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FTR#1291 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Part 23

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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

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1291 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Lviv, Ukaine, Sum­mer of 2018. Cel­e­bra­tion of the 75th anniver­sary of the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion (Gali­cian). Note the Ukrain­ian hon­or guard in the back­ground.

Intro­duc­tion: Updat­ing the Ukraine war, this broad­cast cen­ters large­ly on the whole­sale white­wash­ing of Ukrain­ian Nazi fight­ing for­ma­tions, the Azov units, in par­tic­u­lar.

In turn, this white­wash­ing is the his­tor­i­cal cul­mi­na­tion of a long process.

As Mr. Emory has not­ed in many pro­grams and posts, the Rus­sia-Ukraine war has com­plet­ed the process of the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca that he has chron­i­cled for the bet­ter part of half a cen­tu­ry.

A cen­tral role in that process was played by Gen­er­al Franz Halder.

We have tak­en note of Halder before, dis­cussing the fact that Rein­hard Gehlen cleared his for­ma­tion of a work­ing agree­ment with the U.S. by con­fer­ring with Halder and Admi­ral Karl von Doenitz, who suc­ceed­ed Hitler, fol­low­ing his alleged “sui­cide.”

Per­haps even more impor­tant is his deci­sive post-war work revis­ing the his­to­ry of the Wehrma­cht and World War  II, shep­herd­ing bla­tant, read­i­ly ver­i­fi­able lies into accept­ed his­tor­i­cal truth.

In the long, ongo­ing series of pro­grams about the Ukraine war, Mr. Emory has dis­cussed his belief that the war has func­tioned in a man­ner not unlike the Philoso­pher’s Stone of the medieval alchemists.

That stone was believed to be able to trans­form lead into gold. The war is trans­form­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions in the West into the same his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist fab­ric as the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

” . . . . After the war, he lived a com­fort­able life as an author, com­men­ta­tor and ‘his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant’ for the U.S. Army Cen­ter of Mil­i­tary His­to­ry (CMH). . . .”

“. . . . Halder’s job was to reha­bil­i­tate Nazism for the ben­e­fit of his new Amer­i­can patrons. If the Nazis could be ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the Ger­man peo­ple and the Ger­man Army, Amer­i­ca could use the most use­ful of Hitler’s sol­diers in their war against the Sovi­et Union with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cion. Halder over­saw a team of 700 for­mer Wehrma­cht offi­cers and inten­tion­al­ly set about rewrit­ing his­to­ry to present the image of a clean Wehrma­cht and a Ger­man peo­ple igno­rant of Nazi bru­tal­i­ty. His deputy was CIA agent Adolf Heusinger, a Nazi war crim­i­nal who was large­ly respon­si­ble for plan­ning the end­less mas­sacres of ‘secu­ri­ty war­fare,’ and was lat­er a com­man­der of both the Ger­man Army and NATO. . . .”

” . . . . Halder enjoyed spe­cial sta­tus, releas­ing infor­ma­tion to only the most priv­i­leged jour­nal­ists and his­to­ri­ans. With the legit­i­ma­cy grant­ed by his title, access to infor­ma­tion, and U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ing, Halder’s CMH was con­sid­ered a gold stan­dard source for aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans and their infor­ma­tion was high­ly cov­et­ed. Halder used this to care­ful­ly vet to whom he released infor­ma­tion, ensur­ing he got the max­i­mum impact.”

“From 1955 to 1991 his works were cit­ed at least 700 times in aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­fes­sors and researchers in West­ern mil­i­tary acad­e­mies. Since West­ern his­to­ri­ans were forced to drink from Halder’s well, they passed down the poi­son to their stu­dents, and from there the lies worked their way into the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Even­tu­al­ly, Nazi pro­pa­gan­da was laun­dered into ‘truth’ through sim­ple rep­e­ti­tion and care­ful con­trol of sources. . . . .”

Next, we detail the ide­o­log­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the top Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary com­man­der with Third Reich Ally Stephan Ban­dera.

The Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Four Star Gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­nyi is not shy about his pro­found affin­i­ty with Ban­dera: “ . . . . Zaluzh­nyi is shown in uni­form stand­ing in a mil­i­tary office with sev­er­al oth­er sol­diers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN‑B lead­ers and Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Pho­tos of both Shukhevych and Ban­dera are also promi­nent­ly hang­ing on the wall in the back­ground along with the red and black Ban­derite flag. . . .”

As dis­cussed in our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, post-World War II U.S. polit­i­cal cul­ture has been shaped by the Nazi/Pentagon alliance of Gen­er­al Franz Halder and hun­dreds of his for­mer fel­low Wehrma­cht offi­cers. That alliance has re-shaped the per­cep­tion of the Sec­ond World War in an unabashed­ly pro-Nazi fash­ion.

The white­wash­ing of Ban­dera and his OUN/B dates back to the incor­po­ra­tion of that organization’s par­ent agency, the Rein­hard Gehlen “Org” into the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment.

The Belarus Secret by John Lof­tus; Alfred A. Knopf & Co. [HC]; Copy­right 1982 by John Lof­tus; ISBN 0–394-52292–3; p. 104.

. . . . The CIC had an agent who pho­tographed eleven vol­umes of the secret files of the OUN/Bandera.  These files clear­ly show how most of its mem­bers worked for the Gestapo or SS as police­men, exe­cu­tion­ers, par­ti­san hunters, and munic­i­pal offi­cials. The OUN con­tri­bu­tion to the Ger­man war effort was sig­nif­i­cant, includ­ing rais­ing vol­un­teers for sev­er­al SS divi­sions. It was pre­cise­ly because of its work with the Nazis that Wis­ner want­ed to hire the OUN for his spe­cial forces. . . .

The New York Times has been at the fore­front of the white­wash­ing of the Azov for­ma­tions and whole­sale denial of the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty struc­ture.

Now, “the Gray Lady” has been glo­ri­fy­ing the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, anoth­er of the fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions in the Ukrain­ian order of bat­tle.

Descend­ed from the UNA-UNSO, itself hav­ing been led by Yuri Shukhevych, son and col­lab­o­ra­tor of Roman Shukhevych, the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion is being hailed as an exem­plary com­man­do unit.

(Roman Shukhevych was an OUN/B war crim­i­nal who, among oth­er things, led the Lvov pogrom of June 30, 1941 com­mit­ted by the SS-con­trolled Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall. He was declared a “Hero of Ukraine” by the polit­i­cal forces behind the Maid­an coup.)

Among those join­ing the nor­mal­iza­tion of Azov Nazis are: Vogue mag­a­zine, MSNBC and the School of Visu­al Arts (New York).

For­mer press offi­cer of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Dmytro Kozatsky has achieved grav­i­tas in the West at the named insti­tu­tions.

“ . . . . Protests erupt­ed at DOC NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­atre in Man­hat­tan, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised the accu­sa­tions dur­ing a Q&A were forcibly removed from the event. . . .”

Author Lam­bert Strether con­cludes: “ . . . . what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is pen­e­trat­ing our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Book­ing agents, facil­i­ties man­agers, press agents, board mem­bers who orga­nize such things, fash­ion edi­tors, net­work anchors: All com­bin­ing their efforts to ser­vice a Nazi pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as if it were the most nor­mal thing in the world, which at this point per­haps it is. . . .”

The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca via the Azov “Philosopher’s Stone” has swept up Con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both polit­i­cal par­ties and aca­d­e­m­ic groups at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

Not to be out­done by the above indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions, the ADL has joined the cho­rus declar­ing that the Azovs aren’t Nazis.

Per­haps the white­wash­ing of the Azov Nazis should not sur­prise, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the for­ma­tions’ atroc­i­ties in Ukraine are wide­ly attrib­uted to—drumroll, fanfare—the Rus­sians!

Fore­most in the West­ern fal­si­fi­ca­tion of Ukrainian/Azov atroc­i­ties is the mas­sacre at Bucha, which helped ter­mi­nate and mar­gin­al­ize ongo­ing behind-the-scenes nego­ti­a­tions to end the war.

One of the few West­ern voic­es cor­rect­ly attribut­ing the Bucha mas­sacre is Scott Rit­ter.

“ . . . . Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces, in par­tic­u­lar the “Safari” unit staffed by vet­er­ans of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment, caught up with scores of these refugees while they made their way north and, in the ver­nac­u­lar of the Ukraini­ans, “cleansed” them, gun­ning them down on the spot, or bind­ing their hands behind their backs before exe­cut­ing them in the alley­ways and streets of Bucha. . . .”

1.  As Mr. Emory has not­ed in many pro­grams and posts, the Rus­sia-Ukraine war has com­plet­ed the process of the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca that he has chron­i­cled for the bet­ter part of half a cen­tu­ry.

A cen­tral role in that process was played by Gen­er­al Franz Halder.

We have tak­en note of Halder before, dis­cussing the fact that Rein­hard Gehlen cleared his for­ma­tion of a work­ing agree­ment with the U.S. by con­fer­ring with Halder and Admi­ral Karl von Doenitz, who suc­ceed­ed Hitler, fol­low­ing his alleged “sui­cide.”

Per­haps even more impor­tant is his deci­sive post-war work revis­ing the his­to­ry of the Wehrma­cht and World War  II, shep­herd­ing bla­tant, read­i­ly ver­i­fi­able lies into accept­ed his­tor­i­cal truth.

In the long, ongo­ing series of pro­grams about the Ukraine war, Mr. Emory has dis­cussed his belief that the war has func­tioned in a man­ner not unlike the Philoso­pher’s Stone of the medieval alchemists.

That stone was believed to be able to trans­form lead into gold. The war is trans­form­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions in the West into the same his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist fab­ric as the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

” . . . . After the war, he lived a com­fort­able life as an author, com­men­ta­tor and ‘his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant’ for the U.S. Army Cen­ter of Mil­i­tary His­to­ry (CMH). . . .”

“. . . . Halder’s job was to reha­bil­i­tate Nazism for the ben­e­fit of his new Amer­i­can patrons. If the Nazis could be ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the Ger­man peo­ple and the Ger­man Army, Amer­i­ca could use the most use­ful of Hitler’s sol­diers in their war against the Sovi­et Union with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cion. Halder over­saw a team of 700 for­mer Wehrma­cht offi­cers and inten­tion­al­ly set about rewrit­ing his­to­ry to present the image of a clean Wehrma­cht and a Ger­man peo­ple igno­rant of Nazi bru­tal­i­ty. His deputy was CIA agent Adolf Heusinger, a Nazi war crim­i­nal who was large­ly respon­si­ble for plan­ning the end­less mas­sacres of ‘secu­ri­ty war­fare,’ and was lat­er a com­man­der of both the Ger­man Army and NATO. . . .”

” . . . . Halder enjoyed spe­cial sta­tus, releas­ing infor­ma­tion to only the most priv­i­leged jour­nal­ists and his­to­ri­ans. With the legit­i­ma­cy grant­ed by his title, access to infor­ma­tion, and U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ing, Halder’s CMH was con­sid­ered a gold stan­dard source for aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans and their infor­ma­tion was high­ly cov­et­ed. Halder used this to care­ful­ly vet to whom he released infor­ma­tion, ensur­ing he got the max­i­mum impact.”

“From 1955 to 1991 his works were cit­ed at least 700 times in aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­fes­sors and researchers in West­ern mil­i­tary acad­e­mies. Since West­ern his­to­ri­ans were forced to drink from Halder’s well, they passed down the poi­son to their stu­dents, and from there the lies worked their way into the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Even­tu­al­ly, Nazi pro­pa­gan­da was laun­dered into ‘truth’ through sim­ple rep­e­ti­tion and care­ful con­trol of sources. . . . .”

“How a Net­work of Nazi Pro­pa­gan­dists Helped Lay the Ground­work for the War in Ukraine” by Evan Reif; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 2/3/2023.

“His­to­ry isn’t what hap­pened, but the sto­ries of what hap­pened and the lessons these sto­ries include. The very selec­tion of which his­to­ries to teach in a soci­ety shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we under­stand as pos­si­ble. This choice of which his­to­ry to teach can nev­er be ‘neu­tral’ or ‘objec­tive.’ Those who choose, either fol­low­ing a set agen­da or guid­ed by hid­den prej­u­dices, serve their inter­ests. Their inter­ests could be to con­tin­ue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.” – Howard Zinn

In the after­math of the Sec­ond World War, many of the archi­tects of the worst atroc­i­ties in his­to­ry were res­cued and pro­tect­ed by Amer­i­can intel­li­gence. The overt role of Nazi sci­en­tists such as Wern­er von Braun (who per­son­al­ly over­saw the tor­ture and mur­der of slave labor­ers) in the Unit­ed States space pro­gram and West Ger­man indus­try has been com­mon knowl­edge for decades.

In recent years the end of the Cold War has brought rev­e­la­tions about the CIA’s “glad­i­a­tors” such as Yaroslav Stet­sko and Licio Gel­li influ­enc­ing the world’s polit­i­cal devel­op­ment by any means nec­es­sary. From Ger­many and Italy to Japan and South Korea, there is now a vast col­lec­tion of evi­dence prov­ing the exis­tence of large, well-fund­ed net­works of fas­cist ter­ror­ists who did not hes­i­tate to use vio­lence to ensure com­pli­ance from the “free” peo­ple of the world.

How­ev­er, what is less well known is that thou­sands of fas­cist-lean­ing and anti-com­mu­nist aca­d­e­mics were also res­cued and nur­tured by the U.S. to wage an ide­o­log­i­cal war against Com­mu­nism. These revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­ans spent decades labor­ing in the shad­ows of the aca­d­e­m­ic press until the fall of the Sovi­et Union allowed them to return home and final­ly rewrite his­to­ry to their lik­ing. After decades of effort, we can now see the results of their work, the seeds plant­ed 70 years ago are final­ly bear­ing their poi­soned fruit.

Sow­ing the Seeds

“This strug­gle requires ruth­less and ener­getic action against Bol­she­vik agi­ta­tors, guer­ril­las, sabo­teurs, and Jews, and the total elim­i­na­tion of all active or pas­sive resis­tance” – Franz Halder, Guide­lines for the Con­duct of the Troops in Rus­sia

One of the first and most impor­tant of these his­to­ri­ans was not a his­to­ri­an at all.

Franz Halder was a career staff offi­cer, start­ing with the Reich­swehr in World War I. He joined the Nazi Par­ty in 1933 and his close per­son­al friend­ship with Hitler helped him climb the ranks very quick­ly. By 1938, he was named Chief of Gen­er­al Staff of the Oberkom­man­do des Heeres (OKH), which made Halder the head of plan­ning for the entire Ger­man army and sec­ond in com­mand only to the Führer him­self. No order could leave OKH head­quar­ters with­out the approval and sig­na­ture of Franz Halder. This means that Halder was not only inti­mate­ly aware of the regime’s crimes, but he planned most of them.

Start­ing with the inva­sion of Poland in 1939, Halder per­son­al­ly autho­rized the liq­ui­da­tion of “unde­sir­ables” such as Jews, Poles and Com­mu­nists. His office was respon­si­ble for the infa­mous Com­mis­sar Order and Bar­barossa Decree, which allowed Nazi sol­diers to exe­cute civil­ians at will and with­out reper­cus­sions. These orders led to the even­tu­al death of mil­lions in the Sovi­et Union, both through depor­ta­tion to camps and through bru­tal reprisal cam­paigns in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

“Col­lec­tive dras­tic action will be tak­en imme­di­ate­ly against com­mu­ni­ties from which treach­er­ous or insid­i­ous attacks against the Wehrma­cht are launched, on the orders of an offi­cer with at least the rank of bat­tal­ion com­man­der upwards, if the cir­cum­stances do not per­mit a speedy appre­hen­sion of indi­vid­ual cul­prits.”- Decree on the juris­dic­tion of mar­tial law and on spe­cial mea­sures of the troops (aka the Bar­barossa Decree), May 13, 1941.

Under the euphemism of “secu­ri­ty war­fare,” the Nazis anni­hi­lat­ed entire vil­lages and towns in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry. Depend­ing on the time and place, this was done through meth­ods rang­ing from gun­fire and torch­es to tor­ture, rape, and pil­lag­ing. The result was always the same. Any set­tle­ment which may have held alleged par­ti­sans was com­plete­ly depop­u­lat­ed of every man, woman and child.

All in all, a min­i­mum of 20 mil­lion Sovi­et civil­ians were killed by the Nazis, but some Russ­ian schol­ars esti­mate that the true num­ber is at least dou­ble that.

Halder was a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al; he poured over doc­u­ments for weeks, writ­ing and re-writ­ing them to ensure the lan­guage was as pre­cise and unam­bigu­ous as pos­si­ble. He was suc­cess­ful, as his orders were heav­i­ly used as evi­dence against the Nazi regime in the Nurem­berg tri­als and even today are specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed as the sort of crim­i­nal orders that sol­diers must refuse.

The Allies con­sid­ered Halder’s orders so rep­re­hen­si­ble that Nazis such as Her­mann Hoth and Wil­helm von Leeb were con­vict­ed of crimes against human­i­ty sim­ply for trans­mit­ting them to their sub­or­di­nates. Many low­er-rank­ing Nazis were hanged for fol­low­ing Halder’s orders in the Sovi­et Union. Despite this, Halder suf­fered no con­se­quences what­so­ev­er for issu­ing them.

After Halder sur­ren­dered to the U.S. Army, the Unit­ed States refused to try him at Nurem­berg. Instead, he faced only a minor tri­al for “aid­ing the Nazi regime” in a Ger­man court. He denied any knowl­edge of the crimes that bore his lit­er­al sig­na­ture and was found not guilty. After the war, he lived a com­fort­able life as an author, com­men­ta­tor and “his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant” for the U.S. Army Cen­ter of Mil­i­tary His­to­ry (CMH).

The old fas­cist was res­cued from the gal­lows to serve as the chief plan­ner for anoth­er war. Halder no longer planned vast bat­tles and the exter­mi­na­tion of races, but he remained at the fore­front of the war against what Halder called “Judeo-Bol­she­vism,” a term he learned from his beloved Führer.

Halder’s job was to reha­bil­i­tate Nazism for the ben­e­fit of his new Amer­i­can patrons. If the Nazis could be ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the Ger­man peo­ple and the Ger­man Army, Amer­i­ca could use the most use­ful of Hitler’s sol­diers in their war against the Sovi­et Union with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cion. Halder over­saw a team of 700 for­mer Wehrma­cht offi­cers and inten­tion­al­ly set about rewrit­ing his­to­ry to present the image of a clean Wehrma­cht and a Ger­man peo­ple igno­rant of Nazi bru­tal­i­ty. His deputy was CIA agent Adolf Heusinger, a Nazi war crim­i­nal who was large­ly respon­si­ble for plan­ning the end­less mas­sacres of “secu­ri­ty war­fare,” and was lat­er a com­man­der of both the Ger­man Army and NATO.

Through manip­u­la­tion, fab­ri­ca­tion and wide­spread cen­sor­ship, Halder and Heusinger cre­at­ed a com­plete nar­ra­tive of them­selves and the Wehrma­cht as bril­liant, noble, and hon­or­able vic­tims of the mad­man Hitler rather than the mon­sters who butchered a con­ti­nent.

Halder and Heusinger pub­lished reams of fan­tas­ti­cal lies with the CMH, say­ing that the Wehrma­cht com­mit­ted no crimes on the East­ern Front. Accord­ing to Halder and Heusinger, the Nazis set up mar­kets and cul­tur­al cen­ters to buy food from local farm­ers and hold dances and social events for grate­ful peo­ple. Halder and Heusinger only briefly men­tion prob­lems in the East, say­ing they were car­ried out by “Judeo-Bol­she­vik” NKVD infil­tra­tors instead of the noble Wehrma­cht.

None of this could have been far­ther from the truth. Under unam­bigu­ous orders from the OKH, the Wehrma­cht was direct­ly respon­si­ble for the sub­ju­ga­tion and exter­mi­na­tion of an entire con­ti­nent as part of Gen­er­alplan Ost. Every bit of East­ern Europe was to be picked clean both by and for the ben­e­fit of the Wehrma­cht, and the sol­diers did their duty.

The pri­ma­ry weapon was star­va­tion. The Wehrma­cht sus­tained itself from the con­quered lands, draw­ing on both resources and labor in mas­sive quan­ti­ties. Bru­tal req­ui­si­tion pro­grams for grain and meat killed mil­lions while the rest toiled to feed their Nazi over­lords on a dai­ly ration of 420 calo­ries. In the plan­ning phase for Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, the Nazis con­clud­ed that the war was only winnable if the entire Wehrma­cht was fed from Sovi­et land by the third year. By 1944 the Nazis req­ui­si­tioned more than 5 mil­lion tons of grain and 10.6 mil­lion tons of oth­er food­stuffs from occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry, 80% of which was con­sumed by the Wehrma­cht.

The Nazis need­ed more than just food to con­quer the world. They also need­ed weapons and equip­ment. For this, Ger­many mus­tered its world-famous indus­tri­al might. The infa­mous con­cen­tra­tion camps con­tained mas­sive fac­to­ry and labor com­plex­es where mil­lions of slaves were worked to death, build­ing the weapons and equip­ment the Wehrma­cht used to sub­ju­gate them. Giv­en the mag­ni­tude of the con­tracts, very few Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions kept their hands clean, and even the dirt­i­est kept all their blood mon­ey after the war.

The two ele­ments had an almost per­fect sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship. Ger­man cap­i­tal served the inter­ests of the Army, and the Army served the inter­ests of cap­i­tal. As the Nazis con­quered, they took slaves to build more weapons, which would then be used to con­quer and take more slaves. The two-head­ed mon­ster exploit­ed con­quered land with such sav­age effi­cien­cy that Nazi gen­er­als and eco­nom­ic plan­ners feared run­ning out of slaves.

“When we shoot the Jews to death, allow the POWs to die, expose con­sid­er­able por­tions of the urban pop­u­la­tion to star­va­tion, and in the upcom­ing year also lose a part of the rur­al pop­u­la­tion to hunger, the ques­tion remains to be answered: Who is actu­al­ly sup­posed to pro­duce eco­nom­ic val­ue?” – Maj. Gen. Hans Leykauf

Despite the sheer enor­mi­ty of his crimes, Halder’s laun­dry was wild­ly suc­cess­ful; it was not until after the fall of the USSR that any West­ern his­to­ri­an ques­tioned his lies.

Even well-mean­ing researchers were ensnared by Halder’s trap. Halder enjoyed spe­cial sta­tus, releas­ing infor­ma­tion to only the most priv­i­leged jour­nal­ists and his­to­ri­ans. With the legit­i­ma­cy grant­ed by his title, access to infor­ma­tion, and U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ing, Halder’s CMH was con­sid­ered a gold stan­dard source for aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans and their infor­ma­tion was high­ly cov­et­ed. Halder used this to care­ful­ly vet to whom he released infor­ma­tion, ensur­ing he got the max­i­mum impact.

From 1955 to 1991 his works were cit­ed at least 700 times in aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­fes­sors and researchers in West­ern mil­i­tary acad­e­mies. Since West­ern his­to­ri­ans were forced to drink from Halder’s well, they passed down the poi­son to their stu­dents, and from there the lies worked their way into the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Even­tu­al­ly, Nazi pro­pa­gan­da was laun­dered into “truth” through sim­ple rep­e­ti­tion and care­ful con­trol of sources.

Although access to Sovi­et records has led to increas­ing resis­tance to this pro­pa­gan­da, some his­to­ri­ans, such as Tim­o­thy Sny­der of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, still lean heav­i­ly on, or recy­cle Halder’s ideas to sup­port what is known as the “dou­ble geno­cide” the­o­ry. Cre­at­ed by Baltic neo-Nazis to hide their involve­ment in the Holo­caust and wide­spread col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazi regime, this the­o­ry lan­guished in the dark­ness until Sny­der brought it into the main­stream with “Blood­lands.” Even 70 years after its pub­li­ca­tion, Halder’s poi­son remains a key ele­ment in attempts to por­tray the Red Army as noth­ing more than sav­ages, and there­by make the Nazis seem tame.

The Army knew that Halder pub­lished noth­ing but apolo­gia, but that was the point. Halder remained with the Army for decades and was fre­quent­ly reward­ed for a job well done. He was even giv­en a medal for Mer­i­to­ri­ous Civil­ian Ser­vice in 1961, in hon­or of his tire­less ser­vice in the cause of geno­cide denial.

“It is nec­es­sary to elim­i­nate the red sub­hu­mans, along with their Krem­lin dic­ta­tors. The Ger­man peo­ple will have to com­plete the great­est task in their his­to­ry, and the world will hear that this task will be com­plet­ed to the end.” – Wehrma­cht Mes­sages for the troops, № 112, June 1941

The Fer­tile Soil

“In the East, I intend to loot and pil­lage effec­tive­ly. All that may be suit­able for the Ger­mans in the East, should be extract­ed and brought to Ger­many imme­di­ate­ly.” – Her­mann Goer­ing

After decades of strug­gling in the dark, the fall of the Sovi­et Union cre­at­ed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for fas­cist aca­d­e­mics. As ex-Sovi­et pro­fes­sors left, retired, or were fired in the tumul­tuous 1990s, an entire gen­er­a­tion of fas­cist aca­d­e­mics nur­tured in the West was stand­ing by to replace them.

Lav­ish­ly fund­ed pri­vate schools popped up all over the for­mer War­saw Pact, staffed with fas­cist pro­fes­sors from Cana­da, Aus­tralia and the U.S. who had spent decades reha­bil­i­tat­ing their Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist pre­de­ces­sors.

With almost lim­it­less finan­cial back­ing from NATO and a dizzy­ing array of affil­i­at­ed NGOs, the fas­cists could now rewrite his­to­ry to their lik­ing and train an entire gen­er­a­tion of new sol­diers in their ide­o­log­i­cal war.

As an exam­ple of this, we can focus on the life and times of Kyiv inde­pen­dent war cor­re­spon­dent Illia Pono­marenko. Through him, we can see some of the gears in the machine.

Illia was born in the town of Vol­no­vakha, Donet­sk Oblast, Rus­sia. Then a part of Ukraine, this town of around 20,000 peo­ple sits about 40 miles north of Mar­i­upol and the Sea of Azov.

Found­ed in 1881 as a sta­tion for what was known as “Catherine’s rail­way,” a major rail project posthu­mous­ly named after the long-reign­ing Empress, had been most­ly unre­mark­able since. Illia even­tu­al­ly moved south to attend col­lege in Mar­i­upol, the indus­tri­al port city which formed the back­bone of the region’s econ­o­my.

Mar­i­upol and the sur­round­ing area have often been swept up in the tumul­tuous his­to­ry of Ukraine. The region was a major flash­point in the Russ­ian Civ­il War and changed hands many times in the fight­ing between the Red Army, Tsarist forces, Makhno’s ban­dits, and the Cen­tral Pow­ers before it was recap­tured by Sovi­et forces in 1920.

In the fol­low­ing decades, the region saw an explo­sion in eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment due to its strate­gic posi­tion on the Sea of Azov only a short fer­ry trip from the USSR’s rich­est iron mines. Most notable was the now-famous Azovstal steel plant, a crown jew­el of Stalin’s first five-year plan. The foun­da­tions were laid for the plant in 1930 and, by 1933 Azovstal pro­duced its first ingot of cast iron. Pro­duc­tion increased rapid­ly, and in 1939 the plant set a world record by pro­duc­ing 1,614 tons of pig iron in a sin­gle day.

When the Nazis came to enslave Ukraine, Mar­i­upol and Azovstal stood res­olute. The plant pro­duced armor for T‑34 tanks until the bit­ter end with the last work­ers being evac­u­at­ed the same day the Nazis cap­tured the city. As they left, the work­ers destroyed the blast fur­naces and pow­er plants to deny them to the ene­my. Azovstal fell under the con­trol of Krupp, but repeat­ed sab­o­tage from Sovi­et par­ti­sans kept the fac­to­ry out of ser­vice until 1945.

More than 6,000 Azovstal work­ers fought against the Nazis as par­ti­sans or Red Army sol­diers. Sev­er­al hun­dred were dec­o­rat­ed for val­or, with eight of those being award­ed Hero of the Sovi­et Union, the high­est pos­si­ble award for a Red Army sol­dier. Sad­ly, hun­dreds paid the ulti­mate price in the war against fas­cism. A mon­u­ment was erect­ed in their hon­or out­side the plant which has been allowed to crum­ble by the Maid­an regime, no doubt ashamed of what it rep­re­sents.

Even this great and cost­ly vic­to­ry only brought a reprieve for Mar­i­upol. The peo­ple of Mar­i­upol lived for decades in peace and pros­per­i­ty, bliss­ful­ly unaware of what was com­ing next. In 1991, less than 50 years after the vic­to­ry of 1945, the mon­sters returned to once again rav­age Ukraine and its peo­ple.

In 1990, after a decade of eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage and on the verge of col­lapse, the Human Devel­op­ment Index of the USSR was the 25th high­est in the world, at .920. After the col­lapse one year lat­er, it would nev­er again be so high.

In 2019, the last year data was pub­lished before the war, Rus­sia ranked 52nd. Far from the pros­per­i­ty promised to them by the West, four years of Maid­an rule made the sit­u­a­tion even worse in Ukraine, which fell from 83rd in 2014 to 88th, below Sri Lan­ka, Mex­i­co and Alba­nia. Iran and Cuba, crushed under the siege war­fare Amer­i­ca euphemisti­cal­ly calls sanc­tions, still pro­vide a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for their peo­ple.

None of the for­mer Sovi­et republics has recov­ered to their 1990 lev­el as of 2022. Even when the USSR was months from dis­so­lu­tion, Sovi­et cit­i­zens enjoyed more pros­per­i­ty than they have since their “lib­er­a­tion.” Their wealth and secu­ri­ty did not van­ish into the ether; rather, they were stolen by the very same West­ern cap­i­tal­ists who loot­ed the coun­try once before.

It is easy to view these num­bers as sim­ple abstrac­tions, mea­sures of a vast and almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble eco­nom­ic machine but, just as it was in the 1940s, this cam­paign of sys­tem­at­ic pil­lag­ing was lethal. Peer-reviewed stud­ies have found a min­i­mum of five mil­lion excess deaths from star­va­tion, lack of med­ical care, drug addic­tion, and depri­va­tion in Rus­sia alone from 1991 to 2001. When the rest of the for­mer Sovi­et republics are added, the butcher’s bill eas­i­ly exceeds that of the Holo­caust.

Had this hap­pened any­where else, or been per­pe­trat­ed by any­one else, it would have been called what it was: geno­cide. Grow­ing up amidst the dev­as­ta­tion wrought by the unre­strained bru­tal­i­ty of the “rules-based inter­na­tion­al order” only makes Ponomarenko’s future col­lab­o­ra­tion even more shock­ing.

Pono­marenko moved to Mar­i­upol to attend col­lege at Mar­i­upol State Uni­ver­si­ty in 2010. Despite the innocu­ous name, this col­lege was found­ed in 1991 with grants from USAID and George Soros and still today receives con­sid­er­able fund­ing from the U.S. and EU. The line of the col­lege is unabashed­ly pro-NATO, its pro­fes­sors tour NATO head­quar­ters, and the uni­ver­si­ty proud­ly adver­tis­es its links to D.C.-based Atlanti­cist think tanks.

MSU is not unique. Uni­ver­si­ties like it emerged all over the East­ern Bloc, flush with cash from both West­ern gov­ern­ments and their proxy think tanks. The Soros-backed Open Soci­ety Foun­da­tion was a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant con­duit for this. Not only did Soros cre­ate scores of new uni­ver­si­ties through­out the East­ern Bloc, but even went so far as to pro­duce new text­books for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in the region. His schools count pres­i­dents, mem­bers of par­lia­ment and count­less less­er bureau­crats among their alum­ni.

All of this is in the ser­vice of his war against Com­mu­nism, which he has been wag­ing since at least the 1970s with both offi­cial and unof­fi­cial gov­ern­ment sup­port. The irony of the fero­cious anti-Com­mu­nist George Soros being called a Com­mu­nist by the right is par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp, espe­cial­ly as Soros has per­son­al­ly ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from loot­ing the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

Pono­marenko grad­u­at­ed in 2014, just in time to be swept up by the next storm to hit Ukraine.

The Bloody Har­vest

“Appar­ent­ly some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeak­able acts of evil to become banal with­in min­utes, pro­vid­ed only that they occur far enough away to pose no per­son­al threat.” – Iris Chang

The nar­ra­tive we are sell­ing regard­ing the 2014 Maid­an coup is sim­ple. We are told that pro­test­ers rose with near­ly uni­ver­sal sup­port to free them­selves of the yoke of the ille­git­i­mate, reviled Vik­tor Yanukovych’s Par­ty of Regions, and there­by Russ­ian con­trol. After this, they say, the tran­si­tion was clean and order­ly, the prob­lems in the east emerged only because of Russ­ian infil­tra­tion and all true Ukraini­ans stood behind the new regime. To this day, the Maid­an regime vehe­ment­ly main­tains that the con­flict in Ukraine is not a civ­il war, but rather a for­eign inva­sion that has been going on for eight years.

If you lis­ten hard enough, you can almost hear the echoes of Franz Halder and Adolf Heusinger in the approved Maid­an nar­ra­tive, and I do not believe this is acci­den­tal. Just as it was then, the fan­ta­sy cre­at­ed by NATO pro­pa­gan­da could not be any far­ther from the truth. The Maid­an nev­er had uni­ver­sal sup­port, and the process of bring­ing the coun­try to heel was a long, bloody affair.

Despite the Ukrain­ian government’s insis­tence to the con­trary, the con­flict is a civ­il war by any rea­son­able def­i­n­i­tion, the sep­a­ratists were Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens almost with­out excep­tion and they start­ed fight­ing to defend a legit­i­mate­ly elect­ed Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Most for­eign back­ing was firm­ly behind the Maid­an, not Yanukovych and the sep­a­ratists. From the very begin­ning of the Maid­an, groups like Mamu­ka Mamulashvili’s U.S.-backed Geor­gian Legion had mer­ce­nar­ies on the ground to esca­late a peace­ful protest into a bloody coup.

Many of the mili­ti­a­men were mem­bers of the Ukrain­ian Army, who defect­ed when ordered to shoot their fam­i­ly, friends and fel­low Ukraini­ans in Don­bas. NATO ana­lysts esti­mate that 70% of the Ukrain­ian Army desert­ed or defect­ed rather than killing for the Maid­an regime and they took their weapons with them, a fact which puts yet anoth­er nail in the cof­fin of the Maid­an nar­ra­tive of for­eign infil­tra­tors.

The nar­ra­tive of a for­eign inva­sion, rather than civ­il war, is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for the Maid­an regime. If we accept that this is a civ­il war, then we must ask why this so-called “nation­al­ist” gov­ern­ment is killing so many Ukraini­ans in Don­bas with its dai­ly shelling of res­i­den­tial areas, schools, hos­pi­tals and oth­er civil­ian tar­gets. It would be impos­si­ble to jus­ti­fy call­ing them nation­al­ists, let alone lib­er­a­tors, with the blood of so many Ukraini­ans on their hands.

The “Alley of Angels,” a memo­r­i­al ded­i­cat­ed to chil­dren of Donet­sk killed by Ukrain­ian shelling. [Source: twitter.com]

The solu­tion to this con­tra­dic­tion is sim­ple. If you strip the peo­ple of Don­bas of their iden­ti­ty and his­to­ry as Ukraini­ans, it becomes much eas­i­er to rec­on­cile their anni­hi­la­tion. In the ide­ol­o­gy of “heroes of Ukraine” Yaroslav Stet­sko and Stepan Ban­dera, foun­da­tion­al to the Ukrain­ian far-right, only a Gali­cian is a true Ukrain­ian. The bulk of the nation’s peo­ple are so-called “Moskals” and “Asi­at­ics” unwor­thy of liv­ing in the Gali­cian Reich.

The fact that Gali­cia had been a part of Poland or Aus­tria, not Ukraine, for more than a mil­len­ni­um is sim­ply ignored in favor of their addled fan­ta­sy about how they, and they alone, are true Ukraini­ans by virtue of some ancient Viking blood.

Then as now, the ide­ol­o­gy makes it easy for Gali­cian fas­cists to jus­ti­fy killing Ukraini­ans by the thou­sands.

When the Maid­an protests began in 2014, counter-protests emerged all around the coun­try, with thou­sands of Ukraini­ans tak­ing to the streets in sup­port of the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­lyelect­ed gov­ern­ment of Vik­tor Yanukovych and the Par­ty of Regions. As the Maid­an grew increas­ing­ly vio­lent under the influ­ence of the far right, the anti-Maid­an pro­test­ers refused to be intim­i­dat­ed and fought back. Even­tu­al­ly, they coa­lesced into mili­tias drawn from the wide vari­ety of anti-Maid­an activists and resis­tance became much more orga­nized.

Fear­ing a counter-rev­o­lu­tion, the unelect­ed gov­ern­ment of America’s hand-picked Arseniy Yat­senyuk cre­at­ed the Spe­cial Tasks Patrol (STP) police which was drawn almost entire­ly from the neo-Nazis infest­ing Ukraine and giv­en wide-rang­ing pow­ers to detain and kill Ukraini­ans.

The most famous of them was the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Long before their cyn­i­cal rebrand­ing in the wake of the 2022 Russ­ian inva­sion, the Azov Bat­tal­ion of 2014 was an open­ly neo-Nazi mili­tia. The sol­diers Illia Pono­marenko counts as com­rades in arms marched under the same flag their ances­tors did in the 1940s.

The echoes of his­to­ry are easy to hear from Azov. Orig­i­nal­ly called “Patri­ot of Ukraine,” the orga­ni­za­tion was found­ed in 2005 by Andrei Belit­sky as a coali­tion of sev­er­al Kharkiv neo-Nazi groups, such as Tryzub (the armed wing of CIA agent and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Sla­va Stetsko’s Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), and the UNA-UNSO (led by the son of CIAcom­man­do and Holo­caust per­pe­tra­tor Roman Shukhevych) and filled with sol­diers from Ukraine’s large far-right soc­cer hooli­gan gangs.

In their for­ma­tive years, Patri­ot of Ukraine worked as enforcers for Mafia king­pin Arsen Avakov, who was ele­vat­ed to Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs after the Maid­an. Avakov pulled strings to get lieu­tenant Belit­sky out of prison for beat­ing a rival gang­ster to death and the tal­ent­ed young Nazi was dep­u­tized to bring the sep­a­ratists to heel.

In Mar­i­upol, the saga final­ly came full cir­cle and the world got to see first-hand what Halder and Heusinger spent so long plan­ning.

After months of protests, fight­ing in Mar­i­upol start­ed in May 2014. Accord­ing to the Ukrain­ian ver­sion of events, on May 3rd Russ­ian infil­tra­tors approached a check­point in the city with food for the guards laced with sleep­ing pills, then took the sol­diers and their weapons after they were inca­pac­i­tat­ed. This fan­ta­sy is like­ly cov­er­ing up the truth: The sol­diers sim­ply sur­ren­dered. Sep­a­ratists set up bar­ri­cades in the city cen­ter and began to occu­py city admin­is­tra­tion build­ings. The sit­u­a­tion was rapid­ly spi­ral­ing out of the Maid­an regime’s con­trol.

Azov was one of the first units sent by the regime to retake Mar­i­upol. Insert­ed into the city on the 7th of May, Azov start­ed killing almost imme­di­ate­ly. Azov dis­man­tled the bar­ri­cades by force, fir­ing on the crowd of unarmed pro­test­ers who opposed them. Azov fin­ished its work by the night of May 8th, and on Vic­to­ry Day, May 9th, they start­ed the next phase of their mis­sion. While most of Ukraine was com­mem­o­rat­ing the sac­ri­fice of eight mil­lion Ukraini­ans in the strug­gle against Azov’s fore­fa­thers, the heirs of Stet­sko and Ban­dera marked the occa­sion in their tra­di­tion­al way, by killing Ukraini­ans. When the local police defect­ed upon receiv­ing an order to open fire on the crowds, Azov did not hes­i­tate. Vic­to­ry Day turned into a blood­bath as Azov ter­ror­ists opened fire on the crowds.

Local pro­test­ers and police defec­tors occu­pied the region­al police HQ and took the chief of police pris­on­er in the process. Azov mil­i­tants attempt­ed to break the siege but, when faced with armed resis­tance, the “cyborgs” were sound­ly defeat­ed. They retreat­ed after suf­fer­ing casu­al­ties and were forced to nego­ti­ate for the release of the pris­on­ers. Just like before, the brava­do and prowess of the fas­cist thugs evap­o­rat­ed as soon as their vic­tims fought back.

Azov was defeat­ed that day, but they were not destroyed. With back­ing from the Ukrain­ian state and the gang­sters who were increas­ing­ly tak­ing pow­er, Azov returned in June, their forces bol­stered by for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies and a col­umn of armored vehi­cles. After they came under drone attack, the sep­a­ratists were forced to with­draw and DPR forces were dri­ven out of Mar­i­upol, suf­fer­ing 5 dead and 30 cap­tured. None of them returned alive.

Among the attack­ers that day were men wear­ing the insignia of the U.S. Army 1st Avi­a­tion Brigade, a unit respon­si­ble for train­ing Army sol­diers in com­bined arms oper­a­tions. Con­sid­er­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion, the source of Azov’s sud­den pro­fi­cien­cy with UAVs becomes very clear.

Azov did not rest on their lau­rels. Along with the rest of the STP units, Azov quick­ly got back to their roots as what the peo­ple of the region once knew as “pun­ish­ers,” enforc­ing order by any means nec­es­sary. It is unclear just how many peo­ple suf­fered in the dun­geons staffed by STPs and SBU (Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence), but the cam­paign was so wide­spread that even the Maid­an regime found dozens of them guilty for crimes such as gang rape (includ­ing at least one instance where 8–10 Azov mem­bers raped a men­tal­ly dis­abled man until he near­ly died), loot­ing, tor­ture, mur­der, smug­gling and extor­tion. They may have worn the insignia of a mil­i­tary unit, but Azov had changed lit­tle from their days as Mafia killers.

All the while, Azov was nur­tured by the Unit­ed States and its NATO allies. Evi­dence has emerged of CIA train­ing at least from 2015, if not ear­li­er. Arms deal­ers bragged open­ly about trans­fer­ring anti-tank weapons and, by 2017, Azov was pos­ing for pic­tures with NATO mil­i­tary advis­ers.

Even as men march­ing under a swasti­ka once again cut a swathe through his home, Illia Pono­marenko was one of their most stead­fast sup­port­ers from the very begin­ning. After COVID forced him to can­cel a planned intern­ship in the U.S, Illia went to work for NATO-fund­ed papers such as the Kyiv Post, and lat­er the Kyiv Inde­pen­dent.

His edu­ca­tion at the NATO-fund­ed schools served him well, and he has done an exem­plary job at con­tin­u­ing the work start­ed by Franz Halder and Adolf Heusinger so many years ago by once again reha­bil­i­tat­ing the fas­cist killers butcher­ing Ukraini­ans. He now has mil­lions of fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, and rou­tine­ly makes appear­ances on main­stream West­ern news, such as the BBC, CNN and Fox News. His years of car­ry­ing water for his Nazi friends have final­ly paid off, Illia went from sim­ply being in the right place at the right time to an inte­gral part in the machine.

What we are see­ing today in Ukraine is no acci­dent: It is a plan sev­en decades in the mak­ing. From the very begin­ning, the Unit­ed States and NATO have been work­ing to reha­bil­i­tate the lega­cy of fas­cism so it can be used as a weapon. These net­works are not just in Ukraine; they have branch­es all around the world. Azov mil­i­tants were even spot­ted at protests in Hong Kong, the lat­est front in America’s covert war. For­tu­nate­ly, Chi­nese author­i­ties pre­vent­ed the city from suf­fer­ing the same fate as Mar­i­upol.

The seeds of this con­flict were not plant­ed in 2014, nor in 1991. Rather, they were sewn on June 22, 1941, when Nazi troops first streamed across the bor­der as part of Franz Halder’s Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa. After four long years and tens of mil­lions dead, the Unit­ed States absorbed the “best and bright­est” of the Third Reich and, for 70 years, they care­ful­ly tend­ed Halder and Heusinger’s saplings, wait­ing for the chance to take root.

In 2014, we final­ly saw the nox­ious weeds of fas­cism return to the land they blight­ed so long ago, watered once more in rivers of Ukrain­ian blood.

2. Next, we detail the ide­o­log­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the top Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary com­man­der with Third Reich Ally Stephan Ban­dera.

The Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Four Star Gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­nyi is not shy about his pro­found affin­i­ty with Ban­dera: “ . . . . Zaluzh­nyi is shown in uni­form stand­ing in a mil­i­tary office with sev­er­al oth­er sol­diers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN‑B lead­ers and Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Pho­tos of both Shukhevych and Ban­dera are also promi­nent­ly hang­ing on the wall in the back­ground along with the red and black Ban­derite flag. . . .”

As dis­cussed in our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, post-World War II U.S. polit­i­cal cul­ture has been shaped by the Nazi/Pentagon alliance of Gen­er­al Franz Halder and hun­dreds of his for­mer fel­low Wehrma­cht offi­cers. That alliance has re-shaped the per­cep­tion of the Sec­ond World War in an unabashed­ly pro-Nazi fash­ion.

The white­wash­ing of Ban­dera and his OUN/B dates back to the incor­po­ra­tion of that organization’s par­ent agency, the Rein­hard Gehlen “Org” into the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment.

The Belarus Secret by John Lof­tus; Alfred A. Knopf & Co. [HC]; Copy­right 1982 by John Lof­tus; ISBN 0–394-52292–3; p. 104.

. . . . The CIC had an agent who pho­tographed eleven vol­umes of the secret files of the OUN/Bandera.  These files clear­ly show how most of its mem­bers worked for the Gestapo or SS as police­men, exe­cu­tion­ers, par­ti­san hunters, and munic­i­pal offi­cials. The OUN con­tri­bu­tion to the Ger­man war effort was sig­nif­i­cant, includ­ing rais­ing vol­un­teers for sev­er­al SS divi­sions. It was pre­cise­ly because of its work with the Nazis that Wis­ner want­ed to hire the OUN for his spe­cial forces. . . .

“Ukraine’s Com­man­der-in-Chief is an Open Ban­derite Fas­cist by Mark Sle­bo­da; Sub­stack; 1/14/2023.

Since the open­ly West-backed Maid­an Putsch in 2014, Jan­u­ary 1st has been pro­claimed a nation­al hol­i­day in Ukrainecel­e­brat­ing the birth­day of the geno­ci­dal WW2-era West Ukrain­ian fas­cist and anti-semi­te ide­o­logue, ter­ror­ist insur­gent leader, Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, and Holo­caust per­pe­tra­tor, Stepan Ban­dera.

For the last eight years it has been marked by hor­ri­fy­ing torch­lit night­time parades of the regime’s NeoN­azi death­squads and brown­shirts goose-step­ping through the streets of the cap­i­tal, Kiev.

This year the Kiev Putsch regime’s Par­lia­men­tary body the Rada, cel­e­brat­ed the fas­cist hol­i­day with a tweetnow delet­edon Twit­ter show­ing the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 4 star gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­ny, stand­ing smil­ing smug­ly, in front of a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera, accom­pa­nied by one of Bandera’s quotes, “The com­plete and final vic­to­ry of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism will come when the Russ­ian empire ceas­es to exist.” And then added, “A fight against the Russ­ian empire is cur­rent­ly under­way. And the pre­cepts of Stepan Ban­dera are well known to the com­man­der-in-chief of the armed forces.”

This is hard­ly the first such rev­e­la­tion. Zaluzh­nyi is infa­mous­ly known as open ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port­er of Stepan Ban­dera, now offi­cial­ly glo­ri­fied by the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime as a hero and “found­ing father” of the new Ukraine under their rule and vision.

This is almost cer­tain­ly one of the cri­te­ria for which he was cho­sen to lead the Kiev regime’s mil­i­tary forces.

In 2021, right after becom­ing the Kiev regime’s Com­man­der-In-Chief, Zaluzh­ny offi­cial­ly appoint­ed Dmit­ry Yarosh, the head and founder of the NeoN­azi & white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary group, the Right Sec­tor, as his per­son­al “senior mil­i­tary advi­sor”.

And Zaluzh­ny obvi­ous­ly loves throw­ing around pr pho­to shoots of him­self brazen­ly dis­play­ing his Ban­derite fas­cist bona fides. Yes –despite the fact that his Pres­i­dent, Zelen­skiy, has a Jew­ish dad­dy.

This year, the Kiev regime’s Com­man­der-in-Chief post­ed to his own Twit­ter account a “front­line” pho­to of him strid­ing in uni­form, with assault rifle in hand, promi­nent­ly dis­play­ing a bracelet carved with swastikas.
Lame­ly the West­ern MSM echoed every cryp­to-NeoN­azi ever by claim­ing, “Its not a swasti­ka, its just an ancient  Viking sym­bol”. Seri­ous­ly?
 Yeah, I’m sure the Ban­dera-wor­ship­ping head of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary was wear­ing swastikas just because he’s secret­ly a Norse pagan.

In anoth­er pho­to from this year, Zaluzh­nyi is shown in uni­form stand­ing in a mil­i­tary office with sev­er­al oth­er sol­diers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN‑B lead­ers and Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Pho­tos of both Shukhevych and Ban­dera are also promi­nent­ly hang­ing on the wall in the back­ground along with the red and black Ban­derite flag.

A sep­a­rate pho­to tak­en of Zaluzhnyi’s office also has a bust of Ban­dera dis­played promi­nent­ly for all to see on a table against the wall. 

In a recent inter­view  with the Econ­o­mistZaluzh­ny said flat out-
“We’ve been at war since 2014… And the most impor­tant expe­ri­ence we had and the one which we have prac­ticed almost like a reli­gion is that Rus­sians and any oth­er ene­mies must be killed, just killed, and most impor­tant­ly, we should not be afraid, not hes­i­tate, to do it. And this is what we are doing.”
Yes they have been indeed killing Rus­sians since 2014.

 In a civ­il con­flict in coun­try where 20% of the pop­u­la­tion is eth­nic Russ­ian and a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the rest, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the East, are Russ­ian-speak­ing and regard Rus­sians as a broth­er peo­ple, not as “the ene­my”.

This is the Ban­derite fas­cist Com­man­der-in-Chief of a mil­i­tary armed, trained, giv­en C4ISR, direct­ed and pup­pet­ed by NATO and fund­ed to the cost of now hun­dreds of bil­lions of West­ern tax­pay­er dol­lars in a proxy war on Rus­sia.  He’s cel­e­brat­ed in West­ern media reports, mag­a­zine cov­ers, and news­pa­per front pages as a hero!
How can this be?

The grim real­i­ty is that as long as Zaluzhny’s hatred and vio­lence, and that of his NeoN­azi hordes, are direct­ed, for the moment, pri­mar­i­ly against eth­nic Rus­sians, “pro-Russ­ian East­ern Ukraini­ans” and left­ists, then his brand of Ban­derite fas­cism is geopo­lit­i­cal­ly use­ful to the West, and thus “kosher”.
Indeed the US and Cana­da have a long doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of sup­port­ing Ban­derite fas­cists in Ukraine, and their analo­ques in the Baltics, back to the imme­di­ate after­math of WW2.

Zaluschny…Hey – the bas­tard may be a fas­cist, but he’s OUR fas­cist, god-damn it!

3.  The New York Times has been at the fore­front of the white­wash­ing of the Azov for­ma­tions and whole­sale denial of the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty struc­ture.

Now, “the Gray Lady” has been glo­ri­fy­ing the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, anoth­er of the fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions in the Ukrain­ian order of bat­tle.

Descend­ed from the UNA-UNSO, itself hav­ing been led by Yuri Shukhevych, son and col­lab­o­ra­tor of Roman Shukhevych, the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion is being hailed as an exem­plary com­man­do unit.

(Roman Shukhevych was an OUN/B war crim­i­nal who, among oth­er things, led the Lvov pogrom of June 30, 1941 com­mit­ted by the SS-con­trolled Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall. He was declared a “Hero of Ukraine” by the polit­i­cal forces behind the Maid­an coup.)

“ACTION ALERT: NYT Has Found New Neo-Nazi Troops to Lion­ize in Ukraine” by Eric Horowitz; FAIR; 11/30/2022

The New York Times has found anoth­er neo-Nazi mili­tia to fawn over in Ukraine. The Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion “gave access to the New York Times to report on two recent river­ine oper­a­tions,” which cul­mi­nat­ed in a piece (11/21/22) head­lined “On the Riv­er at Night, Ambush­ing Rus­sians.”

Since the US-backed Maid­an coup in 2014, estab­lish­ment media have either min­i­mized the far-right ide­ol­o­gy that guides many Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist detach­ments or ignored it com­plete­ly.

Anti-war out­lets, includ­ing FAIR (1/28/223/22/22), have repeat­ed­ly high­light­ed this dynamic—particularly regard­ing cor­po­rate media’s lion­iza­tion of the Azov bat­tal­ion, once wide­ly rec­og­nized by West­ern media as a fas­cist mili­tia, now sold to the pub­lic as a reformed far-right group that gal­lant­ly defends the sov­er­eign­ty of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org, 10/6/22).

That is when Azov’s polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion is dis­cussed at all, which has become less and less com­mon since Rus­sia launched its inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary.

‘Chris­t­ian Tal­iban’

The less­er-known Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, with­in which the Times embed­ded its reporters, is dri­ven by sev­er­al far-right currents—none of which are men­tioned in the arti­cle.

Brat­st­vo was found­ed as a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion in 2004 by Dmytro Korchyn­sky, who pre­vi­ous­ly led the far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Korchyn­sky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s para­mil­i­tary wing, is a Holo­caust denier who false­ly blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and ped­dled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrma­cht.” He has stat­ed that he sees Brat­st­vo as a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” (Inter­cept, 3/18/15).

In the 1980s, the Times por­trayed the reli­gious extrem­ists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiv­ing US train­ing and arms—as a hero­ic bul­wark against Sovi­et expan­sion­ism. We all know how that worked out.

In an echo of that pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, the Times neglect­ed to tell its read­ers about the neo-Nazi and theo­crat­ic pol­i­tics of the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion. Why should any­one care who else Brat­st­vo mem­bers would like to see dead, so long as they’re oper­at­ing in fur­ther­ance of US pol­i­cy­mak­ers’ stat­ed aim of weak­en­ing Rus­sia?

Mod­ern-day cru­sade

The article’s author, Car­lot­ta Gall, recount­ed Bratstvo’s Russ­ian-fight­ing exploits in qua­si-reli­gious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hint­ed at the unit’s guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy came in the form of mythol­o­giz­ing the unit’s Chris­t­ian devo­tion.

Of Brat­st­vo fight­ers embark­ing on a mis­sion, Gall wrote, “They recit­ed a prayer togeth­er, then loaded up the nar­row rub­ber dinghies and set out, hunched silent fig­ures in the dark.” Refer­ring to bat­tal­ion com­man­der Olek­siy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost myth­i­cal renown for sur­viv­ing close com­bat with Russ­ian troops.”

The piece even fea­tured a pho­to­graph show­ing mili­tia mem­bers gath­ered in prayer. Evok­ing the notion of pious sol­diers rather than that of a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban,” the cap­tion read, “Mem­bers of the Brat­st­vo battalion’s spe­cial forces unit prayed togeth­er before going on a night oper­a­tion.”

The Times also gave voice to some of the lofti­er aims of Bratstvo’s cru­sade, quot­ing Serediuk’s mus­ing that, “We all dream about going to Chech­nya, and the Krem­lin, and as far as the Ural Moun­tains.” Nazi racial ide­o­logues have long been enam­ored by the prospect of reach­ing the Urals, which they view as the nat­ur­al bar­ri­er sep­a­rat­ing Euro­pean cul­ture from the Asi­at­ic hordes.

While plot­ting Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, Hitler iden­ti­fied the Urals as the east­ern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, refer­ring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid Euro­pean Rus­sia of Asi­at­ic “unter­men­schen” so the land could be set­tled by hun­dreds of mil­lions of white Euro­peans, Himm­ler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way for­ward lit­tle by lit­tle to the Urals.”

‘Mind­set of the 13th cen­tu­ry’

The only two Brat­st­vo mem­bers named in the piece, mean­while, are Serediuk and Vitaliy Chorny. While Chorny—who the Times iden­ti­fied as the battalion’s head of intel­li­gence gathering—is quot­ed, his state­ments are lim­it­ed to descrip­tions of the unit’s fight­ing strat­e­gy. Serediuk’s record­ed utter­ances are sim­i­lar­ly lack­ing in sub­stance.

Far more illu­mi­nat­ing is an Al Jazeera arti­cle (4/15/15) titled “‘Chris­t­ian Taliban’s’ Cru­sade on Ukraine’s Front Lines,” which quotes both Serediuk and Chorny exten­sive­ly. Serediuk, Al Jazeera report­ed, “rev­els in the Chris­t­ian Tal­iban label.”: In ref­er­ence to his deci­sion to leave the Azov bat­tal­ion, the piece went on to say

Serediuk didn’t leave the Azov because of the neo-Nazi con­nec­tions, however—extreme-right ide­ol­o­gy doesn’t both­er him. What does irk him, how­ev­er, is being around fight­ers who are not zeal­ous in their reli­gious con­vic­tions.

In the same piece, Chorny invoked the vio­lent­ly anti­se­mit­ic Cru­sades of the Mid­dle Ages to describe Bratstvo’s ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion:

The enemy—the forces of darkness—they have all the weapons, they have greater num­bers, they have mon­ey. But our sol­diers are the bringers of Euro­pean tra­di­tions and the Chris­t­ian mind­set of the 13th cen­tu­ry.

To cir­cum­vent the Times’ exul­tant nar­ra­tive, one has to do a cer­tain amount of sup­ple­men­tary research and analy­sis. But even the most basic inquiry—searching “Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion” on Google—reveals the far-right under­pin­nings of the unit with which the Times embed­ded its reporters.

The sev­enth search result is a June 2022 study from the Com­bat­ing Ter­ror­ism Cen­ter at West Point, which report­ed, “Anoth­er such far-right enti­ty is the so-called Broth­er­hood (Brat­st­vo) ‘bat­tal­ion,’ which includes Belaru­sian, Dan­ish, Irish and Cana­di­an mem­bers.”

The ninth result is an arti­cle from the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con (4/6/22), which quot­ed a far-right Cana­di­an vol­un­teer as say­ing on Telegram that he was “fight­ing in the neo-Nazi ‘Brat­st­vo’ Bat­tal­ion in Kyiv.”

SS mem­o­ra­bil­ia

In a world where jour­nal­ists actu­al­ly prac­ticed what they preached, some­one at the paper of record sure­ly would have noticed the Nazi insignia appear­ing in two pho­tos in the piece. In this world, how­ev­er, the Times either for­got how to use the zoom function—though the paper made exten­sive use of this capa­bil­i­ty when report­ing on China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty Con­gress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they sim­ply did not want to report on this ugly and incon­ve­nient dis­cov­ery.

One sol­dier is seen wear­ing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer cir­cle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in Ger­man, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfver­bande—an SS unit that par­tic­i­pat­ed in Hitler’s war of anni­hi­la­tion against the Sovi­et Union, and guard­ed the con­cen­tra­tion camps where Nazi Ger­many con­demned mil­lions of Jew­ish men, women and chil­dren to death.

Indi­vid­u­als don­ning the Totenkopf also took part in the mur­der of mil­lions of oth­ers in these camps, includ­ing Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, polit­i­cal dis­si­dents, trade union­ists, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, homo­sex­u­als and Romani peo­ple.

In Sep­tem­ber, Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy posted—and then qui­et­ly delet­ed—a pic­ture on social media of him­self with a num­ber of sol­diers, one of whom was wear­ing a Totenkopf patch sim­i­lar to that seen in the Times’ pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer meet­ing. One can eas­i­ly find this par­tic­u­lar iter­a­tion on Ama­zon or eBay.

Lat­er in the Times arti­cle, anoth­er pho­to­graph of a sol­dier wear­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an inte­ri­or room and star­ing out from the very cen­ter of the image, the Totenkopf is even hard­er to miss. Amazon’s prod­uct descrip­tion for this spe­cif­ic vari­ant reads, “This gor­geous repli­ca piece takes you back to World War II.”

4.  Among those join­ing the nor­mal­iza­tion of Azov Nazis are: Vogue mag­a­zine, MSNBC and the School of Visu­al Arts (New York).

For­mer press offi­cer of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Dmytro Kozatsky has achieved grav­i­tas in the West at the named insti­tu­tions.

“ . . . . Protests erupt­ed at DOC NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­atre in Man­hat­tan, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised the accu­sa­tions dur­ing a Q&A were forcibly removed from the event. . . .”

Author Lam­bert Strether con­cludes: “ . . . . what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is pen­e­trat­ing our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Book­ing agents, facil­i­ties man­agers, press agents, board mem­bers who orga­nize such things, fash­ion edi­tors, net­work anchors: All com­bin­ing their efforts to ser­vice a Nazi pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as if it were the most nor­mal thing in the world, which at this point per­haps it is. . . .”

“Nor­mal­iz­ing Nazis at Vogue, MSNBC, and “America’s Largest Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val” (but not Cat­alo­nia)” by Lam­bert Strether; Naked Cap­i­tal­ism; 12/5/2022.

Dmytro Kozatsky was the press offi­cer of Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion, which makes him a fas­cist.

(Colonel Dou­glas Mac­Gre­gor: “[T]hese so-called Azov Nazis and their sup­port­ers are not only mur­der­ing Rus­sians, they’re mur­der­ing their own peo­ple, and as we saw recent­ly, they actu­al­ly set out to kill Pol­ish troops that were serv­ing in Ukrain­ian uni­form in Ukraine.” For more on the Azovs, see Appen­dix A. For more on Kozatsky, see Appen­dix B).[1] Kozatsky is also a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. His most recent project was pho­tograph­ing from inside the Azovstal iron and steel works at Mar­i­upol, with the Azovs, until his cap­ture by Russ­ian forces and ulti­mate release in a pris­on­er exchange. He is now tour­ing the Unit­ed States, appar­ent­ly to sup­port a movie in which he stars (as him­self), and his Azovstal pho­to­book. The main pur­pose of this post is to show a Nazi insin­u­at­ing him­self — and rather eas­i­ly — into the upper reach­es of our cul­ture indus­try (fash­ion, film, books) through such exam­ples as I can glean from Google in its cur­rrent state. The cul­ture indus­try being pri­mar­i­ly PMC and Demo­c­rat, the same peo­ple defend­ing and applaud­ing Kozatsky are also the ones with “In This House” signs on their lawns, who decry “hate” wher­ev­er they feel they encounter it. It’s a fun­ny old world. But let’s look first at Kozatsky’s war.

The seige of Azovstal made Kozatsky’s career as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er (and he is a good pho­tog­ra­ph­er, much as Leni Riefen­stahl was a bril­liant cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er). Let’s look at three images:

(From Ukrain­ian Week­ly.) The cap­tion sources the pho­to to “the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy of Ukraine,” sug­gest­ing an offi­cial con­nec­tion. This one seems to be of Kozatsky, rather than by him. (The first two pho­tos, not being open­ly manip­u­la­tive, are more appeal­ing to me than this one. I mean, a shaft of light strik­ing a per­for­ma­tive Jesus? Real­ly? At least it’s an ethos.)

When Russ­ian forces took Azovstal, Kozatsky was cap­tured (along with, accord­ing to Russ­ian esti­mates, 2,439 oth­er pris­on­ers of war). Moon of Alaba­ma dis­cov­ered this curi­ous inci­dent which took place while Kozatsky was in cap­tiv­i­ty:

On July 28 the Rus­sians pub­lished a video of an inter­view with Azov nazi sol­dier Dmytro Kozatsky, call sign Orest, who direct­ly accused Zelen­s­ki advi­sor [Olek­sii ] Arestovich of order­ing the killing of Russ­ian sol­diers who had been tak­en pris­on­ers.

Kozatsky was run­ning the pub­lic rela­tion side for his Azov unit. Even before the war start­ed, Kozatsky says, Arestovich was prepar­ing an infor­ma­tion cam­paign with shock videos that were sup­posed to show the tor­ture and killing of Russ­ian sol­diers tak­en pris­on­ers. Kozatsky received such an order and passed it on. He lat­er not­ed that such shock videos were indeed made and pub­lished on social media sides.

Nego­ti­a­tions took place between Rus­sia and Ukraine, and of the 2,439 Ukrain­ian POWs, Rus­sia released 200, one of whom was Kozatsky. From Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da:

“It is very dif­fi­cult to nego­ti­ate about peo­ple who are well known in the media. The few­er peo­ple know you, the eas­i­er it is to release you [from cap­tiv­i­ty]. When you are famous, your val­ue increas­es many times over. The most dif­fi­cult thing was to talk about the com­man­ders, about Ptash­ka [renowned female army para­medic – ed.], or about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er known as Orest,” anoth­er inter­locu­tor in Pres­i­dent Zelenskyy’s cir­cle explained.

