­tion of Crimea.

    “Since then the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened for us. In 2014, they began sup­ply­ing weapons to Ukraine and prepar­ing the army for NATO, bring­ing it in line with NATO stan­dards,” he said.

    “In the end what tipped the bal­ance was the lives of these 3 mil­lion peo­ple in Don­bass. We under­stood they would be attacked.”

    Peskov said Rus­sia had also had to act in the face of the threat it per­ceived from NATO, say­ing it was “only a mat­ter of time” before the alliance placed mis­siles in Ukraine as it had in Poland and Roma­nia.

    “We just under­stood we could not put up with this any more. We had to act,” he said.

    ———–

    “Rus­sia will stop ‘in a moment’ if Ukraine meets terms — Krem­lin” by Cather­ine Bel­ton; Reuters; 03/07/2022

    “It was the most explic­it Russ­ian state­ment so far of the terms it wants to impose on Ukraine to halt what it calls its “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion”, now in its 12th day.”

    12 days into the inva­sion we got terms for peace. It’s progress. Maybe. Assum­ing peace is pos­si­ble. But in terms of sig­nif­i­cant changes to the sta­tus quo, it’s real­ly the demand that Ukraine aban­don all futures hopes of join­ing NATO that’s the biggest change. Crimea and the sep­a­ratist republics were already effec­tive­ly gone. Will Ukraine be will­ing to amend its con­sti­tu­tion as the price for peace?

    ...
    But the Krem­lin spokesman insist­ed Rus­sia was not seek­ing to make any fur­ther ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims on Ukraine and said it was “not true” that it was demand­ing Kyiv be hand­ed over.

    “We real­ly are fin­ish­ing the demil­i­tari­sa­tion of Ukraine. We will fin­ish it. But the main thing is that Ukraine ceas­es its mil­i­tary action. They should stop their mil­i­tary action and then no one will shoot,” he said.

    On the issue of neu­tral­i­ty, Peskov said: “They should make amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion accord­ing to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.”

    He added: “We have also spo­ken about how they should recog­nise that Crimea is Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry and that they need to recog­nise that Donet­sk and Lugan­sk are inde­pen­dent states. And that’s it. It will stop in a moment.”

    ...

    “For the rest. Ukraine is an inde­pen­dent state that will live as it wants, but under con­di­tions of neu­tral­i­ty.”
    ...

    And note what is now the most explic­it artic­u­la­tion of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of the inva­sion: pro­tect­ing the 3 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in the sep­a­ratist republics from a per­ceived inevitable attack, cou­pled with a sense of the inevitabil­i­ty of Ukraine’s long-term prospects for join­ing NATO:

    ...
    Rus­sia had been forced into tak­ing deci­sive actions to force the demil­i­tari­sa­tion of Ukraine, he said, rather than just recog­nis­ing the inde­pen­dence of the break­away regions.

    This was in order to pro­tect the 3 mil­lion Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion in these republics, who he said were being threat­ened by 100,000 Ukrain­ian troops.

    “We couldn’t just recog­nise them. What were we going to do with the 100,000 army that was stand­ing at the bor­der of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk that could attack at any moment. They were being brought U.S. and British weapons all the time,” he said.

    ...

    “Since then the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened for us. In 2014, they began sup­ply­ing weapons to Ukraine and prepar­ing the army for NATO, bring­ing it in line with NATO stan­dards,” he said.

    “In the end what tipped the bal­ance was the lives of these 3 mil­lion peo­ple in Don­bass. We under­stood they would be attacked.”

    Peskov said Rus­sia had also had to act in the face of the threat it per­ceived from NATO, say­ing it was “only a mat­ter of time” before the alliance placed mis­siles in Ukraine as it had in Poland and Roma­nia.

    “We just under­stood we could not put up with this any more. We had to act,” he said.
    ...

    Keep in mind that Ukraine legal­ly can’t join NATO while it has sep­a­ratist republics on its soil. So Ukraine would either need to for­mal­ly rec­og­nize their inde­pen­dence or recap­ture that ter­ri­to­ry before join­ing NATO. That was pre­sum­ably part of the Krem­lin’s log­ic here in terms of view­ing a large con­flict as inevitable.

    Is Ukraine open to those terms? We’ll see. It does­n’t look like­ly. But it’s also an exam­ple of why the lack of cov­er­age of the peace talks of Kono­top are so unhelp­ful. It’s a lot eas­i­er to arrive at a long-term peace agree­ment when there’s cov­er­age of the short-term truces.

