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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
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
Mr. Emory has launched a new Patreon site. Visit at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory
FTR#1241 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1242 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Continuing our coverage of the Ukraine War, we note Gennadiy Druzenko–the head of Ukraine’s Military Medical Service– and his order to castrate all Russian POW’s.
Can you imagine the media uproar if the head of Russia’s military medical branch gave an order to castrate all Ukrainian POW’s?
Note, also this video clip: The SBU “detaining suspected traitors.”
The program begins with a synoptic, telescoped view of the OUN/B, a key component of the Gehlen “Org,” itself a front for the Odessa–the Nazi SS postwar operational underground.
The program begins with a synoptic, telescoped view of the OUN/B, a key component of the Gehlen “Org,” itself a front for the Odessa–the Nazi SS postwar operational underground.
” . . . . His [Gehlen’s] FHO was connected in this role with a number of secret fascist organizations in the countries to Germany’s east. These included Stepan Bandera’s ‘B Faction’ of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN/B),15Romania’s Iron Guard,16 the Ustachis of Yugoslavia,17 the Vanagis of Latvia. . . . The military intelligence historian Colonel William Corson put it most succinctly, ‘Gehlen’s organization was designed to protect the Odessa Nazis. It amounts to an exceptionally well-orchestrated diversion.’. . .”
The discussion accesses a post Mr. Emory crafted in November of 2015.
Pravy Sektor associate Valentyn Nalyvaichenko had been the head of the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence service) since the Maidan Coup, up until his ouster in June of 2015. Not surprisingly, he had operated the organization along the lines of the OUN/B.
Previously, he had served in that same capacity under Viktor Yuschenko, seeing the outfit as a vehicle for rewriting Ukraine’s history in accordance with the historical revisionism favored by the OUN/B.
Very close to Pravy Sektor head Dymitro Yarosh, Nalyvaichenko employed Yarosh while serving in the Ukrainian parliament. Yarosh claims that the two collaborated on “anti-terrorist” operations conducted against ethnic Russians.
Bear in mind that the SBU has been the “cognitive window” through which the events in Ukraine have been processed.
Key Elements of Zelensky’s “Democacy”:
- ” . . . . The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression. With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents. . . .”
-
” . . . . Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime change operation of 2013–14, nurtured close ties to Washington when he served as general consul to the Ukrainian embassy to the US during the George W. Bush administration. During that time, Nalyvaichenko was recruited by the CIA, according to his predecessor at the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko . . . . ”
-
” . . . . In 2021, Zelensky appointed one of Ukraine’s most notorious intelligence figures, Oleksander Poklad, to lead SBU’s counterintelligence division. Poklad is nicknamed “The Strangler,” a reference to his reputation for using torture and assorted dirty tricks to set-up his bosses’ political rivals on treason charges. . . .”
The “serial,” cascading amalgamation of Ukrainian fascist national security elements is exemplified by Anton Geraschenko, the spelling of whose name varies. A key operative of the Azov milieu, he not only shepherded “Profexer,” the alleged mastermind of the DNC “hack,” but may well have been a principal behind the “PropOrNot” list of journalists who were “unacceptable” to the establishment in Ukraine (see below.)
Of paramount importance as well is the role of the SBU, networking with the various OUN/B successor organizations in perpetrating terror against the Ukrainian population.
Do not fail to note former SBU director Nalyvaichenko’s links to the CIA and to the U.S., via the George W. Bush administration.
The fawning Western coverage of the Ukraine War may be seen through the lens of Zelensky’s “Total War” declaration: ” . . . . While Western media homes in on Russian human rights violations at home and inside Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has authorized a propaganda campaign known as ‘Total War’ that includes the planting of bogus images and false stories to further implicate Russia. . . .”
The OUN/B milieu in the U.S. has apparently been instrumental in generating disinformation vis a vis alleged “Russian” disinformation in U.S. media.
Note that the PropOrNot group may well be an extension of Anton Geraschenko’s Myrotvotets hacker/journalist intimidation group.
” . . . One PropOrNot tweet, dated November 17, invokes a 1940s Ukrainian fascist salute “Heroiam Slava!!”[17] to cheer a news item on Ukrainian hackers fighting Russians. The phrase means ‘Glory to the heroes’ and it was formally introduced by the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at their March-April 1941 congress in Nazi occupied Cracow, as they prepared to serve as Nazi auxiliaries in Operation Barbarossa. . . . ‘the OUN‑B introduced another Ukrainian fascist salute at the Second Great Congress of the Ukrainian Nationalists in Cracow in March and April 1941. This was the most popular Ukrainian fascist salute and had to be performed according to the instructions of the OUN‑B leadership by raising the right arm ‘slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head’ while calling ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ (Slava Ukraїni!) and responding ‘Glory to the Heroes!’ (Heroiam Slava!). . . .”
Was “Team Geraschenko” involved in the smearing of Robert Parry, who was defamed by the PropOrNot group?
” . . . . The website, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi chief of the National Police. . . . The website is designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s successor to the KGB), the powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko [closely associated with the Azov Battalion].
“Ukraine’s journalist blacklist website—operated by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private information was posted anonymously to the website. Many of these threats came with the wartime Ukrainian fascist salute: ‘Slava Ukraini!’ [Glory to Ukraine!] So when PropOrNot’s anonymous ‘researchers’ reveal only their Ukrainian(s) identity, it’s hard not to think about the spy-linked hackers who posted the deadly ‘Myrotvorets’ blacklist of ‘treasonous’ journalists. . . .”
Parry subsequently died of a fast-acting case of cancer.
Anton Geraschenko was also involved in handling “Profexer”–the dubious alleged crafter of the [outdated] software allegedly used in the alleged “hack” of the DNC.
1a. The program begins with a synoptic, telescoped view of the OUN/B, a key component of the Gehlen “Org,” itself a front for the Odessa–the Nazi SS postwar operational underground.
“The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt” by Carl Oglesby; Covert Action Information Bulletin; Fall/1990.
” . . . . His [Gehlen’s] FHO was connected in this role with a number of secret fascist organizations in the countries to Germany’s east. These included Stepan Bandera’s ‘B Faction’ of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN/B),15Romania’s Iron Guard,16 the Ustachis of Yugoslavia,17 the Vanagis of Latvia. . . . The military intelligence historian Colonel William Corson put it most succinctly, ‘Gehlen’s organization was designed to protect the Odessa Nazis. It amounts to an exceptionally well-orchestrated diversion.’. . .”
1b. Characteristic of the cringeworthy portrayals of Zelensky is a New York Times op-ed piece.
“Why We Admire Zelensky” by Bret Stephens; The New York Times; 4/20/2022; p. A22 [Western Print Edition].
. . . . Ukraine’s president shows that democracies can still produce great leaders. . . .
2a. The discussion accesses a post Mr. Emory crafted in November of 2015.
Pravy Sektor associate Valentyn Nalyvaichenko had been the head of the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence service) since the Maidan Coup, up until his ouster in June of 2015. Not surprisingly, he had operated the organization along the lines of the OUN/B.
Previously, he had served in that same capacity under Viktor Yuschenko, seeing the outfit as a vehicle for rewriting Ukraine’s history in accordance with the historical revisionism favored by the OUN/B.
Very close to Pravy Sektor head Dymitro Yarosh, Nalyvaichenko employed Yarosh while serving in the Ukrainian parliament. Yarosh claims that the two collaborated on “anti-terrorist” operations conducted against ethnic Russians.
Bear in mind that the SBU has been the “cognitive window” through which the events in Ukraine have been processed.
As of 11/11/2015, Mr. Emory noted the programs documenting Ukrainian fascism: (It is impossible within the scope of this post to cover our voluminous coverage of the Ukraine crisis. Previous programs on the subject are: FTR #‘s 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 783, 784, 794, 800, 803, 804, 808, 811, 817, 818, 824, 826, 829, 832, 833, 837, 849, 850, 853, 857, 860. Listeners/readers are encouraged to examine these programs and/or their descriptions in detail, in order to flesh out their understanding.)
. . . A reconstructed historical memory is created as ‘true memory’ and then contrasted with ‘false Soviet history’ ”(Jilge, 2007:104–105). Thus, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, SBU director under Yushchenko, described the task of his agency as being to disseminate “the historical truth of the past of the Ukrainian people,” to “liberate Ukrainian history from lies and falsifications and to work with truthful documents only” (Jilge, 2008:179). Ignoring the OUN’s antisemitism, denying its participation in anti- Jewish violence, and overlooking its fascist ideology, Nalyvaichenko and his agency presented the OUN as democrats, pluralists, even righteous rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. . . .
2b. “Poland Stretches Out Its Hands to the Freedom Fighters” by Rob Slane; The Blogmire; 4/11/2015.
. . . . Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities show no signs whatsoever that they are about to abandon their admiration of those responsible for these horrific crimes. To the contrary, they seem to be intent on admiring them all the more, as the SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko’s recent words indicate: “SBU does not need to invent anything extra — it is important to build on the traditions and approaches of the OUN-UPA security service. It [the OUN-UPA security service] worked against the aggressor during the temporary occupation of the territory, it had a patriotic upbringing, used a counterintelligence unit, and had relied on the peaceful Ukrainian population using its support.” . . . .