Clear­ly, for what­ev­er rea­son, Kozatsky was a high-val­ue pris­on­er (and not least because throw­ing Zeken­sky advi­sor Arestovich under the bus — if that’s what real­ly hap­pened — didn’t affect his release in any way). Kozatsky describes his war to EuroNews:

“That’s it. I am thank­ful to Azovstal for shel­ter – the place of my death and my life,” Dmytro ‘Orest’ Kozatsky said in his Insta­gram post, pub­lished on Fri­day.

The Azov reg­i­ment fighter[2] made his pho­tog­ra­phy from the sieged Azovstal steel plant avail­able for free, ask­ing for it to be shared as much as pos­si­ble. Some of these pho­tographs have already gone viral reveal­ing the sit­u­a­tion of Azov reg­i­ment fight­ers, notably the injured per­son­nel.

“By the way, while I will be in cap­tiv­i­ty, I leave you my pho­tos, apply to all the jour­nal­ist awards and pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tions for me. If I get some­thing, I will be real­ly pleased to learn about it after I am released. Thank you all for your sup­port. See you”, he wrote.

And now Kozatsky is on tour! First, I’ll look at what hap­pened to Kozatsky in Spain (where they know what fas­cism is all about, hav­ing been ruled by Fran­co). After that, I’ll work though cas­es in the Unit­ed States: Vogue mag­a­zine, Ukrain­ian Nation­al Wom­ens League Of Amer­i­ca (Philadel­phia), the School Of Visu­al Arts (New York), and (drum­roll) MSNBC[3].

Cat­alo­nia. Here’s what hap­pened at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia. From Hyper­al­ler­gic:

Sev­er­al of [Kozatsky’s Azovstal] pho­tos were on dis­play at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia (UPC) since mid-Octo­ber, but on Novem­ber 13, the insti­tu­tion announced it was pre­ma­ture­ly end­ing the show, claim­ing that it “wasn’t aware of the artist’s ide­ol­o­gy.”

“The UPC rad­i­cal­ly rejects Nazism and regrets the sit­u­a­tion cre­at­ed,” the UPC said in a state­ment.

Ear­li­er that day, pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist Ana­toly Shariy had shared mul­ti­ple screen­shots of Kozatsky’s social media posts on Telegram, all of which con­tained far-right and neo-Nazi hate sym­bols. A swasti­ka tat­too appears on Kozatsky’s leg, with anoth­er drawn in ketchup on a home­made piz­za. Mean­while, a self­ie of Kozatsky shows his sweat­shirt embla­zoned with the num­bers 14/88, a com­bi­na­tion of two white suprema­cist sym­bols, and a Ukrain­ian coat of arms.

(To be fair, Kozatsky issued a non-apol­o­gy apol­o­gy. For more, see Appen­dix B.)

Vogue Mag­a­zine

From Dmytro Kozatsky’s list­ing as a Vogue pho­tog­ra­ph­er:

The Azov reg­i­ment fight­er made his pho­tog­ra­phy from the sieged Azovstal steel plant avail­able for free, ask­ing for it to be shared as much as pos­si­ble. Some of these pho­tographs have already gone viral reveal­ing the sit­u­a­tion of Azov reg­i­ment fight­ers, notably the injured per­son­nel.

Dmytro and oth­er fight­ers of Azovstal in Mar­i­upol were defend­ing the city for 82 days with lim­it­ed sup­plies of food and water, they also saved more than 1000 civil­ians (most­ly women and chil­dren) that found shel­ter, food and water at the plant and lat­er were evac­u­at­ed.

“Fight­ers,” again. Have we learned noth­ing from Coco Chanel? Appar­ent­ly ***cough*** Balen­ci­a­ga ***cough*** not.

Ukrain­ian Nation­al Wom­ens League Of Amer­i­ca (Philadel­phia)

From the events list­ing:

UNWLA, Branch 10, is host­ing a pho­to exhi­bi­tion dis­play­ing the real­i­ty of war in Ukraine through the eyes of four amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­phers. Free admis­sion and refresh­ments. Prints avail­able for pur­chase.

The exhib­it will fea­ture some of the most beau­ti­ful and heart­felt works of:

  1. Dmytro Kozatsky – the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who took the most famous pho­tos from Azov.

Entire­ly unex­cep­tion­al. Which is the prob­lem. (I also won­der how many oth­er branch­es of the UNWLA Kozatsky will vis­it, and whether he will vis­it Cana­da as well.

School Of Visu­al Arts (New York)

Again from Hyper­Al­ler­gic:

Protests erupt­ed at DOC NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­atre in Man­hat­tan, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised the accu­sa­tions dur­ing a Q&A were forcibly removed from the event. One attendee, stu­dent and orga­niz­er Kay­la Pop­uchet, said she was attacked by fel­low audi­ence mem­bers, some of whom called her a ‘bitch’ and ‘Krem­lin shill.’

“Krem­lin shill.” Car­ry­ing a “Vote Blue No Mat­ter Who” tote-bag, no doubt. From Pop­uchet:

So I was just kicked out by @DOCNYCfest for point­ing out their “spe­cial guest speak­er” Dymtro Kozatsky is a Neo-Nazi in the open­ly Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the attacks on Don­bass civil­ians. Doc­NYC tried to hide his affil­i­a­tions, why? pic.twitter.com/INgzFaLUMa — Kay­la (@kaylapop_) Novem­ber 14, 2022

“I even heard some­one call me Russ­ian, which is fun­ny because I am an Afro-Latin Amer­i­can with zero rela­tion to Rus­sia,” Pop­uchet told Hyper­al­ler­gic.

Obvi­ous­ly, Pop­uchet was from an out-group, so any­thing goes:

As jour­nal­ist Moss Robe­son not­ed on Twit­ter, the SVA The­atre removed all men­tion of Kozatsky’s name from its event descrip­tion after Shariy’s Telegram mes­sages sur­faced ear­li­er that morn­ing. SVA declined Hyperallergic’s mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment, and DOC NYC has not yet respond­ed.

Does make you won­der where DSA — and heck, AOC! — was on this, doesn’t it?

MSNBC

From MSNBC itself:

Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States Oksana Markaro­va, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning pho­to­jour­nal­ist Car­ol Guzy, and Dmytro Kozatsky, a Ukrain­ian sol­dier and pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was held in the Mar­i­upol steel plant, join Andrea Mitchell to dis­cuss “Relent­less Courage: Ukraine and the World at War,” a new book fea­tur­ing a col­lec­tion of images cap­tur­ing Ukraini­ans’ endur­ing fight. Ambas­sador Markaro­va, who writes in the book about a jour­nal­ist lost to the war, tells Mitchell: “He was a very beau­ti­ful human being, full of light,” and Russia’s tar­get­ing of civil­ians “shows how inhu­mane this aggres­sive regime is, and how this war is about the val­ues, democ­ra­cy.” She adds, “We will not stop until there is account­abil­i­ty.”

* * *

I’m afraid I don’t have an earth-quake of a con­clu­sion here; what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is pen­e­trat­ing our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Book­ing agents, facil­i­ties man­agers, press agents, board mem­bers who orga­nize such things, fash­ion edi­tors, net­work anchors: All com­bin­ing their efforts to ser­vice a Nazi pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as if it were the most nor­mal thing in the world, which at this point per­haps it is. It would also be nice to know if how many oth­er Ukrain­ian efforts like this are going on, and if they are… facil­i­tat­ed by any­one “in gov­ern­ment.”

NOTES

[1] OK, I said “Nazi” in the head­line, and the (more accu­rate) “fas­cist” in the text, because “Nor­mal­iz­ing Nazis” is eupho­nious. But I don’t want to get into the fine points, here. One of Ter­ry Pratchett’s more enter­tain­ing vil­lains, Mr. Pin, has “Not a Nice Per­son at All” done in pok­er­work on his wal­let. “I won­der kind of per­son would put that on a wal­let?” “Some­body who wasn’t a very nice per­son.” So I will not be debat­ing styles of pok­er­work at this time. I could have said “Ban­derite,” I sup­pose, but then nobody would know what I meant.

[2] Azov “fight­ers,” I love it. Seems to be the most fre­quent euphemism.

[3] Moss Robe­son has a vivid but entire­ly unlinked descrip­tion of Kozatsky’s appear­ance at the Taras Shevchenko School of Ukrain­ian Stud­ies of Greater Wash­ing­ton, in the facil­i­ties of West­land Mid­dle School in Bethes­da, Mary­land (i.e., in the heart of PMC ter­ri­to­ry, where every­body “works in gov­ern­ment,” and the fifth wealth­i­est city in the Unit­ed States). Sad­ly, I can’t source the pho­to of the event, I can’t find the event on any school cal­en­dar or newslet­ter. That’s a shame, because Ire­na Chalu­pa, for­mer edi­tor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAl­ert blog and DNC oppo researcher (!), is said to have orga­nized and pho­tographed the event. Per­haps read­ers can do bet­ter?

APPENDIX A: The Azovs are Fas­cists

Before Feb­ru­ary 2022:

Atlantic Coun­cil (2018):

Since the begin­ning of 2018, C14 and oth­er far-right groups such as the Azov-affil­i­at­ed Nation­al Mili­tia, Right Sec­tor, Karpats­ka Sich, and oth­ers have attacked Roma groups sev­er­al times, as well as anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tions, city coun­cil meet­ings, an event host­ed by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, art exhi­bi­tions, LGBT events, and envi­ron­men­tal activists. On March 8, vio­lent groups launched attacks against Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cas­es did police do any­thing to pre­vent the attacks, and in some they even arrest­ed peace­ful demon­stra­tors rather than the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors

To be clear, far-right par­ties like Svo­bo­da per­form poor­ly in Ukraine’s polls and elec­tions, and Ukraini­ans evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argu­ment is a bit of “red her­ring.” It’s not extrem­ists’ elec­toral prospects that should con­cern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to con­front vio­lent groups and end their impuni­ty. Whether this is due to a con­tin­u­ing sense of indebt­ed­ness to some of these groups for fight­ing the Rus­sians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real prob­lem and we do no ser­vice to Ukraine by sweep­ing it under the rug.

Of course, it’s not a prob­lem any more!

Al Jazeera (2022):

The far-right neo-Nazi group has expand­ed to become part of Ukraine’s armed forces, a street mili­tia and a polit­i­cal par­ty….

The unit was ini­tial­ly formed as a vol­un­teer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nation­al­ist Patri­ot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social Nation­al Assem­bly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xeno­pho­bic and neo-Nazi ideals and phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed migrants, the Roma com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple oppos­ing their views.A few months after recap­tur­ing the strate­gic port city of Mar­i­upol from the Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists, the unit was offi­cial­ly inte­grat­ed into the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine on Novem­ber 12, 2014, and exact­ed high praise from then-Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko.

“These are our best war­riors,” he said at an awards cer­e­mo­ny in 2014. “Our best vol­un­teers.”

Cato (2022):

An espe­cial­ly egre­gious per­for­mance has occurred with respect to the role of the Azov bat­tal­ion (now the Azov reg­i­ment) in Ukraine’s defense effort. The Azov bat­tal­ion was noto­ri­ous for years before the Russ­ian inva­sion as a bas­tion of extreme nation­al­ists and out­right Nazis. That aspect proved to be more than just a source of embar­rass­ment for Ukraine’s sup­port­ers when the unit became a cru­cial play­er in the bat­tle for the city of Mar­i­upol. The West­ern (espe­cial­ly US) press sought to por­tray Ukraine’s resis­tance to the Russ­ian siege as a hero­ic effort sim­i­lar to bat­tle of Stal­in­grad in World War II.

The promi­nence of the Azov reg­i­ment among the defend­ers cer­tain­ly should have com­pli­cat­ed that media por­tray­al. Yet most accounts sim­ply focused on the suf­fer­ing of Mariupol’s pop­u­la­tion, the heart­less vil­lainy of the Russ­ian aggres­sors, and the tenac­i­ty of the city’s brave defend­ers. Such accounts typ­i­cal­ly ignored the pres­ence of Azov fight­ers among the defend­ers or failed to dis­close their ide­o­log­i­cal pedi­gree. A Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry, for exam­ple, mere­ly described the Azov reg­i­ment as “a nation­al­ist out­fit.” Oth­er news accounts referred to the Azov forces in a sim­i­lar vague man­ner, occa­sion­al­ly with a per­func­to­ry acknowl­edg­ment that the reg­i­ment was con­tro­ver­sial.

….How­ev­er, the cov­er­age of the Ukraine war threat­ens to achieve a new low in media integri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty. When the estab­lish­ment press white­wash­es the behav­ior of out­right neo-​Nazis, some­thing is ter­ri­bly amiss.

CNN (2022):

Azov’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal wings for­mal­ly sep­a­rat­ed in 2016, when the far-right Nation­al Corps par­ty was found­ed. The Azov bat­tal­ion had by then been inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard.

An effec­tive fight­ing force that’s very much involved in the cur­rent con­flict, the bat­tal­ion has a his­to­ry of neo-Nazi lean­ings, which have not been entire­ly extin­guished by its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. ​

In its hey­day as an autonomous mili­tia, the Azov Bat­tal­ion was asso­ci­at­ed with White suprema­cists and neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and insignia. It was espe­cial­ly active in and around Mar­i­upol in 2014 and 2015. CNN teams in the area at the time report­ed Azov’s embrace of neo-Nazi emblems and para­pher­na­lia.

After its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, amid dis­cus­sions in the US Con­gress about des­ig­nat­ing the Azov Move­ment a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Ukraine’s then min­is­ter of inter­nal affairs, Arsen Avakov, defend­ed the unit. “The shame­ful infor­ma­tion cam­paign about the alleged spread of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy (among Azov mem­bers) is a delib­er­ate attempt to dis­cred­it the ‘Azov’ unit and the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine,” he told the online news­pa­per Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da in 2019.

The bat­tal­ion still oper­ates as a rel­a­tive­ly autonomous enti­ty. It has been promi­nent in defend­ing Mar­i­upol in recent weeks, and its resis­tance has been wide­ly praised by mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment.

Fair (2022):

The out­sized influ­ence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukrain­ian soci­ety (Human Rights Watch, 6/14/18)—includ­ing the the Azov Reg­i­ment, the explic­it­ly neo-Nazi branch of Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard—is anoth­er fact that has been dis­missed as dis­in­for­ma­tion. West­ern out­lets once under­stood far-right extrem­ism as a fes­ter­ing issue (Haaretz, 12/27/18) that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment “under­played” (BBC, 12/13/14).

The Finan­cial Times (3/29/22) and Lon­don Times (3/30/22) attempt­ed to reha­bil­i­tate the Azov regiment’s rep­u­ta­tion, using the dis­in­for­ma­tion label to down­play the influ­ence of extrem­ism in the nation­al guard unit. Quot­ing Azov’s founder Andriy Bilet­sky as well as an unnamed Azov com­man­der, the Finan­cial Times cast Azov’s mem­bers as “patri­ots” who “shrug off the neo-Nazi label as ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.’” Alex Kovzhun, a “con­sul­tant” who helped draft the polit­i­cal pro­gram of the Nation­al Corps, Azov’s polit­i­cal wing, added a light­heart­ed human inter­est per­spec­tive, say­ing Azov was “made up of his­to­ri­ans, foot­ball hooli­gans and men with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence.”

That the Finan­cial Times would take Bilet­sky at his word on the issue of Azov’s Nazi-free char­ac­ter, a man who once declared that the Nation­al Corps would “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans]” (Guardian, 3/13/18), is a prime exam­ple of how West­ern media have engaged in infor­ma­tion war at the expense of their most basic jour­nal­is­tic duties and ethics.

APPENDIX B: Kozatsky is a Fas­cist

In addi­tion to the Nazi para­pher­na­lia described by Shariy above, we have Twit­ter likes:

On Twit­ter, the Azov press spokesper­son [Kozatsky] has “liked” many hor­ren­dous posts, includ­ing an image of a sym­bol asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazi SS which large­ly admin­is­tered the Holo­caust. The Totenkopf was cap­tioned: “Your face when you read news about gyp­sies.” That year, in 2018, the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion warned, “attacks on Roma in Ukraine have esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.” Ear­li­er that spring, Kozatsky liked an image of the KKK and anoth­er tweet that said “Heil Hitler!” on the Nazi dictator’s birth­day. In Jan­u­ary 2019, Kozatsky liked an image of Amon Göth, an Aus­tri­an Nazi who com­mand­ed the Plas­zow con­cen­tra­tion camp and was por­trayed in Schindler’s List as the main antag­o­nist of the film. In March 2020, not long after the first con­firmed case of Covid-19 in his coun­try, Kozatsky liked an image of Ukrain­ian graf­fi­ti that said “Death to Yids” with an SS sym­bol. Two days before he sur­ren­dered in Mar­i­upol, some­one on Twit­ter mocked Kozatsky for his ankle tat­toos: “I’m not a nazi.” He respond­ed, “I want to dis­ap­point you and tell you that the swasti­ka is not only Nazi. Here is your home­work, young inves­ti­ga­tor…” There are plen­ty of more exam­ples of him being a Nazi on the inter­net.

As seen above, Dmytro Kozatsky obvi­ous­ly gets a big kick out of the neo-Nazi code 1488, and he appears to be fond of the white suprema­cist Ukrain­ian brands Sva­S­tone and “White Print.” Accord­ing to Report­ing Rad­i­cal­ism, a web­site cre­at­ed by the US-fund­ed Free­dom House in Ukraine, “The brand name Sva­S­tone alludes to the swasti­ka. Its logo is a styl­ized swasti­ka… The logo and name are exclu­sive­ly used as a brand that tar­gets far-right con­sumers.” White Print is more obscure and overt­ly neo-Nazi. This Azov-asso­ci­at­ed brand, which appar­ent­ly oper­ates exclu­sive­ly on the Russ­ian social media net­work VK, made Kozatsky’s 1488 tshirt, and per­haps anoth­er fea­tur­ing a sun cross swasti­ka. Kozatsky expressed inter­est in anoth­er one of their shirts glo­ri­fy­ing the “Gali­cia Divi­sion” — the Ukrain­ian Waf­fen-SS unit — in addi­tion to the shirt he already has embla­zoned with the Nazi formation’s Ukrain­ian emblem.

Not a nice per­son at all.

5.  The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca via the Azov “Philosopher’s Stone” has swept up Con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both polit­i­cal par­ties and aca­d­e­m­ic groups at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

“‘Now, All of You Are Azov’: ‘open­ly neo-Nazi’ Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion meets Con­gress, tours US” by Moss Robe­son; The Gray Zone; 10/05/2022.

After meet­ing with at least 50 mem­bers of Con­gress, sol­diers of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment toured the US to auc­tion off swasti­ka-inspired patch­es and lob­by for an end to restric­tions on US arms and train­ing.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Moss Robeson’s Ukes, Kooks and Spooks blog and light­ly edit­ed by The Gray­zone.

Read part one of Robeson’s series on Azov’s US tour here.

This Sep­tem­ber, a del­e­ga­tion of the Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi-led Azov move­ment arrived in the Unit­ed States, at a time when myth mak­ing about the far-right network’s “depoliti­ciza­tion” had reached a fever pitch. By this time, the New York Times had ceased refer­ring to Azov as “open­ly neo-Nazi,” and was refer­ring to the ultra-nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion as “cel­e­brat­ed.”

Since news broke of Azov’s US tour, more infor­ma­tion has come to light about the ultra-nation­al­ist organization’s out­reach in the coun­try, includ­ing efforts by Azov to reverse Con­gress’ ban on sup­ply­ing it with arms and train­ing.

The Azov del­e­ga­tion includ­ed three vet­er­ans of the reg­i­ment for­mer­ly holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­upol. They were led by Gior­gi Kuparashvili, the only fight­er not tak­en pris­on­er by the Rus­sians.

Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, a cofounder and instruc­tor of the Azov Reg­i­ment, his del­e­ga­tion met over fifty mem­bers of Con­gress, far more than any­one has real­ized. Among those who showed up to greet Azov on Capi­tol Hill was Rep. Adam Schiff, the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat who spent the Trump era lead­ing Rus­si­a­gate the­atrics and clam­ored for ship­ments of offen­sive US weapons to Ukraine.

The trio was accom­pa­nied by two spous­es and a moth­er of POWs cap­tured at Azovstal. This includ­ed Katery­na Prokopenko, the wife of the far-right com­man­der of the Azov Reg­i­ment, Denys Prokopenko, who was freed in a pris­on­er exchange and declared a Hero of Ukraine dur­ing her vis­it to the Unit­ed States. The delegation’s oth­er Azov wife was Yulia Fedosyuk, the leader of “Sil­ver of the Rose,” an anti-fem­i­nist, anti-gay group linked to the Azov move­ment, accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Olek­siy Kuz­menko.

Ear­li­er this year, Prokopenko and Fedosyuk met with Pope Fran­cis. While in the Unit­ed States, they spoke at a small ral­ly in front of the White House, appeared for an inter­view on the pro-Trump chan­nel News­max, and took meet­ings with numer­ous mem­bers of Con­gress. News­max sep­a­rate­ly inter­viewed two of the Azov vet­er­ans, includ­ing Kuparashvili.

On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24, half of the del­e­ga­tion includ­ing Kuparashvili appeared before a siz­able audi­ence at a Ukrain­ian church in Detroit. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can Cri­sis Response Com­mit­tee of Michi­gan (UACRCM), a lob­by­ing out­fit formed ear­li­er this year, live-streamed the event, which was orga­nized by US part­ners of the Azov movement’s char­i­ty wing.

Among the more promi­nent Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists present for the event was Borys Potapenko, a mem­ber of the UACRCM and an inter­na­tion­al coor­di­na­tor of the Stepan Ban­dera-found­ed Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN‑B), which col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many through­out much of World War Two. Potapenko is also among the lead­ers of the far-right “Capit­u­la­tion Resis­tance Move­ment” in Ukraine, which allied with Azov’s Nation­al Corps against Volodymyr Zelen­sky in 2019–22. (More about this com­ing soon on the “Ban­dera Lob­by Blog”…)

Gior­gi Kuparashvili spoke to the audi­ence in Eng­lish, focus­ing large­ly on the Azov delegation’s suc­cess in Wash­ing­ton. “We went to the Sen­a­tors, Con­gress­men, from both par­ties. Hon­est­ly, the major­i­ty we met, there were like over fifty of them, and head of their frac­tions [Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans], they all gave 100% sup­port. They start­ed to work right from their office in front of us, picked up the phone, and start­ed call­ing to dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions which can influ­ence — right now, we’re hav­ing prob­lems with the Gene­va Con­ven­tions. Gene­va Con­ven­tions is not work­ing, not for Rus­sia…”

Lat­er, Kuparashvili indi­cat­ed that the del­e­ga­tion had more on its polit­i­cal agen­da than detail­ing Russ­ian war crimes, crit­i­ciz­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross, and secur­ing the release of Azov POWs. He pre­dict­ed that this year, Con­gress will lift its ban on the U.S. sup­ply­ing arms and train­ing to the Azov Reg­i­ment.

The Azov delegation’s audi­ence at their first stop in New Jer­sey large­ly con­sist­ed of chil­dren

In his clos­ing remarks, Gior­gi Kuparashvili appeared to take aim at his least two favorite mem­bers of Con­gress: Ro Khan­na, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat from Sil­i­con Val­ley, thanks to whom Con­gress cur­tailed U.S. sup­port for the Azov Reg­i­ment in 2018, and Max Rose, a for­mer Con­gress­man and right-wing Demo­c­rat from Stat­en Island, who called on the State Depart­ment to label the Azov Reg­i­ment a “For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion” in 2020.

“From year ’14, ’15, ’16, until today,” claimed Kuparashvili, “there is a bill which, I don’t remem­ber the name, but the Con­gress­man who lob­bied, I don’t know how… He left Con­gress a cou­ple years ago, he ini­ti­at­ed to put the Azov as a restric­tion in a bill. This week, we talked to all the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors, every­body under­stands, because when you bring the bill to Con­gress, they have to read it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nobody read it, so they approved it again.”

“Now we told them, ‘are you sup­port­ing this?’ And every­body knows it’s just a mis­take in it. As the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors says, this bill goes until 2025. They’re not going to wait until 2025, and gonna make the cor­rec­tion on this year, to remove it from there… We’re deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion and fix­ing it, and major­i­ty of the job is already done, and Con­gress and Sen­ate, both par­ties are sup­port­ing this.”

Before Kuparashvili’s clos­ing remarks, his hosts held an auc­tion on behalf of the Azov char­i­ty project, ulti­mate­ly rais­ing $33,416. The auc­tion end­ed with bid­ding on three Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es fea­tur­ing styl­ized wolf­san­gel swastikas.

Before the bid­ding com­menced, Kuparashvili insist­ed that things were not as they appear. “If you know, there is a sym­bol,” he said, tap­ping the patch on his left arm, “which I’m gonna explain now, because they call us Nazis, all this crap.” At that point he mock­ing­ly put his hand over his mouth, and said, “sor­ry my lan­guage — ha!”

“This is actu­al­ly two let­ters, two Latin let­ters, N and I. The N stands for Nation­al; I, it’s Idea. Nation­al Idea. Nation­al Idea. For reg­i­ment, it’s our slo­gan. Nation­al Idea. Every coun­try, it doesn’t mat­ter, it’s U.S., Ukraine, what­ev­er. When the coun­try was in prob­lem, cen­ter of grav­i­ty always became the nation­al­ists. The Nation­al Idea. All the nation gath­ers around the nation­al­ists, and around the Nation­al Idea. For us, Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. If they don’t like what is Ukraine, and what it’s Nation­al Idea, hell with them…” Kuparahsvili, touch­ing on the total­i­tar­i­an Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist con­cept of “Nati­oc­ra­cy,” all but admit­ted Azov’s affin­i­ty for white nation­al­ists in the West.

Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, before, only Azov mem­bers could wear their swasti­ka patch­es, but he bestowed per­mis­sion on the audi­ence to place their bids, because “now, all of you are Azov.” There was anoth­er dis­claimer that Kuparashvili shared only after the win­ners emerged. “It’s a respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

“We’re just hand­ing over it,” Kuparashvili told the audi­ence about the Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es. “We’re giv­ing to those our respon­si­bil­i­ty. We have the sol­diers where they go through the basic train­ing, go through all the train­ings, and dif­fi­cul­ties. If they don’t deserve, you can’t grad­u­ate… But if you deserve it, with this comes a respon­si­bil­i­ty… Your Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. You got­ta fight for it. Not just put it in a room or a shelf some­where, but you got­ta fight for it. Fight for your Nation­al Idea…” The win­ners each salut­ed Kuparashvili in the Azov fash­ion.

Two days lat­er, the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art in Chica­go host­ed anoth­er Azov char­i­ty auc­tion, co-spon­sored by the Ban­derite-led Illi­nois Divi­sion of the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca. Its most influ­en­tial mem­ber, Pavlo Ban­dri­wsky, an OUN‑B leader in Chica­go known as “the Strate­gist”, took pic­tures with the Azov vet­er­ans. This event fea­tured a bat­tle flag of the Azov Reg­i­ment that was appar­ent­ly auc­tioned off with the promise that every sur­viv­ing mem­ber will sign it after the war is won. The Con­sul Gen­er­als of Ger­many and Poland also spoke at the event.

On Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 1, after return­ing to Wash­ing­ton, the full del­e­ga­tion, except for Katery­na Prokopenko, who left to be reunit­ed with her hus­band in Turkey, made an appear­ance at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Yulia Fedosyuk con­clud­ed her remarks, “Glo­ry to the Azov Reg­i­ment.” At some point, Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McFaul, the dan­ger­ous­ly fool­ish for­mer US Ambas­sador to Rus­sia (2012–14), stopped by to offer words of sup­port for Ukraine, if not the Azov Reg­i­ment itself.

Ear­li­er this year, Stanford’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion (CISAC) pub­lished a detailed report on the “Azov Move­ment… a far-right nation­al­ist net­work.” Michael McFaul directs the Free­man Spogli Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, of which the CISAC is part. He appar­ent­ly took no issue with the neo-Nazi sym­bol pro­ject­ed behind him.

This might not have been the Azov delegation’s last stop in the Unit­ed States, but it would be rather fit­ting. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty is in the Con­gres­sion­al dis­trict adja­cent to Ro Khan­na, whose restric­tions on US sup­port for the Azov Reg­i­ment should be lift­ed this year, accord­ing to one of the event’s speak­ers. But these days, even Khan­na might not object.

6.  Not to be out­done by the above indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions, the ADL has joined the cho­rus declar­ing that the Azovs aren’t Nazis.

“The ADL issues state­ment declar­ing Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion no longer ‘far-right’” by Alexan­der Ruben­stein; The Gray Zone; 12/8/2022.

The Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL) has emailed The Gray­zone a defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and refused to con­demn the Pen­ta­gon for hon­or­ing a vet­er­an of the group who sports Nazi-inspired tat­toos.

A Novem­ber 9 email from the Anti-Defama­tion League to The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a twist­ed defense of Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion. Despite its self-pro­claimed “anti-hate” mis­sion, the ADL  insist­ed in the email it “does not” con­sid­er Azov as the “far right group it once was.”

The Azov Bat­tal­ion is a neo-Nazi unit for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed into the US gov­ern­ment-backed Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. Found­ed by Andriy Bilet­sky, who has infa­mous­ly vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led unter­men­schen,” Azov was once wide­ly con­demned by West­ern cor­po­rate media and the human rights indus­try for its asso­ci­a­tion with Nazism. Then came the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

In the months that imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed, Azov led the Ukrain­ian military’s defense of Mar­i­upol, the group’s long­time strong­hold. As the mili­tia assumed a front­line role in the war against Rus­sia, West­ern media led a cam­paign to rebrand Azov as mis­un­der­stood free­dom fight­ers while accus­ing its crit­ics of echo­ing Krem­lin talk­ing points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “cel­e­brat­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion.”

Like the Wash­ing­ton Post and oth­er main­stream out­lets, the ADL ignored Azov’s atroc­i­ties this April in Mar­i­upol, where locals accused the group of using civil­ians as human shields and exe­cut­ing those who attempt­ed to flee. One video out of Mar­i­upol showed Azov fight­ers proud­ly declar­ing the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and mass mur­der­er of Jews, Stepan Ban­dera, to be their “father.” 

The Azov Bat­tal­ion has long served as a mag­net for the inter­na­tion­al white nation­al­ist move­ment, attract­ing recruits from the ter­ror­ist Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion to a US Army Spe­cial­ist arrest­ed on charges of dis­trib­ut­ing bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions.

Back in March 2022, just a month before the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowl­edg­ing that white nation­al­ists see Azov “as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.” 

Eight months lat­er, how­ev­er, the ADL has changed its tune, assert­ing to this out­let that Azov has root­ed the fas­cists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL sim­ply shift its mes­sag­ing to con­form to the imper­a­tives of a Biden admin­is­tra­tion still intent on send­ing bil­lions in mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine?

The ADL responds to Gray­zone report with defense of Azov

The ADL’s defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion was trig­gered by an inci­dent this Sep­tem­ber, when this jour­nal­ist filed a “hate inci­dent” report through the ADL’s web­site which detailed the con­tents of a Gray­zone exposé on a Pen­ta­gon-spon­sored sports com­pe­ti­tion. Held at Dis­ney World, the week­long com­pe­ti­tion host­ed and hon­ored Ihor Halush­ka, a Ukrain­ian Azov vet­er­an brand­ed with a Nazi Son­nen­rad tat­too — a hate sym­bol, accord­ing to none oth­er than the ADL. 

The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a brief sum­ma­ry of these facts and events to the ADL, fur­nished sup­port­ing pho­tographs, and includ­ed a link to the entire report. Asked what the ADL could do to help, this reporter request­ed they con­demn the Pen­ta­gon for host­ing a neo-Nazi. Upon fil­ing the report, I was imme­di­ate­ly giv­en an auto­mat­ed case num­ber and put on the organization’s mass mail­ing list.

 

Some 60 days lat­er, the ADL respond­ed, apol­o­giz­ing for the delay yet refrain­ing from acknowl­edg­ing any of The Grayzone’s report­ing. Instead, the ADL offered a two para­graph defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion. There was, of course, no con­dem­na­tion of the War­rior Games’ host­ing of Halush­ka, and the event has not been includ­ed in the ADL’s pub­lic direc­to­ry of hate inci­dents.

“When it was cre­at­ed in 2014, the Azov Brigade was a pri­vate mil­i­tary group fight­ing the then annex­a­tion of Crimea,” the ADL wrote to The Gray­zone. “Dur­ing this peri­od, it was a group that had a clear far-right influ­ence. In late 2014, the group was brought in as a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard and renamed the Azov Reg­i­ment. When this hap­pened, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment inves­ti­gat­ed the group and claims to have expelled it of these far-right mem­bers. It was also dur­ing this time that its founder Andriy Bilet­sky left AZOV and has since worked in the greater Azov move­ment, includ­ing found­ing a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, the Nation­al Corps. In essence, there was a split between the mil­i­tary unit AZOV and the polit­i­cal goals of its found­ing mem­bers. Of course, this is not to say that they have suc­cess­ful­ly removed all far-right ele­ments from their ranks, but our Cen­ter on Extrem­ism also does not see Azov Regime as the far-right group it once was.”

The ADL’s stun­ning defense of Azov as a large­ly depoliti­cized fight­ing unit is under­mined most strong­ly by the ADL’s own research mate­r­i­al.

The ADL harsh­ly con­demned Azov before it legit­imized it

In 2019, the orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished a report on “The Inter­nal­iza­tion of White Suprema­cy,” which name-dropped Azov 18 times and brand­ed it “a far-right group and mili­tia,” “the far-right orga­ni­za­tion and mili­tia,” and “a Ukrain­ian extrem­ist group and mili­tia.”

The report also stat­ed that Azov “has ties to neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” “has reached out to like-mind­ed Amer­i­can extrem­ists,” and “report­ed­ly has con­nec­tions to Atom­waf­fen (AWD), an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi group alleged­ly tied to five mur­ders.”

Lat­er that year, the ADL not­ed that an neo-Nazi US Army Spe­cial­ist that pled guilty to unlaw­ful­ly dis­trib­ut­ing bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions had “expressed desire to find more ‘rad­i­cals’ and trav­el to Ukraine to fight with para­mil­i­tary group the Azov Bat­tal­ion.” 

A more recent ADL report paints Azov in a sim­i­lar­ly unflat­ter­ing light. This March, sev­en days after Rus­sia launched its mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Ukraine, the ADL ran a blog post enti­tled, “White Suprema­cists, Oth­er Extrem­ists Respond to Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine.” The arti­cle referred to Azov as “the Ukrain­ian nation­al guard unit with explic­it neo-Nazi ties,” and not­ed that white suprema­cists “see Azov as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.”

In Novem­ber, how­ev­er, the ADL declared that it “does not see Azov Reg­i­ment as the far-right group it once was.” To jus­ti­fy its sud­den turn­about, the sup­posed anti-extrem­ism orga­ni­za­tion point­ed to a sup­posed split between the rad­i­cal right­ist Andriy Bilet­sky and the Azov rank-and-file.

Bilet­sky and Azov’s “split” amounts to a lit­er­al office divider

In its email to The Gray­zone, the ADL claimed that “the mil­i­tary unit AZOV and the polit­i­cal goals of its found­ing mem­bers” were “split” in 2014, insist­ing that Bilet­sky “left Azov and has since worked in the great Azov move­ment, includ­ing found­ing a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, the Nation­al Corps.” 

The ADL not­ed no such “split” in 2019 when they char­ac­ter­ized the Nation­al Corps sim­ply as the “polit­i­cal wing of Azov.” 

In fact, the close asso­ci­a­tion of Azov with the Nation­al Corps was wide­ly acknowl­edged in both media out­lets and think tanks fund­ed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.

“Azov’s Kyiv recruit­ment cen­ter and mil­i­tary acad­e­my share a loca­tion with the offices of the Nation­al Corps,” a researcher for the US gov­ern­ment-spon­sored Belling­cat out­let explained in the NATO-affil­i­at­ed Atlantic Coun­cil in 2020. The researcher added that Azov “rou­tine­ly hosts Bilet­sky (and oth­er for­mer com­man­ders) at its bases and wel­comes his par­tic­i­pa­tion in cer­e­monies, greet­ing him as a leader.”

In fact, on Octo­ber 26, 2022 – a mere two weeks before the ADL assert­ed a “split” between the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the “polit­i­cal goals” of its founder – Bilet­sky deliv­ered a speech at a cer­e­mo­ny in Kiev cel­e­brat­ing the renam­ing of a street after Azov in com­mem­o­ra­tion of their fight in Mar­i­upol this April.

Azov Bat­tal­ion founder Andriy Bilet­sky hon­or­ing the “heroes of Azov” on Octo­ber 26, 2022

“There is a ton of lib­er­al white wash­ing when it comes to fas­cists in Ukraine”

While the ADL claimed to The Gray­zone that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment presided over a purge of neo-Nazis from Azov’s ranks, the media appear­ances of Azov mem­bers this year tell a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. 

As The Gray­zone report­ed, Ital­ian author­i­ties issued a war­rant this Novem­ber for the arrest of Anton Radom­sky, an Azov fight­er, for plan­ning to attack a shop­ping mall near Naples.

Also in Novem­ber, an Azov photographer’s pub­lic rela­tions tour of the East­ern Unit­ed States was inter­rupt­ed by protests after his his­to­ry of post­ing Nazi imagery on social media came to light.

And con­trary to the ADL’s spin, inter­views with for­eign fight­ers embed­ded with Azov paint a pic­ture of a fight­ing group that is still hon­ey­combed with hard­core neo-Nazis.

“Azov Bat­tal­ion still has a lot of its neo-Nazi pres­ence,” an Amer­i­can named Justin, who fought with Azov in Mar­i­upol, claimed in an inter­view pub­lished on Octo­ber 8. Accord­ing to the for­mer vol­un­teer, his bat­tal­ion com­man­der was a “fuck­ing Nazi” who kept a pho­to­graph of Adolf Hitler as his desk­top back­ground on his com­put­er. The Amer­i­can explained that he and his fel­low sol­diers would greet each oth­er with sieg heil salutes.

An equal­ly reveal­ing inter­view which appeared on Novem­ber 12 fea­tured com­ments from an Amer­i­can vol­un­teer for the Azov Bat­tal­ion named Kent “Bone­face” McLel­lan.

“Bone­face” boasts a lengthy arrest record in the US, includ­ing an inci­dent in which he was filmed by an under­cov­er gov­ern­ment infor­mant par­tic­i­pat­ing in para­mil­i­tary train­ing with the Amer­i­can Front neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the group was plan­ning “to kill Jews, immi­grants and oth­er minori­ties.” 

In the Novem­ber inter­view, Bone­face admit­ted to tak­ing pho­tographs of Ukrain­ian fight­ers “pos­ing with the corpses of a lynched preg­nant woman and a man they said was her hus­band” for a video enti­tled “Kikes get the rope.”  He also claimed to have appeared in a video depict­ing a botched cru­ci­fix­ion. 

But Boneface’s com­ments on the preva­lence of neo-Nazis with­in the ranks of Azov offer the clear­est refu­ta­tion of the ADL’s asser­tion that the bat­tal­ion is “no longer the far-right group it once was.”

“There is a ton of lib­er­al white wash­ing when it comes to Fas­cists in Ukraine,” McLel­lan said, rat­tling off pop­u­lar talk­ing points: “Nazis don’t exist”; “Azov bat­tal­ion and Azov reg­i­ment are dif­fer­ent”; “They took all the Nazis out of Azov.”

“I speak out against the white wash­ing of Nation­al­ists by the media,” he added. “I use Twit­ter to main­ly troll the (west­ern) left, as they believe Ukraine[‘s] mil­i­tary isn’t full of nation­al­ist ideals.”

Is the ADL as cred­u­lous as the rest of Ukraine flag-wav­ing lib­er­al Amer­i­ca when it asserts that Azov has been de-rad­i­cal­ized? Or are they just trolling us too?

7.  Per­haps the white­wash­ing of the Azov Nazis should not sur­prise, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the for­ma­tions’ atroc­i­ties in Ukraine are wide­ly attrib­uted to—drumroll, fanfare—the Rus­sians!

Fore­most in the West­ern fal­si­fi­ca­tion of Ukrainian/Azov atroc­i­ties is the mas­sacre at Bucha, which helped ter­mi­nate and mar­gin­al­ize ongo­ing behind-the-scenes nego­ti­a­tions to end the war.

One of the few West­ern voic­es cor­rect­ly attribut­ing the Bucha mas­sacre is Scott Rit­ter.

“ . . . . Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces, in par­tic­u­lar the “Safari” unit staffed by vet­er­ans of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment, caught up with scores of these refugees while they made their way north and, in the ver­nac­u­lar of the Ukraini­ans, “cleansed” them, gun­ning them down on the spot, or bind­ing their hands behind their backs before exe­cut­ing them in the alley­ways and streets of Bucha. . . .”

Bucha, Revis­it­ed: ‘60 Min­utes’ regur­gi­tates dis­in­for­ma­tion about who com­mit­ted war crimes” by Scott Rit­ter; Scott Rit­ter; 10/21/2022.

Scott Rit­ter

The Ukrain­ian nar­ra­tive con­struct­ed by the west is built on a body­guard of lies. And there is no lie greater than that which blames Rus­sia for the deaths of hun­dreds of Ukrain­ian civil­ians in Bucha who were slaugh­tered by Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces.

Some­time dur­ing the peri­od between 1–3 April 2022, Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces entered the north­ern Kiev sub­urb of Bucha. Russ­ian forces who had occu­pied the town had evac­u­at­ed on March 30, part of a gen­er­al realign­ment of forces announced by the Russ­ian Min­istry of Defense on March 25. Bucha had been on the front­lines and was the scene of heavy fight­ing between the Rus­sians and Ukraini­ans; hun­dreds of civil­ians caught up in this fight­ing were killed and wound­ed.

Russ­ian troops were civ­il to the Ukrain­ian civil­ians who remained in Bucha, hand­ing out human­i­tar­i­an sup­plies to those in need and bar­ter­ing dry goods with local ven­dors for fresh eggs and dairy prod­ucts. When the Rus­sians with­drew, pro-Russ­ian civil­ians were encour­aged to depart with them. This under­scored the Russ­ian under­stand­ing of the poten­tial for Ukrain­ian reprisals against any civil­ian deemed to have been “cooperating/collaborating” with their forces dur­ing the peri­od in which Russ­ian troops occu­pied Bucha.

Many Ukraini­ans who had inter­act­ed with the Russ­ian troops did not leave, assum­ing that their nor­mal inter­ac­tions with Russ­ian sol­diers, includ­ing lim­it­ed com­merce and the accep­tance of human­i­tar­i­an sup­plies in order to sur­vive, did not con­sti­tute trea­son against the Ukrain­ian state.

They were wrong.

Short­ly after Russ­ian troops depart­ed Bucha, Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces made their way into the town. Announce­ments were made on social media and pub­lic broad­cast­ing warn­ing the cit­i­zens of Bucha about “cleans­ing” oper­a­tions tar­get­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors. In light of these announce­ments, many of the Ukraini­ans who had remained in Bucha became con­cerned about their fate, and began to flee toward Russ­ian lines. They wore the white arm band, indi­cat­ing that they were not a threat to the Russ­ian troops. Many also brought with them Russ­ian-pro­vid­ed rations to sus­tain them on their jour­ney.

But it was too late.

Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces, in par­tic­u­lar the “Safari” unit staffed by vet­er­ans of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment, caught up with scores of these refugees while they made their way north and, in the ver­nac­u­lar of the Ukraini­ans, “cleansed” them, gun­ning them down on the spot, or bind­ing their hands behind their backs before exe­cut­ing them in the alley­ways and streets of Bucha.

The evi­dence of this crime was over­whelm­ing. But the “col­lec­tive West,” led by a coterie of erst­while jour­nal­ists whose func­tion had trans­formed from reporters of fact-based truth to stenog­ra­phers of fic­tion­al pro­pa­gan­da, was engaged in a larg­er infor­ma­tion oper­a­tion, designed to shift pub­lic opin­ion away from the need to seek a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment to the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict, toward the sus­tain­ment of a long-term war of attri­tion designed to weak­en Rus­sia in the long term.

To accom­plish this task, the “col­lec­tive West” need­ed to con­struct an unam­bigu­ous “good ver­sus evil” nar­ra­tive which por­trayed the Ukraini­ans as the brave defend­ers of demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues such as free­dom and lib­er­ty, and the Rus­sians as rapa­cious thugs maraud­ing across the Ukrain­ian land­scape, bru­tal­iz­ing an inno­cent civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. This kind of unam­bigu­ous dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of roles was nec­es­sary in order to gain pop­u­lar sup­port for what was to come—a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar infu­sion of finan­cial and mil­i­tary aid designed to trans­form the Russ­ian-Ukraine con­flict into a de fac­to exis­ten­tial strug­gle between “good” (NATO) and “evil” (Rus­sia).

It worked.

Bucha became the sym­bol around which the cit­i­zens of the “col­lec­tive West” ral­lied, sup­port­ing not only the inter­ven­tion of their lead­ers to under­mine a viable diplo­mat­ic off-ramp from the con­flict being nego­ti­at­ed in Istan­bul between Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, but also blind­ing them to the dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the failed effort to deter and defeat Rus­sia through sanc­tions. Instead of demand­ing that their respec­tive lead­ers work to restore a sem­blance of eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty at home, the cit­i­zens of the “col­lec­tive West” applaud­ed while their gov­ern­ments trans­ferred tens of bil­lions of dol­lars of their hard-earned trea­sure to sus­tain a gov­ern­ment which more close­ly mir­rored the fic­tion­al Russ­ian thug man­u­fac­tured in the imag­i­na­tions of west­ern main­stream media.

Sev­en months lat­er, the “col­lec­tive West” finds itself at a new inflec­tion point. After build­ing up over the course of the sum­mer months a reserve corps of fresh forces trained and equipped to NATO stan­dards, Ukraine, with the assis­tance of NATO intel­li­gence, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, logis­tics, and oper­a­tional plan­ning sup­port, car­ried out a much-bal­ly­hooed offen­sive in the direc­tion of Kharkov and Kher­son.

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By sac­ri­fic­ing this new NATO army (tens of thou­sands of Ukrain­ian sol­diers were killed and wound­ed, and hun­dreds of tanks and armored vehi­cles lost), Ukraine was able to achieve impres­sive ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains with­out inflict­ing any mean­ing­ful dam­age to the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. This pyrrhic “vic­to­ry” led to Ukraine destroy­ing its strate­gic reserve with­out accom­plish­ing any mean­ing­ful mil­i­tary objec­tives. More­over, the Russ­ian response—consolidation of defense lines, par­tial mobi­liza­tion of 300,000 troops, and the ini­ti­a­tion of a strate­gic air cam­paign designed to par­a­lyze Ukraine—has rad­i­cal­ly shift­ed the nar­ra­tive away from “Ukraine is win­ning, a Russ­ian col­lapse is immi­nent” to “a Russ­ian vic­to­ry is a defeat for NATO.”

Rus­sia is win­ning.

NATO is being defeat­ed on the bat­tle­fields of Ukraine.

Rather than accept this new real­i­ty and seek a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment to the con­flict, the “col­lec­tive West” once again turns to its time-test­ed play­book of gen­er­at­ing a false “good ver­sus evil” nar­ra­tive capa­ble of moti­vat­ing nations who have long ago emp­tied their arse­nals and trea­suries in sup­port of Ukraine, and who are cur­rent­ly star­ing eco­nom­ic and social dis­as­ter in the face as win­ter approach­es and the real­i­ty of the con­se­quences of sanc­tion­ing Russ­ian ener­gy hits home, to once again invest good mon­ey after bad and dou­ble down on the los­ing bet that was, is, and for­ev­er will be Ukraine.

One of the main prob­lems fac­ing the so-called “jour­nal­ists” who pop­u­late the west­ern main­stream media is that even fic­tion writ­ers as capa­ble as them­selves could not craft a believ­able nar­ra­tive based upon the emerg­ing real­i­ty that Ukraine is the liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of the sick­en­ing ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera, whose mur­der­ous ethos has infect­ed every aspect of Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment, mil­i­tary, and secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

The oth­er prob­lem was that the Ukraini­ans were, sim­ply put, liars.

Exhib­it num­ber one: Ukraine’s for­mer ombudswoman for human rights, Lyud­my­la Deniso­va.

In the after­math of the “Bucha mas­sacre” nar­ra­tive man­u­fac­tured by Ukraine and dis­sem­i­nat­ed by their com­pli­ant co-con­spir­a­tors in the main­stream west­ern media, Deniso­va sought to sus­tain the moral out­rage the orig­i­nal sto­ries gen­er­at­ed by releas­ing even more tales from the dark side. Typ­i­cal of her modus operen­di was the sto­ry she told to BBC, and which was picked up, unques­tion­ing­ly, by oth­er west­ern news out­lets, includ­ing Newsweek and the Wash­ing­ton Post, about alleged sex­u­al vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted by Russ­ian sol­diers in Ukraine.

“About 25 girls and women aged 14–24 were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly raped dur­ing the occu­pa­tion in the base­ment of one house in Bucha,” Deniso­va told the BBC. “Nine of them are preg­nant. Russ­ian sol­diers told them they would rape them to the point where they would­n’t want sex­u­al con­tact with any man, to pre­vent them from hav­ing Ukrain­ian chil­dren.”

None of this was true, and the prob­lem with telling a lie of such mag­ni­tude is even­tu­al­ly someone—even a thor­ough­ly com­pro­mised west­ern “journalist”—is going to want to speak direct­ly with the vic­tims.

There were none.

Deniso­va after­wards explained the rea­son behind her lies. “I talked about ter­ri­ble things,” she told a Ukrain­ian news­pa­per, “in order to some­how push them [the west] to make the deci­sions that Ukraine and the Ukrain­ian peo­ple need.” In one par­tic­u­lar case, Deniso­va not­ed that the Ital­ians were “against the pro­vi­sion of weapons to us,” but after hear­ing her speak, decid­ed “they will sup­port Ukraine, includ­ing by the pro­vi­sion of weapons.”

In the after­math of the Ukrain­ian recon­quest of Kharkov, the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties tried to cre­ate a “new Bucha” nar­ra­tive, this time around the exis­tence of mass graves in the vicin­i­ty of Izium. But this sto­ry­line soon fell apart amid grow­ing direct evi­dence of Ukrain­ian atroc­i­ties against any­one deemed to be a “col­lab­o­ra­tor.”

Flushed with vic­to­ry, the Ukrain­ian sup­port­ers of Stepan Ban­dera open­ly bragged about their crimes. One Ukrain­ian vol­un­teer detach­ment com­man­der, a mem­ber of the “Right Sec­tor” polit­i­cal par­ty, admit­ted his crimes to a Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist, who expressed no emo­tion upon learn­ing about the deaths of so many of her fel­low cit­i­zens. “We haven’t got time to put them in jail,” the Right Sec­tor thug said, not­ing that those accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians “just disappear…Ukraine will have to con­duct a cen­sus,” he bragged, “because so many peo­ple have dis­ap­peared.”

Videos of fresh­ly dug graves filled with the bod­ies of fresh­ly exe­cut­ed men and women, all in civil­ian cloth­ing, their hands bound behind their backs, backed up the commander’s words.

Unable to craft a nar­ra­tive capa­ble of over­com­ing this brutish real­i­ty, the main­stream media resort­ed to the age-old trick of breath­ing fresh life into an old story—they repack­aged the lie of the orig­i­nal Russ­ian sin—the alleged “mas­sacre” of Bucha.

On Octo­ber 16, CBS’s flag­ship news pro­gram, “60 Min­utes,” broad­cast a sto­ry enti­tled “The Lost Souls of Bucha.” Scott Pel­ley, the cor­re­spon­dent giv­en the task of res­ur­rect­ing this sto­ry, nar­rat­ed a script designed to pull at the heart­strings of any­one lis­ten­ing.

“The town of Bucha,” he intoned, “lived in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty on the inter­na­tion­al stage until ear­ly spring when Russ­ian occu­py­ing forces retreat­ed from the town and left behind dev­as­ta­tion and death that shocked the entire world. Over 27 days, Russ­ian troops killed more than 400 civil­ians in the Kiev sub­urb. Some of the vic­tims were dis­cov­ered bound and tor­tured. Many were left to rot in the place where they were killed.”

Pel­ley had vis­it­ed Bucha short­ly after it was recap­tured by Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty forces, and played a major role in par­rot­ing the Ukrain­ian nar­ra­tive of “Rus­sia bad” when it came to attribut­ing the cause of death to hun­dreds of Ukrain­ian civil­ians whose bod­ies lit­tered the land­scape. Accord­ing to “60 Min­utes,” Pel­ley “saw the dev­as­ta­tion first­hand and wit­nessed a mass grave dug behind a church in the town cen­ter,” and “vowed to return to learn more about the peo­ple who were killed and buried in that mass grave.”

Pelley’s sto­ry did just that.

There is no doubt­ing that there were vic­tims whose bod­ies were buried in Bucha.

But they weren’t killed by Rus­sians.

They were mur­dered by Ukraini­ans.

Hope­ful­ly, this time the west­ern audi­ence has wised up about the truth of what is going on inside Ukraine today:

The real­i­ty of a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment which has wrapped itself in the red and black ban­ner of the Right Sec­tor, repli­cat­ing the mur­der­ous his­to­ry of Stepan Ban­dera and his fol­low­ers in Vol­hy­nia and East­ern Gali­cia in every vil­lage, town, and city recap­tured from the Rus­sians.

The real­i­ty of Ukrain­ian para­troop­ers who sing the prais­es of Stepan Ban­dera upon com­plet­ing their train­ing.

The real­i­ty of Swastikas open­ly paint­ed on the tanks and armored vehi­cles of the “Krak­en Bat­tal­ion” and oth­er neo-Nazi mil­i­tary for­ma­tions with­in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.

The real­i­ty of the crim­i­nal nature of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

“60 Min­utes” and the west­ern media can revis­it the Bucha tragedy all they want; noth­ing they report will change the fact that the bod­ies seen lying in the street were killed by the Ban­dera-wor­ship­ping mur­der­ers of the “Safari” bat­tal­ion, on the orders of Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Noth­ing can change the fact that these same Ukrain­ian offi­cials, from Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky on down, delib­er­ate­ly lied about Bucha for the sole pur­pose of gen­er­at­ing west­ern out­rage suf­fi­cient to fuel the Ukrain­ian econ­o­my and mil­i­tary with tens of bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of aid.

And noth­ing can change the real­i­ty that all this invest­ment has been in a los­ing cause.

Rus­sia is win­ning.

Rus­sia will win.

And repeat­ing the lies of Bucha will not change that real­i­ty.

Discussion

13 comments for “FTR#1291 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Part 23”

  1. The offi­cial cel­e­bra­tion of fas­cist groups oper­at­ing in Ukraine by the US polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment is noth­ing new. We’ve seen this movie before. There was the open wel­come giv­en to fas­cist Geor­gian war­lord Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili. Or the mem­bers from Azov and Right Sec­tor on the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary ath­let­ic team invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the War­rior Games at Dis­ney World. But it was still rather remark­able to see the kind of open embrace of some­one who is effec­tive a Ukrain­ian fas­cist super fan that just hap­pened a cou­ple weeks ago at a ral­ly attend­ed by a num­ber of high US and EU offi­cials, includ­ing the head of USAID Saman­tha Pow­er. It was a high-lev­el cel­e­bra­tion of US Ukrain­ian Activists, an NGO found­ed in 2014 by Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka. As we’re going to see, Sha­poryn­s­ka is so close to Ukraine’s fas­cist mili­tias that she declared her group “the DC branch of Right Sec­tor” back in 2015. And while Right Sec­tor founder Dmytro Yarosh is indeed one of the recip­i­ents of Sha­poryn­ska’s deep praise, he’s not the only one. For exam­ple, she’s also a big fan of both Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili and for­mer com­man­der of the Don­bass Bat­tal­ion Semen Semenchenko (aka Semy­on Sem­chenko). Recall how Semenchenko had a role in lob­by­ing the US gov­ern­ment over the con­flict in Ukraine and was respon­si­ble for giv­ing US Sen­a­tors faked pho­tos that pur­port­ed­ly showed the Russ­ian mil­i­tary invad­ing Ukraine. The pho­tos were debunked. Also recall that intrigu­ing sto­ry from Decem­ber of 2018 sur­round­ing Semenchenko, then a Ukrain­ian MP, who was part of a group of Ukraini­ans and one Geor­gian who were detained in Geor­gia for ille­gal poses­sion and pro­cure­ment of arms, ammu­ni­tion and explo­sives. Six Ukraini­ans and the Geor­gian were detained. Semenchenko, how­ev­er, had the ben­e­fit of diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty and was allowed to leave.

    And that brings us to the sec­ond and third arti­cles below. Because it turns out Semenchenko has stood as among Ukraine’s fas­cist mili­tia com­man­ders for one notable rea­son: he’s fac­ing state charges. Yes, back in March 2021, a pri­vate mil­i­tary out­fit found­ed by Semenchenko, DBC Corp, was raid­ed by the SBU over charges of oper­at­ing an ille­gal pri­vate mer­ce­nary force. DBC Corp was also charged with attempt­ing to ille­gal­ly pro­cure weapons from Rus­sia. But these weapons weren’t intend­ed for use in the fight in the Don­bas. No, they were intend­ed for use in the Mid­dle East. Yep, it turns out DBC Corp was train­ing forces in Kyiv for using in con­flict zones in the Mid­dle East. And in a very inter­est­ing twist, Semenchenko’s part­ner in this oper­a­tion claims that Semenchenko told him the com­pa­ny was going to get these Mid­dle East con­tracts from the US State Depart­ment. Those con­tracts nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. But the ques­tion of whether or not they were ever on the table are a lot hard­er to dis­miss when we see this cel­e­bra­tion of the “US Ukrain­ian Activists”, led by an open Semenchenko admir­er.

    Oh, and then in May of 2021, Semenchenko was charged with ter­ror­ism over a June 2019 attack on the 112 News chan­nel head­quar­ters with a rock­et pro­pelled anti-tank grenade launch­er. It’s unclear why it took near­ly 2 years of charges to be brought, which sug­gest the charges like­ly would­n’t have been brought had DBC Corp not been fac­ing legal pres­sure of its own. Fac­ing 7 to 12 years, Semenchenko was released in June of 2022 under house arrest after Kyry­lo Budanov, of the Main Intel­li­gence Direc­torate of the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine, appealed to the courts for his release so he can be used in the defense of Ukraine.

    That’s all part and the con­text of the DC “US Ukrain­ian Activists” ral­ly attend­ed by Saman­tha Pow­er and a num­ber of oth­er US and EU offi­cials. It was ral­ly to cel­e­brate a Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra lob­by­ing infra­struc­ture that can’t real­ly be sep­a­rat­ed from the same Ukrain­ian fas­cist net­works that have been on the ascen­dance in Ukrain­ian since 2014. Fas­cists net­works that have been large­ly allowed to oper­ate with impuni­ty. Or near impuni­ty in the case of Semen Semenchenko.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at this Feb 25, 2023, ral­ly, where Ukrain­ian fas­cist super fan Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka got an offi­cial embrace from both the US and the EU:

    The Gray­zone

    Top Biden offi­cials address pro-war ral­ly led by Ukrain­ian Nazi sup­port­ers

    ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·
    MARCH 4, 2023

    USAID’s Saman­tha Pow­er joined EU and US offi­cials who ral­lied at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al at a pro-war demon­stra­tion orga­nized by a clique of Ukrain­ian activists that have described them­selves as “true Ban­derites” and “Right Sektor’s Wash­ing­ton DC branch.”

    High-rank­ing Biden for­eign pol­i­cy offi­cials includ­ing USAID Admin­is­tra­tor, Saman­tha Pow­er, and Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs, Karen Don­fried, observed the first anniver­sary of Russia’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Ukraine at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton DC. There, on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2023, they ral­lied along­side a band of Belt­way-based Ukrain­ian activists ded­i­cat­ed to hon­or­ing and fundrais­ing for ultra-nation­al­ists and war crim­i­nals. The demon­stra­tors demand­ed that the US send F‑16 fight­er jets to Kiev and “pun­ish Rus­sia” by any means nec­es­sary.

    Power’s USAID pro­mot­ed the event with a media advi­so­ry that redi­rect­ed vis­i­tors to the rally’s prin­ci­pal orga­niz­er, an NGO called US Ukrain­ian Activists. This was one of two Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra groups that orga­nized the ral­ly, and both have open­ly sup­port­ed far-right ele­ments in Ukraine since the US-backed Maid­an coup in 2014.

    US Ukrain­ian Activists was found­ed by Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka, an avowed sup­port­er of neo-Nazi and ultra-nation­al­ist mili­tias like the Azov Bat­tal­ion, whom she has described “hero­ic defend­ers of Ukraine.” Shaporynska’s fundrais­ing efforts for extrem­ists groups that were at one point black­list­ed by the US Depart­ment of Defense have been pro­lif­ic and very pub­lic.

    In a video tweet­ed by Pow­er the day before the ral­ly, Ukraine’s ambas­sador to the US, Oksana Markaro­va, is seen giv­ing the USAID Admin­is­tra­tor a tour of a local Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-fund­ed cul­tur­al and busi­ness cen­ter in DC. Markaro­va points to a por­trait of a woman on a wall and informs Pow­er she is “Nadiya [Sha­poryn­s­ka], a tire­less activist here in DC.”

    ...

    Top Biden for­eign pol­i­cy offi­cials join defend­ers of Nazis at Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al

    The Feb­ru­ary 25 ral­ly for Ukraine at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al fea­tured promi­nent US offi­cials on its speak­er ros­ter. Along­side Pow­er was Karen Don­fried, the Biden Administration’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs. Don­fried spent close to 20 years work­ing at the Amer­i­can and Ger­man gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Ger­man Mar­shall Fund think tank, leav­ing her role as its pres­i­dent to join the White House in 2021. Oth­er notable speak­ers includ­ed Ukraine’s Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Oksana Markaro­va; Dis­trict of Colum­bia Sec­re­tary of State Kim­ber­ly Bas­sett; Mark Ordan, chair of the Board of Direc­tors at the US Cham­ber of Com­merce; and the Euro­pean Union’s Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Stavros Lam­brini­dis.

    Also appear­ing on stage was Paul Grod, pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress. Grod has made a career out of defend­ing the lega­cy of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, and even once peti­tioned the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to offi­cial­ly rec­og­nize the geno­ci­dal Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, or OUN, as ‘des­ig­nat­ed resis­tance fight­ers.” This des­ig­na­tion would have fun­neled Cana­di­an tax dol­lars direct­ly into the pen­sion accounts of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors.

    In 2010, Grod hon­ored the lega­cy of the Waf­fen SS Gali­cia, the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists as heroes who fought “for the free­dom of their ances­tral Ukrain­ian home­land.” These groups were dri­ving forces behind the geno­cide in East­ern Europe dur­ing World War Two.

    Grod’s Ukrain­ian World Con­gress host­ed the Feb­ru­ary 25 pro-proxy war ral­ly through its affil­i­ate, the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca. His group has declared Stepan Ban­dera, the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor whose forces slaugh­tered hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews, Poles, and Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, as “the undis­put­ed sym­bol of Ukraine’s lengthy and trag­ic strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.”

    ...

    DC pro-proxy war ral­ly led by enthu­si­as­tic pro­mot­er of Nazi bat­tal­ions

    In 2014, after the US helped install a nation­al­ist pro-NATO gov­ern­ment in Kiev, Sha­poryn­s­ka co-found­ed a lob­by­ing group called Unit­ed Help for Ukraine. Among the organization’s first moves was to orga­nize a protest out­side the offices of the now-shut­tered RT Amer­i­ca news­room. The fol­low­ing year, Sha­poryn­s­ka found­ed US Ukrain­ian Activists, which host­ed the Feb­ru­ary 25 pro-proxy war ral­ly in DC along­side Unit­ed Help for Ukraine.

    Shaporynska’s Face­book posts over the years reveal her enthu­si­as­tic sup­port and fundrais­ing for avowed­ly fas­cist Ukrain­ian mili­tias includ­ing Right Sek­tor and its leader, Dymtro Yarosh, the Azov Bat­tal­ion, the Aidar Bat­tal­ion, and for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion com­man­der Semen Semenchenko.