    It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that there’s anoth­er par­ty implic­it­ly involved in these nego­ti­a­tions over whether or not Ukraine has a future in NATO: NATO. There’s noth­ing stop­ping NATO from telling Ukraine to give up any hope of join­ing NATO in the future. It rais­es the ques­tion as to what NATO is going to do if Ukraine ends up refus­ing to Rus­si­a’s peace terms under the pri­ma­ry demand that it wants to join NATO in the future. Will NATO encour­age this? Even worse, is Ukraine qui­et­ly being giv­en a promise of NATO mem­ber­ship fol­low­ing the ‘lib­er­a­tion’ of those sep­a­ratist republics after a bru­tal war? It’s a major ques­tion loom­ing over all of this. The kind of ques­tion that’s like­ly to be answered in the form of qui­et­ly ignored sto­ries about calls for peace, whether they’re a fail­ure or suc­cess.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 9, 2022, 4:55 pm
  5. @Dave: It’s worth not­ing that it’s like­ly that it was­n’t the PBS New­shour blur­ring out the por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera in that intere­view but Artem Semenikhin him­self who active­ly did it. Blur­ring out the back­ground is a stan­dard video fil­ter that you can select with video con­fer­enc­ing tools like Zoom or Skype. He could have done it with a cou­ple of clicks and based on the blur­ring of the door and chair it looks like the whole back­ground was blurred. Not that PBS New­shours was­n’t com­plete­ly play­ing dumb about Semenihkin dur­ing the inter­view.

    If indeed it was Semenihkin who did the blur­ring, it sug­gests an aware­ness about the poten­tial bad press that comes with the open embrace of a fig­ure like Stepan Ban­dera. It would be inter­est­ing to find inter­views of Semenikhin from his same office to Ukrain­ian media to see if he acti­vates the fil­ter for those inter­views too.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 9, 2022, 5:31 pm
  6. @Pterrafractyl–

    Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

    Actu­al­ly, I not­ed McLeod’s obser­va­tion on the Zoom blur effecgt.

    Still–as you noted–this is the era­sure of his­to­ry.

    The pro­gram should drop the “P” from its title and become the “BS New­shour.”

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | March 9, 2022, 6:35 pm
  7. @Dave: Here’s an arti­cle about anoth­er exam­ple of the West­ern white-wash­ing of Ukraine’s Nazi prob­lem in Cana­da last week:

    While march­ing dur­ing a pro-Ukraine ral­ly in Toron­to, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land was pho­tographed hold­ing up a red-and-black scarf with the slo­gan “Sla­va Ukrai­ni” (Glo­ry to Ukraine). Her office even post­ed a pho­to on twit­ter. This pre­dictably led to a num­ber of peo­ple point­ing out the far right Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist his­to­ry asso­ci­at­ed with that flag and slo­gan. Get­ting pho­tographed with the clear sym­bol­ism of the UPA army would be a pub­lic image prob­lem for any politi­cian, but it’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky top­ic for Free­land, who was already caught deny­ing that her grand­fa­ther was the edi­tor of a pro-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion in Ukraine dur­ing WWII before the unam­bigu­ous evi­dence was release.

    So how did Free­land’s office deal with the tweet? By delet­ing it and then tweet­ing out a dif­fer­ent pho­to from the March that did­n’t fea­ture the red-and-black flag. When that tac­tic failed to silence her crit­ics, a new tac­tic was deployed: assert that every­one mak­ing a big deal out of this was play­ing into Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion:

    Nation­al Post

    Did Chrys­tia Free­land pose with extrem­ist sym­bols or is it Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion?

    ‘A clas­sic KGB dis­in­for­ma­tion smear is accus­ing Ukraini­ans and Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­ans of being far right extrem­ists or fas­cists or Nazis,’ Free­land’s press sec­re­tary said

    Author of the arti­cle:
    Tristin Hop­per
    Pub­lish­ing date:
    Mar 02, 2022

    Cana­di­an Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land is being assailed with online accu­sa­tions that she posed with far-right sym­bols at a pro-Ukraine ral­ly in Toron­to. But the sym­bol may not be as far-right as crit­ics claim, and Freeland’s office is say­ing the whole thing reeks of Russ­ian-spon­sored “dis­in­for­ma­tion.”

    On Sun­day, Free­land joined sev­er­al thou­sand demon­stra­tors at a pro-Ukraine ral­ly in down­town Toron­to. In a pho­to her office sub­se­quent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter, Free­land can be seen help­ing to hold up a red-and-black scarf bear­ing the slo­gan “Sla­va Ukrai­ni” (Glo­ry to Ukraine).

    Observers were quick to note that red-and-black were the offi­cial colours of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, a nation­al­ist par­ti­san group active dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    Although the group fought against both Nazi Ger­many and the Sovi­et Union, a fac­tion led by Stepan Ban­dera would ally itself with Ger­man forces and become an active par­tic­i­pant in the Holo­caust, direct­ly killing thou­sands of Jews and an esti­mat­ed 100,000 Poles.

    It’s why red-and-black flags remain a favoured sym­bol of the Ukrain­ian far-right. The colours are a promi­nent fea­ture of an annu­al torch­lit march through Kyiv held by far-right nation­al­ists to hon­our Ban­dera.

    As a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed sto­ry on the Cana­di­an right-wing site True North put it, Free­land has posed with a “pro-Nazi” ban­ner. People’s Par­ty of Cana­da Leader Maxime Bernier put out a Tues­day tweet accus­ing Cana­da of hav­ing a “nazi as deputy prime min­is­ter.”

    Soon after its post­ing, the orig­i­nal pho­to was delet­ed and replaced with an image of Free­land with­out the scarf.

