I won't say the you tube footage is completely meaningless but given all 'sides' within the conflict use social media for propaganda purposes, I don't accept this proves anything. Where is the context and explanation of what these images are supposed to show? An explanation of who shot this footage? A stirring soundtrack tells me nothing
Again, you can't dismiss the evidence just because you don't like it. You don't like the soundtrack? Fine, here is a shorter video without any music or editing:
Shall we all just agree to admit two points as the truth?
1. February's 2014 coup was a NATO coup not a Russian coup
2. NATO is using Ukraine to get up close as possible to the Russian border, not the other way round.
Without context and explanation this is evidence of what exactly?
Who is shooting?
At whom?
When?
Where?
What happened before and after?
Under whose command?
Providence: who is filming? how do I know what I am seeing and what I am told is true and, for example, not some training exercise from 10 years ago or footage of actors or 101 other forms of distortion?
Nice piece of neo-Nazi Svoboda footage you found there.
...
No amount of money paid to keyboard tappers can change either
Going after the messenger while refusing the address the message, are we?
For your information, Radio Svoboda doesn't have anything to do with the Svoboda party in Ukraine (Svoboda merely means Freedom). Even if the clip was filmed by the Svoboda party, it doesn't make any difference, as long as it's not forged or flawed in another significant way. If you believe it is forged or otherwise flawed, it's up to you to prove that. But of course you are not going to discuss my evidence at all. Discussing evidence is just not what you do. Making baseless claims is so much easier...
Labeling the Svoboda party "neo-Nazi" is just one example of such a baseless claim. I think you'll agree that labeling someone an "idiot" would be inappropriate in a civilized discussion. Yet, for some reason labeling a large group of people "neo-Nazis" is fine in your book.
Svoboda is merely a nationalistic party that has a limited support in Ukraine. In the parliamentary elections that followed the revoluton, Svoboda scored 4.74%, failing to break through the 5% threshold that was required to get into parliament.
TonyGosling wrote:
Shall we all just agree to admit two points as the truth?
1. February's 2014 coup was a NATO coup not a Russian coup
2. NATO is using Ukraine to get up close as possible to the Russian border, not the other way round.
Absolutely not, on both points. It wasn't a coup but a genuine revolution, followed by both parliamentary and presidential elections. This event was seen by Russia as a good opportunity to annex Crimea, which is something that was planned since 2003, according to a former Putin's adviser. The little green men who took control of Crimea were initially claimed by Putin to be a "local self-defence groups" though eventually he admitted they were Russian troops. To distract Ukraine's and the world's attention from Russia's annexation of Crimea, Putin sent subversive groups into the Donbass region of Ukraine to incite rebellion. The commander of one such group, Igor Girkin (Strelkov), said the following in an interview:
Quote:
If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out — like in [the Ukrainian city of] Kharkiv, like in Odessa.
In parallel to subversive activities, a propaganda campaign was launched. The Russian state-owned TV (that is pretty much all of Russian TV, including RT) started to demonize the new Ukrainian authorities by labeling them with terms like "junta", "fascists", etc. The outright lies were also used, such as this story about a boy who was allegedly crucified by Ukrainean military. Given that people in Donbass region traditionally consume Russian rather than Ukrainian TV (which they no longer had access to since the separatists took control of TV broadcasting towers), it's no surprise they've bought into this propaganda.
Since then, Russia keeps supplying both weapons and troops to separatists. The evidence was laid out by me in this post. The propaganda machine keeps rolling as well. It's sad this community have bought into it so easily.
Without context and explanation this is evidence of what exactly?
You are making me do lots of work in order to answer your questions. At the same time, you don't seem to be willing to do any work yourself. In particular, just like others in this thread, you are not willing to discuss the evidence of Russian invasion to Ukraine.
I'll answer your questions, but just this time.
ian neal wrote:
Who is shooting?
The Berkut riot police. I already addressed the point of their identity.
Quote:
At whom?
At protesters obviously. Who else would they be shooting at?
Quote:
When?
Most likely on Feb 20, 2014.
Quote:
Where?
The short video I posted contains two segments: one with a Berkut policeman firing a Kalashnikov and another with a Berkut sniper aiming. The first segment is filmed in front of the International Academy of Culture and Arts. The barricade is also visible on this video at 06:18. I couldn't identify the location of the other segment, but I expect it to be nearby.
Quote:
What happened before and after?
I couldn't find a very detailed timeline of those events. A very rought timeline is available on wikipedia. One partical quote of interest from that timeline:
Quote:
On 20 February Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaliy Zakharchenko announced he had signed a decree to authorize the usage of live ammunition against protesters.
Quote:
Under whose command?
I don't know the whole chain of command, however given that Berkut is a police unit, the chain includes the minister of interior affairs and of course the president.
Quote:
Providence: who is filming? how do I know what I am seeing and what I am told is true and, for example, not some training exercise from 10 years ago or footage of actors or 101 other forms of distortion?
Judging by the logo, it was filmed by RadioSvoboda (aka RadioLiberty). If it was filmed 10 years ago, you would be able to find a copy on youtube uploaded back then. I invite you to try.
'...With Russia breathing down their necks, the young seek refuge in ramen burgers and beards.
By Vijai Maheshwari
| 8/13/15, 5:30 AM CET
| Updated 8/13/15, 8:32 AM CET
KIEV — A disc jockey spins a remix of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” on a stage by the river, while scores of young fashion brands that have sprung up in Ukraine’s capital since the revolution hawk their wares in a carnival atmosphere. T-shirts decorated with slogans like “Putin is a Dick,” “Pray for Ukraine” and “Separatist Buyer’s Club,” flap in the cool summer breeze, alongside harem pants in folk patterns, hoodies emblazoned with the Ukrainian trident, and tons of other creative knick-knacks. A vivacious girl in lensless granny glasses hands us a free cupcake for our “good vibrations” while a bearded barber from the “Tommy Gun Barbershop” offers free shaves. It’s just past noon on a summer Sunday, but Kiev Market is pumping, hipsters jostling against each other to sample the wares....'
As a victim and survivor of the (CIA) 'Hippie Trail' in '67, I eventually came to understand 'vot it voz all about': 'disengagement' - don't vorry about Vietnam already, 'enjoy'.
But there is, of course, a dark plot behind it - suggest 'Westophiles' check out:
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150815/1025789574.html#ixzz3iukpfte4
'Was the US deterrence military doctrine aimed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War era really "defensive" and who actually started the nuclear arms race paranoia?'
LSD 25, anyone? Good stuff - take it from a veteran!!! (One of the few, perhaps, who has, to date (much to many 'people's' chagrin), survived...) _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'Ukraine’s President Poroshenko has just made yet another in his seemingly unending series of belligerent speeches. Speaking in Kharkiv on August 22, he openly bragged that Ukraine has used the breathing space provided by Minsk-2 to build up its army. As he has repeatedly done in the past, he reeled off a long list of ways in which the Ukrainian army has been strengthened with extra men and equipment.
On previous occasions when Poroshenko has made similar boasts, they have turned out to be untrue. Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that the Ukrainian military has built up a numerically large force near the battlefront, reports continue to pour in of poor morale, widespread desertions and equipment failures, and of growing anger and bitterness towards the Ukrainian high command.
It is nonetheless possible – and indeed likely – that some sort of attack on the Donbass is in the offing. The Saker has provided the fullest discussion of this and I have nothing to add to it.
War-weary Ukrainians listening to Poroshenko’s speech are more likely however to notice the following words: “The military threat from the east is a prospect for decades to come. This threat will not pass anytime soon and every new generation has to have army training.”
In other words, whatever renewed offensive Poroshenko has in mind, he expects the war to go on indefinitely with Ukraine’s youth being increasingly militarised in the process. This is a promise of war without end.
It is also, incidentally, an indication that Poroshenko knows that any offensive Ukraine now launches cannot achieve final victory. In other words, if Poroshenko does now order his army to attack – as seems likely – he is sending his soldiers to fight and die in a battle he knows they cannot win. Nothing perhaps exposes his cynicism – and this war’s futility – more than that.
What these words also show, however, is something else: the extent of Poroshenko’s and of the Maidan movement’s intransigence and their refusal to compromise to the smallest degree on any of Maidan’s maximalist aims even if by doing so they might achieve peace. Instead, they refuse to compromise even though by doing so they knowingly doom Ukraine to perpetual war.
It should be said clearly that Ukraine does have an alternative to this desperate prospect. It could compromise and work with Russia and the EU to implement fully the terms of Minsk-2. Whilst that might not be a guarantee of peace, it would at least create that possibility.
This is the alternative opinion polls show the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians prefer. As has, however, been true throughout this crisis, the wishes of the majority of Ukrainians are being held hostage to the obsessions of a violent and intransigent minority, which is now in control.
Instead of implementing Minsk-2 as he promised, Poroshenko has violated it so flagrantly that even those parts of the Western media that habitually support him find it impossible to deny the fact but must instead invent excuses for him (see for example the convoluted reasoning used to justify Ukraine’s failure to carry out Minsk-2 in this editorial in the Financial Times).
Now of course Poroshenko has broken cover and is openly bragging about how he only saw Minsk-2 as giving him a breathing space until he got his army ready.
Even the normally supportive Western media seems startled by the bleak nihilism of his speech.
Meanwhile reports from Ukraine point to a rapidly deteriorating situation. Reports from eye witnesses and such statistics as the government still provides all point to a situation rapidly approaching breaking point.
The economy is in free fall. Production continues to collapse, falling far below even the depressed levels of last year.
Attempts to negotiate a write-off with Ukraine’s private creditors are for the moment deadlocked.
Coal production has fallen to World War II levels. An energy shortage once again beckons and contrary to its boasts Ukraine is once again being forced to turn to Russia for gas, coal and other energy supplies to get through the winter.
As we predicted, the government has proved unable to suppress Right Sector despite the open challenge Right Sector poses to the government. Reports from Kharkiv say Right Sector there is completely out of control, with the police all but vanishing from the streets as the behaviour of Right Sector’s activists becomes ever more brazen.
The situation is becoming so bad that there are signs of growing alarm on the part of Ukraine’s Western backers. Christoph Schiltz, writing for the German newspaper Die Welt, makes his dismay all too obvious:
Ukraine is eroding and the West looks on. The European Union is helpless. It contents itself with appeals to the parties to the conflict, or demands, as (German) Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has just done, a stronger role for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – an observer force that has never played any real role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine meanwhile is in a vicious circle: threatened by Russia from outside, threatened from within by economic and financial collapse, corruption and militias… (translation from the German by RI)
It says much for the bankruptcy of Western policy that all Schiltz can offer is, however, more of the same: more financial and military support for an obviously failing government in Kiev; more pressure through more sanctions on Russia. This despite the fact that it is Ukraine not Russia which is refusing to carry out the terms of Minsk-2......'
It wouldn't be surprising to get some 'photos' or 'videos' of him in action, but that would not be proof of his 'serving' in the Army; and any time he was anywhere near action (and long-range artillery doesn't qualify!!) he would be as protected as our 'Prince Harry' was in Afghanistan. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
The Ukrainian government says it has reached a debt restructuring deal with its creditors including a write-off of up to $3.8bn (£2.5bn; €3.4bn).
Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko said Ukraine's sovereign debt, estimated at $19bn, would be cut by 20% and the repayment period extended.
Ukraine's economic woes have spiralled since conflict erupted with pro-Russia rebels in the east in April 2014.
Hopes have risen of a peace deal amid continued fighting this week.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Wednesday that both the government in Kiev and the separatists had agreed to end shelling and aim for a full ceasefire from 1 September.
However, the Ukrainian military said on Thursday there had been a "significant escalation" in fighting in the past 24 hours and seven soldiers had been killed.
'Win-win'
The debt restructuring deal announced on Thursday comes after five months of negotiations to save the conflict-hit country from default.
Foreign creditors, including private investors, had come under pressure from the US and the International Monetary Fund to accept short-term losses so that Ukraine would not be forced into resuming its reliance on Russia.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Yaresko
Image caption
Commentators say the deal is a victory for Finance Minister Natalie Yaresko, a US-born finance expert
As well as the 20% "haircut" for creditors, the deal will also extend the payment period on government bonds by four years, according to the finance ministry.
Ms Yaresko described it as a "win-win situation".
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said it was a blow to "enemy" Russia.
"The default that our enemy was awaiting did not happen," he tweeted (in Ukrainian).
The deal for Ukraine comes amid calls for Greece to have its burgeoning debt restructured. Greece's private lenders took a massive 50% haircut on what they were owed, reducing Greek debt by €100bn. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:29 pm Post subject:
Short video clip of bombardment damage in Donetsk:
Drone footage: Donetsk residential neighbourhoods devastated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeDQVGphsy8&feature=em-uploademail _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Agent provocateur, je crois?.... _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Controlled Opposition website www.StopFake.org – might be legit, but I just checked it with the surname “Marushevska” – she was the pouting beauty who ‘independently’ virally inspired the US coup in Ukraine. (She seemingly spent a year at Harvard before ‘spontaneously’ making the video)
The origins of the video are not quite as ‘grass roots’ as is portrayed. The clip was produced by the team behind A Whisper to a Roar, a documentary about the “fight for democracy” all over the world, which was funded by Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco. The “inspiration” behind the documentary was none other than Larry Diamond, a Council on Foreign Relations member. The Council on Foreign Relations is considered to be America’s “most influential foreign-policy think tank” and has deep connections with the U.S. State Department.