2c. “Yarosh Comments on Dismissal of His ‘Friend’ Nalyvaichenko;” EurAsia Daily; 6/25/2015.
The leader of the Right Sector extremist group Dmytro Yarosh believes that the dismissal of Chief of the Security Service Valentyn Nalyvaichenko was illogical and untimely. He writes in Facebook that Nalyvaichenko is his friend, who has raised the Security Service from zero and has neutralized lots of terrorist threats all over the country. “I know what I am talking about as my Right Sector was involved in many of his special operations against Russian terrorists,” Yarosh said. . . . . . In the past Yarosh was Nalyvaichenko’s advisor.
2d. “Switching Spymasters Amid War Is Risky” by Brian Mefford; Atlantic Council; 6/18/2015.
Valentin Nalyvaichenko, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is in trouble again. On June 15, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was “unsatisfied” with Nalyvaichenko’s work. Three days later, Ukraine’s parliament dismissed him. . . . . . . . Poroshenko Bloc MP Serhiy Leshchenko released a document confirming old rumors that Right Sector’s Dmitro Yarosh worked for Nalyvaichenko when he was a member of parliament from 2012 to 2014. While the connection between the two raises some questions about the events of Euromaidan and the origins of Right Sector, this attack alone wasn’t enough to discredit Nalyvychenko. Yarosh is now a member of parliament and an advisor to the chief of general staff of the Ukrainian army. In other words, Yarosh has been legitimized by the political establishment. . . .
3. The “serial,” cascading amalgamation of Ukrainian fascist national security elements is exemplified by Anton Geraschenko, the spelling of whose name varies. A key operative of the Azov milieu, he not only shepherded “Profexer,” the alleged mastermind of the DNC “hack,” but may well have been a principal behind the “PropOrNot” list of journalists who were “unacceptable” to the establishment in Ukraine (see below.)
Of paramount importance as well is the role of the SBU, networking with the various OUN/B successor organizations in perpetrating terror against the Ukrainian population.
Do not fail to note former SBU director Nalyvaichenko’s links to the CIA and to the U.S., via the George W. Bush administration.
The fawning Western coverage of the Ukraine War may be seen through the lens of Zelensky’s “Total War” declaration: ” . . . . While Western media homes in on Russian human rights violations at home and inside Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has authorized a propaganda campaign known as ‘Total War’ that includes the planting of bogus images and false stories to further implicate Russia. . . .”
While claiming to defend democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed his opposition, ordered his rivals’ arrest, and presided over the disappearance and assassination of dissidents across the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to US Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated, “Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”
US corporate media has responded by showering Zelensky with fawning press, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute to himself and the Ukrainian military during the 2022 Grammy awards ceremony on April 3.
Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia.
“There is one less traitor in Ukraine,” Internal Affairs Ministry advisor Anton Geraschenko stated in endorsement of the murder of a Ukrainian mayor accused of collaborating with Russia.
Zelensky has further exploited the atmosphere of war to outlaw an array of opposition parties and order the arrest of his leading rivals. His authoritarian decrees have triggered the disappearance, torture and even murder of an array of human rights activists, communist and leftist organizers, journalists and government officials accused of “pro-Russian” sympathies.
The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression. With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents.
On the battlefield, meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has engaged in a series of atrocities against captured Russian troops and proudly exhibited its sadistic acts on social media. Here too, the perpetrators of human rights abuses appear to have received approval from the upper echelons of Ukrainian leadership.
While Zelensky spouts bromides about the defense of democracy before worshipful Western audiences, he is using the war as a theater for enacting a blood-drenched purge of political rivals, dissidents and critics.
“The war is being used to kidnap, imprison and even kill opposition members who express themselves critical of the government,” a left-wing activist beaten and persecuted by Ukraine’s security services commented this April. “We must all fear for our freedom and our lives.”
Torture and enforced disappearances “common practices” of Ukraine’s SBU
When a US-backed government seized power in Kiev following the Euromaidan regime change operation of 2013–14, Ukraine’s government embarked on a nationwide purge of political elements deemed pro-Russian or insufficiently nationalistic. The passage of “decommunization” laws by the Ukrainian parliament further eased the persecution of leftist elements and the prosecution of activists for political speech.
The post-Maidan regime has focused its wrath on Ukrainians who have advocated a peace settlement with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, those who have documented human rights abuses by the Ukrainian military, and members of communist organizations. Dissident elements have faced the constant threat of ultra-nationalist violence, imprisonment, and even murder.
The Ukrainian security service known as the SBU has served as the main enforcer of the post-Maidan government’s campaign of domestic political repression. Pro-Western monitors including the United Nations Office of the High Commission (UN OHCR) and Human Rights Watch have accused the SBU of systematically torturing political opponents and Ukrainian dissidents with near-total impunity.
The UN OHCR found in 2016 that “arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of such conflict-related detainees were common practice of SBU… A former Kharkiv SBU officer explained, ‘For the SBU, the law virtually does not exist as everything that is illegal can be either classified or explained by referring to state necessity.”
Yevhen Karas, the founder of the infamous neo-Nazi C14 unit, has detailed the close relationship his gang and other extreme right factions have enjoyed with the SBU. The SBU “informs not only us, but also Azov, the Right Sector, and so on,” Karas boasted in a 2017 interview. Kiev officially endorses assassinating Ukrainian mayors for negotiating with Russia.
Since Russia launched its military operation inside Ukraine, the SBU has hunted down local officials that decided to accept humanitarian supplies from Russia or negotiated with Russian forces to arrange corridors for civilian evacuations.
On March 1, for example, Volodymyr Strok, the mayor of the eastern city of Kreminna in the Ukrainian-controlled side of Lugansk, was kidnapped by men in military uniform, according to his wife, and shot in the heart.
On March 3, pictures of Strok’s visibly tortured body appeared. A day before his murder, Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to negotiate with pro-Russian officials.
Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page (see below): “There is one less traitor in Ukraine. The mayor of Kreminna in Luhansk region, former deputy of Luhansk parliament was found killed.”
According to Geraschenko, Strok had been judged by the “court of the people’s tribunal.”
The Ukrainian official therefore delivered a chilling message to anyone choosing to seek cooperation with Russia: do so and lose your life.
On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylipko, was found murdered. Prylipko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents – a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office.
Next, on March 24, Gennady Matsegora, the mayor of Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, released a video (below) appealing to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration for the release of his daughter, who had been held hostage by agents of the Ukrainian SBU intelligence agency.
Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kiev after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that “there would be consequences for collaborators” indicates that these atrocities have been sanctioned by the highest levels of government.
As of today, eleven mayors from various towns in Ukraine are missing. Western media outlets have been following the Kiev line without exception, claiming that all mayors been arrested by the Russian military. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied the charge, however, and little evidence exists to corroborate Kiev’s line about the missing mayors.
Zelensky outlaws political opposition, authorizes arrest of rivals and war propaganda blitz
When war erupted with Russia this February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a series of decrees formalizing Kiev’s campaign against political opposition and dissident speech.
In a March 19 executive order, Zelensky invoked martial law to ban 11 opposition parties. The outlawed parties consisted of the entire left-wing, socialist or anti-NATO spectrum in Ukraine. They included the For Life Party, the Left Opposition, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Union of Left Forces, Socialists, the Party of Shariy, Ours, State, Opposition Bloc and the Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.
Openly fascist and pro-Nazi parties like the Azov National Corps were left untouched by the presidential decree, however.
“The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response,” President Zelensky stated.
As he wiped out his opposition, Zelensky ordered an unprecedented domestic propaganda initiative to nationalize all television news broadcasting and combine all channels into a single 24 hour channel called “United News” to “tell the truth about war.”
Next, on April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by Ukraine’s SBU security services.
The founder of the second largest party in Ukraine, the now-illegal Patriots for Life, Medvedchuk is the de facto representative of the country’s ethnic Russian population. Though Patriots for Life is regarded as “pro-Russia,” in part because of his close relations with Vladimir Putin, the new chairman of the party has condemned Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine.
Members of the state-sponsored neo-Nazi Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked Medvedchuk’s home in March 2019, accusing him of treason and demanding his arrest.
In August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus carrying representatives of Medvedchuk’s party, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Zelensky’s administration escalated the assault on his top opponent in February 2021 when he shuttered several media outlets controlled by Medvedchuk. The US State Department openly endorsed the president’s move, declaring that the United States “supports Ukrainian efforts to counter Russia’s malign influence…”
Three months later, Kiev jailed Medvedchuk and charged him with treason. Zelensky justified locking away his leading rival on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”
Medvedchuk escaped house arrest at the onset of the war between Russia and Ukraine, but is a captive once again, and may be used as collateral for a post-war prisoner swap with Russia.
Under Zelensky’s watch, “the war is being used to kidnap, imprison and even kill opposition members”
Since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, Ukraine’s SBU security service had been on a rampage against any and all iterations of internal political opposition. Leftist Ukrainian activists have faced particularly harsh treatment, including kidnapping and torture.
This March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the home of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda. While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”
“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the leftist German publication Junge Welt.
The Azov members and SBU agents recorded the torture session and published images of Matjuschenko’s bloodied face online.