    We stand unit­ed. We stand with Ukraine. Nous sommes unis. Nous sommes debout aux côtés de l’Ukraine.Slava Ukrai­ni! ????? ???????! pic.twitter.com/5mFjesfOm8— Chrys­tia Free­land (@cafreeland) Feb­ru­ary 28, 2022

    Freeland’s office con­firmed that they removed the orig­i­nal pho­to after it began to be cir­cu­lat­ed by accounts crit­i­cal of the scarf’s pres­ence.

    “A pho­to was tak­en, tweet­ed, and lat­er replaced when it was clear some accounts were dis­tort­ing the intent of the ral­ly and pho­to,” read a state­ment by Free­land press sec­re­tary Adri­enne Vaup­shas. She added that the ori­gins of the scarf were not known and that “many peo­ple were jock­ey­ing for pho­tos and giv­ing the Deputy Prime Min­is­ter tokens.”

    Natalia Kha­nenko-Friesen, direc­tor of the Cana­di­an Insti­tute of Ukrain­ian Stud­ies, told the Nation­al Post that the red-and-black sym­bol­o­gy for Ukraine long pre­dates its adop­tion by extrem­ist groups. Kha­nenko-Friesen not­ed that red-and-black ban­ners can be seen in paint­ings depict­ing the Cos­sack Het­manate, a peri­od of Ukrain­ian Cos­sack rule that began in the 17th cen­tu­ry.

    The black rep­re­sents the Ukrain­ian soil, while the red sym­bol­izes blood — although Kha­nenko-Friesen (a schol­ar of Ukrain­ian folk­lore) said it’s not tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood as blood in any vio­lent con­text. “Blood as life, as blos­som, and not as blood lost in bat­tles,” she said. Red and black remains a com­mon colour scheme in tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian embroi­dery.

    The wider con­text to the whole affair is that Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion sources have been mount­ing an aggres­sive pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign fram­ing any sup­port of Ukraine as being akin to an endorse­ment of neo-Nazism.

    In jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine last week, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin said it was mere­ly a “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” to “denaz­i­fy” Ukraine.

    ...

    The tac­tic is noth­ing new. Ever since Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, Russ­ian diplo­mats and state media have fre­quent­ly alleged that Cana­di­an for­eign pol­i­cy is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly shaped by a Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty that is flush with fas­cist sym­pa­thiz­ers.

    In 2019, one of Russia’s most pop­u­lar prime­time news pro­grams ran a spe­cial fea­ture seem­ing to link Cana­di­an sup­port of Ukraine’s pro-West­ern gov­ern­ment to fas­cist ele­ments with­in the country’s Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra.

    ...

    Mar­cus Kol­ga is a Mac­don­ald-Lau­ri­er fel­low who runs Dis­in­foWatch, a web­site track­ing for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives. He was also at the Sun­day ral­ly not far away from where the scarf pho­to was tak­en.

    Kol­ga told the Nation­al Post that any­one tout­ing the pho­to as evi­dence of any Nazi sym­pa­thies among the Cana­di­an fed­er­al gov­ern­ment are “unwit­ting­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in an active Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tion.”

    “One of the nar­ra­tives that they (the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion) use is to smear crit­ics as being fas­cists or Nazis,” he said, adding that it was some­thing that Sovi­et sources were direct­ing at the Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty as far back as the 1970s.

    “Dis­in­for­ma­tion is a real threat and Cana­di­ans need to be vig­i­lant — it is a tool the Krem­lin deploys to under­mine democ­ra­cies,” Ihor Michalchyshyn, CEO of the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress, told the Nation­al Post when asked about the con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing Freeland’s hold­ing of a red-and-black scarf.

    The spot­light has been par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh on Free­land. Not only is she a promi­nent Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­an who has been vocal in her oppo­si­tion to Putin’s regime, but her fam­i­ly tree does indeed include a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor.

    Freeland’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Michael Cho­mi­ak, was the edi­tor of Kra­vivs­ki Visti, a pro-Nazi news­pa­per estab­lished in Ger­man-occu­pied Poland dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    When the detail first emerged in pro-Russ­ian media fol­low­ing Freeland’s 2017 appoint­ment as Cana­di­an min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, her office did not address the claim direct­ly, but warned Cana­di­an media to be wary of Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.

    Report­ing by Cana­di­an media would con­firm Chomiak’s links to Kra­vivs­ki Visti. It was some­thing the fam­i­ly open­ly acknowl­edged when Chomiak’s papers were donat­ed to Alberta’s provin­cial archives.

    The easy coun­ter­point to Russ­ian claims of Ukrain­ian neo-Nazism are that there are no Nazi states head­ed by a Jew­ish pres­i­dent. Ukrain­ian head of state Volodymyr Zelen­skyy is indeed Jew­ish, had mem­bers of his fam­i­ly mur­dered in the Holo­caust and is even earn­ing plau­dits in the Israeli media as a “mod­ern Mac­cabee” — a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish rebel war­riors cel­e­brat­ed by the fes­ti­val of Hanukkah.