Diamond has also worked closely with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). is considered to be the CIA’s “civilian arm” and has been deeply embroiled in innumerable instigated uprisings, attempted coups and acts of neo-colonial regime change
Fiercely impartial as an organization LiveLeak is dedicated to ensuring no censorship or preference is shown based on political affiliation or financial consideration, tho’ they do use RT as a source for HD video. . .
I used to play squash with George Soros’s secretary – I can phone her up and ask for a direct quote? _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Friday 23rd October 6.30pm
Ukraine Cultural Centre
154 Holland Park Avenue W11 4UH
Andriy Parubiy is the deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and a politician with a far-right record, he is due in the UK to speak with UK government officials and 'think tanks'. On previous visits to Ottawa and Washington he begged for lethal arms to be sent to Ukraine, arms that will be used in the continuing onslaught against the civilians of the Donbass.
Parubiy founded the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. He also founded its paramilitary wing, Patriot of Ukraine, and initiated Nazi-like torchlight marches.The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party.
After leaving these organisations in 2004, he continued to defend a far right nationalist ideology based on the glorification of Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera and his OUN-UPA.
As commander of the paramilitary Maidan defence forces he is implicated in the snipers that led to the coup which overthrew the elected government. Secretary of the National Security & Defence Council after the coup, he was responsible for launching the so-called “Anti Terrorist Operation” against the Donbass as well as incorporating far right paramilitary battalions (the same he commanded in the Maidan movement) into the state apparatus. There is evidence that he also organised the Odessa massacre on May 2nd 2014.
Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine is organising this demonstration outside the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Holland Park where Parubiy is due to speak on 23rd October at 7pm. We call on the British government to ban him from entering the UK.
NO PASARAN!
NO TO UK LINKS WITH UKRAINIAN FAR-RIGHT!
SARU Campaign
c/o Unity House
39 Chalton Street
London, NW1 1JD
United Kingdom
Add us to your address book _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Andriy Parubiy, is the deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and a politician with a far right record. He is due to visit the UK to meet with government officials to advocate military aid for Ukraine. Here’s why we will be protesting his visit:
“Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests – negotiating directly with the Yanukovych regime.” Channel 4 How the far right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
In 1991, Parubiy founded the Social National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok (the current leader of the far-right Svoboda party). The SNPU symbol, a modified nazi Wolfsangel, later became the symbol of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. The ideology of the SNPU was radical nationalism and neo-nazism.
“… of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neo fascist affiliations. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel),used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the DutchSS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a numberof European neofascist organizations after 1945. As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf’s Hook became the “idea of the nation.” Moreover,the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearly referred back to “national socialism”—the official name of the ideology of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and of the Hitlerite regime. The SNPU’s political platform distinguished itself by its openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violent takeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia for all of Ukraine’s ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively large party to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans.” (Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov, Ultra right Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994–2009)
Patriot Ukraine parade, Lviv 1999
In 1998-2004 Parubiy was the head of paramilitary youth wing of Social-Nationalist Party ‘Patriot of Ukraine‘, which existed until December 2014 when it joined the Right Sector. The first Congress of the “Patriot of Ukraine” was held in Lviv on 12 December 1999 where it was officially adopted by the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) as its paramilitary youth wing. In the evening, around 1500 members of the SNPU and the “Patriot of Ukraine” staged a torchlight demonstration in the city. The first leader of the organization, Andriy Parubiy, established a long-lasting tradition of torchlight parades, which became an organizational trademark. It was described as having racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs.
“Indeed, anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party’s platform; until 2004, they called themselves the Social-National Party of Ukraine in an intentional reference to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party. Just last summer, a prominent leader of party youth was distributing texts from Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels translated into Ukrainian.” (Der Spiegel ‘Prepared to Die’: The Right Wing’s Role in Ukrainian Protests)
A photo of Parubiy leading the “Patriot of Ukraine” march was placed on the cover of his book, ‘A view from the right‘, published in Lviv in 1999.
“Young men with loose long dirty hair and worn out jeans propagate dissoluteness and pacifism – that’s the result of expansion into Ukraine of American way of life and liberal ideology. Russian-speaking criminal world, devoid of spirituality, without national roots – is the legacy of communist rule in Ukraine.” Parubiy ‘The view from the right ‘ (p. 15)
Parubiy (second left on the table) at a Patriot Ukraine meeting
“Parubiy and several other activists of Patriot of Ukraine were tried for beating Communist-led demonstrators in Lviv on November 7, 1997. In his interview, Parubiy said that main TV channels in Ukraine then broadcast videos of him personally beating the demonstrators. But the trial was moved to another region because of pressure from the far right. The criminal case was closed due to the statute of limitations. Parubiy projected a more moderate public image since 2004. But during the recent events he also cooperated with Svoboda and Pravyi Sektor. In 2004, the SNPU changed its image and name, to become Svoboda. At that point Parubiy left the organisation.” Reuters interview with Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottawa, School of Political Studies
The 2004 change of name and image provoked a split, with Patriot Ukraine, the paramilitary youth wing led by Parubiy, refusing to join the new organisation Svoboda. They then continued to exist autonomously and went on to set up the Social-National Assembly, led by Parubiy’s trainee Andriy Biletsky.
Despite this change of image, his core views, far right Ukrainian nationalism based on the heritage of Stephan Bandera, did not change fundamentally. In 2010 he vocally campaigned against the European Parliament for its negative reaction to the declaration of Stepan Bandera as a Hero of Ukraine (as reported in the Kyiv Post). Bandera was the head of the OUN-UPA, a fascist organisation which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and was involved in carrying acts of genocide against Poles, Jews and others (see Ivan Katchanovski “Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide or Ukrainian-Polish Conflict? The Mass Murder of Poles bythe OUN and the UPA in Volhynia“)
The European Parliament resolution was clear on this question: “[it] deeply deplores the decision by the outgoing President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously to award Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of ‘National Hero of Ukraine’; hopes, in this regard, that the new Ukrainian leadership will reconsider such decisions and will maintain its commitment to European values;”
The Euro Asian Jewish Congress historian Vyacheslav Likhachev described the SNPU and Parubiy in an article published in 2012:
“In their propagandist materials SNPU [Social-National Party of Ukraine] ideologues were more outspoken, describing the confrontation with “the Moscow influence” as a racial confrontation. The Ukrainian nation in the publications of the SNPU was proudly called the “root of the white race”. Ukraine was understood as an “Outpost of European civilization”, while Russia – as “Asiatic hordes”. Ukraine, according to one of the SNPU leaders (who subsequently have gone to “Our Ukraine” party) Andriy Parubiy, must “confront the aggressiveness of the pernicious ideas of the Asian world, which today is Russia”. Simultaneously with the Russophobia, SNPU ideologues professed (and still profess) anti-Western sentiment: from their point of view, “Marxism is internationalist and cosmopolitan liberalism are in fact two sides of the same coin”. Right-Wing Extremism in Ukraine: The Phenomenon of ‘Svoboda’
Parubiy, commader of the Maidan “defence”
During the Euromaidan movement, Parubiy was the “commander” of EuroMaidan, and the various Maidan paramilitary units had to take an oath of allegiance to Parubiy. This meant that neo-nazi paramilitary groups which had joined together under the umbrella of Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) were operating under his authority. Amongst those was the newly reformed “Patriot of Ukraine”, led now by Andriy Biletskiy, who had been a pupil of Parubiy and went on to become the commander of the infamous Azov Battalion (which has the Wolfsangel as its symbol).
The ‘EuroMaidan’ movement overthrow a legitimate government by force and in the overthrow, the armed groups of the Maidan Self-Defence, Right Sector and others, played a crucial role, under the command of Parubiy. His name has also been linked by several sources to the organisation of the Maidan sniper fire which escalated the conflict after an agreement had already been reached. While this cannot be confirmed, the story has been reproduced in the Western and Ukrainian media.
“When the shooting started early on the morning of the 20th, Sergei says, he was escorted to the Conservatory, and spent some 20 minutes before 07:00 firing on police, alongside a second gunman. His account is partially corroborated by other witnesses. That morning, Andriy Shevchenko, then an opposition MP and part of the Maidan movement, had received a phone call from the head of the riot police on the square. “He calls me and says, ‘Andriy, somebody is shooting at my guys.’ And he said that the shooting was from the Conservatory.” Shevchenko contacted the man in charge of security for the protesters, Andriy Parubiy, known as the Commandant of the Maidan.” (The untold story of the Maidan massacre BBC 12/02/15)
After the victory of the Maidan, Parubiy became a prominent figure in the new regime being appointed as Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council a position he occupied until his resignation in August 2014.
Some have implicated him in the Odessa massacre of May 2nd, 2014. In a video widely available on the internet, he is seen, on April 29, 2014, delivering military grade bullet proof vests to a unit of the Maidan Self-Defence in Odessa. Receiving the vests is Mykola Volkov, one of the key players in the clashes on May 2nd which left dozens of people dead.
Parubiy (left) handing over vests to Mykola (right)
Mykola, who was wearing one of the bullet proof vests on May 2nd, has been identified on the day of the Odessa massacre arguing on the phone with someone in a position of authority that his men should be allowed through police lines to “take care of the rest”, in reference to the clash with anti-Maidan protesters, as shown in this video from EuroMaidanPR. Mykola’s men were allowed through and then burnt down the House of Trade Unions where the anti-Maidan protesters had sought refuge, killing dozens. In another video, Mykola can be seen shooting at anti Maidan protestors trying to flee the burning building by jumping out of windows. While Parubiy’s direct participation in the massacre cannot be confirmed, he delivered bullet proof vests three days earlier is established beyond doubt.
Three days before the bloody massacre, Parubiy also met with various security and volunteer forces as described on the website of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine:
“The meeting of the Operational center lasted over two hours; we discussed all the current issues and we adopted appropriate decisions to prevent destabilization of the situation in Odessa region. I have talked with the major law enforcement officers, we know the situation in detail for each department – they are willing to perform tasks”, Andriy Parubiy said following the results of the meeting of the Operational center.” Andriy Parubiy was with working visit in Odessa region 30/4/14
The investigations of both the Maidan sniper massacre and the Odessa massacre have been criticised in Ukraine and abroad for their lack of speed and results. In his position as secretary of the NSDC, Parubiy is also responsible for having launched the socalled “Anti Terrorist Operation” in the Donbass as well as incorporating far right paramilitary battalions (the same he commanded in the Maidan movement) into the state apparatus.
Popular Front founding. Parubiy (left), Biletsky (right), Yatseniuk (second right)
In 2014, Parubiy became a founding member of the People’s Front party which has a ‘military council’, whose members include Biletskiy, leader of Azov Battalion and Ihor Lapin commander Aidar Battalion. In December 2014, Parubiy was elected first vice speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The photo shows him being congratulated by the commander of the Aidar Battalion.
As deputy speaker, Parubiy has been welcomed into Canada and the US, where he is begging these countries to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Lethal arms that will be used in the continued military onslaught against the Donbass.
Parubiy is now due in the UK to speak with government officials and think tanks. Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance will organise a demonstration outside the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Holland Park where he is due to speak on 23rd October at 7pm. We call on the British government to ban him from entering the UK.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 8:59 pm Post subject:
Euromaidan Unmasked: Europe Shocked by the Bitter Truth on Ukraine
By Oriental Review
Global Research, February 04, 2016
The hard-hitting documentary by Paul Moreira “Ukraine, les masques de la révolution” [Ukraine: Masks of the Revolution], released on Monday night by Canal+, created a turmoil both in Ukraine and France well before the premiere.
On Sunday the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported in Facebook that their Ambassador in France had sent an outraged letter to Canal+ where he condemned the documentary as a “a pamphlet at the height of the worst disinformation traditions” “using primitive methods of journalistic manipulation, including the handling of comments of respondents, distorted in translation and facts and purely fabricated images“. The same day Le Monde doubled the pressure on Canal+.
Paul Moreira has calmly and respectfully responded to his critics by a detailed post translated into English here. To the credit of Canal Plus’ management, the documentary was screened in time:
Please watch it attentively. And let’s try to understand why it has infuriated the Kiev regime
To be fair, the masterpiece did not reveal anything new.
So far there were a lot of separate investigations by international organizations, NGOs, concerned individuals etc on different aspects of the “Revolution of Dignity“: who actually killed the “heavenly hundred“, what happened in Odessa in May 2014, what is going on in the zone of “anti-terrorist operation” in the South-East of Ukraine, where are the “Russian troops” and where are the Western mercenaries there… But most of them were successfully ignored by the mainstream Western media, stick to their comfortable myths about Euromaidan.