The torture of left-wing activist Alexander Matjuschenko on March 3 in Dnipro, recorded by Azov members and posted on Telegram by the city of Dnipro
Matjuschenko was jailed on the grounds that he was “conducting an aggressive war or military operation,” and now faces 10 to 15 years in prison. Despite enduring several broken ribs from the beating by state-backed ultra-nationalists, he has been denied bail. Meanwhile, dozens of other leftists have been jailed on similar charges in Dnipro.
Among those targeted by the SBU were Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich, members of the outlawed Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine. Both were arrested and jailed on March 6 and accused of “spreading pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.”
In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavova, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason, and an untold number of others; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism.”
The list of those imprisoned by Ukraine’s security services since the outbreak of war grows by the day, and is too extensive to reproduce here.
Perhaps the most ghastly incident of repression took place when neo-Nazis backed by the Ukrainian government kidnapped Maxim Ryndovskiy, a professional MMA fighter, and brutally tortured him for the crime of training with Russian fighters at a gym in Chechnya. Ryndovskiy also happened to be Jewish, with a Star of David tattooed on his leg, and had spoken out on social media against the war in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s SBU has even hunted opposition figures outside the country’s borders. As journalist Dan Cohen reported, Anatoly Shariy of the recently banned Party of Shariy said he was the target of a recent SBU assassination attempt. Shariy has been an outspoken opponent of the US-backed Maidan regime, and has been forced to flee into exile after enduring years of harassment from nationalists.
This March, the libertarian politician and online pundit received an email from a friend, “Igor,” seeking to arrange a meeting. He subsequently learned that Igor was held by the SBU at the time and being used to bait Shariy into disclosing his location.
For his part, Shariy has been placed on the notorious Myrotvorets public blacklist of “enemies of the state” founded by Anton Geraschenko – the Ministry of Internal Affairs advisor who endorsed the assassination of Ukrainian lawmakers accused of Russian sympathies. Several journalists and Ukrainian dissidents, including the prominent columnist Oles Buzina, were murdered by state-backed death squads after their names appeared on the list.
Common Ukrainian citizens have also been subjected to torture since the start of the war this February. Seemingly countless videos have appeared on social media showing civilians tied to lamp posts, often with their genitals exposed or their faces painted green. Carried out by Territorial Defense volunteers tasked with enforcing law and order during wartime, these acts of humiliation and torture have targeted everyone from accused Russian sympathizers to Roma people to alleged thieves.
Ukraine’s SBU studies torture and assassination from the CIA
Vassily Prozorov, a former SBU officer who defected to Russia following the Euromaidan coup, detailed the post-Maidan security services’ systemic reliance on torture to crush political opposition and intimidate citizens accused of Russian sympathies.
According to Prozorov, the ex-SBU officer, the Ukrainian security services have been directly advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employees have been present in Kiev since 2014. They are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”
Below, Russia’s RIA Novosti profiled Prozorov and covered his disclosures in a 2019 special.
Journalist Dan Cohen interviewed a Ukrainian businessman named Igor who was arrested by the SBU for his financial ties with Russian companies and detained this March in the security service’s notorious headquarters in downtown Kiev. Igor said he overheard Russian POWs being beaten with pipes by Territorial Defense volunteers being coached by SBU officers. Pummeled to the sound of the Ukrainian national anthem, the Russian prisoners were brutalized until they confessed their hatred for Putin.
Then came Igor’s turn. “They used a lighter to heat up a needle, then put it under my fingernails,” he told Cohen. “The worst was when they put a plastic bag over my head and suffocated me and when they held the muzzle of a Kalashnikov rifle to my head and forced me to answer their questions.”
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime change operation of 2013–14, nurtured close ties to Washington when he served as general consul to the Ukrainian embassy to the US during the George W. Bush administration. During that time, Nalyvaichenko was recruited by the CIA, according to his predecessor at the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko, who served under the Russian-oriented government of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.
In 2021, Zelensky appointed one of Ukraine’s most notorious intelligence figures, Oleksander Poklad, to lead SBU’s counterintelligence division. Poklad is nicknamed “The Strangler,” a reference to his reputation for using torture and assorted dirty tricks to set-up his bosses’ political rivals on treason charges.
This April, a vivid illustration of the SBU’s brutality emerged in the form of video (below) showing its agents pummeling a group of men accused of Russian sympathies in the city of Dnipro.
“We will never take Russian soldiers prisoner”: Ukraine’s military flaunts its war crimes
While the Western media has focused squarely on alleged Russian human rights abuses since the outbreak of war, Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Ukrainian social media accounts have proudly exhibited sadistic war crimes, from field executions to the torture of captive soldiers.
This March, a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel called White Lives Matter released a video of a Ukrainian soldier calling the fiancee of a Russian prisoner of war, seen below, and taunting her with promises to castrate the captive.
Ukrainian soldiers’ use of the cellphones of dead Russian soldiers to mock and hector their relatives appears to be a common practice. In fact, the Ukrainian government has begun using notoriously invasive facial recognition technology from Clearview AI, a US tech company, to identify Russian casualties and taunt their relatives on social media.
This April, a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel called fckrussia2022 posted a video depicting a Russian soldier with one of his eyes bandaged, suggesting it had been gouged during torture, and mocked him as a “one-eyed” pig.
Perhaps the most gruesome image to have appeared on social media in recent weeks is the photo of a tortured Russian soldier who had one of his eyes gouged before he was killed. The accompanying post was captioned, “looking for Nazis.”
Photos distributed by pro-Ukraine Telegram channels showing captured, tortured and executed Russian soldiers
Video has also emerged this April showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting defenseless Russian POWs in the legs outside the city of Kharkov. A separate video published by Ukrainian and US-backed Georgian Legion soldiers showed the fighters carrying out field executions of wounded Russian captives near a village outside Kiev.
It is likely that these soldiers had been emboldened by their superiors’ blessings. Mamula Mamulashvili, the commander of the Georgian Legion, which participated in the field executions of wounded Russian POW’s, boasted this April that his unit freely engages in war crimes: “Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner.”
Similarly, Gennadiy Druzenko, the head of the Ukrainian military medical service, stated in an interview with Ukraine 24 that he “issued an order to castrate all Russian men because they were subhuman and worse than cockroaches.”
Ukrainian officials present woman tortured and killed by Azov as victim of Russia
While Western media homes in on Russian human rights violations at home and inside Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has authorized a propaganda campaign known as “Total War” that includes the planting of bogus images and false stories to further implicate Russia.
In one especially cynical example of the strategy, Ukraine 24 – a TV channel where guests have called for the genocidal extermination of Russian children – published a photo this April depicting a female corpse branded with a bloody swastika on her stomach. Ukraine 24 claimed that it found this woman in Gostumel, one of the regions in the Kiev Oblast that the Russians vacated on March 29.
Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, and Oleksiy Arestovych, the top advisor to President Zelensky, published the photo of the defiled female corpse on social media. While Vasylenko left the photo online, Arestovych deleted it eight hours after posting when confronted with the fact that he had published a fake.
In fact, the image was pulled from footage originally recorded by Patrick Lancaster, a Donetsk-based US journalist who had filmed the corpse of a woman tortured and murdered by members of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion in a Mariupol school basement they had converted into a base.
At 2:31 in Lancaster’s video, the woman’s corpse can be seen clearly.
As weapons pour into Ukraine from NATO states and the war intensifies, the atrocities are almost certain to pile up – and with the blessing of leadership in Kiev. As Zelensky proclaimed during a visit to the city of Bucha this April, “if we do not find a civilized way out, you know our people – they will find an uncivilized way out.”
4. Geraschenko/Heraschenko’s celebratory murderousness gives us reason to doubt his description of the deaths of the Sukhenko family.
The head of the village of Motyzhyn, her husband and son were shot and buried in a shallow grave, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry said on Monday, showing their partially covered bodies in the sand. . . .
. . . . “There have been Russian occupiers here. They tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head,” said Anton Herashchenko, naming those killed as Olha Sukhenko, her husband Ihor Sukhenko and their 25-year old son, Oleksandr. . . .
5. Singled out for criticism as a Russian “dupe” by the PropOrNot group, Robert Parry passed of a fast-acting case of cancer in early 2018.
Cancer is a favorite way for this country’s intelligence services to dispose of people.
The “fake news” theme has captivated The Washington Post and the mainstream U.S. media so much that it is stooping to McCarthyistic smears against news outlets that don’t toe the State Department’s propaganda line
The mainstream U.S. media’s hysteria over “fake news” has reached its logical (or illogical) zenith, a McCarthyistic black-listing of honest journalism that simply shows professional skepticism toward Officialdom, including what’s said by U.S. government officials and what’s written in The Washington Post and New York Times.
Apparently, to show skepticism now opens you to accusations of disseminating “Russian propaganda” or being a “useful idiot” or some similar ugly smear reminiscent of the old Cold War. Now that we have entered a New Cold War, I suppose it makes sense that we should expect a New McCarthyism.
After returning from a Thanksgiving trip to Philadelphia on Saturday, I received word that Consortiumnews.com, the 21-year-old investigative news site that has challenged misguided “group thinks” whether from Republicans, Democrats or anyone else over those two-plus decades, was included among some 200 Internet sites spreading what some anonymous Web site, PropOrNot, deems “Russian propaganda.”
