Putin's stooges. Credit: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/ Getty
I never met my wife’s grandmother, Luba, but she is apparently her double. Born just outside Lviv into a wealthy family, she was 18 when the Nazis invaded in 1941. Within months, both of Luba’s parents had been rounded up and murdered by German death squads and their Ukrainian ultra-nationalist lackies. Luba survived the occupation by passing herself off as a Christian maid in a grand house. She hid her 12-year old brother in a nearby clock tower, secretly taking him food.
I have no idea how someone can have that much courage and emotional wherewithal at such a tender age. Miraculously, both survived. The Red Army finally liberated the city, in 1944, after which Luba made aliya to Israel where she became a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. She was a formidable woman.
Putin also imagines himself a liberator, his soldiers being some sort of new Red Army freeing Ukraine from latter day Nazis. For years, Russian state-controlled media has repeatedly cast the Ukrainians as neo-Nazis, never fully freed from the wickedness of anti-Semitism. “Mojem povtorit” the Russians say. We can do it again. We can defeat Nazism again.
Putin wants to recruit Jewish suffering — the suffering of my wife’s family, among millions of others — as some sort of ghastly pretext for his wicked war on the Ukrainian people.
Yes, there is a small far-Right element to Ukrainian politics. But the same could be said of modern-day Poland and Hungary, even in France or Germany. And I won’t dignify Putin’s narrative of liberation by arguing with it. You don’t rain down bombs upon innocent civilians if you want to liberate them. And you don’t bomb the holocaust memorial site at Babi Yar if you are intent on freeing the country from “Nazis”. And let’s not forget that the current and elected president of Ukraine is Jewish.
What is particularly disappointing, however, is that various Israeli leaders have allowed themselves to be manipulated in the service of Putin’s dangerous historical revisionism. In 2018, the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood next to Putin in Moscow’s Red Square, watching Russian tanks roll past, commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the Russian victory over the Nazis.
It helps Putin’s anti-Nazi narrative to be filmed being close to Israeli prime ministers, so it is no coincidence that one of the only world leaders to have met Putin over the past two weeks of the war has been the new Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Israel may have voted to condemn the Russian invasion at the United Nations, but you can be pretty sure that all Russian TV will show is the Russian and Israeli leaders shaking hands and smiling at each other. The message is clear: the Jews approve of what we are doing. But both Netanyahu and Bennett were always being played.
They probably knew it too. But both had domestic reasons for being there. First, Israeli voters like to see their leaders fraternising with big players on the world stage, and 1.2 million of them are originally from Russia. Also Israel, like London, is the home to several serious Russian oligarchs, such as Roman Abramovich, with billions invested. But most important is the fact that Russia has been an important ally in the fight against Isis in Syria —and Israeli politicians hope that Russia may even be persuaded to block any new nuclear deal that the Americans want to revive with Iran.
It is because of the politics of the Middle East that Israeli politicians are prepared to stand grinning beside Putin. “It is necessary to ensure the continued security coordination between the Russian army and the Israel Defence Forces,” Netanyahu said, before he flew out to admire Putin’s tanks. Which is why, when the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014, the Israelis said nothing. So despite the fact that Ukraine was for centuries the absolute centre of world Judaism (which is why, for the ultra-Orthodox especially, it contains a number of important pilgrimage sites – such as the birthplace of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov), modern Jews don’t really see this part of the world as particularly important. The Pale of Settlement is the old Jewish world; Israel the new one. The Russian invasion is not our fight.
But it should be. Not only for obvious humanitarian reasons. But also, as a recent editorial in the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz rightly claimed: “Putin’s attempt to liken the invading Russian army to the Red Army that liberated East Europe and the extermination camps from Nazi Germany borders on Holocaust denial.” To requisition the mass murder of Jews as justification for the present invasion of Ukraine is a perversion of history so vast that it threatens to undermine the very purpose for which the state of Israel was established.
Last week, my two youngest children received their Israeli passports in the post. I felt a sense of relief that I find difficult to explain. “Home is the place where they have to let you in,” as Rabbi Sacks once explained it to me. His point was that whatever happens in the world, having an Israeli passport guarantees Jews a safe place if ever they need it. I want this option for my boys. Their great great grandparents, Luba’s Mum and Dad, were murdered by genocidal Nazis in Lviv. They are remembered at Yad Vashem in the Hall of Names alongside so many others whose blood was spilt in Ukraine.