    Regard­less, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da efforts haven’t been hurt by the con­tin­ued pres­ence with­in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    Con­sist­ing of rough­ly 900 sol­diers, the Azov bat­tal­ion has spent the last eight years fight­ing for Ukraine against pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the Don­bass region. Although mil­i­tary observers con­sid­er the bat­tal­ion a “fringe” ele­ment with­in the wider Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, it has open­ly neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies, with mem­bers often seen pos­ing with swastikas or pho­tos of Adolf Hitler.

    Just a few months ago, it became a minor scan­dal in Cana­da when it emerged that mem­bers of the Azov bat­tal­ion had received Cana­di­an train­ing as part of Oper­a­tion Uni­fi­er, Canada’s eight-year mis­sion to train Ukrain­ian sol­diers against the prospect of Russ­ian inva­sion.

    ———–

    “Did Chrys­tia Free­land pose with extrem­ist sym­bols or is it Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion?” by Tristin Hop­per; Nation­al Post; 03/02/2022

    “Soon after its post­ing, the orig­i­nal pho­to was delet­ed and replaced with an image of Free­land with­out the scarf.”

    Whoops. March­ing hold­ing up a “Glo­ry to Ukraine” scarf was not a great idea, in ret­ro­spect. Espe­cial­ly for Free­land, who is no stranger to these kinds of con­tro­ver­sies:

    ...
    Freeland’s office con­firmed that they removed the orig­i­nal pho­to after it began to be cir­cu­lat­ed by accounts crit­i­cal of the scarf’s pres­ence.

    “A pho­to was tak­en, tweet­ed, and lat­er replaced when it was clear some accounts were dis­tort­ing the intent of the ral­ly and pho­to,” read a state­ment by Free­land press sec­re­tary Adri­enne Vaup­shas. She added that the ori­gins of the scarf were not known and that “many peo­ple were jock­ey­ing for pho­tos and giv­ing the Deputy Prime Min­is­ter tokens.”

    ...

    The spot­light has been par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh on Free­land. Not only is she a promi­nent Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­an who has been vocal in her oppo­si­tion to Putin’s regime, but her fam­i­ly tree does indeed include a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor.

    Freeland’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Michael Cho­mi­ak, was the edi­tor of Kra­vivs­ki Visti, a pro-Nazi news­pa­per estab­lished in Ger­man-occu­pied Poland dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    When the detail first emerged in pro-Russ­ian media fol­low­ing Freeland’s 2017 appoint­ment as Cana­di­an min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, her office did not address the claim direct­ly, but warned Cana­di­an media to be wary of Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.
    ...

    And note how we got rather con­tra­dic­to­ry mes­sag­ing in defense of the scarf inci­dent. On the one hand, Free­land’s office was assert­ing it had no idea where the scarf came from, run­ning away from the ugly his­to­ry of the red-and-black sym­bol­ism. But on the oth­er hand, we hear from the direc­tor of the Cana­di­an Insti­tute of Ukrain­ian Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta about how the red and black flag is a tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian sym­bol that pre­dates WWII. The red stands for blood and the black for soil. But we are assured this tra­di­tion­al ‘blood and soil’ mean­ing isn’t like the extrem­ist far right ‘blood and soil’ sym­bol­ism. It’s an exam­ple of how dicey these defens­es can get:

    ...
    On Sun­day, Free­land joined sev­er­al thou­sand demon­stra­tors at a pro-Ukraine ral­ly in down­town Toron­to. In a pho­to her office sub­se­quent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter, Free­land can be seen help­ing to hold up a red-and-black scarf bear­ing the slo­gan “Sla­va Ukrai­ni” (Glo­ry to Ukraine).

    Observers were quick to note that red-and-black were the offi­cial colours of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, a nation­al­ist par­ti­san group active dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    Although the group fought against both Nazi Ger­many and the Sovi­et Union, a fac­tion led by Stepan Ban­dera would ally itself with Ger­man forces and become an active par­tic­i­pant in the Holo­caust, direct­ly killing thou­sands of Jews and an esti­mat­ed 100,000 Poles.

    It’s why red-and-black flags remain a favoured sym­bol of the Ukrain­ian far-right. The colours are a promi­nent fea­ture of an annu­al torch­lit march through Kyiv held by far-right nation­al­ists to hon­our Ban­dera.

    ...

    Natalia Kha­nenko-Friesen, direc­tor of the Cana­di­an Insti­tute of Ukrain­ian Stud­ies, told the Nation­al Post that the red-and-black sym­bol­o­gy for Ukraine long pre­dates its adop­tion by extrem­ist groups. Kha­nenko-Friesen not­ed that red-and-black ban­ners can be seen in paint­ings depict­ing the Cos­sack Het­manate, a peri­od of Ukrain­ian Cos­sack rule that began in the 17th cen­tu­ry.

    The black rep­re­sents the Ukrain­ian soil, while the red sym­bol­izes blood — although Kha­nenko-Friesen (a schol­ar of Ukrain­ian folk­lore) said it’s not tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood as blood in any vio­lent con­text. “Blood as life, as blos­som, and not as blood lost in bat­tles,” she said. Red and black remains a com­mon colour scheme in tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian embroi­dery.
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing that the Mac­don­ald-Lau­ri­er Insti­tute that runs the “Dis­in­foWatch” web­site is right-wing lib­er­tar­i­an ‘think-tank’ affil­i­at­ed with the broad­er Koch net­work of right-wing lib­er­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, which is reminder that pow­er­ful oil and gas inter­ests in the West have a pow­er­ful lob­by­ing net­work that’s going to be active­ly shap­ing per­cep­tions of this con­flict:

    ...
    Mar­cus Kol­ga is a Mac­don­ald-Lau­ri­er fel­low who runs Dis­in­foWatch, a web­site track­ing for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives. He was also at the Sun­day ral­ly not far away from where the scarf pho­to was tak­en.