I would normally ignore such nonsense but it was elevated by The Washington Post, which treated these unnamed “independent researchers” as sophisticated experts who “tracked” the Russian propaganda operation and assembled the black list.
And I’m not joking when I say that these neo-McCarthyites go unnamed. The Post’s article by Craig Timberg on Thursday described PropOrNot simply as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds [who] planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.” . . . .
6. The OUN/B milieu in the U.S. has apparently been instrumental in generating disinformation vis a vis alleged “Russian” disinformation in U.S. media.
Note that the PropOrNot group may well be an extension of Anton Geraschenko’s Myrotvotets hacker/journalist intimidation group.
Was “Team Geraschenko” involved in the smearing of Robert Parry?
In the Alternet.org article, Mark Ames highlights several points:
- The “PropOrNot” group quoted in a Washington Post story tagging media outlets, websites and blogs as “Russian/Kremlin stooges/propaganda tools/agents” is linked to the OUN/B heirs now in power in Ukraine. ” . . . One PropOrNot tweet, dated November 17, invokes a 1940s Ukrainian fascist salute “Heroiam Slava!!”[17] to cheer a news item on Ukrainian hackers fighting Russians. The phrase means ‘Glory to the heroes’ and it was formally introduced by the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at their March-April 1941 congress in Nazi occupied Cracow, as they prepared to serve as Nazi auxiliaries in Operation Barbarossa. . . . ‘the OUN‑B introduced another Ukrainian fascist salute at the Second Great Congress of the Ukrainian Nationalists in Cracow in March and April 1941. This was the most popular Ukrainian fascist salute and had to be performed according to the instructions of the OUN‑B leadership by raising the right arm ‘slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head’ while calling ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ (Slava Ukraїni!) and responding ‘Glory to the Heroes!’ (Heroiam Slava!). . . .”
- The OUN/B heirs ruling Ukraine compiled a list of journalists who were “Russian/Kremlin stooges/propaganda tools/agents,” including personal data and contact information (like that made public in the WikiLeaks data dump of DNC e‑mails). This list was compiled by the Ukrainian intelligence service, interior ministry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more frightening policies enacted by the current oligarch-nationalist regime in Kiev is an online blacklist [42] of journalists accused of collaborating with pro-Russian ‘terrorists.’ [43] The website, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi chief of the National Police. . . . The website is designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s successor to the KGB), the powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko [closely associated with the Azov Battalion]. Ukraine’s journalist blacklist website—operated by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private information was posted anonymously to the website. Many of these threats came with the wartime Ukrainian fascist salute: ‘Slava Ukraini!’ [Glory to Ukraine!] So when PropOrNot’s anonymous ‘researchers’ reveal only their Ukrainian(s) identity, it’s hard not to think about the spy-linked hackers who posted the deadly ‘Myrotvorets’ blacklist of ‘treasonous’ journalists. . . .”
7. We are being told that a Ukrainian hacker, nicknamed “The Profexer” was the creator of the malware allegedly used in the high-profile hacks.
The assertion that the Profexer was paid by Russian hackers to write custom malware comes from Anton Gerashchenko, a far-right member of Ukraine’s Parliament with close ties to the security services and an open apologist for the Azov Battalion.
And according to Mr. Gerashchenko, the interaction the Prefexor had with the ‘Russian hackers’ was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose.
As the article also notes, however, “It is not clear whether the specific malware the programmer created was used to hack the D.N.C. servers, but it was identified in other Russian hacking efforts in the United States.”
The central point here involves Profexer’s claims to have written software for the Russian hackers who “hacked” the DNC.
Aside from the fact that the DNC may not have been “hacked” at all, the P.A.S. web shell tool the Profexer wrote that was cited in the “Grizzly Steppe” report was an outdated version of P.A.S. web shell.
Unless there’s more information yet to come along this line of inquiry, it appears that the primary criminal activity that the Profexer witnessed was his own quasi-crime of creating “customized malware” for an anonymous group that may or may not have been used in the DNC hacks. Based on this compelling evidence it appears we can narrow the culprits down to…pretty much any hacker. Huzzah!
It’s clear that the P.A.S. web shell malware that was used in the DNC hacks wasn’t customized. Because it was already an outdated version of P.A.S. web shell.
. . . . There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russia’s intelligence services, but his malware apparently did. . . .
. . . . “There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the D.N.C. attack to the G.R.U., F.S.B. or any agency of the Russian government,” said Jeffrey Carr, the author of a book on cyberwarfare. The G.R.U. is Russia’s military intelligence agency, and the F.S.B. its federal security service. . . .
. . . . Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine. . . .
. . . . A member of Ukraine’s Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in Russian hacking.
Mr. Gerashchenko described the author only in broad strokes, to protect his safety, as a young man from a provincial Ukrainian city. He confirmed that the author turned himself in to the police and was cooperating as a witness in the D.N.C. investigation. . . .
. . . . It is not clear whether the specific malware the programmer created was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .
We got another update on Canada’s ongoing military training of Ukrainian extremists associated with the Azov Battalion. First, recall the reports about a far right umbrella group, the Centura group, openly bragging on social media about how they were being trained by the Canadian military in Canada. Those reports led to review by the Canadian military which revealed that Canada’s military was fully aware of the extremist nature of these trainees and was largely only concerned about public exposure of this training.
That review led to pledges by the Canadian military that it has not and will not ever train soldiers affiliated with Azov. Well, there’s a new round of reports contradicting those pledges. A recent report by Radio Canada found evidence that soldiers from the Azov regiment, identified by patches on their clothing and other insignias, have participated in training with Canada’s armed forces recently as 2020. But this training wasn’t in Canada. It was in the western-backed Zolochiv training center in Western Ukraine. Interestingly, a spokesperson for the Azov regiment currently fighting in Mariupol told reporters that they were excluded as a group from training with Canadian instructors but that they “wrote a program” for their own courses and “were instructors in all disciplines in the National Guard of Ukraine training centre.” In other words, Canada’s military found a kind of training loophole for Azov. They won’t directly train Azov. But they’re train troops at the same training centers where Azov is also training and instructing. A loophole that we can reasonably assume remains open at this point.
So it doesn’t appear anything has really changed regarding the Canadian military’s ties to Ukrainian extremists. But something has obviously changed in a very big way: those trained units are now fighting in a hot war, making it exactly the kind of situation where we should expect war crimes to be committed by these units. War crimes against soldiers and civilians. And potentially the kind of war crimes that could eventually lead to international investigations and calls for punishing those responsible.
And that brings us to the other Azov-related topic in the following CTV News article: Canada’s potential culpability in war crimes committed by the Azov battalion now that Canada’s military has been repeatedly caught training and equipping these units. Will Canada potentially be found liable for acts of terror and violence executed by these units? Especially now that much heavier weapons are being shipped into Ukraine and presumably used by these units? Well, it sounds like the evidentiary requirements would be pretty high in order to hold Canada liable. Evidence that Canada knew the people it was training and arming really did pose are real threat of violating human rights.
But, of course, that’s exactly the kind of evidence we keep seeing reported. Evidence that Canada’s military knew full well they were training extremists and took steps as a result to hide from the public what it was doing. And right now those extremist units are in the middle of war zone with very credible accusations of human rights abuses that have already been reported. So as we’re reading about these calls in Canada to hold the government accountable for the its secret training of Ukrainian extremists, it’s important keeping in mind that a big part of the reason Canada’s government has been hiding this assistance in the first place is because it knew it was training dangerous extremists with a history of human rights violations and now these trained units are out there in the battlefield doing what they do best
“Addressing concerns that extremist elements in the Ukrainian military now have access to much deadlier firepower because of countries like Canada arming Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the CAF said that donations of military aid are provided “exclusively” to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and that those donations are “controlled with end users certificates provided by the MoD of Ukraine.””
“Don’t blame us!” That appears to be the Canadian military’s stance regarding its potential liability should the Azov Battalion or other extremist units that received Canadian training be found guilty of war crimes using the heavy weaponry that Canada is now delivering to Ukraine’s armed forces. Don’t blame Canada because it will be exclusively up to Ukraine’s government how those weapons are ultimately used.