The memory of their deaths is profoundly disrespected by Putin’s cynical exploitation. Israeli leaders have allowed themselves to become stooges in some sordid Russian conspiracy where they are forced to play act the narratives of the second world war for a gullible TV audience. And Putin has taken the memories of dead Jews and used them as an excuse to conduct a war of aggression against a civilian population and to target their Jewish leader for assassination.
Uncovering and maintaining the truth of what happened during the holocaust is quite properly a modern Jewish commandment — both a sacred and a secular mitzvah. “Though shalt not grant Hitler posthumous victories”, was how Emil Fackenheim described it. Putin’s manipulation of the history of the Jews to deliver a patently fraudulent casus belli is a lie that must be kept a million miles away from the story of the Jewish people during the holocaust. Russian propaganda is an insult to their memory.
Once again in Europe millions of people are on the move, terrified families, women and children fleeing violent men in uniforms, elderly people hiding in freezing basements, cities reduced rubble. It looks like history, but it is today. Dressing up as liberators, the Russians have come as the aggressor. They have now become the very thing that they say they hate. And there is a special place in hell for people such as this.
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SubscribeIsrael looks after its own interests. As it should. It follows the dictum of lord Palmerston “ We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”.
Well except for the perpetual enemies part, I suppose. They have that and are surrounded, hence they need allies from wherever.
I agree with Giles about the Russian misuse of WWIII symbology here to denigrate the Ukrainians, but Putin isn’t Hitler either.
We’d all be better off not applying the logic of WWII to every conflict.
Putin has many similarities to Hitler.
Both were first elected and then became dictators. Both were surrounded by a few “advisors” and ignored their advice unless it agreed with their own thoughs. Both started major conflicts. Both used the same argument to start those major conflicts (liberating German/Russian speakers).. Both lived in isolated bunkers (Putin’s dacha, Hitlers Eagle’s Nest). Both believe in, and used, terror tactics and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilians. Both killed and imprisoned any opponents.
One was far right and, once upon a time, the other was far left but in the circle far right becomes far left if you take one step too far (and they may both be ultimately the same).
Yes, the similarities are chilling.
And to depersonalise it, Russia very much resented (and blames) the West for the collapse of the system in the 90s, which has echoes of Germany’s resentment of WW1 reparations.
That is true! I studied the rise of Hitler while researching my novel, Smoke. Hitler perfected the perfidious art of honing German hate of the French into a third reich wehrmacht of revenge.
That Russian resentment after the entire Soviet state was disrupted and rearranged into a frankenstein version of capitalism–it certainly does “rhyme” (as the saying goes) with the third reich pattern where German rage was manipulated by hitler’s evil genius into hyper-destructive militarism.
What the world is seeing now is putin’s replay of hitler’s manic rage, eerily reminiscent of hitler’s assault on Czech Sudetenland. That 1939 assault was, as was mentioned in Fraser’s article above, a manipulative retrieval of native speakers who happened to have landed in the next country over.
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True. In the circle of ideology, hitlerian fascists and stalinist fascists meet at the bottom, in the deepest pit of human cruelty. At that low point of human destruction, all ideological speculation is burnt in the fire of holocaust, be it in gulag or stalag.
Ooh I dunno about that – the only reason we have nukes is for our perpetual enemy the French. Nothing to do with Russians.
‘Tis the tragic world in which we live. As the French say, “C’est la guerre” . . . a gyrating, cyclical mandela of human tragedy.
Putin’s cry for ‘denazification’ has more to do with Nazism in Ukraine, such as the Azov Battalion, than any Jewish population. He is driven by the War in Donbas which has engaged in warfare for nearly ten years. Also, it doesn’t help that Azov Battalion gets funding and training from Ukraine and her allies. This is a sharp difference to the far-right / right-wing in Germany, where the AfD is highly monitored and harassed. It’s frankly not the same.
Historically, Ukraine did have Nazi collaboration during WWII. A good novel exploring this is ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper’ by Helen Dale. However, Ukraine did suffer under the Nazis and only a fool would deny that. But Ukraine’s relationship with Nazism is complex and requires nuance.
That said, Putin seems to mesh his criticism of Nazism with “the West”. To ‘denazify’ Ukraine is to Russify it, as opposed to Western influences. This is a long-standing theme in Ukraine, spiking in the Euromaiden. But it’s also consistent in Russia, where the Nazis massacred millions. Both are motivated by WWII history; so is Britain, but all three interpretations are vastly different to each other.