    Kol­ga told the Nation­al Post that any­one tout­ing the pho­to as evi­dence of any Nazi sym­pa­thies among the Cana­di­an fed­er­al gov­ern­ment are “unwit­ting­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in an active Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tion.”

    “One of the nar­ra­tives that they (the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion) use is to smear crit­ics as being fas­cists or Nazis,” he said, adding that it was some­thing that Sovi­et sources were direct­ing at the Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty as far back as the 1970s.

    “Dis­in­for­ma­tion is a real threat and Cana­di­ans need to be vig­i­lant — it is a tool the Krem­lin deploys to under­mine democ­ra­cies,” Ihor Michalchyshyn, CEO of the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress, told the Nation­al Post when asked about the con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing Freeland’s hold­ing of a red-and-black scarf.
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s hard to avoid amaze­ment, albeit jad­ed amaze­ment, at how at the end of this arti­cle where it’s repeat­ed­ly assert­ed that all of these claims are just Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion we then get lamen­ta­tions about how the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion is aid­ing these Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts:

    ...
    Regard­less, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da efforts haven’t been hurt by the con­tin­ued pres­ence with­in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    Con­sist­ing of rough­ly 900 sol­diers, the Azov bat­tal­ion has spent the last eight years fight­ing for Ukraine against pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the Don­bass region. Although mil­i­tary observers con­sid­er the bat­tal­ion a “fringe” ele­ment with­in the wider Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, it has open­ly neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies, with mem­bers often seen pos­ing with swastikas or pho­tos of Adolf Hitler.

    Just a few months ago, it became a minor scan­dal in Cana­da when it emerged that mem­bers of the Azov bat­tal­ion had received Cana­di­an train­ing as part of Oper­a­tion Uni­fi­er, Canada’s eight-year mis­sion to train Ukrain­ian sol­diers against the prospect of Russ­ian inva­sion.
    ...

    Damn those Ukrain­ian Nazis! They’re only fuel­ing the vicious Russ­ian lies about Ukrain­ian Nazis, com­pli­cat­ing Canada’s efforts to train these Nazis! This is where we are.

    At least this is where we are right now. Where we’re head­ing is anoth­er sto­ry. It’s hard to see how the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism does­n’t get ‘turned up to eleven’ for at least the next gen­er­a­tion fol­low­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of Rus­si­a’s inva­sion. Nation­al­ism that’s going to surg­ing through­out the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra across the world. It’s part of what made the dis­missal of the out­cry of that flag as ‘Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion’ so dis­turb­ing. Glob­al out­rage over the inva­sion, con­duct­ed under the aus­pices of ‘de-Naz­i­fy­ing’ Ukraine’, is going to be used around the world as the ulti­mate excuse for ignore even the most bla­tant open dis­plays of Nazism as Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion. The war is wrong, and there­fore there are no Nazis in Ukraine and any­one sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise is only fuel­ing this unjust war. That’s the log­ic that’s get­ting tur­bo-charged every­where. You know, like those mem­bers of Azov Bat­tal­ion sport­ing swastikas who unfor­tu­nate­ly fuel all those Russ­ian lies about Nazis in Ukraine.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 10, 2022, 4:34 pm
  8. Here’s an exam­ple of the kind of ugly sto­ry that could get a lot ugli­er by the time this con­flict comes to an end: Meta (aka Face­book) just announced some spe­cial revi­sions to its hate speech poli­cies per­tain­ing to the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine. The com­pa­ny is now going to all some posts call­ing for the death of Rus­sians, along with calls for the death of Vladimir Putin and Alexan­der Lukashenko. Meta is char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as a lim­it­ed loos­en­ing of its poli­cies, say­ing they still won’t allow “cred­i­ble calls for vio­lence against Russ­ian civil­ians”. But speech such as “death to the Russ­ian invaders”, which would have been pre­vi­ous­ly banned, is now tem­porar­i­ly allow­able in cer­tain coun­tries.

    There’s also a tech­ni­cal rule for the calls for the death of Putin and Lukashenko: they’ll be allowed as long as there aren’t at least two tech­ni­cal indi­ca­tors, like the tim­ing and method. So, for exam­ple, you can call for the poi­son­ing of Putin, or the assas­si­na­tion of him at a par­tic­u­lar world event. But you can’t call for his poi­son­ing at that event.