But as the article describes, the “don’t blame us! We have no control over how our aid is used!” excuse isn’t just going to be applied to any war crimes committed using the heavy weapons Canada is giving to Ukraine. That same basic excuse is also apparently going to be applied to any war crimes committed by the members of the Azov Battalion or other extremists who were directly trained by Canada as part of Canada’s Operation UNIFIER. AS the CAF spokesperson put it, “Ukraine is a sovereign country” responsible for recruiting and vetting its own security forces. In other words, “don’t blame us if we accidentally train Ukrainian extremists who go on to commit war crimes. Blame Ukraine!”:
At the same time, notice how possible international war crimes charges that could be leveled against Canada for knowingly providing weapons to extremist groups could potentially be deflected by making the case that Ukraine is not known to be a government that engages in human rights violations. Yes, weapons deliveries to Ukraine could be portrayed as being in a very different category as, say, weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia which has a track record of human rights violations. In other words, “don’t blame us if we accidentally train Ukrainian extremists who go on to commit war crimes. We had no idea this could happen based on Ukraine’s wonderful human rights record!”:
But even if Canada did end up getting investigated over its potential role in fueling war crimes committed by Ukrainian extremists it trained and armed, the evidentiary requirements would be significant and require proving that Canada knew it was training dangerous extremists capable of such acts:
Of course, as we’ve repeatedly seen, evidence exists that Canada’s military was not only fully aware that it was training Ukrainian extremists but actively took steps to cover this up and prevent journalists from learning about it. It’s basically been the extremists themselves posting about their training on social media that’s been tipping off journalists about these training operations. That’s part of what makes these questions about the potential culpability of Canada’s military in war crimes committed by these extremist units so important. By training units like Azov, Canada has placed itself in a potentially legally precarious situation. It’s the kind of situation that not only incentivizes the covering up of any potential war crimes by these units but also covering up the growing risk of extremism in Ukraine more generally. The reality that these movements have been allowed to engaged in acts of violence and terrorism with impunity has to be systematically covered up and ignored as a kind of legal shield against future war crimes investigations:
Have any Canadian soldiers operating in Ukraine been injured during the Russian invasion so far? We haven’t had any reports on that yet. Then again, if this training program inside Ukraine is still going on we presumably aren’t going to be hearing about it. For reasons having to do with operational security on Canada’s military mission in Ukraine, no doubt. But as the ongoing Canadian coverup of its Azov sponsorship makes clear, Canada has no shortage of reasons to keep quiet about the exact nature of its ongoing military relationship with Ukraine. A military relationship poised to only get deeper as this conflict drags on. Deeper and far more scandalous.
The AP reports: Ukraine hunts down ‘traitors’ helping Russia
We’re there, Dave. All the way there.
The radicalization of Ukrainian society in response to the Russian invasion is obviously an urgent issue. There’s not shortage of radicalizing drivers with the growing influence of Ukraine’s Nazis and the inherently radicalizing effects of living through war and displacement. But as Ukrainian academic Olga Baysha, author of Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, points out in the following interview, there’s another prevailing factor at work that we should expect to be impacting how Ukraine is transformed by this conflict: the growing sense of betrayal Ukrainians felt towards the government of Volodymyr Zelensky over his push for Western-backed neoliberal ‘reforms’ almost immediately after getting elected. As Baysha points out, Zelensky was indeed elected on a platform of reform. But it wasn’t the kind of austerity-induced economic reforms Zelensky ended up implementing. Instead, Zelensky was largely elected on a platform of generic ‘modernization’ and anti-oligarch corruption, as depicted in Zelensky’s television show. Zelensky won overwhelming in 2019 on a populist platform of making Ukraine’s government actually work for the people. And they he got elected and started pushing Western-backed mass privatizations and other neoliberal reforms. This wasn’t popular, as his plummeting approval ratings made clear.
Baysha also address the situation facing Ukraine’s ethnic Russian population, which had long felt betrayed by the anti-Russian fervor of the Maidan revolution but is now feeling betrayed by Russia’s actual physical invasion. What’s going to happen to this part of Ukrainian society as this conflict plays out? What sort of radicalization can we expect for that demographic? Ukrainian nationalism is going to be of limited appeal given its virulent Russophobia. How is a Russian invasion and potential occupation of the ethnic-Russian speaking areas of Ukraine that didn’t hate Russian but also didn’t want to be invaded going to shape this part of Ukrainian society? It’s quite an identity crisis.
Finally, as Baysha points out, this sense of betrayal in Ukrainian society is nothing new. Much of Ukraine’s Westward push in the 90s is now associated with a sense of betrayal over the improved economy that never happened. And now Ukraine is set to become even more closely aligned with the West, meaning even more neoliberal ‘reforms’ are very likely in store for Ukraine’s future. Neoliberal reforms that are going to be carried out in a war torn already devastated country. Don’t forget how Viktor Yanukovych’s government turned out the EU’s Trade Association offer in 2013 — after months of secretly lobbying through the ‘Hapsburg Group’ to make the agreement happen — primarily because of all the austerity the EU was demanding. Years of austerity, which Russian wasn’t demanding in its own counter-offer. That’s why Yanukovych ultimately nixed the deal. The austerity was too much for him to stomach. All of that austerity is now once against slated for Ukraine’s future now. That’s part of why the warnings Baysha has in this interview are are probably going to become even more relevant after the conflict in Ukraine is finally over and Ukraine moves on to the post-conflict rebuilding phase of its Westward push:
“Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization,” and “normalization.” It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc. Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions, an increase in utility tariffs, and so on.”
Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t campaign as a neoliberal reformer. He campaigned as a “modernizer” who was going to replicate the kind of anti-corruption agenda portrayed on his television show. But three days after getting elected the actual agenda was revealed: massive privatization and other neoliberal ‘reforms’ backed largely be Western interests. Flash forward to Zelensky’s plummeting poll ratings as a result of this switcharoo and we find his administration turning to extrajudicial crackdowns on political opposition through the National Security and Defense Council. Similarly, while Zelensky didn’t campaign as an ally of the far right, that’s effectively what he became. As Olga Baysha puts in in the interview, it doesn’t appear that Zelensky was secretly harboring far right sympathies all along. Instead, it’s just a reflection of the fact that Ukraine’s Nazis have successfully threatened their way into a status of virtual impunity. The president was intimidated into cooperation. That’s the reality that cannot be acknowledged in the West media’s coverage of Ukraine: the far right really does exert an effective veto over Ukraine’s government and Zelensky’s administration has been exhibit A for that reality. It’s this arc and — from a populist reformer elected on a vague platform of ‘modernization’ to neoliberal ‘reformer’ and ally of far right — that constitutes some of the key context for what was happening inside Ukraine in the years leading up to the Russian invasion. A deep collective sense of popular betrayal. And that sentiment is part of what is now being transmorphed into virulent nationalism in response to the Russian invasion:
But as Baysha also describes, it’s not like there has ever been a widely held general public sentiment in Ukraine in terms of how the country needs to reform itself, in large part because the Ukrainian nationalism that has been elevated as the official national culture since 2014 simultaneously views the ethnic Russian half of the population as uncivilized barbarians. It underscores how the tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine includes the tragic reality that the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine has been attack symbolically by its own government and society for years now and is now being physically destroyed in this conflict. What does that foretell in terms of the ongoing radicalization of Ukrainian society in the Eastern half of the country? What forms of extremism can take root in this kind of environment?
Finally, as Baysha reminds us, this sense of betrayal is deeply intertwined with the hopes Ukrainians have had for a better life through an embrace of the the West for decades, going back to the 90s. And those hope have been consistently betrayed the entire time. Instead of a better life, Ukrainians embraced Western ‘reforms’ and got the austerity nightmare of the 90s that created the oligarchy current running the country. So when Zelensky suddenly imposed a new wave of Western-backed neoliberal reforms shortly after being elected, it’s not like Ukrainians had to wait and see if the reforms were going to make their lives better. They’ve been down this awful road before:
How will Ukrainians respond to unyielding calls from its Western ‘partners’ for one austerity ‘reform’ after another? We’ll find out. It’s easy to imagine the anti-EU allure of the far right becoming even more alluring for Western Ukrainians. It’s a lot harder to imagine how the ethnic Russians of Ukraine are going to react. But it’s pretty obvious that Ukrainians across the political and demographic divides are united by a strong desire not to reexperience the kind of ‘reforms’ that only seem to benefit foreign investors. And yet that ‘reform’ agenda is the Zelensky agenda. Or at least it was before the war and it’s hard hard to see why that won’t be the exact same agenda after the war as Ukraine is even more fully invested in its Westward shift. The same agenda, but presumably with a lot more austerity given how much weaker Ukraine’s economy is now. And that’s why one of the biggest questions looming over the future of Ukraine and this conflict is the question of how the population is going to respond when a devastated Ukraine finally wins the conflict thanks to unprecedented military help from the West, ‘official’ joins the ‘club’ of Western nations, and is suddenly asked to endure more austerity than ever before, indefinitely, to return the favor.
Here’s a set of articles related to both the events in Ukraine but also how the events in Ukraine are reported on and the consequences for the reporting. Consequences that appear to include getting cut off from services like PayPal for deviating too much from the official narratives about what’s happening in Ukraine and why. At least that’s what just happened to Consortium News, which received notification this week that it was permanently cut off from PayPal. On what grounds? Well, PayPal couldn’t say. Their representative just told Consortium News that there was a the “potential risk” detected but that it was “not exactly specified by the back office.” The agent said, “It has something to do with the history of this account.” And that’s it. That’s the basis for cutting Consortium News off of PayPal’s services permanently.
It’s worth recalling at this point that PayPal’s former owner — and still a major shareholder — is none other than eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, a figure with deep ties to the US National Security state. Was cutting off Consortium News thanks, in part, to Omidyar wearing his ‘spy’ hat? We don’t know, but the fact that PayPal is cutting off media outlets with a history of challenge the national security state’s narratives on a range of topics and can’t even cite a reason for this cutoff certainly suggests the reasons are ones PayPal doesn’t want to publicly admit.
At the same time, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the blatant nature of this action against Consortium News was done precisely to send a message to other outlets. It’s part of what made it seem like such a sleazy move.