    In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Sha­poryn­s­ka held a protest out­side of the White House with the wives of Azov fight­ers that had been cap­tured by Rus­sia. Around the same time, she and her US Ukrain­ian Activists NGO were open­ly fundrais­ing for the fas­cist mili­tia, whom they called “hero­ic defend­ers of Ukraine.”

    Sha­poryn­s­ka and her activist col­leagues were rais­ing mon­ey for the Azov Bat­tal­ion when it was under the lead­er­ship of Andriy Bilet­sky, who out­lined the group’s mis­sion as fol­lows: “lead the white races of the world in a final cru­sade … against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].”

    Shaporynska’s sup­port for the Azov Bat­tal­ion stretch­es back years. Under the aus­pices of Unit­ed Help for Ukraine, Sha­poryn­s­ka orga­nized a char­i­ty con­cert for Azov and the Aidar Bat­tal­ion in Jan­u­ary of 2015. That same year, Sha­poryn­s­ka and her col­leagues post­ed pho­tographs of them­selves clad in the col­ors of the neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian Right Sek­tor move­ment. They wrote that they were the “Wash­ing­ton DC Right Sec­tor Branch” and that they “sup­port” its leader Dmytro Yarosh.

    Yarosh led Right Sec­tor from 2013 to 2015, vow­ing to lead the “de-Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” of Ukraine through an armed strug­gle. He is an avowed fol­low­er of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera.

    Yet Azov and Right Sek­tor aren’t the only group of fas­cists and war crim­i­nals with Sha­poryn­s­ka and company’s full sup­port.

    Months after the pro-Azov event Sha­poryn­s­ka threw yet anoth­er “char­i­ty con­cert,” this time fea­tur­ing Geor­gian war­lord Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili as its guest of hon­or. The war­lord would meet with Sha­poryn­s­ka again in 2017 dur­ing one of his many jun­kets to Washington’s Capi­tol Hill.

    Mamu­lashvili cur­rent­ly com­mands the Geor­gian Nation­al Legion for­eign mer­ce­nary group that is back­ing Ukraine’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in its fight against Rus­sia. In April of 2022, Mamu­lashvili infa­mous­ly vowed to exe­cute Russ­ian POWs, a war crime that his mili­tia has com­mit­ted on video through­out the Ukraine con­flict.

    The zealots behind US Ukrain­ian Activists and Unit­ed Help for Ukraine have made no effort to con­ceal their full-fledged sup­port for Ukraine’s most extrem­ist fac­tions. Unit­ed Help for Ukraine has even described its co-founder, Tanya Aldave, as a “true ban­derite,” – in oth­er words, an admir­er of the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Ban­dera. Today, Aldave’s Linkedin bio lists her as an attor­ney for the US Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion.

    ...

    ———-

    “Top Biden offi­cials address pro-war ral­ly led by Ukrain­ian Nazi sup­port­ers” by ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN; The Gray­zone; 03/04/2023

    “Power’s USAID pro­mot­ed the event with a media advi­so­ry that redi­rect­ed vis­i­tors to the rally’s prin­ci­pal orga­niz­er, an NGO called US Ukrain­ian Activists. This was one of two Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra groups that orga­nized the ral­ly, and both have open­ly sup­port­ed far-right ele­ments in Ukraine since the US-backed Maid­an coup in 2014.

    It was pret­ty notable that the head of USAID, Saman­tha Pow­ers, spoke at this event, although not as notable as the fact that Pow­ers was joined on stage at the event by a throng of US and EU offi­cials. This was a big deal:

    ...
    The Feb­ru­ary 25 ral­ly for Ukraine at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al fea­tured promi­nent US offi­cials on its speak­er ros­ter. Along­side Pow­er was Karen Don­fried, the Biden Administration’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs. Don­fried spent close to 20 years work­ing at the Amer­i­can and Ger­man gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Ger­man Mar­shall Fund think tank, leav­ing her role as its pres­i­dent to join the White House in 2021. Oth­er notable speak­ers includ­ed Ukraine’s Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Oksana Markaro­va; Dis­trict of Colum­bia Sec­re­tary of State Kim­ber­ly Bas­sett; Mark Ordan, chair of the Board of Direc­tors at the US Cham­ber of Com­merce; and the Euro­pean Union’s Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States, Stavros Lam­brini­dis.
    ...

    And at the cen­ter of this big deal was the cel­e­bra­tion of the “US Ukrain­ian Activists” NGO, found­ed in 2014 by Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka. So what kind of ‘activism’ is this NGO involved with? Fundrais­ing for Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions, is seems. Yes, it turns out Sha­poryn­s­ka is quite a far of groups like Right Sec­tor and Azov. In fact, back in 2015, Sha­poryn­s­ka led a group that declared them­selves to be the “Wash­ing­ton DC Right Sec­tor Branch” and that they “sup­port” Yarosh. This is casu­al cheer­lead­ing:

    ...
    US Ukrain­ian Activists was found­ed by Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka, an avowed sup­port­er of neo-Nazi and ultra-nation­al­ist mili­tias like the Azov Bat­tal­ion, whom she has described “hero­ic defend­ers of Ukraine.” Shaporynska’s fundrais­ing efforts for extrem­ists groups that were at one point black­list­ed by the US Depart­ment of Defense have been pro­lif­ic and very pub­lic.

    ...

    In 2014, after the US helped install a nation­al­ist pro-NATO gov­ern­ment in Kiev, Sha­poryn­s­ka co-found­ed a lob­by­ing group called Unit­ed Help for Ukraine. Among the organization’s first moves was to orga­nize a protest out­side the offices of the now-shut­tered RT Amer­i­ca news­room. The fol­low­ing year, Sha­poryn­s­ka found­ed US Ukrain­ian Activists, which host­ed the Feb­ru­ary 25 pro-proxy war ral­ly in DC along­side Unit­ed Help for Ukraine.

    ...

    In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Sha­poryn­s­ka held a protest out­side of the White House with the wives of Azov fight­ers that had been cap­tured by Rus­sia. Around the same time, she and her US Ukrain­ian Activists NGO were open­ly fundrais­ing for the fas­cist mili­tia, whom they called “hero­ic defend­ers of Ukraine.”

    Sha­poryn­s­ka and her activist col­leagues were rais­ing mon­ey for the Azov Bat­tal­ion when it was under the lead­er­ship of Andriy Bilet­sky, who out­lined the group’s mis­sion as fol­lows: “lead the white races of the world in a final cru­sade … against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].”

    Shaporynska’s sup­port for the Azov Bat­tal­ion stretch­es back years. Under the aus­pices of Unit­ed Help for Ukraine, Sha­poryn­s­ka orga­nized a char­i­ty con­cert for Azov and the Aidar Bat­tal­ion in Jan­u­ary of 2015. That same year, Sha­poryn­s­ka and her col­leagues post­ed pho­tographs of them­selves clad in the col­ors of the neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian Right Sek­tor move­ment. They wrote that they were the “Wash­ing­ton DC Right Sec­tor Branch” and that they “sup­port” its leader Dmytro Yarosh.

    Yarosh led Right Sec­tor from 2013 to 2015, vow­ing to lead the “de-Rus­si­fi­ca­tion” of Ukraine through an armed strug­gle. He is an avowed fol­low­er of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera.
    ...

    But this was­n’t just a cel­e­bra­tion of Shaporynska’s group. Paul Grod, the pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress (UWC), was also on stage. As we’ve seen, the UWC is effec­tive­ly the mod­ern day umbrel­la group under which the descen­dants of the WWII-era groups like the OUN‑B are now orga­nized. This event was a effec­tive­ly a DC cel­e­bra­tion of fas­cist-ori­ent­ed Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra orga­ni­za­tions:

    ...
    Also appear­ing on stage was Paul Grod, pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress. Grod has made a career out of defend­ing the lega­cy of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, and even once peti­tioned the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to offi­cial­ly rec­og­nize the geno­ci­dal Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, or OUN, as ‘des­ig­nat­ed resis­tance fight­ers.” This des­ig­na­tion would have fun­neled Cana­di­an tax dol­lars direct­ly into the pen­sion accounts of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors.

    In 2010, Grod hon­ored the lega­cy of the Waf­fen SS Gali­cia, the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists as heroes who fought “for the free­dom of their ances­tral Ukrain­ian home­land.” These groups were dri­ving forces behind the geno­cide in East­ern Europe dur­ing World War Two.

    Grod’s Ukrain­ian World Con­gress host­ed the Feb­ru­ary 25 pro-proxy war ral­ly through its affil­i­ate, the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca. His group has declared Stepan Ban­dera, the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor whose forces slaugh­tered hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews, Poles, and Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, as “the undis­put­ed sym­bol of Ukraine’s lengthy and trag­ic strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.”
    ...

    .
    Also note how Shaporynska’s enthu­si­asm for Ukrain­ian fas­cists isn’t lim­it­ed to Right Sec­tor or Azov. She’s a boost­er for the Aidar Bat­tal­ion and for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion com­man­der Semen Semenchenko (some­times spelled Sem­chenko). As we’re seen, Semenchenko isn’t just the for­mer com­man­der of the Ukrain­ian mili­tia. He’s an open fas­cist.

    First, Recall how Semenchenko jus­ti­fied civil­ian casu­al­ties back in 2014 when he was lead­ing the Don­bas vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion, claim­ing that unarmed peo­ple in the crowds were paid to be there as cov­er for the sep­a­ratists and call­ing them “pigs”. Also recall how Semenchenko had a role in lob­by­ing the US gov­ern­ment over the con­flict in Ukraine and was respon­si­ble for giv­ing US Sen­a­tors faked pho­tos that pur­port­ed­ly showed the Russ­ian mil­i­tary invad­ing Ukraine. The pho­tos were debunked. Final­ly, recall that intrigu­ing sto­ry from Decem­ber of 2018 sur­round­ing Semenchenko, then a Ukrain­ian MP, who was part of a group of Ukraini­ans and one Geor­gian who were detained in Geor­gia for ille­gal pos­s­e­sion and pre­cure­ment of arms, ammu­ni­tion and explo­sives. Six Ukraini­ans and the Geor­gian were detained. Semenchenko, how­ev­er, had the ben­e­fit of diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty and was allowed to leave. That’s the kind of fig­ure cham­pi­oned by Sha­poryn­s­ka.

    And then there’s Geor­gian Legion leader Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili. Yes, Sha­poryn­s­ka is a Mamu­lashvili fan too. Of course, so are a num­ber of US law­mak­ers who have wel­come Mamu­lashvili dur­ing mul­ti­ple trips to the US. This is as good time to recall the deep ties between the Geor­gian fas­cist move­ment behind the Geor­gian Legion and the UNA-UNSO, the descen­dant of the WWII-era Ukrain­ian Nation­al Army (UNA) that was found­ed in 1990 as an off­shoot of the new­ly formed Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assem­bly (also the UNA). The UNA-UNSO was led by Yuri Shukhevych (son of Roman Shukhevych) for the first 23 years of its exis­tence, until 2014 when its mem­bers went on to form groups like Azov and Right Sec­tor. But before that hap­pened, the UNA-UNSO mem­bers played a key role in fight­ing along­side Geor­gian nation­al­ists dur­ing the 2008 Geor­gian civ­il war. It was there where the ties between Ukrain­ian and Geor­gian fas­cists were solid­i­fied, cul­mi­nat­ing in the appar­ent role played by Geor­gians in foment­ing the sniper attacks dur­ing the Maid­an protests. Nadiya Sha­poryn­s­ka is a fas­cist super fan. A fas­cist super fan with no short­age of fans of her own in DC:

    ...
    Shaporynska’s Face­book posts over the years reveal her enthu­si­as­tic sup­port and fundrais­ing for avowed­ly fas­cist Ukrain­ian mili­tias includ­ing Right Sek­tor and its leader, Dymtro Yarosh, the Azov Bat­tal­ion, the Aidar Bat­tal­ion, and for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion com­man­der Semen Semenchenko.

    ...

    Yet Azov and Right Sek­tor aren’t the only group of fas­cists and war crim­i­nals with Sha­poryn­s­ka and company’s full sup­port.

    Months after the pro-Azov event Sha­poryn­s­ka threw yet anoth­er “char­i­ty con­cert,” this time fea­tur­ing Geor­gian war­lord Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili as its guest of hon­or. The war­lord would meet with Sha­poryn­s­ka again in 2017 dur­ing one of his many jun­kets to Washington’s Capi­tol Hill.

    Mamu­lashvili cur­rent­ly com­mands the Geor­gian Nation­al Legion for­eign mer­ce­nary group that is back­ing Ukraine’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in its fight against Rus­sia. In April of 2022, Mamu­lashvili infa­mous­ly vowed to exe­cute Russ­ian POWs, a war crime that his mili­tia has com­mit­ted on video through­out the Ukraine con­flict.

    The zealots behind US Ukrain­ian Activists and Unit­ed Help for Ukraine have made no effort to con­ceal their full-fledged sup­port for Ukraine’s most extrem­ist fac­tions. Unit­ed Help for Ukraine has even described its co-founder, Tanya Aldave, as a “true ban­derite,” – in oth­er words, an admir­er of the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Ban­dera. Today, Aldave’s Linkedin bio lists her as an attor­ney for the US Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion.
    ...

    It’s also worth recall­ing at this point how Amer­i­can fugi­tive neo-Nazi Craig Lang first joined Right Sec­tor before mov­ing on to join the Geor­gian Legion. Mamu­lashvili described Lang as “a very good spe­cial­ist”.

    But it’s that appar­ent role that for­mer MP Semen Semenchenko played in attempt­ing to ille­gal­ly pro­cure weapons from Geor­gia that brings us to the fol­low­ing pair of sto­ries from back in 2021 about some legal trou­bles Semenchenko ran into. The kind of legal trou­bles he did­n’t have diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty to escape: In March of 2021, the Ukrain­ian SBU raid­ed a train­ing camp oper­at­ed by a pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tor, the DBC Corp. That com­pa­ny appears to have been set up by Semenchenko to oper­ate as basi­cal­ly a mer­ce­nary out­fit on behalf of Ukrain­ian oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky. But DBC Corps’ mer­ce­nary ser­vices weren’t just intend­ed of Ukraine. It as going to offer mil­i­tary logis­ti­cal ser­vices to places in the Mid­dle East like Syr­ia or Afghanistan. And accord­ing to Semenchenko’s part­ner in the project, Yevhen Shevchenko, jSe­menchenko claimed the com­pa­ny was going to get con­tracts from the US State Depart­ment. Now, those con­tracts nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, but you have to won­der if that was a real pos­si­bil­i­ty.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, relat­ing back to the sto­ry of Semenchenko being involved with the ille­gal pro­cure­ment of arms from Geor­gia, it sounds like one of the crimes the SBU was charg­ing DBC Corp with was the ille­gal pro­cure­ment of weapons from Rus­sia. So weapons were being ille­gal­ly pro­cured from Rus­sia for even­tu­al use in the Mid­dle East. That was the appar­ent crime com­mit­ted by DBC Corp. And yet, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, per­haps the most sur­pris­ing part of this whole sto­ry is that charges were brought at all. Mer­ce­nary forces have been run­ning ram­pant in Ukrain­ian for years:

    Kyiv Post

    SBU busts ‘pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny’ alleged­ly tied to Kolo­moisky

    By Illia Pono­marenko.
    Pub­lished March 26, 2021. Updat­ed March 27 at 5:23 pm

    Pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­nies (PMCs) are ille­gal in Ukraine. But it has rarely stopped peo­ple with deep enough pock­ets, who are fond of solv­ing their busi­ness issues with a kind word and a gun.

    Late on March 24, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU) raid­ed and dis­armed a train­ing camp run by DBC Corp., a secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor found­ed by for­mer sol­diers and offi­cers of the para­mil­i­tary Don­bas Bat­tal­ion, which used to fight Russ­ian-spon­sored forces in the Don­bas.

    Accord­ing to the SBU, the unli­censed com­pa­ny had stock­piles of mil­i­tary-grade weapons and was train­ing its per­son­nel for com­bat. Law enforcers accused the ille­gal PMC’s employ­ees of smug­gling mil­i­tary equip­ment from Rus­sia.

    And jour­nal­ists report­ed that DBC Corp. has fought in cor­po­rate wars on behalf of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky, who was recent­ly sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States and faces civ­il and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions in sev­er­al coun­tries.

    On March 26, the Slidstvo.Info inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism agency report­ed that DBC’s sub­sidiary in Ukraine defend­ed Kolomoisky’s inter­ests by hav­ing a gun­fight in Kyiv, pre­vent­ing state offi­cials from enter­ing state-owned ener­gy com­pa­ny Cen­tren­er­go and help­ing orga­nize protests against mem­bers of the Nation­al Bank of Ukraine.

    ...

    Base in the woods

    The SBU report­ed that the PMC unof­fi­cial­ly employed 150 peo­ple dis­guised as mem­bers of oth­er, legal secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and civic orga­ni­za­tions. Accord­ing to the SBU, DBC Corp. is effec­tive­ly a mer­ce­nary com­pa­ny. Run­ning one is a crim­i­nal felony in Ukraine.

    “The com­bat train­ing for the PMC oper­a­tives was car­ried out at a spe­cial train­ing base in Kyiv Oblast,” the SBU said. “Also, some of the employ­ees have com­plet­ed train­ing cours­es abroad.”

    The com­pa­ny was alleged­ly run by 15 senior staff mem­bers who sought out new recruits from among for­mer mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­bers and law enforcers with com­bat expe­ri­ence.

    Notably, the orga­ni­za­tion was head­ed by Semy­on Semenchenko, a for­mer law­mak­er and founder of the Don­bas Bat­tal­ion, as well as Yevhen Shevchenko, a blog­ger close­ly tied to Semenchenko, who was pre­sent­ed as “a non-staff agent” with the country’s Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau (NABU) in a num­ber of high-pro­file cor­rup­tion cas­es.

    The SBU says Semenchenko and Shevchenko are “pos­si­ble orga­niz­ers and coor­di­na­tors of an ille­gal scheme to smug­gle mil­i­tary and dou­ble-use hard­ware from Rus­sia to be sold to Ukrain­ian defense pro­duc­tion enter­pris­es at inflat­ed prices.”

    SBU oper­a­tives unearthed scores of weapons and muni­tions at the DBC Corp. base, includ­ing 5,500 small arms rounds, sev­en anti-tank RPG-26 rock­ets, four under-bar­rel grenade launch­ers, 38 VOG-25 grenades, a Kalash­nikov PK machine gun, three pis­tols, three Kalash­nikov AKS and AKS-74 rifles, two oth­er assault rifles, sev­en slide-action shot­guns, and 21 F‑1 and RGD‑5 hand grenades.

    The SBU said the PMC was mak­ing secu­ri­ty ser­vice con­tracts with “var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions in the Mid­dle East,” adding that “there have been propo­si­tions to orga­nize sup­plies of weapons into these coun­tries.”

    On the fol­low­ing day, the secu­ri­ty ser­vice stat­ed that Semenchenko had reg­is­tered the PMC abroad, while Shevchenko was respon­si­ble for acquir­ing weapons, equip­ment and explo­sives for train­ing and oper­a­tions.

    Dur­ing fol­low-up search­es all across Ukraine, the SBU also seized over 20 firearms, over 15,000 rounds, and many explo­sives, mor­tar pro­jec­tiles and grenade launch­ers.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion con­nect­ed the ille­gal smug­gling of weapons from Rus­sia to Andriy Rogoza, a busi­ness­man involved in a range of high-pro­file cor­rup­tion scan­dals in Ukraine’s defense indus­try.

    Nei­ther Semenchenko nor Shevchenko was tak­en into cus­tody.

    ...

    Accord­ing to Shevchenko, Semenchenko invit­ed him to invest in a com­pa­ny that would ren­der secu­ri­ty ser­vices in Syr­ia and Afghanistan under con­tracts from the U.S. State Depart­ment, but coop­er­a­tion between the two men nev­er took off.

    “That was Semyon’s idea,” Shevchenko told Hro­madske media out­let late on March 24. “I told him I was ready to allo­cate financ­ing for a real exist­ing con­tract. A con­tract nev­er panned out, so we part­ed our ways.”

    Shevchenko also denied his involve­ment in arms smug­gling. Ear­li­er, he report­ed on his Face­book page that SBU oper­a­tives had searched his home and “found noth­ing ille­gal, seized noth­ing.”

    On March 26, the SBU charged Semenchenko with cre­at­ing an ille­gal para­mil­i­tary force to be deployed to Iraq, Syr­ia and Libya, “aim­ing to insti­gate inter­na­tion­al con­flicts and recruit vol­un­teers in Ukraine.”

    Semenchenko denied the charges and said he had “always act­ed in the best inter­est of Ukraine” and was “sur­prised” to learn he had been declared “the most ter­ri­ble ter­ror­ist.” He insist­ed that his force was cre­at­ed to fight against Wag­n­er Group, the noto­ri­ous Russ­ian mer­ce­nary army close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Krem­lin.

    No secret made

    How­ev­er, the most sur­pris­ing aspect of the case may be the fact that the SBU only now decid­ed to bust Semenchenko’s com­pa­ny. DBC (an abbre­vi­a­tion of Don­bas Bat­tal­ion Cor­po­ra­tion) has act­ed in the open for years.

    It even has a Face­book group and a Wikipedia page, which say the com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2018 by for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion vet­er­ans togeth­er with Amer­i­can investors in New York, where its head­quar­ters is alleged­ly locat­ed. Pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tors are legal in the U.S.

    DBC Corp. claims to have chap­ters in the U.S., Ukraine, Poland, Iraq and Kenya.

    For years, the com­pa­ny made no secret of its pres­ence on Ukrain­ian soil or the loca­tion of its train­ing base near the vil­lage of Suvyd, 45 kilo­me­ters north­east of Kyiv, even invit­ing jour­nal­ists there.

    In inter­views, one of the company’s senior offi­cers, for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion com­man­der Ana­toliy Vynohrod­skiy claimed that the DBC Corp. pro­vid­ed strict­ly non-mil­i­tary secu­ri­ty ser­vices and does not count as a mer­ce­nary unit under Ukrain­ian law.

    Vynohrod­skiy said that DBC Corp. intend­ed to take con­tracts out­side Ukraine. He claimed that the base near Kyiv is only used for basic fit­ness train­ing and not weapons train­ing.

    How­ev­er, numer­ous pic­tures show DBC Corp. recruits and instruc­tors fir­ing weapons at the base.

    The com­pa­ny said it had planned to employ near­ly 3,000 per­son­nel with month­ly salaries start­ing at $2,000, while fresh recruits get some $500 a month dur­ing their basic train­ing course.

    Shevchenko claimed in an inter­view with Censor.NET on March 25 that Semenchenko’s PMC has had finan­cial trou­bles and con­flicts with investors. In par­tic­u­lar, he said, Kaza­khstani busi­ness­man Sergey Borisenko invest­ed at least $1 mil­lion in DBC Corp., but lat­er accused Semenchenko of fraud and got in touch with the SBU.

    Kolomoisky’s pri­vate army?

    An attempt to legal­ize and reg­u­late pri­vate secu­ri­ty con­trac­tors in Ukraine was made in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2020 in a bill sub­mit­ted to par­lia­ment by Olha Vasylevs­ka-Smagliuk, a law­mak­er with Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelensky’s 248-seat Ser­vant of the Peo­ple par­ty

    Many experts raised con­cerns that this would allow pow­er­ful peo­ple to have their own ful­ly-equipped pri­vate armies fight­ing for their inter­ests.

    How­ev­er, that may have been the case regard­less. The media has asso­ci­at­ed Semenchenko with Kolo­moisky for years.

    Accord­ing to the lat­est reports, Semenchenko’s unof­fi­cial pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny could be involved in busi­ness con­flicts at the behest of the noto­ri­ous oli­garch.

    Accord­ing to the PMC’s Face­book page, DBC Corp. works in Ukraine through its local sub­sidiary, Don­corp Ukraine.

    On March 26, Slidstvo.Info, report­ed that Don­corp mem­bers con­trolled by Semenchenko were involved in a Feb­ru­ary gun­fight at a devel­op­er con­struc­tion site in Kyiv, in which Kolomoisky’s long-time friend and busi­ness part­ner Mykhai­lo Kiper­man report­ed­ly has busi­ness inter­ests.

    “It was dis­cov­ered that one of the mini­vans tak­en by police fol­low­ing the inci­dent belongs to the Don­corp struc­tures,” jour­nal­ists said.

    They added that in ear­ly 2020, Don­corp mem­bers also guard­ed the premis­es of Cen­tren­er­go, a major state-run ener­gy com­pa­ny, report­ed­ly head­ed by offi­cials loy­al to Kolo­moisky. Cen­tren­er­go also signed an Hr 300,000 ($10,700) secu­ri­ty con­tract with Don­corp as late as Novem­ber 2020.

    “It should be not­ed that a month ago, Don­corp mem­bers pre­vent­ed the head of State Prop­er­ty Fund from enter­ing the Centrenergo’s office to obstruct the man­age­ment reshuf­fle,” Slidstvo.Info said. “Just to get in, (head of the State Prop­er­ty Fund) Dmytro Sen­ny­chenko had to deploy law enforcers.”

    In late 2019, the Don­corp per­son­nel were also involved in ral­lies against Yakiv Smoliy and Katery­na Rozhko­va, who served as the Nation­al Bank of Ukraine’s top offi­cials, accord­ing to the jour­nal­ists. Smoliy pub­licly accused Kolomiosky of orches­trat­ing the ral­lies as part of his cam­paign against the nation­al­iza­tion of Pri­vat­Bank, which was pre­vi­ous­ly owned by the oli­garch.

    ———-

    “SBU busts ‘pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny’ alleged­ly tied to Kolo­moisky” By Illia Pono­marenko; Kyiv Post; 03/26/2021

    “The SBU says Semenchenko and Shevchenko are “pos­si­ble orga­niz­ers and coor­di­na­tors of an ille­gal scheme to smug­gle mil­i­tary and dou­ble-use hard­ware from Rus­sia to be sold to Ukrain­ian defense pro­duc­tion enter­pris­es at inflat­ed prices.””

    It was March of 2021, rough­ly sev­en years after the Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion and less than a year before the out­break of war between Rus­sia and Ukraine, when Semen (Semy­on) Semenchenko was charged with orga­niz­ing an ille­gal mer­ce­nary scheme. A par­tic­u­lar­ly bizarre mer­ce­nary scheme giv­en the con­text of the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine at that time. The kind of scheme that lends weight to the long-stand­ing con­cerns about the flood of weapons flow­ing into Ukraine end up all over the world: Semenchenko was charged with lead­ing a pri­vate mer­ce­nary firm, DBC Corp., that at was procur­ing weapons from Rus­sia for use by the DBC mer­ce­nary forces in the Mid­dle East. It’s not exact­ly the kind of mer­ce­nary scan­dal one expects, all things con­sid­ered:

    ...
    Late on March 24, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU) raid­ed and dis­armed a train­ing camp run by DBC Corp., a secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor found­ed by for­mer sol­diers and offi­cers of the para­mil­i­tary Don­bas Bat­tal­ion, which used to fight Russ­ian-spon­sored forces in the Don­bas.

    Accord­ing to the SBU, the unli­censed com­pa­ny had stock­piles of mil­i­tary-grade weapons and was train­ing its per­son­nel for com­bat. Law enforcers accused the ille­gal PMC’s employ­ees of smug­gling mil­i­tary equip­ment from Rus­sia.

    And jour­nal­ists report­ed that DBC Corp. has fought in cor­po­rate wars on behalf of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky, who was recent­ly sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States and faces civ­il and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions in sev­er­al coun­tries.

    ...

    The SBU report­ed that the PMC unof­fi­cial­ly employed 150 peo­ple dis­guised as mem­bers of oth­er, legal secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and civic orga­ni­za­tions. Accord­ing to the SBU, DBC Corp. is effec­tive­ly a mer­ce­nary com­pa­ny. Run­ning one is a crim­i­nal felony in Ukraine.

    “The com­bat train­ing for the PMC oper­a­tives was car­ried out at a spe­cial train­ing base in Kyiv Oblast,” the SBU said. “Also, some of the employ­ees have com­plet­ed train­ing cours­es abroad.

    The com­pa­ny was alleged­ly run by 15 senior staff mem­bers who sought out new recruits from among for­mer mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­bers and law enforcers with com­bat expe­ri­ence.

    Notably, the orga­ni­za­tion was head­ed by Semy­on Semenchenko, a for­mer law­mak­er and founder of the Don­bas Bat­tal­ion, as well as Yevhen Shevchenko, a blog­ger close­ly tied to Semenchenko, who was pre­sent­ed as “a non-staff agent” with the country’s Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau (NABU) in a num­ber of high-pro­file cor­rup­tion cas­es.

    ...

    SBU oper­a­tives unearthed scores of weapons and muni­tions at the DBC Corp. base, includ­ing 5,500 small arms rounds, sev­en anti-tank RPG-26 rock­ets, four under-bar­rel grenade launch­ers, 38 VOG-25 grenades, a Kalash­nikov PK machine gun, three pis­tols, three Kalash­nikov AKS and AKS-74 rifles, two oth­er assault rifles, sev­en slide-action shot­guns, and 21 F‑1 and RGD‑5 hand grenades.

    The SBU said the PMC was mak­ing secu­ri­ty ser­vice con­tracts with “var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions in the Mid­dle East,” adding that “there have been propo­si­tions to orga­nize sup­plies of weapons into these coun­tries.”

    On the fol­low­ing day, the secu­ri­ty ser­vice stat­ed that Semenchenko had reg­is­tered the PMC abroad, while Shevchenko was respon­si­ble for acquir­ing weapons, equip­ment and explo­sives for train­ing and oper­a­tions.
    ...

    But then we get this this fas­ci­nat­ing detail: Accord­ing to Semenchenko’s part­ner in crime, Yevhen Shevchenko, the com­pa­ny was going to ren­der secu­ri­ty ser­vices in Syr­ia and Afghanistan under con­tracts from the U.S. State Depart­ment. Those con­tracts nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. But con­sid­er­ing the fas­cist sym­pa­thies recent­ly put on dis­play in DC, it’s hard to dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty that at least some sort of explo­ration of such a con­tract did actu­al­ly take place. This is also a good time to recall how Andrii Arte­menko — him­self hav­ing close ties to Right Sec­torhad a com­pa­ny that pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary logis­tics ser­vices to Mid­dle East­ern con­flict zones from 2007–2013. In oth­er words, Semenchenko mer­ce­nary con­trac­tor scheme was­n’t as out­landish as it might ini­tial­ly seem:

    ...
    Accord­ing to Shevchenko, Semenchenko invit­ed him to invest in a com­pa­ny that would ren­der secu­ri­ty ser­vices in Syr­ia and Afghanistan under con­tracts from the U.S. State Depart­ment, but coop­er­a­tion between the two men nev­er took off.

    “That was Semyon’s idea,” Shevchenko told Hro­madske media out­let late on March 24. “I told him I was ready to allo­cate financ­ing for a real exist­ing con­tract. A con­tract nev­er panned out, so we part­ed our ways.”

    Shevchenko also denied his involve­ment in arms smug­gling. Ear­li­er, he report­ed on his Face­book page that SBU oper­a­tives had searched his home and “found noth­ing ille­gal, seized noth­ing.”

    On March 26, the SBU charged Semenchenko with cre­at­ing an ille­gal para­mil­i­tary force to be deployed to Iraq, Syr­ia and Libya, “aim­ing to insti­gate inter­na­tion­al con­flicts and recruit vol­un­teers in Ukraine.”
    ...

    And then we get to the tru­ly reveal­ing part of this 2021 arti­cle: the biggest sur­prise in this sto­ry is the fact that the SBU cracked down on Semenchenko at all, along with the failed attempts by the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment to legal­ize and reg­u­late pri­vate mili­tias. As the arti­cle notes, these groups had been oper­at­ing in open defi­ance of the state with impuni­ty for years. Includ­ing the appar­ent use of DBC mer­ce­nar­ies to pre­vent the head of and State Prop­er­ty Fund from enter­ing the state-run Cen­tren­er­go’s offices to block a man­age­ment reshuf­fle in ear­ly 2020 that would have removed offi­cials loy­al to Ihor Kolo­moisky. This kind of above-the-law law­less­ness has been ram­pant for a while now:

    ...
    How­ev­er, the most sur­pris­ing aspect of the case may be the fact that the SBU only now decid­ed to bust Semenchenko’s com­pa­ny. DBC (an abbre­vi­a­tion of Don­bas Bat­tal­ion Cor­po­ra­tion) has act­ed in the open for years.

    It even has a Face­book group and a Wikipedia page, which say the com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2018 by for­mer Don­bas Bat­tal­ion vet­er­ans togeth­er with Amer­i­can investors in New York, where its head­quar­ters is alleged­ly locat­ed. Pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tors are legal in the U.S.

    DBC Corp. claims to have chap­ters in the U.S., Ukraine, Poland, Iraq and Kenya.

    For years, the com­pa­ny made no secret of its pres­ence on Ukrain­ian soil or the loca­tion of its train­ing base near the vil­lage of Suvyd, 45 kilo­me­ters north­east of Kyiv, even invit­ing jour­nal­ists there.

    ...

    An attempt to legal­ize and reg­u­late pri­vate secu­ri­ty con­trac­tors in Ukraine was made in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2020 in a bill sub­mit­ted to par­lia­ment by Olha Vasylevs­ka-Smagliuk, a law­mak­er with Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelensky’s 248-seat Ser­vant of the Peo­ple par­ty

    Many experts raised con­cerns that this would allow pow­er­ful peo­ple to have their own ful­ly-equipped pri­vate armies fight­ing for their inter­ests.

    How­ev­er, that may have been the case regard­less. The media has asso­ci­at­ed Semenchenko with Kolo­moisky for years.

    ...

    On March 26, Slidstvo.Info, report­ed that Don­corp mem­bers con­trolled by Semenchenko were involved in a Feb­ru­ary gun­fight at a devel­op­er con­struc­tion site in Kyiv, in which Kolomoisky’s long-time friend and busi­ness part­ner Mykhai­lo Kiper­man report­ed­ly has busi­ness inter­ests.

    “It was dis­cov­ered that one of the mini­vans tak­en by police fol­low­ing the inci­dent belongs to the Don­corp struc­tures,” jour­nal­ists said.

    They added that in ear­ly 2020, Don­corp mem­bers also guard­ed the premis­es of Cen­tren­er­go, a major state-run ener­gy com­pa­ny, report­ed­ly head­ed by offi­cials loy­al to Kolo­moisky. Cen­tren­er­go also signed an Hr 300,000 ($10,700) secu­ri­ty con­tract with Don­corp as late as Novem­ber 2020.

    It should be not­ed that a month ago, Don­corp mem­bers pre­vent­ed the head of State Prop­er­ty Fund from enter­ing the Centrenergo’s office to obstruct the man­age­ment reshuf­fle,” Slidstvo.Info said. “Just to get in, (head of the State Prop­er­ty Fund) Dmytro Sen­ny­chenko had to deploy law enforcers.”

    In late 2019, the Don­corp per­son­nel were also involved in ral­lies against Yakiv Smoliy and Katery­na Rozhko­va, who served as the Nation­al Bank of Ukraine’s top offi­cials, accord­ing to the jour­nal­ists. Smoliy pub­licly accused Kolomiosky of orches­trat­ing the ral­lies as part of his cam­paign against the nation­al­iza­tion of Pri­vat­Bank, which was pre­vi­ous­ly owned by the oli­garch.
    ...

    And that ram­pant above-the-law law­less­ness brings us to this fol­low up sto­ry about the legal per­ils Semenchenko was fac­ing back in 2021 that went beyond just set­ting up an ille­gal mer­ce­nary oper­a­tion. Less than two months after the SBU bust of DBC Corp, Semenchenko was charged with ter­ror­ism. But not over the mer­ce­nary scheme. No, it turns out Semenchenko alleged­ly deployed an anti-tank grenade launch­er against the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel back in June of 2019. The chan­nel was owned by ‘pro-Krem­lin’ law­mak­er Taras Kozak and was sub­se­quent­ly shut down by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties in Feb­ru­ary of 2021. So it was almost two years after that attack that Semenchenko was final­ly charged with ter­ror­ism. Who knows why it took near­ly two years for Semenchenko to final­ly get charged in that attack, although the fact that the gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly shut the sta­tion down for ‘pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’ is a clue. Regard­less, the fact that Semenchenko was allowed to car­ry out that attack with­out any legal response for near­ly two years is some pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant con­text in terms of get­ting an idea of how Semenchenko thought he could get away with set­ting up a mer­ce­nary out­fit pro­vid­ing ser­vices to con­flict zones in the Mid­dle East using weapons ille­gal­ly pro­cured from Rus­sia. Semenchenko was allowed to oper­ate with impuni­ty, until he was­n’t. What changed? It’s a mys­tery, because it’s not like Ukraine’s offi­cial atti­tude towards these fas­cist mili­tias changed. So what is it that brought these very belat­ed charges of ter­ror­ism?

    Kyiv Post

    Ex-law­mak­er Semenchenko charged with ter­ror­ism, fir­ing arms at TV chan­nel head­quar­ters

    Ukraine’s State Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SBU) pressed ter­ror­ism charges against Semy­on Semenchenko, a for­mer law­mak­er and a mil­i­tary com­man­der, the agency announced on May 14. The SBU accus­es Semenchenko of
    by Anna Myro­niuk | May 15, 2021, 4:15 pm

    Ukraine’s State Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SBU) pressed ter­ror­ism charges against Semy­on Semenchenko, a for­mer law­mak­er and a mil­i­tary com­man­der, the agency announced on May 14. The SBU accus­es Semenchenko of fir­ing an anti-tank grenade launch­er at the head­quar­ters of the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel in 2019.

    The ter­ror­ism charges against Semenchenko, founder of the Don­bas Bat­tal­ion that fought against Rus­sia-led forces in east­ern Ukraine, aren’t the first for the ex-mil­i­tary com­man­der.

    Semenchenko was detained on March 26 on sus­pi­cion of cre­at­ing an ille­gal pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny to be deployed to Iraq, Syr­ia and Libya, “aim­ing to insti­gate inter­na­tion­al con­flicts and recruit vol­un­teers in Ukraine.” How­ev­er, Ukrain­ian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism agency Slidstvo.Info report­ed that Semenchenko’s pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny worked for oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky.

    ...

    Accord­ing to the SBU, Semenchenko assigned two mem­bers of his ille­gal para­mil­i­tary force to fire grenades at the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel back in June 2019. No one was harmed.

    The 112 Ukraine, owned by pro-Krem­lin law­mak­er Taras Kozak, was infa­mous for spread­ing Russ­ian nar­ra­tives about the con­flict in the Don­bas. The chan­nel, along with Kozak’s two oth­er TV chan­nels — New­sOne and ZIK — was shut down by the gov­ern­ment in Feb­ru­ary.

    It was report­ed that all three chan­nels were actu­al­ly con­trolled by Kozak’s ally Vik­tor Medved­chuk, a law­mak­er who for many years was Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s unof­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Ukraine. On May 11, Medved­chuk was charged with trea­son.

    Accord­ing to the SBU, the 2019 attack on the 112 Ukraine head­quar­ters, alleged­ly orga­nized by Semenchenko, was used by Rus­sia in its hybrid war against Ukraine.

    If found guilty of orga­niz­ing the 2019 attack, qual­i­fied as a ter­ror­ism act, Semenchenko will face a jail sen­tence of sev­en to 12 years. Sep­a­rate­ly, he is fac­ing five to 10 years in prison for man­ag­ing and financ­ing an ille­gal pri­vate mil­i­tary for­ma­tion.

    ———-

    “Ex-law­mak­er Semenchenko charged with ter­ror­ism, fir­ing arms at TV chan­nel head­quar­ters” by Anna Myro­niuk; Kyiv Post; 05/15/2021

    “Accord­ing to the SBU, Semenchenko assigned two mem­bers of his ille­gal para­mil­i­tary force to fire grenades at the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel back in June 2019.”

    This is the dark real­i­ty of how pri­vate mer­ce­nary forces have been oper­at­ing with near impuni­ty for years now in Ukraine. Again, the big news here isn’t that Semenchenko launched a ter­ror attack against a news out­let. The big news is that he was charged with the attack at all, almost two years after the attack. Bet­ter late than nev­er, appar­ent­ly:

    ...
    The 112 Ukraine, owned by pro-Krem­lin law­mak­er Taras Kozak, was infa­mous for spread­ing Russ­ian nar­ra­tives about the con­flict in the Don­bas. The chan­nel, along with Kozak’s two oth­er TV chan­nels — New­sOne and ZIK — was shut down by the gov­ern­ment in Feb­ru­ary.

    It was report­ed that all three chan­nels were actu­al­ly con­trolled by Kozak’s ally Vik­tor Medved­chuk, a law­mak­er who for many years was Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s unof­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Ukraine. On May 11, Medved­chuk was charged with trea­son.

    ...

    If found guilty of orga­niz­ing the 2019 attack, qual­i­fied as a ter­ror­ism act, Semenchenko will face a jail sen­tence of sev­en to 12 years. Sep­a­rate­ly, he is fac­ing five to 10 years in prison for man­ag­ing and financ­ing an ille­gal pri­vate mil­i­tary for­ma­tion.
    ...

    So what kind of jail time was Semenchenko ulti­mate­ly fac­ing? Well, he was released under house arrest in June of 2022 after the Main Intel­li­gence Direc­torate of the Min­istry of Defense of Ukraine Kyry­lo Budanov asked for his release on per­son­al duty, argu­ing that “his orga­ni­za­tion­al skills will ben­e­fit the coun­try and defense”. Yep. So get ready for more sto­ries about Semen Semenchenko’s fas­cist antics. And, maybe, just maybe, the very belat­ed legal reper­cus­sions from those fas­cist antics that some­how dis­solve away. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s the only movie in the the­ater.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 11, 2023, 6:09 pm
  2. How long before we see NATO troops oper­at­ing on the Ukrain­ian front lines? That was just one of the many grim ques­tions raised in a fas­ci­na­tion Wash­ing­ton Post piece on Mon­day about the hol­low­ing out of Ukraine’s armed forces of almost all expe­ri­enced sol­diers thanks to the hor­rif­ic casu­al­ty rates Ukraine has been suf­fer­ing over the last year. In oth­er words, for­get a lack of ammu­ni­tion and weapons. Ukraine lacks troops. At least troops that won’t flee after being sent to the front lines with almost no train­ing. It’s like the flip side of a report we got back in May about troops feel­ing aban­doned and unpre­pared.

    And as the Ukrain­ian sources in the arti­cle warns the US audi­ences, if Ukraine does­n’t get capa­ble troops soon, the much antic­i­pat­ed Spring coun­terof­fen­sive may not be fea­si­ble. Very soon. US offi­cials are expect­ing that coun­terof­fen­sive to start as soon as late April/early May.

    What exact­ly are the Ukraini­ans ask­ing for? Well, one Ukrain­ian who spoke non-anony­mous­ly to reporters was a bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the 46th Air Assault Brigade, who was iden­ti­fied only by his call sign, Kupol. Accord­ing to this lieu­tenant colonel, “We need NATO instruc­tors in all our train­ing cen­ters, and our instruc­tors need to be sent over there into the trench­es. Because they failed in their task.” Yes, Kupol is call­ing for replac­ing Ukraine’s instruc­tors with NATO instruc­tors and send­ing the Ukrain­ian instruc­tors to the trench­es. That’s not quite a call for NATO troops oper­at­ing along­side Ukraine on the front lines, but it is a call for send­ing a large num­ber of NATO troops to Ukraine.

    Is that a pos­si­bil­i­ty? Well, here’s where the impli­ca­tions of this piece become rather dire: it real­ly does appear that Ukraine has lost almost all of the troops the US and oth­er allies have been train­ing over the past 9 years. So at the same time the West has been mak­ing all of these pledges to ramp up the lev­els of hard­ware and ammu­ni­tion to Ukraine, it does­n’t appear that Ukraine has the man­pow­er remain­ing to use that hard­ware and ammu­ni­tion even if it arrives. And when we have calls for dra­mat­i­cal­ly increas­ing the lev­els of NATO train­ing so Ukraine can even be capa­ble of oper­at­ing the West­ern-pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary hard­ware in antic­i­pa­tion of a coun­terof­fen­sive that is expect­ed to be launched in a cou­ple of months or less, that’s a recipe for fuel­ing the unof­fi­cial arm­ing of Ukraine with ‘ex-NATO’ ‘vol­un­teers’. That’s a big part of the con­text of this arti­cle: it feels like a pre­lude to a call for a lit­er­al army of ‘ex-NATO vol­un­teers’:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Ukraine short of skilled troops and muni­tions as loss­es, pes­simism grow

    By Isabelle Khur­shudyan, Paul Sonne and Karen DeY­oung
    March 13, 2023 at 5:33 p.m. EDT

    DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine — The qual­i­ty of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary force, once con­sid­ered a sub­stan­tial advan­tage over Rus­sia, has been degrad­ed by a year of casu­al­ties that have tak­en many of the most expe­ri­enced fight­ers off the bat­tle­field, lead­ing some Ukrain­ian offi­cials to ques­tion Kyiv’s readi­ness to mount a much-antic­i­pat­ed spring offen­sive.

    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials have esti­mat­ed that as many as 120,000 Ukrain­ian sol­diers have been killed or wound­ed since the start of Russia’s inva­sion ear­ly last year, com­pared with about 200,000 on the Russ­ian side, which has a much larg­er mil­i­tary and rough­ly triple the pop­u­la­tion from which to draw con­scripts. Ukraine keeps its run­ning casu­al­ty num­bers secret, even from its staunchest West­ern sup­port­ers.

    Sta­tis­tics aside, an influx of inex­pe­ri­enced draftees, brought in to plug the loss­es, has changed the pro­file of the Ukrain­ian force, which is also suf­fer­ing from basic short­ages of ammu­ni­tion, includ­ing artillery shells and mor­tar bombs, accord­ing to mil­i­tary per­son­nel in the field.

    “The most valu­able thing in war is com­bat expe­ri­ence,” said a bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the 46th Air Assault Brigade, who is being iden­ti­fied only by his call sign, Kupol, in keep­ing with Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary pro­to­col. “A sol­dier who has sur­vived six months of com­bat and a sol­dier who came from a fir­ing range are two dif­fer­ent sol­diers. It’s heav­en and earth.”

    “And there are only a few sol­diers with com­bat expe­ri­ence,” Kupol added. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they are all already dead or wound­ed.”

    Such grim assess­ments have spread a pal­pa­ble, if most­ly unspo­ken, pes­simism from the front lines to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in Kyiv, the cap­i­tal. An inabil­i­ty by Ukraine to exe­cute a much-hyped coun­terof­fen­sive would fuel new crit­i­cism that the Unit­ed States and its Euro­pean allies wait­ed too long, until the force had already dete­ri­o­rat­ed, to deep­en train­ing pro­grams and pro­vide armored fight­ing vehi­cles, includ­ing Bradleys and Leop­ard bat­tle tanks.

    The sit­u­a­tion on the bat­tle­field now may not reflect a full pic­ture of Ukraine’s forces, because Kyiv is train­ing troops for the com­ing coun­terof­fen­sive sep­a­rate­ly and delib­er­ate­ly hold­ing them back from cur­rent fight­ing, includ­ing the defense of Bakhmut, a U.S. offi­cial said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to be can­did.

    Andriy Yer­mak, head of Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial office, said the state of the Ukrain­ian force does not dimin­ish his opti­mism about a com­ing coun­terof­fen­sive. “I don’t think we’ve exhaust­ed our poten­tial,” Yer­mak said. “I think that in any war, there comes a time when you have to pre­pare new per­son­nel, which is what is hap­pen­ing right now.”

    And the sit­u­a­tion for Rus­sia may be worse. Dur­ing a NATO meet­ing last month, U.K. Defense Min­is­ter Ben Wal­lace said that 97 per­cent of Russia’s army was already deployed in Ukraine and that Moscow was suf­fer­ing “First World War lev­els of attri­tion.”

    Kupol said he was speak­ing out in hopes of secur­ing bet­ter train­ing for Ukrain­ian forces from Wash­ing­ton and that he hopes Ukrain­ian troops being held back for a com­ing coun­terof­fen­sive will have more suc­cess than the inex­pe­ri­enced sol­diers now man­ning the front under his com­mand.

    “There’s always belief in a mir­a­cle,” he said. “Either it will be a mas­sacre and corpses or it’s going to be a pro­fes­sion­al coun­terof­fen­sive. There are two options. There will be a coun­terof­fen­sive either way.”

    How much increased West­ern mil­i­tary aid and train­ing will tip the bal­ance in such a spring offen­sive remains uncer­tain, giv­en the scars of attri­tion that are begin­ning to show.

    One senior Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to be can­did, called the num­ber of tanks promised by the West a “sym­bol­ic” amount. Oth­ers pri­vate­ly voiced pes­simism that promised sup­plies would even reach the bat­tle­field in time.

    “If you have more resources, you more active­ly attack,” the senior offi­cial said. “If you have few­er resources, you defend more. We’re going to defend. That’s why if you ask me per­son­al­ly, I don’t believe in a big coun­terof­fen­sive for us. I’d like to believe in it, but I’m look­ing at the resources and ask­ing, ‘With what?’ Maybe we’ll have some local­ized break­throughs.”

    “We don’t have the peo­ple or weapons,” the senior offi­cial added. “And you know the ratio: When you’re on the offen­sive, you lose twice or three times as many peo­ple. We can’t afford to lose that many peo­ple.”

    Such analy­sis is far less opti­mistic than the pub­lic state­ments by Ukraine’s polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship.

    Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky has described 2023 as “the year of vic­to­ry” for Ukraine. His mil­i­tary intel­li­gence chief, Kyry­lo Budanov, tout­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Ukraini­ans vaca­tion­ing this sum­mer in Crimea, the penin­su­la Rus­sia annexed ille­gal­ly from Ukraine nine years ago.

    “Our pres­i­dent inspires us to win,” Col. Gen. Olek­san­dr Syrsky, Ukraine’s ground forces com­man­der, said in an inter­view with The Wash­ing­ton Post. “Gen­er­al­ly, we all think the same, and we under­stand that for us it is of course nec­es­sary to win by the end of the year. And it is real. It is real if we are giv­en all the help which we have been promised by our part­ners.”

    On the front lines, how­ev­er, the mood is dark.

    Kupol, who con­sent­ed to hav­ing his pho­to­graph tak­en and said he under­stood he could face per­son­al blow­back for giv­ing a frank assess­ment, described going to bat­tle with new­ly draft­ed sol­diers who had nev­er thrown a grenade, who read­i­ly aban­doned their posi­tions under fire and who lacked con­fi­dence in han­dling firearms.

    His unit with­drew from Soledar in east­ern Ukraine in the win­ter after being sur­round­ed by Russ­ian forces who lat­er cap­tured the city. Kupol recalled how hun­dreds of Ukrain­ian sol­diers in units fight­ing along­side his bat­tal­ion sim­ply aban­doned their posi­tions, even as fight­ers for Russia’s Wag­n­er mer­ce­nary group pressed ahead.

    After a year of war, Kupol, a lieu­tenant colonel, said his bat­tal­ion is unrec­og­niz­able. Of about 500 sol­diers, rough­ly 100 were killed in action and anoth­er 400 wound­ed, lead­ing to com­plete turnover. Kupol said he was the sole mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­al in the bat­tal­ion, and he described the strug­gle of lead­ing a unit com­posed entire­ly of inex­pe­ri­enced troops.

    “I get 100 new sol­diers,” Kupol said. “They don’t give me any time to pre­pare them. They say, ‘Take them into the bat­tle.’ They just drop every­thing and run. That’s it. Do you under­stand why? Because the sol­dier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some rea­son, he has nev­er thrown a grenade. … We need NATO instruc­tors in all our train­ing cen­ters, and our instruc­tors need to be sent over there into the trench­es. Because they failed in their task.”

    He described severe ammu­ni­tion short­ages, includ­ing a lack of sim­ple mor­tar bombs and grenades for U.S.-made MK 19s.

    Ukraine has also faced an acute short­age of artillery shells, which Wash­ing­ton and its allies have scram­bled to address, with dis­cus­sions about how to shore up Ukrain­ian stocks dom­i­nat­ing dai­ly meet­ings on the war at the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Washington’s efforts have kept Ukraine fight­ing, but use rates are very high, and scarci­ty per­sists.

    “You’re on the front line,” Kupol said. “They’re com­ing toward you, and there’s noth­ing to shoot with.”

    Kupol said Kyiv need­ed to focus on bet­ter prepar­ing new troops in a sys­tem­at­ic way. “It’s like all we do is give inter­views and tell peo­ple that we’ve already won, just a lit­tle bit fur­ther away, two weeks, and we’ll win,” he said.

    Dmytro, a Ukrain­ian sol­dier whom The Post is iden­ti­fy­ing only by first name for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, described many of the same con­di­tions. Some of the less-expe­ri­enced troops serv­ing at his posi­tion with the 36th Marine Brigade in the Donet­sk region “are afraid to leave the trench­es,” he said. Shelling is so intense at times, he said, that one sol­dier will have a pan­ic attack, then “oth­ers catch it.”

    The first time he saw fel­low sol­diers very shak­en, Dmytro said, he tried to talk them through the real­i­ty of the risks. The next time, he said, they “just ran from the posi­tion.”

    “I don’t blame them,” he said. “They were so con­fused.”

    The chal­lenges stem from steep loss­es. Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s com­man­der in chief, said in August that near­ly 9,000 of his sol­diers had died. In Decem­ber, Mykhai­lo Podolyak, an advis­er to Zelen­sky, said the num­ber was up to 13,000. But West­ern offi­cials have giv­en high­er esti­mates and, in any case, the Ukrain­ian fig­ures exclud­ed the far larg­er num­ber of wound­ed who are no longer able to fight.

    A Ger­man offi­cial, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to be can­did, said that Berlin esti­mates Ukrain­ian casu­al­ties, includ­ing dead and wound­ed, are as high as 120,000. “They don’t share the infor­ma­tion with us because they don’t trust us,” the offi­cial said.

    Mean­while, a Russ­ian offen­sive has been build­ing since ear­ly Jan­u­ary, accord­ing to Syrsky. Budanov, Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence chief, told The Post last month that Rus­sia had more than 325,000 sol­diers in Ukraine, and anoth­er 150,000 mobi­lized troops could soon join the fight. Ukrain­ian sol­diers report being out­num­bered and hav­ing less ammu­ni­tion.

    The stakes for Ukraine in the com­ing months are par­tic­u­lar­ly high, as West­ern coun­tries aid­ing Kyiv look to see whether Ukrain­ian forces can once again seize the ini­tia­tive and reclaim more ter­ri­to­ry from Russ­ian con­trol.

    Rus­sia is also fac­ing ammu­ni­tion, man­pow­er and moti­va­tion prob­lems — and has notched only incre­men­tal gains in recent months despite the strained state of Ukraine’s force. As bad as Ukraine’s loss­es are, Russia’s are worse, the U.S. offi­cial said.

    “The ques­tion is whether Ukraine’s rel­a­tive advan­tage is suf­fi­cient to attain their objec­tives, and whether those advan­tages can be sus­tained,” said Michael Kof­man, a mil­i­tary ana­lyst at Vir­ginia-based CNA. “That depends not just on them, but also on the West.”

    Despite reports of untrained mobi­lized Russ­ian fight­ers being thrown into bat­tle, Syrsky said those now arriv­ing are well-pre­pared. “We have to live and fight in these real­i­ties,” he said. “Of course, it’s prob­lem­at­ic for us. … It forces us to be more pre­cise in our fir­ing, more detailed in our recon­nais­sance, more care­ful in choos­ing our posi­tions and more detailed in orga­niz­ing the inter­ac­tion between the units. There is no oth­er way.”

    Russia’s recent gains — notably around Bakhmut — have not sig­nif­i­cant­ly tilt­ed the bat­tle­field, and U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials have said that even if Rus­sia seizes Bakhmut, it would be of lit­tle strate­gic impor­tance. But giv­en the heavy casu­al­ties Ukraine is suf­fer­ing there, offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton have ques­tioned Kyiv’s refusal to retreat. The Unit­ed States has been advis­ing Ukraine to retreat from the city since at least Jan­u­ary, the U.S. offi­cial said.

    A Ukrain­ian offi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because he was not autho­rized to speak pub­licly, said the bat­tle for Bakhmut was deplet­ing Russ­ian forces there — main­ly Wag­n­er fight­ers who have been Moscow’s most effec­tive of late — and that Ukrain­ian units defend­ing the city were not slat­ed to be deployed in upcom­ing offen­sive oper­a­tions any­way.

    Ukraine has lost many of its junior offi­cers who received U.S. train­ing over the past nine years, erod­ing a corps of lead­ers who helped dis­tin­guish the Ukraini­ans from their Russ­ian ene­mies at the start of the inva­sion, the Ukrain­ian offi­cial said. Now, the offi­cial said, those forces must be replaced. “A lot of them are killed,” the offi­cial said.

    At the start of the inva­sion, Ukraini­ans rushed to vol­un­teer for mil­i­tary duty, but now men across the coun­try who did not sign up have begun to fear being hand­ed draft slips on the street. Ukraine’s inter­nal secu­ri­ty ser­vice recent­ly shut down Telegram accounts that were help­ing Ukraini­ans avoid loca­tions where author­i­ties were dis­trib­ut­ing sum­mons­es.

    Ini­tial­ly, the Unit­ed States focused its train­ing on new weapons sys­tems Wash­ing­ton had decid­ed to pro­vide Kyiv, such as M777 artillery pieces and HIMARS rock­et launch­ers. In Jan­u­ary, after near­ly a year of all-out war, the Unit­ed States began train­ing Ukrain­ian forces in com­bined-arms war­fare. Just one bat­tal­ion, of about 650 peo­ple, has com­plet­ed the train­ing in Ger­many so far.

    Addi­tion­al Ukrain­ian bat­tal­ions will com­plete the train­ing by the end of March, and the pro­gram will adjust as Ukraine’s needs evolve, said Lt. Col. Gar­ron Garn, a Pen­ta­gon spokesman.

    ...

    Even with new equip­ment and train­ing, U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials con­sid­er Ukraine’s force insuf­fi­cient to attack all along the giant front, where Rus­sia has erect­ed sub­stan­tive defens­es, so troops are being trained to probe for weak points that allow them to break through with tanks and armored vehi­cles.

    Britain is also train­ing Ukrain­ian recruits, includ­ing about 10,000 last year, with anoth­er 20,000 expect­ed this year. The Euro­pean Union has said it will train 30,000 Ukraini­ans in 2023.

    Ukraine has been hold­ing back sol­diers for a spring offen­sive and train­ing them as part of new­ly assem­bled assault brigades. Kyiv is also orga­niz­ing bat­tal­ions around the new fight­ing vehi­cles and tanks that West­ern nations are pro­vid­ing.

    ...

    U.S. offi­cials said they expect Ukraine’s offen­sive to start in late April or ear­ly May, and they are acute­ly aware of the urgency of sup­ply­ing Kyiv because a drawn-out war could favor Rus­sia, which has more peo­ple, mon­ey and weapons man­u­fac­tur­ing.

    Asked at a recent con­gres­sion­al hear­ing how much more U.S. aid might be required, Pen­ta­gon pol­i­cy chief Col­in Kahl told House law­mak­ers that he did not know. “We don’t know the course or tra­jec­to­ry of the con­flict,” Kahl said. “It could end six months from now, it could end two years from now, three years from now.”

    ————

    “Ukraine short of skilled troops and muni­tions as loss­es, pes­simism grow” By Isabelle Khur­shudyan, Paul Sonne and Karen DeY­oung; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/13/2023

    Kupol said he was speak­ing out in hopes of secur­ing bet­ter train­ing for Ukrain­ian forces from Wash­ing­ton and that he hopes Ukrain­ian troops being held back for a com­ing coun­terof­fen­sive will have more suc­cess than the inex­pe­ri­enced sol­diers now man­ning the front under his com­mand.”

    Ukrain­ian Lieu­tenant Colonel Kupol is speak­ing out in the hopes of secur­ing bet­ter train­ing for Ukrain­ian troops from DC. That’s the stat­ed ratio­nale behind this report that is direct­ly con­tra­dict­ing the ‘Ukraine has Rus­sia on the ropes!’ nar­ra­tive that has been dom­i­nant in the West­ern press for months now. And a rather plau­si­ble ratio­nale, giv­en the hor­rif­ic casu­al­ties Ukraine has been fac­ing. Num­bers that are an offi­cial hor­rif­ic secret. But secret or not, what Ukraine can’t keep secret is the fact that those casu­al­ties have hol­lowed out the num­ber of expe­ri­enced sol­diers to such an extent over the last year that Ukraine may not have the man­pow­er need­ed for a much-hyped Spring coun­terof­fen­sive. For­get ammu­ni­tion and hard­ware short­ages. Ukraine needs peo­ple. But not just any­one with a pulse. Ukraine needs trained sol­diers. Soon:

    ...
    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials have esti­mat­ed that as many as 120,000 Ukrain­ian sol­diers have been killed or wound­ed since the start of Russia’s inva­sion ear­ly last year, com­pared with about 200,000 on the Russ­ian side, which has a much larg­er mil­i­tary and rough­ly triple the pop­u­la­tion from which to draw con­scripts. Ukraine keeps its run­ning casu­al­ty num­bers secret, even from its staunchest West­ern sup­port­ers.

    ...

    “The most valu­able thing in war is com­bat expe­ri­ence,” said a bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the 46th Air Assault Brigade, who is being iden­ti­fied only by his call sign, Kupol, in keep­ing with Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary pro­to­col. “A sol­dier who has sur­vived six months of com­bat and a sol­dier who came from a fir­ing range are two dif­fer­ent sol­diers. It’s heav­en and earth.”

    “And there are only a few sol­diers with com­bat expe­ri­ence,” Kupol added. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they are all already dead or wound­ed.”

    Such grim assess­ments have spread a pal­pa­ble, if most­ly unspo­ken, pes­simism from the front lines to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in Kyiv, the cap­i­tal. An inabil­i­ty by Ukraine to exe­cute a much-hyped coun­terof­fen­sive would fuel new crit­i­cism that the Unit­ed States and its Euro­pean allies wait­ed too long, until the force had already dete­ri­o­rat­ed, to deep­en train­ing pro­grams and pro­vide armored fight­ing vehi­cles, includ­ing Bradleys and Leop­ard bat­tle tanks.
    ...

    And note how a num­ber of oth­er anony­mous Ukrain­ian offi­cials are chim­ing in to con­cur on that bleak assess­ment. We’re see­ing a qui­et pub­lic rela­tions oper­a­tion at work here, deliv­er­ing a mes­sage that is in stark con­trast to the ongo­ing offi­cial opti­mism:

    ...
    Andriy Yer­mak, head of Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial office, said the state of the Ukrain­ian force does not dimin­ish his opti­mism about a com­ing coun­terof­fen­sive. “I don’t think we’ve exhaust­ed our poten­tial,” Yer­mak said. “I think that in any war, there comes a time when you have to pre­pare new per­son­nel, which is what is hap­pen­ing right now.”

    ...

    One senior Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to be can­did, called the num­ber of tanks promised by the West a “sym­bol­ic” amount. Oth­ers pri­vate­ly voiced pes­simism that promised sup­plies would even reach the bat­tle­field in time.

    “If you have more resources, you more active­ly attack,” the senior offi­cial said. “If you have few­er resources, you defend more. We’re going to defend. That’s why if you ask me per­son­al­ly, I don’t believe in a big coun­terof­fen­sive for us. I’d like to believe in it, but I’m look­ing at the resources and ask­ing, ‘With what?’ Maybe we’ll have some local­ized break­throughs.”

    “We don’t have the peo­ple or weapons,” the senior offi­cial added. “And you know the ratio: When you’re on the offen­sive, you lose twice or three times as many peo­ple. We can’t afford to lose that many peo­ple.”

    Such analy­sis is far less opti­mistic than the pub­lic state­ments by Ukraine’s polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship.
    ...

    And as Kupol warns, Ukraine needs NATO instruc­tors at ALL of its train­ing cen­ters. The Ukrain­ian instruc­tors can be sent to the trench­es:

    ...
    Kupol, who con­sent­ed to hav­ing his pho­to­graph tak­en and said he under­stood he could face per­son­al blow­back for giv­ing a frank assess­ment, described going to bat­tle with new­ly draft­ed sol­diers who had nev­er thrown a grenade, who read­i­ly aban­doned their posi­tions under fire and who lacked con­fi­dence in han­dling firearms.