    Here’s where it gets extra ugly: the select coun­tries where posts on death to the Russ­ian sol­diers aren’t lim­it­ed to Ukraine. Arme­nia, Azer­bai­jan, Esto­nia, Geor­gia, Hun­gary, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, Roma­nia, Rus­sia, Slo­va­kia, are all sub­ject to this loos­en­ing too. In oth­er words, every coun­try with a sub­stan­tial eth­nic Russ­ian minor­i­ty. Yes, the Face­book pages of every coun­try with a large eth­nic Russ­ian minor­i­ty can now be inun­dat­ed with calls for the death of Rus­sians. Yes, tech­ni­cal­ly it’s just Russ­ian sol­diers, but that’s where the nuance of lan­guage comes into play. There’s a lot of dif­fer­ent some­what ambigu­ous ways one can call for the death of Russ­ian sol­diers.

    Oh, and there’s one more change to the hate speech pol­i­cy: Praise of the Azov Bat­tal­ion will now be allowed as long as its in the con­text of defend­ing Ukraine or its work in Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard. Inter­est­ing­ly, it does­n’t sound like this excep­tion applies to any of the oth­er Nazi mili­tia units oper­at­ing in Ukraine. Just Azov. It’s a sign of the sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance the group has acquired.

    Death to Rus­sians and praise for Azov. That’s Face­book’s approach to con­flict res­o­lu­tion. Which we prob­a­bly should have expect­ed:

    Reuters

    Exclu­sive: Face­book tem­porar­i­ly allows posts on Ukraine war call­ing for vio­lence against invad­ing Rus­sians or Putin’s death

    By Mun­sif Ven­gat­til and Eliz­a­beth Cul­li­ford
    March 10, 2022 5:38 PM CST Updat­ed

    March 10 (Reuters) — Meta Plat­forms (FB.O) will allow Face­book and Insta­gram users in some coun­tries to call for vio­lence against Rus­sians and Russ­ian sol­diers in the con­text of the Ukraine inva­sion, accord­ing to inter­nal emails seen by Reuters on Thurs­day, in a tem­po­rary change to its hate speech pol­i­cy.

    The social media com­pa­ny is also tem­porar­i­ly allow­ing some posts that call for death to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin or Belaru­sian Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko in coun­tries includ­ing Rus­sia, Ukraine and Poland, accord­ing to inter­nal emails to its con­tent mod­er­a­tors.

    “As a result of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine we have tem­porar­i­ly made allowances for forms of polit­i­cal expres­sion that would nor­mal­ly vio­late our rules like vio­lent speech such as ‘death to the Russ­ian invaders.’ We still won’t allow cred­i­ble calls for vio­lence against Russ­ian civil­ians,” a Meta spokesper­son said in a state­ment.

    The calls for the lead­ers’ deaths will be allowed unless they con­tain oth­er tar­gets or have two indi­ca­tors of cred­i­bil­i­ty, such as the loca­tion or method, one email said, in a recent change to the com­pa­ny’s rules on vio­lence and incite­ment.

    The tem­po­rary pol­i­cy changes on calls for vio­lence to Russ­ian sol­diers apply to Arme­nia, Azer­bai­jan, Esto­nia, Geor­gia, Hun­gary, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, Roma­nia, Rus­sia, Slo­va­kia, and Ukraine, accord­ing to one email.

    In the email recent­ly sent to mod­er­a­tors, Meta high­light­ed a change in its hate speech pol­i­cy per­tain­ing both to Russ­ian sol­diers and to Rus­sians in the con­text of the inva­sion.

    “We are issu­ing a spir­it-of-the-pol­i­cy allowance to allow T1 vio­lent speech that would oth­er­wise be removed under the Hate Speech pol­i­cy when: (a) tar­get­ing Russ­ian sol­diers, EXCEPT pris­on­ers of war, or (b) tar­get­ing Rus­sians where it’s clear that the con­text is the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine (e.g., con­tent men­tions the inva­sion, self-defense, etc.),” it said in the email.

    “We are doing this because we have observed that in this spe­cif­ic con­text, ‘Russ­ian sol­diers’ is being used as a proxy for the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. The Hate Speech pol­i­cy con­tin­ues to pro­hib­it attacks on Rus­sians,” the email stat­ed.

    Last week, Rus­sia said it was ban­ning Face­book in the coun­try in response to what it said were restric­tions of access to Russ­ian media on the plat­form. Moscow has cracked down on tech com­pa­nies, includ­ing Twit­ter (TWTR.N), which said it is restrict­ed in the coun­try, dur­ing its inva­sion of Ukraine, which it calls a “spe­cial oper­a­tion.”

    ...

    Emails also showed that Meta would allow praise of the right-wing Azov bat­tal­ion, which is nor­mal­ly pro­hib­it­ed, in a change first report­ed by The Inter­cept.

    Meta spokesman Joe Osborne pre­vi­ous­ly said the com­pa­ny was “for the time being, mak­ing a nar­row excep­tion for praise of the Azov Reg­i­ment strict­ly in the con­text of defend­ing Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine Nation­al Guard.”

    ———–

    “Exclu­sive: Face­book tem­porar­i­ly allows posts on Ukraine war call­ing for vio­lence against invad­ing Rus­sians or Putin’s death” by Mun­sif Ven­gat­til and Eliz­a­beth Cul­li­ford; Reuters; 03/10/2022

    “The tem­po­rary pol­i­cy changes on calls for vio­lence to Russ­ian sol­diers apply to Arme­nia, Azer­bai­jan, Esto­nia, Geor­gia, Hun­gary, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, Roma­nia, Rus­sia, Slo­va­kia, and Ukraine, accord­ing to one email.”