The next two articles cover the kind of story that probably got Consortium News in trouble in the first place. The 8‑year anniversary of the Odessa massacre just happened. This would be the burning down of the labor union building where ethnic Russian protestors were burnt alive in an arson attack by far right groups associated with Right Sector. In years past, observers have showed up on May 2 at the Odessa labor union building to mourn the victims, only to be once again attacked by far right protestors in full view of the police who do nothing. The Odessa authorities have apparently decided this would be a bad year to allow a repeat. A city-wide curfew was announced for May 1–3 and no one is allowed to leave their homes during this period.
As Consortium News reports, not only has that attack never been adequate investigated but the there’s literally video showing the far right protestors setting fire to the building. It’s an open cover up. The kind of open cover up that is all the more sensitive now that Ukraine is pleading for global assistance.
We can then contrast that Consortium News report on the curfew with a report by NBC News that more or less regurgitates the Odessa authorities’ explanation for the curfew. So why did they announce the curfew, according to that report? To prevent Russian saboteurs. Yep. It doesn’t sounds like there’s any evidence of specific plots. Just a general sense that Russian saboteurs might hit the city on May 2. Hence a three day city-wide curfew. There is, of course, no mention at all about the far right’s role in carrying out the attack or the annual attacks on the observers mourning the victims.
We have to ask: if Consortium News’s was the kind of outlet that basically just parroted the Ukrainian authorities, would it have had its PayPal services cut off? The answer is obvious, even if PayPal refuses to give it
“There was no prior notice sent nor was Consortium News afforded any due process. A PayPal customer service agent confirmed in a telephone call on Sunday that the “back office” gave no specific reason for “permanently limiting” CN‘s account other than that an “investigation and review” of CN‘s “history found some potential risk associated with this account.” ”
No prior notice or warnings at all. Just a sudden permanent ban issued right in the middle of Consortium News’s fundraising drive.
But it’s not just that this action was done without warning. PayPal couldn’t even give a reason or cite a complaint. Yet, Consortium News was just permanently banned from PayPal for no reason. Or at least not a reason they’re willing to admit:
But PayPal didn’t just cut off access to its service for no reason. It also threatened to keep Consortium News’s $9,348.14 left in its balance:
The company obviously doesn’t like the kind of content Consortium News is generating. And yet, true to form, it can’t actually point out the problematic dangerous content. It would be easy to cite one example after another if Consortium News was just pumping out fake news with no basis behind its reporting. But we’re not getting a litany of violations. Instead, we’re getting non-answers from PayPal when directly pressed for any explanation at all. It’s a big clue as to what is going on here. When PayPal announced last month that it was cutting off access to Russia, the company apparently had much bigger plans in mind. Media outlets that deviate from the official narratives around the Russian invasion of Ukraine get cutoff too.
On one level it’s more or less what we should probably have expected from PayPal. After all, while Pierre Omidyar may not be the largest shareholder in the company after PayPal was spun out from eBay, Omidyar still holds a substantial stake. It’s not hard to imagine Omidyar playing the role of PayPal’s National Security State representative. Still, when the behavior or major corporations gets this blatantly shady targeting entities that are simply reporting unpopular news, it raises the question of what exactly has Consortium News been reporting that would trigger this kind of response. So here’s an example of a Consortium News piece that probably pisses off a lot of Omidyar’s friend’s in the CIA and State Department: today is the final day for a curfew imposed on the city of Odessa from May 1–3. May 2 just happens to be the 8 year anniversary of the Odessa Trade House massacre. And as Ukrainian leftists groups point out to Consortium News in the following report, May 2 has becoming an important day in Odessa. Every year, people come to the site of the massacre to commemorate the victims and every year far right groups come out to beat up those people while the police stand by and allow it. Odessa authorities have decided those events can’t happen this year, presumably due to the heightened concerns over another far right massacre, and those concerns are so high that they’re imposing a curfew on the entire city for three days. Try to find reporting on this curfew in the western press. There’s almost nothing on it and the reporting we can find portrays the entire curfew as necessary to stop Russian saboteurs. Yep. If you’re a western media out, the message is clear: if you write stories about how Ukrainian authorities continue to cover for the far right there will be consequences:
“The city, which is “(under the control of Ukrainian troops) announced the introduction of a ‘curfew’ in the city from 22–00 on May 1 to 5–00 on May 3. For the duration of the ‘curfew’ Odessans are not allowed to leave their homes,” said the group Repression of the Left and Dissenters in Ukraine in a Telegram post. “Obviously, this decision of the authorities is due to the fact that May 2 is a very important date for the inhabitants of Odessa.””
It’s not a mystery. The curfew that just happens to overlap with the May 2 anniversary of the Odessa attacks was obviously imposed to avoid a repeat of what has become an annual ritual in Odessa: Every year on May 2, residents of Odessa come to the House of Trade Unions to honor the memory of the victims of that attack. And ever year, far right groups attack them as the police stand by:
But not this year. The annual far right attacks on observers of the Odessa massacre wasn’t allowed to happen. Why? Well, according to the following NBC New report, the Odessa authorities ordered the curfew due to concerns about Russian saboteurs. Yep, that’s the reasons the entire city was put under curfew. Russian saboteurs. They can’t actually cite specific threats, but they’re pretty sure Russian saboteurs are getting ready to wreck havoc and therefore declare the curfew:
“The first week of May typically brings tourists, barbecues and blooming flowers to Odesa, an international jewel of culture and commerce on the Black Sea. This year, however, it brought a daylong curfew as authorities feared the potential presence of Russian agents aimed at discord and destruction.”
The curfew wasn’t imposed to avoid a repeat of the annual May 2 far right beat down of the observers of the Odessa massacre. Nope, it was done to prevent Russian discord and destruction. That’s the official Ukrainian narrative around this decision:
What kind of impact is the PayPal cutoff ultimately going to have on Consortium News? We’ll see. It’s obviously vulnerable to financial distress. But whether or not this ends up being a crippling blow for the out, the message PayPal sent is clear: if you’re operating a small media outlet that’s dependent on online donations to function, there are lines you cannot cross. Unwritten lines, yes. But they’re pretty easy to see. Just look at all the stories and angles no one is covering, and be sure to also not cover them. Do that and the spigot stays on.
Stories about civilian deaths as a result of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities have been a regular occurrence since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Less common have been the reports pointing out how those civilian deaths have been adjacent to what appear to be legitimate military targets positioned next to the civilians, the missile attack next to a mall in Kremenchuk. But we just got a major update on that topic: Amnesty International just issued a report criticizing the Ukrainian government specifically for positioning military units in civilian areas.
The report unsurprisingly was met with angry denials by the Ukrainian government, which insists that any civilian deaths are solely the fault of Russia. Interestingly, this assessment is shared by the Ukraine office of Amnesty International, which reportedly tried to block the report. We are told he report was made entirely with the input of foreign observers and no input from the Ukraine office.
The head of the Ukraine office, Oksana Pokalchuk, ended up quitting in protest the next day while insisting that the report was being used as “Russian propaganda”. Interestingly, it turns out that Pokalchuk was unable to avoid the ire of the Ukrainian government despite her protests. The Myrotvorets website had already created a “blacklist” page target Pokalchuk. So we have to ask: how much of Pokalchuk’s vociferous opposition to this report was driven by a genuine disagreement on the report’s content vs fear of being blacklisted by her government and made into an ‘official enemy’ of Ukraine?
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t explicitly told that it was Myrotvorets that blacklisted Pokalchuk in the following NPR article. Instead, the article describes it as follows:
For whatever reason, this report refused to mention Anton Gerashenko by name or his role in creating Myrotvorets to intimidate journalists. Instead, he’s simply described as that of “a high-ranking official in Ukraine’s foreign ministry who manages relationships with foreign journalists”. In other words, this NPR article effectively self-censored any direct mention of Myrotvorets and the government officials behind it. It’s the kind of observation that underscores the kind of personal threats Pokalchuk was probably experiencing, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of this Amnesty report:
“Like Amnesty International, NPR’s journalists also have witnessed some evidence of military presence near bombed civilian areas.”
Amnesty International’s report is merely rehashing what has become increasingly clear in one story of civilian deaths after another. Even NPR is adding its own observations verifying the finding: these civilian deaths are being fueled by a decision to have a military presence in civilian areas. It’s the kind of report that should trigger a review of a number of stories of civilian deaths in this conflict.
Remarkably, it sounds like the report was made without any input from the Ukraine office of Amnesty International. Instead, that office did everything it could to block its release. It’s the kind of intra-agency conflict that suggests the reports we’ve been getting out of the Ukraine office of Amnesty International has been whitewashed garbage:
But perhaps the most notable aspect of this story is the apparent open government intimidation and censorship on display here. As the author the report, Donatella Rovera, describes it, “I think the level of self-censorship on this issue has been pretty extraordinary.” And yet we have to ask, is the apparent self-censorship of the head of the Ukraine office Amnesty International, Oksana Pokalchuk, driven at all by the fact that she was herself attacked by the government-run Myrotvorets “blacklist” website? Pokalchuk’s life was placed in immediate danger the moment Myrotvorets put that page up. Might that have something to do with Pokalchuk’s vociferous denials of the reports’ findings? Also note that we aren’t even told the name of the Nyrotvorets website in this NPR report. It’s merely described as ‘a Ukrainian website notorious for leaking the personal information of Ukraine’s alleged “enemies” listed her as a “participant in acts of humanitarian aggression in Ukraine” and “guilty of denying Ukraine’s right to defend itself.“ ’ So the name of Myrotvorets was effectively self-censored out of the part this NPR report describing Rovera’s observation on self-censorship in Ukraine. Take a moment and digest that:
So how is the Ukraine office Amnesty International going to handle its coverage of the conflict going forward now that there’s been a major split with its international parent organization? We’ll see, but whatever the Ukraine office does it won’t be under the leadership of Pokalchuk, as we learned the day after this report was released:
““It is painful to admit, but I and the leadership of Amnesty International have split over values,” Pokalchuk wrote. “I believe that any work done for the good of society should take into account the local context, and think through consequences.””
