Ukraine’s Nazis: We Ignore at our Peril

Let me be crystal clear. This article has nothing to do with taking sides, being pro- or anti-Putin, or refuting humanitarian aid to Ukrainian citizens. It is about a Neo-Nazi dynamic within Ukraine, which I consider dangerous to ignore.

To understand Ukraine now, 2014 is a significant date. You’d hardly know that from legacy media. Looking back, muddies the black and white narrative of: ‘West equals good, and Putin equals bad’. 2014, exposes Western interference in Ukrainian democracy.

Ukraine, as a buffer state between two super powers - Europe and Russia, used to entertain both sides. When the Ukrainian Pesident Yanukovych, chose a deal with Putin, over the EU, the Obama administration orchestrated a coup to overthrow him in 2014, spearheaded by Victoria Nuland (1).

In the so-called Maidan revolution, the USA inserted a pro-West President. Nuland had even determined the new power composition of the Ukrainian government, weeks in advance of the coup (2).

During this time, at the end of 2013, US Senator John McCain made a visit to Kiev, and shared a platform with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of Svoboda, a hard- right, antisemitic opposition party, and arguably Europe’s most influential far right movement.

Since the coup, McCain kept in touch with Kiev, and is on record motivating Ukrainian troops, saying that 2017 would be the year of offence when : “ we will make Russia pay a heavier price” (on video at the end).

Today, many of the same Obama foreign policy team—Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and others— are back in the White House and State Department, working for a president who personally ran Obama’s Ukraine policy.

In addition, in 2014, the USA started training and equipping a neo-Nazi battalion, for up to 12,000 men, called Azov (4). There can be no doubt about the neo-Nazi and white supremacist background of the Azov Battalion, who put themselves in the frontline to fight Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The founder and first commander of the battalion, Andriy Biletsky once said, “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment, is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival.”

Azov use the same emblem, seen on the left below, as did a Third Reich Division, seen on the right.

In an interview with The Daily Beast (5), Sgt. Ivan Kharkiv of Azov, talks about his battalion’s experience with U.S. trainers quite fondly, even mentioning U.S. volunteers, engineers and medics that still assist them. He also talks about the significant support they get, from the Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S. As for the training they have, and continue to receive from numerous foreign armed forces, Kharkiv says “We must take knowledge from all armies… We pay for our mistakes with our lives”.

Some argue we shouldn’t worry about Azov, and Ukraine’s several other Neo-Nazi groups, because other countries have similar organisations. This simply is not true. Azov have been trained by the West, in particular the USA (3), who also arm them. They are officially part of Ukraine’s armed forces, making them unique; and because they get military training, they attract Neo-Nazis from abroad. International recruitment has stepped up during the conflict:

Since the 2014 coup, western media have increasingly reported far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators (6). Jewish organisations have also raised concerns:

Human rights organisations produced a joint report in 2018, highlighting the problem, whilst also expressing concern that the authorities were not investigating violent acts perpetrated by members of these groups. Concern was also raised that Azov were being given policing duties (7).

In 2018, the US Congress revoked their funding of Azov, but this was retracted after pressure from the pentagon (8).

Following the 2014 regime change, expressions of admiration for WW2 Nazi collaborators, like Bandera, have also increased (9). The Ukrainian Parliament declared Bandera’s birthday of January 1st, as a National holiday, and it is marked with marches in Kiev.

Neo-Nazi March in Kiev, 2021

In Bandera’s birthplace of Lviv, many officials, including its leader, Maxim Kozitsky, honoured the Nazi collaborator, by laying wreaths at his monument.

Bandera led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose men killed thousands of Jews and Poles, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army.

Monument to Bandera in Lviv

A main road in Kiev has also been named after Bandera.

Those seeking to down play the significance of the Ukrainian far right, point to their low numbers in Parliament. However, it has not prevented them gaining a disproportionate number of high level positions. Azov’s first commander, Biletsky, for example, was a deputy in Parliament from 2014 to 2019, during which time Azov rolled out it’s National Druzhina street patrol unit, who pledge by oath: ‘to restore order’ to the streets. They carried out a pogrom on the Roma and LGBT organisations and stormed a municipal council. They monitored the elections of 2019, when Zelensky became President (10). From 2018, Biletsky became wanted by Russia for unfriendly treatment to citizens of the Donbas.

After Russia escalated the conflict by shelling Ukraine, issues of racism surfaced early on. As African citizens tried to flee, they were met with aggressive treatment at the border:

No-one can foresee the future, but it would be common sense to predict Ukrainian citizens are going to be far worse off, the longer the conflict continues. Before the war, seven out of ten of them were already struggling financially, before European inflation began rising sharply. This is the very environment that brought the rise of Nazism to Europe before.

Looking back a century, Germany’s Nazis started as few in number. In 1919, when Hitler joined the German Workers Party, it was a small, insignificant group, even when it changed it’s name to the Nazis, in 1920.

It too received funds from the USA in it’s early days. In 1923, the American car maker, Henry Ford funded Hitler (11), the same year that the Nazis tried to seize power in Munich, for which Hitler was jailed. While serving his sentence, Hitler wrote down his ideas about Nazi global domination and racial theory.

Before 1930, the Nazis only achieved 3% of the vote, and their popularity only shot up after the depression, when in 1930, they got 18.3% of the vote, giving them 107 delegates in the Reichstag. Then, in 1932, they became the largest faction and formed the government in 1933, the same year, Edsel Ford, Henry’s son made financial contributions to Hitler (11).

Given we have a sharp warning from history, it would be madness not to shine a light on Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at this moment in time. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (12) provides cover for them by claiming it is a slur against Ukraine to talk about it’s Nazis. This was her reason, she said, for banning Russia Today in the UK. Although all efforts are rightly devoted to humanitarian aid to Ukrainian citizens, no decent one of them will want neo-Nazis to gain a greater foothold in their homeland. As it is, Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi battalion in its armed forces, together with a police unit given carte blanche to control it’s streets. Andriy Biletsky, who set up both, wrote that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

I, for one, have taken note.

🌿 https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O

References

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957

2. Ukraine (28/2/2022) - taped recording of Nuland. laurelevy.substack.com

3. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/ukraine-us-one-thing-common-neither-free-fair-elections-obama-biden-ran-coups-install-election-winners/

4. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/cia-neo-nazi-training-ukraine-russia-putin-biden-nato?s=09&fbclid=IwAR3X6H0QmJPQohB9bckdJ_0nKDXW8zUDo1QnGV3qYw-mfUISSuOTborXIu4

5. https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-america-training-neonazis-in-ukraine

6. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/

7. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/14/ukraine-investigate-punish-hate-crimes

8. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/congress-has-removed-a-ban-on-funding-neo-nazis-from-its-year-end-spending-bill/

9. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/ukraine-designates-national-holiday-to-commemorate-nazi-collaborator-1.6787201

10. https://www.unian.ua/elections/10406364-nacionalni-druzhini-budut-oficiyno-sposterigati-za-viborami-prezidenta.html

11. Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler pp104/5 Antony C Sutton (1976) Clairview

12. https://jewishlife.co.uk/community/news/liz-truss-uk-ban-on-rt-after-false-nazi-slurs

video below:

📡IFE News Agency🚨 @IFENewsAgency

Video: #US Senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain & Amy Klobuchar in December 2016 telling #Ukrainian troops that they would help #Ukraine make 2017 a "year of offense" against #Russia & it was time to make Russia "pay a heavier price".