The principal danger of Paul Moreira’s heartbreaking 50-minutes long documentary is that it exposed all critically important lies and silenced facts about “Revolution of Dignity” and its agents in a concentrated form at the established French TV channel.
Paul Moreira did not do anything but showed a simple and honest truth – there was no dignity in that “revolution”. There is no “free civilizational choice” and “independent and legitimate authorities” in today’s Ukraine. There are gangsters licensed to kill and rob, psychopaths and criminals in the “democratic parliament”, parallel Nazi-inspired army, foreign officials who manipulate the political process in a sovereign country, media under total nationalist control etc. His argumentation and picture are so evident, eloquent and bright that there is no reasonable way to refute them. Here is the cause of hysteria and calls to ban (which paradoxically has triggered unprecedented public attention to the movie far beyond France) – they understand that an open and fair discussion would lead further undesirable revelations against the interim rulers in Kiev.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 1:16 am Post subject:
Ukraine: Les Masques De La Révolution Canal+
Ukraine: Masks of the Revolution
English subtitles
http://www.geenpeil.nl
Without them, there would have been no Ukrainian revolution.
In February 2014, paramilitary groups fought against the police in the streets of Kyev and ousted President Yanukovych. They settled a new government.
According to western media, they were the revolution heroes. They fought on the right side.
But they are actually extreme-right militias. And they are now heavily armed.
The Right Sector, Azov or Svoboda created parallel irregular forces that easily go out of control. In Odessa, in May 2014, they were responsible for a mass killing without facing any charges. 45 people burnt to death. A massacre that didn’t get much attention.
How come western democracies haven’t raised their voice in protest?
Most likely because these Ukrainian nationalist militias actually played a significant role in a much larger scale war. The Ukrainian revolution was strongly supported by the US diplomacy.
In the new cold war that opposes Russia to the USA, Ukraine is a decisive pawn. A tactical pawn to contain Putin’s ambitions.
“Ukraine, masks of the revolution” by Paul Moreira sheds light on this blind corner.
'MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. The Russian Black Sea Fleet that is based in Crimea has been reinforced with a squadron of eight newest Sukhoi Su-30SM fighters. The fleet will receive several more aircraft of this type later this year, the fleet's spokesman Vyacheslav Trukhachev said on Thursday.
"After the reunification of Crimea with Russia in 2014 the process of renewal of Russia’s BSF [Black Sea Fleet] naval aviation began. Its rearmament with the newest multifunctional Su-30SM fighters has been actually completed. A naval aviation squadron comprising eight Su-30SM fighters based at the Saki aerodrome in Crimea has been formed by now. Later this year, the Black Sea Fleet will receive several more aircraft of this type," he said.
The multirole Su-30SM can be deployed in counter-air strikes, counter-land and counter-sea missions. It can conduct electronic counter-countermeasures and early warning tasks. The aircraft also acts as a command-and-control platform within a fleet of combat aircraft performing joint missions.
According to Trukhachev, the fleet has mastered the drone systems, it is also renewing its air weapons arsenal, and the pilots undergo retraining for flying new types of aircraft.'
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Russia not planning to deploy Tu-22M3 bomber in Crimea _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — "[T]he report I received this morning was that the first series of training went exceptionally well," Breedlove stated on Tuesday.
Breedlove explained that NATO just finished the first batch of training and is now starting the second batch. The training includes the Ukrainian National Guard.
"Additionally, we are training special operation forces of Ukraine," he added.
As part of NATO partnership-building with Ukraine, the alliance began providing military training to Ukraine in 2014.
An outspoken neo-Nazi takes the reins of Ukraine’s parliament, as the US and its European vassals remain silent.
When Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk got the boot and was replaced by the speaker of parliament Volodymyr Groysman, Mr. Andriy Parubiy was appointed in his stead. This extraordinary event speaks volumes about not only the Ukraine but also the present state of affairs in the West and its media, which increasingly adapts its reporting to fit the current geopolitical interests of the masters of the Western universe. Mr. Parubiy has a biography littered with overt activity as one of the leading figures at the nexus of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and outright neo-Nazi movements. Yet there has not been so much as a squeak from any leading Western politician or the media about the appalling fact that this same Parubiy has now ascended to the respectable position of speaker of parliament of a country with which the EU has signed an agreement about economic and political association. The self-proclaimed guardian of our values, as the EU wants us to regard it, has signed a treaty of political association with a country, where the second highest political position is held by a person who has earned his stripes as a neo-Nazi commander. However, the EU has not always in the past been so indifferent to Parubiy’s activities, as we shall see further down.
parubiy_3
Mr. Parubiy commemorating the Ukrainian WWII Nazi leader Stepan Bandera
Andriy Parubiy founded in 1991 the Social-National Party of Ukraine, together with Oleh Tyahnybok, another coup leader and the present leader of the Svoboda party. The name Social-National Party was chosen as a fully intentional allusion to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party called National Socialist Party. This interpretation has been confirmed by Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading weekly news magazine. True to its historical inspiration, the Social-National Party (SNUP) did not conceal its radical nationalism and its neo-Nazi features. In a research paper from 2009, Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov characterized the SNUP in these words: “… of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neo-fascist affiliations. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel), used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the Dutch SS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a number of European neo-fascist organizations after 1945. As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf’s Hook became the “idea of the nation.” Moreover, the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearly referred back to “national socialism”—the official name of the ideology of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and of the Hitlerite regime. The SNPU’s political platform distinguished itself by its openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violent takeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia for all of Ukraine’s ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively large party to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans.”
snpu_logo
The symbol of the Social-National Party is a modified Wolfsangel of Hitler’s Nazi movement
From 1998 to 2004, Parubiy led the Patriot of Ukraine, a paramilitary organization of the Social-National Party. The Patriot of Ukraine also admitted to its overt racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs and its specialization in promoting political violence as a means to an end (alas, the end, which has been achieved). It constituted a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and other radical violent groups affiliated with the Svoboda party.
In his role as the commandant of Euromaidan from December 2013 to February 2014, Parubiy was the leader of the military wing of the coup that brought down the democratically elected President Yanukovich and subjected the parliament to a reign of terror. In this capacity, he brought into the Maidan all the neo-Nazi storm battalions that he had fostered under the S.N.A. umbrella. Independent evidence strongly points to the fact that it was precisely Parubiy, who was directly in charge of the Maidan snipers. The case is compellingly put forward in an article in the Global Research. Another convincing write-up on this is provided by Gordon Hahn in The Real “Snipers’ Massacre”, Ukraine, February 2014.
parubiy_2Andriy Parubiy at the Maidan directing people who appear to be snipers heading home from a job well done
After the regime took office in the wake of the coup, Parubiy was appointed to the influential position of head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. In this role, he was tasked with the brutal repression that swept the country after the Maidan coup. He organized and coordinated the National Guard and other ultra-right, neofascist and neo-Nazi storm battalions like the Azov Battalion, which unleashed the terror in Eastern Ukraine. This would also imply that he condoned the Odessa and Mariupol massacres
With Parubiy and Tyahnybok well established as the leaders of the insurgent fascist movement they abruptly performed in 2004 a rebranding of their various organizations by dropping the most overt allusions to Nazism. A well-informed source, who wishes to remain anonymous, revealed that it is believed that the rebranding was a strategy that their handlers at the CIA had prescribed in order to make the leaders and their organizations more politically acceptable on the Western propaganda front. The Social-National Party changed its name to Svoboda with Tyahnybok at the helm. Simultaneously they abandoned the Wolfsangel logo, but this was done only in regards to the formally adopted logo, in essence, the party continued wielding the Wolfsangel in its gatherings.
tyahnybokSvoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok in an eerie setting addressing his party congress.
Did the EU not know all this? Or, is this a case of a severe form of institutional amnesia? Let’s see. Turns out that on 13 December 2012 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the situation in Ukraine (2012/2889). According to this resolution the EU was then “concerned about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada; recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.”
Yes, in 2012, the EU called for a boycott of the Svoboda Party because of its extremist views, which went against the famous “EU fundamental values”. But today, they have no problem with cheering on Mr. Parubiy, who was the progenitor of Svododa (and much worse things), as he sweeps to power in the EU’s very own political association partner.
What was the Faustian bargain that brought about this change of heart? This is not a rhetoric question, so I will answer it. It is the expediency to enlist the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and other extremists in their geopolitical shenanigans against Russia.
parubiy_trudeau
The former Neo-Nazi leader Andriy Parubiy is now a respected member of the ruling elite, here pictured with the charming new prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
Jon Hellevig is a Finnish lawyer and businessman who has worked in Russia since the early 1990s. He is the managing partner of the Moscow–based law company Hellevig, Klein & Usov Llc. Hellevig has written books about Russian legislation and society and writes columns for Russian media.
Andriy Parubiy, is the deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and a politician with a far right record. He is due to visit the UK to meet with government officials to advocate military aid for Ukraine. Here’s why we will be protesting his visit:
“Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests – negotiating directly with the Yanukovych regime.” Channel 4 How the far right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
In 1991, Parubiy founded the Social National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok (the current leader of the far-right Svoboda party). The SNPU symbol, a modified nazi Wolfsangel, later became the symbol of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. The ideology of the SNPU was radical nationalism and neo-nazism.
“… of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neo fascist affiliations. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel),used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the DutchSS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a numberof European neofascist organizations after 1945. As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf’s Hook became the “idea of the nation.” Moreover,the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearly referred back to “national socialism”—the official name of the ideology of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and of the Hitlerite regime. The SNPU’s political platform distinguished itself by its openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violent takeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia for all of Ukraine’s ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively large party to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans.” (Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov, Ultra right Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994–2009)
Patriot Ukraine parade, Lviv 1999
In 1998-2004 Parubiy was the head of paramilitary youth wing of Social-Nationalist Party ‘Patriot of Ukraine‘, which existed until December 2014 when it joined the Right Sector. The first Congress of the “Patriot of Ukraine” was held in Lviv on 12 December 1999 where it was officially adopted by the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) as its paramilitary youth wing. In the evening, around 1500 members of the SNPU and the “Patriot of Ukraine” staged a torchlight demonstration in the city. The first leader of the organization, Andriy Parubiy, established a long-lasting tradition of torchlight parades, which became an organizational trademark. It was described as having racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs.
“Indeed, anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party’s platform; until 2004, they called themselves the Social-National Party of Ukraine in an intentional reference to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party. Just last summer, a prominent leader of party youth was distributing texts from Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels translated into Ukrainian.” (Der Spiegel ‘Prepared to Die’: The Right Wing’s Role in Ukrainian Protests)
A photo of Parubiy leading the “Patriot of Ukraine” march was placed on the cover of his book, ‘A view from the right‘, published in Lviv in 1999.
“Young men with loose long dirty hair and worn out jeans propagate dissoluteness and pacifism – that’s the result of expansion into Ukraine of American way of life and liberal ideology. Russian-speaking criminal world, devoid of spirituality, without national roots – is the legacy of communist rule in Ukraine.” Parubiy ‘The view from the right ‘ (p. 15)
Parubiy (second left on the table) at a Patriot Ukraine meeting
“Parubiy and several other activists of Patriot of Ukraine were tried for beating Communist-led demonstrators in Lviv on November 7, 1997. In his interview, Parubiy said that main TV channels in Ukraine then broadcast videos of him personally beating the demonstrators. But the trial was moved to another region because of pressure from the far right. The criminal case was closed due to the statute of limitations. Parubiy projected a more moderate public image since 2004. But during the recent events he also cooperated with Svoboda and Pravyi Sektor. In 2004, the SNPU changed its image and name, to become Svoboda. At that point Parubiy left the organisation.” Reuters interview with Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottawa, School of Political Studies
The 2004 change of name and image provoked a split, with Patriot Ukraine, the paramilitary youth wing led by Parubiy, refusing to join the new organisation Svoboda. They then continued to exist autonomously and went on to set up the Social-National Assembly, led by Parubiy’s trainee Andriy Biletsky.
Despite this change of image, his core views, far right Ukrainian nationalism based on the heritage of Stephan Bandera, did not change fundamentally. In 2010 he vocally campaigned against the European Parliament for its negative reaction to the declaration of Stepan Bandera as a Hero of Ukraine (as reported in the Kyiv Post). Bandera was the head of the OUN-UPA, a fascist organisation which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and was involved in carrying acts of genocide against Poles, Jews and others (see Ivan Katchanovski “Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide or Ukrainian-Polish Conflict? The Mass Murder of Poles bythe OUN and the UPA in Volhynia“)
The European Parliament resolution was clear on this question: “[it] deeply deplores the decision by the outgoing President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously to award Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of ‘National Hero of Ukraine’; hopes, in this regard, that the new Ukrainian leadership will reconsider such decisions and will maintain its commitment to European values;”
The Euro Asian Jewish Congress historian Vyacheslav Likhachev described the SNPU and Parubiy in an article published in 2012:
“In their propagandist materials SNPU [Social-National Party of Ukraine] ideologues were more outspoken, describing the confrontation with “the Moscow influence” as a racial confrontation. The Ukrainian nation in the publications of the SNPU was proudly called the “root of the white race”. Ukraine was understood as an “Outpost of European civilization”, while Russia – as “Asiatic hordes”. Ukraine, according to one of the SNPU leaders (who subsequently have gone to “Our Ukraine” party) Andriy Parubiy, must “confront the aggressiveness of the pernicious ideas of the Asian world, which today is Russia”. Simultaneously with the Russophobia, SNPU ideologues professed (and still profess) anti-Western sentiment: from their point of view, “Marxism is internationalist and cosmopolitan liberalism are in fact two sides of the same coin”. Right-Wing Extremism in Ukraine: The Phenomenon of ‘Svoboda’
Parubiy, commader of the Maidan “defence”
During the Euromaidan movement, Parubiy was the “commander” of EuroMaidan, and the various Maidan paramilitary units had to take an oath of allegiance to Parubiy. This meant that neo-nazi paramilitary groups which had joined together under the umbrella of Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) were operating under his authority. Amongst those was the newly reformed “Patriot of Ukraine”, led now by Andriy Biletskiy, who had been a pupil of Parubiy and went on to become the commander of the infamous Azov Battalion (which has the Wolfsangel as its symbol).