A split over values. That’s Pokalchuk’s stated basis for quitting the group. What is unstated is the threats she’s been inevitably receiving as a consequence of her Myrotvorets government blacklisting. We’ll see if quitting the group gets Pokalchuk removed from the blacklist.
So is Amnesty International going to be allowed to continue operating in Ukraine? We’ll see. It’s on the enemies list now, so at a minimum the Amnesty workers still operating in Ukraine should probably be watching for any new Myotvorets blacklistings of Amnesty’s employees. And also be on a the lookout for any military installations that suddenly pop up next to their offices and residences.
It’s been over a week since video evidence emerged of Ukrainian troops executing 10 Russian POWs laying flat on the ground with their hands on their heads. We’ll see what, if any investigation or consequences for this clear war crime. Presumably little to none on both fronts. At least, that’s what we can reasonably assume based on the lack of any investigations of consequences for the previous POW executions that have been caught on video. Like the executions of POWs and seemingly civilians too by the Georgian Legion back in early April in the wake of the Russian pullout of Bucha. The head of the Georgian Legion, Mamuka Mamulkashvili, even boasted about how the Legion wasn’t going to be taking any Russian prisoners alive in response to questions about those videos. Yes, he was very open about those war crimes. Proud even. And there haven’t been any discernible consequences for that so far and it’s hard to imagine there ever will be.
That’s part of the grim context of this latest video of executed Russian POWs. This is apparently allowed behavior. Or at least it’s not actively disallowed. Which means there’s almost certainly a lot more of it going on and has been throughout the conflict.
We haven’t heard any indication that the soldiers in the latest video were members of the Georgian Legion or one of the Ukrainian Nazi battalions. So we have to ask, how far has the practice of taking no prisoners spread from the Georgian Legion to the rest with the Ukrainian military? Along with the depressing question of what, if anything, will the international community do if it turns out this is a widely tolerated practice?
So with the Georgian Legion’s open practice of of the summary execution of POWs now seemingly tolerated for Ukrainian military, it’s worth taking a took at a fascinating piece in Covert Action Magazine covering the important historical connections between the figures and ideologies behind the Georgian Legion and the network of CIA-sponsored Ukrainian nationalist groups that have been operating continuously since WWII. The names of the groups might change, but networks and ideologies are the same.
As we’re going to see, while the Georgian Legion wasn’t formed until 2014, when its founder, Mamuka Mamulashvili, was already in Ukraine, the roots of the unit go back to Georgia’s civil war and the Abkhazian fight for autonomy in the final years of the Soviet Union. It was a civil war that saw Georgian ‘nationalists’ (fascists), like a then-14 year old Mamuka, fighting to not jut prevent Abkhazia from gaining autonomy from Georgia, but actually view the Abhkazian as foreign invaders who needed to be expelled from the land along with all minorities. Anyone who wasn’t a ‘true Georgian’ was be purged from land. And while the Georgian fascists ultimately that war, leaving Abkhazia with the autonomous status it enjoys today, it was that conflict where the ties between the Georgian and Ukrainian fascists was solidified. But when Georgia’s fascists made the call to their Ukrainian compatriots to help fight in Abkhazia, it was specifically the UNA-UNSO that answered that call.
It’s the relationship between the UNA-UNSO, its WWII predecessor the UNA, and the CIA’s deep decades-long relationship with both that is of paramount significance in terms of understanding the fascist dynamics playing out in Ukraine today. UNA-UNSO was itself dissolved in 2014, when its members went on to become founding members of Right Sector (founded in 2013), and the Azov Battalion (founded in 2014). You can’t understand what has been unfolding in Ukraine for the last decade without an appreciation of the role the UNA-UNSO played in connecting the CIA’s Cold War relationship with the Ukrainian nationalist groups that founded the UNA in 1990 and its UNA-UNSO paramilitary group formed in 1991 and the contemporary Ukrainian fascist groups like Azov and Right Sector. There’s a direct historical line, as evidence by the UNSO being led by none other than Yuri Shukhevych from 1991–2014. Recall how Roman Shukhevych was the leader of the Nachtigall Battalion that carried out the June 30, 1941 slaughter of Lviv’s Jewish population, the very same day the OUN‑B declared an independent Ukrainian (by very Nazi-oriented) state centered in Lviv. June 30 is also Shukheviych’s birthday and it was June 30, 2017, when the city of Lviv held the “Shukheviychfest” festival in his honor as part of a series of events the Ukrainian government was holding in honor of various WWII Ukrainian nationalist heroes. His son, Yuri, ended up leading the UNA-UNSO for its first 23 years, before it dissolved itself and its members went on to found groups like Azov and Right Sector. It’s a very direct historic line.
And when the Ukrainian ‘nationalists’ (fascists) were in their time of need in 2014, Mamuka and his fellow Georgian fascists paid back the favor, 23 years later. When Mamuka arrived in Ukraine he was met by a slew of Ukrainian fascist offshoots of the UNA-UNSO like the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, founded by Slava Stetsko, longtime CIA asset and wife of Nazi collaborator and CIA-asset Yaroslav Stetsko. Guess which date Slava chose for her 1991 return to Ukraine: June 30. Because of course that was the date. That was the milieu Mamuka was entering when he arrived in Ukraine in late 2013 to pay back the favor for the CIA-backed UNA-UNSO’s 1991 favor in Abkhazia.
And that historic tie between the Ukrainian and Georgian fascists isn’t just of historical interest. It’s also another piece of circumstantial evidence to include in the still-unresolved investigation into the 2014 Maidan sniper attacks. And as we’ve seen with Ivan Katchanovski’s study of the Maidan sniper attacks, not only is there strong circumstantial evidence that members of the Georgian Legion were the forces that initiated the sniper attacks on both the Maidan protestors and police, starting the chain of events that led to the downfall of the the Yanukovych government within days, but 5 Georgians have publicly claimed to have done exactly that but there’s been no investigation of their claims. The evidence has been pointing in the direct of the Georgian commandos for years now. Evidence that includes public admissions. So it’s important to keep in mind that if indeed the Georgians were behind those sniper attacks, they were returning a favor. A very huge favor delivered by the CIA-sponsored UNA-UNSO back in 1991.
Another important detail to keep in mind regarding the nature of the Georgian Legion: it was formed in 2014 inside Ukraine and its member don’t appear to have ever returned to Georgia and view the current Georgian government disfavorably. In other words, if we ever do hear about the Georgian Legion returning to Georgia, it’s probably going to be right before or right after some sort of far right coup.
So as we watch the non-investigation of these war crimes play out, it’s important to keep in mind that the group that has been normalizing this war crime appears to have some sort of special status, and not just inside Ukraine. The Georgian Legion played a key role in the success of the 2014 Maidan revolution and continues to have the strong support of Western governments and press. As opposed to facing consequences for war crimes, the Georgian Legion almost has international celebrity status, which is why we should probably expect these kinds of ISIS-style executions to get a lot more popular:
“Georgia has always been a borderland. Located in the heart of the Caucasus mountainss between Russia, Iran and Turkey, Georgia and its people have been wedged between great powers for most of their existence. Throughout the centuries, Georgia has been ruled at times by its home-grown monarchs along with Romans, Ottomans, Sassanids, Timurids, Mongols and Russians. All of them have influenced the development of Georgian culture in some form. As usual, the nationalists arguing for some sort of ethnic purity are arguing against their own history.”