    His unit with­drew from Soledar in east­ern Ukraine in the win­ter after being sur­round­ed by Russ­ian forces who lat­er cap­tured the city. Kupol recalled how hun­dreds of Ukrain­ian sol­diers in units fight­ing along­side his bat­tal­ion sim­ply aban­doned their posi­tions, even as fight­ers for Russia’s Wag­n­er mer­ce­nary group pressed ahead.

    After a year of war, Kupol, a lieu­tenant colonel, said his bat­tal­ion is unrec­og­niz­able. Of about 500 sol­diers, rough­ly 100 were killed in action and anoth­er 400 wound­ed, lead­ing to com­plete turnover. Kupol said he was the sole mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­al in the bat­tal­ion, and he described the strug­gle of lead­ing a unit com­posed entire­ly of inex­pe­ri­enced troops.

    “I get 100 new sol­diers,” Kupol said. “They don’t give me any time to pre­pare them. They say, ‘Take them into the bat­tle.’ They just drop every­thing and run. That’s it. Do you under­stand why? Because the sol­dier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some rea­son, he has nev­er thrown a grenade. … We need NATO instruc­tors in all our train­ing cen­ters, and our instruc­tors need to be sent over there into the trench­es. Because they failed in their task.”

    ...

    The stakes for Ukraine in the com­ing months are par­tic­u­lar­ly high, as West­ern coun­tries aid­ing Kyiv look to see whether Ukrain­ian forces can once again seize the ini­tia­tive and reclaim more ter­ri­to­ry from Russ­ian con­trol.

    ...

    Ukraine has lost many of its junior offi­cers who received U.S. train­ing over the past nine years, erod­ing a corps of lead­ers who helped dis­tin­guish the Ukraini­ans from their Russ­ian ene­mies at the start of the inva­sion, the Ukrain­ian offi­cial said. Now, the offi­cial said, those forces must be replaced. “A lot of them are killed,” the offi­cial said.

    ...

    Ini­tial­ly, the Unit­ed States focused its train­ing on new weapons sys­tems Wash­ing­ton had decid­ed to pro­vide Kyiv, such as M777 artillery pieces and HIMARS rock­et launch­ers. In Jan­u­ary, after near­ly a year of all-out war, the Unit­ed States began train­ing Ukrain­ian forces in com­bined-arms war­fare. Just one bat­tal­ion, of about 650 peo­ple, has com­plet­ed the train­ing in Ger­many so far.

    Addi­tion­al Ukrain­ian bat­tal­ions will com­plete the train­ing by the end of March, and the pro­gram will adjust as Ukraine’s needs evolve, said Lt. Col. Gar­ron Garn, a Pen­ta­gon spokesman.

    ...

    Even with new equip­ment and train­ing, U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials con­sid­er Ukraine’s force insuf­fi­cient to attack all along the giant front, where Rus­sia has erect­ed sub­stan­tive defens­es, so troops are being trained to probe for weak points that allow them to break through with tanks and armored vehi­cles.

    Britain is also train­ing Ukrain­ian recruits, includ­ing about 10,000 last year, with anoth­er 20,000 expect­ed this year. The Euro­pean Union has said it will train 30,000 Ukraini­ans in 2023.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the tim­ing at work­ing here: U.S. offi­cials said they expect Ukraine’s offen­sive to start in late April or ear­ly May. That’s about enough time for a mir­a­cle, but not much else:

    ...
    U.S. offi­cials said they expect Ukraine’s offen­sive to start in late April or ear­ly May, and they are acute­ly aware of the urgency of sup­ply­ing Kyiv because a drawn-out war could favor Rus­sia, which has more peo­ple, mon­ey and weapons man­u­fac­tur­ing.

    Asked at a recent con­gres­sion­al hear­ing how much more U.S. aid might be required, Pen­ta­gon pol­i­cy chief Col­in Kahl told House law­mak­ers that he did not know. “We don’t know the course or tra­jec­to­ry of the con­flict,” Kahl said. “It could end six months from now, it could end two years from now, three years from now.”
    ...

    Yes, the start of Ukraine’s coun­terof­fen­sive is less than 2 months away in the minds of US offi­cials. A coun­terof­fen­sive that’s seen as cru­cial for avoid­ing an even more pro­tract­ed and drawn out war of attri­tion. How far will the US and oth­er NATO allies go to ensure that offen­sive becomes a real­i­ty? We’ll find out. Pos­si­bly in the form of reports about a flood of ‘ex-NATO vol­un­teers’ flood­ing into Ukraine. Or rather, a larg­er flood. There’s already plen­ty of flood­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 14, 2023, 5:03 pm
  3. The main­stream­ing and nor­mal­iza­tion of Right Sec­tor as just anoth­er Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary unit did­n’t start with the launch of the Russ­ian ‘spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion’ last year. But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Inde­pen­dent pieces, both by reporter Kim Sen­gup­ta, the main­stream­ing of Right Sec­tor was accel­er­at­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly short­ly before the out­break of war and is more or less com­plete a year lat­er. And as we’re also going to see, that main­stream­ing process was very much a delib­er­a­tive effort on the part of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, seem­ing­ly in antic­i­pa­tion of giv­ing Right Sec­tor an even larg­er role in the fight­ing.

    The two arti­cle both revolve around the same fig­ure: Right Sec­tor com­man­der Dmytro ‘Da Vin­ci’ Kot­syubay­lo. We’ve heard ref­er­ences to ‘Da Vin­ci’ before. Recall how Kot­syubay­lo was award­ed the “Hero of Ukraine” com­men­da­tion in Decem­ber of 2021. This was a month after the Novem­ber 2021 appoint­ment of Right Sec­tor leader Dmytro Yarosh as an advi­sor to the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

    As we’re going to see, Da Vin­ci died ear­li­er this month. But not before con­duct­ing inter­views where he insist­ed that Right Sec­tor had not only purged itself of any Nazis or fas­cists, but that the groups was being so stren­u­ous in its selec­tion process that all racists of any stripe are reject­ed. Tak­en a face val­ue, one would have to assume that Right Sec­tor is some sort of ‘woke bat­tal­ion’ now. And any­one who sug­gests oth­er­wise is just repeat­ing Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

    That’s the spin at work, and that spin appears to be more or less the accept­ed nar­ra­tive about Right Sec­tor now. And it also appears that the award­ing of ‘Da Vin­ci’ with the Hero of Ukraine medal — a month after Dmytro Yarosh was appoint­ed as an advi­sor to the head of Ukraine’s armed forced — was part of a gov­ern­ment effort to sup­port that spin. Right Sec­tor is just anoth­er mil­i­tary unit now, for­mer­ly led by Da Vin­ci the non-extrem­ist war hero.

    Now, as we’re going to see, the arti­cles do acknowl­edge that Right Sec­tor did indeed start off filled with Nazis and fas­cists. But, we are told, those Nazi and fas­cists were all kicked out or left by the end of 2014 (just ignore all the reports about inter­na­tion­al fas­cists like Craig Lang join­ing the group in sub­se­quent years).

    So where did the ex-Right Sec­tor Nazis and fas­cists go? This is where the sto­ry gets dark­ly amus­ing: we are told that many of the more hard­core fas­cists joined the Azov Bat­tal­ion, which does­n’t take pains to hide its far right ide­ol­o­gy. Exam­ples of Azov not hid­ing that ide­ol­o­gy include the Nazi patch­es (the Totenkopf, Son­nen­rad, and Wolf­san­gel) that the group does­n’t both­er to hide. Keep in mind that the arti­cle mak­ing these points was pub­lished on Feb 10, 2022, less than two weeks before the launch of the Rus­sia inva­sion. In oth­er words, the full scale white­wash­ing of Azov and its Nazi sym­bols had­n’t yet kicked yet.

    Ok, first, here’s the Inde­pen­dent piece from a few weeks ago about the death of ‘Da Vin­ci’, who was def­i­nite­ly not the leader of a far right bat­tal­ion. And any­one sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise is just spread­ing Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    Death of nation­al­ist Ukrain­ian com­man­der ‘Da Vin­ci’ gives Rus­sia a pro­pa­gan­da win

    Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo was a leader of one of the most con­tro­ver­sial armed groups in the coun­try, and was hailed as a hero by Volodymyr Zelen­sky, writes Kim Sen­gup­ta. He is the lat­est high-pro­file casu­al­ty in the fierce fight­ing around the east­ern city of Bakhmut

    Kim Sen­gup­ta
    Thurs­day 09 March 2023 06:44

    The youngest bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, famed for his brav­ery and a long-time prime tar­get of the Rus­sians, has been killed in the bat­tle for Bakhmut.

    Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo, a leader of a group that Moscow has accused of hav­ing neo-Nazi and fas­cist links, died dur­ing shelling near the Don­bas city, which has been the focus of a sus­tained Russ­ian offen­sive for months.

    Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, who pre­sent­ed Kot­syubay­lo with the Order of the Gold­en Star as well as the title “Hero of Ukraine” last year, said in trib­ute: “He was one of the youngest heroes of Ukraine; one of those whose per­son­al his­to­ry, char­ac­ter and courage for­ev­er became the his­to­ry, char­ac­ter and courage of Ukraine. He was killed in a bat­tle near Bakhmut – a bat­tle for Ukraine.”

    Kot­syubay­lo, 27, who had the call­sign “Da Vin­ci”, was a leader of the Pravy Sek­tor [Right Sec­tor] group, and had become well known in Ukraine for his part in the sev­en-year-long war against Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists in the east. His rep­u­ta­tion for front­line com­bat had been fur­ther enhanced dur­ing the cur­rent con­flict.

    The young soldier’s death is a pro­pa­gan­da win for the Rus­sians. One Krem­lin-sup­port­ing web­site post­ed: “A high-rank­ing Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist has been liq­ui­dat­ed. We are talk­ing about Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo with the call­sign ‘Da Vin­ci’, an ardent sup­port­er and one of the lead­ers of the ‘Right-Sec­tor’ banned in Rus­sia and recog­nised as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion.”

    ...

    The deci­sion to keep troops hang­ing on in Bakhmut has led to ques­tions being asked with­in Ukraine’s armed forces, with crit­ics point­ing to the fail­ure to with­draw in time from Mar­i­upol, where thou­sands were tak­en cap­tive by the Rus­sians when they cap­tured the south­ern city. Sim­i­lar delays in with­draw­ing from Sievierodonet­sk and Lysy­chan­sk, two cities in the east, also led to large num­ber of sol­diers being killed and wound­ed.

    Pravy Sek­tor is one of the most well known and con­tro­ver­sial armed groups to have emerged from the fierce street clash­es of the Maid­an protests, which over­threw the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych in 2014.

    The group went on to play a promi­nent part in the con­flict that fol­lowed against sep­a­ratists in the east, and became – in the process – fig­ures of hate for their Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian adver­saries. For the first six months of the fight­ing that took place at that time, Pravy Sek­tor was one of the top three most fre­quent­ly men­tioned groups in Russ­ian media, and the organ­i­sa­tion was banned in Moscow.

    I spent some time with the group in the Don­bas last year, as Vladimir Putin’s inva­sion got under way, with Russia’s pres­i­dent declar­ing that one key aim of his country’s “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” was to “denaz­i­fy” Ukraine.

    The Pravy Sek­tor fight­ers echoed the wider Ukrain­ian and West­ern dis­par­age­ment of Mr Putin’s claim to be erad­i­cat­ing fas­cism, say­ing it was one of the spu­ri­ous excus­es used to launch the war.

    The group was ini­tial­ly formed as a con­fed­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal nation­al­ist organ­i­sa­tions. Some of these, includ­ing one called White Ham­mer, were sub­se­quent­ly expelled. Oth­ers, like Patri­ot of Ukraine, the para­mil­i­tary wing of the country’s Social-Nation­al Assem­bly, left the group after it sup­pos­ed­ly watered down its mil­i­tan­cy.

    Kot­syubay­lo insist­ed to me that stren­u­ous efforts had been made to keep out those who held Nazi, fas­cist or racist views.

    “We are nation­al­ists; I am a nation­al­ist. But we are not [like] some oth­ers, who are neo-Nazis, white suprema­cists, and all that stuff. In this unit we have Jews, Mus­lims, Chris­tians; you’ll not see any­one with a Nazi or fas­cist tat­too, or any­thing like that. We have vol­un­teers from lots of dif­fer­ent coun­tries; we don’t mind where they come from, or their reli­gion,” he said.

    Kot­syubay­lo adopt­ed the name “Da Vin­ci” because of his admi­ra­tion, dur­ing his days as an art stu­dent, for the Renais­sance poly­math. “I liked his imag­i­na­tion and inven­tion, embrac­ing of new ideas. One can’t admire things like that and be an intol­er­ant racist,” he said.

    After the war was over, Kot­syubay­lo said, his aim was to try to lead a “nor­mal life” with his part­ner Ali­na Mykhailo­va, a for­mer activist and deputy coun­cil­lor in Kyiv, who also served on the front­line.

    Kot­syubay­lo felt, how­ev­er, that nor­mal life would be dif­fi­cult for peo­ple like him, as they would always be tar­get­ed by hos­tile pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.

    One sto­ry that fuelled such a cam­paign was about a wolf cub that he and his troops had raised after its moth­er was shot by hunters. It became the nat­ur­al mas­cot of the unit, which has charg­ing wolves in its badge. Asked by a reporter vis­it­ing the unit’s base what the wolf was being fed, Kot­syubay­lo replied that the bones in the cage were of “Russ­ian-speak­ing chil­dren”. After he received his award from Mr Zelen­sky, there were claims in the Russ­ian media that Ukraine had giv­en one of its high­est hon­ours to a right-wing extrem­ist who want­ed to feed his wolf the bones of Russ­ian chil­dren.

    “It was obvi­ous­ly a joke; any­one could see it was a joke. I was try­ing to make fun of the type of ridicu­lous things they say about us, and this got turned into ‘fact’,” Kot­syubay­lo protest­ed.

    “I sup­pose it helped the way they want­ed to show us, a way of mak­ing peo­ple fear and hate each oth­er,” he said. “We are in a real war now, not just a pro­pa­gan­da one. There will be a lot of fight­ing and peo­ple will die – we must accept that not all of us will come out of it alive.”

    ———–

    “Death of nation­al­ist Ukrain­ian com­man­der ‘Da Vin­ci’ gives Rus­sia a pro­pa­gan­da win” by Kim Sen­gup­ta; The Inde­pen­dent; 03/09/2023

    “Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo, a leader of a group that Moscow has accused of hav­ing neo-Nazi and fas­cist links, died dur­ing shelling near the Don­bas city, which has been the focus of a sus­tained Russ­ian offen­sive for months.”

    Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo, aka ‘Da Vin­ci’, was­n’t a leader of a group with neo-Nazi and fas­cist links. No, no, he was the leader of a group that Moscow has accused of hav­ing neo-Nazi and fas­cist links. There’s noth­ing to wor­ry about, you see. It’s all just Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

    And as this report points out, Kot­syubay­lo was pre­sent­ed with the Order of the Gold­en Star as well as the title “Hero of Ukraine” last year by Volodymyr Zelen­sky just last year. How could the leader of a group with Nazi fas­cist ties be award­ed the title “Hero of Ukraine”?

    That’s the spin we’re see­ing these days when it comes to report­ing on Right Sec­tor. The group is sim­ply com­prised of patri­ot­ic nation­al­ists who are the vic­tims of a Russ­ian smear cam­paign, hence all the ‘con­tro­ver­sy’ around the group:

    ...
    Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, who pre­sent­ed Kot­syubay­lo with the Order of the Gold­en Star as well as the title “Hero of Ukraine” last year, said in trib­ute: “He was one of the youngest heroes of Ukraine; one of those whose per­son­al his­to­ry, char­ac­ter and courage for­ev­er became the his­to­ry, char­ac­ter and courage of Ukraine. He was killed in a bat­tle near Bakhmut – a bat­tle for Ukraine.”

    Kot­syubay­lo, 27, who had the call­sign “Da Vin­ci”, was a leader of the Pravy Sek­tor [Right Sec­tor] group, and had become well known in Ukraine for his part in the sev­en-year-long war against Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists in the east. His rep­u­ta­tion for front­line com­bat had been fur­ther enhanced dur­ing the cur­rent con­flict.

    The young soldier’s death is a pro­pa­gan­da win for the Rus­sians. One Krem­lin-sup­port­ing web­site post­ed: “A high-rank­ing Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist has been liq­ui­dat­ed. We are talk­ing about Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo with the call­sign ‘Da Vin­ci’, an ardent sup­port­er and one of the lead­ers of the ‘Right-Sec­tor’ banned in Rus­sia and recog­nised as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion.”

    ...

    Pravy Sek­tor is one of the most well known and con­tro­ver­sial armed groups to have emerged from the fierce street clash­es of the Maid­an protests, which over­threw the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych in 2014.

    The group went on to play a promi­nent part in the con­flict that fol­lowed against sep­a­ratists in the east, and became – in the process – fig­ures of hate for their Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian adver­saries. For the first six months of the fight­ing that took place at that time, Pravy Sek­tor was one of the top three most fre­quent­ly men­tioned groups in Russ­ian media, and the organ­i­sa­tion was banned in Moscow.
    ...

    As ‘Da Vin­ci’ described to the Inde­pen­dent in a report last year, stren­u­ous efforts had been made to keep out Nazis, fas­cists, or any sort of racists. Tak­en at face val­ue, we would have to assume Right Sec­tor is like Ukraine’s ‘woke bat­tal­ion’. Or, in the case of ‘Da Vin­ci’ per­son­al­ly, he makes the case that some­one who admires a cre­ative genius like Da Vin­ci sim­ply could­n’t hold racist view. The spin is dizzy­ing:

    ...
    I spent some time with the group in the Don­bas last year, as Vladimir Putin’s inva­sion got under way, with Russia’s pres­i­dent declar­ing that one key aim of his country’s “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” was to “denaz­i­fy” Ukraine.

    The Pravy Sek­tor fight­ers echoed the wider Ukrain­ian and West­ern dis­par­age­ment of Mr Putin’s claim to be erad­i­cat­ing fas­cism, say­ing it was one of the spu­ri­ous excus­es used to launch the war.

    The group was ini­tial­ly formed as a con­fed­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal nation­al­ist organ­i­sa­tions. Some of these, includ­ing one called White Ham­mer, were sub­se­quent­ly expelled. Oth­ers, like Patri­ot of Ukraine, the para­mil­i­tary wing of the country’s Social-Nation­al Assem­bly, left the group after it sup­pos­ed­ly watered down its mil­i­tan­cy.

    Kot­syubay­lo insist­ed to me that stren­u­ous efforts had been made to keep out those who held Nazi, fas­cist or racist views.

    “We are nation­al­ists; I am a nation­al­ist. But we are not [like] some oth­ers, who are neo-Nazis, white suprema­cists, and all that stuff. In this unit we have Jews, Mus­lims, Chris­tians; you’ll not see any­one with a Nazi or fas­cist tat­too, or any­thing like that. We have vol­un­teers from lots of dif­fer­ent coun­tries; we don’t mind where they come from, or their reli­gion,” he said.

    Kot­syubay­lo adopt­ed the name “Da Vin­ci” because of his admi­ra­tion, dur­ing his days as an art stu­dent, for the Renais­sance poly­math. “I liked his imag­i­na­tion and inven­tion, embrac­ing of new ideas. One can’t admire things like that and be an intol­er­ant racist,” he said.
    ...

    Final­ly, we get to this point where Kot­syubay­lo and his part­ner Ali­na Mykhailo­va — who is a deputy city coun­cilor in Kyiv — lament how they would like­ly nev­er be able to live nor­mal lives and will instead always be tar­get­ed by hos­tile pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns. It’s worth not­ing at this point that the two appar­ent met while they were both mem­bers of Right Sec­tor. It’s going to be inter­est­ing to see where Mykhailo­va’s polit­i­cal career goes now giv­en Da Vin­ci’s hero sta­tus that is now solid­i­fied with a glo­ri­ous bat­tle­field death:

    ...
    After the war was over, Kot­syubay­lo said, his aim was to try to lead a “nor­mal life” with his part­ner Ali­na Mykhailo­va, a for­mer activist and deputy coun­cil­lor in Kyiv, who also served on the front­line.

    Kot­syubay­lo felt, how­ev­er, that nor­mal life would be dif­fi­cult for peo­ple like him, as they would always be tar­get­ed by hos­tile pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.
    ...

    And now here’s a look at the Feb 10, 2022, report by this same reporter on his trip to Ukraine, less than two weeks before the launch of the Russ­ian ‘spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion.’ A piece that adds some impor­tant con­text to the cur­rent eulo­giz­ing of ‘Da Vin­ci’ fol­low­ing his death: the award­ing of that “Hero of Ukraine” medal to Da Vin­ci by pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky was part of a broad­er offi­cial embrace of Right Sec­tor by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary.

    Now, as the arti­cle admits, Right Sec­tor did indeed have Nazis and fas­cists ear­ly on in its exis­tence, but we are told those extrem­ists were all expelled or left. So where did they go? Well, accord­ing to the arti­cle, some of the more “hard­line” for­mer Right Sec­tor mem­bers end­ed up with Azov Bat­tal­ion, which, as the arti­cle also notes, “does lit­tle to hide its far-right cre­den­tials.”. In fact, at a train­ing exer­cise of cit­i­zen vol­un­teers in Kyiv, Azov’s mem­bers wore uni­forms with Nazi sym­bols like the Totenkopf, the Son­nen­rad, and the Wolf­san­gel. Again, keep in mind this arti­cle was pub­lished two weeks before the launch of the Russ­ian inva­sion, so the inter­na­tion­al white­wash­ing of Azov was­n’t quite in full effect by that point and sym­bols like the Totenkopf, Son­nen­rad, and Wolf­san­gel were still rec­og­nized as Nazi sym­bols.

    So as we read about the ele­va­tion of a Right Sec­tor com­man­der to “Hero of Ukraine” sta­tus, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that ‘Da Vin­ci’s’ wartime celebri­ty sta­tus was part of a Right Sec­tor white­wash­ing cam­paign designed to turn Right Sec­tor into a per­fect­ly respectable wing of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. And that was all in motion even before the start of the 2022 war:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    Nation­al­ists not extrem­ists: Pravy Sek­tor deny rad­i­cal­ism claims and say they want to ‘serve’ Ukraine

    Leader of group that emerged from the Maid­an protests tells Kim Sen­gup­ta in Avdi­iv­ka that it stren­u­ous­ly checks those who sign up

    by Kim Sen­gup­ta
    Thurs­day 10 Feb­ru­ary 2022 16:34

    “We are not extrem­ists, we are not ultras, we are not hard or far right. These are the labels some peo­ple use against us, and these labels are wrong,” Dmytro Kot­syubay­lo wants to stress at the base of his unit on Ukraine’s front line.

    The young com­man­der of the Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor) unit points out that stren­u­ous efforts have been made to keep out those who hold Nazi, fas­cist or racist views, and that this would remain the case if anoth­er con­flict were to erupt and there was an urgent need for recruits.

    Pravy Sek­tor is one of the most well-known and con­tro­ver­sial armed groups to emerge from the fierce street clash­es of the Maid­an protests, which over­threw the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych sev­en years ago.

    The group’s fight­ers went on to play a promi­nent part in the con­flict that fol­lowed against the sep­a­ratists in the east, and became, in the process, fig­ures of hate for their Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian adver­saries. For the first six months of the fight­ing, Pravy Sek­tor was one of the top three most fre­quent­ly men­tioned polit­i­cal groups in Russ­ian media, and the organ­i­sa­tion was banned in Moscow.

    Pravy Sek­tor has also, it should be not­ed, faced fierce crit­i­cism with­in Ukraine for its hard­line nation­al­ist mem­ber­ship when it was formed, and for its mil­i­tant activ­i­ties, which have led to clash­es with police.

    In the cur­rent com­bustible cri­sis in Ukraine, with the threat of war loom­ing and more than 100,000 Russ­ian troops sur­round­ing the bor­der, Pravy Sek­tor con­tin­ues to be held up as an organ­i­sa­tion of dan­ger­ous bogey­men by the sep­a­ratists and their back­ers in Moscow.

    Ear­li­er this week, a senior offi­cial of the Krem­lin-backed break­away Donet­sk People’s Repub­lic (DPR) claimed that a group of Pol­ish “mer­ce­nar­ies” had been iden­ti­fied prepar­ing to car­ry out “ter­ror­ist and sab­o­tage attacks”, and that they were work­ing along­side Pravy Sek­tor fight­ers.

    The “mer­ce­nar­ies”, accord­ing to Eduard Basurin, have been trained by the British using new­ly sup­plied British weapon­ry. Lon­don has sent a con­sign­ment of NLAW anti-tank mis­siles to Ukraine, and has trained around 20,000 Ukrain­ian troops, and tales of a British “hid­den hand” have been a theme in the sep­a­ratist nar­ra­tive.

    “We are very grate­ful to the British for send­ing us the mis­siles, and we are grate­ful to all our allies, but [in] the end we also know we’ll have to fight for our­selves. We are not involved in any con­spir­a­cies with for­eign troops,” says Kot­syubay­lo, whose nom de guerre is Da Vin­ci.

    “We don’t know what Vladimir Putin will do. He may start an offen­sive here in the Don­bas, man­u­fac­tur­ing some provo­ca­tion; or he may decide that, with so much inter­na­tion­al atten­tion, he will not car­ry out an attack. But the Rus­sians have, as you know, built up a huge force over there, and will they sim­ply go home?”

    Pravy Sek­tor also denies the claims of for­eign col­lu­sion, insist­ing any mis­sion it car­ries out is in liai­son with Ukraine’s armed forces, and that its actions are mon­i­tored by the gov­ern­ment.

    Regard­ed once with wari­ness and hos­til­i­ty by the country’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal hier­ar­chy, it has become more wide­ly accept­ed after inter­nal changes and suc­cess­es on the bat­tle­field.

    The high­ly sym­bol­ic offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the part the organ­i­sa­tion has played in the country’s war came with the award­ing of the title of “Hero of Ukraine” to Kot­syubay­lo by pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky.

    The 26-year-old cap­tain wore com­bat fatigues at the cer­e­mo­ny, as he was also dec­o­rat­ed with the “Order of the Gold­en Star”, for courage and lead­er­ship, while an audi­ence of MPs gave a stand­ing ova­tion.

    Last week, Kot­syubay­lo had a meet­ing with gen­er­al Valerii Zaluzh­nyi, the head of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place about what role the unit might play on the east­ern front should hos­til­i­ties break out.

    ...

    Show­ing me around a muse­um of the Maid­an and the sub­se­quent con­flict, which his men and women have put togeth­er, he con­tin­ues: “We are nation­al­ists; I am a nation­al­ist. But we are not [like] some oth­ers who are neo-Nazis, white suprema­cists, and all that stuff. In this unit we have Jews, Mus­lims, Chris­tians; you’ll not see any­one with a Nazi or fas­cist tat­too or any­thing like that. We have vol­un­teers from lots of dif­fer­ent coun­tries; we don’t mind where they come from, or their reli­gion.”

    ...

    Pravy Sek­tor was ini­tial­ly formed as a con­fed­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal nation­al­ist groups. Some of these, includ­ing one called White Ham­mer, were expelled. Oth­ers, like Patri­ot of Ukraine, the para­mil­i­tary wing of the country’s Social-Nation­al Assem­bly, left the group after it sup­pos­ed­ly watered down its mil­i­tan­cy.

    Some of the more hard­line for­mer Pravy Sek­tor mem­bers have found a home in the Azov Bat­tal­ion, which does lit­tle to hide its far-right cre­den­tials. At a recent train­ing exer­cise for cit­i­zen vol­un­teers in Kiev, its mem­bers wore uni­forms with Nazi sym­bols like the Totenkopf (death’s head), the Son­nen­rad (black sun), and the Wolf­san­gel, or wolf’s trap.

    How­ev­er, it is some­times dif­fi­cult to draw clear ide­o­log­i­cal demar­ca­tion lines in the Ukraine con­flict.

    More than half the mem­bers of Azov are Russ­ian-speak­ers from east­ern Ukraine. Its orig­i­nal roots are in a group of ultra sup­port­ers of the foot­ball team FC Met­al­ist Kharkiv, from a region where 74 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion are Russ­ian-speak­ing. Until the Maid­an protests, these fans were allied with the ultras of FC Spar­tak Moscow. Far-right Russ­ian groups have fought along­side the sep­a­ratists in the con­flict against Ukrain­ian forces.

    Most young fight­ers on both sides of the con­flict, what­ev­er their ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tion, talk about how they have lost a part of their life and would like to get back to some­thing approach­ing nor­mal­i­ty, if and when the strife ever ends.

    Kot­syubay­lo met Ali­na Mykhailo­va, also 26, a deputy coun­cil­lor at Kiev City Coun­cil and a for­mer activist, while she was deliv­er­ing donat­ed aid to the front line. They have had a cou­ple of brief hol­i­days abroad togeth­er, but, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­flict com­ing, they are now restrict­ed to brief meet­ings when he returns to the cap­i­tal.

    Speak­ing to them at a restau­rant in Kiev, I ask them whether they can see them­selves ever, in the future, shar­ing a meal with a sep­a­ratist cou­ple, also engaged in polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary work but on the oth­er side.

    Kot­syubay­lo just shakes his head.

    Ali­na says she believes that “this sort of thing will not take place for a long, long time”.

    She adds: “Too much has hap­pened; there is too much bit­ter­ness. There are painful mem­o­ries which are just too fresh. And, from what we are see­ing now, with the Rus­sians at our bor­der, I don’t think there will be any time to heal.”

    ———–

    “Nation­al­ists not extrem­ists: Pravy Sek­tor deny rad­i­cal­ism claims and say they want to ‘serve’ Ukraine” by Kim Sen­gup­ta; The Inde­pen­dent; 02/10/2022

    “The young com­man­der of the Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor) unit points out that stren­u­ous efforts have been made to keep out those who hold Nazi, fas­cist or racist views, and that this would remain the case if anoth­er con­flict were to erupt and there was an urgent need for recruits.

    Don’t wor­ry about Nazis in Right Sec­tor now, or in the future should a broad­er con­flict break out. That was Da Vin­ci’s mes­sage to the world in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of 2022, less than two weeks before the for­mal out­break of the ‘Spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion’.

    And then we get to this very inter­est­ing admis­sion in the piece: yes, Right Sec­tor has indeed faced fierce crit­i­cism inside Ukraine over its “hard­line nation­al­ist” mem­ber­ship and was once regard­ed with wari­ness and hos­til­i­ty by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal hier­ar­chy. But that’s all changed, and it was the award­ing of the title “Hero of Ukraine” to ‘Da Vin­ci’ that for­mal­ized that offi­cial embrace of Right Sec­tor. That’s part of the con­text of all of the cel­e­brat­ing around ‘Da Vin­ci’ as a Right Sec­tor leader: mak­ing ‘Da Vin­ci’ the inter­na­tion­al face of Right Sec­tor as part of a broad­er white­wash­ing cam­paign for the group:

    ...
    Pravy Sek­tor has also, it should be not­ed, faced fierce crit­i­cism with­in Ukraine for its hard­line nation­al­ist mem­ber­ship when it was formed, and for its mil­i­tant activ­i­ties, which have led to clash­es with police.

    In the cur­rent com­bustible cri­sis in Ukraine, with the threat of war loom­ing and more than 100,000 Russ­ian troops sur­round­ing the bor­der, Pravy Sek­tor con­tin­ues to be held up as an organ­i­sa­tion of dan­ger­ous bogey­men by the sep­a­ratists and their back­ers in Moscow.

    ...

    Regard­ed once with wari­ness and hos­til­i­ty by the country’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal hier­ar­chy, it has become more wide­ly accept­ed after inter­nal changes and suc­cess­es on the bat­tle­field.

    The high­ly sym­bol­ic offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the part the organ­i­sa­tion has played in the country’s war came with the award­ing of the title of “Hero of Ukraine” to Kot­syubay­lo by pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky.

    The 26-year-old cap­tain wore com­bat fatigues at the cer­e­mo­ny, as he was also dec­o­rat­ed with the “Order of the Gold­en Star”, for courage and lead­er­ship, while an audi­ence of MPs gave a stand­ing ova­tion.

    Last week, Kot­syubay­lo had a meet­ing with gen­er­al Valerii Zaluzh­nyi, the head of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place about what role the unit might play on the east­ern front should hos­til­i­ties break out.
    ...

    And then we get to this oth­er intrigu­ing piece of info: Right Sec­tor appears to have received both train­ing and mis­siles from Britain. Right Sec­tor has a lot of pow­er­ful friends:

    ...
    Ear­li­er this week, a senior offi­cial of the Krem­lin-backed break­away Donet­sk People’s Repub­lic (DPR) claimed that a group of Pol­ish “mer­ce­nar­ies” had been iden­ti­fied prepar­ing to car­ry out “ter­ror­ist and sab­o­tage attacks”, and that they were work­ing along­side Pravy Sek­tor fight­ers.

    The “mer­ce­nar­ies”, accord­ing to Eduard Basurin, have been trained by the British using new­ly sup­plied British weapon­ry. Lon­don has sent a con­sign­ment of NLAW anti-tank mis­siles to Ukraine, and has trained around 20,000 Ukrain­ian troops, and tales of a British “hid­den hand” have been a theme in the sep­a­ratist nar­ra­tive.

    “We are very grate­ful to the British for send­ing us the mis­siles, and we are grate­ful to all our allies, but [in] the end we also know we’ll have to fight for our­selves. We are not involved in any con­spir­a­cies with for­eign troops,” says Kot­syubay­lo, whose nom de guerre is Da Vin­ci.

    ...

    Pravy Sek­tor also denies the claims of for­eign col­lu­sion, insist­ing any mis­sion it car­ries out is in liai­son with Ukraine’s armed forces, and that its actions are mon­i­tored by the gov­ern­ment.
    ...

    So giv­en the nar­ra­tive we’re now get­ting about how Right Sec­tor used to have Nazis, at first, but then got rid of them all, that rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion as to where those Nazi went. Behold the answer: the Azov Bat­tal­ion, “which does lit­tle to hide its far-right cre­den­tials”, and uses overt Nazi sym­bols like the Totenkopf, Son­nen­rad, and Wolf­san­gel. Keep in mind this report was two weeks before the start of the cur­rent war so the inter­na­tion­al white­wash­ing of Azov had­n’t ful­ly kicked in to high gear quite yet:

    ...
    Pravy Sek­tor was ini­tial­ly formed as a con­fed­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal nation­al­ist groups. Some of these, includ­ing one called White Ham­mer, were expelled. Oth­ers, like Patri­ot of Ukraine, the para­mil­i­tary wing of the country’s Social-Nation­al Assem­bly, left the group after it sup­pos­ed­ly watered down its mil­i­tan­cy.

    Some of the more hard­line for­mer Pravy Sek­tor mem­bers have found a home in the Azov Bat­tal­ion, which does lit­tle to hide its far-right cre­den­tials. At a recent train­ing exer­cise for cit­i­zen vol­un­teers in Kiev, its mem­bers wore uni­forms with Nazi sym­bols like the Totenkopf (death’s head), the Son­nen­rad (black sun), and the Wolf­san­gel, or wolf’s trap.
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s also worth not­ing the sen­ti­ments shared by ‘Da Vin­ci’ and his part­ner Ali­na when posed the ques­tion of when they could envi­sion them­selves shar­ing a meal with a sep­a­ratist cou­ple. Their pes­simistic answers are a reminder that part of what is fuel­ing this entire con­flict is the fact that the peo­ple of the sep­a­ratist republics are seen by Ukraine’s lead­er­ship as super­flu­ous peo­ple with no future with a rein­te­grat­ed Ukraine. It’s also a reminder that Ukraine’s west­ern allies who are ful­ly on board with the recap­ture of all of Ukraine’s lost ter­ri­to­ry have no plans for these peo­ple either:

    ...
    Kot­syubay­lo met Ali­na Mykhailo­va, also 26, a deputy coun­cil­lor at Kiev City Coun­cil and a for­mer activist, while she was deliv­er­ing donat­ed aid to the front line. They have had a cou­ple of brief hol­i­days abroad togeth­er, but, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­flict com­ing, they are now restrict­ed to brief meet­ings when he returns to the cap­i­tal.

    Speak­ing to them at a restau­rant in Kiev, I ask them whether they can see them­selves ever, in the future, shar­ing a meal with a sep­a­ratist cou­ple, also engaged in polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary work but on the oth­er side.

    Kot­syubay­lo just shakes his head.

    Ali­na says she believes that “this sort of thing will not take place for a long, long time”.

    She adds: “Too much has hap­pened; there is too much bit­ter­ness. There are painful mem­o­ries which are just too fresh. And, from what we are see­ing now, with the Rus­sians at our bor­der, I don’t think there will be any time to heal.”
    ...

    “Too much has hap­pened; there is too much bit­ter­ness. There are painful mem­o­ries which are just too fresh. And, from what we are see­ing now, with the Rus­sians at our bor­der, I don’t think there will be any time to heal.”

    Those are some omi­nous words from Ali­na in ret­ro­spect. Words spo­ken before the cur­rent con­flict even start­ed. What sort of pos­si­ble civ­il res­o­lu­tion is there for this con­flict? How could the peo­ple of the Don­bas ever mean­ing­ful­ly get rein­te­grat­ed into a coun­try that bit­ter­ly hates them at this point? It’s hard to see a solu­tion. Or at least a solu­tion that does­n’t rely on groups like Right Sec­tor wip­ing that pop­u­la­tion out entire­ly. But don’t call any of this extrem­ism. That would just be Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 27, 2023, 4:50 pm
  4. Sto­ries about the woes fac­ing the inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teers flood­ing into Ukraine are noth­ing new at this point. There was, for exam­ple, that stun­ning two-part report out of the Kyiv Inde­pen­dent last year about a Pol­ish mob­ster — Piotr Kapus­cin­s­ki, aka Sasha Kuchyn­sky — who was giv­en a posi­tion lead­ing troops in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion. And as sol­diers told reporters, he ruled like a mad tyrant threat­ened sol­diers if they did­n’t car­ry out his crim­i­nal orders like loot­ing a local mall and appeared to be traf­fick­ing in weapons. But that was­n’t the worst part of the inves­ti­ga­tion. The worst part was the fact that Kapus­cin­s­ki was receiv­ing high-lev­el pro­tec­tion from with­in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary hier­ar­chy. It’s was a grim reminder that cor­rupt Ukrain­ian author­i­ties are like­ly the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of many of the unad­dressed issues we are read­ing about.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing recent New York Times piece about anoth­er source of sys­temic cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teers are fac­ing: the cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty brought by the vol­un­teers them­selves. Yes, as we should expect, it turns out a large num­ber of vol­un­teers are them­selves sources for trou­ble and cor­rup­tion. Sur­prise! In many cas­es, cor­rup­tion involv­ing the fundrais­ing they them­selves are con­duct­ing osten­si­bly on behalf of Ukraine’s armed forces.

    For exam­ple, one of the best known Amer­i­cans fight­ing in Ukraine is James Vasquez, who claimed in fundrais­ing to be a formed US Army Staff sergeant with expe­ri­ence fight­ing in Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq after 9/11. It turns out Vasquez nev­er actu­al­ly served in those coun­tries and left the mil­i­tary a pri­vate first class. It sounds like Vasquez had been fight­ing with ‘Da Vin­ci’s Wolves’, the Right Sec­tor unit that appears to be play­ing a lead­ing role in nor­mal­iz­ing Right Sec­tor as a ‘non-extrem­ist’ bat­tal­ion. And as Vasquez has bragged in the fundrais­ing videos and tweets, he has easy access to weapons, includ­ing brand new Amer­i­can rifles, and that he should not have to wor­ry about inter­na­tion­al rules of war while in Ukraine. It also turns out Vasquez was fight­ing in Ukraine with­out a mil­i­tary con­tract, some­thing that appar­ent­ly only became an issue after the New York Times pub­lished this report.

    And then there’s Ryan Routh, a for­mer con­struc­tion work­er from North Car­oli­na who is lead­ing a project that aims to smug­gle in fight­ers from Pak­istan and Iran. Yep. Routh is appar­ent­ly seek­ing recruits from among the Afghan sol­diers who fled the Tal­iban. Routh claims dozens have expressed inter­est.

    Now, maybe it real­ly is the case that Routh is in con­tact with dozens of Afghan sol­diers liv­ing in Pak­istan or Iran who are will­ing to fight and die for Ukraine. But it’s also worth keep­ing in mind that Routh’s scheme sounds like a great cov­er for some sort of jihadist pipeline. At the same time, it’s not at all clear how one could pos­si­bly frame this con­flict in a man­ner that take on ‘holy war’ dimen­sions.

    So we have to ask: are we on the verge of see­ing a jihadist dimen­sion graft­ed onto the con­flict in Ukraine? Jihadist mer­ce­nar­ies per­haps? Is it pos­si­ble that this con­flict could attract gen­uine jihadist will­ing to blow them­selves up for the cause? This is a good time to recall how the Kerch Bridge attack appears to have been a sui­cide truck bomb­ing.

    These are just two of the exam­ples of the kinds of prob­lems the inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teers have been bring­ing with them to Ukraine. And yet, it’s not at all clear that Ukraine’s mil­i­tary is tak­ing any real steps to address this. Instead, it sounds like the pre­ven­tion of Russ­ian infil­tra­tors is the only real are of focus. In oth­er words, we should­n’t expect these issues to get bet­ter. Quite the con­trary. The fes­ter­ing con­tin­ues with no end in sight:

    The New York Times

    Stolen Val­or: The U.S. Vol­un­teers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bick­er

    Peo­ple who would not be allowed any­where near the bat­tle­field in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrain­ian front, with ready access to Amer­i­can weapons.

    By Justin Scheck and Thomas Gib­bons-Neff
    March 25, 2023
    Updat­ed 9:25 a.m. ET

    They rushed to Ukraine by the thou­sands, many of them Amer­i­cans who promised to bring mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, mon­ey or sup­plies to the bat­tle­ground of a right­eous war. Home­town news­pa­pers hailed their com­mit­ment, and donors backed them with mil­lions of dol­lars.

    Now, after a year of com­bat, many of these home­spun groups of vol­un­teers are fight­ing with them­selves and under­min­ing the war effort. Some have wast­ed mon­ey or stolen val­or. Oth­ers have cloaked them­selves in char­i­ty while also try­ing to prof­it off the war, records show.

    One retired Marine lieu­tenant colonel from Vir­ginia is the focus of a U.S. fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the poten­tial­ly ille­gal export of mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy. A for­mer Army sol­dier arrived in Ukraine only to turn trai­tor and defect to Rus­sia. A Con­necti­cut man who lied about his mil­i­tary ser­vice has post­ed live updates from the bat­tle­field — includ­ing his exact loca­tion — and boast­ed about his easy access to Amer­i­can weapons. A for­mer con­struc­tion work­er is hatch­ing a plan to use fake pass­ports to smug­gle in fight­ers from Pak­istan and Iran..

    And in one of the more curi­ous entan­gle­ments, one of the largest vol­un­teer groups is embroiled in a pow­er strug­gle involv­ing an Ohio man who false­ly claimed to have been both a U.S. Marine and a Long­Horn Steak­house assis­tant man­ag­er. The dis­pute also involves a years-old inci­dent on Aus­tralian real­i­ty TV.

    Such char­ac­ters have a place in Ukraine’s defense because of the arms-length role the Unit­ed States has tak­en: The Biden admin­is­tra­tion sends weapons and mon­ey but not pro­fes­sion­al troops. That means peo­ple who would not be allowed any­where near the bat­tle­field in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrain­ian front — often with unchecked access to weapons and mil­i­tary equip­ment.

    ...

    The New York Times reviewed more than 100 pages of doc­u­ments from inside vol­un­teer groups and inter­viewed more than 30 vol­un­teers, fight­ers, fund-rais­ers, donors and Amer­i­can and Ukrain­ian offi­cials. Some spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion.

    The inter­views and research reveal a series of decep­tions, mis­takes and squab­bles that have hin­dered the vol­un­teer dri­ve that began after Russia’s full-scale inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2022, when Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky of Ukraine called for help. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defend­ing the coun­try, please come over,” he said. “We will give you weapons.”

    Thou­sands answered the call. Some joined mil­i­tary groups like the Inter­na­tion­al Legion, which Ukraine formed for for­eign fight­ers. Oth­ers took roles in sup­port or fund-rais­ing. With Kyiv, Ukraine’s cap­i­tal, under attack, there was lit­tle time for vet­ting arrivals. So peo­ple with prob­lem­at­ic pasts, includ­ing check­ered or fab­ri­cat­ed mil­i­tary records, became entrenched in the Legion and a con­stel­la­tion of oth­er vol­un­teer groups.

    Asked about these prob­lems, the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary did not address spe­cif­ic issues but did say that it was on guard because Russ­ian agents reg­u­lar­ly tried to infil­trate vol­un­teer groups. “We inves­ti­gat­ed such cas­es and hand­ed them over to law enforce­ment agen­cies,” said Andriy Cher­ni­ak, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.

    ‘A Mil­lion Lies’

    One of the best-known Amer­i­cans on the bat­tle­field is James Vasquez. Days after the inva­sion, Mr. Vasquez, a Con­necti­cut home-improve­ment con­trac­tor, announced that he was leav­ing for Ukraine. His local news­pa­per told the tale of a for­mer U.S. Army staff sergeant who left behind his job and fam­i­ly and picked up a rifle and a ruck­sack on the front line.

    Since then, he has post­ed bat­tle­field videos online, at least once broad­cast­ing his unit’s pre­cise loca­tion to every­one, includ­ing the oppos­ing side. He used his sto­ry to solic­it dona­tions. “I was in Kuwait dur­ing Desert Storm, and I was in Iraq after 9/11,” Mr. Vasquez said in a fund-rais­ing video. He added, “This is a whole dif­fer­ent ani­mal.”

    Mr. Vasquez, in fact, was nev­er deployed to Kuwait, Iraq or any­where else, a Pen­ta­gon spokes­woman said. He spe­cial­ized in fuel and elec­tri­cal repairs. And he left the Army Reserve not as a sergeant as he claimed, but as a pri­vate first class, one of the Army’s low­est ranks.

    Still, Mr. Vasquez had easy access to weapons, includ­ing Amer­i­can rifles. Where did they come from? “I’m not exact­ly sure,” Mr. Vasquez said in a text mes­sage. The rifles, he added, were “brand-new, out of the box and we have plen­ty.” He also tweet­ed that he should not have to wor­ry about inter­na­tion­al rules of war while in Ukraine.

    He fought along­side Da Vinci’s Wolves, a Ukrain­ian far-right bat­tal­ion, until this past week, when The Times asked about his false mil­i­tary ser­vice claims. He imme­di­ate­ly deac­ti­vat­ed his Twit­ter account and said that he might leave Ukraine because the author­i­ties had dis­cov­ered that he was fight­ing with­out a required mil­i­tary con­tract.

    Mr. Vasquez said he had been mis­rep­re­sent­ing his mil­i­tary record for decades. He acknowl­edged being kicked out of the Army but would not talk pub­licly about why. “I had to tell a mil­lion lies to get ahead,” Mr. Vasquez said in an inter­view. “I didn’t real­ize it was going to come to this.”

    Pub­lic Quar­rels

    The Inter­na­tion­al Legion, hasti­ly formed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, spent 10 min­utes or less check­ing each volunteer’s back­ground ear­ly in the war, one Legion offi­cial said. So a Pol­ish fugi­tive who had been jailed in Ukraine for weapon vio­la­tions got a posi­tion lead­ing troops. Sol­diers told The Kyiv Inde­pen­dent that he had mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed sup­plies, harassed women and threat­ened his sol­diers.

    Ukrain­ian offi­cials ini­tial­ly boast­ed of 20,000 poten­tial Legion vol­un­teers, but far few­er actu­al­ly enlist­ed. Cur­rent­ly, there are around 1,500 mem­bers in the orga­ni­za­tion, say peo­ple with knowl­edge of the Legion.

    Some are expe­ri­enced fight­ers work­ing as part of the Defense Intel­li­gence of Ukraine. But there have been high-pro­file prob­lems. A for­mer Army pri­vate first class, John McIn­tyre, was eject­ed from the Legion for bad behav­ior. Mr. McIn­tyre defect­ed to Rus­sia and recent­ly appeared on state-run tele­vi­sion, which said he had pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary intel­li­gence to Moscow.

    Inter­nal doc­u­ments show that the Legion is strug­gling. Recruit­ment has stag­nat­ed. The Wash­ing­ton-based Counter Extrem­ism Project wrote in March that the Legion and affil­i­at­ed groups “con­tin­ue to fea­ture indi­vid­u­als wide­ly seen as unfit to per­form their duties.”

    Mal­colm Nance, a for­mer Navy cryp­tol­o­gist and MSNBC com­men­ta­tor, arrived in Ukraine last year and made a plan to bring order and dis­ci­pline to the Legion. Instead, he became enmeshed in the chaos.

    Mr. Nance, whose tele­vi­sion appear­ances have made him one of the most vis­i­ble Amer­i­cans sup­port­ing Ukraine, was an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary oper­a­tor. He draft­ed a code of hon­or for the orga­ni­za­tion and, by all accounts, donat­ed equip­ment.

    Today, Mr. Nance is involved in a messy, dis­tract­ing pow­er strug­gle. Often, that plays out on Twit­ter, where Mr. Nance taunt­ed one for­mer ally as “fat” and an asso­ciate of “a ver­i­fied con artist.”

    He accused a pro-Ukraine fund-rais­ing group of fraud, pro­vid­ing no evi­dence. After argu­ing with two Legion admin­is­tra­tors, Mr. Nance wrote a “coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence” report try­ing to get them fired. Cen­tral to that report is an accu­sa­tion that one Legion offi­cial, Emese Abi­gail Fayk, fraud­u­lent­ly tried to buy a house on an Aus­tralian real­i­ty TV show with mon­ey she didn’t have. He labeled her “a poten­tial Russ­ian spy,” offer­ing no evi­dence. Ms. Fayk denied the accu­sa­tions and remains with the Legion.

    Mr. Nance said that as a mem­ber of the Legion with an intel­li­gence back­ground, when he devel­oped con­cerns, he “felt an oblig­a­tion to report this to Ukrain­ian coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence.”

    The dis­pute goes to the heart of who can be trust­ed to speak for and raise mon­ey for the Legion.

    Mr. Nance has left Ukraine but con­tin­ues fund-rais­ing with a new group of allies. One of them, Ben Lack­ey, is a for­mer Legion mem­ber. He told his fel­low vol­un­teers that he was once a Marine and wrote on LinkedIn that he had most recent­ly been an assis­tant man­ag­er at Long­Horn Steak­house. In fact, the Pen­ta­gon said he had no mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence (and he worked as a serv­er, the steak­house said).

    In an inter­view, Mr. Lack­ey said that he had lied about being a U.S. Marine so he could join the Legion.

    With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a for­mer con­struc­tion work­er from Greens­boro, N.C., is seek­ing recruits from among Afghan sol­diers who fled the Tal­iban. Mr. Routh, who spent sev­er­al months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cas­es ille­gal­ly, from Pak­istan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed inter­est.

    “We can prob­a­bly pur­chase some pass­ports through Pak­istan, since it’s such a cor­rupt coun­try,” he said in an inter­view from Wash­ing­ton.

    It is not clear whether he has suc­ceed­ed, but one for­mer Afghan sol­dier said he had been con­tact­ed and was inter­est­ed in fight­ing if it meant leav­ing Iran, where he was liv­ing ille­gal­ly.

    Mis­di­rect­ed Dona­tions

    Grady Williams, a 65-year-old retired engi­neer with no mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and a metham­phet­a­mine con­vic­tion from 2019, was a vol­un­teer tour guide at Ronald Reagan’s San­ta Bar­bara ranch when he heard Mr. Zelensky’s plea for vol­un­teers.

    ...

    He said he had flown to Poland, hitch­hiked to Ukraine and tak­en a train to Kyiv. He bumped into two Amer­i­cans in mil­i­tary-look­ing gear. “They said, ‘Dude, come with us,’” he said.

    The vol­un­teers brought Mr. Williams to a base near the front and gave him a gun. Days lat­er, he said, he was near­ly blown up while fight­ing along­side Ukrain­ian sol­diers from a trench near Bucha. With­in a week, the mil­i­tary real­ized that he had not reg­is­tered to fight and sent him back to Kyiv.

    From there, he took a cir­cuitous path that end­ed in rais­ing mon­ey for vol­un­teers from the Repub­lic of Geor­gia. He raised about $16,000, telling donors that their mon­ey would buy elec­tric motor­cy­cles for fight­ers. But the Geor­gians kicked him out after he got into a con­flict with anoth­er vol­un­teer. He said he had spent about $6,900 of the con­tri­bu­tions on down pay­ments for motor­bikes and the rest on his trav­el and oth­er expens­es.

    He has since linked up with a new group, which he said had promised him com­mand of a motor­cy­cle unit if he raised enough mon­ey. So he moved this month to Ode­sa, Ukraine, he said, and expects to deliv­er a sin­gle motor­bike soon.

    Exam­ples of wast­ed mon­ey in the hands of well-inten­tioned peo­ple are com­mon. Mriya Aid, a group led by an active-duty Cana­di­an lieu­tenant colonel, spent about $100,000 from donors on high-tech U.S.-style night-vision devices. They end­ed up being less-effec­tive Chi­nese mod­els, inter­nal doc­u­ments show.

    “We expe­ri­enced a prob­lem with the night vision,” said Lubomyr Chabursky, a vol­un­teer on Mriya Aid’s lead­er­ship team. But he said the pur­chase rep­re­sent­ed only 2 per­cent of the aid the group had pro­vid­ed.

    Ear­li­er this year, the Mozart Group, which two for­mer Marines estab­lished to help Ukraine, dis­band­ed after one sued the oth­er, alleg­ing theft and harass­ment.

    Absent Paper Trail

    Last spring, a vol­un­teer group called Ripley’s Heroes said it had spent approx­i­mate­ly $63,000 on night-vision and ther­mal optics. Some of the equip­ment was sub­ject to Amer­i­can export restric­tions because, in the wrong hands, it could give ene­mies a bat­tle­field advan­tage.

    Front­line vol­un­teers said Ripley’s deliv­ered the equip­ment to Ukraine with­out required doc­u­men­ta­tion list­ing the actu­al buy­ers and recip­i­ents. Recent­ly, the fed­er­al author­i­ties began inves­ti­gat­ing the ship­ments, U.S. offi­cials said.

    In his defense, the group’s founder, a retired U.S. Marine named Lt. Col. Hunter Rip­ley Rawl­ings IV, pro­vid­ed deal doc­u­ments to The Times. But those records show that, just as the vol­un­teers said, Ripley’s was not dis­closed to the State Depart­ment as the buy­er.

    Ripley’s says it has raised over $1 mil­lion, some of it thanks to the for­mer Con­necti­cut con­trac­tor, Mr. Vasquez, who claimed to be the group’s chief strat­e­gy offi­cer and pro­mot­ed Ripley’s to his online audi­ence.

    Ripley’s spent about $25,000 on remote-con­trol recon­nais­sance cars last year, but they nev­er arrived, ship­ping records show. Colonel Rawl­ings said the Pol­ish author­i­ties had held them up over legal con­cerns.

    Colonel Rawl­ings has said that his group is await­ing Amer­i­can non­prof­it sta­tus. But he has not revealed his spend­ing or proof of a non­prof­it appli­ca­tion to The Times or to donors who have asked. So it is not clear where the mon­ey is going. “I believed these guys,” said Shaun Stants, who said he had orga­nized a fund-rais­er in Octo­ber in Pitts­burgh but was nev­er shown the finan­cial records he asked for. “And they took me for a fool.”

    Cor­po­rate records in Poland and the Unit­ed States show that Colonel Rawl­ings also start­ed a for-prof­it com­pa­ny called Iron Forge. In an inter­view, he said he expect­ed his char­i­ty and oth­ers to pay Iron Forge for trans­porta­tion, mean­ing that donor mon­ey would be used to finance his pri­vate ven­ture. But he said no con­flict of inter­est exist­ed because Iron Forge would ulti­mate­ly send mon­ey back to the char­i­ties. Details are being worked out, he said.

    In the days after The Times approached Mr. Vasquez and oth­ers, mem­bers of the squab­bling groups — Ripley’s, the Legion, the dis­si­dent Legion mem­bers and more — esca­lat­ed their feud. They accused one anoth­er of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds and lying about their cre­den­tials.

    After a for­mer ally turned on Mr. Vasquez, Mr. Nance came to his defense.

    “James was NOT fake, he was trou­bled,” Mr. Nance said on Twit­ter. “He did a lot for Ukraine but has chal­lenges to face.”

    ———-

    “Stolen Val­or: The U.S. Vol­un­teers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bick­er” by Justin Scheck and Thomas Gib­bons-Neff; The New York Times; 03/25/2023

    One retired Marine lieu­tenant colonel from Vir­ginia is the focus of a U.S. fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the poten­tial­ly ille­gal export of mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy. A for­mer Army sol­dier arrived in Ukraine only to turn trai­tor and defect to Rus­sia. A Con­necti­cut man who lied about his mil­i­tary ser­vice has post­ed live updates from the bat­tle­field — includ­ing his exact loca­tion — and boast­ed about his easy access to Amer­i­can weapons. A for­mer con­struc­tion work­er is hatch­ing a plan to use fake pass­ports to smug­gle in fight­ers from Pak­istan and Iran..”

    The ille­gal expor­ta­tion of US mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy and the ille­gal impor­ta­tion of fight­ers from Pak­istan and Iran. These are just some of the exam­ples of the kind of ‘assis­tance’ these for­eign ‘vol­un­teers’ are pro­vid­ing to Ukraine. And over a year into the con­flict, it does­n’t sound like Ukraine has got­ten a han­dle on the vet­ting process. Instead, it appears that Ukraine has real­ly just one goal in the vet­ting process: keep­ing Russ­ian infil­tra­tors out:

    ...
    Such char­ac­ters have a place in Ukraine’s defense because of the arms-length role the Unit­ed States has tak­en: The Biden admin­is­tra­tion sends weapons and mon­ey but not pro­fes­sion­al troops. That means peo­ple who would not be allowed any­where near the bat­tle­field in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrain­ian front — often with unchecked access to weapons and mil­i­tary equip­ment.

    ...

    The New York Times reviewed more than 100 pages of doc­u­ments from inside vol­un­teer groups and inter­viewed more than 30 vol­un­teers, fight­ers, fund-rais­ers, donors and Amer­i­can and Ukrain­ian offi­cials. Some spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    Thou­sands answered the call. Some joined mil­i­tary groups like the Inter­na­tion­al Legion, which Ukraine formed for for­eign fight­ers. Oth­ers took roles in sup­port or fund-rais­ing. With Kyiv, Ukraine’s cap­i­tal, under attack, there was lit­tle time for vet­ting arrivals. So peo­ple with prob­lem­at­ic pasts, includ­ing check­ered or fab­ri­cat­ed mil­i­tary records, became entrenched in the Legion and a con­stel­la­tion of oth­er vol­un­teer groups.

    Asked about these prob­lems, the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary did not address spe­cif­ic issues but did say that it was on guard because Russ­ian agents reg­u­lar­ly tried to infil­trate vol­un­teer groups. “We inves­ti­gat­ed such cas­es and hand­ed them over to law enforce­ment agen­cies,” said Andriy Cher­ni­ak, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.
    ...

    In the case of James Vasquez — char­ac­ter­ized as one of the best-known Amer­i­cans on the bat­tle­field — we find Vasquez brag­ging about how he had access to Amer­i­can rifles that were “brand-new, out of the box and we have plen­ty.” He also tweet­ed that he should not have to wor­ry about inter­na­tion­al rules of war while in Ukraine. And which unit was Vasquez work­ing with? A group sim­ply labeled ‘Da Vin­ci’s Wolves’, which as we saw, is sim­ply the rebrand­ing of Right Sec­tor. So Vasquez was brag­ging about all the brand new Amer­i­can rifles he could use with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about inter­na­tion­al rules of war while he was serv­ing with Right Sec­tor:

    ...
    One of the best-known Amer­i­cans on the bat­tle­field is James Vasquez. Days after the inva­sion, Mr. Vasquez, a Con­necti­cut home-improve­ment con­trac­tor, announced that he was leav­ing for Ukraine. His local news­pa­per told the tale of a for­mer U.S. Army staff sergeant who left behind his job and fam­i­ly and picked up a rifle and a ruck­sack on the front line.

    Since then, he has post­ed bat­tle­field videos online, at least once broad­cast­ing his unit’s pre­cise loca­tion to every­one, includ­ing the oppos­ing side. He used his sto­ry to solic­it dona­tions. “I was in Kuwait dur­ing Desert Storm, and I was in Iraq after 9/11,” Mr. Vasquez said in a fund-rais­ing video. He added, “This is a whole dif­fer­ent ani­mal.”

    Mr. Vasquez, in fact, was nev­er deployed to Kuwait, Iraq or any­where else, a Pen­ta­gon spokes­woman said. He spe­cial­ized in fuel and elec­tri­cal repairs. And he left the Army Reserve not as a sergeant as he claimed, but as a pri­vate first class, one of the Army’s low­est ranks.

    Still, Mr. Vasquez had easy access to weapons, includ­ing Amer­i­can rifles. Where did they come from? “I’m not exact­ly sure,” Mr. Vasquez said in a text mes­sage. The rifles, he added, were “brand-new, out of the box and we have plen­ty.” He also tweet­ed that he should not have to wor­ry about inter­na­tion­al rules of war while in Ukraine.

    He fought along­side Da Vinci’s Wolves, a Ukrain­ian far-right bat­tal­ion, until this past week, when The Times asked about his false mil­i­tary ser­vice claims. He imme­di­ate­ly deac­ti­vat­ed his Twit­ter account and said that he might leave Ukraine because the author­i­ties had dis­cov­ered that he was fight­ing with­out a required mil­i­tary con­tract.

    Mr. Vasquez said he had been mis­rep­re­sent­ing his mil­i­tary record for decades. He acknowl­edged being kicked out of the Army but would not talk pub­licly about why. “I had to tell a mil­lion lies to get ahead,” Mr. Vasquez said in an inter­view. “I didn’t real­ize it was going to come to this.”
    ...

    Regard­ing the Pol­ish fugi­tive — mob­ster Piotr Kapus­cin­s­ki aka Sasha Kuchyn­sky — who was giv­en a posi­tion lead­ing troops in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion, recall how Kapus­cin­s­ki did­n’t just threat­en sol­diers. He threat­ened sol­diers if they did­n’t car­ry out his crim­i­nal orders like loot­ing a local mall and appeared to be traf­fick­ing in weapons and was receiv­ing high-lev­el pro­tec­tion from with­in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary hier­ar­chy. It’s a reminder that cor­rupt Ukrain­ian author­i­ties are like­ly the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of many of the unad­dressed issues we are read­ing about:

    ...
    Pub­lic Quar­rels

    The Inter­na­tion­al Legion, hasti­ly formed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, spent 10 min­utes or less check­ing each volunteer’s back­ground ear­ly in the war, one Legion offi­cial said. So a Pol­ish fugi­tive who had been jailed in Ukraine for weapon vio­la­tions got a posi­tion lead­ing troops. Sol­diers told The Kyiv Inde­pen­dent that he had mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed sup­plies, harassed women and threat­ened his sol­diers.
    ...

    Now, regard­ing Grady Williams, the 65-year-old with a 2019 metham­phet­a­mine con­vic­tion who end­ed up rais­ing mon­ey for vol­un­teers from Geor­gia, that sure sounds like a ref­er­ence to the “NAFO” meme-cen­tric online fundrais­ing oper­a­tion that was rais­ing mon­ey for the Geor­gian Legion. It would be inter­est­ing to learn the iden­ti­ty of the new group Williams end­ed up join­ing:

    ...
    Mis­di­rect­ed Dona­tions

    Grady Williams, a 65-year-old retired engi­neer with no mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and a metham­phet­a­mine con­vic­tion from 2019, was a vol­un­teer tour guide at Ronald Reagan’s San­ta Bar­bara ranch when he heard Mr. Zelensky’s plea for vol­un­teers.

    ...

    He said he had flown to Poland, hitch­hiked to Ukraine and tak­en a train to Kyiv. He bumped into two Amer­i­cans in mil­i­tary-look­ing gear. “They said, ‘Dude, come with us,’” he said.

    The vol­un­teers brought Mr. Williams to a base near the front and gave him a gun. Days lat­er, he said, he was near­ly blown up while fight­ing along­side Ukrain­ian sol­diers from a trench near Bucha. With­in a week, the mil­i­tary real­ized that he had not reg­is­tered to fight and sent him back to Kyiv.