The ‘EuroMaidan’ movement overthrow a legitimate government by force and in the overthrow, the armed groups of the Maidan Self-Defence, Right Sector and others, played a crucial role, under the command of Parubiy. His name has also been linked by several sources to the organisation of the Maidan sniper fire which escalated the conflict after an agreement had already been reached. While this cannot be confirmed, the story has been reproduced in the Western and Ukrainian media.
“When the shooting started early on the morning of the 20th, Sergei says, he was escorted to the Conservatory, and spent some 20 minutes before 07:00 firing on police, alongside a second gunman. His account is partially corroborated by other witnesses. That morning, Andriy Shevchenko, then an opposition MP and part of the Maidan movement, had received a phone call from the head of the riot police on the square. “He calls me and says, ‘Andriy, somebody is shooting at my guys.’ And he said that the shooting was from the Conservatory.” Shevchenko contacted the man in charge of security for the protesters, Andriy Parubiy, known as the Commandant of the Maidan.” (The untold story of the Maidan massacre BBC 12/02/15)
After the victory of the Maidan, Parubiy became a prominent figure in the new regime being appointed as Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council a position he occupied until his resignation in August 2014.
Some have implicated him in the Odessa massacre of May 2nd, 2014. In a video widely available on the internet, he is seen, on April 29, 2014, delivering military grade bullet proof vests to a unit of the Maidan Self-Defence in Odessa. Receiving the vests is Mykola Volkov, one of the key players in the clashes on May 2nd which left dozens of people dead.
Parubiy (left) handing over vests to Mykola (right)
Mykola, who was wearing one of the bullet proof vests on May 2nd, has been identified on the day of the Odessa massacre arguing on the phone with someone in a position of authority that his men should be allowed through police lines to “take care of the rest”, in reference to the clash with anti-Maidan protesters, as shown in this video from EuroMaidanPR. Mykola’s men were allowed through and then burnt down the House of Trade Unions where the anti-Maidan protesters had sought refuge, killing dozens. In another video, Mykola can be seen shooting at anti Maidan protestors trying to flee the burning building by jumping out of windows. While Parubiy’s direct participation in the massacre cannot be confirmed, he delivered bullet proof vests three days earlier is established beyond doubt.
Three days before the bloody massacre, Parubiy also met with various security and volunteer forces as described on the website of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine:
“The meeting of the Operational center lasted over two hours; we discussed all the current issues and we adopted appropriate decisions to prevent destabilization of the situation in Odessa region. I have talked with the major law enforcement officers, we know the situation in detail for each department – they are willing to perform tasks”, Andriy Parubiy said following the results of the meeting of the Operational center.” Andriy Parubiy was with working visit in Odessa region 30/4/14
The investigations of both the Maidan sniper massacre and the Odessa massacre have been criticised in Ukraine and abroad for their lack of speed and results. In his position as secretary of the NSDC, Parubiy is also responsible for having launched the socalled “Anti Terrorist Operation” in the Donbass as well as incorporating far right paramilitary battalions (the same he commanded in the Maidan movement) into the state apparatus.
Popular Front founding. Parubiy (left), Biletsky (right), Yatseniuk (second right)
In 2014, Parubiy became a founding member of the People’s Front party which has a ‘military council’, whose members include Biletskiy, leader of Azov Battalion and Ihor Lapin commander Aidar Battalion. In December 2014, Parubiy was elected first vice speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The photo shows him being congratulated by the commander of the Aidar Battalion.
As deputy speaker, Parubiy has been welcomed into Canada and the US, where he is begging these countries to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Lethal arms that will be used in the continued military onslaught against the Donbass.
Parubiy is now due in the UK to speak with government officials and think tanks. Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance will organise a demonstration outside the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Holland Park where he is due to speak on 23rd October at 7pm. We call on the British government to ban him from entering the UK.
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How Obama Aims to Conquer Crimea
When US President Barack Obama perpetrated his coup d’état in Ukraine in February 2014, and even had his agent Victoria Nuland select the person who was to rule Ukraine after the coup, it was with the expectation that the new government would renegotiate, and soon end, the Russian lease of the naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea, which wasn’t due to expire until 2042. (Up until 1954, that base had been in Russian territory because Crimea was part of Russia; but, after the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954 arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine, and then the Soviet Union itself broke up in 1991, Russia was keeping its navy there by paying a lease on it from Ukraine.)
However, instead of the US winning control of Crimea as had been planned, the racist-fascist anti-Russian «Right Sector» forces, which Obama’s people had hired to carry out the coup in Kiev under the cover of ‘democratic’ demonstrations against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych (who had received over 75% of Crimeans' votes in the Presidential election, prior to being overthrown), terrorized Crimeans during the coup, and this terrorizing of them, simply added insult to their injury. On February 20th, Right Sector forces massacred Crimeans who were escaping from Ukraine’s capital, fleeing the rabid sentiments in Kiev against supporters of Yanukovych. Right Sector caught up with them at the town of Korsun, burned some of their buses, and murdered some of the escaping Crimeans, though most survived — some of them severely injured.
Also, early in March of 2014, shortly prior to Crimea's referendum on whether to remain within Ukraine, a Crimean who had served in Kiev as a prosecutor in the democratically elected Ukrainian national government that had just been overthrown, and who had likewise escaped from Kiev, was now safely back home in Crimea, and did a Crimean TV interview. This former prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, took questions from the live TV audience. The interview was posted to YouTube on 12 April 2014, and, as I described it, linking to the YouTube, she proceeded there to «inform her fellow Crimeans what she had seen happen during the overthrow, and why she couldn’t, in good conscience, remain as a Ukrainian official in Kiev, and swear loyalty to the new Ukrainian Government. She had heard the chants of the Maidan protesters and smelled their piles of burning tires, and seen their marches in Kiev with Nazi symbols and salutes, and she didn’t want to become any part of that. So, she quit and was now unemployed back home in Crimea at the time of this interview».
The Obama Administration, in planning for the coup, had polling done throughout Ukraine, and supplemented the sample in Crimea because, naturally, taking control of the Sebastopol naval base was of particular concern to Obama.
USAID and the International Republican Institute of the Republican Party (not the National Democratic Institute, because funding from them might have suggested the White House’s backing) polled 500 Crimeans, during 16-30 May 2013. As I have reported elsewhere, the first stage of preparation for the upcoming coup was already active inside the US Embassy in Kiev on 1 March 2013; and so, this was a very coordinated Obama Administration operation. (Most Washington-based accounts of the overthrow allege that it was ‘democratic’ and started after Yanukovych rejected the EU’s offer on 21 November 2013.) On 27 December 2014, I compared the results of that Crimean poll versus the results of a poll covering all areas of the former Ukraine, which was taken, also, for the US government, but, to Obama’s inevitable disappointment, neither poll found a US-friendly, Ukraine-friendly, Russia-hostile, Crimea.
«Gallup polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found that only 15% considered themselves «Ukrainian». 24% considered themselves «Crimean». But 40% considered themselves «Russian». Even before Obama’s February 2014 coup which overthrew the Ukrainian President whom [nearly] 80% of Crimeans had voted for, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine — and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this extremely bloody coup. Furthermore, in April 2014, Gallup again polled Crimea, and they found that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as «Mostly positive» the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as «Mostly negative»; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as «Mostly positive,» and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as «Mostly negative». During the intervening year, Crimeans’ favorability toward America had plunged down to 2.8%, from its year-earlier 6%. Clearly, what Obama had done in Ukraine (his violent coup in Kiev) had antagonized the Crimeans. And, as if that weren’t enough, the 2014 poll provided yet more evidence: «The 500 people that were sampled in Crimea were asked [and this is crucial] ‘Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status [whether to rejoin Russia] reflect the views of most people here.’ 82.8% said ‘Agree.’ 6.7% said ‘Disagree.’» In the hearts of the local residents, Crimea was still Russian territory, after an involuntary hiatus of 60 years; and so the Russian Government accepted them back again, into Russia – this was not as Corey Flintoff droned, «Russia’s seizure of Crimea». It was Russia’s protection of them from the invasion of Ukraine by the United States in a bloody coup».
On 20 March 2015, even Kenneth Rapoza at the anti-Russian magazine Forbes, headlined, «One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev», and he concluded that, «Despite huge efforts on the part of Kiev, Brussels, Washington and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit. At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self-rule».
However, Barack Obama refuses to accept this. After all, if he were to accept it, then he would have to terminate the anti-Russia economic sanctions he initiated on the basis of Russia’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea, and he would have to acknowledge that the massive US-led military buildup of NATO forces on Russia’s borders in order to protect against ‘Russia’s aggression’ needs to stop and, indeed, be withdrawn. But Obama doesn’t accept any of this; to do that would negate the whole purpose of his coup, and even his anti-Russian policy, including, perhaps, his refusal to cooperate with Russian forces that are trying to stamp out jihadist groups in Syria.
On 6 February 2016, I headlined «US Now Overtly at War Against Russia» and reported that both US ‘Defense’ Secretary Ashton Carter and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had announced the US was initiating a quadrupling of US troops and weaponry on Russia’s northwestern borders.
On 4 May 2016, Dmitriy Sedov headlined at Strategic Culture, «NATO to Form Allied Fleet in the Black Sea: Plans Fraught with Great Risks» and he opened: «Finally, it has become clear what the world has been set to expect from the NATO summit to be held in Warsaw on July 8-9. Summing things up, it is clear that the Alliance is moving to the east. It plans to create a Black Sea «allied fleet». It should be done quickly – the standing force should be formed by July».
Sedov closed by saying that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko «is impatiently waiting for the July NATO summit. The event can ultimately do away with whatever is left of ‘détente’, ‘reset’ etc. and bring the world back to the days of uncompromised mutual assured destruction».
There is a backstory to that, and, naturally, it goes back to Barack Obama:
As I have previously explained, US Secretary of State John Kerry had told Poroshenko, on 12 May 2015, to stop saying that Ukraine would restart its war against the separatist Donbass region and would invade Crimea and retake that too; but, Kerry’s subordinate, Hillary Clinton’s friend Victoria Nuland, told Poroshenko to ignore her boss on that, and then US President Obama sided with Nuland and sidelined Kerry on Ukraine policy by making clear that he thought Poroshenko was right to insist upon retaking Crimea and re-invading Donbass.
In other words, the Minsk peace process for Ukraine, that had been initiated by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, was grudgingly accepted by Obama but he really had no intention of its being anything more than a pause in the war, after which NATO itself would become engaged in facing-down Russia over its ‘aggressive invasion’ and ‘seizure’ of Crimea.
Game’s on for World War III, is Obama’s message to Russian President Vladimir Putin. At some point, either the American side or the Russian-NATO-EU side will have to back down on the Crimea matter, or else the bombs will be release against the other. Kerry has been trying negotiation, but his real enemy is his own boss.
There is every indication that, if Hillary Clinton, a super-hawk against Russia, becomes the next US President, then the policies that Obama has been implementing will be carried out. 2016 could thus turn out to be a very fateful election in the US, and not only for the US but for the entire world. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
July 20: Firefighters examine the wreckage of a burned car in Kyiv after the murder of prominent Belarusian-born journalist Pavel Sheremet. (c) Efrem Lukatsky / AP / Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
At a press conference in early June, president Petro Poroshenko sought to reassure the Ukrainian and foreign media: “I give you my personal guarantee: there are no threats to journalists working in Ukraine.”
This statement followed the disclosure of private information about thousands of journalists accused of collaborating with “terrorists” in eastern Ukraine on a website controlled by Anton Herashchenko, a Ukrainian MP and advisor to Ukraine's interior minister. Journalist Pavel Sheremet, who attended that press conference, later quipped that the press managed to throw a few buckets of ice into the warm bath prepared for the president. Six weeks later, Sheremet was assassinated in downtown Kyiv, just steps away from several European embassies.