    Lit­er­al­ly every coun­try with a large eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion. You have to won­der what exact­ly the inter­nal ratio­nal was for select­ing only these coun­tries.

    And then we get the oth­er big change: Azov, and only Azov, can now be praised. But only praised in the con­text of its Nation­al Guard work:

    ...
    Emails also showed that Meta would allow praise of the right-wing Azov bat­tal­ion, which is nor­mal­ly pro­hib­it­ed, in a change first report­ed by The Inter­cept.

    Meta spokesman Joe Osborne pre­vi­ous­ly said the com­pa­ny was “for the time being, mak­ing a nar­row excep­tion for praise of the Azov Reg­i­ment strict­ly in the con­text of defend­ing Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine Nation­al Guard.”
    ...

    And as hint­ed at in the fol­low­ing piece in the Inter­cept, which first report­ed the change in Face­book’s Azov poli­cies, one of the conun­drums raised when Face­book first mod­i­fied its Azov poli­cies after the inva­sion began is the fact that the pol­i­cy still did­n’t real­ly allow for the praise of Azov because the rules still pro­hib­it­ed praise of any vio­lence Azov was engaged in. So the lift­ing of the ban on calls for the death of Russ­ian sol­diers was effec­tive­ly required for the mean­ing­ful lift­ing of the ban on prais­ing of Azov because vio­lence is the only thing Azov real­ly does:

    The Inter­cept

    Face­book Allows Praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian Bat­tal­ion If It Fights Russ­ian Inva­sion
    The rever­sal rais­es ques­tions about Facebook’s black­list-based con­tent mod­er­a­tion, which crit­ics say lacks nuance and con­text.

    Sam Bid­dle
    Feb­ru­ary 24 2022, 11:44 a.m.

    Face­book will tem­porar­i­ly allow its bil­lions of users to praise the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi mil­i­tary unit pre­vi­ous­ly banned from being freely dis­cussed under the company’s Dan­ger­ous Indi­vid­u­als and Orga­ni­za­tions pol­i­cy, The Inter­cept has learned.

    The pol­i­cy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongo­ing Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine and pre­ced­ing mil­i­tary esca­la­tions. The Azov Bat­tal­ion, which func­tions as an armed wing of the broad­er Ukrain­ian white nation­al­ist Azov move­ment, began as a vol­un­teer anti-Rus­sia mili­tia before for­mal­ly join­ing the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard in 2014; the reg­i­ment is known for its hard­core right-wing ultra­na­tion­al­ism and the neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy per­va­sive among its mem­bers. Though it has in recent years down­played its neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies, the group’s affini­ties are not sub­tle: Azov sol­diers march and train wear­ing uni­forms bear­ing icons of the Third Reich; its lead­er­ship has report­ed­ly court­ed Amer­i­can alt-right and neo-Nazi ele­ments; and in 2010, the battalion’s first com­man­der and a for­mer Ukrain­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an, Andriy Bilet­sky, stat­ed that Ukraine’s nation­al pur­pose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final cru­sade … against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].” With Russ­ian forces report­ed­ly mov­ing rapid­ly against tar­gets through­out Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to mod­er­a­tion puts the com­pa­ny in a bind: What hap­pens when a group you’ve deemed too dan­ger­ous to freely dis­cuss is defend­ing its coun­try against a full-scale assault?

    Accord­ing to inter­nal pol­i­cy mate­ri­als reviewed by The Inter­cept, Face­book will “allow praise of the Azov Bat­tal­ion when explic­it­ly and exclu­sive­ly prais­ing their role in defend­ing Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard.” Inter­nal­ly pub­lished exam­ples of speech that Face­book now deems accept­able include “Azov move­ment vol­un­teers are real heroes, they are a much need­ed sup­port to our nation­al guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been coura­geous­ly defend­ing our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is play­ing a patri­ot­ic role dur­ing this cri­sis.”

    The mate­ri­als stip­u­late that Azov still can’t use Face­book plat­forms for recruit­ing pur­pos­es or for pub­lish­ing its own state­ments and that the regiment’s uni­forms and ban­ners will remain as banned hate sym­bol imagery, even while Azov sol­diers may fight wear­ing and dis­play­ing them. In a tac­it acknowl­edge­ment of the group’s ide­ol­o­gy, the memo pro­vides two exam­ples of posts that would not be allowed under the new pol­i­cy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great mod­els for nation­al sac­ri­fices and hero­ism” and “Well done Azov for pro­tect­ing Ukraine and it’s white nation­al­ist her­itage.”

    In a state­ment to The Inter­cept, com­pa­ny spokesper­son Eri­ca Sackin con­firmed the deci­sion but declined to answer ques­tions about the new pol­i­cy.