    From there, he took a cir­cuitous path that end­ed in rais­ing mon­ey for vol­un­teers from the Repub­lic of Geor­gia. He raised about $16,000, telling donors that their mon­ey would buy elec­tric motor­cy­cles for fight­ers. But the Geor­gians kicked him out after he got into a con­flict with anoth­er vol­un­teer. He said he had spent about $6,900 of the con­tri­bu­tions on down pay­ments for motor­bikes and the rest on his trav­el and oth­er expens­es.

    He has since linked up with a new group, which he said had promised him com­mand of a motor­cy­cle unit if he raised enough mon­ey. So he moved this month to Ode­sa, Ukraine, he said, and expects to deliv­er a sin­gle motor­bike soon.
    ...

    Final­ly, we get to the plans by Ryan Routh, a for­mer con­struc­tion work­er from North Car­oli­na with plans to smug­gle sol­diers in from Pak­istan and Iran. Sol­diers who, accord­ing to Routh, fled the Tal­iban so, at least in the­o­ry, they hope­ful­ly aren’t jihadist. In the­o­ry. But that’s hard to say when we’re deal­ing with a near com­plete lack of vet­ting. Don’t for­get that the Tal­iban are fight­ing ISIS too. So are we look­ing at the cov­er sto­ry for the infil­tra­tion of jihadists into Ukraine? The oppor­tu­ni­ty appears to be there:

    ...
    Inter­nal doc­u­ments show that the Legion is strug­gling. Recruit­ment has stag­nat­ed. The Wash­ing­ton-based Counter Extrem­ism Project wrote in March that the Legion and affil­i­at­ed groups “con­tin­ue to fea­ture indi­vid­u­als wide­ly seen as unfit to per­form their duties.”

    ...

    With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a for­mer con­struc­tion work­er from Greens­boro, N.C., is seek­ing recruits from among Afghan sol­diers who fled the Tal­iban. Mr. Routh, who spent sev­er­al months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cas­es ille­gal­ly, from Pak­istan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed inter­est.

    “We can prob­a­bly pur­chase some pass­ports through Pak­istan, since it’s such a cor­rupt coun­try,” he said in an inter­view from Wash­ing­ton.

    It is not clear whether he has suc­ceed­ed, but one for­mer Afghan sol­dier said he had been con­tact­ed and was inter­est­ed in fight­ing if it meant leav­ing Iran, where he was liv­ing ille­gal­ly.
    ...

    It rais­es anoth­er grim ques­tion as to which vol­un­teer unit will these fight­ers smug­gled in from Pak­istan and Iran ulti­mate­ly end up join­ing. Will smug­gled fight­ers with false pass­ports be allowed in the Inter­na­tion­al Legion? If not, will Right Sec­tor take them? Azov?

    There’s also the ques­tion of gen­er­al moti­va­tion. Are these for­mer Afghan sol­diers some­how inspired by the calls to ‘defend democ­ra­cy’? Or is this more of a mer­ce­nary sit­u­a­tion? Either way, it’s the start of some­thing new. The next phase in an inter­na­tion­al con­flict increas­ing­ly shaped by the ran­dom inter­na­tion­al inde­pen­dent actors flow­ing into it. Or maybe inde­pen­dent actors. We don’t actu­al­ly known how inde­pen­dent they are or real­ly what their ulti­mate agen­das are, which is anoth­er part of this con­flict. It turns out the path to WWIII has a major DIY ele­ment.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 28, 2023, 3:25 pm
  5. Fol­low­ing up on that dis­turb­ing NY Times report describ­ing the plans by a US vol­un­teer in Ukraine to import dozens of for­mer sol­diers from Afghanistan to fight in Ukraine — sug­gest­ing a poten­tial new jihadist phase of the war — here’s a Covert Action Mag­a­zine piece describ­ing exact­ly that kind of sce­nario already unfold­ing. Yes, it turns out a num­ber of Chechen fight­ers in Syr­ia have plans to relo­cate to Ukraine and an all-Chechen brigade already appears to be in the works in a deal with the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. And while these Chechen fight­ers are pre­sum­ably going to be inspired, in large part, by a desire to fight Chech­nya’s long-stand­ing foe, there’s also the real­i­ty that a num­ber of these fight­ers were mem­bers of ISIS or oth­er al Qae­da off­shoots dur­ing their time in Syr­ia. In oth­er words, the neo-Nazi nexus that is Ukraine is poised to be a neo-Nazi jihadist nexus:

    Covert Action Mag­a­zine

    Chechen Fight­ers Sign Deal with Ukraine to Form All-Chechen Brigade to Fight Rus­sians

    By Jere­my Kuz­marov -
    March 29, 2023

    Jihadists com­ing fresh from Syr­ia exem­pli­fy yet again that War on Ter­ror is a fraud.

    In ear­ly March, Asia Times report­ed that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment under Volodymyr Zelen­sky had signed a deal with new­ly arrived Chechen fight­ers from Syr­ia to estab­lish an all-Chechen brigade report­ing direct­ly to the Min­istry of Defense.

    Many of the Chechens in Syr­ia had been part of ISIS and oth­er al-Qae­da off­shoots like Jab­hat al-Nus­ra, with Chechen com­man­der Abu Omar al-Shis­hani serv­ing as ISIS Min­is­ter of War.

    The Chechens want­ed to direct­ly fight the Rus­sians with whom they have been at war for more than 300 years—and to fight against Chechen forces on the Russ­ian side led by Ramzan Kady­rov, who switched sides after bro­ker­ing a deal with Rus­sia in 2006.

    Asia Times report­ed that “the influx of Chechen fight­ers to Ukraine will like­ly encour­age oth­er region­al jihadist groups in Syr­ia to fol­low suit” in trav­el­ing to fight the Rus­sians in Ukraine.

    ...

    Devil’s Game

    In his 2005 book, Devil’s Game: How the Unit­ed States Helped Unleash Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, his­to­ri­an Robert Drey­fuss detailed a his­tor­i­cal pat­tern dat­ing to the 1950s in which the U.S. sup­port­ed Islamists as an anti­dote to social­ism and com­mu­nism.

    Drey­fuss describes a piv­otal con­fer­ence at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 1953 fund­ed by a branch of the State Depart­ment with roots in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty in which Said Ramadan, an ide­o­logue with Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, par­tic­i­pat­ed with lead­ing Ori­en­tal­ist aca­d­e­mics who ral­lied behind the strat­e­gy of sup­port­ing Islamists in the Cold War.[1]

    The CIA went on to sup­port Mus­lim resis­tance to Sovi­et rule in Cen­tral Asia and the Cau­ca­sus, putting it on the side of the Chechens in a pre­lude to today.

    U.S. strat­e­gy builds on the prece­dent of the British, which recruit­ed as intel­li­gence assets Islamists like Jamal al-din al-Afghani (1838–1897) and Muham­mad Abduh (1849–1905) in Egypt and foment­ed Islamist insur­rec­tions when they suit­ed British impe­r­i­al goals.

    A key case study in Devil’s Game is Afghanistan, where the CIA recruit­ed the most hard­line Islam­ic ele­ments in the 1970s to induce a Sovi­et inva­sion to give the Sovi­ets their Viet­nam and to take the war against the Sovi­ets into Cen­tral Asia.

    In recent decades, the U.S. has found itself on the side of the Islamists in Libya, which were used to over­throw sec­u­lar nation­al­ist Muam­mar Qaddafi, as well as in the Balka­ns, Sau­di Ara­bia, Azer­bai­jan, Syr­ia and also now Ukraine.

    Sheikh Mansur Bat­tal­ion

    In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio (NPR) fea­tured Chechen fight­ers in Ukraine who formed the Sheikh Mansur Battalion—an all-Chechen brigade.

    A mem­ber of the bat­tal­ion named Masour recalled Rus­sians burn­ing Chechen vil­lages dur­ing the Chechen War for inde­pen­dence in the 1990s and vowed revenge.

    Chechen fight­ers com­mit­ted legions of human rights abus­es in the Chechen war and in Syr­ia and were known for the use of sui­cide bomb­ing and oth­er ter­ror­ist tac­tics.

    Accord­ing to the U.S. State Depart­ment, the Islam­ic Inter­na­tion­al Peace­keep­ing Brigade (IIPB) is the pri­ma­ry chan­nel for Islam­ic fund­ing of Chechen guer­ril­las, in part through links to al-Qae­da-relat­ed financiers on the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la.

    In 2003, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion defined the Chech­nya-based Spe­cial Pur­pose Islam­ic Reg­i­ment (SPIR) and the Riyadus-Salikhin Recon­nais­sance and Sab­o­tage Bat­tal­ion of Chechen Mar­tyrs as ter­ror­ist enti­ties, accord­ing to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions.

    The Sheikh Mansur Bat­tal­ion has been active in Ukraine since 2014 and fought in Mar­i­upol and Bakhmut among oth­er places. The bat­tal­ion is named in hon­or of Sheikh Mansur, a Chechen mil­i­tary comRuss­ian EmpireRuss­ian Empire into the Cau­ca­sus dur­ing the late 18th cen­tu­ry.

    For a time, the bat­tal­ion oper­at­ed under the com­mand of the Ukrain­ian Vol­un­teer Corps, an inde­pen­dent vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion of the far-right Right Sec­tor par­ty.

    For­eign Fight­ers in Ukraine

    The Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies Asso­ci­a­tion (ISA) con­fer­ence in Mon­tre­al in mid-March fea­tured a pan­el on for­eign fight­ers in Ukraine, which includ­ed dis­cus­sion of the Wag­n­er Group, Kady­rov forces and Serbs on the Russ­ian side, and the pres­ence of Chechen, Croat and Geor­gian fight­ers as well as Mus­lim Crimean Tatars on the Ukrain­ian side.

    The first speak­er on the pan­el, Helene Olsen of King’s Col­lege in Lon­don, empha­sized that the term mer­ce­nary is no longer used because of its neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion though that essen­tial­ly is what the for­eign fight­ers are.

    While mon­ey, adven­ture seek­ing and a desire to run away from per­son­al prob­lems may be a moti­vat­ing fac­tor, a lot of the for­eign fight­ers on the Ukrain­ian side espe­cial­ly are moti­vat­ed by a revenge motive and hatred for the Rus­sians.

    Dr. Iva Vuku­sic of Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty in the Nether­lands empha­sized that a num­ber of the Croats worked direct­ly with the far-right Azov Bat­tal­ion. Both came from a Nazi lin­eage, with Croat fight­ers hav­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazi pup­pet-state in Croa­t­ia dur­ing World War II.

    Vuku­sic also empha­sized that many of the mer­ce­nar­ies on both sides sub­scribed to an anti-LGBTQ, anti-fem­i­nist and anti-immi­grant world­view and were involved in war crimes, some of which have been broad­cast on their Telegram chan­nels.

    Ele­na E. Pokalo­va of the Nation­al Defense Uni­ver­si­ty point­ed to the exis­tence in Ukraine of many for­eign fight­ers from the Cau­ca­sus, includ­ing the Chechens and mem­bers of the Geor­gian Legion, who want­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fight the Rus­sians after the 2008 war over South Osse­tia and Abk­hazia that the Rus­sians won.

    Bru­tal­i­ty of Geor­gian Legion Exposed

    Cover­tAc­tion Mag­a­zine pub­lished an impor­tant two-part exposé on the Geor­gian Legion, not­ing how it car­ried out ISIS-style exe­cu­tions in Ukraine.

    Author Evan Reif wrote that “the Geor­gian Legion prides itself on nev­er tak­ing pris­on­ers, releas­ing videos on its social media of ISIS-style exe­cu­tions of bound, tor­tured POWs that are so brazen even West­ern intel­li­gence cutouts such as Belling­cat and West­ern press agen­cies like CNN and The New York Times have con­firmed their authen­tic­i­ty. Despite this, the Geor­gian Legion finds support…from peo­ple at the high­est ech­e­lons of Amer­i­can pow­er. Con­gress­man Adam Kinzinger, the ‘nev­er Trump’ Repub­li­can, is one of their most vocal back­ers.”

    The head of the Geor­gian Legion, Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, has had deep ties with far right and neo-Nazi groups and was accused of launch­ing black-flag sniper attacks in Ukraine dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary 2014 Maid­an coup that were blamed on the pro-Russ­ian Yanukovych regime.

    After Yanukovych was forced to flee, Mamuka’s trained the infa­mous Spe­cial Tasks Patrol police units, recruit­ed from among the thou­sands of neo-Nazis (many of them CIA-affil­i­at­ed) which led the way in crush­ing the nascent counter-rev­o­lu­tion in Don­bas.

    Reif wrote that the Geor­gian Legion “car­ried out their mis­sion [at this time] with extreme bru­tal­i­ty, sub­ju­gat­ing cities and towns by any means nec­es­sary.”

    This same bru­tal­i­ty was seen in a recent video in which sev­er­al bound Russ­ian sol­diers are depict­ed lying on the ground with their throats slit in pools of blood as the cam­era­man brags about Geor­gian prowess and then shoots a pris­on­er who starts to gur­gle as he fights for air.[2]

    Reif con­clud­ed that, despite claims by Mamu­ka to the con­trary, the Geor­gian Legion was rife with neo-Nazis from around the world. Among them was Paul Gray, an Iraq and Afghan war vet­er­an affil­i­at­ed with at least four known neo-Nazi groups, the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Work­ers Par­ty (TWP), Van­guard Amer­i­ca, Patri­ot Front, and the infa­mous Atom­waf­fen.

    A New Oper­a­tion Glad­io?

    Christo­pher Helali, in anoth­er impor­tant arti­cle for CAM that pro­files for­eign mer­ce­nary fight­ers in Ukraine, sug­gests that the nexus of mil­i­tary per­son­nel, neo-Nazis, and intel­li­gence net­works being mobi­lized is rem­i­nis­cent of Oper­a­tion Glad­io fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War—a state ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion involv­ing the cre­ation of under­ground armies to fight the Sovi­et Union and polit­i­cal left in Europe.

    The CIA, as we know, has out­sized role in the Ukraine conflict—spreading pro­pa­gan­da, over­see­ing the Ukrain­ian secret ser­vice (?????? ??????? ???????), and pro­vid­ing para­mil­i­tary train­ing to Ukrain­ian Spe­cial Forces engaged in dirty-war tac­tics in east­ern Ukraine.

    Thou­sands of Amer­i­can mer­ce­nar­ies, many with white suprema­cist back­grounds, have also gone to fight on the front­lines of Ukraine. The New York York Times on March 26 pro­filed some of them, includ­ing James Vasquez, who fought along­side the Da Vince’s Wolves, a Ukrain­ian far-right battalion.[3]

    What the Times did not report is that Vasquez and some of his asso­ciates may be work­ing under intel­li­gence cov­er to coor­di­nate the activ­i­ties of the Chechens, Croats, Geor­gians and oth­er for­eign fight­ers that have been unleashed on east­ern Ukraine to kill Rus­sians and ter­ror­ize the peo­ple.

    1. Robert Drey­fuss, Devil’s Game: How the Unit­ed States Helped Unleash Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam (New York: Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books, 2005). ?

    2. The killer was iden­ti­fied as Geor­gian Legion­naire Tey­mu­raz Khizan­ishvili, a for­mer body­guard of Mikheil Saakashvili, the dis­graced pro-NATO prime min­is­ter of Geor­gia from 2004 to 2013 and a close ally of the Mamu­lashvili fam­i­ly. The crime was so brazen that even British intel­li­gence asset Eliot Hig­gins of Belling­cat and The New York Times were forced to con­firm its verac­i­ty. For his part, Mamu­ka dou­bled down when con­front­ed with this evi­dence in an inter­view, stating,“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.” ?

    3. Vasquez was a char­la­tan who lied about being deployed to Kuwait dur­ing Oper­a­tion Desert Storm and to Iraq dur­ing Oper­a­tion Endur­ing Free­dom.

    ————

    “Chechen Fight­ers Sign Deal with Ukraine to Form All-Chechen Brigade to Fight Rus­sians” By Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 03/29/2023

    Asia Times report­ed that “the influx of Chechen fight­ers to Ukraine will like­ly encour­age oth­er region­al jihadist groups in Syr­ia to fol­low suit” in trav­el­ing to fight the Rus­sians in Ukraine.”

    An influx of Chechen fight­ers from Syr­ia that por­tends an even larg­er flow of jihadists into Ukraine. That’s the warn­ing the Asia Times report­ed a few weeks ago. While the Chechen have an obvi­ous his­to­ry that dri­ves their ani­mos­i­ty toward Rus­sia, it’s the fact that these fight­ers are affil­i­ates of ISIS and oth­er al Qae­da off­shoots that makes this such a poten­tial­ly omi­nous new phase of the war. Ukraine was already a glob­al nexus of neo-Nazis are oth­er far right groups. But there’s no rea­son that nexus could­n’t become some­thing even worse:

    ...
    Many of the Chechens in Syr­ia had been part of ISIS and oth­er al-Qae­da off­shoots like Jab­hat al-Nus­ra, with Chechen com­man­der Abu Omar al-Shis­hani serv­ing as ISIS Min­is­ter of War.

    The Chechens want­ed to direct­ly fight the Rus­sians with whom they have been at war for more than 300 years—and to fight against Chechen forces on the Russ­ian side led by Ramzan Kady­rov, who switched sides after bro­ker­ing a deal with Rus­sia in 2006.
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing that the 2005 book Devil’s Game: How the Unit­ed States Helped Unleash Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam con­tains some vital his­to­ry for under­stand­ing the rela­tion­ship between the rul­ing Shia theoc­ra­cy in Iran and the broad­er Sun­ni Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work. It turns out the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies were part of a Shia branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a fact that looms large in rela­tion to Far Man­soor’s ground­break­ing research show­ing how the CIA secret­ly assist­ed in the Iran­ian theo­crat­ic rev­o­lu­tion as part of an attempt to thwart a social­ist rev­o­lu­tion. That’s all part of the con­text of the flow of jihadists into Ukraine: there is a LONG his­to­ry of the US secret­ly using jihadist groups as proxy fight­ers, damn the con­se­quences:

    ...
    Devil’s Game

    In his 2005 book, Devil’s Game: How the Unit­ed States Helped Unleash Fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, his­to­ri­an Robert Drey­fuss detailed a his­tor­i­cal pat­tern dat­ing to the 1950s in which the U.S. sup­port­ed Islamists as an anti­dote to social­ism and com­mu­nism.

    Drey­fuss describes a piv­otal con­fer­ence at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 1953 fund­ed by a branch of the State Depart­ment with roots in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty in which Said Ramadan, an ide­o­logue with Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, par­tic­i­pat­ed with lead­ing Ori­en­tal­ist aca­d­e­mics who ral­lied behind the strat­e­gy of sup­port­ing Islamists in the Cold War.[1]

    The CIA went on to sup­port Mus­lim resis­tance to Sovi­et rule in Cen­tral Asia and the Cau­ca­sus, putting it on the side of the Chechens in a pre­lude to today.

    U.S. strat­e­gy builds on the prece­dent of the British, which recruit­ed as intel­li­gence assets Islamists like Jamal al-din al-Afghani (1838–1897) and Muham­mad Abduh (1849–1905) in Egypt and foment­ed Islamist insur­rec­tions when they suit­ed British impe­r­i­al goals.

    A key case study in Devil’s Game is Afghanistan, where the CIA recruit­ed the most hard­line Islam­ic ele­ments in the 1970s to induce a Sovi­et inva­sion to give the Sovi­ets their Viet­nam and to take the war against the Sovi­ets into Cen­tral Asia.

    In recent decades, the U.S. has found itself on the side of the Islamists in Libya, which were used to over­throw sec­u­lar nation­al­ist Muam­mar Qaddafi, as well as in the Balka­ns, Sau­di Ara­bia, Azer­bai­jan, Syr­ia and also now Ukraine.
    ...

    But it’s not just the implic­it dan­ger of jihadist flow­ing into Ukraine and get­ting their hands on all of that weapon­ry — includ­ing Stinger mis­siles — that we have to wor­ry about. It’s also the fact that these jihadists are going to be fight­ing along­side a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al net­work of Nazis and oth­er far right extrem­ists. Or, in the case of the Sheikh Mansur Bat­tal­ion, right under Right Sec­tor’s com­mand. What kind of future dis­as­ters can we expect to emerge from this kind of net­work­ing?

    ...
    Sheikh Mansur Bat­tal­ion

    In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio (NPR) fea­tured Chechen fight­ers in Ukraine who formed the Sheikh Mansur Battalion—an all-Chechen brigade.

    A mem­ber of the bat­tal­ion named Masour recalled Rus­sians burn­ing Chechen vil­lages dur­ing the Chechen War for inde­pen­dence in the 1990s and vowed revenge.

    Chechen fight­ers com­mit­ted legions of human rights abus­es in the Chechen war and in Syr­ia and were known for the use of sui­cide bomb­ing and oth­er ter­ror­ist tac­tics.

    Accord­ing to the U.S. State Depart­ment, the Islam­ic Inter­na­tion­al Peace­keep­ing Brigade (IIPB) is the pri­ma­ry chan­nel for Islam­ic fund­ing of Chechen guer­ril­las, in part through links to al-Qae­da-relat­ed financiers on the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la.

    In 2003, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion defined the Chech­nya-based Spe­cial Pur­pose Islam­ic Reg­i­ment (SPIR) and the Riyadus-Salikhin Recon­nais­sance and Sab­o­tage Bat­tal­ion of Chechen Mar­tyrs as ter­ror­ist enti­ties, accord­ing to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions.

    The Sheikh Mansur Bat­tal­ion has been active in Ukraine since 2014 and fought in Mar­i­upol and Bakhmut among oth­er places. The bat­tal­ion is named in hon­or of Sheikh Mansur, a Chechen mil­i­tary comRuss­ian EmpireRuss­ian Empire into the Cau­ca­sus dur­ing the late 18th cen­tu­ry.

    For a time, the bat­tal­ion oper­at­ed under the com­mand of the Ukrain­ian Vol­un­teer Corps, an inde­pen­dent vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion of the far-right Right Sec­tor par­ty.

    ...

    The Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies Asso­ci­a­tion (ISA) con­fer­ence in Mon­tre­al in mid-March fea­tured a pan­el on for­eign fight­ers in Ukraine, which includ­ed dis­cus­sion of the Wag­n­er Group, Kady­rov forces and Serbs on the Russ­ian side, and the pres­ence of Chechen, Croat and Geor­gian fight­ers as well as Mus­lim Crimean Tatars on the Ukrain­ian side.

    The first speak­er on the pan­el, Helene Olsen of King’s Col­lege in Lon­don, empha­sized that the term mer­ce­nary is no longer used because of its neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion though that essen­tial­ly is what the for­eign fight­ers are.

    While mon­ey, adven­ture seek­ing and a desire to run away from per­son­al prob­lems may be a moti­vat­ing fac­tor, a lot of the for­eign fight­ers on the Ukrain­ian side espe­cial­ly are moti­vat­ed by a revenge motive and hatred for the Rus­sians.

    Dr. Iva Vuku­sic of Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty in the Nether­lands empha­sized that a num­ber of the Croats worked direct­ly with the far-right Azov Bat­tal­ion. Both came from a Nazi lin­eage, with Croat fight­ers hav­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazi pup­pet-state in Croa­t­ia dur­ing World War II.
    ...

    And then there’s the real­i­ty that a num­ber of the extrem­ist groups oper­at­ing in Ukraine like the Geor­gian Legion already have a track record of ISIS-style bru­tal­i­ty and a his­to­ry of recruit­ing mem­bers from groups like Atom­waf­fen. What kind of awful­ness is going to emerge from hav­ing mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen fight­ing along­side actu­al ISIS mem­bers? It’s like a recipe for ter­ror syn­er­gy:

    ...
    Cover­tAc­tion Mag­a­zine pub­lished an impor­tant two-part exposé on the Geor­gian Legion, not­ing how it car­ried out ISIS-style exe­cu­tions in Ukraine.

    Author Evan Reif wrote that “the Geor­gian Legion prides itself on nev­er tak­ing pris­on­ers, releas­ing videos on its social media of ISIS-style exe­cu­tions of bound, tor­tured POWs that are so brazen even West­ern intel­li­gence cutouts such as Belling­cat and West­ern press agen­cies like CNN and The New York Times have con­firmed their authen­tic­i­ty. Despite this, the Geor­gian Legion finds support…from peo­ple at the high­est ech­e­lons of Amer­i­can pow­er. Con­gress­man Adam Kinzinger, the ‘nev­er Trump’ Repub­li­can, is one of their most vocal back­ers.”

    The head of the Geor­gian Legion, Mamu­ka Mamu­lashvili, has had deep ties with far right and neo-Nazi groups and was accused of launch­ing black-flag sniper attacks in Ukraine dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary 2014 Maid­an coup that were blamed on the pro-Russ­ian Yanukovych regime.

    After Yanukovych was forced to flee, Mamuka’s trained the infa­mous Spe­cial Tasks Patrol police units, recruit­ed from among the thou­sands of neo-Nazis (many of them CIA-affil­i­at­ed) which led the way in crush­ing the nascent counter-rev­o­lu­tion in Don­bas.

    Reif wrote that the Geor­gian Legion “car­ried out their mis­sion [at this time] with extreme bru­tal­i­ty, sub­ju­gat­ing cities and towns by any means nec­es­sary.”

    This same bru­tal­i­ty was seen in a recent video in which sev­er­al bound Russ­ian sol­diers are depict­ed lying on the ground with their throats slit in pools of blood as the cam­era­man brags about Geor­gian prowess and then shoots a pris­on­er who starts to gur­gle as he fights for air.[2]

    Reif con­clud­ed that, despite claims by Mamu­ka to the con­trary, the Geor­gian Legion was rife with neo-Nazis from around the world. Among them was Paul Gray, an Iraq and Afghan war vet­er­an affil­i­at­ed with at least four known neo-Nazi groups, the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Work­ers Par­ty (TWP), Van­guard Amer­i­ca, Patri­ot Front, and the infa­mous Atom­waf­fen.
    ...

    How long before we learn about some sort of Atomwaffen/ISIS col­lab­o­ra­tive ter­ror plot? It seems like it’s just as mat­ter of time with the way things are pro­gress­ing. How many of the thou­sands of Stinger mis­siles shipped to Ukraine will end up in the hands of these groups? Time will tell, pre­sum­ably in the form of ter­ror­ism. These are our pri­or­i­ties. And have been for decades. Hence all the pre­dictable ter­ror­ism.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 1, 2023, 4:29 pm
  6. It appears the Myrotvorets intim­i­da­tion cam­paign found a new tar­get. A tar­get the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment appears more than hap­py to see tar­get­ed:

    The Kyiv Post just pub­lished a piece brand­ing Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist David Pugliese as an “unde­sir­able per­son”. Or rather, the piece con­veyed the mes­sage from an unnamed Ukrain­ian offi­cial who told the post that Pugliese is “UNDESIRABLE PERSON” (in all caps) for Ukraine. It’s bad, but worse is that at an anony­mous “senior Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment offi­cial” is endors­ing that attack on Pugliese. So this is like a death threat against a jour­nal­ist joint­ly issued by the gov­ern­ments of Cana­da and Ukraine.

    So what was Pugliese’s grand jour­nal­is­tic sin? Exact­ly what we should expect: report­ing on Ukrain­ian Nazis. As such, the gist of the attack on Pugliese appears to be that he is pro­mot­ing ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’, as evi­denced by the fact that the Russ­ian embassy in Ukraine would tweet out Pugliese’s reports. Yep.

    But it appears that it was a par­tic­u­lar line of report­ing that real­ly raised the hack­les of Cana­di­an offi­cials: the reports on Chrys­tia Free­land’s Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing grand­fa­ther. As we saw, when Free­land was appoint­ed For­eign Min­is­ter in Jan­u­ary of 2017, it was­n’t long before jour­nal­ists start­ed look­ing into this fam­i­ly his­to­ry. A fam­i­ly his­to­ry that was sud­den­ly pret­ty rel­e­vant giv­en Free­land’s intense anti-Rus­sia stances. Con­sor­tium News first report­ed on it in Feb­ru­ary of 2017, with Pugliese writ­ing about it the fol­low­ing month in the Ottowa Cit­i­zen.

    Accord­ing to this unnamed for­mer senior Cana­di­an offi­cial, in his many years “of hav­ing watched how Pugliese works – Pugliese has all the marks of a ‘grey zone’ media oper­a­tor,” who could be “incen­tivized and tasked to car­ry mes­sages and to focus on issues as per Krem­lin direc­tion.” As the Cana­di­an offi­cial put it, “it was not what the deceased grand­fa­ther may have done, three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry before, but rather the tim­ing of the arti­cle.” In oth­er words, jour­nal­ists who won’t toe the offi­cial line and ignore uncom­fort­able facts in their report­ing are Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists. That’s the mes­sage being sent right now. Well, that and the mes­sage that jour­nal­ists who don’t toe the line will be put on a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment hit list.

    Amus­ing, the arti­cle also cites unnamed experts who note that Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da tra­di­tion­al­ly uses truth­ful infor­ma­tion, but present it out of con­text. That’s appar­ent­ly the new line of defense we can expect to see: yeah, this all may be true, but we should ignore it because the con­text is all wrong!

    But that report­ing on Free­land’s grand­fa­ther was just one of the acts of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da accord­ing to this report. In anoth­er exam­ple, the arti­cle refers to a Sep­tem­ber 2019 report by Pugliese about the anger gen­er­at­ed in Ukraine’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty after Canada’s ambas­sador to Ukraine attend­ed the com­mem­o­ra­tion for a mon­u­ment hon­or­ing the mem­bers of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA) in the town of Sam­bir at the edge of a ceme­tery con­tain­ing the graves of more than 1,200 Jews mur­dered by these groups. So what was the alleged prob­lem with this arti­cle? Well, for starters, this Kyiv Post piece does­n’t even name the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee but instead just refers to it as a “civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion”. Nor does the piece men­tion what the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee was actu­al­ly upset about. Instead, it mere­ly cites the fact that the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee has as one of its lead­ers Olek­san­dr Feld­man, for­mer­ly a mem­ber of the Par­ty of Regions and now part of the Oppo­si­tion Plat­form — For Life par­ty. That, alone, appears to be the basis for dis­miss­ing the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee as a Krem­lin front group. Keep in mind that the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee’s direc­tor-gen­er­al is none oth­er than Eduard Dolin­sky, who is quot­ed in that 2019 piece not­ing that “all Jews of Sam­bir were mur­dered by Nazis and their col­lab­o­ra­tors from OUN and UPA.” So Dolin­sky’s Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee is now appar­ent­ly a source of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da that we can all ignore based sole­ly on the present of a for­mer Par­ty of Regions mem­ber. It’s a sad­ly per­fect exam­ple of the incred­i­bly divi­sive forces at work that have been dri­ving Ukraine’s civ­il war since 2014:

    ...
    In one arti­cle, Pugliese cites a civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion in Ukraine as being upset by the action of Cana­di­an offi­cials. The leader of the group cit­ed by Pugliese had been a mem­ber of par­lia­ment in the pro-Krem­lin fac­tion Oppo­si­tion-For Life par­ty, which is asso­ci­at­ed with for­mer Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, who aban­doned office dur­ing the pop­u­lar pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic upris­ing of Maid­an.
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s worth not­ing one of the oth­er absurd argu­ments being used to smear Pugliese as a Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist: Pugliese’s twit­ter account was cre­at­ed in 2010 but only start­ed men­tion­ing “Ukrain­ian Nazis” in the year and a half pre­ced­ing the Russ­ian inva­sion. In oth­er words, Pugliese did­n’t start tweet­ing about Ukrain­ian Nazis until 2020, and some­how that pegs him as some sort of Krem­lin assets. Beyond the base­line stu­pid­i­ty of this argu­ment, note that it’s com­ing amidst a slew of accu­sa­tions that include Pugliese’s 2017 and 2019 arti­cles about Ukrain­ian Nazis. Like so much bad pro­pa­gan­da, even if you accept the assert­ed ‘facts’, it still does­n’t make sense. But like so much bad pro­pa­gan­da with state author­i­ty back­ing it, it does­n’t have to make sense. It just needs to con­vey the mes­sage. A mes­sage to jour­nal­ists: toe the line or you’ll get added to the “UNDESIRABLE PERSONS” list:

    Kyiv Post

    Cana­di­an Jour­nal­ist Brand­ed ‘Unde­sir­able Per­son’ in Ukraine

    David Pugliese has come to the atten­tion of offi­cials in Kyiv due to his writ­ings for the Ottawa Cit­i­zen which often echo Krem­lin talk­ing points.

    by Jason Jay Smart | April 3, 2023, 3:29 pm

    David Pugliese, a Cana­di­an who has writ­ten for the 169-year-old Ottawa Cit­i­zen since 1989, has caught the eye of offi­cials in at least two coun­tries due to his per­ceived record of run­ning sto­ries that abet the inter­ests of the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment.

    Refer­ring to Pugliese as an “activist,” a Ukrain­ian offi­cial told the Kyiv Post that he “is known to Ukraine because of his pub­lic anti-Ukrain­ian rhetoric,” which “coin­cides with Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist nar­ra­tives,” adding that Ukraine would con­sid­er him to be, writ­ing in all cap­i­tal let­ters, “an unde­sir­able per­son.”

    The title of “unde­sir­able per­son” has no legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions but doc­u­ments seen by Kyiv Post con­firm that Pugliese has been a sub­ject of con­cern for Ukrain­ian offi­cials due to his writ­ings which often echo Krem­lin talk­ing points.

    A for­mer senior Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, echoed this view, telling the Kyiv Post that in his many years “of hav­ing watched how Pugliese works – Pugliese has all the marks of a ‘grey zone’ media oper­a­tor,” who could be “incen­tivized and tasked to car­ry mes­sages and to focus on issues as per Krem­lin direc­tion.”

    ...

    Known as soft pro­pa­gan­da to media watch­ers, the offi­cial cit­ed a 2017 piece by Pugliese that assert­ed news of then-For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter of Canada’s Chrys­tia Freeland’s Ukrain­ian grand­fa­ther had actu­al­ly been a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing World War II, a nar­ra­tive that was strong­ly pro­mot­ed by the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment.

    News reports at the time indi­cate that at least one oth­er jour­nalist had first heard of her grandfather’s past from offi­cials at the Russ­ian Embassy. Pugliese, in his own arti­cle on the sub­ject, states that evi­dence of Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was avail­able on mul­ti­ple web­sites, includ­ing pro-Krem­lin web­sites, before the news sto­ry broke.

    The Cana­di­an offi­cial com­ment­ed that it was not what the deceased grand­fa­ther may have done, three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry before, but rather the tim­ing of the arti­cle.

    The piece came out with­in days of Free­land announc­ing that Ottawa would sup­port Kyiv in its sur­vival against a renewed Russ­ian inva­sion of the coun­try.

    Accord­ing to experts who spoke to the Kyiv Post, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da tra­di­tion­al­ly uses truth­ful infor­ma­tion, but presents it out of con­text, or intro­duces it to a con­text that is unre­lat­ed – such as tropes about 1940s Nazis in Ukraine as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the inva­sion of the coun­try in 2022.

    The sto­ry regard­ing Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was fur­ther ampli­fied by pro-Moscow news sources, includ­ing the Russ­ian Embassy in Cana­da, which even­tu­al­ly led to the expul­sion of four Russ­ian diplo­mats.

    Free­land said that the ban­ished Russ­ian emis­saries were “intel­li­gence offi­cers or indi­vid­u­als who have used their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus to under­mine Canada’s secu­ri­ty or inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy.”

    Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, at the time, referred to Russia’s role in pro­mot­ing the sto­ry about Freeland’s grand­fa­ther, describ­ing the inci­dent as being “…efforts by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists to dis­cred­it our min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, through social media and shar­ing sto­ries about her.”

    Kir­ill Kalin­in, who had run the Russ­ian embassy’s social media plat­forms and act­ed as its spokesman, was one of the Russ­ian envoys eject­ed.

    An observ­er not­ed that dur­ing Kalinin’s tenure in Ottawa, the Russ­ian embassy’s Twit­ter account, which would have been under his con­trol, tagged Pugliese in Tweets. The embassy has also shared Pugliese’s work on Nazis in Ukraine – some­thing that the Cana­di­an offi­cial con­firmed had also been noticed by oth­ers in Cana­da.

    A review of pub­licly avail­able Tweets finds that after Kalin­in left Cana­da, the Russ­ian Embassy con­tin­ued to tag Pugliese, includ­ing in the recent past where he has men­tioned in an Embassy post that denied the mass tor­ture, rape, and mur­der of Ukrain­ian civil­ians by Russ­ian troops in occu­pied-Bucha in 2022 – a post from which Pugliese did not remove his name.

    Upon being expelled from Ottawa, Kalin­in gave an exclu­sive inter­view to Pugliese, where he chas­tised the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment for hav­ing made the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist per­sona non gra­ta.

    The Ukrain­ian and Cana­di­an offi­cial con­firmed that Pugliese’s mul­ti­ple arti­cles tying Ukraine with Nazism had been noticed since he had Pugliese’s social media usage. Ear­li­er, a 2020 open let­ter by the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress expressed con­cerns that Pugliese’s report­ing was biased and prop­a­gat­ed a nar­ra­tive “orig­i­nat­ing from the Russ­ian Embassy in Cana­da.”

    One of Krem­lin auto­crat Vladimir Putin’s numer­ous rea­sons for order­ing a full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine was that Nazis were in power even though it had a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Jew­ish pres­i­dent and has been defend­ing its ter­ri­to­ry from the ini­tial Moscow inva­sion of 2014 when the Crimean Penin­su­la was forcibly seized.

    In one arti­cle, Pugliese cites a civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion in Ukraine as being upset by the action of Cana­di­an offi­cials. The leader of the group cit­ed by Pugliese had been a mem­ber of par­lia­ment in the pro-Krem­lin fac­tion Oppo­si­tion-For Life par­ty, which is asso­ci­at­ed with for­mer Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, who aban­doned office dur­ing the pop­u­lar pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic upris­ing of Maid­an.

    ...

    Chrono­log­i­cal­ly, The New York Times has report­ed that Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion began to ramp-up its use of the terms “Ukraine” and “Nazi” in the weeks sur­round­ing the launch of the full-scale inva­sion. Since Pugliese first opened his Twit­ter account in Octo­ber 2010 until Octo­ber 2021, he nev­er once pub­lished the words “Nazi” and “Ukraine” in the same Tweet.

    How­ev­er, with­in a year-and-a-half peri­od imme­di­ate­ly before the all-out inva­sion of Ukraine and con­tin­u­ing for a few months into the inva­sion, Pugliese used the words “Nazi” and “Ukraine” more than two dozen times, which is one of the rea­sons that some said that they find it hard to believe that his arti­cles and social media posts so often par­rot what the Krem­lin has been pro­mot­ing pure­ly by chance.

    The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, as the full-scale inva­sion was begin­ning, increased the trope about Ukrain­ian Nazis. Some found Pugliese’s own rep­e­ti­tion of the trope on social media to be pecu­liar, in that despite nev­er men­tion­ing “Ukraine” “Nazi” in a sin­gle tweet between Octo­ber 2010 and Octo­ber 2021. In 2022 alone, he wrote the terms togeth­er more than two dozen times, par­tic­u­lar­ly between Jan­u­ary and May 2022.

    Glenn Green­wald, Tuck­er Carl­son, and oth­ers have been iden­ti­fied by media watch­ers – but Pugliese has not received the scru­ti­nized atten­tion that he should, as he is a poten­tial risk, since it does appear that he is car­ry­ing water for the Krem­lin,” said the Cana­di­an offi­cial

    ————

    “Cana­di­an Jour­nal­ist Brand­ed ‘Unde­sir­able Per­son’ in Ukraine” by Jason Jay Smart; Kyiv Post; 04/03/2023

    “Refer­ring to Pugliese as an “activist,” a Ukrain­ian offi­cial told the Kyiv Post that he “is known to Ukraine because of his pub­lic anti-Ukrain­ian rhetoric,” which “coin­cides with Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist nar­ra­tives,” adding that Ukraine would con­sid­er him to be, writ­ing in all cap­i­tal let­ters, “an unde­sir­able per­son.”

    An “unde­sir­able per­son”. That’s the label giv­en to Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist David Pugliese by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. It sure sounds like Pugliese is get­ting the ‘myrotvorets’ treat­ment. The ‘it sure would be a shame if some­thing bad hap­pened to this bad per­son’ mafia-style treat­ment.

    But as we can see, it’s not the a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment intim­i­da­tion cam­paign. Cana­di­an offi­cials are endors­ing this intim­i­da­tion cam­paign. Or at least in this case it’s an anony­mous “for­mer senior Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment offi­cial” who appears to be ful­ly on board with this:

    ...
    The title of “unde­sir­able per­son” has no legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions but doc­u­ments seen by Kyiv Post con­firm that Pugliese has been a sub­ject of con­cern for Ukrain­ian offi­cials due to his writ­ings which often echo Krem­lin talk­ing points.

    A for­mer senior Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, echoed this view, telling the Kyiv Post that in his many years “of hav­ing watched how Pugliese works – Pugliese has all the marks of a ‘grey zone’ media oper­a­tor,” who could be “incen­tivized and tasked to car­ry mes­sages and to focus on issues as per Krem­lin direc­tion.”
    ...

    And note how they aren’t even refut­ing the truth­ful­ness of Pugliese’s report­ing on Free­land’s Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing grand­fa­ther. No, it’s the tim­ing of the report­ing that they are cit­ing as evi­dence of mali­cious intent. So fol­low­ing this ‘log­ic’, had Pugliese report­ed on Free­land’s grand­fa­ther before she was appoint­ed as For­eign Min­is­ter it would have been per­fect­ly fine. It was only report­ing on it after it became rel­e­vant that the report­ing was a prob­lem:

    ...
    Known as soft pro­pa­gan­da to media watch­ers, the offi­cial cit­ed a 2017 piece by Pugliese that assert­ed news of then-For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter of Canada’s Chrys­tia Freeland’s Ukrain­ian grand­fa­ther had actu­al­ly been a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing World War II, a nar­ra­tive that was strong­ly pro­mot­ed by the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment.

    News reports at the time indi­cate that at least one oth­er jour­nalist had first heard of her grandfather’s past from offi­cials at the Russ­ian Embassy. Pugliese, in his own arti­cle on the sub­ject, states that evi­dence of Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was avail­able on mul­ti­ple web­sites, includ­ing pro-Krem­lin web­sites, before the news sto­ry broke.

    The Cana­di­an offi­cial com­ment­ed that it was not what the deceased grand­fa­ther may have done, three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry before, but rather the tim­ing of the arti­cle.

    The piece came out with­in days of Free­land announc­ing that Ottawa would sup­port Kyiv in its sur­vival against a renewed Russ­ian inva­sion of the coun­try.

    Accord­ing to experts who spoke to the Kyiv Post, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da tra­di­tion­al­ly uses truth­ful infor­ma­tion, but presents it out of con­text, or intro­duces it to a con­text that is unre­lat­ed – such as tropes about 1940s Nazis in Ukraine as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the inva­sion of the coun­try in 2022.
    ...

    Recall how we were ini­tial­ly told that the April 2018 expul­sion of those four Russ­ian diplo­mats was in response to alleged Russ­ian poi­son­ing of the Skri­pals. It was only lat­er that Justin Trudeau admit­ted that the real rea­son for their expul­sion was their pro­mo­tion of the unde­ni­able real­i­ty of the role Free­land’s grand­fa­ther played as vir­u­lent a Nazi pro­pa­gan­dist. So when we read about Trudeau’s admis­sion that the it was in response to Rus­si­a’s pro­mo­tion of Free­land’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this was a grudg­ing admis­sion.

    But also note the absur­di­ty of the argu­ment that the tim­ing of Pugliese’s report on Free­land’s grand­fa­ther, argu­ing that the tim­ing was sus­pi­cious because it came with­in days of Free­land announc­ing Canada’s sup­port of Ukraine. It’s an accu­sa­tion that ignores the more salient event that had just hap­pened: Free­land’s ele­va­tion to becom­ing Canada’s For­eign Min­is­ter in the first place in Jan­u­ary of 2017, which had already prompt­ed cov­er­age of her grand­fa­ther’s Nazi past in out­let like Con­sor­tium News. In oth­er words, when Pugliese wrote that March 2017 arti­cle about Free­land’s grand­fa­ther, he was writ­ing about the back­ground of some­one who was, at that point, still a rel­a­tive­ly new gov­ern­ment offi­cial. Of course that was news­wor­thy.

    But beyond that, note how this March 2017 arti­cle by Pugliese under­cuts the oth­er argu­ment we’re hear­ing against Pugliese: that he only sud­den­ly start­ed tweet­ing and post­ing about Ukrain­ian Nazis in the year and a half before the Russ­ian inva­sion, despite hav­ing a Twit­ter account first set up in 2010. As we can see, whether or not he was tweet­ing about Ukrain­ian Nazis, he was writ­ing about them at least as far back as 2017:

    ...
    The sto­ry regard­ing Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was fur­ther ampli­fied by pro-Moscow news sources, includ­ing the Russ­ian Embassy in Cana­da, which even­tu­al­ly led to the expul­sion of four Russ­ian diplo­mats.

    Free­land said that the ban­ished Russ­ian emis­saries were “intel­li­gence offi­cers or indi­vid­u­als who have used their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus to under­mine Canada’s secu­ri­ty or inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy.”

    Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, at the time, referred to Russia’s role in pro­mot­ing the sto­ry about Freeland’s grand­fa­ther, describ­ing the inci­dent as being “…efforts by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists to dis­cred­it our min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, through social media and shar­ing sto­ries about her.”

    Kir­ill Kalin­in, who had run the Russ­ian embassy’s social media plat­forms and act­ed as its spokesman, was one of the Russ­ian envoys eject­ed.

    An observ­er not­ed that dur­ing Kalinin’s tenure in Ottawa, the Russ­ian embassy’s Twit­ter account, which would have been under his con­trol, tagged Pugliese in Tweets. The embassy has also shared Pugliese’s work on Nazis in Ukraine – some­thing that the Cana­di­an offi­cial con­firmed had also been noticed by oth­ers in Cana­da.

    A review of pub­licly avail­able Tweets finds that after Kalin­in left Cana­da, the Russ­ian Embassy con­tin­ued to tag Pugliese, includ­ing in the recent past where he has men­tioned in an Embassy post that denied the mass tor­ture, rape, and mur­der of Ukrain­ian civil­ians by Russ­ian troops in occu­pied-Bucha in 2022 – a post from which Pugliese did not remove his name.

    Upon being expelled from Ottawa, Kalin­in gave an exclu­sive inter­view to Pugliese, where he chas­tised the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment for hav­ing made the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist per­sona non gra­ta.

    ...

    Chrono­log­i­cal­ly, The New York Times has report­ed that Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion began to ramp-up its use of the terms “Ukraine” and “Nazi” in the weeks sur­round­ing the launch of the full-scale inva­sion. Since Pugliese first opened his Twit­ter account in Octo­ber 2010 until Octo­ber 2021, he nev­er once pub­lished the words “Nazi” and “Ukraine” in the same Tweet.

    How­ev­er, with­in a year-and-a-half peri­od imme­di­ate­ly before the all-out inva­sion of Ukraine and con­tin­u­ing for a few months into the inva­sion, Pugliese used the words “Nazi” and “Ukraine” more than two dozen times, which is one of the rea­sons that some said that they find it hard to believe that his arti­cles and social media posts so often par­rot what the Krem­lin has been pro­mot­ing pure­ly by chance.

    ...

    And when we see a 2020 open let­ter from the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress ‘express­ing con­cern’ about Pugliese’s report­ing, it’s worth recall­ing that March 2022 Nation­al Post piece where the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress was defend­ing Free­land against charges that she was pro­mot­ing Ukrain­ian extrem­ist groups when she was pho­tographed march­ing at a pro-Ukraine ral­ly help­ing to hold up a red and black scarf — the col­ors of the UPA and cur­rent­ly the col­ors of Right sec­tor — bear­ing the “Sla­va Ukrai­ni” slo­gan. As we saw, it was the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress defend­ing Free­land and denounc­ing and crit­i­cism as Rus­sia pro­pa­gan­da. Because of course. The Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress is — like the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca — just anoth­er OUN front group:

    ...
    The Ukrain­ian and Cana­di­an offi­cial con­firmed that Pugliese’s mul­ti­ple arti­cles tying Ukraine with Nazism had been noticed since he had Pugliese’s social media usage. Ear­li­er, a 2020 open let­ter by the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Con­gress expressed con­cerns that Pugliese’s report­ing was biased and prop­a­gat­ed a nar­ra­tive “orig­i­nat­ing from the Russ­ian Embassy in Cana­da.”
    ...

    Now, regard­ing the unnamed “civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion in Ukraine” that was upset by the unnamed “actions of Cana­di­an offi­cials”, it’s worth not­ing what this group was and what they were angry about: It was the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee — which has Eduard Dolin­sky as its direc­tor-gen­er­al — express­ing anger over Canada’s Ambas­sador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk speak­ing at an Aug 21, 2019, cer­e­mo­ny unveil­ing a mon­u­ment in Sam­bir, Ukraine, to hon­our mem­bers of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA). As Dolin­sky informed jour­nal­ists at the time, “all Jews of Sam­bir were mur­dered by Nazis and their col­lab­o­ra­tors from OUN and UPA.”. But appar­ent the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee can’t be trust­ed and can just be dis­missed as a Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da out­fit. Why? Because its lead­er­ship includes Olek­san­dr Feld­man, for­mer­ly a mem­ber of the Par­ty of Regions and now part of the Oppo­si­tion Plat­form — For Life par­ty. It’s a stun­ning exam­ple of the under­ly­ing dynam­ic that dri­ve Ukraine’s civ­il war in the first place: the polit­i­cal class that rep­re­sent­ed much of East­ern and South Ukraine — those asso­ci­at­ed with Yanukovy­ch’s old Par­ty of Regions bloc — are now casu­al­ly labeled trai­tors who can just be dis­missed. And here we see that dynam­ic at work casu­al­ly dis­miss­ing the Ukraine Jew­ish Com­mit­tee as some sort of sub­ver­sive enti­ty sim­ply because it has a ties to some­one who was a mem­ber of the Par­ty of Regions. And yet this yit piece arti­cle does­n’t actu­al­ly name the group. It’s a tru­ly dement­ed dynam­ic at work:

    ...
    In one arti­cle, Pugliese cites a civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion in Ukraine as being upset by the action of Cana­di­an offi­cials. The leader of the group cit­ed by Pugliese had been a mem­ber of par­lia­ment in the pro-Krem­lin fac­tion Oppo­si­tion-For Life par­ty, which is asso­ci­at­ed with for­mer Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, who aban­doned office dur­ing the pop­u­lar pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic upris­ing of Maid­an.
    ...

    It’s offi­cial: the Ukrain­ian Jew­ish Com­mit­tee is a Krem­lin front group. That’s accord­ing to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. With the appar­ent agree­ment of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. So you can just go ahead and dis­miss every­thing they say. You don’t have to dis­miss every­thing they say, of course, but it would be wise to do so. You don’t want to end up on the “UNDESIRABLE PERSONS” list, do you?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 7, 2023, 4:44 pm
  7. Talk of ‘decol­o­niz­ing’ Rus­sia isn’t new. We’ve heard chat­ter like that for years. Chat­ter that’s grown into a cho­rus over the last year.

    But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing BNE Intellinews report by Leonid Ragozin, the ‘decol­o­niz­ing’ Rus­sia age­nad has tak­en on a per­haps sur­pris­ing new fla­vor: it appears that Russ­ian fas­cists intent on purg­ing Russ­ian of eth­nic minori­ties are at the core of Ukrain­ian-Pol­ish-backed bat­tal­ion at the same time there’s a grow­ing West­ern-back move­ment to ‘decol­o­nize’ Rus­sia by break­ing the coun­try up into eth­nic statelets and lib­er­at­ing Rus­si­a’s minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions from Moscow’s iron fist. Yep. This is a good time to keep in mind that things don’t have to make sense when we’re talk­ing about fas­cist move­ment and the cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of fas­cist move­ments.

    Much like the Azov move­ment, this ‘Russ­ian lib­er­a­tion’ move­ment has both a mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal dimen­sions. On the mil­i­tary side, we find the Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps (RVC), led by the unit’s com­man­der, Denis “White Rex” Nikitin and filled with far right fig­ures who have cho­sen to fight for Ukraine because they regard Vladimir Putin’s regime as neo-Bol­she­vik and Rus­so­pho­bic. RVC has report­ed­ly been involved with some cross-bor­der raids of Russ­ian vil­lages. Fol­low­ing one raid, Nikitin even post­ed a pho­to mock­ing the wound­ing of a Mus­lim boy dur­ing the raid with the mot­to “Rus­sia will be Aryan or life­less”. As we should expect, Nikitin is report­ed­ly close to the Azov move­ment. The RVC has its own polit­i­cal wing, the Civic Coun­cil, based in Poland.

    And while Ukraine’s GRU has attempt­ed to dis­tance itself from the RVC, the real­i­ty is that its a part of the Inter­na­tion­al Legion. In fact, a GRU spokesman once called the RVC’s mem­bers, “one of those forces that will be shap­ing the future con­fig­u­ra­tion of post-Putin Rus­sia”.

    Com­pet­ing with the RVC is anoth­er group that emerged in the last year also with exten­sive GRU back: the Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion, which was ini­tial­ly being pro­mot­ed by GRU offi­cer and gov­ern­ment spokesper­son Olek­siy Arestovych. For­mer Russ­ian Duma MP Ilya Pono­marev even­tu­al­ly took over the role as the pub­lic face for the group. Recall how Pono­marev was the fig­ure who took the lead in cel­e­brat­ing and tak­ing cred­it for the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­i­na.

    Unlike the RVC, which is an overt­ly Rus­sophile group intent on purg­ing Rus­sia of minori­ties, the Free­dom for Russ­ian Legion frames itself as a cham­pi­on of Russ­ian minori­ties. So much so that the group envi­sions break­ing Rus­sia up into dozens of eth­nic statelets. As Pono­marev put it in a tweet, “There will be a jun­ta – either Prigozhin’s or ours. Make you choic­es, Rus­sians”.

    So we have two com­pet­ing Russ­ian ‘lib­er­a­tion’ groups with the direct pack­ing of Ukraine’s GRU. But it’s not just Ukraine and Poland back­ing these groups. In fact, Pono­marev was a fea­tured speak­er at an event in Feb­ru­ary, the Free Nations of Post-Rus­sia Forum. The forum, focused on a broad array of Russ­ian lib­er­a­tion groups, was host­ed inside the EU par­lia­ment build­ing in Brus­sels at the invi­ta­tion of the far right Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists (ECR) par­ty. Yep, this ‘Russ­ian lib­er­a­tion’ move­ment has the offi­cial back­ing of the EU’s far right par­ties. Because of course. But also note the lack of out­cry from the rest of the EU’s polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment.

    And as Ragonzin points out, while aver­age Rus­sians may not be deeply invest­ed in the out­come of the con­flict in Ukraine, they are over­whelm­ing­ly very wary of any sort of desta­bi­liza­tion of Rus­sia or the pos­si­ble out­break of a civ­il war. In oth­er words, you almost could­n’t come up with a mor effec­tive means of ral­ly­ing the Russ­ian pop­u­lace behind the Krem­lin than the cre­ation of of West­ern-backed Russ­ian desta­bi­liza­tion move­ment. Again, we should­n’t expect the cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of fas­cist move­ments to nec­es­sar­i­ly make sense:

    BNE Intellinews

    RAGOZIN: Vision of Russia’s future

    What sort of Rus­sia does the West want? Pros­per­ous and ful­ly inte­grat­ed, or bro­ken up and con­tained? It’s not clear, and exiled oppo­si­tion lead­ers are not engag­ing in this con­ver­sa­tion with West­ern gov­ern­ments. / bne IntelliNews

    By Leonid Ragozin in Riga
    March 30, 2023

    When the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary unit called Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps (RVC) briefly entered a Russ­ian vil­lage in Bryan­sk Region near the Ukrain­ian bor­der, the Russ­ian author­i­ties claimed that the attack­ers had killed two civil­ians and wound­ed a small boy called Fyo­dor Simo­nenko.

    RVC is made of far-right per­son­al­i­ties from Rus­sia who have cho­sen to fight on the Ukrain­ian side because they regard Vladimir Putin’s regime as neo-Bol­she­vik and Rus­so­pho­bic. It reject­ed the accu­sa­tions of tar­get­ing civil­ians in Bryan­sk oper­a­tion.

    But soon after the incur­sion, the unit’s com­man­der, Denis “White Rex” Nikitin (his real sur­name is Kapustin), took to ridi­cul­ing the wound­ed boy online after Russ­ian media revealed that he hailed from a Mus­lim fam­i­ly. Fyo­dor was brought up, it turned out, by a sin­gle moth­er of Crimean Tatar ori­gin who emi­grat­ed to Rus­sia from Tajik­istan. One of Nikitin’s posts con­tained a pho­to of a fam­i­ly dressed in Tajik nation­al cos­tumes with stylised swastikas placed like halos above the heads of adults and chil­dren. The mot­to above the pic­ture read: “Rus­sia will be Aryan or life­less”.

    A racial­ly pure Rus­sia, cleansed from minori­ties and immi­grants, is one of the most rad­i­cal visions of the country’s future among those pre­sent­ed by var­i­ous oppo­nents of Putin’s regime. Extrem­ist projects like this catch a lot of atten­tion, in large part because Putin’s main­stream lib­er­al oppo­nents appear either short of ideas or audac­i­ty to spell them out while the war in Ukraine is still rag­ing.

    The lit­tle white men

    A week after Bryan­sk incur­sion, Nikitin repost­ed a quote attrib­uted to the Bel­gian Nazi leader Leon Degrelle, which proph­e­sis­es that one day “a young Russ­ian Bona­parte” will “emerge from the east and cre­ate a Euro­pean uni­ty, which Karl V, Napoleon, Hitler and West­ern Euro­peans, who fought togeth­er with me, failed to achieve”. Degrelle’s Wal­loon Legion was vir­tu­al­ly wiped out by the Sovi­ets in the North Cau­ca­sus. In Bel­gium, Degrelle was sen­tenced to death in absen­tia and his Nazi par­ty, known as Rex, was dis­band­ed. Rex hap­pens to be Nikitin’s nick­name.

    Ever since mov­ing to Ukraine in 2017, Nikitin was close to the Azov move­ment, which is what its lead­ing fig­ures call a host of polit­i­cal and para­mil­i­tary groups, as well as busi­ness­es, linked to what emerged in 2014 as the Azov bat­tal­ion. The vision of a racial­ly pure pan-Euro­pean enti­ty that begins in Ukraine before spilling into Rus­sia and sub­se­quent­ly con­quer­ing the rest of Europe (in what the movement’s ide­ol­o­gists called Recon­quista) was at the heart of the Azov movement’s polit­i­cal pro­gramme, as expressed by its ide­ol­o­gist Ole­na Semenya­ka cir­ca 2015.

    The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment dis­tanced itself from the Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps, but not quite. A spokesman for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence (GUR), Andrey Yusov, called its mem­bers “one of those forces that will be shap­ing the future con­fig­u­ra­tion of post-Putin Rus­sia”. The Deep State, a Ukrain­ian war mon­i­tor­ing group, jok­ing­ly dubbed RVC “the lit­tle white men” in a ref­er­ence to Putin’s “lit­tle green men” who occu­pied Crimea in 2014.

    That RVC is linked to GUR is no secret. For once, it is part of the Inter­na­tion­al Legion – a unit com­prised of for­eign vol­un­teers who fight for Ukraine, which was set up under GUR’s aus­pices. RVC’s chief of staff, who goes by the call­sign For­tu­na, said in an inter­view that he took part in GUR’s oper­a­tion to lib­er­ate Zmi­inyi Island in the Black Sea from the Rus­sians.

    It is unclear to what extent RVC’s ide­ol­o­gy is being sym­pa­thised with or shared by senior offi­cers at GUR, which under­stand­ably wel­comes any groups that help weak­en or undo Rus­sia. The office of GUR’s chief Kyry­lo Budanov is famous­ly dec­o­rat­ed with the map of Rus­sia divid­ed into a mul­ti­tude of imag­i­nary statelets. A cake in the shape of that map was made for his last birth­day.

    RVC has a polit­i­cal wing called Civic Coun­cil which is based not in Ukraine but in Poland. The organ­i­sa­tion posi­tions itself as the offi­cial recruiter for the corps. The per­son in charge of recruit­ment is Denis Mikhaylov, a for­mer Naval­ny co-ordi­na­tor in St Peters­burg who fell out with the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion leader’s move­ment. In 2020, Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov told the BBC that he and his col­league sus­pect­ed Mikhaylov of hav­ing been plant­ed into their organ­i­sa­tion by the Krem­lin.

    The main pub­lic face of the Civic Coun­cil is Anas­ta­sia Sergeye­va, who also leads a much bet­ter-known Pol­ish organ­i­sa­tion called For Free Rus­sia. It strives to unite and help mem­bers of the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion who found them­selves strand­ed in Poland. Its web­site lists the Pol­ish for­eign min­istry and War­saw mayor’s office, as well as British and Czech embassies in Poland, among its offi­cial part­ners.

    Inde­pen­dent St Peters­burg

    RVC has a com­pet­ing project which is also being devel­oped in both Ukraine and Poland, although the exis­tence of its mil­i­tary com­po­nent is doubt­ed by many.

    Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion emerged as a brand in the spring of 2022, soon after the begin­ning of the all-out Russ­ian inva­sion in Ukraine. Ini­tial­ly, it appeared to be the ini­tia­tive of the GUR, which by that time began form­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Legion. A GUR offi­cer and one of the main spokes­peo­ple for the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment at the time, Olek­siy Arestovych, was among its chief pro­mot­ers.

    Lat­er, though, the fugi­tive for­mer Russ­ian Duma MP Ilya Pono­marev took lead in the project, at least pub­licly. Pono­marev is a for­mer asso­ciate of Putin’s spin doc­tor in chief Vladislav Surkov, who escaped cor­rup­tion charges in Rus­sia (get­ting paid mil­lions of rubles for sev­er­al lec­tures at Skolko­vo) by flee­ing to Ukraine.

    The oth­er pub­lic face of the unit goes by the call­sign Cae­sar. Accord­ing to Pono­marev, back in Rus­sia Cae­sar was close to the Russ­ian Impe­r­i­al Move­ment, but fell out with it long before it was des­ig­nat­ed by the State Depart­ment as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion for its role in train­ing vol­un­teers for pro-Russ­ian forces in Ukraine.

    There is noth­ing to be said so far about the “legion’s” bat­tle­field achieve­ments, but Cae­sar was co-opt­ed by Pono­marev into the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the self-pro­claimed Con­gress of People’s Deputies – a gath­er­ing he helped organ­ise in Poland in Novem­ber 2022. The com­mit­tee also includ­ed sev­er­al well-known per­son­al­i­ties, like for­mer Putin’s advi­sor Andrey Illar­i­onov and ex-MP Gen­nady Gud­kov.

    The “con­gress” pro­claimed itself Russia’s “tran­si­tion­al par­lia­ment” and adopt­ed a dec­la­ra­tion which called for denounc­ing the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion and intro­duc­ing emer­gency law until new gov­ern­ment bod­ies will be formed. It also called for an armed insur­rec­tion against Putin’s regime. Clar­i­fy­ing his inten­tions, Pono­marev wrote on Twit­ter: “There will be a jun­ta – either Prigozhin’s or ours. Make you choic­es, Rus­sians”. Yevge­ny Prigozhin is the founder of Wag­n­er Group.

    The gath­er­ing drew ridicule from Russ­ian inde­pen­dent media and senior oppo­si­tion fig­ures. “You are Surkov’s dis­gust­ing clown who rep­re­sents no one”, Navalny’s chief of staff Volkov wrote on Twit­ter, address­ing Pono­marev (Volkov resigned from his post lat­er for unre­lat­ed rea­sons).

    Last Feb­ru­ary, Pono­marev also fea­tured promi­nent­ly at anoth­er gath­er­ing, called Free Nations of Post-Rus­sia Forum, which took place inside the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment in Brus­sels under the aus­pices of the parliament’s far-right fac­tion, the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists (ECR). The group includes Poland’s rul­ing Law & Jus­tice Par­ty (PiS). As the name of the forum sug­gests, its par­tic­i­pants advo­cate an even­tu­al breakup of Rus­sia.

    The for­mer Pol­ish for­eign min­is­ter and ECR’s cur­rent sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Anna Foty­ga opened the forum, which pri­mar­i­ly drew lit­tle-known per­son­al­i­ties who ped­dle exot­ic geopo­lit­i­cal projects like that of “Moscow Repub­lic” or Ingria – an inde­pen­dent Baltic coun­try to be formed around St Peters­burg and based on the iden­ti­ty of near-extinct Finno-Ugric minori­ties liv­ing there.