The manner of his murder — a car bomb during the morning rush hour on a busy intersection of the Ukrainian capital — indicates a brazenness never seen before in the crimes against Ukrainian journalists. The notorious murder 16 years ago of Georgiy Gongadze, the founder of the news website that Sheremet later worked for, happened under the cover of night in a wood on the outskirts of Kyiv.
The murder of Sheremet demonstrates the trajectory that the Ukrainian state has followed in recent years — from a regime that encouraged clandestine killings to an environment permissive of public executions. Whoever the organisers and the perpetrators of Sheremet''s murder are such an outrageous crime became possible only because of the system of impunity created and nurtured by the current Ukrainian authorities.
Patriotic risks
Over the last two years, Ukraine has experienced an unprecedented spiral of political killings and human rights abuses, most of which remain unresolved or even completely ignored by the Ukrainian government.
The two most prominent cases — the massacre of protesters on Maidan and the killing of demonstrators during the riots in Odesa — remain stalled, with the OHCHR noting “the lack of progress” in all of its recent reports. There has still been no justice in the murder of columnist Oles’ Buzyna, the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Segodnya, who was shot dead near his home in Kyiv in April 2015. The suspects, who are affiliated with the far right group C14 were released from detention on bail under pressure from various political groups.
The Ukrainian government has consistently denied allegations of arbitrary detention and torture of its citizens by Ukrainian security service (SBU), despite UN observers’ conclusions that these are “deeply entrenched practices. They have also refused to recognise the existence of secret detention facilities even in the face of detailed evidence to the contrary just released by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The west has remained indifferent to Kyiv's failure to investigate numerous political crimes and human right abuses committed on Poroshenko''s watch
The calls of human rights groups to investigate the indiscriminate use of banned weapons against civilians in Donbas have been utterly ignored. The investigations into mistreatment of Ukrainian citizens by members of paramilitary battalions and their effective prosecution are very rare. When they do happen, as in the recent case of an Aidar volunteer battalion commander, political actors often interfere and put pressure on judges to release them.
Even corrupt elites tied to the previous regime consistently manage to escape Ukrainian law enforcement. The main suspects in two high-profile anti-corruption cases — Serhiy Kliuev and Oleksandr Onyshchenko — fled the country with no attempt on the part of the SBU to stop them.
In fact, in the two years since the Euromaidan revolution, which began as a popular uprising against state-sponsored violence and graft, no major government official or oligarch has faced trial in Ukraine.
2013: Pavel Sheremet takes part in the "Media of the future" conference at RIA Novosti. (C) Ramil Sitdikov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.
This lack of accountability encourages continued violation of basic civic rights and freedoms. Since the start of 2016, members of volunteer battalions have been involved in violent attacks on three Ukrainian TV channels in Kyiv, which they accused of political subversion. Defamation of some journalists, including Pavel Sheremet, continues unabated. The Russian language radio station he worked for, Radio Vesti, has been at the centre of several scandals regarding its allegedly “unpatriotic” messaging.
In his final radio show on Tuesday, Pavel Sheremet recounted how he was consistently accused of working for the Russian security services by various politicians and even by some of his colleagues. In his final blog post, Sheremet pointed to the lawless practices of Ukrainian paramilitaries, concluding that former battalion commanders and people in camouflage uniforms are now, if not above the law, then could paralyse the functioning of any law.”
Cultures of impunity
President Poroshenko''s response to Sheremet''s murder shows that he remains seemingly impervious to the culture of impunity that has become pervasive during his rule.
In language startlingly similar to how Russian officials explained the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, Poroshenko accused unnamed forces of trying to destabilise the situation in the country”, stressing that “foreign interests” could be behind the crime.
A similar instrumentalised framing of Sheremet''s killing was immediately adopted by other top law enforcement officials in Ukraine. They seem keen to lay the blame for the murder on “external enemies” even before the investigation began. By pursuing this route, they will create an even more propitious climate for future crimes against political and civic activists that could always be pinned on “foreign agents”.
In a country with politicised courts, inefficient and deeply corrupt police prosecutor offices, political ties and stacks of cash will still provide impunity for any kind of crime
The US and European governments, which earlier expressed shock at the news of Sheremet''s flagrant murder, should not treat this as an isolated incident. Rather, it reflects a broader systemic problem with the lack of universal justice and accountability in the Ukrainian state.
So far, the west has remained indifferent to Kyiv's failure to investigate numerous other political crimes and human right abuses committed on Poroshenko''s watch. Without addressing them head on, the focus on Sheremet''s murder will hardly lead to a meaningful change in Ukraine's selective administration of justice. In a country with politicised courts, inefficient and deeply corrupt police prosecutor offices, political ties and stacks of cash will still provide impunity for any kind of crime.
Sheremet understood this better than anyone. In an article last month, he publicised an appeal of small businessmen who described the continuing lack of accountability for prosecutors charged with stealing their property. How can ordinary Ukrainian citizens victimised by the state attain justice, Pavel Sheremet pondered, if officials committing the most egregious and well-publicised crimes still go unpunished?
By Alexander Mercouris - Global Research, August 11, 2016
Anyone who has been following Ukraine related news over the last few days will be aware of reports of Russian troop movements in Crimea, of a shoot out there between the Russian security forces and alleged Ukrainian infiltrators which left several people dead, and of claims that Ukrainian sabotage groups had attempted to infiltrate the peninsula.
On 10th August 2016 came final confirmation of the incident from Russia’s counterintelligence and anti terrorism agency, the FSB (full statement attached below). It reported separate incidents involving three Ukrainian sabotage groups connected to the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, shoot outs between FSB operatives and the Russian military and the Ukrainian military across the border line, and the deaths of one FSB operative and of one Russian soldier caught up in the shoot outs. Other reports speak of the death of at least two Ukrainian infiltrators, and of the capture of several others, which claims however the FSB report does not confirm. The FSB report does however speak of twenty improvised explosive devices containing more than 40 kilograms of TNT equivalent, ammunition, fuses, antipersonnel and magnetic bombs, grenades and the Ukrainian armed forces’ standard special weapons being found in one of the locations involved in the incident.
The FSB report also says that several Ukrainian and Russian citizens belonging to an undercover spy ring operating inside Crimea have been arrested on charges of planning to help the saboteurs. The FSB has named the ringleader as Yevgeny Panov, a resident of Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region born in 1977, who the FSB says is an employee of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate. Presumably he has been working in Crimea for some time under cover. The FSB says it has arrested him and that he is “giving evidence”.
The FSB has not identified the targets of the saboteurs other than saying that they were “critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula”. Some Russian media reports have suggested that the intention was to create “false flag” incidents that would set Crimea’s Tatar and Russian communities against each other. The reference to “critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula” does not however support this. Rather it suggests an attempt to disrupt power supplies and possibly water treatment plants at the height of Crimea’s tourist season and on the eve of the elections.
The Ukrainians for their part deny all these allegations, claiming that the whole incident has been invented by the Russians. The Western media, predictably enough, is following the Ukrainian line with wild speculations that the Russians have fabricated the whole incident in order to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine during the Olympic Games.
Whilst the full truth of this incident will only become known over time – when or if people like Panov are put on trial – there is actually no reason to doubt that the Russian account is true. The Russians are hardly likely to arrange the death of one of their own FSB operatives and of one of their soldiers in order to fabricate an incident like this, and the report of the capture of several of the saboteurs, and the confirmation of the arrest of the members of the spy ring which was created to support them, all but confirms that the Russian claims about this incident are true. Indeed given that Ukrainian leaders frequently speak of Ukraine being at war with Russia it is not difficult to see why they might authorise a sabotage mission of this sort in order to disrupt elections which would confirm the extent of Crimea’s integration into Russia. Presumably the Ukrainian plan was to claim that the attacks were the result of local anti-Russian resistance cells, thereby fostering the fiction that there is opposition within Crimea to its unification with Russia. It has been a cause of serious embarrassment to the Ukrainian leadership and its Western backers that there has been no real evidence of such opposition up to now. The sabotage mission appears to have been intended to “correct” this.
Two days ago I reported about a meeting Putin had with his security chiefs which appeared to have been hurriedly convened in a secret location. I speculated that the meeting was held to discuss the situation in Aleppo. Whilst Aleppo undoubtedly was discussed at this meeting as shown by the presence of Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Kremlin’s account of the meeting – which referred to Putin’s forthcoming meetings with foreign leaders, of whom the two most important were President Erdogan of Turkey and President Rouhani of Iran with whom the topic of Syria and Aleppo would certainly be discussed – the meeting between Putin and his security chiefs undoubtedly also discussed the situation in Crimea, and the reports of the Ukrainian sabotage mission there.
Might there have been any other purpose to this Ukrainian sabotage mission other than to create the appearance of instability in Crimea during the tourist season and during the coming election season? Putin in the joint press conference he held in Moscow following his meeting with Armenia’s President Sargsyan linked the incident to the attempted murder of Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic. If true that would suggest that having despaired of a military victory the government in Kiev is now turning to assassination and sabotage tactics in order to keep the struggle with Russia going and to achieve its political goals. Alternatively it could be that the Ukrainians have carried out these operations in preparation for the summer offensive in the Donbass that has been much talked about but which has yet to happen, though it is not clear how planting bombs in Crimea could aid a military offensive in the Donbass. Yet another explanation is that the Ukrainians might be sensing a weakening in European support and might have launched the operation in order to heighten tensions and to rally support and to further undermine the Minsk II peace process.
My own opinion is that the most likely explanation for this frankly reckless action – which will cause serious embarrassment to some of Ukraine’s European backers even if they are not prepared to say so publicly – is the chaotic condition of the Ukrainian power structure and the perennial infighting that goes on there. Given the luridly romantic language many members of the Maidan movement customarily like to indulge in I can easily see how the sabotage operation in Crimea and the murder attempt on Plotnitsky – if the two are indeed connected – might have been planned by individuals in Kiev who might think that the success of such operations would increase their credibility and popularity within the Maidan movement and therefore their chances of achieving political success in Ukraine.
Whatever the precise motivations behind this incident Putin has made it very clear that the Russians are taking it extremely seriously. He has already said that there will no Normandy Four meeting with Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko at the forthcoming G20 summit in China. Moreover and in contrast to what happened following the trial of Savchenko, whose actions were carried out in the Donbass and therefore in territory the Russians continue to recognise as Ukrainian, I expect the Russians to be much slower to agree to prisoner exchanges of the Ukrainian operatives who were involved in this mission and who they accuse of carrying out or planning to carry out violent actions on Russian territory.
Here is the text of the statement describing the incidents which has been provided by the FSB:
“The Russian FSB averted terrorist acts in the Republic of Crimea that were being prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.
The Russian FSB averted terrorist acts in the Republic of Crimea that were being prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, and which targeted certain critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula.
The goal of the attacks was the destabilisation of the socio-political situation on the peninsula prior to the approaching elections to the federal and regional governmental institutions.
The search operations carried out during the night of 6/7 August 2016 in the vicinity of the city of Armyansk, Republic of Crimea, uncovered a group of saboteurs. While attempting to detain the terrorists, an FSB operative was killed by enemy gunfire. The following was discovered on the scene: 20 improvised explosive devices with a total explosive power of 40kg TNT, munitions, special detonators, standard-issue anti-personnel and magnetic land mines, grenades, and special-issue weapons used by Ukrainian armed forces’ special operations units.
The follow-on measures on the territory of the Republic of Crimea eliminated a network of agents operated by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Ukrainian and Russian citizens, engaged in the preparation of terrorist attacks, were arrested, and are now giving evidence. One of the organisers is Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Panov, born 1977, an inhabitant of the Zaporozhye Region of Ukraine, an operative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukrainian MOD, who has also been arrested and is giving evidence.
During the night of August 8, 2016, Ukrainian MOD special operations units attempted two more infiltrations by saboteur units which were prevented by the armed units of the FSB and collaborating entities. The infiltration effort was covered by heavy fire from the adjacent country, including by armored vehicles belonging to Ukrainian military. A Russian soldier was killed by the fire.
First, it appeared to be a fluke: this summer the Ukronazi regime sent a small terrorist unit into Crimea tasked with blowing up several targets in the Crimea (see here for details). They were arrested by the Russian security services. In November, another two saboteurs were caught by the FSB (see here). And now something really remarkable happened. The Ukronazi security service kidnapped two Russian citizens in broad daylight and accused them of being “deserters”. Turns out that the two kidnapped men are Maksim Odintsov and Alexander Baranov and that both of them are junior servicemen in the Russian military (ensign and junior sergeant). Apparently, what happened is this: Odintsov and Baranov used to serve in the Ukrainian military (at least that is what the SBU claims), but when Crimea, where Odintsov and Baranov live, returned to Russia they did what tens of thousands of other Ukrainian servicemen did – they joined the Russian military. The two were lured to the neutral zone between Crimea and the Ukraine by men who promised them that they could give them diplomas proving that they had a higher education from Ukrainian institutions. You can watch this video to see what actually happened next (no translation needed):
The video also shows one of the two men, with a superb shiner on his face, admitting that he had served in the Ukrainian military and that he is guilty of treason. What is remarkable here is that the Ukronazis kidnapped these two men in broad daylight in an location which was clearly under video monitoring, and that they then showed one of the hostages with a clear sign of the beating he received. No matter how incompetent the SBU is, they are not so incompetent as to not realize the fantastically provocative nature of their actions. This was an absolutely deliberate provocation whose goal was to get some kind of Russian reaction, either in Crimea or somewhere else.
