The uncomfortable truth about radical ideologies in Ukraine

What you need to know:

After the coup of 2014, the new Ukrainian authorities took a more systematic approach to glorifying Hitler's collaborators. In April of 2015, the law ‘On the Legal Status and Perpetuation of the Memory of Fighters for the Independence of Ukraine in the 20th Century’ was adopted, in which the OUN and UPA are glorified.

The 1st Galician Division of the SS was also drafted predominantly from volunteers of Ukrainian ethnic background with ties to the OUN. One of the Division’s battalions was commanded by an OUN member, Major Yevgeny Pobigushchy. Present-day Ukrainian propaganda depicts this Division as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but it was yet another OUN-established nationalist paramilitary organization that collaborated with the Nazis and was steered by the OUN leaders Dmytro Klyachkivsky and Roman Shukhevych. In reality, the 1st Galician Division of the SS started off as the SS-Freiwilligen Division "Galizien" but was re-named after 1944 as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division der SS and was supposed to be made up of Galicians only, who were considered by Nazis to be "more Aryan-like” than Ukrainians. However, OUN-B successfully infiltrated the division and took over some leading positions in it.

b) who are destroyed in the struggle, except for those who defend the regime: resettlement in their lands, the destruction, first of all, of the intelligentsia, which should not be allowed in any government institutions, and generally make it impossible for the intelligentsia to appear, that is, access to schools, etc. For example, the so-called Polish villagers need to be assimilated, informing them, especially in this hot, fanatical time, that they are Ukrainians, only of the Latin rite, forcibly assimilated. Destroy the leaders. Isolate the Yids, remove them from government institutions in order to avoid sabotage, especially Muscovites and Poles. If there is an insurmountable need to leave a Yid in the economic apparatus, put our policeman over him and liquidate him for the slightest offense.

For example, a 10th-grade textbook authored by V. Vlasov and S. Kulchitsky talks about how Metropolitan Archbishop Andrei Sheptytsky saved Jews, for which people are normally bestowed with the title ‘Righteous Among the Nations of the World’. However, the Israeli World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, denied Sheptytsky this honor, and it is quite clear why. At the beginning of World War II, Sheptytsky sent a letter to Hitler expressing support for the ‘liberation’ of Kiev. The textbook also names Bandera as the initiator of the ‘Act of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood’. While educators are in no hurry to inform schoolchildren of its contents, you can see festive posters on the streets of Ukraine honoring this document. It should be noted that the third page of this Act reads as follows: “Once restored, the Ukrainian State will closely cooperate with National Socialist Germany, which is creating a new system in Europe and the world under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and helping the Ukrainian people to free themselves from Moscow’s occupation. The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being formed on Ukrainian soil, will fight together with the allied German Army against Moscow for a sovereign, united Ukrainian state and a new system throughout the world.”

While Ukrainian nationalists played an important role in the change of power during the Euromaidan in 2013-2014, the education of young people in the Nazi spirit began way before 2014. For example, in 2006, terrorist and sabotage training were conducted in Estonia under the guidance of curators from NATO countries. In 2013, the UNA-UNSO also reported that they had conducted these exercises. The latter organization is one of the oldest, and its members took part in the wars against the Russian army in Georgia and Chechnya. The training of militants and the Patriot of Ukraine organization are widely known, and these processes are supported at the highest state level. For example, a neo-Nazi camp organized by the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Tryzub organization was honored by the presence of Valentin Nalivaichenko, the head of the Ukrainian Security Service.

Each of these organizations has its ideological roots in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists from the World War 2 era. Tryzub was founded by Yaroslava Stetsko, the wife of the author of the Ukrainian Statehood Renewal Act and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament. Yuri Shukhevich, the son of Roman Shukhevich, the notorious Ukrainian Insurgent Army commander and deputy commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, headed up the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People's Self-Defense. He was also an MP. The “respectable” nationalists from the Svoboda party chose the name Social-National Party (sound familiar?) when it was founded in 1991. The radical Patriot of Ukraine group came from this party, and, in the beginning, its head was Andriy Parubiy, ex-Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada.

Statements made by the leaders give an idea as to what these “patriots” believe in. Azov’s deputy commander Oleg Odnorozhenko, who also holds leadership positions within the Social-National Assembly and was one of the ideologists behind Patriot of Ukraine, thinks that it is necessary to restore white dominance in countries with “non-while population.” And Andriy Biletsky, co-founder of the Social-National Assembly, who used to be an MP and now serves as leader of the National Corps, (the Azov Battalion’s political wing), is convinced that the historic mission of the Ukrainian nation is to “spearhead the white crusade against sub-humans led by Semites.” Oleg Tyagnibok, the “respectable” founder of Patriot of Ukraine, also made his views on the “Jewish issue” very clear back in 2004.

In Mariupol, the Azov Battalion was reported to have had a secret detention facility where multiple people were tortured. Ukraine’s SBU was said to provide the cover for the operation, which means that this activity was supported by the official government of Ukraine. What more proof do we need, if former deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, Vadym Troyan, went on to be appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, and the Azov Battalion itself is now a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine that serves the Ministry of Internal Affairs? Troyan was in charge of police reforms that involved a complete change of staff. On his orders, the officers who worked with the previous government of Viktor Yanukovych were let go and replaced. Many of the new recruits were eager to show off their Nazi salutes in front of the Ministry’s entrance carrying the coat-of-arms of Ukraine.

International mercenaries began training for the Misanthropic Division as early as in 2015 in Portugal, and citizens of France, Italy, Belarus, Canada, Sweden, Slovenia and the USA had all participated in the war on Donbass before that. For example, there were reports of Mikael Skillt, a Swedish neo-Nazi sniper joining the Azov Battalion. Portugal’s Publico daily reported that Francesco Saverio Fontana, an Italian neo-fascist linked to CasaPound Italia fought in Donbass and recruited international fighters for Ukraine’s ATO operation from the UK, France and Brazil. Michael Colborne, a Canadian journalist working with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported that in 2014 and 2015 the Azov Battalion was joined by at least thirty mercenaries from Croatia. According to the data provided by the German government upon the request of the Left Party faction, the total number of foreigners who joined the war against Donbass exceeded one thousand, including about 150 German fighters.

The uncomfortable truth about radical ideologies in Ukraine

What you need to know:

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