    Only a hand­ful of par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ed non-vir­tu­al nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ments, like Chechen and Cir­cass­ian, or indeed had any dig­i­tal foot­print to speak of. Those who did would make a few eyes roll in the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion cir­cles.

    Pavel Mez­erin of the Ingria project used to be an aid to Yury Shutov – a for­mer St Peters­burg politi­cian and a noto­ri­ous gang­ster who died in 2014 while serv­ing a life sen­tence for sev­er­al con­tract mur­ders. Shutov was also impli­cat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of the famous pro-democ­ra­cy politi­cian Gali­na Starovoy­to­va, but as with many polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions in Rus­sia that crime has been nev­er com­plete­ly solved.

    ...

    Courage to speak for Rus­sia

    It is in large part due to their exoti­cism and sheer luna­cy that these kinds of projects catch the atten­tion of the media. How­ev­er, they hard­ly reflect the mood in Rus­sia oppo­si­tion cir­cles, not to men­tion in Rus­sia prop­er, includ­ing in eth­nic regions. Rus­sia is a nation state with an 80% eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion. Most eth­nic autonomies have a major­i­ty eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion. Sep­a­ratist sen­ti­ments are next to non-exis­tent in real life.

    Besides, the mem­o­ries of the Sovi­et col­lapse in the 1990s are way too vivid, while the plight of Ukraine serves as a larg­er-than-life cau­tion­ary tale. There is broad under­stand­ing that a dis­so­lu­tion of Rus­sia will lead to a civ­il war, the fear of which under­pins Putin’s regime. If any­thing, the sep­a­ratists’ projects help Putin to keep the regime intact and the oppo­si­tion at bay.

    But they betray the hopes har­boured by at least some ele­ments in the gov­ern­ments of Ukraine and Poland, far-right politi­cians else­where in East­ern Europe and their West­ern friends. The post-Rus­sia forum fea­tured British jour­nal­ist cum politi­cian Edward Lukas, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Amer­i­can think-tanks, the Jamestown and Her­itage foun­da­tions.

    The rad­i­cals are fill­ing the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the far more influ­en­tial lead­ers of the Russ­ian main­stream lib­er­al oppo­si­tion. The most potent organ­i­sa­tion, Navalny’s move­ment, is under­go­ing an iden­ti­ty cri­sis with its leader lan­guish­ing in jail and all the oth­er main fig­ures forced into exile. It keeps churn­ing out cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions into Putin’s entourage, but this sub­ject has been large­ly side­lined by war. There is lit­tle new to be learned about the regime’s excess­es.

    ...

    The con­formist major­i­ty could eas­i­ly accept Russia’s mil­i­tary defeat in Ukraine – it has always been luke­warm about Putin’s mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism and the appetite for new ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains is minus­cule, as per polls. But the threat posed by forces advo­cat­ing civ­il war in Rus­sia, like RVC, or the dis­so­lu­tion of the coun­try, like the post-Rus­sia forum, is some­thing they need to be reas­sured about by both the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion and its West­ern part­ners. In the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, talk­ing about these issues, not to men­tion advo­cat­ing the inter­ests of the future demo­c­ra­t­ic Rus­sia in the West, requires a lot of courage and skill. No one seems to be up to that task.

    The West­ern ambi­gu­i­ty about the future of Rus­sia is the Achilles heel of the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion. It is also Putin’s mas­sive polit­i­cal asset. What kind of Rus­sia does the West want? Demo­c­ra­t­ic, pros­per­ous and ful­ly inte­grat­ed in the EU and Nato, or weak and “con­tained”, as West­ern hawks call it to avoid the word “iso­lat­ed”? Or would it rather have Rus­sia dis­in­te­grate? None of the exiled oppo­si­tion lead­ers appears to have the strength or audac­i­ty to engage in a dif­fi­cult but mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with West­ern gov­ern­ments on these issues.

    ————

    “RAGOZIN: Vision of Russia’s future” by Leonid Ragozin; BNE Intellinews; 03/30/2023

    “The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment dis­tanced itself from the Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps, but not quite. A spokesman for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence (GUR), Andrey Yusov, called its mem­bers “one of those forces that will be shap­ing the future con­fig­u­ra­tion of post-Putin Rus­sia”. The Deep State, a Ukrain­ian war mon­i­tor­ing group, jok­ing­ly dubbed RVC “the lit­tle white men” in a ref­er­ence to Putin’s “lit­tle green men” who occu­pied Crimea in 2014.

    The “lit­tle white men” that will be “one of those forces that will be shap­ing the future con­fig­u­ra­tion of post-Putin Rus­sia.” That’s the GRU’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps (RVC), which is extra notable giv­en that the RVC is part of the GRU-led Inter­na­tion­al Legion, whose chief’s office is famous­ly dec­o­rat­ed with the map of a bro­ken up Rus­sia. They aren’t being very sub­tle:

    ...
    That RVC is linked to GUR is no secret. For once, it is part of the Inter­na­tion­al Legion – a unit com­prised of for­eign vol­un­teers who fight for Ukraine, which was set up under GUR’s aus­pices. RVC’s chief of staff, who goes by the call­sign For­tu­na, said in an inter­view that he took part in GUR’s oper­a­tion to lib­er­ate Zmi­inyi Island in the Black Sea from the Rus­sians.

    It is unclear to what extent RVC’s ide­ol­o­gy is being sym­pa­thised with or shared by senior offi­cers at GUR, which under­stand­ably wel­comes any groups that help weak­en or undo Rus­sia. The office of GUR’s chief Kyry­lo Budanov is famous­ly dec­o­rat­ed with the map of Rus­sia divid­ed into a mul­ti­tude of imag­i­nary statelets. A cake in the shape of that map was made for his last birth­day.
    ...

    And then there’s the polit­i­cal wing of the RVC, the Civic Coun­cil, which has a for­mer co-ordi­na­tor for Russ­ian oppo­si­tion leader Alex­ei Naval­ny as its chief recruiter, it was­n’t that long ago that the West view Naval­ny as a poten­tial ‘great uniter’ of the Russ­ian peo­ple. Specif­i­cal­ly, the West saw Naval­ny as some­one who could unite Rus­si­a’s mid­dle class with far right nation­al­ists. And here we find that the Civ­il Coun­cil’s web­site lists the Pol­ish for­eign min­istry and War­saw mayor’s office, as well as British and Czech embassies in Poland, among its offi­cial part­ners. In oth­er words, when we find the West now back­ing Russ­ian over fas­cists as the lead­ers of a Russ­ian lib­er­a­tion move­ment, that’s not real­ly new. What’s new is the idea of using these Russ­ian fas­cists as the mil­i­tary cud­gel in an agen­da that brands itself as a Russ­ian minor­i­ty lib­er­a­tionist move­ment:

    ...
    RVC has a polit­i­cal wing called Civic Coun­cil which is based not in Ukraine but in Poland. The organ­i­sa­tion posi­tions itself as the offi­cial recruiter for the corps. The per­son in charge of recruit­ment is Denis Mikhaylov, a for­mer Naval­ny co-ordi­na­tor in St Peters­burg who fell out with the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion leader’s move­ment. In 2020, Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov told the BBC that he and his col­league sus­pect­ed Mikhaylov of hav­ing been plant­ed into their organ­i­sa­tion by the Krem­lin.

    The main pub­lic face of the Civic Coun­cil is Anas­ta­sia Sergeye­va, who also leads a much bet­ter-known Pol­ish organ­i­sa­tion called For Free Rus­sia. It strives to unite and help mem­bers of the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion who found them­selves strand­ed in Poland. Its web­site lists the Pol­ish for­eign min­istry and War­saw mayor’s office, as well as British and Czech embassies in Poland, among its offi­cial part­ners.
    ...

    And that brings us to the oth­er ‘Russ­ian lib­er­a­tion’ project backed by the West: the Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion being devel­oped in Ukraine and Poland, with GRU offi­cer and gov­ern­ment spokesman Olek­siy Arestovych act­ing as one of its chief ini­tial pro­mot­ers. This is a good time to recall the inci­dent last year when Arestovych post­ed on social media the pho­to of a defiled female body with a bloody swasti­ka carved onto her stom­ach. The social media post claimed the body had been dis­cov­ered in a region recent­ly evac­u­at­ed by Russ­ian forces but it turns out the image was 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. So this Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion start­ed off with high-lev­el polit­i­cal sup­port inside the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. But it sounds like for­mer Russ­ian Duma MP Ilya Pono­marev took over Arestovych the role of pub­licly lead­ing the project. Recall how Pono­marev was the fig­ure who took the lead in cel­e­brat­ing and tak­ing cred­it for the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­i­na. That’s a big part of the con­text here: the pub­lic leader for this group is also the pub­lic leader for car­ry­ing tar­get­ed polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion cam­paigns inside Rus­sia. So when he makes asser­tions like “There will be a jun­ta – either Prigozhin’s or ours. Make you choic­es, Rus­sians,” these aren’t emp­ty remarks. Pono­marev real­ly is seri­ous about polit­i­cal­ly desta­bi­liz­ing Rus­sia through polit­i­cal vio­lence. He’s not hid­ing this:

    ...
    RVC has a com­pet­ing project which is also being devel­oped in both Ukraine and Poland, although the exis­tence of its mil­i­tary com­po­nent is doubt­ed by many.

    Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion emerged as a brand in the spring of 2022, soon after the begin­ning of the all-out Russ­ian inva­sion in Ukraine. Ini­tial­ly, it appeared to be the ini­tia­tive of the GUR, which by that time began form­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Legion. A GUR offi­cer and one of the main spokes­peo­ple for the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment at the time, Olek­siy Arestovych, was among its chief pro­mot­ers.

    Lat­er, though, the fugi­tive for­mer Russ­ian Duma MP Ilya Pono­marev took lead in the project, at least pub­licly. Pono­marev is a for­mer asso­ciate of Putin’s spin doc­tor in chief Vladislav Surkov, who escaped cor­rup­tion charges in Rus­sia (get­ting paid mil­lions of rubles for sev­er­al lec­tures at Skolko­vo) by flee­ing to Ukraine.

    The oth­er pub­lic face of the unit goes by the call­sign Cae­sar. Accord­ing to Pono­marev, back in Rus­sia Cae­sar was close to the Russ­ian Impe­r­i­al Move­ment, but fell out with it long before it was des­ig­nat­ed by the State Depart­ment as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion for its role in train­ing vol­un­teers for pro-Russ­ian forces in Ukraine.

    There is noth­ing to be said so far about the “legion’s” bat­tle­field achieve­ments, but Cae­sar was co-opt­ed by Pono­marev into the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the self-pro­claimed Con­gress of People’s Deputies – a gath­er­ing he helped organ­ise in Poland in Novem­ber 2022. The com­mit­tee also includ­ed sev­er­al well-known per­son­al­i­ties, like for­mer Putin’s advi­sor Andrey Illar­i­onov and ex-MP Gen­nady Gud­kov.

    The “con­gress” pro­claimed itself Russia’s “tran­si­tion­al par­lia­ment” and adopt­ed a dec­la­ra­tion which called for denounc­ing the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion and intro­duc­ing emer­gency law until new gov­ern­ment bod­ies will be formed. It also called for an armed insur­rec­tion against Putin’s regime. Clar­i­fy­ing his inten­tions, Pono­marev wrote on Twit­ter: “There will be a jun­ta – either Prigozhin’s or ours. Make you choic­es, Rus­sians”. Yevge­ny Prigozhin is the founder of Wag­n­er Group.
    ...

    But, of course, this Russ­ian desta­bi­liza­tion move­ment isn’t sim­ply a pet project of the Ukrain­ian and Pol­ish gov­ern­ments. Last Feb­ru­ary, Pono­marev was fea­tured at the Free Nations of Post-Rus­sia Forum at the invi­ta­tion of the far right Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists (ECR) cau­cus. And Pno­marev’s group was­n’t the only Rus­sia-focused ‘lib­er­a­tionist’ move­ment. That was the norm for this gath­er­ing. A gath­er­ing ded­i­cat­ed to the dream of break­ing Rus­sia up into dozens of statelets that took place in the EU par­lia­ment. Again, it isn’t sub­tle:

    ...
    Last Feb­ru­ary, Pono­marev also fea­tured promi­nent­ly at anoth­er gath­er­ing, called Free Nations of Post-Rus­sia Forum, which took place inside the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment in Brus­sels under the aus­pices of the parliament’s far-right fac­tion, the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists (ECR). The group includes Poland’s rul­ing Law & Jus­tice Par­ty (PiS). As the name of the forum sug­gests, its par­tic­i­pants advo­cate an even­tu­al breakup of Rus­sia.

    The for­mer Pol­ish for­eign min­is­ter and ECR’s cur­rent sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Anna Foty­ga opened the forum, which pri­mar­i­ly drew lit­tle-known per­son­al­i­ties who ped­dle exot­ic geopo­lit­i­cal projects like that of “Moscow Repub­lic” or Ingria – an inde­pen­dent Baltic coun­try to be formed around St Peters­burg and based on the iden­ti­ty of near-extinct Finno-Ugric minori­ties liv­ing there.

    Only a hand­ful of par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ed non-vir­tu­al nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ments, like Chechen and Cir­cass­ian, or indeed had any dig­i­tal foot­print to speak of. Those who did would make a few eyes roll in the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion cir­cles.

    Pavel Mez­erin of the Ingria project used to be an aid to Yury Shutov – a for­mer St Peters­burg politi­cian and a noto­ri­ous gang­ster who died in 2014 while serv­ing a life sen­tence for sev­er­al con­tract mur­ders. Shutov was also impli­cat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of the famous pro-democ­ra­cy politi­cian Gali­na Starovoy­to­va, but as with many polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions in Rus­sia that crime has been nev­er com­plete­ly solved.
    ...

    Nor is the RVC sub­tle about its ide­ol­o­gy: its a bat­tal­ion of fas­cists who want a racial­ly pure Rus­sia cleansed of minori­ties and immi­grants. Or as RVC com­man­der Denis “White Rex” Nikitin put it “Rus­sia will be Aryan or life­less”. And, of course, we find Nikitin is close to Azov. It’s an iron­ic part of the con­text here: at the same time the EU is back­ing a move­ment that is osten­si­bly focused on ‘lib­er­at­ing’ eth­nic minori­ties from Moscow’s yolk and break­ing Rus­sia up into dozens of eth­no­sec­tar­i­an statelets, Ukraine and Poland are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly back­ing a group filled by Rus­sophile fas­cists who want to purge Russ­ian of its per­ceived Unter­men­sch. Pick a lane:

    ...
    When the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary unit called Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corps (RVC) briefly entered a Russ­ian vil­lage in Bryan­sk Region near the Ukrain­ian bor­der, the Russ­ian author­i­ties claimed that the attack­ers had killed two civil­ians and wound­ed a small boy called Fyo­dor Simo­nenko.

    RVC is made of far-right per­son­al­i­ties from Rus­sia who have cho­sen to fight on the Ukrain­ian side because they regard Vladimir Putin’s regime as neo-Bol­she­vik and Rus­so­pho­bic. It reject­ed the accu­sa­tions of tar­get­ing civil­ians in Bryan­sk oper­a­tion.

    But soon after the incur­sion, the unit’s com­man­der, Denis “White Rex” Nikitin (his real sur­name is Kapustin), took to ridi­cul­ing the wound­ed boy online after Russ­ian media revealed that he hailed from a Mus­lim fam­i­ly. Fyo­dor was brought up, it turned out, by a sin­gle moth­er of Crimean Tatar ori­gin who emi­grat­ed to Rus­sia from Tajik­istan. One of Nikitin’s posts con­tained a pho­to of a fam­i­ly dressed in Tajik nation­al cos­tumes with stylised swastikas placed like halos above the heads of adults and chil­dren. The mot­to above the pic­ture read: “Rus­sia will be Aryan or life­less”.

    A racial­ly pure Rus­sia, cleansed from minori­ties and immi­grants, is one of the most rad­i­cal visions of the country’s future among those pre­sent­ed by var­i­ous oppo­nents of Putin’s regime. Extrem­ist projects like this catch a lot of atten­tion, in large part because Putin’s main­stream lib­er­al oppo­nents appear either short of ideas or audac­i­ty to spell them out while the war in Ukraine is still rag­ing.

    The lit­tle white men

    A week after Bryan­sk incur­sion, Nikitin repost­ed a quote attrib­uted to the Bel­gian Nazi leader Leon Degrelle, which proph­e­sis­es that one day “a young Russ­ian Bona­parte” will “emerge from the east and cre­ate a Euro­pean uni­ty, which Karl V, Napoleon, Hitler and West­ern Euro­peans, who fought togeth­er with me, failed to achieve”. Degrelle’s Wal­loon Legion was vir­tu­al­ly wiped out by the Sovi­ets in the North Cau­ca­sus. In Bel­gium, Degrelle was sen­tenced to death in absen­tia and his Nazi par­ty, known as Rex, was dis­band­ed. Rex hap­pens to be Nikitin’s nick­name.

    Ever since mov­ing to Ukraine in 2017, Nikitin was close to the Azov move­ment, which is what its lead­ing fig­ures call a host of polit­i­cal and para­mil­i­tary groups, as well as busi­ness­es, linked to what emerged in 2014 as the Azov bat­tal­ion. The vision of a racial­ly pure pan-Euro­pean enti­ty that begins in Ukraine before spilling into Rus­sia and sub­se­quent­ly con­quer­ing the rest of Europe (in what the movement’s ide­ol­o­gists called Recon­quista) was at the heart of the Azov movement’s polit­i­cal pro­gramme, as expressed by its ide­ol­o­gist Ole­na Semenya­ka cir­ca 2015.
    ...

    And that brings us to the utter mad­ness of this whole agen­da: if there’s one thing that can ral­ly the Russ­ian pop­u­lace around the state, it’s pre­vent­ing the breakup of Rus­sia by out­side pow­ers. Win­ning the war in Ukraine isn’t a top pri­or­i­ty for aver­age Russ­ian. Avoid­ing some sort of civ­il war that destroys the coun­try, on the oth­er hand, is very much a pri­or­i­ty. And yet we have a Russ­ian ‘lib­er­a­tion’ move­ment com­prised of open fas­cists and Nazis oper­at­ing with the back­ing of not just the EU but also Amer­i­can think-tanks like the Jamestown and Her­itage Foun­da­tions. It’s like the worst mes­sag­ing the West could have pos­si­bly mus­tered:

    ...
    Courage to speak for Rus­sia

    It is in large part due to their exoti­cism and sheer luna­cy that these kinds of projects catch the atten­tion of the media. How­ev­er, they hard­ly reflect the mood in Rus­sia oppo­si­tion cir­cles, not to men­tion in Rus­sia prop­er, includ­ing in eth­nic regions. Rus­sia is a nation state with an 80% eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion. Most eth­nic autonomies have a major­i­ty eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion. Sep­a­ratist sen­ti­ments are next to non-exis­tent in real life.

    Besides, the mem­o­ries of the Sovi­et col­lapse in the 1990s are way too vivid, while the plight of Ukraine serves as a larg­er-than-life cau­tion­ary tale. There is broad under­stand­ing that a dis­so­lu­tion of Rus­sia will lead to a civ­il war, the fear of which under­pins Putin’s regime. If any­thing, the sep­a­ratists’ projects help Putin to keep the regime intact and the oppo­si­tion at bay.

    But they betray the hopes har­boured by at least some ele­ments in the gov­ern­ments of Ukraine and Poland, far-right politi­cians else­where in East­ern Europe and their West­ern friends. The post-Rus­sia forum fea­tured British jour­nal­ist cum politi­cian Edward Lukas, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Amer­i­can think-tanks, the Jamestown and Her­itage foun­da­tions.

    The rad­i­cals are fill­ing the vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the far more influ­en­tial lead­ers of the Russ­ian main­stream lib­er­al oppo­si­tion. The most potent organ­i­sa­tion, Navalny’s move­ment, is under­go­ing an iden­ti­ty cri­sis with its leader lan­guish­ing in jail and all the oth­er main fig­ures forced into exile. It keeps churn­ing out cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions into Putin’s entourage, but this sub­ject has been large­ly side­lined by war. There is lit­tle new to be learned about the regime’s excess­es.

    ...

    The con­formist major­i­ty could eas­i­ly accept Russia’s mil­i­tary defeat in Ukraine – it has always been luke­warm about Putin’s mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism and the appetite for new ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains is minus­cule, as per polls. But the threat posed by forces advo­cat­ing civ­il war in Rus­sia, like RVC, or the dis­so­lu­tion of the coun­try, like the post-Rus­sia forum, is some­thing they need to be reas­sured about by both the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion and its West­ern part­ners. In the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, talk­ing about these issues, not to men­tion advo­cat­ing the inter­ests of the future demo­c­ra­t­ic Rus­sia in the West, requires a lot of courage and skill. No one seems to be up to that task.

    The West­ern ambi­gu­i­ty about the future of Rus­sia is the Achilles heel of the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion. It is also Putin’s mas­sive polit­i­cal asset. What kind of Rus­sia does the West want? Demo­c­ra­t­ic, pros­per­ous and ful­ly inte­grat­ed in the EU and Nato, or weak and “con­tained”, as West­ern hawks call it to avoid the word “iso­lat­ed”? Or would it rather have Rus­sia dis­in­te­grate? None of the exiled oppo­si­tion lead­ers appears to have the strength or audac­i­ty to engage in a dif­fi­cult but mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with West­ern gov­ern­ments on these issues.
    ...

    It’s a strat­e­gy that makes so lit­tle sense we almost have to ask: is regime change actu­al­ly the goal here? Because this is such a ham-fist­ed attempt at per­sua­sion you have to won­der if per­sua­sion is even the goal here. And yet it’s not at all hard to imag­ine that the West is indeed keen­ly inter­est­ed in see­ing either a far right coup in Moscow or, even bet­ter, the breakup of the coun­try fol­low­ing a civ­il war. So we have a West­ern-backed ‘decoloni­sa­tion’ agen­da of desta­bi­liza­tion and civ­il war that already has a pub­lic face, but it’s the kind of pub­lic face that does­n’t appear to have any fea­si­ble chance of suc­cess. Which is a reminder that any actu­al destabilization/civil war agen­da tar­get­ing Rus­sia might require groups like RVC or the Free­dom for Rus­sia Legion to act as a pub­lic face to take cred­it for the desta­bi­liz­ing dirty work done by a far more diverse cast of char­ac­ters.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 19, 2023, 4:58 pm
  8. Are Ukraine’s “blood­lines” being ade­quate­ly pre­served for the future of the nation? That’s the deeply dis­turb­ing ques­tion raised in the fol­low­ing New York Times tout­ing a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment pro­gram designed to do exact­ly that by offer­ing sol­diers the option to have their sperm frozen in case they are killed in com­bat. On one lev­el, it’s a per­fect­ly rea­son­able pro­gram for fam­i­lies fac­ing the very real prospect that one half of the cou­ple is about to go off and die. But as we’re going to see, the pro­gram isn’t just about giv­ing indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ‘live on’ even after the hus­band has been killed in com­bat. It’s also being framed as a means of pre­serv­ing “Ukrain­ian blood­lines” in the face of Russ­ian attempts to erase Ukraini­ans as an inde­pen­dent peo­ple. As one sol­dier puts it, his inter­est in freez­ing his sperm was also “about not decreas­ing the num­ber of our patri­ots, peo­ple who will lat­er defend, devel­op and build our coun­try.” Or as Oksana Dmytri­ie­va, a deputy Health Min­is­ter and the Ukrain­ian law­mak­er who wrote the bill that would pro­vide state fund­ing for the pro­gram, put it, “this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of our gene pool.” So as we should have prob­a­bly expect­ed, the longer this war is going and the blood­i­er and dead­lier it gets, the more inter­est there’s going to be on how to rebuild the nation. Includ­ing the nation’s genet­ics:

    The New York Times

    When Freez­ing Sperm Makes a Patri­ot­ic State­ment

    Some Ukrain­ian sol­diers are try­ing to ensure that even if they die in the war, their part­ners can still build fam­i­lies. They also want to send Rus­sia a mes­sage of defi­ance.

    By Emma Bubo­la
    Pub­lished April 16, 2023
    Updat­ed April 18, 2023

    The cou­ple had dreams of a big fam­i­ly. They would have five chil­dren, who would have their father’s mop of curls, his smile and dreamy eyes. They would teach the chil­dren how to paint and make pot­tery and take them on long walks in the forests near their home­town, Slo­vian­sk, in east­ern Ukraine.

    Then Rus­sia invad­ed their coun­try, shat­ter­ing their plans. The hus­band, Vitaly Kyrkach-Anto­nenko, vol­un­teered to fight and died on the bat­tle­field when his wife, Nataliya, was three months preg­nant with their first child.

    Now, still deep in mourn­ing, she says she will not give up their dream. She intends to give sib­lings to her first­born. Like hun­dreds of oth­er Ukrain­ian sol­diers, Vitaly froze his sperm before head­ing back to bat­tle in the hope that if he did not make it home, he could still pass on his genes.

    “Vitaly,” his wife said, “will be the father of all our future chil­dren.”

    For many Ukraini­ans, the idea of sav­ing sol­diers’ sperm is at once per­son­al and patri­ot­ic. It helps men who want to ensure some­thing of them­selves remains if they die, and it brings com­fort to their part­ners. In a coun­try now famous for its spir­it of resis­tance, it is also one more way of fight­ing back. It leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty, at least, of pre­serv­ing Ukrain­ian blood­lines even as the Krem­lin insists that Ukrain­ian state­hood — and by exten­sion Ukraini­ans as a sep­a­rate peo­ple — is a fic­tion.

    The con­cept of deny­ing that type of era­sure has caught on enough that the Par­lia­ment is debat­ing a bill that would allow sol­diers to freeze their sperm at the state’s expense.

    “This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of our gene pool,” said Oksana Dmytri­ie­va, the Ukrain­ian law­mak­er who wrote the bill, which has already cleared a hur­dle toward pas­sage in an ini­tial vote.

    Sev­er­al clin­ics have already begun offer­ing the ser­vice free, at their own expense. And Ms. Kyrkach-Anto­nenko has unex­pect­ed­ly become some­thing of a role mod­el for the cause, using her Face­book page to encour­age male sol­diers and their wives to give them­selves the option of mak­ing a fam­i­ly, no mat­ter what hap­pens on the bat­tle­field.

    “The mod­ern world allows us to give birth and raise the chil­dren of our fall­en loved ones — the bravest and most coura­geous humans in this world,” she wrote. “Raise them wor­thy of their father, with the same love for Ukraine, and give them the chance to live in the coun­try for which their father shed his blood.”

    Such mes­sages of resis­tance seem to have reached Rus­sia too.

    A pro-Krem­lin reporter, Olga Skabee­va, said recent­ly on Russ­ian state tele­vi­sion that sol­diers’ freez­ing sperm amount­ed to “genet­ic exper­i­ments to con­struct a nation.”

    “With the help of arti­fi­cial selec­tion,” she warned, “a whole army of select­ed Ukraini­ans with an increased lev­el of Rus­so­pho­bia will be bred.”

    Natalya Tol­ub, a spokes­woman for the IVMED fer­til­i­ty clin­ic in Kyiv, the cap­i­tal, said in an email that the reporter’s state­ments were a sign that the Ukraini­ans had hit their mark. “Suc­cess,” she wrote.

    Her clin­ic, she said, is freez­ing the sperm of about 10 sol­diers every week.

    Among them was Yehor, 31, who had been with his girl­friend, Svit­lana Braslavs­ka, 25, for only a few months when they decid­ed to freeze his sperm.

    As he head­ed back to bat­tle last month after a short break, he said that he felt calmer and more fear­less than the first time he went. He cred­it­ed expe­ri­ence, time — and the sperm he left behind in a clin­ic.

    “We are fight­ing for free­dom for our chil­dren; we also have the right to have them,” said Yehor, who asked to be iden­ti­fied only by his first name for secu­ri­ty rea­sons. “Doesn’t mat­ter if they will be born in that way, or even after us.”

    But he said his inter­est in freez­ing his sperm was also “about not decreas­ing the num­ber of our patri­ots, peo­ple who will lat­er defend, devel­op and build our coun­try.”

    Ms. Braslavs­ka does not want to think about whether she would opt for assist­ed repro­duc­tion if he did not return, but she said the war had made her think about hav­ing chil­dren for the first time. She inter­pret­ed her new inter­est as a “phys­i­cal effect” that the war was hav­ing on her, an “impulse to con­tin­ue our nation.”

    Despite Ukraini­ans’ brava­do in the face of adver­si­ty, experts say that Ukraine can­not rebuild its pop­u­la­tion, which was already declin­ing before the war, by using frozen sperm for preg­nan­cies. But Jay Win­ter, a retired Yale his­to­ri­an, said that wasn’t the point.

    By offer­ing not only to die for Ukraine, but also to pro­vide for new life, sol­diers were mak­ing a state­ment — show­ing their com­mit­ment to nation­al sur­vival. “And the sur­vival of the Ukrain­ian nation,” he said, “is what this war is about.”

    The exact num­ber of Ukrain­ian men who have frozen their sperm is hard to come by, but Olek­san­dr Mykhailovych Yuzko, a doc­tor and the pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Repro­duc­tive Med­i­cine, said that requests had risen at clin­ics all over Ukraine.

    He said he expect­ed the sperm to be used not only by some wid­ows, but also by women whose hus­bands suf­fer injuries — phys­i­cal or men­tal — that ren­der them impo­tent. He said the gov­ern­ment need­ed to do more to help women have sol­diers’ chil­dren, by pay­ing for assist­ed repro­duc­tion pro­ce­dures as well.

    “The first part is the preser­va­tion of repro­duc­tive cells,” he said. “The sec­ond part is the restora­tion of the repro­duc­tive poten­tial of Ukraine.”

    The idea of freez­ing sol­diers’ sperm is not new. Dur­ing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, sev­er­al cryo­genic firms offered the ser­vice free to Amer­i­can troops. In Israel, the fam­i­lies of fall­en sol­diers have gone a step fur­ther, fight­ing to advance a bill that would allow a fam­i­ly to use the sperm tak­en from a dead soldier’s body for pro­cre­ation, unless he had pre­vi­ous­ly object­ed to it. Crit­ics in Israel call the notion planned orphan­hood.

    Dominic Wilkin­son, a pro­fes­sor of med­ical ethics at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, said that in his view the rush by some Ukrain­ian sol­diers to freeze their sperm was eth­i­cal, so long as both part­ners agree before­hand that it can be used if the man dies.

    “There are many chil­dren who have only a sin­gle liv­ing par­ent,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that it would be wrong to bring that child into the world.”

    Petro Patij, a doc­tor at a fer­til­i­ty clin­ic in the West­ern Ukrain­ian city of Lut­sk, said that many of his clients were still cou­ples com­ing in for fam­i­ly plan­ning con­sul­ta­tions or to solve fer­til­i­ty prob­lems, but he now feels oblig­ed to also ask the men if they would like to freeze their sperm.

    “It’s very hard,” said Dr. Patij. “They want to hear some­thing opti­mistic and you have to pro­pose to them to freeze sperm because one of them might die tomor­row.”

    ...

    ———-

    “When Freez­ing Sperm Makes a Patri­ot­ic State­ment” by Emma Bubo­la; The New York Times; 04/16/2023

    For many Ukraini­ans, the idea of sav­ing sol­diers’ sperm is at once per­son­al and patri­ot­ic. It helps men who want to ensure some­thing of them­selves remains if they die, and it brings com­fort to their part­ners. In a coun­try now famous for its spir­it of resis­tance, it is also one more way of fight­ing back. It leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty, at least, of pre­serv­ing Ukrain­ian blood­lines even as the Krem­lin insists that Ukrain­ian state­hood — and by exten­sion Ukraini­ans as a sep­a­rate peo­ple — is a fic­tion.

    The pro­gram of freez­ing sperm isn’t sim­ply a cour­tesy to sol­diers and their fam­i­lies. No. it’s a pro­gram that leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­serv­ing Ukrain­ian blood­lines. Blood­lines that are appar­ent­ly dis­tinct from Russ­ian blood­lines. It’s not quite ’14 Words’, but it feels awful­ly close. Also note that the Ukrain­ian MP who wrote the bill that would have the state pay for the freez­ing of sol­diers’ sperm, is also a deputy min­is­ter of health. This pro­gram designed to pre­serv­er the genet­ics of ‘true Ukrain­ian patri­ots’ has high lev­el gov­ern­ment sup­port;

    ...
    Now, still deep in mourn­ing, she says she will not give up their dream. She intends to give sib­lings to her first­born. Like hun­dreds of oth­er Ukrain­ian sol­diers, Vitaly froze his sperm before head­ing back to bat­tle in the hope that if he did not make it home, he could still pass on his genes.

    “Vitaly,” his wife said, “will be the father of all our future chil­dren.”

    ...

    The con­cept of deny­ing that type of era­sure has caught on enough that the Par­lia­ment is debat­ing a bill that would allow sol­diers to freeze their sperm at the state’s expense.

    “This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of our gene pool,” said Oksana Dmytri­ie­va, the Ukrain­ian law­mak­er who wrote the bill, which has already cleared a hur­dle toward pas­sage in an ini­tial vote.
    ...

    And note how experts warn that Ukraine can’t real­is­ti­cal­ly make up for the atro­cious pop­u­la­tion loss by freez­ing sperm. But accord­ing to one his­to­ri­an, rebuild­ing Ukraine’s pop­u­la­tion was­n’t real­ly the point. The point was sym­bol­ic defi­ance in the face of Russ­ian threats against nation­al sur­vival. At least that’s the spin. The kind of spin that equates the nation of Ukraine with par­tic­u­lar genet­ic “blood­lines”:

    ...
    Despite Ukraini­ans’ brava­do in the face of adver­si­ty, experts say that Ukraine can­not rebuild its pop­u­la­tion, which was already declin­ing before the war, by using frozen sperm for preg­nan­cies. But Jay Win­ter, a retired Yale his­to­ri­an, said that wasn’t the point.

    By offer­ing not only to die for Ukraine, but also to pro­vide for new life, sol­diers were mak­ing a state­ment — show­ing their com­mit­ment to nation­al sur­vival. “And the sur­vival of the Ukrain­ian nation,” he said, “is what this war is about.”
    ...

    The mes­sage from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is clear: Ukraine’s nation­al iden­ti­ty is frozen in those sperm sam­ples.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing report on present day Ukraine. Specif­i­cal­ly, the record num­bers of orphans that exist­ed inside Ukraine before the war broke out last year. Num­bers that have only explod­ed since:

    The Guardian

    Ukrain­ian chil­dren orphaned by war ‘need a tremen­dous amount of help’

    Pres­i­dent of Los Ange­les-based non-prof­it Kid­save says Amer­i­cans need to be made aware that Ukrain­ian needs go beyond mil­i­tary aid

    Ramon Anto­nio Var­gas
    Mon 27 Feb 2023 02.00 EST
    Last mod­i­fied on Mon 27 Feb 2023 10.10 EST

    Since Russ­ian troops invad­ed Ukraine a lit­tle more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their sup­port for the encroached coun­try by vol­un­teer­ing to fight for it while oth­ers have called on politi­cians to equip the defend­ers with muni­tions and weapons.

    Ran­di Thomp­son is call­ing on Amer­i­cans to pon­der anoth­er way: aid­ing efforts to place Ukrain­ian chil­dren orphaned by the Russ­ian inva­sion in new fam­i­lies with­in their coun­try.

    Thomp­son is the pres­i­dent, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer and co-founder of the Los Ange­les-based non-prof­it Kid­save, which is ded­i­cat­ed to con­nect­ing old­er chil­dren in insti­tu­tion­al­ized care around the world with fam­i­lies to adopt them. The group had worked in Ukraine for six years before the inva­sion by Russ­ian forces on 24 Feb­ru­ary 2022 made a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.

    Offi­cials esti­mate there were more than 105,000 chil­dren across 700 orphan­ages, board­ing schools and oth­er insti­tu­tions in Ukraine when the war there start­ed – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s under­age pop­u­la­tion and Europe’s high­est rate of youth insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion.

    Num­bers since then are hard­er to track as chil­dren have been evac­u­at­ed and moved out of Ukraine’s insti­tu­tion­al­ized care for safe­ty rea­sons. But there’s rea­son to think things have got­ten only hard­er for Ukraine’s orphans.

    At least 6,000 Ukrain­ian chil­dren have been forced into camps and facil­i­ties across Rus­sia – with­out parental con­sent – by the invaders, accord­ing to a report from the Con­flict Obser­va­to­ry, which is sup­port­ed by the US state depart­ment. And Ukraine’s pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al, Andriy Kostin, has said his teams have doc­u­ment­ed more than 14,000 instances of Ukrain­ian chil­dren being forced into adop­tion in Rus­sia since the inva­sion, which shows no signs of end­ing any­time soon.

    “There’s no ques­tion that the fight­ing is going to con­tin­ue,” Thomp­son said. “The suf­fer­ing is going to con­tin­ue.”

    Accord­ing to Thomp­son, Ukraine has made it a clear pri­or­i­ty to keep in the coun­try any of its chil­dren who are in need of adop­tion as opposed to send­ing them abroad. And Kid­save has done what it can, invest­ing a mil­lion dol­lars from its cof­fers into its oper­a­tions in Ukraine, accord­ing to Thomp­son.

    The group first used car­go vans to move to safe­ty near­ly 120 chil­dren that the orga­ni­za­tion had placed with fam­i­lies.

    It then bought 17 more vehi­cles for its fleet, includ­ing 22-pas­sen­ger sprint­ers, bus­es with capac­i­ties of 50 to 62 pas­sen­gers, and car­go trucks, includ­ing an 18-wheel­er with refrig­er­a­tion.

    That fleet has crossed check­points, gone into towns ensnared by con­flict and helped evac­u­ate more than 30,000 peo­ple while also assist­ing in the deliv­ery of more than 1,000 tons of human­i­tar­i­an aid, with Kid­save staffers and their charges some­times hav­ing to nav­i­gate behind the invaders’ lines using satel­lite phones, night vision gog­gles, pro­tec­tive gear and hel­mets, Thomp­son said.

    Among those whom Kid­save evac­u­at­ed were three chil­dren – ages three, four and six – whose moth­er died from an ill­ness after she had left her phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive hus­band and took them with her. They had moved in with a lov­ing, atten­tive fos­ter fam­i­ly whose home end­ed up sur­round­ed by shelling and bomb­ing.

    The fos­ter par­ents were unable to leave, but they made arrange­ments to move the chil­dren out of the con­flict zone and, through Kid­save, place them with anoth­er fam­i­ly in Ukraine, moti­vat­ed – as Thomp­son put it – by a nation­wide sense of, “I’m going to be my brother’s keep­er now.”

    In a state­ment pro­vid­ed to the Guardian, Ukraine-based Kid­save staff mem­ber Ole­na Shul­ha described how the chil­dren told sto­ries, drew pic­tures, played and watched car­toons until they fell fast asleep dur­ing a two-day, non­stop trip of near­ly 1,100 miles that was not devoid of explo­sions and shelling.

    Shul­ha said the chil­dren were hap­py to brave the trek after being told there was “a new life wait­ing for them, full of inter­est­ing moments, love and care, new friends and dis­cov­er­ies”.

    “We explained to them that there was a new fam­i­ly who would take care of them in a safe place,” Shul­ha wrote. “We pray that their lit­tle hearts will nev­er again expe­ri­ence sep­a­ra­tions, wars and dis­ap­point­ments.”

    While many of her com­pa­tri­ots may be unable to help pro­long such work by phys­i­cal­ly get­ting on the ground in Ukraine, Thomp­son said a new cam­paign offers them the chance to get involved from a dis­tance.

    ...

    ———–

    “Ukrain­ian chil­dren orphaned by war ‘need a tremen­dous amount of help’” by Ramon Anto­nio Var­gas; The Guardian; 02/27/2023

    “Offi­cials esti­mate there were more than 105,000 chil­dren across 700 orphan­ages, board­ing schools and oth­er insti­tu­tions in Ukraine when the war there start­ed – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s under­age pop­u­la­tion and Europe’s high­est rate of youth insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion.”

    Yes, there were over 105,000 orphans when the war start­ed. What are the num­ber of orphans at this point? We don’t know, oth­er than the fact that the num­ber is undoubt­ed­ly much much high­er and will con­tin­ue climb­ing until the war is over. The slaugh­ter has no end in sight. The kind of slaugh­ter that is pre­sum­ably only going to cre­ate more angst about lost “Ukrain­ian blood­lines”. It’s a reminder that part of pro­tect­ing Ukraine for future gen­er­a­tions includes pre­vent­ing the nation from descend­ing into an eth­nona­tion­al­ist cesspool as this con­flict plays out. Ide­al­ly by end­ing the war as soon as pos­si­ble. For the future. Today’s orphans would prob­a­bly appre­ci­ate this too.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 23, 2023, 4:15 pm
  9. How many new recruits will Azov need for the upcom­ing Ukrain­ian counter-offen­sive? That’s the depress­ing­ly offi­cial ques­tion Ukraine’s mil­i­tary appears to be ask­ing now that the Azov brigade has been tapped as one of the six “offen­sive brigades” that will be lead­ing that coun­terof­fen­sive. We are told the unit is hop­ing to recruit 6,500 new fight­ers in antic­i­pa­tion of that fight­ing.

    So do we need to be con­cerned about one of Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions get­ting a new infu­sion of recruits in antic­i­pa­tion of play­ing a lead­ing role in the upcom­ing push to recap­ture ter­ri­to­ry? Not accord­ing to the fol­low Wash­ing­ton Post report that makes the now-tired case that Azov’s extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy is a thing of the past now that the unit is for­mal­ly part of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary. That’s the case not just made by unit lead­ers. Michael Col­borne — an extrem­ism researcher for the intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed Belling­cat who wrote a book about Azov — has joined the ‘Azov is no longer extrem­ist’ choir. Sort of. The way Col­borne now describes it, Azov’s extrem­ist ele­ments have already been dilut­ed with all the new recruits and will be dilut­ed even more with this new round of recruit­ment. Yes, the solu­tion to Azov’s Nazi prob­lem is to grow the unit so large the Nazis become out­num­bered by non-extrem­ists patri­ots who were mere­ly drawn to the unit for its fight­ing prowess. Col­borne omi­nous­ly added, “in Ukraine, the term nation­al­ist or patri­ot describes a heck of a lot of peo­ple right now.”

    Keep in mind that, despite his Belling­cat sta­tus, Col­borne has an excel­lent track record over the past decade of high­light­ing Azov’s extrem­ism. For exam­ple, in July of 2019, Col­borne authored a piece in Balkan Insight describ­ing how the Azov move­ment hosts an annu­al ‘Paneu­ropa’ con­fer­ence focused on build­ing ties with far right groups across Europe. Then, in Sep­tem­ber of 2019, Col­borne had a tweet thread about the Nazi salutes at a neo-Nazi con­cert tak­ing place not far from the Maid­an Square in Kiev. That tweet thread is no longer avail­able since it appears that ALL of Col­borne’s pre-May 2022 tweets have been delet­ed. But it’s still avail­able on the inter­net archive. And in Jan­u­ary of 2022, Col­borne was quot­ed in an arti­cle with the fol­low­ing warn­ing about the poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty a war in Ukraine presents to the far right:

    ...
    “I wor­ry that a new war with Rus­sia could not only help the Azov move­ment, but basi­cal­ly be the wind in its sails that it needs to grow its ranks and influ­ence,” Michael Col­borne, author of From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right and a jour­nal­ist who cov­ers extrem­ism for Belling­cat, told Buz­zFeed News. “A new war or some new inter­ven­tion by Rus­sia could very well pro­vide them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther solid­i­fy their pres­ence in Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics and soci­ety, a fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ty to brand and frame them­selves as the truest defend­ers of the nation and thus fur­ther swat away accu­sa­tions that come from peo­ple like me about their far-right nature.”
    ...

    So a month before the out­break of this con­flict, Col­borne was open­ly warn­ing that Azov was going to turn it into the ‘wind in its sails that it needs to grow its ranks and influ­ence.’ And here we are, a lit­tle over a year lat­er. That’s some pow­er­ful wind.

    We also got a rather con­fus­ing update on the US’s pol­i­cy on arm­ing and train­ing Azov. Accord­ing to an anony­mous State Depart­ment spokesper­son, the US ban on arm­ing and train­ing Azov is at this point of no prac­ti­cal effect because the “Azov Bat­tal­ion” — a non­state “mili­tia group” — has not exist­ed in more than five years. Azov now “is a dif­fer­ent unit” accord­ing to this spokesper­son. So it sounds like the US is not only open to arm­ing and train­ing Azov at this point but has been so for over five years now. Sur­prise.

    Oh, and we got a poten­tial pre­view on one of the tac­tics Azov might use to recap­ture ter­ri­to­ry: Maj. Bohdan “Tavr” Krotevych — in unit’s inter­im com­man­der — cit­ed the First Russ­ian-Chechen War, when Chechen forces cap­tured small Russ­ian towns to use as lever­age to recov­er Russ­ian-held areas. Krotevych sug­gest­ed Ukraine may do the same. Recall the appar­ent cross-bor­der attacks on Russ­ian towns car­ried out by the “Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corp” of Russ­ian neo-Nazis fight­ing for Ukraine. Are we going to see US-trained-and-armed Azov units make sim­i­lar cross-bor­der attacks? We’ll see. For now, it’s time to recruit. Recruit and white­wash:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Ukraine’s Azov brigade races to rebuild ahead of fate­ful fight

    By Mis­sy Ryan, Kos­tiantyn Khu­dov and Alice Mar­tins
    April 26, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EDT

    KYIV, Ukraine — The Azov brigade, hailed by Ukraini­ans for its tenac­i­ty dur­ing Russia’s siege of Mar­i­upol, is scram­bling to rebuild from heavy com­bat loss­es as it seeks to play a mus­cu­lar role in Ukraine’s next major assault.

    The high-pro­file unit is hop­ing to recruit 6,500 new fight­ers who will pro­vide restored com­bat heft even as its lead­ers push for the return of more than 1,000 brigade troops who remain in Rus­sia as pris­on­ers of war.

    “We are ready to lib­er­ate ter­ri­to­ry,” Maj. Bohdan “Tavr” Krotevych, who is the brigade’s inter­im com­man­der and is lead­ing the rebuild­ing effort after his release from Russ­ian cap­tiv­i­ty in the fall, said in an inter­view.

    The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment has des­ig­nat­ed Azov, which recent­ly absorbed oth­er ele­ments of the country’s Nation­al Guard, as one of six “offen­sive brigades” that will help spear­head Ukraine’s attempt to recap­ture Russ­ian-occu­pied areas.

    ...

    Brigade lead­ers are also seek­ing to move past the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Azov’s far-right roots, which has result­ed in the unit being barred from receiv­ing West­ern weapons, poten­tial­ly cur­tail­ing its abil­i­ties.

    The newest recruits are drawn to Azov not for the ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy of its ori­gins but for its proven com­bat skill, brigade lead­ers say.

    “It is a name that, thanks to the defense of Mar­i­upol, became known to the world,” a 28-year-old mas­ter sergeant, who goes by the call sign Maslo, said at a recent train­ing ses­sion out­side Kyiv. “It was known in a cer­tain neg­a­tive way,” Maslo added. “Now it is in a pos­i­tive way because what we do works … The recruits com­ing to us under­stand that.”

    Azov rose to promi­nence after Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s ille­gal seizure of Crimea in 2014, as Ukraine’s ill-equipped mil­i­tary strug­gled to fight back against Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists in the east­ern Don­bas region. Azov, then a vol­un­teer for­ma­tion, had a key role in defend­ing the strate­gic city of Mar­i­upol. The unit was incor­po­rat­ed into Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard lat­er that year.

    After Russia’s Feb­ru­ary 2022 inva­sion, hun­dreds of Azov fight­ers held out for weeks beneath Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant, along with strand­ed civil­ians. They per­sist­ed with­out ade­quate food and med­i­cine amid a mas­sive Russ­ian bomb­ing cam­paign, which ele­vat­ed Azov and oth­er Mar­i­upol defend­ers to what Ukraine’s mil­i­tary com­mand called “heroes of our time.”

    In May, hun­dreds of wound­ed troops were evac­u­at­ed. A few days lat­er, mil­i­tary com­man­ders ordered the remain­ing Azovstal troops to sur­ren­der, end­ing the siege.

    Krotevych, who was among some 900 cap­tured Azov fight­ers, spent the ini­tial days as a pris­on­er of war at Oleniv­ka, a fil­tra­tion cen­ter in Russ­ian-con­trolled Donet­sk region, where sev­er­al months lat­er dozens of Azov fight­ers were killed in an attack Rus­sia and Ukraine blamed on each oth­er.

    Krotevych spent the next four months in soli­tary con­fine­ment near Moscow, until he was released in Sep­tem­ber as part of a major pris­on­er swap bro­kered by Turkey and Sau­di Ara­bia. Under that deal, 215 Ukraini­ans, includ­ing more than 100 Azov fight­ers, and a group of for­eign nation­als were released in exchange for Vik­tor Medved­chuk, a pro-Krem­lin Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion politi­cian, as well as Russ­ian fight­ers.

    Two weeks after his return to Ukraine, Krotevych returned to the unit.

    While most of the released POWS returned to the unit, over 1,000 Azov per­son­nel, includ­ing fight­ers absorbed from anoth­er brigade, remain impris­oned in Rus­sia. They rep­re­sent about a fifth of the rough­ly 6,000 Ukraini­ans now being held there as POWs, Krotevych said.

    Unit lead­ers have unsuc­cess­ful­ly advo­cat­ed more exchanges. “I came to the con­clu­sion that the fastest way to release our pris­on­ers is to take more Russ­ian sol­diers pris­on­er, and to end this war with our vic­to­ry,” Krotevych said.

    In Kyiv, a mas­sive ban­ner hang­ing on Khreshchatyk Street in the city’s cen­ter that reads “Free Azovstal defend­ers” is a tes­ta­ment to the feel­ings of many Ukraini­ans. Yet the unit’s con­duct against Rus­sia has not entire­ly eclipsed the con­tro­ver­sy around its ultra­na­tion­al­ist his­to­ry and links to fig­ures who have espoused xeno­pho­bic and racist views.

    Azov lead­ers have denied alle­ga­tions of fas­cism and racism.

    Still, Azov has long fea­tured in mes­sag­ing by Putin and oth­er Russ­ian lead­ers about their goal of “de-Naz­i­fy­ing” the coun­try. In 2022, Russia’s top court offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed Azov a ter­ror­ist group.

    Krotevych said the unit has no polit­i­cal ambi­tions and con­ducts inves­ti­ga­tions into any cas­es of far-right extrem­ism it iden­ti­fies. “As a mil­i­tary unit, we share the posi­tion of the state and the gov­ern­ment,” he said.

    Krotevych said that Rus­sia had labeled all of those who have tak­en up arms to defend Ukraine as dan­ger­ous “nation­al­ists.”

    Michael Col­borne, who wrote a book about the Azov move­ment and leads Bellingcat’s work on the glob­al far right, said the unit’s focus appears to have shift­ed over time from ide­ol­o­gy to mil­i­tary effec­tive­ness.

    He said that any remain­ing far-right ele­ments with­in Azov prob­a­bly would con­tin­ue to be “dilut­ed” as the unit grows and that the issue had become less impor­tant as Ukraine con­fronts an exis­ten­tial threat. “In Ukraine, the term nation­al­ist or patri­ot describes a heck of a lot of peo­ple right now,” Col­borne said.

    Ear­li­er this year, Meta, the par­ent com­pa­ny for Face­book, removed Azov from a list of dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, cit­ing a dis­tinc­tion between the mil­i­tary group and the polit­i­cal move­ment.

    Despite Azov’s appar­ent evo­lu­tion, it receives vir­tu­al­ly no weapon­ry from West­ern nations includ­ing the Unit­ed States.

    Recent U.S. laws pro­hib­it the pro­vi­sion of “arms, train­ing or oth­er assis­tance to the Azov Bat­tal­ion.” The mea­sures come as law­mak­ers in both par­ties call for prop­er over­sight of the huge amount of aid going to Ukraine.

    A State Depart­ment spokesper­son, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty under rules set by the depart­ment, said the recent pro­hi­bi­tions had no prac­ti­cal effect because the Azov Bat­tal­ion — which the depart­ment described as a non­state “mili­tia group” — has not exist­ed in more than five years.

    Azov now “is a dif­fer­ent unit,” the spokesper­son said. How­ev­er, he added: “Ukraine has agreed not to direct U.S. sup­port to any iden­ti­fied units of con­cern” such as Azov.

    Sarah Har­ri­son, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon lawyer now at the Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group, said the State Depart­ment was being “too cute by half” in draw­ing a dis­tinc­tion between Azov’s para­mil­i­tary past and its cur­rent sta­tus. But Har­ri­son also said that law­mak­ers should have been more pre­cise giv­en that they clear­ly did not intend to sin­gle out a unit that no longer exists.

    ...

    Maslo, who was also cap­tured by Rus­sia last year and spent a month in the hos­pi­tal recov­er­ing from injuries he suf­fered, said Azov’s resource­ful­ness could help com­pen­sate for its lack of advanced weapon­ry.

    Azov, he said, “will invent some­thing out of noth­ing.”

    Unit lead­ers say recruit­ment is going well but declined to dis­close pre­cise num­bers. Ful­ly achiev­ing those goals may be dif­fi­cult more than a year into the fight, after Ukraine’s mil­i­tary has tak­en heavy loss­es.

    “The major­i­ty would assume that the war will end quick­ly or some­body else will win it for us. This didn’t hap­pen,” Krotevych said. “So, we’re try­ing to explain to the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try that we need them to help us lib­er­ate ter­ri­to­ries.”

    Asked about the com­ing offen­sive, Krotevych cit­ed the First Russ­ian-Chechen War, when Chechen forces adopt­ed a strat­e­gy of cap­tur­ing small Russ­ian towns to use as lever­age to recov­er Russ­ian-held areas. He sug­gest­ed Ukraine may do the same.

    He said that Azov would draw on the ordeals of 2022 in future fight­ing. “Our Azovstal expe­ri­ence tells us that there are no sit­u­a­tions with no way out,” he said.

    ———–

    “Ukraine’s Azov brigade races to rebuild ahead of fate­ful fight” By Mis­sy Ryan, Kos­tiantyn Khu­dov and Alice Mar­tins; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 04/26/2023

    “The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment has des­ig­nat­ed Azov, which recent­ly absorbed oth­er ele­ments of the country’s Nation­al Guard, as one of six “offen­sive brigades” that will help spear­head Ukraine’s attempt to recap­ture Russ­ian-occu­pied areas.”

    Azov has been des­ig­nat­ed to be part of the tip of the spear in Ukraine’s expect­ed counter-offen­sive lat­er this year, one of six brigades. It’s offi­cial. And that means the unit has big recruit­ment goals too. And while Azov has its rep­u­ta­tion as a bas­tion of far right ide­olo­gies, that rep­u­ta­tion is now bur­nished with the “heroes of our time” acclaim the unit received in response to its ulti­mate­ly doomed hold out in Mar­i­upol:

    ...
    The high-pro­file unit is hop­ing to recruit 6,500 new fight­ers who will pro­vide restored com­bat heft even as its lead­ers push for the return of more than 1,000 brigade troops who remain in Rus­sia as pris­on­ers of war.

    “We are ready to lib­er­ate ter­ri­to­ry,” Maj. Bohdan “Tavr” Krotevych, who is the brigade’s inter­im com­man­der and is lead­ing the rebuild­ing effort after his release from Russ­ian cap­tiv­i­ty in the fall, said in an inter­view.

    ...

    Brigade lead­ers are also seek­ing to move past the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Azov’s far-right roots, which has result­ed in the unit being barred from receiv­ing West­ern weapons, poten­tial­ly cur­tail­ing its abil­i­ties.

    The newest recruits are drawn to Azov not for the ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy of its ori­gins but for its proven com­bat skill, brigade lead­ers say.

    “It is a name that, thanks to the defense of Mar­i­upol, became known to the world,” a 28-year-old mas­ter sergeant, who goes by the call sign Maslo, said at a recent train­ing ses­sion out­side Kyiv. “It was known in a cer­tain neg­a­tive way,” Maslo added. “Now it is in a pos­i­tive way because what we do works … The recruits com­ing to us under­stand that.”

    ...

    After Russia’s Feb­ru­ary 2022 inva­sion, hun­dreds of Azov fight­ers held out for weeks beneath Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant, along with strand­ed civil­ians. They per­sist­ed with­out ade­quate food and med­i­cine amid a mas­sive Russ­ian bomb­ing cam­paign, which ele­vat­ed Azov and oth­er Mar­i­upol defend­ers to what Ukraine’s mil­i­tary com­mand called “heroes of our time.”
    ...

    And that dri­ve to fill Azov with new recruits in antic­i­pa­tion of an upcom­ing counter-offen­sive brings us to the appar­ent reap­praisal of Azov’s extrem­ist ori­en­ta­tion by Belling­cat research Michael Col­borne. First Col­borne describes Azov as hav­ing ‘shift­ed focus’ from ide­ol­o­gy to mil­i­tary effec­tive­ness. But then he sug­gests that the far right ele­ments inside Azov are get­ting “dilut­ed” with all the new recruits and that process is only going to con­tin­ue as Ukraini­ans ral­ly around a shared exis­ten­tial threat. Col­borne then tries to draw an equiv­o­ca­tion between Azov’s fas­cism and the patri­ot­ic nation­al­ism that has swept the coun­try, adding, “In Ukraine, the term nation­al­ist or patri­ot describes a heck of a lot of peo­ple right now”:

    ...
    In Kyiv, a mas­sive ban­ner hang­ing on Khreshchatyk Street in the city’s cen­ter that reads “Free Azovstal defend­ers” is a tes­ta­ment to the feel­ings of many Ukraini­ans. Yet the unit’s con­duct against Rus­sia has not entire­ly eclipsed the con­tro­ver­sy around its ultra­na­tion­al­ist his­to­ry and links to fig­ures who have espoused xeno­pho­bic and racist views.

    Azov lead­ers have denied alle­ga­tions of fas­cism and racism.

    Still, Azov has long fea­tured in mes­sag­ing by Putin and oth­er Russ­ian lead­ers about their goal of “de-Naz­i­fy­ing” the coun­try. In 2022, Russia’s top court offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed Azov a ter­ror­ist group.

    Krotevych said the unit has no polit­i­cal ambi­tions and con­ducts inves­ti­ga­tions into any cas­es of far-right extrem­ism it iden­ti­fies. “As a mil­i­tary unit, we share the posi­tion of the state and the gov­ern­ment,” he said.

    Krotevych said that Rus­sia had labeled all of those who have tak­en up arms to defend Ukraine as dan­ger­ous “nation­al­ists.”

    Michael Col­borne, who wrote a book about the Azov move­ment and leads Bellingcat’s work on the glob­al far right, said the unit’s focus appears to have shift­ed over time from ide­ol­o­gy to mil­i­tary effec­tive­ness.

    He said that any remain­ing far-right ele­ments with­in Azov prob­a­bly would con­tin­ue to be “dilut­ed” as the unit grows and that the issue had become less impor­tant as Ukraine con­fronts an exis­ten­tial threat. “In Ukraine, the term nation­al­ist or patri­ot describes a heck of a lot of peo­ple right now,” Col­borne said.
    ...

    Now, when we see the move by Meta back in Jan­u­ary to remove Azov from the list of dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, recall how this isn’t the first time Meta lift restric­tions specif­i­cal­ly for Azov. It was late Feb­ru­ary of 2022, days after the start of the con­flict, when Meta lift­ed a ban on posts prais­ing Azov on the bat­tle­field. Remov­ing Azov was the list of dan­ger­ous groups is just the next step in that white­wash­ing process:

    ...
    Ear­li­er this year, Meta, the par­ent com­pa­ny for Face­book, removed Azov from a list of dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, cit­ing a dis­tinc­tion between the mil­i­tary group and the polit­i­cal move­ment.
    ...

    And then there’s the utter­ly con­fus­ing mes­sag­ing com­ing out of the US of gov­ern­ment on whether or not the US is arm­ing and train­ing Azov: an anony­mous State Depart­ment spokesper­son assert­ed that the pro­hi­bi­tions on the arm­ing of Azov had not prac­ti­cal effect because the Azov Bat­tal­ion has­n’t exist­ed in more than five years and is now a dif­fer­ent unit. That sure sounds like an admis­sion that, yes, the US is arm­ing and train­ing Azov:

    ...
    Despite Azov’s appar­ent evo­lu­tion, it receives vir­tu­al­ly no weapon­ry from West­ern nations includ­ing the Unit­ed States.

    Recent U.S. laws pro­hib­it the pro­vi­sion of “arms, train­ing or oth­er assis­tance to the Azov Bat­tal­ion.” The mea­sures come as law­mak­ers in both par­ties call for prop­er over­sight of the huge amount of aid going to Ukraine.

    A State Depart­ment spokesper­son, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty under rules set by the depart­ment, said the recent pro­hi­bi­tions had no prac­ti­cal effect because the Azov Bat­tal­ion — which the depart­ment described as a non­state “mili­tia group” — has not exist­ed in more than five years.

    Azov now “is a dif­fer­ent unit,” the spokesper­son said. How­ev­er, he added: “Ukraine has agreed not to direct U.S. sup­port to any iden­ti­fied units of con­cern” such as Azov.

    Sarah Har­ri­son, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon lawyer now at the Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group, said the State Depart­ment was being “too cute by half” in draw­ing a dis­tinc­tion between Azov’s para­mil­i­tary past and its cur­rent sta­tus. But Har­ri­son also said that law­mak­ers should have been more pre­cise giv­en that they clear­ly did not intend to sin­gle out a unit that no longer exists.
    ...

    And that appar­ent arm­ing and train­ing of Azov by the US brings us to the rather omi­nous puta­tive plan for recap­tur­ing ter­ri­to­ry: Azov’s com­mand­ing offi­cer cit­ed exam­ples from the Chechen war of cap­tur­ing small Russ­ian towns for use as lever­age. This is a good time recall the appar­ent cross-bor­der attacks on Russ­ian towns car­ried out by the “Russ­ian Vol­un­teer Corp” of Russ­ian neo-Nazis fight­ing for Ukraine. Might we see some­thing sim­i­lar from the US-armed-and-trained Azov? It sounds pos­si­ble at this point:

    ...
    Asked about the com­ing offen­sive, Krotevych cit­ed the First Russ­ian-Chechen War, when Chechen forces adopt­ed a strat­e­gy of cap­tur­ing small Russ­ian towns to use as lever­age to recov­er Russ­ian-held areas. He sug­gest­ed Ukraine may do the same.

    He said that Azov would draw on the ordeals of 2022 in future fight­ing. “Our Azovstal expe­ri­ence tells us that there are no sit­u­a­tions with no way out,” he sai
    ...

    “Our Azovstal expe­ri­ence tells us that there are no sit­u­a­tions with no way out”

    It’s an inter­est­ing sen­ti­ment giv­en that Azov did ulti­mate­ly lose Mar­i­upol. But that stand­off did yield big gains. For Azov at least in terms of pub­lic rela­tions. It rais­es the ques­tion of what sort of addi­tion­al glo­ry will the unit earn in the upcom­ing counter-offen­sive.

    But let’s also keep in mind that we’re talk­ing about a unit with a track record of com­mit­ting civil­ian atroc­i­ties. And if this planned counter-offen­sive goes well for Ukraine it’s inevitably going to include the cap­ture of ter­ri­to­ry filled with civil­ian sep­a­ratists. What sort of bat­tle­field ‘glo­ry’ will the unit earn while recap­tur­ing and occu­py­ing sep­a­ratist towns? We’ll see. Maybe Azov will achieve grand bat­tle­field vic­to­ries or maybe it’s going to be more atroc­i­ties. But at this point it’s pret­ty clear Azov has already won the bat­tle for hearts and minds. Just as Michael Col­borne warned short­ly before Azov won him over.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 27, 2023, 4:02 pm
  10. Who attacked the Krem­lin? Not Ukraine, that’s for sure. Maybe it was Rus­sia? At least that’s the response we’re get­ting from Kiev fol­low­ing a pair of drone attacks that result­ed in now-viral videos show­ing explo­sions on the dome of the Krem­lin.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Russ­ian dis­si­dent-in-exile Ilya Pono­marev gave a dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion of the attacks and sug­gest­ed they were the actions of a Russ­ian par­ti­san group. Recall how Pono­marev was the fig­ure who took the lead in cel­e­brat­ing and tak­ing cred­it for the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­i­na. Also recall how Pono­marev has been warn­ing that Rus­sia is fac­ing a coup one way or anoth­er. It will either be a coup led by Wag­n­er Group founder Yevge­ny Prigozhin or a coup led by him.