What were they really hoping for?
Probably for some kind of Russian reaction which would reach across the border: some kind of attack on the Ukrainian border post, or maybe an artillery strike. Maybe even an attempt to free the two men, or even a retaliatory counter-kidnapping. What they knew is that any Russian reaction across the border would have been met by a hysterical chorus of outrage from the western political leaders and their corporate media.
For the time being, the (hideously slowly clumsy and poorly updated) website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had nothing to say. The (marginally better) website of the President of Russia offered this reaction:
Question: Mr President, I want to clarify the situation with the Russian military service personnel detained by the Ukrainians. What measures are you taking?
Vladimir Putin: I cannot say anything about these measures yet and can say only what we know at present, which is that these military servicemen formerly served in the Ukrainian armed forces and, after Crimea’s reunification with Russia, decided to serve in the Russian armed forces.
In this respect, let me say first of all that we have always had great respect for and trust in Ukrainian military service personnel, and therefore proposed that they continue their service in our ranks.
Second, they wanted to obtain confirmation of education at one of Ukraine’s higher education establishments, and this was why they went to the border. They were lured a few metres further and detained.
I think this kind of treachery will ultimately turn against those who carry out such acts. This is the same kind of thing as switching off the power supply to Crimea in winter and just before New Year. If people in Ukraine think they can win Crimea residents’ sympathy this way, this amounts to an attack using inappropriate means, to use legal language.
In other words: other than issuing a verbal condemnation, Russia will not react in any dramatic manner. This is, of course, the correct decision, especially now that Trump is hopefully going to replace the Neocons with some patriotically minded and mentally sane officials. But there is also an inherent risk in this Russian stance: it invites the Ukronazis to further escalate their provocations.
Consider this: while the junta in Kiev has been constantly shelling the Donbass, the Kremlin did nothing to stop it. When top Novorussian officials, such as Motorola, were murdered by somebody hired by the junta, the Russians again did nothing. Nor did the Moscow retaliate when the Ukronazis sent saboteurs into Crimea. What I fear is that next the Ukronazis will combine these two provocations into one and attack Crimea directly, either by lobbing a mortar shell directly across the border or even with an artillery attack upon a town in northern Crimea.
While from a military point of view a Russian response is a no-brainer, from the political point of view this might be much harder. Imagine this:
The SBU hides one single artillery piece in a town just north of the Crimean-Ukrainian border and then begins to shell, at night, of course, Russian military positions or town, in northern Crimea. Several Russian soldiers or civilians are killed, more are wounded. The Russian counter-battery radars will immediately and easily detect the location from which these attacks came, but we all know since the MH-17 that Russian radar recordings are considered worthless by the western corporate media. And if the Russian counter-strike hits a town, this will be presented as yet another aggression against the “sovereign and free Ukraine”. The Russians all remember how on 08.08.08 it was Russia, not Georgia, which was declared the aggressor and how when months later the investigative committees of the EU declared that, well, no, it was actually the Georgians who attacked the Russian peacekeepers nobody in the West paid any attention to this. The reality is that the otherwise weak, militarily incompetent, Ukraine holds the “escalation dominance” over Russia, especially in Crimea. Yes, on every rung of the escalatory ladder Russia is vastly more capable and powerful than the Ukraine, but it is the Ukraine which can chose on which rung of the escalatory ladder it chooses to engage Russia. Sounds paradoxical?
That is because, as I have been repeating for years now, the purpose of the regime in Kiev is not to win an unwinnable conflict against Russia, but only to draw Russia into the Ukraine. Russia should have escalation dominance over the Ukraine, but in reality it is Ukraine which will get to chose at which rung of the escalation ladder Russia will be forced to react. This is a typical case where “the action is in the reaction”.
And let’s be honest, with the US Neocons out of power very soon, at least temporarily, the junta in Kiev has absolutely nothing to lose from a direct, blatant, attack on Russia. Think of it: the EU and NATO leaders in Europe are absolutely horrified by the Trump victory and they are desperate for a crisis, any crisis, which would give them a meaning, a sense of purpose, a justification before the European public opinion. As for the Americans, Trump will only become President on January 20th, that leaves them enough time to react to any crisis, even an artificial one, in such a manner as to preempt any attempts by the new administration to improve relations with Russia.
Sure looks to me like the Neocons, the EU/NATO comprador elites and the Ukronazis in Kiev all have exactly the same interests: trigger a crisis before Trump is sworn in.
In the meantime, the Minister of Culture of the Ukraine has declared that the people of the Donbass a “genetically unfit” to accept the Ukrainian culture (does anybody still wonder why I call this regime “Ukronazi” and not “Ukrainian”?) while the European Parliament has declared that the EU is in a state of “informational war” with Russia and that the EU needs to “respond” to the Russian attack.
As for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are all preparing for an imminent Russian invasion. As for the Poles, they are busy exhuming the body of Lech Kaczynski in the hope to prove that Russian shot down his aircraft in 2010.
The next couple of months will be very dangerous indeed.
The presidents of the People’s Councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Denis Pushilin and Vladimir Degtyarenko, have organized an appeal and the collection of signatures among the residents of the republics to denounce the serious situation in the cities of Donbass subjected to bombardments by the Ukrainian army.
The situation threatens to become a real humanitarian disaster.
This call will be delivered to the President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, President of the United States Donald Trump and Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel.
To add your endorsement, send your name / organization, affiliation, city and country to:
Solidarity with Novorossiya & Antifascists in Ukraine / International Action Center
solidarityukraineantifa@gmail.com _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
A member of the Right Sector paramilitary group stands in a building damaged by shelling in Avdiivka, Ukraine. (Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press)
MARINKA, Ukraine — A jeep hurtles down a long, potholed road toward the front line. Inside, Misha, Monarch and Dinamo balance their assault rifles between their legs. The mood is upbeat; it has been days since these militiamen traded fire with their enemy entrenched across no man’s land.
They approach a Ukrainian army checkpoint surrounded by untended fields. This should be as far as these three gunmen get. The red-and-black flag fluttering from their SUV shows they belong to Right Sector, an ultranationalist group of paramilitaries banned from the battlefront.
But the guards wave them through. They drive on to join other members of Ukraine’s secret army holding the line on their country’s eastern frontier.
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“Officially, we are not here,” says Monarch, a joyless man in his 30s who, like the others, insisted on being identified only by his nom de guerre. “Politicians say we’ve withdrawn. But things are different in the east. We have a good relationship with the soldiers. We share the same enemy.”
“We’re Ukrainian partisans,” Misha adds. “Politicians are scared that, once war ends, we’ll return to Kiev and turn our guns on them. And we should. We need to.”
Members of the far-right radical group Right Sector and their supporters attend an anti-government rally in Kiev, Ukraine in July. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
Despite Kiev’s pledge to rein them in, rogue militias continue to fight against Moscow-backed separatists. When war erupted in 2014, Ukraine’s army was on its knees after decades of corruption and neglect. So the top brass joined forces with volunteer battalions to counter the pro-Russian insurgency. But these informal groups proved difficult to control, with some committing heinous abuses. Almost all have been incorporated into Ukrainian state forces.
One major group refuses to submit: Right Sector. This organization was formed during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan revolution from hardened protesters and far-right, fringe parties. Analysts say Right Sector has thousands of members, including hundreds of armed men deployed alongside Ukrainian government troops.
Despite official claims to the contrary, fresh recruits continue to arrive and operate with regular troops. “It’s generally understood the army controls Right Sector fighters,” says Vyacheslav Likhachev, an analyst of right-wing radicalism. “Their every step is coordinated with Ukraine’s commanders.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. For now, Kiev benefits from these guerrilla units; they’re highly motivated and don’t qualify for state pensions.
Longer term, the government is playing with fire.
Right Sector’s existence undermines Kiev’s standing within Europe, and — if peace talks ever gain momentum — this group probably would reject any compromise and could push a volatile region deeper into conflict.
But with fighting picking up along the front here, just at the moment when many Ukrainians have been worrying that President Trump’s desire to reset relations with Russia will cast their country into the cold, there’s little likelihood that Kiev will move anytime soon against the Right Sector fighters.
They are admired for their fierce dedication, but belligerent statements and menacing demonstrations have sullied the group’s reputation. Russian state media demonize the organization and exaggerate its importance, painting it as the military wing of a (fictional) fascist junta.
Moscow has freely exploited Ukraine’s troubled history with the extreme right. Some Ukrainian nationalists fought against the Nazis during World War II, but others committed atrocities alongside the Germans.
The maverick organization does contain neo-Nazi elements. It also has fighters with no far-right sympathies. All despise Ukraine’s corrupt officialdom.
Members of the Ukrainian national guard’s Azov Regiment, activists of a youth group called the Azov Civil Corps, and the far-right radical group Right Sector take part in a rally to mark Defender of Ukraine Day in Kiev, Ukraine, in October. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
‘Something big’s happening’
Volunteer units guard the little town of Marinka, living in squalid, abandoned cottages. At a position overlooking separatist-held Donetsk, two foreigners stand out: an Italian neo-Nazi and a young Dutchman. The two share a thirst for adventure and a total ignorance of the local language.
Giuseppe Donene’s T-shirt echoes a Nazi-era war flag, emblazoned with the word “Hatred.” Despite his extreme ideology, he is disarmingly affable. What prompted him to enlist?
“This is Europe, my house. But governments don’t let us fight,” he says. He complains that Europe is losing its identity to Muslims and African immigrants, and maintains that eastern Ukraine is the place to take a stand. “Something big’s happening here. It’s worth fighting for.”
This 47-year-old married father of two has worked in private security in Angola, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Every few months, he takes leave to join pro-Ukrainian battalions.
“My family don’t support me, but they try to understand,” he says. “It’s tough, though. An eternal conflict.”
He doesn’t worry that his presence could lend credence to the Kremlin line about fascists fighting for Ukraine.
“Russia doesn’t need to film my T-shirt to feed their propaganda,” he says. “They’ll say whatever they want.”
Nearby, Sjoerd Heeger, 22, grasps an AK-47 assault rifle and surveys no man’s land through orange-tinted sunglasses. A former trash collector and call center worker, he is the butt of relentless teasing as an archetypal war tourist.
“My mum doesn’t know I’m here. Maybe I’ll send her a photo of a grenade. She’s used to me disappearing,” he says. Heeger’s combat training consisted of firing off just four magazines. His instructor taught him first aid, “but I didn’t understand half of what he said.”
The unit’s commander welcomes such adventurers. “The more the better,” says Vano, 28, whose real name is Ivan Borisenko. “Sure, the Dutch kid doesn’t know how to use his weapon. But he’ll learn soon enough.”
Two men from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, Alkandil and Viktor, hold a neighboring position. Since the 1990s they have fought against Russia in conflicts scattered around the former Soviet Union: in Abkhazia, Chechnya, South Ossetia and now Donbass.
With his bushy white beard and bulging belly, Viktor, 56, resembles Santa Claus in camo.
“Here, we have one enemy,” says his compatriot Alkandil, 47. “I hope one day this war will end. I hope one day to hang up my weapon and return home. But while Russia threatens these lands, I will have no peace.”
Downtime
An hour’s drive from Marinka, in a run-down warehouse that serves as a Right Sector base, several dozen fighters distract themselves from the tedium of a protracted war, cleaning weapons, working out or drinking. Rusted trucks litter the yard. Patriotic heavy-metal music blares through dank corridors.
A former history teacher services a Soviet-era rocket launcher on a pool table. Right Sector’s sources of firepower are obscure but have been boosted by black-market deals, battlefield spoils and raids on arsenals.
Beyond the base, PR is not top-priority. “We don’t get on with civilians here,” says Misha Ukhman, a former journalist who is the group’s media officer. “We don’t have time for winning hearts and minds. There’s a war to fight.”
Right Sector’s opposition to Ukraine’s ruling elite and desire to revolt is a gift for the Kremlin. These dissidents could be exploited by the very enemy they fight.
“Right-wing radicals are fertile ground for Russia’s campaign to destabilize Ukraine,” says political analyst Likhachev. “Their ideology is inherently anti-
Russian but shares common goals with Moscow.”
Regardless, rogue militants such as Misha think this is a war that can have no political solution.
“We need another revolution,” he says. “Politicians steal and steal. We cannot trust them. This is our land. We will fight to the end.”
The commander of Somali battalion of the Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Donetsk, Mikhail Tolstykh, better known for his nom de guerre Givi, was killed in a terrorist attack in Donetsk, representatives for the operational command of the breakaway republic stated.
"Mikhail Tolstykh, a hero of the People's Republic of Donetsk, the commander of Somali battalion, was killed today at 06:12 as a result of a terrorist attack. His assassination comes as a continuation of the terrorist war that the Kiev junta launched against the Donbass," the Donetsk News Agency quoted a statement from the military command of the republic.