Nazism was not the only horrible evil in the first half of the 20th century. Stalinism was rarely better, and in many places was much worse. It is therefore completely unfair to blame links to the Nazists on nations that were crushed by Nazism from the one side and Stalinism from the other.
Good point. Ukrainians were caught in the crossfire.
But they come to imitate their conquerors
The starting whistle for the 2nd World War was the Soviet/German pact that Stalin thought would see the capitalists bash lumps off each other..but was very put out when France collapsed in a heap.
And the endless going on about how *Russia* saw off Germany and lost so many people? Ukraine lost more people proportionately than Russia and a very huge number in absolute terms.
History is complicated and complex but actions derived from it are often far more straightforward; you stand up to non-democratic, totalitarian bullies eventually, and if not today, then some day soon, or else they’ll end up stamping all over you.
True, but there were also large numbers of Russians who helped the Germans as well. They had their own units, quite large in number. And their reasons were almost the same as those of the Ukrainians: they were fed up with the mass murder the Soviet state had inflicted on them the prior two decades. They hoped things would be better under the Germans. We all know that wasn’t the Germans’ plan, but after going through a program of mass murder that only the Holocaust itself would top (until the CCP took control of China, at least), it really is hard to criticize their decision. They had no good choices: fight for one form of evil or another. In the long run the Soviets would murder more than the Germans
Tbh, I think Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, as well as the general Ukrainian population, are highly unsympathetic to Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic Victory’ framing. It’s very easy to see why: Stalin, and the Soviet Union, committed horrific actions. Ukraine rejects communism, and the desire for victory can translate to nostalgia for tyranny. Also, many older Ukranians may associate anti-fascist teachings by the Soviet as lies to justify further abuse against Ukranians.
My point isn’t to present an argument, just put pieces together and understand behaviour. Ukraine has an interesting relationship with both Russia and ‘the West.’ The Ukrainian language, as an example, incorporates influences from the Poland and Lithinunia. Kiev has lived under Western and Russian rule for over a 1000 years. Remember: Ukraine’s “national identity” isn’t that old and has changed rapidly since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin interprets Ukraine as belonging to Russia. Both the Kremlin and Patriach Kirill of Moscow see Ukranians and Russians (as well as Belarusians) as ‘one people’ derived from the Kievan Rus. Putin argues that Ukraine is plastic: all manufactured by Lenin. And there’s some truth to that claim, as well as a cohesive East Slavic identity. Yet the land of Ukraine has experienced differing and opposing influences from medieval to contemporary history. The problem with Putin’s mindset is not grasping why Ukraine developed a national identity. Instead, he uses the frustrating ‘West vs Russia’ framing with many limitations.
Spot on…….. the history of the whole region is extremely complicated and there seems little appetite to go into it in current affairs and news programmes to explain why …just as one eg…Western Ukraine was once Poland..Ukraine has a significant Magyar/Hungarian cohort, and so on.
As you say had the Nazi Germans not been so crazed by their grotesque ideology they might have swept up just about everyone in Ukraine for their side, so crazed had the Soviet Union been towards them by their own grotesque ideology.
Don’t you think Putin is overegging the Nazism of Ukraine a bit? It’s like he’s operating a zero NaCi policy. At Ukraine’s expense!
“You don’t rain down bombs upon innocent civilians if you want to liberate them.”
People in glass houses https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/feb/07/balkans
We have very short memories.
“it is no coincidence that one of the only world leaders to have met Putin over the past two weeks of the war has been the new Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett.”
I hate doing this but I can’t help myself as it drives me mad. There can be no such thing as “one of the only”. It is either the “only one” or “one of (insert number greater than 1)” or “one of the very few/ a handful etc.”
Apart from that, a fascinating and very pertinent article from which I learned some things I never knew before.
It goes with “one of the most unique”. or just “most unique”.
A point that might seem minor but is in fact major: The U.S. almost certainly will not make a deal with Iran. Oh, Biden probably will, and he will almost certainly enforce it. But remember how Trump backed out of the original Iran deal? Why was he able to do that? Simple: only the Senate can ratify a treaty. The original Iran deal was never sent to the Senate, Obama just decided to enforce it of his own will. Biden will almost certainly play the same game. But it does mean the treaty is Biden’s personal treaty, not one that Constitutionally can be said to be the U.S.’s treaty (again, the reason Trump was able to back out of the original of his own accord: because the country never actually committed to it according to the Constitution’s rules of how we commit to treaties).