    So we have Kiev issue blan­ket denials while Pono­marev seemed con­fi­dent it was a par­ti­san group behind this. But as we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er major piece of con­text here: the April 6 “cash prize” of $549,000 offered by Ukraine oli­garch Volodymyr Yat­senko to any­one who man­ages to “land” a drone inside Moscow’s Red Square dur­ing the upcom­ing May 9 Vic­to­ry Day parade cel­e­brat­ing the Sovi­et Union’s defeat over Nazi Ger­many.

    Yep, a planned attack on the cel­e­bra­tion of the defeat of Nazi Ger­many. But the sym­bol­ism behind this attack is even worse when you con­sid­er that Yat­senko hap­pens to be a close ally of Ihor Kolo­moisky, the infa­mous patron of not just Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky but also the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. That’s the guy arrang­ing for drone attacks a day cel­e­brat­ing the defeat of Nazi Ger­many.

    Yat­senko even hint­ed dur­ing his April 6 “cash prize” announce­ment that his own weapons com­pa­ny was already “warm­ing up” for its own planned May 9 attack on Red Square. So we have to ask: did the Krem­lin just get attack as part of a “warm up” for a Vic­to­ry Day attack? We don’t know, but that seems like a much more plau­si­ble sce­nario than the idea that Rus­sia attacked itself:

    CNN

    Kyiv denies involve­ment in alleged Krem­lin drone attack

    By Sebas­t­ian Shuk­la, Nathan Hodge, Matthew Chance and Katha­ri­na Krebs, CNN
    Updat­ed 5:48 PM EDT, Wed May 3, 2023

    Rus­sia claimed Ukraine launched an attempt to kill Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin with a drone strike on the Krem­lin overnight on Wednes­day, an extra­or­di­nary alle­ga­tion that was met with force­ful denials in Kyiv.

    The Krem­lin said the attack was foiled and the alleged drones destroyed. Video that appeared on social media shows a bright flash and a puff of smoke over a part of the Krem­lin, the offi­cial res­i­dence of the Russ­ian pres­i­dent and the most potent sym­bol of pow­er in Moscow.

    In a state­ment, the Krem­lin said it regard­ed the alleged attack as ter­ror­ism and a delib­er­ate attempt on Putin’s life. “Rus­sia reserves the right to take retal­ia­to­ry mea­sures where and when it sees fit,” it added.

    Ukraine denied involve­ment in the alleged strike. “As Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky has stat­ed numer­ous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its dis­pos­al to free its own ter­ri­to­ry, not to attack oth­ers,” the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial spokesman, Sergiy Nyky­forov, told CNN on Wednes­day.

    US offi­cials said they were still assess­ing the inci­dent, and had no infor­ma­tion about who might have been respon­si­ble. What­ev­er the truth, any admis­sion of a secu­ri­ty breach at the heart of the Krem­lin is remark­able.

    Moscow said the alleged attack took place in the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day. The Russ­ian pres­i­dent was not in the build­ing at the time, Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said.

    CNN analy­sis of video show­ing the inci­dent sup­port the Kremlin’s claim that two drones were flown above the Krem­lin ear­ly Wednes­day, but did not show evi­dence of Ukrain­ian involve­ment:

    A video that appeared to show smoke ris­ing from the Krem­lin sur­faced on a local neigh­bor­hood chan­nel on social media plat­form Telegram at 2:37 a.m. local time Wednes­day. The first reports of the inci­dent cit­ing the Krem­lin came via Russ­ian state media TASS and RIA around 2:33 p.m. local time – around 12 hours lat­er.

    Short­ly after the first media reports, anoth­er video appear­ing to show the moment a drone explod­ed above the Krem­lin began cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly on social media. In the video, the appar­ent drone seems to fly towards the building’s domed roof, fol­lowed by what looks like a small explo­sion.

    In this video, two peo­ple appear to be climb­ing on the dome hold­ing flash­lights, and can be seen duck­ing down just before the moment of the explo­sion. The peo­ple climb­ing the dome are not present in the first of these videos, but appear in the sec­ond, sug­gest­ing they were respond­ing to the fire caused by the first drone at the time the sub­se­quent drone appeared.

    An ‘attempt on the President’s life’

    The Krem­lin Press Ser­vice has called the pur­port­ed drone attack an “attempt on the President’s life,” said it was an “act of ter­ror­ism” and blamed Ukraine.

    But Kyiv said that accu­sa­tion of ter­ror­ism was bet­ter direct­ed at Rus­sia. “A ter­ror attack destroyed blocks of res­i­den­tial build­ings in Dnipro and Uman, or a mis­sile at a line at Kram­a­torsk rail sta­tion and many oth­er tragedies,” said Nyky­forov, the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial spokesman.

    “What hap­pened in Moscow is obvi­ous­ly about esca­lat­ing the mood on the eve of May 9.” That day is known as “Vic­to­ry Day” inside Rus­sia, com­mem­o­rat­ing the Sovi­et Union’s role in defeat­ing Nazi Ger­many in World War II.

    “It’s a trick to be expect­ed from our oppo­nents,” he said.

    Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial advis­er Mykhai­lo Podolyak also denied Kyiv had any involve­ment and said it made no sense for Ukraine to have car­ried out the alleged strike.

    “First of all, it absolute­ly does not solve any mil­i­tary goals. And it is very unhelp­ful in the con­text of prepar­ing for our offen­sive actions. And it def­i­nite­ly does not change any­thing at a bat­tle­field,” he said. “This would allow Rus­sia to jus­ti­fy mass strikes on Ukrain­ian cities, civil­ians and infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties. Why would we need that? What’s the log­ic?”

    Podolyak also said Moscow’s claims were an attempt at con­trol­ling the nar­ra­tive ahead of a much-antic­i­pat­ed Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive.

    “Rus­sia with­out a doubt is very afraid of Ukraine start­ing an offen­sive on the front line and is try­ing to seize the ini­tia­tive, dis­tract the atten­tion and cre­ate dis­trac­tions of a cat­a­stroph­ic nature,” he said. “So, Russ­ian state­ments on such staged oper­a­tions need to be tak­en as an attempt to cre­ate pre­text for a large-scale ter­ror­ist attack in Ukraine.”

    ‘New line of oper­a­tion’

    For­mer Russ­ian offi­cial Ilya Pono­marev told CNN that he believed the attack was the work of what he calls Russ­ian par­ti­sans, not the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.

    “It’s one of Russ­ian par­ti­san groups. I can­not say more, as they have not yet pub­licly claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

    Pono­marev, who now lives in exile in Ukraine and Poland, was the only Russ­ian law­mak­er to vote against the annex­a­tion of Crimea by Rus­sia in 2014, and since been includ­ed on a list of ter­ror­ist sus­pects, accord­ing to the Russ­ian author­i­ties.

    Accord­ing to Pono­marev, Russ­ian par­ti­san groups are typ­i­cal­ly com­posed of “young­sters, stu­dents, res­i­dents of large cities. I am aware of the par­ti­san activ­i­ty in approx­i­mate­ly 40 cities across Rus­sia.”

    Accord­ing to Pono­marev, the drone attacks inside Rus­sia would be a “new line of oper­a­tion” for such groups.

    “What Putin is sell­ing to the nation and espe­cial­ly to the elites is the feel­ing of invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty. And par­ti­sans are ruin­ing both. They are actu­al­ly say­ing the war is here and you guys, you per­son­al­ly, are not safe,” said Pono­marev.

    A US offi­cial said Wash­ing­ton had no warn­ing about the alleged drone attack. “What­ev­er hap­pened, there was no advanced warn­ing,” the offi­cial told CNN, adding that author­i­ties are still try­ing to find out more.

    Anoth­er US offi­cial told CNN they are still work­ing to assess Russia’s claims, and have not yet val­i­dat­ed the Krem­lin asser­tion that Ukraine tried to assas­si­nate Putin.

    ...

    In his response to the attack, Russ­ian State Duma Speak­er Vyach­eslav Volodin called for the use of weapons capa­ble of “stop­ping and destroy­ing the Kyiv ter­ror­ist regime.”

    Kyiv is approx­i­mate­ly 862 kilo­me­ters (about 535 miles) from Moscow. Rus­sia has accused Ukraine of mul­ti­ple attempt­ed drone strikes deep inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry, includ­ing one ear­li­er this year when the gov­er­nor of the Moscow region claimed a Ukrain­ian drone had crashed near the vil­lage of Gubas­to­vo, south­east of the cap­i­tal.

    ———–

    “Kyiv denies involve­ment in alleged Krem­lin drone attack” by Sebas­t­ian Shuk­la, Nathan Hodge, Matthew Chance and Katha­ri­na Krebs; CNN; 05/03/2023

    Ukraine denied involve­ment in the alleged strike. “As Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky has stat­ed numer­ous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its dis­pos­al to free its own ter­ri­to­ry, not to attack oth­ers,” the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial spokesman, Sergiy Nyky­forov, told CNN on Wednes­day.”

    “It was­n’t us!” That was Kiev’s response to the Krem­lin drone attack. But Kiev isn’t just deny­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. It’s also assert­ing this is part of a Russ­ian plot to “esca­late the mood” in Russ­ian in the lead up to Rus­si­a’s May 9 hol­i­day cel­e­brat­ing the Sovi­et Union’s vic­to­ry or Nazi Ger­many:

    ...
    The Krem­lin Press Ser­vice has called the pur­port­ed drone attack an “attempt on the President’s life,” said it was an “act of ter­ror­ism” and blamed Ukraine.

    But Kyiv said that accu­sa­tion of ter­ror­ism was bet­ter direct­ed at Rus­sia. “A ter­ror attack destroyed blocks of res­i­den­tial build­ings in Dnipro and Uman, or a mis­sile at a line at Kram­a­torsk rail sta­tion and many oth­er tragedies,” said Nyky­forov, the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial spokesman.

    “What hap­pened in Moscow is obvi­ous­ly about esca­lat­ing the mood on the eve of May 9.” That day is known as “Vic­to­ry Day” inside Rus­sia, com­mem­o­rat­ing the Sovi­et Union’s role in defeat­ing Nazi Ger­many in World War II.

    “It’s a trick to be expect­ed from our oppo­nents,” he said.

    Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial advis­er Mykhai­lo Podolyak also denied Kyiv had any involve­ment and said it made no sense for Ukraine to have car­ried out the alleged strike.

    “First of all, it absolute­ly does not solve any mil­i­tary goals. And it is very unhelp­ful in the con­text of prepar­ing for our offen­sive actions. And it def­i­nite­ly does not change any­thing at a bat­tle­field,” he said. “This would allow Rus­sia to jus­ti­fy mass strikes on Ukrain­ian cities, civil­ians and infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties. Why would we need that? What’s the log­ic?”

    Podolyak also said Moscow’s claims were an attempt at con­trol­ling the nar­ra­tive ahead of a much-antic­i­pat­ed Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive.

    “Rus­sia with­out a doubt is very afraid of Ukraine start­ing an offen­sive on the front line and is try­ing to seize the ini­tia­tive, dis­tract the atten­tion and cre­ate dis­trac­tions of a cat­a­stroph­ic nature,” he said. “So, Russ­ian state­ments on such staged oper­a­tions need to be tak­en as an attempt to cre­ate pre­text for a large-scale ter­ror­ist attack in Ukraine.”
    ...

    But then we have some­what dif­fer­ing claims from Russ­ian dis­si­dent-in-exile Ilya Pono­marev, who sug­gests this isn’t a Krem­lin false flag, but rather the actions of a Russ­ian par­ti­san group. Recall how Pono­marev was the fig­ure who took the lead in cel­e­brat­ing and tak­ing cred­it for the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­i­na. Also recall how Pono­marev has been warn­ing that Rus­sia is fac­ing a coup one way or anoth­er. It will either be a coup led by Wag­n­er Group founder Yevge­ny Prigozhin or a coup led by him. Pono­marev sure seemed con­fi­dent it was one of those par­ti­san groups behind this:

    ...
    ‘New line of oper­a­tion’

    For­mer Russ­ian offi­cial Ilya Pono­marev told CNN that he believed the attack was the work of what he calls Russ­ian par­ti­sans, not the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.

    “It’s one of Russ­ian par­ti­san groups. I can­not say more, as they have not yet pub­licly claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

    Pono­marev, who now lives in exile in Ukraine and Poland, was the only Russ­ian law­mak­er to vote against the annex­a­tion of Crimea by Rus­sia in 2014, and since been includ­ed on a list of ter­ror­ist sus­pects, accord­ing to the Russ­ian author­i­ties.

    Accord­ing to Pono­marev, Russ­ian par­ti­san groups are typ­i­cal­ly com­posed of “young­sters, stu­dents, res­i­dents of large cities. I am aware of the par­ti­san activ­i­ty in approx­i­mate­ly 40 cities across Rus­sia.”

    Accord­ing to Pono­marev, the drone attacks inside Rus­sia would be a “new line of oper­a­tion” for such groups.

    “What Putin is sell­ing to the nation and espe­cial­ly to the elites is the feel­ing of invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty. And par­ti­sans are ruin­ing both. They are actu­al­ly say­ing the war is here and you guys, you per­son­al­ly, are not safe,” said Pono­marev.
    ...

    All in all, it’s not exact­ly a com­pelling denial com­ing from Kiev. Although, as the fol­low­ing Gray­zone arti­cle describes, there real­ly might be an excep­tion­al­ly high inter­est from numer­ous par­ties, not just Kiev mil­i­tary units, in strik­ing Moscow with drones right now. That’s thanks to the $549,000 cash prize offer issued on Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion on April 6 by oli­garch Volodymyr Yat­senko to any nation­al weapons pro­duc­er that man­ages to land a drone inside Red Square dur­ing the May 9 Vic­to­ry Day parade. Yat­senko even hint­ed that his own weapons com­pa­ny was “warm­ing up” for the event. Was this lat­est drone attack part of that “warm up”? And if so, what does that tell us to expect on May 9:

    The Gray­zone

    Ukrain­ian banker offers cash for drone ter­ror in Rus­sia

    ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN
    MAY 2, 2023

    Days before a failed drone assas­si­na­tion tar­get­ing Putin, Ukrain­ian bank­ing baron Volodymyr Yat­senko offered a $500,000 boun­ty to any weapons mak­er able to land a drone in Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s upcom­ing Vic­to­ry Day parade.

    On April 23, a Ukrain­ian drone laden with 30 Cana­di­an-made C4 explo­sive blocks crashed near Rud­ne­vo Indus­tri­al Park in Moscow. Ukraine-based oper­a­tors deployed the 37 LB arse­nal in a failed bid to assas­si­nate Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, who was sched­uled to vis­it Rud­ne­vo that day.

    The drone ulti­mate­ly failed to hit its tar­get, crash­ing rough­ly 12 miles from its intend­ed des­ti­na­tion. Russ­ian media report­ed author­i­ties dis­cov­ered three sim­i­lar unmanned air­crafts in the sur­round­ing area. By the time the Cana­di­an-man­u­fac­tured bombs arrived in Moscow, the gov­ern­ment in Ottawa had pro­vid­ed Kiev with near­ly 6 bil­lion dol­lars worth of aid to sup­port Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s mil­i­tary.

    A Ukrain­ian UJ-22 air­borne drone stuffed with explo­sives fell in the Moscow region. pic.twitter.com/ORTyyM4Edx— Sprit­er (@Spriter99880) April 24, 2023

    The Ukrain­ian UJ-22 drone’s flight orig­i­nat­ed in the country’s Kharkov region. Yuriy Roma­nenko, co-founder of a think tank with close ties to Kiev’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, cred­it­ed Ukraine’s Secret Ser­vice (SBU) with orches­trat­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt. Roma­nenko wrote on Twit­ter: “Last week, our intel­li­gence offi­cers received infor­ma­tion about Putin’s trip to the indus­tri­al park in Rud­ne­vo… Accord­ing­ly, ours launched a kamikaze drone, which flew through all the air defens­es of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, and fell not far from the indus­tri­al park.”

    ?????, ?? ??? ???????? ?????? ??????? ? ????? ??????? ??????? ?? ??????, ?? ?? ?????????? ???-???, ???? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ???. ?? ??????? ?????? ???? ?????????? ???????? ?????????? ? ??????? ?????? ? ?????????????? ???? ? ???????. ??????? ???? ?????????? ????? ??????? ??… pic.twitter.com/F2u8kClhPO— Yuriy Roma­nenko (@shan_yan) April 24, 2023

    “Putin, we are get­ting clos­er,” Roma­nenko warned.

    The drone was car­ry­ing m112 explo­sive charges, which are used by sev­er­al states includ­ing Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, and the Unit­ed King­dom. Accord­ing to Russ­ian media, the explo­sives recov­ered from the botched attack were of Cana­di­an ori­gin.

    The failed attempt on Putin’s life came amidst a wave of drone incur­sions into Russ­ian air­space in recent months. A day after the unsuc­cess­ful April 23 offen­sive, the Russ­ian out­let SHOT record­ed 10 drone attacks in the Bel­go­rod bor­der region, some of which includ­ed French LU-213 frag­men­ta­tion grenades and Amer­i­can-made Switch­blade drones. The Switch­blade has been used in pre­vi­ous air assaults on the region as well.

    The uptick in drone attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry fol­lowed Kiev’s July 2022 launch of an “Army of Drones” cam­paign, an offi­cial effort to raise funds, dubbed “dro-nations,” to assist Ukraine’s pro­cure­ment of for­eign-pro­duced, unmanned air­crafts.

    [Screen­shot from Ukrain­ian World Con­gress web­site urg­ing vis­i­tors to “dronate” to their cause]

    The fundrais­ing push, which counts the West­ern-backed online troll farm, NAFO, and the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress as for­mal part­ners, has enlist­ed famed Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, as its top brand ambas­sador.

    [Star Wars actor Mark Hamill pos­es as the offi­cial face of Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” fundrais­er]

    “Hon­ored to be an Ambas­sador for the Army of Drones and to help Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy and the peo­ple of Ukraine in any way pos­si­ble,” Hamill tweet­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022, attach­ing a pho­to of him­self on a video call with Ukraine’s pres­i­dent.

    Hon­ored to be an Ambas­sador for the Army of Drones and to help Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy and the peo­ple of Ukraine in any way pos­si­ble ????@ZelenskyyUA @U24_gov_ua pic.twitter.com/1JafSR7Nny— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022

    The covert nature of Ukrain­ian drone attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry makes them dif­fi­cult to tal­ly on an author­i­ta­tive basis. A reporter for the British state-fund­ed BBC pressed a Kiev offi­cial to pro­vide such data to no avail while par­tic­i­pat­ing in a “a train­ing ses­sion for Ukraine’s lat­est group of drone pilots in a secret loca­tion on the out­skirts of Kyiv.” The BBC filed its dis­patch from the heart of Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” on April 25, just two days after the alleged SBU-direct­ed aer­i­al assas­si­na­tion attempt on Russia’s pres­i­dent.

    Lead­ing Kiev’s “dro-nation” cam­paign is Ukraine’s Min­is­ter for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Mykhai­lo Fedorov, who “makes no attempt to hide the dead­ly nature of these drones designed to smash into tar­gets like sol­diers or tanks,” accord­ing to the BBC.

    ...

    Accused Ukrain­ian embez­zler offers boun­ty for drone ter­ror inside Rus­sia

    On April 6, Ukrain­ian finance and weapon’s indus­try mag­nate, Volodymyr Yat­senko, appeared on the Kiev-based TSN net­work and offered a cash prize worth approx­i­mate­ly $549,000 USD to any nation­al weapons pro­duc­er that man­ages to land a drone inside Moscow’s Red Square dur­ing Russia’s upcom­ing Vic­to­ry Day cel­e­bra­tion..

    Russia’s annu­al Vic­to­ry Day com­mem­o­ra­tion marks the anniver­sary of Nazi Germany’s 1945 sur­ren­der to the Sovi­et Red Army. Each May 9, mil­lions of Russ­ian cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate in march­es through­out the coun­try to hon­or their nation’s tri­umph over fas­cism. In Moscow, cit­i­zens and gov­ern­ment offi­cials gath­er in Red Square to view musi­cal per­for­mances by Russia’s nation­al army band and a flam­boy­ant parade of the country’s troops and mil­i­tary hard­ware. The cer­e­mo­ny typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures speech­es from the Russ­ian pres­i­dent and Com­man­der of Russia’s Armed Forces as well.

    Moscow announced the can­cel­la­tion of Vic­to­ry Day parades in its bor­der region this April, fol­low­ing a surge of drone activ­i­ty in the ter­ri­to­ry through­out the first months of this year.

    On May 2, The Guardian down­played threats of Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist vio­lence in Rus­sia, stat­ing that while a “Ukrain­ian drone attack on Red Square dur­ing the Vic­to­ry Day mil­i­tary parade would be humil­i­at­ing for Putin,” his gov­ern­ment was not call­ing off Vic­to­ry Day march­es “out of con­cern for pub­lic safe­ty,” but due to a “para­noid obses­sion” that cit­i­zens may hijack the ral­lies to make state­ments about the cur­rent war.

    The Guardian offered no evi­dence to sup­port its por­tray­al of Putin as an irra­tional actor. What’s more, the cen­ter-left British paper neglect­ed to men­tion Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” cam­paign, or the fact that Yat­senko, a pow­er­ful Ukrain­ian oli­garch, is offer­ing a cash prize for an aer­i­al assault on the Red Square event.

    Char­ac­ter­iz­ing the upcom­ing the Red Square cel­e­bra­tion as a “very legit­i­mate” mil­i­tary tar­get dur­ing his April 6 inter­view with TSN, Yat­senko revealed that his own weapons com­pa­ny, Dovbush, is already “warm­ing up” for the event. He pro­ceed­ed to cred­it Dovbush with oper­at­ing a drone dis­cov­ered near a rail­way in New Moscow on March 28. At the time, Ukrain­ian media report­ed the drone was inscribed with Kiev’s Nazi-era bat­tle­cry, “Glo­ry to Ukraine.”

    Describ­ing the March flight as tri­al run for Vic­to­ry Day, Yat­senko insist­ed that if Dovbush suc­cess­ful­ly lands a drone in Red Square on May 9, “accord­ing to the law, I will not pay the prize to myself.”

    Con­cerns that Yat­senko may not adhere to domes­tic finan­cial reg­u­la­tions with­in “the most cor­rupt nation in Europe” were not unwar­rant­ed. The bank­ing tycoon estab­lished his career work­ing for Pri­vat­bank, a Ukrain­ian finan­cial insti­tu­tion estab­lished in the after­math of the Sovi­et Union’s 1991 col­lapse. Ukraine’s post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment nation­al­ized the bank in 2016, after $5.5 bil­lion mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared from its cof­fers. An invest­ment banker lat­er accused Yat­senko of orches­trat­ing the with­draw­al, telling the US-backed Radio Free Europe out­let he was “very impor­tant in mat­ters relat­ed to the nation­al­iza­tion of Pri­vat­bank, as he head­ed the direc­tion of cor­po­rate lend­ing.” The source, Ser­hii Fur­sa, charged Yat­senko with fun­nel­ing the cash to Privatbank’s own­ers, name­ly Ukrain­ian oli­garch Igor Kolo­moisky: the infa­mous patron of both Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky and the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    “In the morn­ing, ordi­nary Ukraini­ans brought mon­ey to Pri­vat­bank, and in the evening, Igor Kolo­moisky used that same mon­ey to drink cham­pagne in Gene­va,” Fur­sa said. “Yat­senko was respon­si­ble for ensur­ing that this depos­i­tors’ mon­ey went to Kolo­moisky.”

    Ukraine’s Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau lat­er alleged that Yaten­sko with­drew “most of the funds from the bank on the eve of its nation­al­iza­tion” in 2016, which he then trans­ferred to his wife and daugh­ter. Among the assets trans­ferred to his daugh­ter, Han­na, were those belong­ing to an agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny that owned “23 real estate objects, 500 land plots and 17 cars.” In Feb­ru­ary 2021, a char­ter flight car­ry­ing Yat­senko was “turned around and forced to land” over Ukraine while en route to Vien­na. Ukrain­ian author­i­ties prompt­ly arrest­ed Yat­senko on charges of embez­zle­ment and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion stem­ming from his role at Pri­vat­bank. The office of Ukraine’s anti-cor­rup­tion pros­e­cu­tor is sched­uled to pro­ceed with his case this Sep­tem­ber.

    While announc­ing his com­pe­ti­tion for a drone attack on Moscow’s upcom­ing May 9 Vic­to­ry Day parade, Yat­senko declared the win­ning air­craft must not only land in Red Square, but be rec­og­niz­able as Ukrain­ian.

    “It must have Ukrain­ian slo­gans like ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine,’” the bank­ing mag­net insist­ed, invok­ing Kiev’s Nazi slo­gan.

    “Let’s cre­ate a ‘hol­i­day’ for them,” Yat­senko con­clud­ed, rais­ing his hands to empha­size the word “hol­i­day” with air quotes.

    ...

    As the prospects of Kiev’s vic­to­ry against Moscow on the bat­tle­field wanes, its elite are open­ly pro­mot­ing a strat­e­gy of aer­i­al ter­ror­ism inside the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. A cel­e­bra­tion mark­ing the defeat of Nazi Ger­many is per­haps their most nat­ur­al tar­get.

    ———-

    “Ukrain­ian banker offers cash for drone ter­ror in Rus­sia” by ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN; The Gray­zone; 05/02/2023

    On April 23, a Ukrain­ian drone laden with 30 Cana­di­an-made C4 explo­sive blocks crashed near Rud­ne­vo Indus­tri­al Park in Moscow. Ukraine-based oper­a­tors deployed the 37 LB arse­nal in a failed bid to assas­si­nate Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, who was sched­uled to vis­it Rud­ne­vo that day.”

    Yes, less than two weeks before the drone attack at the Krem­lin, there was a drones attack in Moscow using mul­ti­ple c4-laden drones on a site Putin was expect­ed to vis­it that day. But in this case there were no denials from Kiev. On the con­trary, we find Yuriy Roma­nenko, co-founder of a think tank with close ties to Kiev’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, went so far as cred­it­ing the SBU with orches­trat­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt. What a dif­fer­ence two weeks makes:

    ...
    The drone ulti­mate­ly failed to hit its tar­get, crash­ing rough­ly 12 miles from its intend­ed des­ti­na­tion. Russ­ian media report­ed author­i­ties dis­cov­ered three sim­i­lar unmanned air­crafts in the sur­round­ing area. By the time the Cana­di­an-man­u­fac­tured bombs arrived in Moscow, the gov­ern­ment in Ottawa had pro­vid­ed Kiev with near­ly 6 bil­lion dol­lars worth of aid to sup­port Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s mil­i­tary.

    ...

    The Ukrain­ian UJ-22 drone’s flight orig­i­nat­ed in the country’s Kharkov region. Yuriy Roma­nenko, co-founder of a think tank with close ties to Kiev’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, cred­it­ed Ukraine’s Secret Ser­vice (SBU) with orches­trat­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt. Roma­nenko wrote on Twit­ter: “Last week, our intel­li­gence offi­cers received infor­ma­tion about Putin’s trip to the indus­tri­al park in Rud­ne­vo… Accord­ing­ly, ours launched a kamikaze drone, which flew through all the air defens­es of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, and fell not far from the indus­tri­al park.”

    ...

    “Putin, we are get­ting clos­er,” Roma­nenko warned.

    The drone was car­ry­ing m112 explo­sive charges, which are used by sev­er­al states includ­ing Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, and the Unit­ed King­dom. Accord­ing to Russ­ian media, the explo­sives recov­ered from the botched attack were of Cana­di­an ori­gin.
    ...

    And with Ukraine’s cre­ation of its “Army of Drones”, more such attacks are pre­sum­ably on the way. But it’s not just Kiev that, until very recent­ly, was behind these drone attacks. Inter­na­tion­al fundrais­ing for this “Army of Drones” is being led by groups like “NAFO” and the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress. Recall how “NAFO” appears to pri­mar­i­ly exist for the pur­pose of fundrais­ing for the Geor­gian Legion. But also recall how this “drone army” does­n’t just rely on NAFO’s fundrais­ing. This drone army also depends on SpaceX’s Star­link satel­lite clus­ter, result­ing in the dec­la­ra­tion by SpaceX by in Feb­ru­ary that Star­link can­not be used for strikes inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry fol­low­ing reports that drones with embed­ded Star­link-ter­mi­nals allow­ing for strikes deep inside Rus­sia were now being con­struct­ed. That’s some­thing that should kept in mind when inter­pret­ing Kiev’s denials over the most recent attacks: we don’t know yet if these drones were using Star­link for these attacks:

    ...
    The failed attempt on Putin’s life came amidst a wave of drone incur­sions into Russ­ian air­space in recent months. A day after the unsuc­cess­ful April 23 offen­sive, the Russ­ian out­let SHOT record­ed 10 drone attacks in the Bel­go­rod bor­der region, some of which includ­ed French LU-213 frag­men­ta­tion grenades and Amer­i­can-made Switch­blade drones. The Switch­blade has been used in pre­vi­ous air assaults on the region as well.

    The uptick in drone attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry fol­lowed Kiev’s July 2022 launch of an “Army of Drones” cam­paign, an offi­cial effort to raise funds, dubbed “dro-nations,” to assist Ukraine’s pro­cure­ment of for­eign-pro­duced, unmanned air­crafts.

    [Screen­shot from Ukrain­ian World Con­gress web­site urg­ing vis­i­tors to “dronate” to their cause]

    The fundrais­ing push, which counts the West­ern-backed online troll farm, NAFO, and the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress as for­mal part­ners, has enlist­ed famed Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, as its top brand ambas­sador.

    [Star Wars actor Mark Hamill pos­es as the offi­cial face of Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” fundrais­er]

    “Hon­ored to be an Ambas­sador for the Army of Drones and to help Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy and the peo­ple of Ukraine in any way pos­si­ble,” Hamill tweet­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022, attach­ing a pho­to of him­self on a video call with Ukraine’s pres­i­dent.
    ...

    But when we’re talk­ing about drones, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that we don’t know who is nec­es­sar­i­ly oper­at­ing them and they may not be gov­ern­ment-oper­at­ed. Pri­vate drones can par­tic­i­pate in this con­flict too. And that brings us to the cash prize offered by Ukrain­ian oli­garch Volodymyr Yat­senko on April 6 offer­ing a $549,000 cash prize to any­one who man­ages to land a drone inside Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 dur­ing the Vic­to­ry day cel­e­bra­tion. Yat­senko even hint­ed that his own weapons com­pa­ny was “warm­ing up” for the event. So we have to ask: was this lat­est drone attack part of that “warm up”?

    ...
    On April 6, Ukrain­ian finance and weapon’s indus­try mag­nate, Volodymyr Yat­senko, appeared on the Kiev-based TSN net­work and offered a cash prize worth approx­i­mate­ly $549,000 USD to any nation­al weapons pro­duc­er that man­ages to land a drone inside Moscow’s Red Square dur­ing Russia’s upcom­ing Vic­to­ry Day cel­e­bra­tion..

    Russia’s annu­al Vic­to­ry Day com­mem­o­ra­tion marks the anniver­sary of Nazi Germany’s 1945 sur­ren­der to the Sovi­et Red Army. Each May 9, mil­lions of Russ­ian cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate in march­es through­out the coun­try to hon­or their nation’s tri­umph over fas­cism. In Moscow, cit­i­zens and gov­ern­ment offi­cials gath­er in Red Square to view musi­cal per­for­mances by Russia’s nation­al army band and a flam­boy­ant parade of the country’s troops and mil­i­tary hard­ware. The cer­e­mo­ny typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures speech­es from the Russ­ian pres­i­dent and Com­man­der of Russia’s Armed Forces as well.

    Moscow announced the can­cel­la­tion of Vic­to­ry Day parades in its bor­der region this April, fol­low­ing a surge of drone activ­i­ty in the ter­ri­to­ry through­out the first months of this year.

    ...

    Char­ac­ter­iz­ing the upcom­ing the Red Square cel­e­bra­tion as a “very legit­i­mate” mil­i­tary tar­get dur­ing his April 6 inter­view with TSN, Yat­senko revealed that his own weapons com­pa­ny, Dovbush, is already “warm­ing up” for the event. He pro­ceed­ed to cred­it Dovbush with oper­at­ing a drone dis­cov­ered near a rail­way in New Moscow on March 28. At the time, Ukrain­ian media report­ed the drone was inscribed with Kiev’s Nazi-era bat­tle­cry, “Glo­ry to Ukraine.”

    ...

    While announc­ing his com­pe­ti­tion for a drone attack on Moscow’s upcom­ing May 9 Vic­to­ry Day parade, Yat­senko declared the win­ning air­craft must not only land in Red Square, but be rec­og­niz­able as Ukrain­ian.

    “It must have Ukrain­ian slo­gans like ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine,’” the bank­ing mag­net insist­ed, invok­ing Kiev’s Nazi slo­gan.

    “Let’s cre­ate a ‘hol­i­day’ for them,” Yat­senko con­clud­ed, rais­ing his hands to empha­size the word “hol­i­day” with air quotes.
    ...

    And then we get to the, now pre­dictable, extra bad con­text in this sto­ry: Yat­senko just hap­pens to be a close ally of Ihor Kolo­moisky, the infa­mous patron of not just Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky but also the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. That’s the guy arrang­ing for drone attacks on May 9, a day cel­e­brat­ing the defeat of Nazi Ger­many:

    ...
    Con­cerns that Yat­senko may not adhere to domes­tic finan­cial reg­u­la­tions with­in “the most cor­rupt nation in Europe” were not unwar­rant­ed. The bank­ing tycoon estab­lished his career work­ing for Pri­vat­bank, a Ukrain­ian finan­cial insti­tu­tion estab­lished in the after­math of the Sovi­et Union’s 1991 col­lapse. Ukraine’s post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment nation­al­ized the bank in 2016, after $5.5 bil­lion mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared from its cof­fers. An invest­ment banker lat­er accused Yat­senko of orches­trat­ing the with­draw­al, telling the US-backed Radio Free Europe out­let he was “very impor­tant in mat­ters relat­ed to the nation­al­iza­tion of Pri­vat­bank, as he head­ed the direc­tion of cor­po­rate lend­ing.” The source, Ser­hii Fur­sa, charged Yat­senko with fun­nel­ing the cash to Privatbank’s own­ers, name­ly Ukrain­ian oli­garch Igor Kolo­moisky: the infa­mous patron of both Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky and the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion.

    “In the morn­ing, ordi­nary Ukraini­ans brought mon­ey to Pri­vat­bank, and in the evening, Igor Kolo­moisky used that same mon­ey to drink cham­pagne in Gene­va,” Fur­sa said. “Yat­senko was respon­si­ble for ensur­ing that this depos­i­tors’ mon­ey went to Kolo­moisky.”

    Ukraine’s Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau lat­er alleged that Yaten­sko with­drew “most of the funds from the bank on the eve of its nation­al­iza­tion” in 2016, which he then trans­ferred to his wife and daugh­ter. Among the assets trans­ferred to his daugh­ter, Han­na, were those belong­ing to an agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny that owned “23 real estate objects, 500 land plots and 17 cars.” In Feb­ru­ary 2021, a char­ter flight car­ry­ing Yat­senko was “turned around and forced to land” over Ukraine while en route to Vien­na. Ukrain­ian author­i­ties prompt­ly arrest­ed Yat­senko on charges of embez­zle­ment and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion stem­ming from his role at Pri­vat­bank. The office of Ukraine’s anti-cor­rup­tion pros­e­cu­tor is sched­uled to pro­ceed with his case this Sep­tem­ber.
    ...

    Yat­senko may be fac­ing a sched­ule anti-cor­rup­tion pros­e­cu­tion lat­er this year, but he’s clear­ly got plen­ty of cash to throw around. How seri­ous is this inves­ti­ga­tion? Time will tell. But it’s hard to imag­ine that being por­trayed as the mas­ter­mind of a Vic­to­ry Day drone attack on Moscow will hurt his legal stand­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 3, 2023, 4:07 pm
  11. It was nev­er like­ly that the end­ing of the con­flict in Ukraine was going to be a clean sim­ple nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment. It was always going to be a night­mar­ish mess to resolve. Just how big a night­mare remains to be seen. But as the Politi­co arti­cle below hints, we might be get­ting some clar­i­ty on the nature of that messy res­o­lu­tion soon­er rather than lat­er. That’s because it increas­ing­ly looks like Ukraine sim­ply will not be capa­ble of launch­ing a suc­cess­ful counter-offen­sive lat­er this year. And with­out that suc­cess­ful counter-offen­sive, war plan­ners in DC sim­ply do not see a viable path for­ward.

    All of this is report­ed­ly part of a debate that has been swirling inside DC for weeks. A debate that, intrigu­ing­ly, spilled out into the pub­lic as a direct con­se­quence of the Jack Teix­eira leaks and the bizarre man­ner in which they were pushed into the main­stream by a ‘pro-Russ­ian Blog­ger’. It’s part of the strange con­text of that leak sto­ry: those leaks effec­tive­ly main­streamed an unspeak­able truth inside DC cor­ri­dors about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a vic­to­ry for Ukraine.

    But as we’re also going to see, while the intra-DC debate over whether or not to dou­ble-down on the US’s back­ing for Ukraine or push for a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment is indeed intense, that debate is jux­ta­posed with the clear lack of debate inside Kiev due to the fact that any sort of peace set­tle­ment is utter­ly unthink­able for the Zelen­skiy gov­ern­ment. Unthink­able pre­cise­ly because of the Ukrain­ian far right’s per­ma­nent threat that any peace set­tle­ment will result in the nation­al­ist over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. It points towards one of the major com­pli­ca­tions in any peace nego­ti­a­tions: the intense cries of “betray­al!” that will pre­dictably come from the Ukrain­ian far right and the obvi­ous risks of a far right coup.

    But, of course, it’s not just the Ukrain­ian far right fight­ing in Ukraine. It’s a glob­al extrem­ist dias­po­ra oper­at­ing there. A dias­po­ra that’s going to be find­ing new homes, or return­ing home, should the con­flict final­ly come to an end. It’s anoth­er one of the peace-relat­ed headaches cre­at­ed by this con­flict: the begin­ning of the end of war in Ukraine could end up being the begin­ning of a new phase of far right ter­ror across the West. And as the recent arrest of two heav­i­ly armed French neo-Nazis who returned from Ukraine under­scores, this isn’t just a hypo­thet­i­cal con­cern. The blow­back is already hap­pen­ing. And that’s all part of why the debate in DC over whether or not to con­tin­ue the war in Ukraine is, in part, a debate over whether to deal with that inevitable blow­back now, or dou­ble down on the con­flict and expe­ri­ence much more blow­back lat­er:

    Politi­co

    Biden’s team fears the after­math of a failed Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive

    Behind closed doors, the admin­is­tra­tion wor­ries about what Ukraine can accom­plish.

    By Jonathan Lemire and Alexan­der Ward
    04/24/2023 04:30 AM EDT
    Updat­ed: 04/24/2023 11:14 AM EDT

    The Biden admin­is­tra­tion is qui­et­ly prepar­ing for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that if Ukraine’s spring coun­terof­fen­sive falls short of expec­ta­tions, crit­ics at home and allies abroad will argue that Amer­i­ca has come up short, too.

    Ukraine’s ever-immi­nent coun­terof­fen­sive will attempt to retake Russ­ian-seized ter­ri­to­ry most like­ly in the east and south, though for oper­a­tional rea­sons no senior offi­cials from Kyiv have detailed specifics.

    Pub­licly, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s team has offered unwa­ver­ing sup­port for Ukraine, pledg­ing to load it up with weapons and eco­nom­ic aid for “as long as it takes.” But, if the impend­ing fight­ing sea­son yields lim­it­ed gains, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have expressed pri­vate­ly they fear being faced with a two-head­ed mon­ster attack­ing it from the hawk­ish and dovish ends of the spec­trum.

    One side will say that Ukraine’s advances would’ve worked had the admin­is­tra­tion giv­en Kyiv every­thing it asked for, name­ly longer-range mis­siles, fight­er jets and more air defens­es. The oth­er side, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials wor­ry, will claim Ukraine’s short­com­ing proves it can’t force Rus­sia out of its ter­ri­to­ry com­plete­ly.

    That doesn’t even account for the reac­tion of America’s allies, main­ly in Europe, who may see a peace nego­ti­a­tion between Ukraine and Rus­sia as a more attrac­tive option if Kyiv can’t prove vic­to­ry is around the cor­ner.

    Inside the admin­is­tra­tion, offi­cials stress they’re doing every­thing pos­si­ble to make the spring offen­sive suc­ceed.

    “We’ve near­ly com­plet­ed the requests of what [Ukraine] said they need­ed for the coun­terof­fen­sive as we have surged weapons and equip­ment to Ukraine over the past few months,” said one admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who, like oth­ers, was grant­ed anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive inter­nal con­sid­er­a­tions.

    But belief in the strate­gic cause is one thing. Belief in the tac­tics is anoth­er — and behind closed doors the admin­is­tra­tion is wor­ried about what Ukraine can accom­plish.

    Those con­cerns recent­ly spilled out into the open dur­ing a leak of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion onto social media. A top secret assess­ment from ear­ly Feb­ru­ary stat­ed that Ukraine would fall “well short” of its coun­terof­fen­sive goals. More cur­rent Amer­i­can assess­ments are that Ukraine may make some progress in the south and east, but won’t be able to repeat last year’s suc­cess.

    Ukraine has hoped to sev­er Russia’s land bridge to Crimea and U.S. offi­cials are now skep­ti­cal that will hap­pen, accord­ing to two admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials famil­iar with the assess­ment. But there are still hopes in the Pen­ta­gon that Ukraine will ham­per Russia’s sup­ply lines there, even if a total vic­to­ry over Russia’s new­ly for­ti­fied troops ends up too dif­fi­cult to achieve.

    More­over, U.S. intel­li­gence indi­cates that Ukraine sim­ply does not have the abil­i­ty to push Russ­ian troops from where they were deeply entrenched — and a sim­i­lar feel­ing has tak­en hold about the bat­tle­field else­where in Ukraine, accord­ing to offi­cials. Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy says the U.S. hasn’t ade­quate­ly armed his forces prop­er­ly and so, until then, the coun­terof­fen­sive can’t begin.

    There is belief that Kyiv is will­ing to con­sid­er adjust­ing its goals, accord­ing to Amer­i­can offi­cials, and a more mod­est aim might be eas­i­er to be sold as a win.

    There has been dis­cus­sion, per aides, of fram­ing it to the Ukraini­ans as a “cease­fire” and not as per­ma­nent peace talks, leav­ing the door open for Ukraine to regain more of its ter­ri­to­ry at a future date. Incen­tives would have to be giv­en to Kyiv: per­haps NATO-like secu­ri­ty guar­an­tees, eco­nom­ic help from the Euro­pean Union, more mil­i­tary aid to replen­ish and bol­ster Ukraine’s forces, and the like. And aides have expressed hope of re-engag­ing Chi­na to push Putin to the nego­ti­at­ing table as well.

    But that would still lead to the dilem­ma of what hap­pens next, and how harsh­ly domes­tic crit­ics respond.

    “If the coun­terof­fen­sive does not go well, the admin­is­tra­tion has only itself to blame for with­hold­ing cer­tain types of arms and aid at the time when it was most need­ed,” said Kurt Volk­er, the spe­cial envoy for Ukraine dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    A coun­terof­fen­sive that doesn’t meet expec­ta­tions will also cause allies in for­eign cap­i­tals to ques­tion how much more they can spare if Kyiv’s vic­to­ry looks far­ther and far­ther away.

    “Euro­pean pub­lic sup­port may wane over time as Euro­pean ener­gy and eco­nom­ic costs stay high,” said Clemen­tine Star­ling, a direc­tor and fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil think tank in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “A frac­tur­ing of transat­lantic sup­port will like­ly hurt U.S. domes­tic sup­port and Con­gress and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion may strug­gle to sus­tain it.”

    Many Euro­pean nations could also push Kyiv to bring the fight­ing to an end. “A poor coun­terof­fen­sive will spark fur­ther ques­tions about what an out­come to the war will look like, and the extent to which a solu­tion can real­ly be achieved by con­tin­u­ing to send mil­i­tary arms and aid alone,” Star­ling said.

    Biden and his top aides have pub­licly stressed that Zelen­skyy should only begin peace talks when he is ready. But Wash­ing­ton has also com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Kyiv some polit­i­cal real­i­ties: at some point, espe­cial­ly with Repub­li­cans in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the pace of U.S. aid will like­ly slow. Offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton, though not press­ing Kyiv, have begun prepar­ing for what those con­ver­sa­tions could look like and under­stand it may be a tough polit­i­cal sell at home for Zelen­skyy.

    “If Ukraine can’t gain dra­mat­i­cal­ly on the bat­tle­field, the ques­tion inevitably aris­es as to whether it is time for a nego­ti­at­ed stop to the fight­ing,” said Richard Haass, pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions. “It’s expen­sive, we’re run­ning low on muni­tions, we’ve got oth­er con­tin­gen­cies around the world to pre­pare for.”

    “It’s legit­i­mate to ask all these ques­tions with­out com­pro­mis­ing Ukraine’s goals. It’s sim­ply a ques­tion of means,” Haass said.

    Ear­li­er this month, Andriy Sybi­ha, a deputy head in Zelenskyy’s office, told the Finan­cial Times that Ukraine would be will­ing to talk if its forces reach Crimea’s doorstep. “If we will suc­ceed in achiev­ing our strate­gic goals on the bat­tle­field and when we will be on the admin­is­tra­tive bor­der with Crimea, we are ready to open [a] diplo­mat­ic page to dis­cuss this issue,” he said.

    That com­ment was quick­ly rebuffed by Tami­la Tashe­va, Zelenskyy’s Crimea envoy: “If Rus­sia won’t vol­un­tar­i­ly leave the penin­su­la, Ukraine will con­tin­ue to lib­er­ate its land by mil­i­tary means,” she told POLITICO ear­li­er this month.

    ...

    ———–

    “Biden’s team fears the after­math of a failed Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive” By Jonathan Lemire and Alexan­der Ward; Politi­co; 04/24/2023

    “Pub­licly, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s team has offered unwa­ver­ing sup­port for Ukraine, pledg­ing to load it up with weapons and eco­nom­ic aid for “as long as it takes.” But, if the impend­ing fight­ing sea­son yields lim­it­ed gains, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have expressed pri­vate­ly they fear being faced with a two-head­ed mon­ster attack­ing it from the hawk­ish and dovish ends of the spec­trum.

    It’s quite a bind: Does the US con­tin­ue to sup­port Ukraine in what has been assessed to be an unwinnable con­flict? Or does the US cut its loss­es, and Ukraine’s loss­es, and push for a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment?. That’s the inter­nal debate Politi­co report­ed on a cou­ple of weeks ago. But as the arti­cle notes, this inter­nal debate was effec­tive­ly pushed into the main­stream via the leaks by Jack Teix­eira and the bizarre man­ner in which they were pushed into the main­stream by a ‘pro-Russ­ian Blog­ger’. It’s part of the strange con­text of that leak sto­ry: those leaks effec­tive­ly main­streamed an unspeak­able truth inside DC cor­ri­dors about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a vic­to­ry for Ukraine:

    ...
    Inside the admin­is­tra­tion, offi­cials stress they’re doing every­thing pos­si­ble to make the spring offen­sive suc­ceed.

    “We’ve near­ly com­plet­ed the requests of what [Ukraine] said they need­ed for the coun­terof­fen­sive as we have surged weapons and equip­ment to Ukraine over the past few months,” said one admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who, like oth­ers, was grant­ed anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive inter­nal con­sid­er­a­tions.

    But belief in the strate­gic cause is one thing. Belief in the tac­tics is anoth­er — and behind closed doors the admin­is­tra­tion is wor­ried about what Ukraine can accom­plish.

    Those con­cerns recent­ly spilled out into the open dur­ing a leak of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion onto social media. A top secret assess­ment from ear­ly Feb­ru­ary stat­ed that Ukraine would fall “well short” of its coun­terof­fen­sive goals. More cur­rent Amer­i­can assess­ments are that Ukraine may make some progress in the south and east, but won’t be able to repeat last year’s suc­cess.
    ...

    So are we see­ing the ear­ly signs of a shift towards nego­ti­a­tions? Per­haps just a cease­fire? Not exact­ly. As the arti­cle also notes, even talk of a “cease­fire” pos­es a major polit­i­cal dilem­ma. In par­tic­u­lar, a polit­i­cal dilem­ma for Kiev:

    ...
    Biden and his top aides have pub­licly stressed that Zelen­skyy should only begin peace talks when he is ready. But Wash­ing­ton has also com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Kyiv some polit­i­cal real­i­ties: at some point, espe­cial­ly with Repub­li­cans in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the pace of U.S. aid will like­ly slow. Offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton, though not press­ing Kyiv, have begun prepar­ing for what those con­ver­sa­tions could look like and under­stand it may be a tough polit­i­cal sell at home for Zelen­skyy.
    ...

    So what kind of response can we expect inside Ukraine if the US begins push­ing for a cease­fire? Well, to get a hint, here’s an arti­cle from Feb 10, 2022 — two weeks before the out­break of the con­flict — that should pro­vide all the warn­ings we need: as Ukrain­ian ‘nation­al­ist’ groups were warn­ing at the time, any hint nego­ti­a­tions with Rus­sia is going to mark the begin­ning of the end of the gov­ern­ment in Ukraine. That was the warn­ing issued by Yuri Hudy­menko, the leader of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax polit­i­cal par­ty, who did­n’t mince words when he stat­ed that “If any­body from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment tries to sign such a doc­u­ment, a mil­lion peo­ple will take to the streets and that gov­ern­ment will cease being the gov­ern­ment.” Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax was notably accused by Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy in the fall of 2021 of plan­ning an armed protest on Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square as part of a coup plot. Recall that remark­able sto­ry from Novem­ber 2021 — as the cri­sis with Rus­sia was build­ing on Ukraine’s bor­ders — when Zelen­skiy claimed that Ukrain­ian oli­garch Rinat Akhme­tov was plan­ning some sort of Russ­ian-backed coup. It was a sto­ry that nev­er real­ly made sense in terms of the motives of accused (Akhme­tov does­n’t appear to be a Russ­ian stooge) so it’s worth not­ing that Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax — a vir­u­lent Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist group — was also issue threats against Kiev dur­ing this time. Threats against any nego­ti­a­tions. And that was the stance of Ukraine’s far right before the war:

    The New York Times

    Armed Nation­al­ists in Ukraine Pose a Threat Not Just to Rus­sia

    Kyiv is encour­ag­ing the arm­ing of nation­al­ist para­mil­i­tary groups to thwart a Russ­ian inva­sion. But they could also desta­bi­lize the gov­ern­ment if it agrees to a peace deal they reject.

    By Andrew E. Kramer
    Feb. 10, 2022

    KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal activist and mili­tia mem­ber sat before his party’s flag leav­ing lit­tle doubt about his readi­ness for action. The flag depict­ed two axes crossed against a field of red.

    Yes, Yuri Hudy­menko said, he is ready to take up arms, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly against Rus­sia. As the leader of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax — one of dozens of right-wing or nation­al­ist groups that rep­re­sent a potent polit­i­cal force in Ukraine and are fierce­ly opposed to any com­pro­mise with Moscow — his anger will be direct­ed at Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment if it grants too many con­ces­sions in exchange for peace.

    “We’ll deal with Rus­sia one way or anoth­er lat­er,” Mr. Hudy­menko said. With a flair for the dra­mat­ic, he added: “If any­body from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment tries to sign such a doc­u­ment, a mil­lion peo­ple will take to the streets and that gov­ern­ment will cease being the gov­ern­ment.”

    Moscow has massed more than 130,000 troops on Ukraine’s bor­ders, threat­en­ing an inva­sion unless its demands to rule out NATO mem­ber­ship for Ukraine, and for a roll­back of NATO forces in East­ern Europe, are met.

    It remains unclear whether West­ern lead­ers and Pres­i­dent Vladimir V. Putin of Rus­sia can nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment of the cri­sis. But any res­o­lu­tion seems like­ly to force Kyiv to accept polit­i­cal­ly per­ilous con­ces­sions that could be desta­bi­liz­ing domes­ti­cal­ly. Ear­li­er this week, for exam­ple, France’s pres­i­dent, Emmanuel Macron, pro­posed the “Fin­lan­diza­tion” of Ukraine that would leave it neu­tral between Rus­sia and NATO, like Fin­land dur­ing the Cold War.

    Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­sky, has few cards to play in any talks with Moscow. Per­haps his strongest is the threat of an insur­gency by nation­al­ist groups like Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax and the even more influ­en­tial Right Sec­tor in the event of a Russ­ian inva­sion. Recent­ly, the gov­ern­ment has even urged the nation­al­ist par­ties to arm them­selves more heav­i­ly.

    But the groups are a two-edged sword, threat­en­ing not just the Krem­lin but also the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, which could be rocked and pos­si­bly over­thrown by them if Mr. Zelen­sky agrees to a peace deal that in their minds gives too much to Moscow.

    Ukraine’s for­eign min­is­ter and defense min­is­ter have both said in recent days that the great­est risk the coun­try faces is inter­nal desta­bi­liza­tion under the threat of a Russ­ian inva­sion, not an actu­al attack.

    And in a coun­try whose cit­i­zens have twice tak­en to the streets in the post-Sovi­et peri­od and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly boot­ed out gov­ern­ments seen as doing Moscow’s bid­ding, this is no idle threat. Ana­lysts say that Mr. Zelen­sky would be tak­ing extreme polit­i­cal risks even to enter­tain a peace deal, which is why he is so care­ful not to talk about pos­si­ble avenues for nego­ti­a­tions.

    “Macron wants to sac­ri­fice Ukraine’s sov­er­eign­ty to calm Rus­sia down but doesn’t under­stand that it will not work,” said Olek­san­dr Ivanov, direc­tor of a group called Move­ment Against Capit­u­la­tion, which plans a street protest in Kyiv on Sat­ur­day.

    “Diplo­mats do not under­stand Ukraine,” he said. “Civ­il soci­ety here has a big­ger influ­ence on pol­i­tics than actu­al polit­i­cal par­ties.” For Mr. Zelen­sky, he added, “the threat of war is actu­al­ly only a threat, while sign­ing com­pro­mis­es is guar­an­teed to bring protests.”

    He will get no argu­ment from Mr. Hudy­menko, whose office walls are dec­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al axes and a cross­bow, a reminder that his par­ty pro­vides para­mil­i­tary train­ing for its mem­bers. He stressed that any protests against a poten­tial set­tle­ment would be peace­ful, but he left lit­tle doubt they would end with the ouster of Mr. Zelen­sky.

    Even main­stream Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal par­ties are opposed to mak­ing con­ces­sions to Rus­sia, and have said they would call for protests if Mr. Zelen­sky should bend too far.

    “All actions of Macron are done with his head fac­ing April elec­tions in France,” said Volodymyr Ariev, a law­mak­er with the Euro­pean Sol­i­dar­i­ty par­ty of Mr. Zelensky’s pre­de­ces­sor, Petro O. Poroshenko. “I under­stand, but we shouldn’t fol­low French inter­ests, or Macron’s inter­ests,” he said. “We should fol­low Ukraine’s inter­ests.”

    ...

    Mr. Macron has embraced a strat­e­gy of reviv­ing talks over the war in east­ern Ukraine as a step toward a broad­er set­tle­ment, which would also include nego­ti­a­tions on Russia’s demands for an over­haul of the Euro­pean secu­ri­ty archi­tec­ture to dimin­ish the role of NATO.

    Under one sce­nario, a set­tle­ment deal in east­ern Ukraine could rule out future NATO mem­ber­ship for the coun­try. Mr. Zelen­sky might also for­go NATO mem­ber­ship in exchange for oth­er secu­ri­ty guar­an­tees from West­ern nations, a sug­ges­tion he raised last month.

    So far, there is no indi­ca­tion any of these ideas have slowed Russia’s mil­i­tary buildup near Ukraine’s bor­ders. Just on Thurs­day, Rus­sia began joint mil­i­tary exer­cis­es with Belarus to the north of Ukraine while to the south the Russ­ian navy declared large swaths of the Black Sea closed for live-fire artillery drills. Those naval maneu­vers close sea lanes to Ukraine’s major port of Odessa in an effec­tive block­ade.

    In Ukraine, nation­al­ist oppo­si­tion com­pli­cates any diplo­mat­ic agree­ment. The risk from the nation­al­ist groups came into focus last fall when Mr. Zelen­sky accused Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax of plan­ning an armed protest on Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square as part of a coup plot. But no seri­ous crack­down on Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax fol­lowed. If it were real­ly a coup, “wouldn’t they arrest some­body?” Mr. Hudy­menko said.

    That put the par­ty, found­ed by a group of blog­gers who chose the ax sym­bol as a tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian imple­ment used both in peace­time and as a peas­ant weapon in war, at the cen­ter of wor­ries over whether the pol­i­cy of encour­ag­ing mil­i­tary train­ing of civil­ians was also rais­ing the risk of inter­nal insta­bil­i­ty.

    Mr. Hudy­menko, a 34-year-old for­mer jour­nal­ist and adver­tis­ing con­sul­tant, once spent two months in jail on accu­sa­tions of blow­ing up a stat­ue of Stal­in in his home­town of Zapor­izhzhia, in south­east­ern Ukraine.

    Sip­ping from a can of Red Bull in an inter­view in his office, he said he acts strict­ly with­in Ukrain­ian law, which guar­an­tees cit­i­zens’ rights to protest peace­ful­ly. “We have a protest cul­ture, a riot cul­ture,” he said.

    But he empha­sized that there could be no polit­i­cal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists before Russ­ian troops pulled out of east­ern Ukraine, where Moscow foment­ed the war start­ing in 2014. That is, in fact, the cen­tral demand of Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment and the stat­ed posi­tion of Mr. Zelen­sky.

    To do oth­er­wise, in an effort to ease ten­sions and poten­tial­ly avert a major war in Europe, would only encour­age Rus­sia to mass troops again in the future, Mr. Hudy­menko said.

    ...

    Mr. Zelen­sky and his gov­ern­ment may be under pres­sure from both Ukraini­ans and Rus­sia, Mr. Hudy­menko said, but in the final analy­sis, “they fear the Ukrain­ian peo­ple more than they fear the Russ­ian army.”

    ————-

    “Armed Nation­al­ists in Ukraine Pose a Threat Not Just to Rus­sia” By Andrew E. Kramer; The New York Times; 02/10/2022

    ““We’ll deal with Rus­sia one way or anoth­er lat­er,” Mr. Hudy­menko said. With a flair for the dra­mat­ic, he added: “If any­body from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment tries to sign such a doc­u­ment, a mil­lion peo­ple will take to the streets and that gov­ern­ment will cease being the gov­ern­ment.””

    A mil­lion activists are going to take to the streets and top­ple the gov­ern­ment. it’s obvi­ous­ly not an idle threat in con­tem­po­rary post-Maid­an Ukraine. And as experts were observ­ing and warn­ing last year, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was­n’t sim­ply acqui­esc­ing to these threats. It was even urg­ing the nation­al­ist par­ties to arm them­selves more heav­i­ly in antic­i­pa­tion of a Russ­ian inva­sion. It was like a dou­ble-edged sword a gov­ern­ment would have to be sui­ci­dal to deploy:

    ...
    Yes, Yuri Hudy­menko said, he is ready to take up arms, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly against Rus­sia. As the leader of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax — one of dozens of right-wing or nation­al­ist groups that rep­re­sent a potent polit­i­cal force in Ukraine and are fierce­ly opposed to any com­pro­mise with Moscow — his anger will be direct­ed at Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment if it grants too many con­ces­sions in exchange for peace.

    ...

    Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­sky, has few cards to play in any talks with Moscow. Per­haps his strongest is the threat of an insur­gency by nation­al­ist groups like Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax and the even more influ­en­tial Right Sec­tor in the event of a Russ­ian inva­sion. Recent­ly, the gov­ern­ment has even urged the nation­al­ist par­ties to arm them­selves more heav­i­ly.

    But the groups are a two-edged sword, threat­en­ing not just the Krem­lin but also the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, which could be rocked and pos­si­bly over­thrown by them if Mr. Zelen­sky agrees to a peace deal that in their minds gives too much to Moscow.

    Ukraine’s for­eign min­is­ter and defense min­is­ter have both said in recent days that the great­est risk the coun­try faces is inter­nal desta­bi­liza­tion under the threat of a Russ­ian inva­sion, not an actu­al attack.

    And in a coun­try whose cit­i­zens have twice tak­en to the streets in the post-Sovi­et peri­od and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly boot­ed out gov­ern­ments seen as doing Moscow’s bid­ding, this is no idle threat. Ana­lysts say that Mr. Zelen­sky would be tak­ing extreme polit­i­cal risks even to enter­tain a peace deal, which is why he is so care­ful not to talk about pos­si­ble avenues for nego­ti­a­tions.

    “Macron wants to sac­ri­fice Ukraine’s sov­er­eign­ty to calm Rus­sia down but doesn’t under­stand that it will not work,” said Olek­san­dr Ivanov, direc­tor of a group called Move­ment Against Capit­u­la­tion, which plans a street protest in Kyiv on Sat­ur­day.

    “Diplo­mats do not under­stand Ukraine,” he said. “Civ­il soci­ety here has a big­ger influ­ence on pol­i­tics than actu­al polit­i­cal par­ties.” For Mr. Zelen­sky, he added, “the threat of war is actu­al­ly only a threat, while sign­ing com­pro­mis­es is guar­an­teed to bring protests.”

    He will get no argu­ment from Mr. Hudy­menko, whose office walls are dec­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al axes and a cross­bow, a reminder that his par­ty pro­vides para­mil­i­tary train­ing for its mem­bers. He stressed that any protests against a poten­tial set­tle­ment would be peace­ful, but he left lit­tle doubt they would end with the ouster of Mr. Zelen­sky.
    ...

    Adding to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax’s threats is the fact that Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy was already forced to take threats from this group seri­ous­ly dur­ing the fall of 2021 and all the coup plot rumors swirling around Kiev. It’s a reminder that the block­ing of any peace nego­ti­a­tions over Ukraine’s civ­il war by groups like Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax is one of the cen­tral dynam­ics in the lead up to the full blown inva­sion:

    ...
    In Ukraine, nation­al­ist oppo­si­tion com­pli­cates any diplo­mat­ic agree­ment. The risk from the nation­al­ist groups came into focus last fall when Mr. Zelen­sky accused Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax of plan­ning an armed protest on Kyiv’s Inde­pen­dence Square as part of a coup plot. But no seri­ous crack­down on Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ax fol­lowed. If it were real­ly a coup, “wouldn’t they arrest some­body?” Mr. Hudy­menko said.

    That put the par­ty, found­ed by a group of blog­gers who chose the ax sym­bol as a tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian imple­ment used both in peace­time and as a peas­ant weapon in war, at the cen­ter of wor­ries over whether the pol­i­cy of encour­ag­ing mil­i­tary train­ing of civil­ians was also rais­ing the risk of inter­nal insta­bil­i­ty.
    ...

    So what kind of threats against the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment can we expect should peace nego­ti­a­tions become a real­i­ty? Beyond that, what hap­pens if, as part of that peace set­tle­ment, Ukraine is no longer wel­com­ing Nazis from around the world to come and train and fight but instead asks them to leave? The threats raised by the sys­tem­at­ic arm­ing and train­ing of extrem­ists in this con­flict aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly going to decline with the end­ing of the war.
    Quite the oppo­site. Because as the fol­low­ing Gray­zone piece reminds us, all of those for­eign fight­ers have home coun­tries they came from. Which means the end of the war could mark the begin­ning of a glob­al flood of armed and trained extrem­ists look­ing for new bat­tle­fields to fight in...or new bat­tle­fields to cre­ate:

    The Gray­zone

    Neo-Nazi ter­ror threat grows as Ukraine fight­ers jailed in France

    Kit Klarenberg·May 9, 2023

    The arrest of two heav­i­ly armed French neo-Nazis return­ing from Ukraine high­lights a loom­ing prob­lem for NATO states spon­sor­ing the proxy war, and their con­spir­a­cy of silence on the nature of the threat.

    On April 24th 2023, two French neo-Nazis were jailed for 15 months, nine of which were sus­pend­ed, for pos­sess­ing assault rifle ammu­ni­tion. The pair had returned to Paris from Ukraine two days ear­li­er, and were arrest­ed at cus­toms.