Reportedly, Mikhail Tolstykh was killed in an explosion that occurred in his office.
In early February, it was reported that Tolstykh was wounded in battles near the settlement of Avdiivka. The commander himself later confirmed the information, but specified that the wound was not serious and he could continue commanding battles.
On October 16, 2016, a commander of the Donetsk militia, Arsen Pavlov, (nom de guerre Motorola) was killed in Donetsk. The authorities of the breakaway republic regarded the incident as a terrorist attack.
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After the death of Motorola, Mikhail Tolstykh, aka Givi, said that he did not intend to leave the Donbass. "I have my battalion, my military unit, where I serve, and I am not going anywhere, because this is my native land," Givi then said.
Representatives of the Kiev authorities commented on the information about the death of Mikhail Tolstykh. The reaction from the Armed Forces and the Security Bureau of Ukraine was cautious. Yet, advisors and MPs were happy to learn the news.
Advisor to the chief of the Security Bureau of Ukraine Yuri Tandit refused to officially confirm the information about the death of the militia commander and said that it should be verified.
"We do not control the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk region," he said. The official did not confirm the involvement of Ukrainian special services in the accident and associated it with events that currently take place in Donetsk.
Speaker for the headquarters if the anti-terrorist operation, Leonid Matyuhin, told 11 Ukraine channel that there was no official confirmation for the death of the militia commander in Donetsk. "There is no official confirmation to this, but it appears that he has unfortunately died," he official said, adding that the official confirmation would follow shortly.
Advisor to the Minister for Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Zorian Shkiryak, supported Tandit's version, who said that Mikhail Tolstykh (Givi) was killed as a result of conflicts within the administration of the People's Republic of Donetsk. According to Shkiryak, Givi could also be killed in an operation conducted by Russian special services. The Kremlin strongly rejected any implication of Russian special services in his assassination.
"We offer the leaders of the People's Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk, Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky, to surrender to the Ukrainian authorities. Judging from the current situation, they are likely to be next," Shkiryak said.
Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashchenko urged others not to rejoice about the death of Mikhail Tolstykh, although he did not miss his chance to make an offensive remark about the late military man.
"I understand the joy of many commentators on Facebook, but I would not be happy about it from the point of view of the efforts to ease pressure on Ukraine or against the backdrop of the combat readiness of the troops created with the support of Russia," he said.
Some believe that the Ukrainian authorities resort to terrorism to cowardly destroy the militia leaders of the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"There will be negative consequences, of course, because Givi has been a media figure lately. He would inspire our fighters, our militia. Givi's death has struck a serious blow on all of us, on the republic, from the point of view of motivation of the troops," Novorossiya MP Yevgeny Tinyansky told Pravda.Ru.
"Givi's office is located on the territory of the military unit, while the military unit is located on the territory of the city. Try to approach a military unit in peacetime without running into a patrol. We live in the time of war, when there are many patrols inside and outside military units. For the time being, it is difficult to say how the attack was organized," he added.
This article is a joint publication of TheNation.com and Foreign Policy In Focus.
As the Ukrainian crisis has unfolded over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Americans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big villain. But the history of the region is a history of competing villains vying against one another; and one school of villains—the Nazis—have a long history of engagement with the United States, mostly below the radar, but occasionally exposed, as they were by Russ Bellant in his book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (South End Press, 1991). Bellant's exposure of émigré Nazi leaders from Germany's World War II allies in the 1988 Bush presidential campaign was the driving force in the announced resignation of nine individuals, two of them from Ukraine, which is why he was the logical choice to illuminate the scattered mentions of Nazi and fascist elements among the Ukrainian nationalists, which somehow never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. Of course most Ukrainians aren’t Nazis or fascists—all the more reason to illuminate those who would hide their true natures in the shadows…or even behind the momentary glare of the spotlight.
Your book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, exposed the deep involvement in the Republican Party of Nazi elements from Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukrainians, dating back to World War II and even before. As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded in the last few weeks, there have been scattered mentions of a fascist or neo-fascist element, but somehow that never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. I can’t think of anyone better to shed light on what’s not being said about that element. The danger of Russian belligerence is increasingly obvious, but this unexamined fascist element poses dangers of its own. What can you tell us about this element and those dangers?
The element has a long history, of a long record that speaks for itself, when that record is actually known and elaborated on. The key organization in the coup that took place here recently was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], or a specific branch of it known as the Banderas [OUN-B]. They’re the group behind the Svoboda party, which got a number of key positions in the new interim regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from other groups, and, especially in the 1930s, began a campaign of assassinating and otherwise terrorizing people who didn’t agree with them.
As World War II approached, they made an alliance with the Nazi powers. They formed several military formations, so that when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they had several battalions that went into the main city at the time, where their base was, Lvov, or Lwow, it has a variety of spellings [Lviv today]. They went in, and there’s a documented history of them participating in the identification and rounding up Jews in that city, and assisting in executing several thousand citizens almost immediately. They were also involved in liquidating Polish group populations in other parts of Ukraine during the war.
Without getting deeply involved in that whole history, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to this day defend their wartime role. They were backers of forming the 14th Waffen SS Division, which was the all-Ukrainian division that became an armed element on behalf of the Germans, and under overall German control. They helped encourage its formation, and after the war, right at the end of the war, it was called the First Ukrainian division. They still glorify that history of that SS division, and they have a veterans organization that obviously doesn’t have too many of members left, but they formed a veterans division of that.
If you look at insignia being worn in Kiev in the street demonstrations and marches, you'll see SS division insignia still being worn. In fact, I was looking at photographs last night of it, and there was a whole formation marching, not with the 14th Division, but with the Second Division. It was a large division that did major battle around Ukraine, and these marchers were wearing the insignia on the armbands of the Second Division.
So this is a very clear record, and the OUN, even in its postwar publications, has called for ethno-genetically pure Ukrainian territory, which of course is simply calling for purging Jews, Poles and Russians from what they consider Ukrainian territory. Also, current leaders of Svoboda have made blatantly anti-Semitic remarks that call for getting rid of Muscovite Jews and so forth. They use this very coarse, threatening language that anybody knowing the history of World War II would tremble at. If they were living here, it would seem like they would start worrying about it.
Obviously these people don’t hold monopoly power in Ukraine, but they stepped up and the United States has been behind the Svoboda party and these Ukrainian nationalists. In fact, the US connections to them go back to World War II, and the United States has had a longstanding tie to the OUN, through the intelligence agencies—initially military intelligence, later the CIA.
Your book discusses a central figure in the OUN, Yaroslav Stetsko, who was politically active for decades here in America. What can you tell us about his history?
Yaroslav Stetsko was the number-two leader of the OUN during World War II and thereafter. In 1959, Stepan Bandera, who was head of the OUN, was killed, and that’s when Stetsko assumed the leadership. Stetsko was the guy who actually marched into Lvov with the German army on June 30, 1941. The OUN issued a proclamation at that time under his name praising and calling for glory to the German leader Adolf Hitler and how they’re going to march arm in arm for Ukraine and so forth. After the war, he was part of the key leadership that got picked up by the Americans.
There’s a number of accounts I’ve seen, at least three credible reports, on how they were in the displaced persons camp—the Allied forces set up displaced persons camps and picked up tens of thousands of these former allies of Hitler from countries all over the East—Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania. There weren’t Polish collaborators; I think most people know the Germans heavily persecuted and murdered millions of Polish residents—but Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and so forth, Belorussia. They had them in these camps they built and organized them, where the Ukrainians were assassinating their Ukrainian nationalist rivals so they would be the undisputed leaders of Ukrainian nationalist movement, so they would get the sponsorship of the United States to continue their political operation, and they were successful in that regard. So when Bandera was out of the picture, Stetsko became the undisputed leader of Ukrainian nationalists.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1943 under German sponsorship organized a multinational force to fight on behalf of the retreating German army. After the battle of Stalingrad in ’43, the Germans felt a heightened need to get more allies, and so the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and others with military formations in place to assist came together and formed the united front called the Committee of Subjugated Nations, and again worked on behalf of the German military. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, or ABN. Stetsko was the leader of that until he died in 1986.
I mention this in part because the OUN tries to say, Well, during the war we fought the Germans and the Communists. The fact of the matter is that they were the leadership of this whole multinational alliance on behalf of the Germans the last two years of the war and in the war thereafter. All the postwar leaders of the unrepentant Nazi allies were under the leadership of Yaroslav Stetsko.
What happened when Stetsko, and others like him from other German allied forces, came to the United States?
In the United States, when they came, his groups organized "captive nations" committees. They became, supposedly, the representatives of people who were being oppressed in Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union. They were, in fact, being given an uncritical blank check to represent the voices of all these nations that were part of the Warsaw Pact, when in fact they represented the most extreme elements of each of the national communities.
The Captive Nations Committee in Washington, DC, for instance, was run by the person who headed the Ukrainian organization of nationalists; that was true in a number of places. In my hometown area near Detroit, as well, they played a major role. In the early 1950s, when they were resettled in the United States, there were at least 10,000 of them that were resettled, when you look at all the nationalities. They became politically active through the Republican National Committee, because it was really the Eisenhower administration that made the policy decision in the early 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these campaign organizations, every four years they would mobilize for the Republican candidate, whoever it would be, and some of them, like Richard Nixon in 1960, actually had close direct ties to some of the leaders like the Romanian Iron Guard, and some of these other groups.
When Nixon ran for president in 1968, he made a promise to these leaders that they would—if he won the presidency, he would make them the ethnic outreach arm of the Republican National Committee on a permanent basis, so they wouldn’t be a quadrennial presence, but a continuing presence in the Republican Party. And he made that promise through a guy named Laszlo Pasztor, who served five years in prison after World War II for crimes against humanity. He was prosecuted in 1946 by the non-Communist government that actually had control of Hungary at the time (there was a period from ’45 to ’48 when the Hungarian Communist Party didn’t run Hungary). They were the ones who prosecuted him. He had served as a liaison between the Hungarian Nazi party and Berlin; he served in the Berlin embassy of the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement. This is the guy that got picked to organize all the ethnic groups, and the only people that got brought in were the Nazi collaborators.
They didn’t have a Russian affiliate because they hated all Russians of all political stripes. There were no African-Americans or Jewish affiliates either. It was just composed of these elements, and for a while they had a German affiliate, but some exposure of the Nazi character of the German affiliate caused it to be quietly removed, but other [Nazi] elements were retained.
Your book was researched and published in the 1980s. What was happening by that point in time, after these groups had been established for more than a decade?
I went to their meetings in the 1980s, and they put out material that really made clear who they were. One of their 1984 booklets praised the pro-Nazi Ustashi regime in Croatia; these Ustashi killed an estimated 750,000 people and burned them alive in their own camp in Croatia. And here they are praising the founding of this regime, and acknowledging that it was associated with the Nazis, and it was signed by the chairman of the Republican National Committee. You couldn’t make this stuff up! It was just crazy.
I interviewed the Cossack guy; he showed me his pension from service in the SS in World War II, and how he was affiliated with free Nazi groups in the United States, and he was just very unrepentant. These are the umbrellas that were called "Captive Nations Committees" by these people that Stetsko was over, and was part of, too. The Reagan White House brought him in, and promoted him as a major leader and did a big dinner. Jeane Kirkpatrick [UN Ambassador during the Reagan administration] was part of it, George H.W. Bush as Vice President, of course, Reagan—and Stetsko was held up as a great leader. And proclamations were issued on his behalf.
When Bush Senior was running for president in 1988, he came to these, basically one of the leading locations of the Ukrainian nationalists in North America, which is just outside of Detroit, a suburb of Detroit, to their cultural center, and one of their foremost leaders in the world is headquartered out of there. At the time, he got Bush to come there and they denounced the OSI, and Bush just shook his head; he wouldn’t say anything about it.
The OSI was the Office of Special Investigations. It was investigating the presence of Nazi war criminals in the United States, and deporting those who were found to have lied on their history when they applied to come into the United States after the war. They had deported a number of people from all over the United States. They had a lot of open investigations, and all these émigré Nazis were trying to bring all the political pressure they could to stop these investigations, including the Ukrainian nationalists.
So they denounced them, the OSI investigations, in front of Bush. Bush nodded his head, but he wouldn’t say anything because he didn’t want to sound like he was sympathetic to the Nazi war criminals, but at the same time he didn’t want to offend his hosts by disputing the issue with them. So, the issue of World War II was still being played out over four decades later, in the politics of the presidency, and unfortunately Bush and Reagan continued to be on the side that we defeated in World War II.
What was the response when your book came out, with all this information? How was the information received, and what was the political reaction?
Prior to the book’s publication, Washington Jewish Week had done a story about some of the ethnic leaders of the Bush campaign and their history, like denying the Holocaust, or being involved with these émigré Nazi groups. They named a couple of them that weren’t part of the Heritage Groups Council, but they were part of the Bush campaign.