    Azov’s for­mal Face­book ban began in 2019, and the reg­i­ment, along with sev­er­al asso­ci­at­ed indi­vid­u­als like Bilet­sky, were des­ig­nat­ed under the company’s pro­hi­bi­tion against hate groups, sub­ject to its harsh­est “Tier 1” restric­tions that bar users from engag­ing in “praise, sup­port, or rep­re­sen­ta­tion” of black­list­ed enti­ties across the company’s plat­forms. Facebook’s pre­vi­ous­ly secret ros­ter of banned groups and per­sons, pub­lished by The Inter­cept last year, cat­e­go­rized the Azov Bat­tal­ion along­side the likes of the Islam­ic State and the Ku Klux Klan, all Tier 1 groups because of their propen­si­ty for “seri­ous offline harms” and “vio­lence against civil­ians.” Indeed, a 2016 report by the Office of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights found that Azov sol­diers had raped and tor­tured civil­ians dur­ing Russia’s 2014 inva­sion of Ukraine.

    The exemp­tion will no doubt cre­ate con­fu­sion for Facebook’s mod­er­a­tors, tasked with inter­pret­ing the company’s mud­dled and at time con­tra­dic­to­ry cen­sor­ship rules under exhaust­ing con­di­tions. While Face­book users may now praise any future bat­tle­field action by Azov sol­diers against Rus­sia, the new pol­i­cy notes that “any praise of vio­lence” com­mit­ted by the group is still for­bid­den; it’s unclear what sort of non­vi­o­lent war­fare the com­pa­ny antic­i­pates.

    ...

    Though the change may come as wel­come news to crit­ics who say that the sprawl­ing, large­ly secret Dan­ger­ous Indi­vid­u­als and Orga­ni­za­tions pol­i­cy can sti­fle online free expres­sion, it also offers fur­ther evi­dence that Face­book deter­mines what speech is per­mis­si­ble based on the for­eign pol­i­cy judg­ments of the Unit­ed States. Last sum­mer, for instance, Moth­er­board report­ed that Face­book sim­i­lar­ly carved out an excep­tion to its cen­sor­ship poli­cies in Iran, tem­porar­i­ly allow­ing users to post “Death to Khamenei” for a two-week peri­od. “I do think it is a direct response to U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy,” Kayyali said of the Azov exemp­tion. “That has always been how the … list works.”

    ———–

    “Face­book Allows Praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian Bat­tal­ion If It Fights Russ­ian Inva­sion” by Sam Bid­dle; The Inter­cept; 02/24/2022

    “The exemp­tion will no doubt cre­ate con­fu­sion for Facebook’s mod­er­a­tors, tasked with inter­pret­ing the company’s mud­dled and at time con­tra­dic­to­ry cen­sor­ship rules under exhaust­ing con­di­tions. While Face­book users may now praise any future bat­tle­field action by Azov sol­diers against Rus­sia, the new pol­i­cy notes that “any praise of vio­lence” com­mit­ted by the group is still for­bid­den; it’s unclear what sort of non­vi­o­lent war­fare the com­pa­ny antic­i­pates.

    Azov’s “bat­tle­field actions” against Russ­ian sol­diers could now be praised, as long as they were non-vio­lent actions. It was quite the mud­dle. At least before Face­book lift­ed its ban on calls for vio­lence against Russ­ian sol­diers.

    Still, the mud­dle remains of how con­tent mod­er­a­tors are going to walk that line of decid­ing which posts include too much overt white suprema­cy:

    ...
    Accord­ing to inter­nal pol­i­cy mate­ri­als reviewed by The Inter­cept, Face­book will “allow praise of the Azov Bat­tal­ion when explic­it­ly and exclu­sive­ly prais­ing their role in defend­ing Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard.” Inter­nal­ly pub­lished exam­ples of speech that Face­book now deems accept­able include “Azov move­ment vol­un­teers are real heroes, they are a much need­ed sup­port to our nation­al guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been coura­geous­ly defend­ing our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is play­ing a patri­ot­ic role dur­ing this cri­sis.”

    The mate­ri­als stip­u­late that Azov still can’t use Face­book plat­forms for recruit­ing pur­pos­es or for pub­lish­ing its own state­ments and that the regiment’s uni­forms and ban­ners will remain as banned hate sym­bol imagery, even while Azov sol­diers may fight wear­ing and dis­play­ing them. In a tac­it acknowl­edge­ment of the group’s ide­ol­o­gy, the memo pro­vides two exam­ples of posts that would not be allowed under the new pol­i­cy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great mod­els for nation­al sac­ri­fices and hero­ism” and “Well done Azov for pro­tect­ing Ukraine and it’s white nation­al­ist her­itage.”
    ...

    Azov killing Russ­ian sol­diers = Good. Azov killing Russ­ian sol­diers to pro­tect Ukraine’s white nation­al­ist her­itage = Bad. And some­where in between is the gray area that Face­book’s mod­er­a­tors get to nav­i­gate.

    Also keep in mind that this is the per­fect envi­ron­ment for the devel­op­ment of new white nation­al­ist lex­i­cons and the ‘Alt Right’ art of bare­ly veiled racist trolling. In oth­er words, it’s only a mat­ter of time before we hear about how Face­book’s ‘Pepe pol­i­cy’ is due for anoth­er belat­ed update.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 11, 2022, 3:32 pm

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