Also remember: the same people who so heavily promoted Biden said it would be a ‘return to normalcy,’ by which they meant Obama, by which they meant the president doing whatever he wants regardless of the limits placed on his office as long as it was some good solid virtue signaling. Even noted autocrats like Wilson wouldn’t touch that constitutional principle that only the Senate can ratify a treat. Wilson ignored almost every other aspect of it, but was willing to accept a humiliating defeat in the eyes of the world not to violate that principle when the Senate would not ratify the Versailles Treaty. So the ‘return to normalcy’ is doing something that was never considered acceptable before, but apparently is now because mean tweets or something.
It is so difficult to be virtuous nowadays. I give it up.
Thanks for these bite-sized bits of history. At school we learned European (well, British) history, and later we knew we had better find out about Asian history, but the rather large area in between is still (apart from William Dalrymple’s bailiwick) a sort of vacant space. Who knew Kiev, Lviv etc. were so interesting?!
Israel has also provided armaments to Azerbaijan in the latest iteration of their war with Armenia. Not impressed.
Israili news agency Vesti, which has originally denounced the Babi Yar bombing, has issued a correction following the report by the war correspondent Ron Ben Yishai.
https://www-ynet-co-il.translate.goog/news/article/sky0frhg5?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Yes. That was obvious from the start as the video showed where the missiles hit.
The REAL story, imho, is how quickly people will believe that someone who has been demonized, would do such a thing, which from his point of view would be harmful to his purpose. It takes a particular kind of mental impairment to hear something like “The Russians bombed Babi Yar,” and NOT have a lot of questions about what really happened, who is making claims, what evidence is there, etc.
Ukraine is taking heavily from the playbook the Palestinians use against Israel, and it is working just as well, and with the same kind of naive liberal people.
The Israeli non-reaction to the brutal invasion of Ukraine has one reason. Russia controls Syrian airspace. Russia provided their (murderous) good friend Assad with surface to air missiles and keeps air bases in Syria. Israel is fighting an undeclared war against Iran in Syria and needs freedom of movement in its airspace. It is as simple as that.
I think you will find that the concern is existential rather than financial.
“Israeli politicians hope that Russia may even be persuaded to block any new nuclear deal that the Americans want to revive with Iran.”
The idea of Israel betraying the source of tens of billions of dollars of no strings attached foreign aid to throw their lot in with Russia is slightly absurd. If it’s true though I do wonder why the American people tolerate such a state of affairs.
Just to clarify: Americans don’t want to revive the obscenity of a nuclear deal that Obama’s handlers engineered. We were relieved when President Trump killed it. It is Biden’s handlers who are intent on its revival. And, as you can see, there isn’t much we can do about their hideous machinations. That they impeached the president – twice – for their own crimes, and stole the election in front of our eyes, is proof they can do anything they wish and get away with it.
That seems like a reply to a different comment.
Does it? “Israeli politicians hope that Russia may even be persuaded to block any new nuclear deal that the Americans want to revive with Iran.”
The Russian army is rolling onwards to Kyiv. As they pass a small village, they hear a Ukrainian voice over the hill;
“One Ukrainian soldier is better than 10 Russian soldiers!”
The Russian general laughs, as he sends 10 men on the hill to capture it. There is gunfire for a minute and then everything goes silent and they then hear the same voice;
“One Ukrainian soldier is better than a hundred of yours!”
Annoyed, the Russian general sends a hundred men to capture the hill. There is gunfire and explosions going on for ten minutes, then all goes silent again. Suddenly, the same voice yells out;
“One Ukrainian soldier is better than thousand of Russian soldiers!”
Perplexed the general contacts the Kremlin and asks for orders. The order is attack, so he sends a thousand men, accompanied with tanks, massive artillery support, and tells them to not return until the hill is theirs. For half an hour all hell is let loose, and then all goes deathly quiet again.
Then, one bedraggled Russian soldier makes it back. Before the general could say anything, the soldier says;
“Do not send more troops in, comrade general, it’s a trap! There`s two of them.”
History is everyone’s servant.
History is perversion. There is nothing pure about it. One could imagine the Tempter using it to beguile Christ in the wilderness.
All the kingdoms of the world are in my gift, says the Prince to the Lord. You must see, Jesus of Nazareth, the prince continues, quoting whatever part of scripture, especially the histories about titles to land, that could be used to gain the required effect, that it is your historical destiny to rule them. Leap into the possession of them now by an act of self-assertion. Be on the right side of history.