Then, when I published the book, it brought out a lot more names, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe did stories on them. It got to the point where when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer would call them about one of their ethnic leaders of the Bush campaign, the standard response was, he’s no longer part of the campaign, and they’d say that almost as soon as the name would get mentioned. So that they would call that person—and I’ll give the example of Florian Galdau, he was, he ran the Romanian Iron Guard in New York City. He had a wartime record. [Romanian Archbishop Valerian] Trifa himself was implicated in the mass killing of Jews in Bucharest in 1941, I believe. Galdau’s record is clear, because when Trifa was prosecuted he was one of the people targeted by the Office of Special Investigations, and he was forced into deportation in the 1980s, but in those records, they identify Florian Galdau as one of his operatives, so his history is known—except, apparently, to the Bush campaign.
So when he was identified by the Philadelphia Inquirer, they immediately said he wasn’t part of it, so the Inquirer called Florian Galdau, and he said, “No, I’m part of it. They never said anything to me. As far as I know I’m still part of the campaign.” And that was the pattern.
The Republican National Committee said after the election that they were going to put a blue ribbon committee together and do an investigation of the charges in my book. I was never contacted, nobody affiliated with the book project, the publisher wasn’t contacted. None of the sources I worked with was contacted. And after about a year, with nobody raising any issues or questions about it, they just folded it up and they said, well, we have not had the resources to investigate this matter.
I did publish an op-ed in The New York Times about two weeks after the election was over, and I think that was the last time anybody said anything publicly about it that got any kind of forum. I think they were allowed to just die and wither away—that is, those leaders. The Republican idea was probably to bring in another generation of people who were born in the United States as these émigré’s died off, but they never did anything about this history that Nixon had bequeathed them with. The Reagan White House had really made deep political commitments and alliances with them. They didn’t want to look like they turned their back on them, and Bush wanted them for his re-election campaign, so he wasn’t going to turn his back on them either.
If you want an anecdote, I know that 60 Minutes was working on a piece that Bradley’s team was working on. Nancy Reagan herself called the executive producer and said that we would really like it if you wouldn’t do this story, and they killed it. Because, basically, it’s not just about Nazis and the Republican National Committee and the White House. It inevitably raises the question of, who are they, how did they get here, who sponsored them? And it goes back to the intelligence agencies at that point. And some people don’t like treading there; if it’s tied to an intelligence agency, they prefer to just stay away from the subject. So, some people at 60 Minutes were frustrated by it, but that’s what happened. I think that they were able to effectively kill the story when people tried to cover it. They were able to persuade news managers to not delve into it too much.
What’s happened since you wrote your book, and most of the World War II generation died off? What have the OUN and its allies been up to since then that we should be aware of?
Once the OUN got sponsored by the American security establishment intelligence agencies, they were embedded in a variety of ways in Europe as well, like Radio Free Europe, which is headquartered in Munich. A lot of these groups in the ABN were headquartered in Munich under the sponsorship of Radio Free Europe. From there, they ran various kinds of operations where they were trying to do work inside the Warsaw Pact countries. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a number of them moved back into Ukraine as well as the other respective countries and began setting up operations there, and organizing political parties. They reconstituted the veterans group of the Waffen SS, they held marches in the 1990s in Ukraine, and they organized political parties, in alliance with the United States, and became part of what was called the Orange Revolution in 2004, when they won the election there.
The prime minister [a reference to Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010] was closely allied with them. They worked with the new government to get veterans benefits for the Ukrainian SS division veterans, and they started establishing the statues and memorials and museums for Stepan Bandera, who was the leader of the OUN, and who I should say were despised by other Ukrainian nationalists because of their methods, because they were extreme and violent toward rival Ukrainian nationalist groups. So Bandera wasn’t a universal hero, but this group was so influential, in part because of its US connections, that if you go online and you Google "Lviv" and the word "Bandera" you’ll see monuments and statues and large posters and banners of Bandera’s likeness and large monuments—permanent erected monuments—on behalf of Bandera so they made this guy like he’s the George Washington of Ukraine.
That government was in power until 2010, when there was another election, and a new regime was elected with a lot of support from the East. Ukrainian nationalist groupings around the Orange Revolution were sharply divided against each other, and there was rampant corruption, and people voted them out. The United States was very aggressive in trying to keep the nationalists in power, but they lost the election. The United States was spending money through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was pumping money into various Ukrainian organizations, and they were doing the same thing in Russia and many other countries around the world as well. We’re talking about many millions of dollars a year to affect the politics of these countries.
When the occupations came in Independence Square in Kiev late last year, you can see Svoboda’s supporters and you can hear their leaders in the Parliament making blatant anti-Semitic remarks. The leader of the Svoboda party went to Germany to protest the prosecution of John Demjanjuk, who was the Ukrainian who was settled in the United States who was implicated as a concentration camp guard in the killing of innocent people. The German courts found him guilty, and the Svoboda leadership went to Germany to complain about convicting this guy. The reason? They said they didn’t want any Ukrainians tainted with it, because they live a lie: that no Ukrainian had anything to do with the German Nazi regime, when history betrays them, and their own affiliations betray them. But they don’t like that being out there publicly, so they always protest the innocence of any Ukrainian being charged with anything, regardless of what the evidence is.
Your book was an important revelation but was not alone. Your book notes that Jack Anderson reported on the pro-Nazi backgrounds of some of the ethnic advisors as far back as 1971, yet when your report came out almost two decades later, everyone responded with shock, surprise and even denial. What lessons should we draw from this history of buried history? And how should it influence our thinking about the unfolding crisis in Ukraine?
I don’t believe it’s ever too late to become familiarized and educated about the history of this phenomenon—both the wartime history and our postwar collaboration with these folks. There were a number of exposés written about the émigré Nazis. There was a 1979 book called Wanted, and it did a number of case stories of these people being brought into the United States, including the Trifa story. Christopher Simpson did a book called Blowback that discussed the policy decisions; it’s an incredible book. He’s a professor at American University, and he did years of research through the Freedom of Information Act and archives, and got the policy documents under which the decisions were made to bring these folks together, and not just into the United States but to deploy them around the world.
Like my book, it didn’t get the attention it deserved. The New York Times book reviewer was negative toward the book. There are people who really don’t want to touch this stuff. There’s a lot of people who don’t want it touched. I think it’s really important for people who believe in openness and transparency and democratic values, who don’t want to see hate groups come back to power in other parts of the world, to know what happened.
There aren't very many Americans who really even know that the Waffen SS was a multinational force. That’s been kind of kept out of the received history. Otherwise people would know that there were Ukrainian Nazis, Hungarian Nazis, Latvian Nazis, and they were all involved in the mass murder of their fellow citizens, if they were Jewish, or even if they were co-nationalists that were on the other side of the issue of the war. They were just mass murderers, across Eastern Europe. And that history, those facts, aren’t even well-known. A lot of people didn’t even know this phenomenon existed.
I think all Americans have a responsibility to know what their government is doing in the foreign policy in Europe as well as elsewhere around the world, as well as Latin America, as well as Africa. Since our policy was to uphold apartheid in South Africa, why weren’t Americans challenging that more? They began challenging that in the '80s, but the apartheid regime was run by the Nazi party. They were allied with Germany in World War II. They were the Nationalist party and they took power in 1948 and the United States backed that for decades. We backed the death squads in Latin America, even though they massacred tens of thousands of people—200,000 people in Guatemala alone. Americans aren’t being attentive to what their government is doing abroad, even though it’s being done with their tax dollars and in their name, and I think we just have a general responsibility.
I went to these meetings, I went to these conferences, I went over a period of years. I met with them directly, most of the people I wrote about, I met with them personally or in group meetings. People can’t afford to do that on their own, timewise, but there’s enough literature out there so they can read about it. They will get enough of a handle to get what the real picture is, to demand change. I’m not totally partisan: I think the Republican Party was extreme on this, but the Democrats folded and didn’t challenge this when they knew it was going on.
Three years ago this week, dozens of people, protesters and police alike, were gunned down in Kiev by mysterious snipers, leading to intensified pressure against authorities and culminating in the Maidan coup. Three years on, ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has compiled his take on the snipers' identity. But Kiev is trying to destroy the evidence.
This week, tens of thousands have taken to the streets of Kiev to mark the third anniversary of the Maidan protests, which began in November 2013 and culminated in the ouster of unpopular but democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych on February 22, 2014. The 2014 protests erupted after Yanukovych delayed the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and began negotiations on joining the Eurasian Economic Union instead.
In the course of about a month of clashes in central Kiev, which reached their peak between February 18 and February 20, 2014, over 130 people, including 18 police officers, were killed, many of them shot by sniper fire.
After taking power, the new government blamed the deaths on Yanukovych, Berkut riot police, and even Russian intelligence. The former president denied giving any orders to fire on the protesters. Other former government officials and anti-Maidan activists maintained that the snipers were not affiliated with the police or other security forces, pointing to numerous flaws that were found in Kiev's own case against Berkut. Critics of Kiev's version also pointed out that no one was ever charged with killing the police who died on Maidan, including the 13 officers killed at the peak of the violence.
Critics also pointed to the leaked phone call between then EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet during the crisis; Paet told Ashton that snipers had killed both police and protesters, and complained that the new authorities didn't seem particularly keen on investigating what actually happened. Medical personnel speaking to German media in the weeks that followed also said that the wounded from both police and protesters had the same kind of bullet wounds.
On the eve of the third anniversary of Yanukovych's ouster, Mykola Azarov, who served as Ukraine's prime minister until his resignation in January 2014, offered a grim reminder of who he firmly believes to have been responsible for the Maidan massacre.
In a detailed post on his Facebook page on Tuesday, complete with photo and video evidence, Azarov dropped a bombshell, writing that "today we, and investigators in Kiev as well, have reliable information about the fact that the murders on the Maidan were carried out by special groups of snipers from Georgia, the Baltic countries and Poland, under the guidance of instructors from France and Germany."
These groups, Azarov said, "were provided with cover and diversionary actions by shooters from the 'Maidan Self-Defense' group under the direction of [Andriy] Parubiy and [Serhiy] Pashinsky," the former now serving as speaker of Ukraine's parliament, and the latter an MP and former interim head of the presidential administration.
#Parubiy, the #Euromaidan #RightSector sniper unit commander, guilty of killing dozens of people. Also now a #Ukrainian parliament chairman. pic.twitter.com/PVEkSDZ4uS
— Sergey Bobkov (@sbobkov) 15 ноября 2016 г.
Going into more detail, Azarov explained that "the Georgian group, consisting of 10 people, was placed in the Conservatory building [which overlooks Maidan Square]. The identities of three of them have been confirmed by photographs taken by Ukrainian Security Forces staff, and it has been established that they are Georgian nationals. On February 20, [2014] this group divided into two. One of them fired from the Conservatory Building, the other from the Hotel Ukraine Building."
"It is also assumed that a third group of professional shooters was involved in the mass killings, who in the space of only 30 minutes shot over 50 people in cold blood from the building on Gorodetsky street and were immediately moved out of the area," the ex-politician added.
Reminder: Kiev.2014
The Snipers, led by Parubiy. Still no one is punished. pic.twitter.com/Vij77YTVDf
— Марина Саакян 🇷🇺 (@marina_saniram) 1 декабря 2016 г.
Unfortunately, Azarov lamented that Secretary of the National Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov, Pashinsky, Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, Paruby, and ex-Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, all of whom were appointed to their positions following the coup, "have done everything they could to destroy evidence and people's testimony. An attempt was made to place the blame for the massacre squarely on Yanukovych and the Burkut riot police."
Arsen avakov ordered the maidan sniper attacks https://t.co/6MTEUD8vlZ watch as his henchmen are caught red handed pic.twitter.com/2CYOPJaVoR
— KGB agent B.hamill (@baz2000) 1 июня 2015 г.
"However, after three years, even the biased investigators have proven unable to prove the unprovable. 'The blood of the innocent people who died is on the conscience of the criminals who seized power in Ukraine', and this is an indisputable fact," Azarov added.
Azarov is obviously not the first former Ukrainian official to suggest that opposition-hired snipers were involved in the February 2014 killings. Late last year, Mykola Dulsky, who was a member of the radical nationalist organization 'White Hammer' during the Maidan, accused Pashinsky, Parubiy and Avakov directly of coordinating the Maidan snipers. Revealing that his group of radicals was charged with taking the roof of Hotel Ukraine, Dulsky said that there were unidentified snipers on the roof, including a man who spoke with an accent of one of the Baltic countries.
In December, Pashinsky tried to brush off the footage showing him driving around with a sniper rifle in his trunk in central Kiev in February 2014, saying that he was carrying the weapon for self-defense.
Clip from an independent report showing Pashinsky driving through Maidan with a sniper rifle in the trunk of his car.
This week, opposition figures and radical nationalist fighters have taken to the streets of Kiev again, calling on the government to resign and accusing authorities of corruption and criminal behavior.
If evidence about the snipers being hired guns for the authorities who illegally took power in February 2014 is confirmed, it would be a severe blow to the shaky foundations on which the current government already rests. "Justice," Azarov stressed, "is inevitable, and these crimes have no statute of limitations."
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