Yep, the underlying historic arguments embraced by the these fascist movements to justify their desired ethnic cleansing is in reality ahistorical garbage. As usual. In the case of these fascists behind the Georgian Legion, it’s historical revisionism rooted in the history of Georgia and Abkhazia. A revisionist form of history that assumes the people who have lived in Abkhazia for centuries are actually the invaders who need to be expelled. And as the article describes, is was that fascist Georgian revisionist history that came to animate the anti-Soviet Georgian movements in the 1980s, with Zviad Gamsakhurdia rising to become the leader of this resistance. A resistance that viewed all minority groups is Georgia as a threat that had to be purged. Including the people of Abkhazia whose history is so deeply intertwined with Georgia’s history that they can’t be separated:
“Georgia for the Georgians.” Or rather, Georgia for the people Zviad Gamsakhurdia and fellow Georgian fascists viewed as ‘true’ Georgians according to their revisionist version of history. That was the nature of Gamsukhurdia’s brief anti-Soviet Georgian government. But he never got a chance to fullfill his desired ethnic cleansings, having been overthrown in a coup in less than a year. The new Mkhedrioni mafia state had mafia kingpin Jaba Ioseliani sitting on the four-man ruling council next to former Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs and Gorbachev acolyte Eduard Shevardnadze:
It was during this period of the final years of the Soviet Union that the centuries old autonomous status of Abhkavia came to the fore and bubble over into an outright ethnic conflict. After the fall of the Gamsakhurdia government in July of 1992, Abkhazia formally declared independence. The Mkhedrioni-state declared war:
And that war on Abkhazia waged by the Mkhedrioni government wasn’t just carried out by the Mkhedrioni militia. It was during that conflict that a 14 year old Mamuka Mamulashvili, the founder of the Georgian Legion, got his first battlefield experience. Importantly, it was the civil war in Abkhazia where Mamusashvili had his first brush with Ukrainian fascism. Specifically, Ukrainian fascist members of the Ukrainian National Assembly—Ukrainian People’s Self-Defence (UNA-UNSO), fighting on the side of Georgia against Abkhazia:
That relationship between the UNA-UNSO, its WWII predecessor the UNA, and the CIA’s deep decades-long relationship with both crucial for understanding the fascist dynamics playing out in Ukraine today. UNA-UNSO was itself dissolved in 2014, when its members went on to become founding members of Right Sector and the Azov Battalion. Led by Roman Shukhevych’s son, the UNA-UNSO connected the CIA’s Cold War relationship with the Ukrainian nationalist groups that founded the UNA in 1990 and its UNA-UNSO paramilitary group formed in 1991 and the contemporary Ukrainian fascist groups like Azov and Right Sector. Also, just a minor correction, but the CIA’s relationship with the OUN obviously didn’t start in 1944 since the CIA was created in 1947. Any prior relationship would have presumably gone through the OSS:
Also note how the UNA-UNSO came to fight in Abkhazia after answering the call of a Georgian-Ukrainian fascist Georgiy Gongadze once called himself the “Christian Taliban” and who went on the found one of Ukraine’s leading newspapers:
And while the UNA-UNSO’s help wasn’t enough in the end to defeat the Abkhazian fight for independence, the consequences of the fascist bonds formed in that conflict are still playing out today are have been since 2014 the Maidan revolution. Or rather, in 2013 when Mamuka arrived in Ukraine to return the favor, where he was met by a slew of Ukrainian fascist offshoots of the UNA-UNSO like the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, founded by Slava Stetsko, longtime CIA asset and wife of Nazi collaborator and CIA-asset Yaroslav Stetsko. It’s another direct historic line connecting the very real ‘Nazification’ of Ukraine over the last decade with the Nazification of Ukraine in WWII. The same ideology and in many cases the same people, but some new names for the groups. And same revered dates, like June 30, the date Slava Stesko chose for her 1991 return to Ukraine. That was the milieu Mamuka was entering when he arrived in Ukraine in late 2013. A milieu the CIA fell in love with over 60 years earlier and never stopped loving:
And as we’ve seen with Ivan Katchanovski’s study of the Maidan stiper attacks the evidence of the Georgian Legion’s role in the sniper attacks includes the public admissions by 5 Georgian commandos. And that makes the role the UNA-UNSO played in the fight to retake Abkhazia important context regarding the role Mamuka’s Georgian Legion played in the Maidan sniper attacks 23 years later. And also part of the context for the subsequent coverup. Of course the Ukrainian government doesn’t want to investigate this:
But it’s not just Ukraine that has a stake in maintaining the reputation of the Georgian Legion. Like Azov, the Georgian Legion is a DC darling, with Mamuka playing the lead role:
And regarding the millions of dollars raised specifically for the Georgian Legion by the meme lords at NAFO, recall how NAFO is routinely described as having “no command structure” was found to have all of the hallmarks of an organized hierarchy. It’s Discord server is run by founders, assigned administrators, moderators, and “forgers” who make memes used for harassing people on social media. “Verified fellas” are granted access to otherwise locked channels, while regular “fellas” are assigned more mundane roles. And journalist or prominent figures critical of Ukraine or NATO on Twitter are targeted by that swarm with hundreds of replies accusing them of being paid by Putin from accounts with Shiba Inu dog avatars. . NAFO may choose the Georgian Legion as the recipients of their donations but it doesn’t appear to be actually run by members of the Georgian Legions and instead operates like a more generic hyper-aggressive pro-NATO Twitter troll swarm:
And that international Georgian Legion fan base — both digital fans and fans in West government and intelligence-service fans — has not only been maintained but blossomed in the face of damning evidence that the Georgian Legion engaged in ISIS-style summary executions of POWs in Bucha in the early weeks of this conflict. Much like the Georgians who publicly admitted their role in the 2014 Maidan sniper attacks, Mamuka Mamulashvili hasn’t hid his desire to commit these exact types of war crimes:
And that’s all part of the grim context of the latest round of POW execution videos. Execution videos that are presumably just showing us a small sample of what is likely a now-routine type of war crime. At least it’s hard to not assume this is routine after the Georgian Legion got away with openly boasting about it and then went on to enjoy its international celebrity status.
This is one of those stories about the West’s love affair with Ukrainian Nazis that should have been seen as a big deal, and is indeed getting treated as a big deal, but it’s still unclear why it’s actually is receiving such treatment. What changed?
That would, of course, be the story of the political scandal that suddenly erupted in Canada following the standing ovation given by the Canadian parliament to a Yaroslav Hunka, 98 year old veteran of the “SS Galichina” 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. An ovation that followed the extremely flattering words of Speaker of the House Anthony Rota. Hunka was declared “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” by Rota. Importantly, this all happened during a visit by President Volodomyr Zelenskyy.
And then, belatedly, people started to point out the guy was probably a war criminal and all hell broke lose, at least politically, with everyone scrambling to distance themselves from the whole affair. So given that virtually everyone involved is playing dumb about the situation, here’s a pair of article that highlight some of the content that’s been long available to the world on a blog maintained by an association of SS Galichina veterans. Content like a blog posts where Hunka describes 1941 to 1943 as the happiest years of his life and where he compares veterans of the unit, now scattered across the world, to Jews. He also reportedly wondered as a 16-year-old student why Jewish classmates were “running away from such a civilized western people” as the Germans.
How many more nuggets likes that are there stored on the Ukrainian-language blog? We knows, but it’s now clear that Canada’s politicians don’t want to find out. But there are some politicians who are now suddenly very interested in learning more about Hunka’s WWII activities: Polish politicians, who are now calling looking into Hunka’s extradition. In other words, this story is far from over, which is presumably why Rota has now stepped down as Speaker.
It’s not the Ukraine Nazi freak out we would have expected, given recent history, but it happened. So it appears we may have found the ‘line’ that cannot be crossed Ukrainian Nazis: direct participation in the Holocaust isn’t ok. You can be a modern Nazi, but old Nazis are not welcome. At least not anymore...barring the occasional standing ovation from a parliament:
“This is the same unit that is honored by controversial monuments in Canada, Australia, and, as the Forward recently exposed, the suburbs of Philadelphia and Detroit. Jewish groups have called for their removal.”
Yeah, it’s not like this was really an isolated incident. This is the same SS Galichina unit with monuments honoring it scattered across the West. Canada, Australia, Philadelphia, and Detroit. In other words, the honoring of a member of this unit wasn’t some random ‘oopsy’. A lot of effort has gone into rehabilitating the image of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS:
And note how the AP originally played along with this image rehabilitation, using the name “First Ukrainian Division” in its initial reporting:
But it’s note just that Hunka was a member of a notorious unit accused of war crimes. A blog maintained by an association of veterans of the group includes recollections from Hunka. Like his description of 1941–43 as the happiest years of his life and that compares veterans of the unit to Jews:
And that’s not the only revealing detail stored in that blog? For example, Hunka actually reminisces about how, as a 16-year-old student, he wondered why Jewish classmates were “running away from such a civilized western people” as the Germans:
“It may very well be that the Liberal government is blameless in what adds up to a dreadful Canadian foreign-policy fiasco; no doubt the access-to-information requests for the potential background of this scandal are being revved up as we speak. Rota, as Speaker, undoubtedly had the constitutional ability to recognize Hunka in his own remarks without even googling his background, which might have turned up the old chap’s own written account of the reasons and context for his SS service. (Hunka’s article mentions that, as a 16-year-old student, he wondered why Jewish classmates were “running away from such a civilized western people” as the Germans.) The very text of Rota’s own speech — “Hey, you know who else fought against the Russians back in the early ’40s?” – would surely have rung alarms in the mind of any semi-educated person who glanced at it.”
What were the Jews so scared of? He actually wrote that, and it’s been up online in a blog post since 2011. This wasn’t some sort of secret history.
And that brings us to the following update on the story: Poland is now looking into Hunka’s extradition over his role in the unit’s war crimes. So if it wasn’t entirely obvious that a war criminal was being hailed by Canada’s parliament, it’s about to get a lot more obvious:
“In a letter to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a body that researches and investigates past crimes against the Polish nation, Czarnek asked it to “urgently examine” whether Hunka is wanted for crimes against Polish people of Jewish origin, adding that “signs of such crimes are grounds to apply to Canada for his extradition.””
It’s going to be interesting to see how Poland’s ‘examination’ of Hunka’s WWII history plays out. Especially in Canada. But we don’t have to wonder if this scandal will eventually force speaker Anthony Rota to step down as speaker. He already stepped down. It’s progress. Probably not enough progress to get Canada to stop repeatedly getting caught providing military training for Ukrainian Nazis despite all the denials, but progress.