Last week, my two youngest children received their Israeli passports in the post. I felt a sense of relief that I find difficult to explain.
What does he know that I don’t?
The mental challenge for a young boy to overcome because of having to hide in a clock tower (possibly on his own) must have been extremely tough. Especially for an extended length of time.
I can’t help feeling that the moral collapse of the US during 2020, when it was deemed ok by political bigwigs to describe riots or looting as peaceful protests, when it was ok to say that covid restrictions are fine to break when it comes to crowds gathering to call for defunding the police, when autonomous zones were deemed as safe spaces effectively — when so many in authority it seemed would not say that what is wrong is wrong or that a crime is a crime is in fact a crime – I can’t help feeling that Putin noticed this bizarre confusion and abdication of moral responsibility in the land of the free that would have been normally becoming of US lawmakers – and formed a decision in his mind that he could do the divil and all himself.
There’s no shame anymore.
” … there is a special place in hell for people such as this”. A wonderful way to end an excellent article and I wish I believed in hell.
What I do believe in is the dignity and courage of Zelensky. He has won the hearts and minds of most Ukrainians and of the rest of the civilised world.
The Russian excuses for invading Ukraine, by tarnishing in one stroke all Ukrainians, that is by setting out the stall that “proves” Ukraine needs to be “de-nazified”, a stall that only reveals the woke virtue-signalling nonsense that is also embedded into the Kremlin’s iniquitous set-up, are as pernicious and cloyingly insincere as the presentations the would-be bank robbers make of themselves when they turn up at the little old lady’s house in suburban London, the old lady believing they are going to practice playing their musical instruments, when in fact their intent is to plan the bank heist, as seen in the 1950s movie The Ladykillers.
Why can’t other world leaders who should know better know what’s right and what’s wrong?
Oh yes, I can just see Alec Guiness as Vladimir Putin.
BTW and not related, I hope your children enjoy their Israeli passports. As both a Jew and an Israeli citizen I find something perverse about this anecdote. You are welcome home to the tribe in peacetime as well.
I would imagine, psychologically, since 1948, it has been a godsend.
Sure, Israel is a game-changer for the dispersed and despised Jews. I grew up in racist South London of the 1970s and 80s. Then I discovered Zionism, and found that I had an option that my father never had in indescribably worse 1930s Germany.
This explanation is undoubtedly helpful in helping some of us gentiles to get our sights realigned toward accurate interpretation during these confusing ethnic realignments.
This article presents a narrative that is completely removed from reality.
The hyper-nationalist Ukrainian-Israeli billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky, a friend of the Obama White House and employer of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, is a major donor to far-right Ukrainian causes. He sides with the followers of Stepan Bandera, the pro-Nazi Ukrainian leader whom Hitler ditched when Bandera made clear that he wanted Ukraine to be nazi but independent of Germany’s Nazi Party. Briefly, Bandera’s #2 in command, Yaroslav Stetsko, led nazi Ukraine, and approved the slaughter of thousands of Jews there. He clearly stated his view, that:
“Moscow and Jewry are Ukraine’s greatest enemies and bearers of corruptive Bolshevik international ideas. Although I consider Moscow, which is in fact Ukraine held in captivity, and not Jewry, to be the main and decisive enemy, I nonetheless fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews.”
https://www.academia.edu/2469365/The_Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists_and_Its_Attitude_toward_Germans_and_Jews?fbclid=IwAR0sWNhZNkw3lhXXvLaMdLAKouON9C9k4ibb4BunRNi00h1EABkO918eOmQ
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-russian-jewish-leader-says-ukraine-oligarch-should-be-hanged/?fbclid=IwAR0ndoL4jmb1caBZet2VU81_FbYb6vMf5pQUjwMFLD3pHmMaC5jdvAiszMY
https://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/jewish-billionaire-finances-ukraines-aydar-ss-nazi-troops/?fbclid=IwAR01wiXWx5jPnHoedvNs1z4oHA19CBFpHKo6zHARNKUAumpE2Pjw3mM17pY
Kolomoyski is a prominent supporter of Ukraine’s Jewish community and the president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. In 2010 he was appointed as the president of the European Council of Jewish Communities after promising the outgoing president he would donate $14 million…After several ECJC board members resigned in protest, Kolomyski quit the ECJC and, together with fellow Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich, founded the European Jewish Union.”
(Wiki)
Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring:
“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. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
But a rebel counteroffensive by ethnic Russians reversed many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered these neo-Nazis. He wrote:
“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups.
“Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.” [Consortium News “Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.”]
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/23/robert-parry-ukraines-neo-nazis-demand-respect/?fbclid=IwAR2MMuYD-4c6IIaZ5UH6hNOZd00FsKMg5NYxhY490hlMfoY2DBIhOEf_buE
The driver of this violence was largely the Ukrainian far right, which, while a minority of the protesters, served as a kind of revolutionary vanguard. Looking outside Kyiv, a systematic analysis of more than 3,000 Maidan protests found that members of the far-right Svoboda party — whose leader once complained Ukraine was run by a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” and which includes a politician who admires Joseph Goebbels — were the most active agents in the protests. They were also more likely to take part in violent actions than any group but one: Right Sector, a collection of far-right activists that traces its lineage to genocidal Nazi collaborators.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/stepan-bandera-nationalist-euromaidan-right-sector/?fbclid=IwAR2dsj4gScKxDgrB0uWb3BlznDb_Cr03Crv2Ecamcp-InqfYBXD0agfNR4o
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/13/ukraine-far-right-fascism-mps?fbclid=IwAR3jg-6ePSUWd39TyJt4Qvb4q1Y7svQsNHGCzXMZJRLyQZ1gp44Y9kgGiZ4
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20824693?fbclid=IwAR3-nfz8Kod7OOg7PMqTTFtlra7XtIbg5jZI3hLMOOlvJgfkBFEc7sxKgpk
As the fire worsened (Odessa massacre), those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading “Galician SS,” a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.
The death by fire of dozens of people in Odessa recalled a World War II incident in 1944 when elements of a Galician SS police regiment took part in the massacre of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka, which had been a refuge for Jews and was protected by Russian and Polish partisans. Attacked by a mixed force of Ukrainian police and German soldiers on Feb. 28, 1944, hundreds of townspeople were massacred, including many locked in barns that were set ablaze.
The legacy of World War II especially the bitter fight between Ukrainian nationalists from the west and ethnic Russians from the east seven decades ago is never far from the surface in Ukrainian politics. One of the heroes celebrated during the Maidan protests in Kiev was Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose name was honored in many banners including one on a podium where Sen. John McCain voiced support for the uprising to oust Yanukovych, whose political base was among ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
During World War II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement that sought to transform Ukraine into a racially pure state. OUN-B took part in the expulsion and extermination of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by anger over political corruption and by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and surged to the front during the seizure of government buildings and the climatic clashes with police.
In the days after the Feb. 22 coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively controlled the government, European and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable regime, although at least four ministries, including national security, were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their crucial role in ousting Yanukovych.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY
As extraordinary as it was for a modern European state to hand ministries over to neo-Nazis, virtually the entire U.S. news media cooperated in playing down the neo-Nazi role. Stories in the U.S. media delicately step around this neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of coup regime’s national security chief Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense forces.”
Last April, as the Kiev regime launched its “anti-terrorist operation” against the ethnic Russians in the east, Parubiy announced that his right-wing paramilitary forces, incorporated as National Guard units, would lead the way. On April 15, Parubiy went on Twitter to declare, “Reserve unit of National Guard formed Maidan Self-defense volunteers was sent to the front line this morning.” (Parubiy resigned from his post for unexplained reasons.)
Now, however, as the Ukrainian military tightens its noose around the remaining rebel strongholds, battering them with artillery fire and aerial bombardments, thousands of neo-Nazi militia members are again pressing to the front as fiercely motivated fighters determined to kill as many ethnic Russians as they can. It is a remarkable story but one that the mainstream U.S. news media would prefer not to notice.
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/10/nyt-discovers-ukraines-neo-nazis-at-war/?fbclid=IwAR1Pe9bB8dGUW1xIvAoGUAa7CbkkJGxHzndKZJrf6dpV5tuabFrAb9BnAtY
I fear, given the current climate in Russia, that someone will need to de-Stalinize the country in future.
The number of Russians who admire Stalin is far greater than the number of Ukrainians who admire Hitler.
Genocide, land grab, ethnic cleansing, legalization of torture, apartheid, white supremacism in Palestine is not “Jewish History”. Zionism, just like all forms of Nazi rule, including Ukrainian Nazism, must be erased from the face of Earth. No one has a right to an ethno-terror State, based on superiority of one ethnicity over all others. Zionism does not represent Jews just as Ukrainian Nazism and Banderism does not represent normal Ukrainians.