    Both were on the radar of French domes­tic spy­ing agency DGSI, which held files on them for endan­ger­ing state secu­ri­ty. Accord­ing to the French out­let Medi­a­part, one was a vet­er­an of Chas­seurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters), France’s elite moun­tain infantry force. He was thrown out of the mil­i­tary after his neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies were exposed online. The oth­er is a noto­ri­ous local far-right activist.

    As in many oth­er West­ern coun­tries, hun­dreds of French cit­i­zens have trav­eled to Kiev to take up arms against Rus­sia since it invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Accord­ing to the DGSI, at least 30 of the French for­eign fight­ers are known fas­cists.

    This shock­ing out­flow has failed to gen­er­ate any Eng­lish-lan­guage media inter­est, how­ev­er, save for March 2022, when far-right mil­i­tant Loïk Le Pri­ol was deport­ed home from Hun­gary en route to Ukraine, to face charges of mur­der­ing Argen­tin­ian rug­by play­er Fed­eri­co Martín Aram­burú in Paris.

    It was inevitable that some of the French Neo-Nazis who man­aged to make the jour­ney to Kiev had pre-exist­ing links with Azov Bat­tal­ion, Ukraine’s noto­ri­ous Neo-Nazi para­mil­i­tary. In Jan­u­ary 2022, Paris banned the white suprema­cist group Zouaves. Its mem­bers had vio­lent­ly attacked anti-racist pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ing a ral­ly for far-right pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eric Zem­mour the pre­vi­ous month. The movement’s leader, Marc de Cac­quer­ay-Val­me­nier, trav­eled to Ukraine in Decem­ber 2019 to meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Azov, and attend its train­ing camps.

    Since the war in Ukraine began, Ouest Casu­al, a still-extant Telegram chan­nel linked to Zouaves, has pub­lished a steady stream of trib­utes to Ukrain­ian sol­diers, repeat­ed­ly denounc­ing the “Asi­at­ic con­tin­gents of Sovi­et impe­ri­al­ism once again sweep­ing across Europe,” and “Putin’s Islamist dogs,” in ref­er­ence to Chechen fight­ers. Bor­deaux Nation­al­iste, a vio­lent Neo-Nazi group close­ly linked to Zouaves, has reg­u­lar­ly orga­nized col­lec­tions of equip­ment for the fight.

    Wash­ing­ton cre­ates a pow­der keg in Kiev

    The two new­ly jailed Neo-Nazis were report­ed­ly “asked all day” by police fol­low­ing their arrest why they car­ried mil­i­tary equip­ment, pos­ses­sion of which is absolute­ly ille­gal under French law, into the coun­try. An obvi­ous answer is that the pair were plan­ning to bring the ter­ror of Ukraine’s bat­tle­fields back home with them.

    In Novem­ber, Alex Rubin­stein report­ed for The Gray­zone on how Ital­ian police had arrest­ed five mem­bers of the local neo-Nazi group, Order of Hagal, which main­tains oper­a­tional ties to Azov Bat­tal­ion. They were stock­pil­ing weapons, includ­ing ammu­ni­tion, tac­ti­cal gear, and a grenade launch­er, and plan­ning ter­ror attacks. A sixth mem­ber, then-fight­ing along­side Azov in Ukraine, remained want­ed.

    The neo-Nazis had been mon­i­tored inten­sive­ly by Ital­ian author­i­ties since 2019. One – report­ed to be “dan­ger­ous­ly close to far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist groups” – was plan­ning an attack on a police sta­tion in Naples, while the fugi­tive Azov fight­er had a shop­ping mall in the same city in his crosshairs.

    ...

    The US and its inter­na­tion­al vas­sals have been keen to encour­age and facil­i­tate the pro­lif­er­a­tion of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. Through­out the Cold War, the CIA and MI6 adopt­ed a covert pol­i­cy of encour­ag­ing ultra-nation­al­ist ele­ments in Ukraine to under­mine com­mu­nist rule. In the years after the US-backed 2014 Maid­an coup, numer­ous far-right mili­tias received high-lev­el mil­i­tary train­ing from Wash­ing­ton, Lon­don, and Ottawa. Sup­port from the West has only increased since Russia’s inva­sion.

    Two groups that received exten­sive prac­ti­cal and mate­r­i­al sup­port from NATO states in recent years are Cen­turia and Right Sec­tor. The indict­ed mem­bers of Italy’s Order of Hagal report­ed­ly main­tained “direct and fre­quent” con­tacts with both, along with Azov, seek­ing “pos­si­ble recruit­ment into the ranks of these fight­ing groups,” accord­ing to local media.

    Well-estab­lished blow­back from US covert ops in Europe

    Since the West ini­ti­at­ed its covert pro­gram of sup­port­ing vio­lent extrem­ists in order to weak­en and desta­bi­lize its geopo­lit­i­cal foes, blow­back has come in var­i­ous forms.

    Through­out the Bosn­ian war in the 1990s, the US sup­port­ed Mujahideen fight­ers. They arrived on CIA “black flights” from all over the world, espe­cial­ly Afghanistan, and received a seem­ing­ly end­less flow of weapons, in breach of a Unit­ed Nations embar­go.

    Quick­ly gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive bru­tal­i­ty against ene­my sol­diers and civil­ians alike, and false flag attacks on their own posi­tions and pub­lic spaces in order to pre­cip­i­tate West­ern inter­ven­tion, their pres­ence was piv­otal to the Bosn­ian Mus­lims’ war effort. US Balka­ns nego­tia­tor Richard Hol­brooke has stat­ed they “wouldn’t have sur­vived” with­out the Mujahideen’s assis­tance.

    Under the terms of the 1995 Day­ton Agree­ment, Mujahideen fight­ers were required to leave Bosnia. Imme­di­ate­ly after it was signed, Croat forces fight­ing along­side British and Amer­i­can mer­ce­nar­ies in the coun­try began assas­si­nat­ing the group’s lead­er­ship to send the Islamists scat­ter­ing. Some fled to Alba­nia along with their US-sup­plied weapons, where they joined the incip­i­ent Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army, anoth­er West­ern-backed enti­ty filled with hard­core jihadists.

    Oth­ers were inter­cept­ed with the assis­tance of the CIA, and deport­ed to their coun­tries of ori­gin to stand tri­al for seri­ous ter­ror offens­es. This was per­ceived as a gross betray­al by the Mujahideen’s senior over­seas lead­er­ship, which includ­ed Osama bin Laden.

    In August 1998, two US embassies in East Africa were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bombed in a sui­cide attack. A day ear­li­er, the bin Laden-linked Islam­ic Jihad pub­lished a threat, explic­it­ly refer­ring to US involve­ment in the extra­di­tion of the group’s “broth­ers” from Alba­nia. It warned that an appro­pri­ate “response” was immi­nent­ly forth­com­ing:

    “We are inter­est­ed in briefly telling the Amer­i­cans that their mes­sage has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read care­ful­ly, is being [pre­pared], because we – with God’s help – will write it in the lan­guage that they under­stand.”

    The embassy attacks marked the begin­ning of bin Laden’s jihad against the US, which one way or anoth­er cul­mi­nat­ed in 9/11. Two of the pur­port­ed hijack­ers, Nawaf al-Haz­mi and Khalid al-Mihd­har, were vet­er­ans of the Bosn­ian war. As The Gray­zone recent­ly report­ed, both may have been know­ing­ly or unknow­ing­ly work­ing for the CIA on the day of the attacks.

    Today, an even more egre­gious betray­al is almost inevitably impend­ing – name­ly, the US end­ing its sup­port for Kiev’s war effort. Across the West, weapon stocks are almost spent, polit­i­cal and pub­lic pres­sure to exit mounts dai­ly, and offi­cials are open­ly express­ing grave doubts about Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to stage a suc­cess­ful coun­terof­fen­sive, let alone recap­ture any lost ter­ri­to­ry in the process.

    On April 24th, Politi­co report­ed that if the long-await­ed coun­terof­fen­sive failed, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion would end its back­ing out­right and com­pel Kiev to begin nego­ti­a­tions with Moscow, sweet­en­ing this bit­ter pill by “fram­ing it to the Ukraini­ans as a ‘cease­fire’ and not as per­ma­nent peace talks.” Of course, as the Ukrain­ian military’s oper­a­tion is whol­ly depen­dent on that sup­port, even a tem­po­rary ces­sa­tion would result in total col­lapse, leav­ing Russ­ian forces to steam­roller through Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry effec­tive­ly unop­posed.

    The con­spir­a­cy of silence on for­eign fight­ers in Ukraine

    The total num­ber of home­grown and for­eign fas­cist fight­ers in Ukraine is not known, but is like­ly to be vast. When the US pulls out of the proxy war, they would have every rea­son to flee. They will bring with them bat­tle­field expe­ri­ence, and in many cas­es elite West­ern mil­i­tary train­ing. High-end weapons and ammu­ni­tion will be avail­able in abun­dance on the black mar­ket, due to the mas­sive well­spring of arms ship­ments to Kiev over the course of the con­flict.

    In July 2022, Europol warned that “the pro­lif­er­a­tion of firearms and explo­sives in Ukraine could lead to an increase in firearms and muni­tions traf­ficked into the EU via estab­lished smug­gling routes or online plat­forms,” and “this threat might even be high­er once the con­flict has end­ed.”

    That same month, a report from the British parliament’s Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee con­tained a brief sec­tion on the risk of Britons who had trav­eled over­seas for “extreme right-wing ter­ror­ism pur­pos­es” hav­ing been “fur­ther rad­i­calised” by the expe­ri­ence, and “devel­oped con­nec­tions with oth­ers” who share their vio­lent ide­ol­o­gy.

    While the coun­try they vis­it­ed, and whom or what they “may have fought,” was obscured with aster­isks, it is beyond doubt this sec­tion referred to fight­ers return­ing from Ukraine. The Com­mit­tee omi­nous­ly warned there was “no process in place” to mon­i­tor these indi­vid­u­als upon their arrival.

    An entire sec­tion in the July 2022 UK par­lia­men­tary report on extreme right-wing ter­ror­ism is redact­ed. It con­cerns for­eign fight­ers return­ing to the UK from a cer­tain nation, and pre­cedes the sec­tion on Rus­sia. I won­der what the nation that shall not be men­tioned is. pic.twitter.com/cL7Rw9kpra— Max Blu­men­thal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 28, 2023

    It is hard to imag­ine that West­ern intel­li­gence offi­cials are not aware that the pow­der keg they cre­at­ed in Kiev could erupt on their own soil. How­ev­er, it also appears clear they have tak­en a vow of omer­ta on the issue, even redact­ing sec­tions in their own pub­lic reports on the plague of return­ing for­eign fight­ers. At the same time, they cam­paign zeal­ous­ly against the threat of home­grown right-wing extrem­ism.

    Since tak­ing office, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has repeat­ed­ly warned of immi­nent “racial­ly or eth­ni­cal­ly moti­vat­ed” ter­ror­ist attacks by US cit­i­zens. It has even pub­lished a ded­i­cat­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy to address the “chal­lenge.”

    Yet, the indict­ment of two Amer­i­can neo-Nazis in Feb­ru­ary this year gen­er­at­ed vir­tu­al­ly no media inter­est, and went large­ly unre­marked upon by US offi­cials. The pair, lead­ers of Atom­waf­fen – also known as the Nation­al Social­ist Resis­tance Front – planned to destroy elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions serv­ing the major­i­ty Black city of Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, in a bid to deprive res­i­dents of heat and light dur­ing Win­ter.

    This eerie silence may be at least par­tial­ly explained by the indict­ment with Azov Bat­tal­ion, which has host­ed mem­bers of the group in Kiev. One Atom­waf­fen fig­ure, Caleb Kole, was sen­tenced in Jan­u­ary 2022 by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice for plot­ting with accom­plices to intim­i­date Jews and jour­nal­ists. It turned out that Cole had pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed Ukraine to attend the country’s annu­al neo-Nazi black met­al fes­ti­val known as Asgard­srei, which is held in a state-owned venue and fea­tures influ­en­tial Azov activists on stage.

    As West­ern pun­dits air­brush Azov’s open­ly fas­cist agen­da in order to jus­ti­fy mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, they are also obscur­ing the threat posed by for­eign fight­ers return­ing home in droves after months in the trench­es with the group.

    ————

    “Neo-Nazi ter­ror threat grows as Ukraine fight­ers jailed in France” by Kit Klaren­berg; The Gray­zone; 05/09/2023

    “The total num­ber of home­grown and for­eign fas­cist fight­ers in Ukraine is not known, but is like­ly to be vast. When the US pulls out of the proxy war, they would have every rea­son to flee. They will bring with them bat­tle­field expe­ri­ence, and in many cas­es elite West­ern mil­i­tary train­ing. High-end weapons and ammu­ni­tion will be avail­able in abun­dance on the black mar­ket, due to the mas­sive well­spring of arms ship­ments to Kiev over the course of the con­flict.”

    Are we about to see dou­bling-down on the con­flict in Ukraine? Or the push for a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment? Either way, the West­ern-backed inter­na­tion­al far right forces cur­rent­ly fight­ing in Ukraine are inevitably going to become key ele­ments in how events play out. We’re either going to see even more weapons and train­ing going towards these groups. Or, should set­tle­ments get put on the table, the scat­ter­ing of these forces across the globe. Maybe they’ll head to a new war zone. Or, like the pair of recent­ly-arrest­ed French neo-Nazis, maybe they’ll return home. But wher­ev­er they go, they won’t be leav­ing Ukraine emp­ty-hand­ed. Weapons will be smug­gled. And that train­ing will be with them for the rest of their lives:

    ...
    On April 24th 2023, two French neo-Nazis were jailed for 15 months, nine of which were sus­pend­ed, for pos­sess­ing assault rifle ammu­ni­tion. The pair had returned to Paris from Ukraine two days ear­li­er, and were arrest­ed at cus­toms.

    Both were on the radar of French domes­tic spy­ing agency DGSI, which held files on them for endan­ger­ing state secu­ri­ty. Accord­ing to the French out­let Medi­a­part, one was a vet­er­an of Chas­seurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters), France’s elite moun­tain infantry force. He was thrown out of the mil­i­tary after his neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies were exposed online. The oth­er is a noto­ri­ous local far-right activist.

    As in many oth­er West­ern coun­tries, hun­dreds of French cit­i­zens have trav­eled to Kiev to take up arms against Rus­sia since it invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Accord­ing to the DGSI, at least 30 of the French for­eign fight­ers are known fas­cists.

    This shock­ing out­flow has failed to gen­er­ate any Eng­lish-lan­guage media inter­est, how­ev­er, save for March 2022, when far-right mil­i­tant Loïk Le Pri­ol was deport­ed home from Hun­gary en route to Ukraine, to face charges of mur­der­ing Argen­tin­ian rug­by play­er Fed­eri­co Martín Aram­burú in Paris.

    It was inevitable that some of the French Neo-Nazis who man­aged to make the jour­ney to Kiev had pre-exist­ing links with Azov Bat­tal­ion, Ukraine’s noto­ri­ous Neo-Nazi para­mil­i­tary. In Jan­u­ary 2022, Paris banned the white suprema­cist group Zouaves. Its mem­bers had vio­lent­ly attacked anti-racist pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ing a ral­ly for far-right pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eric Zem­mour the pre­vi­ous month. The movement’s leader, Marc de Cac­quer­ay-Val­me­nier, trav­eled to Ukraine in Decem­ber 2019 to meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Azov, and attend its train­ing camps.

    Since the war in Ukraine began, Ouest Casu­al, a still-extant Telegram chan­nel linked to Zouaves, has pub­lished a steady stream of trib­utes to Ukrain­ian sol­diers, repeat­ed­ly denounc­ing the “Asi­at­ic con­tin­gents of Sovi­et impe­ri­al­ism once again sweep­ing across Europe,” and “Putin’s Islamist dogs,” in ref­er­ence to Chechen fight­ers. Bor­deaux Nation­al­iste, a vio­lent Neo-Nazi group close­ly linked to Zouaves, has reg­u­lar­ly orga­nized col­lec­tions of equip­ment for the fight.
    ...

    And as the arti­cle reminds us, these French neo-Nazis are the first instance of for­eign extrem­ist fight­ers return­ing from Ukraine with poten­tial ter­ror plots on their minds. We already saw this with the Order of Hagal group in Italy that was report­ed­ly in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with groups like Azov and Right Sec­tor. How many more sto­ries of this nature are we going to see? The answer, in part, pre­sum­ably depends on whether or not we see a push towards nego­ti­a­tions or a deep­en­ing of the con­flict in Ukraine:

    ...
    In Novem­ber, Alex Rubin­stein report­ed for The Gray­zone on how Ital­ian police had arrest­ed five mem­bers of the local neo-Nazi group, Order of Hagal, which main­tains oper­a­tional ties to Azov Bat­tal­ion. They were stock­pil­ing weapons, includ­ing ammu­ni­tion, tac­ti­cal gear, and a grenade launch­er, and plan­ning ter­ror attacks. A sixth mem­ber, then-fight­ing along­side Azov in Ukraine, remained want­ed.

    The neo-Nazis had been mon­i­tored inten­sive­ly by Ital­ian author­i­ties since 2019. One – report­ed to be “dan­ger­ous­ly close to far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist groups” – was plan­ning an attack on a police sta­tion in Naples, while the fugi­tive Azov fight­er had a shop­ping mall in the same city in his crosshairs.

    ...

    The US and its inter­na­tion­al vas­sals have been keen to encour­age and facil­i­tate the pro­lif­er­a­tion of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. Through­out the Cold War, the CIA and MI6 adopt­ed a covert pol­i­cy of encour­ag­ing ultra-nation­al­ist ele­ments in Ukraine to under­mine com­mu­nist rule. In the years after the US-backed 2014 Maid­an coup, numer­ous far-right mili­tias received high-lev­el mil­i­tary train­ing from Wash­ing­ton, Lon­don, and Ottawa. Sup­port from the West has only increased since Russia’s inva­sion.

    Two groups that received exten­sive prac­ti­cal and mate­r­i­al sup­port from NATO states in recent years are Cen­turia and Right Sec­tor. The indict­ed mem­bers of Italy’s Order of Hagal report­ed­ly main­tained “direct and fre­quent” con­tacts with both, along with Azov, seek­ing “pos­si­ble recruit­ment into the ranks of these fight­ing groups,” accord­ing to local media.
    ...

    And what about the extrem­ist fights who trav­eled to Ukraine and would rather not leave? Espe­cial­ly those who might face war crimes pros­e­cu­tions? Well, it’s worth not­ing the expe­ri­ence the US had with the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia but were even­tu­al­ly forced to leave as part of the Day­ton Agree­ment: that was seen as a deeply betray­al by al Qae­da leader Osama bin Laden and a rea­son for a deep­en­ing jihad against the US. What kind of sense of betray­al are the for­eign fight­ers in Ukraine going to be left with should they even­tu­al­ly be forced to leave the coun­try as part of a peace set­tle­ment?

    ...
    Well-estab­lished blow­back from US covert ops in Europe

    Since the West ini­ti­at­ed its covert pro­gram of sup­port­ing vio­lent extrem­ists in order to weak­en and desta­bi­lize its geopo­lit­i­cal foes, blow­back has come in var­i­ous forms.

    Through­out the Bosn­ian war in the 1990s, the US sup­port­ed Mujahideen fight­ers. They arrived on CIA “black flights” from all over the world, espe­cial­ly Afghanistan, and received a seem­ing­ly end­less flow of weapons, in breach of a Unit­ed Nations embar­go.

    Quick­ly gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive bru­tal­i­ty against ene­my sol­diers and civil­ians alike, and false flag attacks on their own posi­tions and pub­lic spaces in order to pre­cip­i­tate West­ern inter­ven­tion, their pres­ence was piv­otal to the Bosn­ian Mus­lims’ war effort. US Balka­ns nego­tia­tor Richard Hol­brooke has stat­ed they “wouldn’t have sur­vived” with­out the Mujahideen’s assis­tance.

    Under the terms of the 1995 Day­ton Agree­ment, Mujahideen fight­ers were required to leave Bosnia. Imme­di­ate­ly after it was signed, Croat forces fight­ing along­side British and Amer­i­can mer­ce­nar­ies in the coun­try began assas­si­nat­ing the group’s lead­er­ship to send the Islamists scat­ter­ing. Some fled to Alba­nia along with their US-sup­plied weapons, where they joined the incip­i­ent Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army, anoth­er West­ern-backed enti­ty filled with hard­core jihadists.

    Oth­ers were inter­cept­ed with the assis­tance of the CIA, and deport­ed to their coun­tries of ori­gin to stand tri­al for seri­ous ter­ror offens­es. This was per­ceived as a gross betray­al by the Mujahideen’s senior over­seas lead­er­ship, which includ­ed Osama bin Laden.

    In August 1998, two US embassies in East Africa were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bombed in a sui­cide attack. A day ear­li­er, the bin Laden-linked Islam­ic Jihad pub­lished a threat, explic­it­ly refer­ring to US involve­ment in the extra­di­tion of the group’s “broth­ers” from Alba­nia. It warned that an appro­pri­ate “response” was immi­nent­ly forth­com­ing:

    “We are inter­est­ed in briefly telling the Amer­i­cans that their mes­sage has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read care­ful­ly, is being [pre­pared], because we – with God’s help – will write it in the lan­guage that they under­stand.”

    The embassy attacks marked the begin­ning of bin Laden’s jihad against the US, which one way or anoth­er cul­mi­nat­ed in 9/11. Two of the pur­port­ed hijack­ers, Nawaf al-Haz­mi and Khalid al-Mihd­har, were vet­er­ans of the Bosn­ian war. As The Gray­zone recent­ly report­ed, both may have been know­ing­ly or unknow­ing­ly work­ing for the CIA on the day of the attacks.

    Today, an even more egre­gious betray­al is almost inevitably impend­ing – name­ly, the US end­ing its sup­port for Kiev’s war effort. Across the West, weapon stocks are almost spent, polit­i­cal and pub­lic pres­sure to exit mounts dai­ly, and offi­cials are open­ly express­ing grave doubts about Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to stage a suc­cess­ful coun­terof­fen­sive, let alone recap­ture any lost ter­ri­to­ry in the process.

    ...

    It is hard to imag­ine that West­ern intel­li­gence offi­cials are not aware that the pow­der keg they cre­at­ed in Kiev could erupt on their own soil. How­ev­er, it also appears clear they have tak­en a vow of omer­ta on the issue, even redact­ing sec­tions in their own pub­lic reports on the plague of return­ing for­eign fight­ers. At the same time, they cam­paign zeal­ous­ly against the threat of home­grown right-wing extrem­ism.
    ...

    Keep in mind there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble way Ukraine and the West might col­lec­tive­ly deal with the extrem­ist dias­po­ra cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Ukraine after a set­tle­ment is reached: just wel­come them to stay and live in Ukraine for­ev­er. Time will tell how this ulti­mate­ly gets resolved. But the arm­ing and train­ing of extrem­ists is a bomb that can’t real­ly be defused. It’s more a “should we length­en the fuse in exchange for a big­ger bomb?” kind of trade­off.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 10, 2023, 5:19 pm
  12. Should US jour­nal­ists sup­port­ive of US mil­i­tary con­flicts over­seas be deemed the legit­i­mate tar­gets of assas­si­na­tion by the oppos­ing gov­ern­ments? And is it ok of those jour­nal­ists are attacked on US soil by bomb­ing, for exam­ple, a pub­lic cafe where they hap­pen to be gath­er­ing? Those are just some of the pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised by the assas­si­na­tion attempt last week in Moscow tar­get­ing Russ­ian author Zakhar Prilepin. While Prilepin sur­vived, his dri­ver was killed in the car bomb­ing attack. It was the lat­est in a string of attacks tar­get­ing promi­nent Russ­ian civil­ians that includes the car bomb­ing of Daria Dug­i­na back in August and the bomb­ing of a cafe in St Peters­burg tar­get­ing blog­ger Vladlen Tatarsky. And based on the response by the Ukrain­ian media, there’s going to be a lot more assas­si­na­tion attempts on the way. That’s at least what we can infer from the deci­sion by the 1 + 1 Media Group to post to Telegram cel­e­brat­ing the car bomb­ing of Prilepin and con­duct­ing a poll on who to tar­get next with a list of can­di­date tar­get. Yep, Ukrain is now con­duct­ing polls on who to tar­get for assas­si­na­tion.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, the con­glom­er­ate that owns 1 + 1 Media Group is also the par­ent com­pa­ny of TSN, the TV News pro­gram that put out the $500k reward for any drone ter­ror attacks on Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s annu­al May 9 Vic­to­ry Day cel­e­bra­tion. Remote assas­si­na­tions are becom­ing part of the cor­po­rate agen­da.

    And while 1 + 1 Media Group isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, it might as well be giv­en that its own by Ihor Kolo­moisky. As we’ve seen, not only is Kolo­moisky the ini­tial chief patron of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, but he went on to become the key bene­fac­tors for Volodymyr Zelen­skiy’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. It’s as if NPR was con­duct­ing polls of US cit­i­zens of who the US should assas­si­nate next.

    It’s also note­wor­thy that the May 6 bomb­ing of Prilepin coin­cid­ed with the arrest of 11 indi­vid­u­als inside Ukraine on the charges of being Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists. So this assas­si­na­tion cam­paign appears to be part of a broad­er intim­i­da­tion and silenc­ing cam­paign tar­get­ing civil­ians inside and out­side Ukraine. Giv­en that one of the arrest­ed includ­ed US cit­i­zen Gon­za­lo Lira, it rais­es the ques­tion of what the US’s response is to this turn of events. Well, accord­ing Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken when asked about the US view on attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry, “These are deci­sions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself.” That sure sounds like an endorse­ment. And an invi­ta­tion for more tar­get­ed civil­ian attacks out­side Ukraine’s bor­ders.

    But per­haps the most remark­able endorse­ment of the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Prilepin cam from Chris­to Grozev, the lead Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tor at the US gov­ern­ment-fund­ed out­let Belling­cat, an enti­ty with close ties to the west­ern intel­li­gence. As Grozev puts it, the bomb­ing of a pub­lic event at a cafe in St. Peters­burg on the grounds that the tar­get was a “pro­pa­gan­dist.” Again, it’s hard to think of an enti­ty that more close­ly fits the def­i­n­i­tion of pro­pa­gan­dis­tic than Belling­cat. Sure, much of what they report is fac­tu­al­ly accu­rate giv­en that they are focused on “open source” analy­sis. But even open source analy­sis involves a great deal of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and there’s no deny­ing the sub­jec­tive spin found in vir­tu­al­ly all of Belling­cat’s cov­er­age of the con­flict in Ukraine. Spin that became much more aggres­sive fol­low­ing the Feb 2022 out­break of the war. For exam­ple, take Belling­cat researcher Michael Col­borne, who pro­duced some fab­u­lous cov­er­age of Azov neo-Nazi char­ac­ter pri­or to 2022 but rad­i­cal­ly changed his cov­er­age after the inva­sion. Would­n’t Col­borne be con­sid­ered a “pro­pa­gan­dist” based on these sim­ple facts? Does Grozev’s assas­si­na­tion green light cov­er fel­low Belling­cat researchers too? Pre­sum­ably not, and yet it’s hard to see how he did­n’t just endorse the assas­si­na­tion attempts on his own peers. It’s just an incred­i­ble devel­op­ment that expos­es the depth of the intel­lec­tu­al rot that has inflict­ed so much of the cov­er­age of this con­flict. Dead­ly rot that is promis­ing to make the medi­a’s own cov­er­age and analy­sis of con­flicts part of the bat­tle­field:

    The Gray­zone

    Ukrain­ian media asks ‘who should be next’ after car bomb­ing of Russ­ian writer

    Alexan­der Rubin­stein
    May 9, 2023

    A Ukrain­ian media group part­nered with BBC, Der Spiegel and oth­er West­ern out­lets polled read­ers on which Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­al should be assas­si­nat­ed fol­low­ing a car bomb attack on writer Zakhar Prilepin. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has green­lit Kiev’s cam­paign of ter­ror.

    Hours after Russ­ian writer and activist Zakhar Prilepin was near­ly killed in a tar­get­ed car bomb, a pop­u­lar Ukrain­ian news agency sub­mit­ted a poll that asked its read­ers, “Who do you think should be next in the Russ­ian pan­theon of scum pro­pa­gan­dists?”

    It’s open sea­son on Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als sup­port­ive of the government’s war effort, accord­ing to Ukrain­ian news agency UNIAN. Fol­low­ing a car bomb intend­ed to kill Russ­ian nov­el­ist Zakhar Prilepin in the Nizh­ny Nov­gorod region of Rus­sia, the out­let polled its audi­ence on Telegram, pro­vid­ing a list of names of promi­nent Rus­sians that could be assas­si­nat­ed.

    Exclud­ing the two report­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Prilepin is the third high-pro­file Russ­ian to be tar­get­ed for assas­si­na­tion by Ukrain­ian agents. His maim­ing fol­lows the car bomb­ing that killed Dariya Dug­i­na, which was intend­ed for her father, the Russ­ian nation­al­ist philoso­pher Alexan­der Dug­in, and the bomb­ing of a pub­lic event fea­tur­ing Vladlen Tatarsky, who ran a pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel. The Telegram post by UNIAN explic­it­ly ref­er­ences Dug­in, Tatarsky, and Prilepin.

    #DefendOur­Val­uesUNIAN, part of the 1+1 media group major­i­ty-owned by Kolo­moysky, gen­er­ates polls on its Telegram chan­nel about which Russ­ian jour­nal­ist should be mur­dered next.Clients of UNIAN are among oth­ers AP, BBC, Reuters, VoA and DeutscheWelle. pic.twitter.com/dGmqRJALgU— Michael Kobs (@MichaKobs) May 8, 2023

    Among the list of poten­tial tar­gets were the oper­a­tors of oth­er Telegram chan­nels, RT edi­tor-in-chief Mar­gari­ta Simonyan (crude­ly referred to in the post as “beaver eater”), Russ­ian TV news hosts Dmit­ry Kise­ly­ov and Sergey Mar­dan, and oth­ers. Some 50,000 Telegram users have vot­ed in the poll at the time of this article’s pub­li­ca­tion.

    Accord­ing to UNIAN’s About page, the out­let “part­ners in infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion and exchange” with Amer­i­can out­lets Reuters and Bloomberg while its clients include promi­nent for­eign out­lets like the BBC and Der Spiegel.

    [see screen­shot]

    UNIAN is owned by the 1+1 Media Group belong­ing to Ukrain­ian oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky, a long time backer of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vlodomyr Zelen­sky and the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. The con­glom­er­ate is also the par­ent com­pa­ny of TSN, the TV News pro­gram that recent­ly put out a boun­ty for drone ter­ror attacks on Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s annu­al May 9 cel­e­bra­tion of the defeat of Nazism.

    Ukrain­ian banker offers cash for drone ter­ror in Rus­siaOli­garch Volodymyr Yat­senko offered a $500,000 boun­ty to any weapons mak­er able to land a drone in Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s upcom­ing Vic­to­ry Day paradeRead the full report by @realalexrubi here https://t.co/tUg3KT1wp1 pic.twitter.com/Tgn45S8zMM— The Gray­zone (@TheGrayzoneNews) May 2, 2023

    The assas­si­na­tion attempt against Russ­ian nov­el­ist Zakhar Prilepin coin­cid­ed with raids inside Ukraine that swept up 11 war com­men­ta­tors includ­ing Gon­za­lo Lira, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. Ukraine’s SBU intel­li­gence agency announced on May 4 that they had arrest­ed “anoth­er net­work of ene­my inter­net agi­ta­tors.”

    Ukrain­ian secret police announce they have arrest­ed 11 “inter­net agi­ta­tors.” A sign of whats to come to the West­ern world if the elites are to be believed when they say this is a war for the future of Democ­ra­cy pic.twitter.com/h4v8jbEGw4— Alex Rubin­stein (@RealAlexRubi) May 6, 2023

    Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists with ties to US intel­li­gence have sought to jus­ti­fy the tar­get­ing of online influ­encers. Chris­to Grozev, the lead Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tor at the US gov­ern­ment-fund­ed out­let Belling­cat, jus­ti­fied the bomb­ing of a pub­lic event at a cafe in St. Peters­burg on the grounds that the tar­get was a “pro­pa­gan­dist.”

    Sim­i­lar­ly, Sarah Ash­ton-Cir­il­lo, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty oper­a­tive who enlist­ed in Ukraine’s armed forces, filmed a phan­tas­magor­i­cal defense of the arrest of Amer­i­can Gon­za­lo Lira by Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents on the same grounds. While the SBU had only pub­licly released images of Lira with his face blurred, Ash­ton-Cir­l­lo was some­how able to pro­duce uncen­sored ver­sions.

    Mean­while, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has pro­vid­ed a green light for Ukraine’s cam­paign of ter­ror inside Rus­sia. Fol­low­ing the sec­ond assas­si­na­tion attempt on Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the US view on attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. “These are deci­sions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself,” Blinken respond­ed.

    ...

    ———–

    “Ukrain­ian media asks ‘who should be next’ after car bomb­ing of Russ­ian writer” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein; The Gray­zone; 05/09/2023

    “It’s open sea­son on Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als sup­port­ive of the government’s war effort, accord­ing to Ukrain­ian news agency UNIAN. Fol­low­ing a car bomb intend­ed to kill Russ­ian nov­el­ist Zakhar Prilepin in the Nizh­ny Nov­gorod region of Rus­sia, the out­let polled its audi­ence on Telegram, pro­vid­ing a list of names of promi­nent Rus­sians that could be assas­si­nat­ed.

    It’s open sea­son on Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als who sup­port the war. And open sea­son any ran­dom civil­ians who might be in their gen­er­al pres­ence when the bombs go off. And now we have the UNIAN Ukrain­ian media out­let issu­ing Telegram polls ask­ing which Russ­ian civil­ian should be assas­si­nat­ed next, with a list of can­di­date tar­get. It’s still open sea­son:

    ...
    Exclud­ing the two report­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Prilepin is the third high-pro­file Russ­ian to be tar­get­ed for assas­si­na­tion by Ukrain­ian agents. His maim­ing fol­lows the car bomb­ing that killed Dariya Dug­i­na, which was intend­ed for her father, the Russ­ian nation­al­ist philoso­pher Alexan­der Dug­in, and the bomb­ing of a pub­lic event fea­tur­ing Vladlen Tatarsky, who ran a pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel. The Telegram post by UNIAN explic­it­ly ref­er­ences Dug­in, Tatarsky, and Prilepin.

    #DefendOur­Val­uesUNIAN, part of the 1+1 media group major­i­ty-owned by Kolo­moysky, gen­er­ates polls on its Telegram chan­nel about which Russ­ian jour­nal­ist should be mur­dered next.Clients of UNIAN are among oth­ers AP, BBC, Reuters, VoA and DeutscheWelle. pic.twitter.com/dGmqRJALgU— Michael Kobs (@MichaKobs) May 8, 2023

    Among the list of poten­tial tar­gets were the oper­a­tors of oth­er Telegram chan­nels, RT edi­tor-in-chief Mar­gari­ta Simonyan (crude­ly referred to in the post as “beaver eater”), Russ­ian TV news hosts Dmit­ry Kise­ly­ov and Sergey Mar­dan, and oth­ers. Some 50,000 Telegram users have vot­ed in the poll at the time of this article’s pub­li­ca­tion.
    ...

    Adding to the dark nature of this cam­paign is the fact that UNIAN is owned by Ihor Kolo­moisky’s 1+1 Media Group. In addi­tion to being the chief ini­tial spon­sor for the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Kolo­moisky went on to become to the pri­ma­ry backer of Volodymyr Zelen­sky’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. So the enti­ty con­duct­ing these assas­si­na­tion polls has ties to both the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and the neo-Nazi para­mil­i­tary units most inclined to car­ry out ter­ror cam­paigns tar­get­ing civil­ians:

    ...
    UNIAN is owned by the 1+1 Media Group belong­ing to Ukrain­ian oli­garch Ihor Kolo­moisky, a long time backer of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vlodomyr Zelen­sky and the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. The con­glom­er­ate is also the par­ent com­pa­ny of TSN, the TV News pro­gram that recent­ly put out a boun­ty for drone ter­ror attacks on Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s annu­al May 9 cel­e­bra­tion of the defeat of Nazism.

    Ukrain­ian banker offers cash for drone ter­ror in Rus­siaOli­garch Volodymyr Yat­senko offered a $500,000 boun­ty to any weapons mak­er able to land a drone in Red Square dur­ing Moscow’s upcom­ing Vic­to­ry Day paradeRead the full report by @realalexrubi here https://t.co/tUg3KT1wp1 pic.twitter.com/Tgn45S8zMM— The Gray­zone (@TheGrayzoneNews) May 2, 2023

    ...

    Adding to the ‘offi­cial’ nature of this cam­paign is the fact that the attack on Prilepin coin­cid­ed with raids on 11 war com­men­ta­tors insid­er Ukraine. in oth­er words, expect fur­ther moves to ‘con­trol the mes­sage’. So far it’s voic­es inside Ukraine and Rus­sia that are deemed to be legit­i­mate tar­gets. Will this silenc­ing remain con­tained to Rus­sia and Ukraine? Time will tell:

    ...
    The assas­si­na­tion attempt against Russ­ian nov­el­ist Zakhar Prilepin coin­cid­ed with raids inside Ukraine that swept up 11 war com­men­ta­tors includ­ing Gon­za­lo Lira, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. Ukraine’s SBU intel­li­gence agency announced on May 4 that they had arrest­ed “anoth­er net­work of ene­my inter­net agi­ta­tors.”

    Ukrain­ian secret police announce they have arrest­ed 11 “inter­net agi­ta­tors.” A sign of whats to come to the West­ern world if the elites are to be believed when they say this is a war for the future of Democ­ra­cy pic.twitter.com/h4v8jbEGw4— Alex Rubin­stein (@RealAlexRubi) May 6, 2023

    ...

    And what about allied gov­ern­ments? Is there any com­ment on this new tac­tic of tar­get­ing Russ­ian civil­ians inside Rus­sia? Well, accord­ing to Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken, “These are deci­sions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself.” That sounds like an endorse­ment:

    ...
    Accord­ing to UNIAN’s About page, the out­let “part­ners in infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion and exchange” with Amer­i­can out­lets Reuters and Bloomberg while its clients include promi­nent for­eign out­lets like the BBC and Der Spiegel.

    [see screen­shot]

    ...

    Mean­while, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has pro­vid­ed a green light for Ukraine’s cam­paign of ter­ror inside Rus­sia. Fol­low­ing the sec­ond assas­si­na­tion attempt on Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the US view on attacks inside Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. “These are deci­sions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself,” Blinken respond­ed.
    ...

    Final­ly, we get to this absolute­ly remark­able endorse­ment of the tar­get­ing of Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als from Chris­to Grozev of the intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed Belling­cat, who jus­ti­fied the bomb­ing on the grounds that the tar­get was a “pro­pa­gan­dist”. It’s kind of hard to think of a more dan­ger­ous move by a Belling­cat inves­ti­ga­tor — some­one who work­ing for an out­let that basi­cal­ly oper­ates as the lead­ing unof­fi­cial pro­pa­gan­dist for West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vices — than endors­ing the assas­si­na­tion of those deemed to be “pro­pa­gan­dists”. And yet here we are, with Belling­cat doing exact­ly that. It’s the kind of inflam­ma­to­ry endorse­ment that just invites an esca­la­tion of this kind of “hybrid war­fare”:

    ...
    Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists with ties to US intel­li­gence have sought to jus­ti­fy the tar­get­ing of online influ­encers. Chris­to Grozev, the lead Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tor at the US gov­ern­ment-fund­ed out­let Belling­cat, jus­ti­fied the bomb­ing of a pub­lic event at a cafe in St. Peters­burg on the grounds that the tar­get was a “pro­pa­gan­dist.”

    Sim­i­lar­ly, Sarah Ash­ton-Cir­il­lo, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty oper­a­tive who enlist­ed in Ukraine’s armed forces, filmed a phan­tas­magor­i­cal defense of the arrest of Amer­i­can Gon­za­lo Lira by Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents on the same grounds. While the SBU had only pub­licly released images of Lira with his face blurred, Ash­ton-Cir­l­lo was some­how able to pro­duce uncen­sored ver­sions.
    ...

    How long will it be before a Belling­cat ana­lyst gets tar­get­ed in response to this endorse­ment? And what will the West­’s response be? Hey, that’s not fair, only Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als can be tar­get­ed for assas­si­na­tion for pro­pa­gan­da? Keep in mind that, as tech­nol­o­gy advances it’s only going to get eas­i­er and eas­i­er to car­ry our remote assas­si­na­tions. These new “hybrid war­fare” norms being estab­lished in this con­flict are going to be play­ing out for years to come. Time will tell, but this is appar­ent­ly the norm now. Civil­ian “pro­pa­gan­dists” liv­ing in their own coun­tries are legit­i­mate tar­gets for assas­si­na­tion. So says the pre­vail­ing pro­pa­gan­da.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 13, 2023, 4:18 pm
  13. As the world’s atten­tion con­tin­ues to be drawn away from Ukraine while the Mid­dle East boils over over the past month, it’s worth not­ing who got fea­tured in a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-pro­duced video pub­lished last month on the United24 Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-run plat­form. It was a video fea­tur­ing the ‘rebuilt’ Azov Brigade. Yes, fol­low­ing the near anni­hi­la­tion of Azov and sub­se­quent sur­ren­der in Mar­i­upol, a large num­ber of Azov fight­ers have sub­se­quent­ly been released in pris­on­er exchanges and it appears they are back in the fight. And the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment isn’t miss­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce Azov-cen­tric pro­pa­gan­da.

    As we’re going to see, the ‘rebuild­ing’ of Azov is being done with core of the unit’s vet­er­ans. In oth­er words, it’s being rebuilt with a core of the same bat­tle-hard­ened far right extrem­ists. One of the unit com­man­ders fea­tured in
    a recent United24 video is a major who goes by the call sign Lemko and is the 1st Spe­cial Pur­pos­es Bat­tal­ion com­man­der. It turns out Lemko is an overt Nazi who was open­ly warn­ing back in 2014 that there could be a ‘split’ over polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy among Ukraine’s fight­ing forces in the future and that the EU’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism posed just as big a threat Ukraine as Rus­sia. That’s the guy now fea­tured in a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da video cel­e­brat­ing the return of Azov to the front lines. Sur­prise!

    Also, it appears that the rein­cor­po­ra­tion of Azov’s top com­man­ders, includ­ing unit com­man­der Denys Prokopenko, who were released by Turkey back in August is a direct vio­la­tion of the pris­on­er swap agree­ment. But it’s hap­pen­ing any­way. It’s not great for future pris­on­er swaps.

    So with the Azov Brigade’s cap­ture lead­er­ship now released and back in Ukraine, it sounds like we should expect a lot more gov­ern­ment pro­duced videos fea­tur­ing the hero­ics of Nazis. And, pre­sum­ably, a lot more arti­cles in the West­ern press blind­ly pro­pelling that pro­pa­gan­da along:

    Busi­ness Insid­er

    Ukraine’s high-pro­file Azov Brigade, many of them for­mer PoWs, has been rebuilt and is fight­ing in the forests of Donet­sk

    Alia Shoaib
    Oct 14, 2023, 9:28 AM CDT

    * Ukraine’s bat­tle-hard­ened Azov Brigade has been rebuilt and is fight­ing in the forests of Donet­sk.
    * Rus­sia took many of its sol­diers cap­tive dur­ing the Mar­i­upol bat­tle last year.
    * Videos show them fight­ing Russ­ian posi­tions from their trench­es in the Sere­bryan­sky for­est.

    Ukraine says that its bat­tle-hard­ened Azov Brigade has returned to the front lines in Ukraine and is fight­ing in the woods of Donet­sk.

    The men can be seen fight­ing from their trench­es in the Sere­bryan­sky for­est in a video recent­ly pub­lished by United24, a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-run plat­form.

    The for­est, near the Russ­ian-occu­pied town of Kreminna, has been the cen­ter of some of the war’s fiercest fight­ing as Rus­sia con­tin­u­al­ly car­ried out assaults.

    Videos cir­cu­lat­ed on social media appeared to show Azov attack­ing Russ­ian posi­tions in the for­est.

    The 12th Azov Assault Brigade of Nation­al Guard attacks Russ­ian posi­tions and clears them in Kreminna for­est area. pic.twitter.com/plQJne5FEa— NOELREPORTS ???? ???? (@NOELreports) Octo­ber 9, 2023

    The Azov Brigade was formed as the Azov Bat­tal­ion in 2014, com­posed of vol­un­teers who came togeth­er to fight pro-Russ­ian forces in the war in Don­bas.

    They were based in Mar­i­upol and played a sig­nif­i­cant role in defend­ing the city from Rus­si­a’s inva­sion in 2022, becom­ing a sym­bol of resis­tance.

    Azov ulti­mate­ly with­drew to the Azovstal steel plant, and thou­sands of Ukrain­ian sol­diers and civil­ians hid with­in its walls for weeks as Rus­sia bom­bard­ed it.

    Pris­on­ers of war

    Many Azov fight­ers were cap­tured dur­ing the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, and Rus­sia lat­er released some.

    Among those was a major who goes by the call sign Lemko and is the 1st Spe­cial Pur­pos­es Bat­tal­ion com­man­der.

    A vet­er­an of the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, upon his release from Russ­ian cap­tiv­i­ty, he sprang back into action and took up arms to rebuild the brigade, accord­ing to the United24 video. Oth­er offi­cers in the rebuilt for­ma­tion were PoWs, and vet­er­ans make up its back­bone, it said.

    Azov claims in the video that about 700 of their fight­ers have now been in cap­tiv­i­ty for over 500 days.

    The unit has pre­vi­ous­ly drawn con­tro­ver­sy over its alleged links to neo-Nazi sym­bol­ism and ide­ol­o­gy, but some argue say it has evolved and left behind its more extreme roots, becom­ing a cru­cial part of the Ukrain­ian army.

    The group often fea­tures heav­i­ly in Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, as the sol­diers tell a jour­nal­ist in the United24 video, and have been classed as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by Rus­sia since 2022.

    ...

    ———-

    “Ukraine’s high-pro­file Azov Brigade, many of them for­mer PoWs, has been rebuilt and is fight­ing in the forests of Donet­sk” by Alia Shoaib; Busi­ness Insid­er; 10/14/2023

    “The men can be seen fight­ing from their trench­es in the Sere­bryan­sky for­est in a video recent­ly pub­lished by United24, a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-run plat­form.”

    A Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment pro­duced video fea­tur­ing a rebuilt Azov Brigade fight­ing in the trench­es. It’s an exam­ple of the kind of sym­bol­ic impor­tant Azov has acquired over the past decade in Ukraine.

    And then there’s the dis­missal of Azov’s extrem­ism. In this case, it’s a link to a June 2023 euronews.com piece by Alexan­der Ritz­mann. Recall how Ritz­mann was part of a CNN piece pub­lished in March 2022 argu­ing that the con­tem­po­rary Azov reg­i­ment was com­plete­ly divorced from the ide­ol­o­gy its founders. Azov’s inter­na­tion­al image reha­bil­i­ta­tion con­tin­ues:

    ...
    The unit has pre­vi­ous­ly drawn con­tro­ver­sy over its alleged links to neo-Nazi sym­bol­ism and ide­ol­o­gy, but some argue say it has evolved and left behind its more extreme roots, becom­ing a cru­cial part of the Ukrain­ian army.

    The group often fea­tures heav­i­ly in Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, as the sol­diers tell a jour­nal­ist in the United24 video, and have been classed as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by Rus­sia since 2022.
    ...

    So we have to ask: is the ‘rebuilt’ Azov going to be built with­out the far right ide­ol­o­gy that pre­vi­ous­ly defined it? Of course not. As we can see, one of the fea­tured vet­er­ans who returned after being released by Rus­sia was the 1st Spe­cial Pur­pos­es Bat­tal­ion com­man­der who goes by the call sign Lemko. As we’re going to see below, Lemko was an open Nazi when he joined Azov back in 2014. And here he is, the 1st Spe­cial Pur­pos­es Bat­tal­ion com­man­der get­ting fea­tured in a gov­ern­ment pro­duced video:

    ...
    Many Azov fight­ers were cap­tured dur­ing the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, and Rus­sia lat­er released some.

    Among those was a major who goes by the call sign Lemko and is the 1st Spe­cial Pur­pos­es Bat­tal­ion com­man­der.

    A vet­er­an of the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, upon his release from Russ­ian cap­tiv­i­ty, he sprang back into action and took up arms to rebuild the brigade, accord­ing to the United24 video. Oth­er offi­cers in the rebuilt for­ma­tion were PoWs, and vet­er­ans make up its back­bone, it said.

    Azov claims in the video that about 700 of their fight­ers have now been in cap­tiv­i­ty for over 500 days.
    ...

    Now let’s take a clos­er look at the ide­ol­o­gy moti­vat­ing Lemko. Because he’s clear­ly very moti­vat­ed. The guy was cap­tured, released, and appears to have imme­di­ate­ly returned to the front. What dri­ves some­one who arrived in Ukraine in 2014 from Cana­da to be this com­mit­ted to Ukraine’s fight? Well, for starters, when he arrived in 2014 he already announced that he had no plans on ever return­ing to Cana­da, pre­sum­ably, in part, because Lemko believes the deca­dent West pos­es just as big a threat to Ukraine as Rus­sia. Or as Lemko put it, “I lived in west­ern Europe for 11 years, so I know...Ukraine has two ene­mies – Rus­sia and the EU.”:

    The Irish Times

    For­eign­ers join far-right mili­tias in Ukraine’s fight against rebels

    Fears that nation­al­ist Azov Bat­tal­ion and oth­ers could ulti­mate­ly turn on new rulers

    Daniel McLaugh­lin
    Thu Jul 17 2014 — 01:01

    Sit­ting in the shade of a broad pine tree and a pink-and-orange umbrel­la, two Swedes and a Cana­di­an explain why they are ready to kill, and be killed, for the future of a free Ukraine.

    They are mem­bers of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, one of sev­er­al units of vol­un­teers fight­ing along­side Ukraine’s mil­i­tary and nation­al guard against sep­a­ratist rebels – alleged­ly backed by Moscow – who want the coun­try’s east­ern regions to join Rus­sia.

    The bat­tal­ion is based by the Sea of Azov in south­ern Donet­sk province, in a beach­side com­plex for­mer­ly used as a hol­i­day home by the fam­i­ly of Vik­tor Yanukovich, who was oust­ed as Ukraine’s pres­i­dent in Feb­ru­ary.

    The unit was formed by the Social Nation­al Assem­bly, a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist group described by crit­ics as vio­lent­ly racist, and its emblem includes vari­a­tions on the “black sun” and “wolf’s hook” sym­bols long asso­ci­at­ed with Nazism.

    Lurid pro­pa­gan­da

    The ide­ol­o­gy of Azov is a gift to the Krem­lin, which has used lurid pro­pa­gan­da to dis­cred­it Ukraine’s rev­o­lu­tion as a fas­cist coup that threat­ens the country’s tens of mil­lions of Russ­ian-speak­ers and, more broad­ly, Europe.

    There are also grow­ing fears in Ukraine that Azov and oth­er far-right mili­tias could ulti­mate­ly turn on its new rulers, whom they see not as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the rev­o­lu­tion but of a venal oli­garchy that has dom­i­nat­ed the coun­try for decades.

    Rus­si­a’s annex­a­tion of Crimea and covert sup­port for rebels in Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions has fuelled rad­i­cal­ism in a Ukraine already reel­ing from the rev­o­lu­tion, and stoked nation­al pas­sions in a coun­try that feels attacked by its huge neigh­bour and large­ly aban­doned by its sup­posed allies in the West.

    Azov now plans to expand its ranks from 300 to 500 men, and a French sup­port­er called Gas­ton Besson – who fought for Croa­t­ian inde­pen­dence in the 1990s – is form­ing a brigade of for­eign­ers will­ing to take up arms for Ukraine’s free­dom and ter­ri­to­ry.

    “Vol­un­teers have come from Rus­sia, France, Italy, Belarus, Cana­da, Swe­den, Slove­nia – many coun­tries,” said Oleg Odnorozhenko, a self-pro­claimed ide­o­logue of the Social Nation­al Assem­bly.

    ...

    “I was sick of the tele­vi­sion pic­tures from CNN and Rus­sia Today, so I decid­ed to come to Ukraine and see for myself. I found a great peo­ple, who desire free­dom, being used in a tug-of-war,” said Sev­erin (28) from Gothen­burg in Swe­den.

    “I would love to solve Ukraine’s prob­lems with polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions. But that’s impos­si­ble now,” he added.

    “I am in favour of a free Euro­pean peo­ple. And I am here to help these Euro­pean peo­ple live in free­dom.”

    Sev­erin calls him­self a nation­al social­ist, but rejects the con­no­ta­tions that he says come with the term “neo-Nazi”. He want­ed to serve in the Swedish army “to pro­tect my land and peo­ple” but was reject­ed due to his polit­i­cal beliefs.

    Like the two men along­side him, Miko­la from Stock­holm and a man from Cana­da who uses the nick­name “Lemko”, Sev­erin is against immi­gra­tion, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, glob­al­i­sa­tion and the ram­pant cap­i­tal­ism and lib­er­al­ism he sees ruin­ing the mod­ern world.

    The three men share a faith in the strength of eth­ni­cal­ly pure nations, liv­ing accord­ing to their tra­di­tions.

    Lemko, who hails from Canada’s large Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra, said he believed in a “Ukraine for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple” and saw the west­ern social mod­el as just as great a threat to the country’s future as the antipa­thy of the Krem­lin. “I lived in west­ern Europe for 11 years, so I know,” said Lemko, who is in his 30s. “Ukraine has two ene­mies – Rus­sia and the EU.”

    ...

    First com­bat

    Sev­erin saw his first com­bat action on June 13th, when the Azov Bat­tal­ion fought sep­a­ratist mil­i­tants in the near­by port city of Mar­i­upol.

    “On the way there, I thought this would be a spe­cial day. But it was harsh, and after expe­ri­enc­ing that no one would say war was beau­ti­ful. Mor­tars went off close by and two of my com­rades were injured. But I was proud to serve.”

    Lemko has no plans to return to Cana­da and Sev­erin says he could be here for “two months or years”, while Miko­la hopes to return to Swe­den in the near future to con­tin­ue his psy­chol­o­gy stud­ies.

    “I’m here to deal with the sep­a­ratists,” Miko­la said. “After that, let’s see.”

    The for­eign­ers, like the local mem­bers of Azov, are deri­sive of Ukraine’s bil­lion­aire pres­i­dent, Petro Poroshenko, the pro-EU gov­ern­ment in Kiev and west­ern states that have been deeply reluc­tant to take a tough stand against Rus­sia.

    “A split is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Lemko said of fears that the var­i­ous units fight­ing the rebels today will one day clash over polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, and over who exact­ly con­trols these increas­ing­ly large and well-armed para­mil­i­tary bat­tal­ions.

    What is clear is that Azov’s extreme nation­al­ism does not have wide­spread sup­port in Ukraine: three far-right can­di­dates mus­tered bare­ly 10 per cent of votes between them in May’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, even dur­ing a deep nation­al cri­sis.

    Desire to defend

    Vasyl Arbu­zov, an advis­er to Donet­sk gov­er­nor Sergei Taru­ta, said Ukraine’s nation­al­ists were bound far less by ide­ol­o­gy than by a desire to defend the coun­try.

    “These aren’t the kind of guys I hang out with on the week­end but, at the moment, they are the kind of guys we need because they are will­ing to fight,” he said.

    Inside their sea­side base, Kalash­nikovs on their laps, three of Azov’s for­eign­ers said they were ready for any­thing.

    “How much talk­ing can you do?” said Lemko.

    “What­ev­er it takes – there’s no turn­ing back now.”

    ———–

    “For­eign­ers join far-right mili­tias in Ukraine’s fight against rebels” by Daniel McLaugh­lin; The Irish Times; 07/17/2014

    “A split is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Lemko said of fears that the var­i­ous units fight­ing the rebels today will one day clash over polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, and over who exact­ly con­trols these increas­ing­ly large and well-armed para­mil­i­tary bat­tal­ions.”

    “A split is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty,” accord­ing to Lemko, back in July of 2014 as the civ­il war in Ukraine was still devel­op­ing. A “split” over polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences between the pro- and anti-EU ele­ments of Ukraine. Which is basi­cal­ly a threat. The threat of a far right-led coup that implic­it­ly exists to this day and is arguably more threat­en­ing than ever.

    And as we can see, Lemko did­n’t hide his ide­ol­o­gy back in 2014. He’s an open Nazi who pals around with fel­low Nazis. And with no plans on ever return­ing to Cana­da:

    ...
    Sev­erin calls him­self a nation­al social­ist, but rejects the con­no­ta­tions that he says come with the term “neo-Nazi”. He want­ed to serve in the Swedish army “to pro­tect my land and peo­ple” but was reject­ed due to his polit­i­cal beliefs.

    Like the two men along­side him, Miko­la from Stock­holm and a man from Cana­da who uses the nick­name “Lemko”, Sev­erin is against immi­gra­tion, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, glob­al­i­sa­tion and the ram­pant cap­i­tal­ism and lib­er­al­ism he sees ruin­ing the mod­ern world.

    The three men share a faith in the strength of eth­ni­cal­ly pure nations, liv­ing accord­ing to their tra­di­tions.

    Lemko, who hails from Canada’s large Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra, said he believed in a “Ukraine for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple” and saw the west­ern social mod­el as just as great a threat to the country’s future as the antipa­thy of the Krem­lin. “I lived in west­ern Europe for 11 years, so I know,” said Lemko, who is in his 30s. “Ukraine has two ene­mies – Rus­sia and the EU.”

    ...

    Lemko has no plans to return to Cana­da and Sev­erin says he could be here for “two months or years”, while Miko­la hopes to return to Swe­den in the near future to con­tin­ue his psy­chol­o­gy stud­ies.
    ...

    And in case it’s not clear that the ‘rebuilt’ Azov is going to be main­tain­ing its ide­ol­o­gy, here’s a report from back in August describ­ing the return of the Azov Brigade to the front. This is fol­low­ing the July release of five Azov com­man­ders where allowed to return home from Turkey fol­low­ing a pris­on­er exchange agree­ment. And as we can see, all of the Azov com­man­ders are being allowed to returned to the front, includ­ing the unit com­man­der Denys Prokopenko. This is a good time to recall how Prokopenko’s wife, Katery­na Prokopenko, was part of a del­e­ga­tion of Azov rep­re­sen­ta­tives who toured in Unit­ed States and met with Con­gress last year. It’s not hard to see why Ukraine would like to see him back lead­ing Azov. Prokopenko is kind of an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty:

    The New Voice of Ukraine

    Azov Brigade returns to bat­tle­field, begins com­bat mis­sions near Kreminna

    August 17, 2023, 07:30 AM

    The Azov Nation­al Guard Brigade has returned to the front and has engaged in com­bat around the Sere­bryanske for­est area, near Kreminna in Luhan­sk Oblast, Nation­al Guard spokesper­son Myko­la Urshalovych announced at a brief­ing on Aug. 17.

    “Azov fight­ers are inflict­ing dev­as­tat­ing loss­es in man­pow­er and equip­ment on the ene­my, and are hold­ing the occu­pied lines,” Urshalovych said.

    ...

    The Azov Brigade par­tic­i­pat­ed in the defense of Mar­i­upol and was present at the final siege at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. On May 20, 2022, on the orders of Ukraine’s top lead­er­ship, the Azovstal gar­ri­son sur­ren­dered.

    After being tak­en pris­on­er by the Rus­sians, five Azovstal com­man­ders were sent to Turkey in an agree­ment “under the per­son­al patron­age of Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan” fol­low­ing a large-scale pris­on­er exchange between Ukraine and Rus­sia in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

    The Azovstal com­man­ders spent more than nine months in Turkey after being released from Russ­ian cap­tiv­i­ty.

    On July 8, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy announced that the five com­man­ders were return­ing home. He met them at Istan­bul air­port and they flew back to Ukraine togeth­er.

    Nation­al Guard Com­man­der Olek­san­dr Piv­nenko sub­se­quent­ly said that Azov’s com­man­ders, includ­ing its leader Denys Prokopenko, could return to the front.

    ———-

    “Azov Brigade returns to bat­tle­field, begins com­bat mis­sions near Kreminna”; The New Voice of Ukraine; 08/17/2023

    “Nation­al Guard Com­man­der Olek­san­dr Piv­nenko sub­se­quent­ly said that Azov’s com­man­ders, includ­ing its leader Denys Prokopenko, could return to the front.”

    And that more or less answers our ques­tions regard­ing whether or not the ‘rebuilt’ Azov was some­how going to be dif­fer­ent from the Azov of old. It’s the same lead­er­ship. Lead­er­ship that should­n’t be allowed back to the front or even back in Ukraine based on the terms of that pris­on­er swap agree­ment. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle points out, when these five com­man­ders were sent to Turkey as part of a pris­on­er swap agree­ment, they were released on the con­di­tion that they would be held until the end of the full-scale inva­sion and would not be allowed to rejoin Ukraine’s armed forces. In oth­er words, the ref­or­ma­tion of Azov’s lead­er­ship was done in direct vio­la­tion of the pris­on­er swap agree­ment:

    The New Voice of Ukraine

    Azovstal heroes home­ward bound: Freed com­man­ders return­ing to Ukraine

    July 8, 2023, 11:19 AM

    Five Ukrain­ian com­man­ders from the defense of Azovstal are return­ing home from Russ­ian imposed exile in Turkey, Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy said in a mes­sage on Telegram on July 8.

    “We are return­ing home from Turkey and bring­ing our heroes home,” he stat­ed.

    ...

    The Ukrain­ian defend­ers return­ing home are:

    * Azov com­man­der Lieu­tenant Colonel Denys Prokopenko, call sign Redis;
    * Azov deputy com­man­der Svy­atoslav Pala­mar, call sign Kaly­na;
    * act­ing com­man­der of the 36th Marine Brigade, Cap­tain 3rd Rank Ser­hiy Volyn­skyi, call sign Voly­na;
    * senior sol­dier of the 72nd Black Zaporozhi­ans Sep­a­rate Mech­a­nized Brigade, Oleh Khomenko;
    * Colonel Denys Shle­ha, com­man­der of the 12th Brigade of the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine.

    The defense of Azovstal Steel­works in the city of Mar­i­upol last­ed from March 18 to May 20, 2022. After being unable to defend the ruins of the for­mer plant, the fight­ers sur­ren­dered their posi­tions on the orders of the Ukrain­ian com­mand and were tak­en pris­on­er by Rus­sia.

    Lat­er, five com­man­ders from the bat­tle were exchanged for 55 Russ­ian ser­vice mem­bers, on con­di­tion that they would be sent to exile in Turkey until the end of the full-scale inva­sion, and not be allowed to rejoin Ukraine’s com­bat forces.

    On July 7, Zelen­skyy met with his Turk­ish coun­ter­part Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, and spoke about pris­on­er-of-war poli­cies between the two nations.

    ———-

    “Azovstal heroes home­ward bound: Freed com­man­ders return­ing to Ukraine”; The New Voice of Ukraine; 07/08/2023

    “Lat­er, five com­man­ders from the bat­tle were exchanged for 55 Russ­ian ser­vice mem­bers, on con­di­tion that they would be sent to exile in Turkey until the end of the full-scale inva­sion, and not be allowed to rejoin Ukraine’s com­bat forces.”

    They weren’t sup­posed to be released until the end of the war and they def­i­nite­ly weren’t sup­posed to be allowed to rejoin Ukraine’s com­bat forces. Those were the terms of the agree­ment. Already dis­card­ed terms. It does­n’t bode well for the prospects of future pris­on­er swaps.

    So with the Azov Brigade report­ed­ly back on the front lines, and there­fore back in a posi­tion where its mem­bers could be made into POWs, it’s going to be grim­ly inter­est­ing to see what Rus­si­a’s stance is towards tak­ing pris­on­ers at this point, at least when its fac­ing off against the ‘rebuilt’ Azov.

    But also keep in mind that when we’re learn­ing about Azov being put back on the front lines fight­ing to recap­ture lost ter­ri­to­ry, we’re talk­ing about the units most capa­ble of dehu­man­iz­ing atroc­i­ties fight­ing in what are now arguably ‘ene­my’ ter­ri­to­ries of occu­pied for­mer­ly Ukrain­ian cities. It’s a recipe for civil­ian bru­tal­i­ties. In oth­er words, expect more Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment videos fea­tur­ing Azov, but don’t be too sur­prised to learn about fol­lowup videos released by var­i­ous human rights groups show­ing the kinds of atroc­i­ties that helped fuel this con­flict in the first place.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 16, 2023, 5:23 pm

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