While Western media deploys Zelensky’s heritage to refute accusations of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the president now depends on them as front line fighters in the war with Russia, report Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, in Kiev on Feb. 2. (President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.
Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.
President of Ukraine Zelensky has visited disengaging area in Zolote today https://t.co/scFZLt45C2 pic.twitter.com/JlD1cWPQ39
— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) October 26, 2019
Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.
Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Andriy Beletsky, commanding officer of the special Ukrainian neo-Nazi police regiment Azov, with volunteers in 2014. (My News24, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.
By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
This Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, U.S. media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the U.S. government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, U.S. media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
Jewishness as Western Media PR Device
Hours before Putin’s Feb. 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Zelensky “asked how a people who lost 8 million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.
Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.
Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a U.S. media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
Watch left & right wing factions of MSM unite to declare any allegations of Nazism in Ukraine to be Russian fake news because President Zelensky is Jewish. Featuring Senators Marsha Blackburn & Mark Warner, former CIA spy Dan Hoffman & "Ukraine Whistleblower" Alexander Vindman pic.twitter.com/vruyDUoWxv
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 28, 2022
A few examples of the U.S. media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):
- PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
- On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify — their president is Jewish after all.”
- On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is — ‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
- Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
- In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”
Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.
In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.
The Azov Battalion marches with Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel flags in Mariupol, August 2020
Neo-Nazi Wave of intimidation
Azov Battalion. (GianlucaAgostini/Wikimedia Commons)
Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing U.S. -based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several U.S. white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.
Igor Kolomoyskyi, 2013. (Wikimedia Commons)
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployedthem as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.
In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”
Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.
In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the U.S. State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”
Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Breaking! A bus carrying supporters and members of #Ukraine's opposition party "Patriots For Life" was attacked by Ukrainian National Corps and Azov Battalion in the east of the country (Kharkov), unconfirmed reports that some of the passengers have been murdered. pic.twitter.com/O0hB2sqbRA
— The Eurasianist ?? (@Russ_Warrior) August 27, 2020
Zelensky Winds Up Collaborating
Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”
A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
Yevgen Karas, leader of C14 organization, at the rally against Minister Arsen Avakov, Kiev, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of U.S. neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.
C14 neo-Nazi gang offers to carry out violence-for-hire: “C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.”
A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.
As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.
The C14 Nazi terror gang signed an agreement with the Kiev municipal government to patrol its streets. This footage taken just a few months later in 2018 shows them carrying out a pogrom against a Romani camp. pic.twitter.com/9aAA86K8TQ
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 28, 2022
Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the U.S. government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official U.S. government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”
Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”
“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.
Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the prime minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.
Zelensky’s minister for veterans affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several anti-Semitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.
Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”
In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, Kiev, Jan. 1, 2015. (All-Ukrainian Union CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”
Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” award
Neo-Nazi Leader Flaunts Influence on Eve of War
On Feb. 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.
Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine's neo-Nazi terror gang C14's speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses' mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the left, the mainstream media and the State Department. pic.twitter.com/VWJqWPUGUp
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 27, 2022
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
‘If We Get killed…We Died Fighting a Holy War’
When Russian forces entered Ukraine this Feb. 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.
With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.
As US media celebrated average Ukrainian citizens taking up arms against Russian troops, the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion's National Corps published a propaganda video of its fighters training and passing out arms to residents of Kharkiv, transforming them into combatants. pic.twitter.com/RVL1nyWkfw
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 1, 2022
On Feb.27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.
Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs?
????? ????? ?????????? ???????? ???? ????? ????? ???????????? ??????
???????????? ?? ??? ???????? ????? https://t.co/SBQltMr4bM pic.twitter.com/A1ci7tZL8r
— ??? (@ng_ukraine) February 27, 2022
A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.
Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.
According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”
Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.
Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
Alex Rubinstein is an independent reporter on Substack. You can subscribe to get free articles from him delivered to your inbox here. If you want to support his journalism, which is never put behind a paywall, you can give a one-time donation to him through PayPal here or sustain his reporting through Patreon here.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
This article is from The Grayzone.
Mr. Rubinstein, thank you for this informative article. But “…. the many narratives pushed by the left….” — really! The Democratic Party and its sympathizers are only leftists when compared to Tea-Party Republicans. Otherwise, especially with regards to foreign policy, they are well to the right of center.
@TS – Yes, it’s always amusing when people refer to the US Democratic Party as “leftists” or (as some in the Republican Party like to do) “Socialists” or even “Communists”. In virtually any other country, the Democrats would be considered firmly in the centre or to the right-of-centre.
Azov member says “Putin’s a Jew” in 3/2022 Greek City Times article linked above. The statement is sourced to 9/10/2014 Guardian article, Azov member also says they’ll kill Poroshenko after they’re in power. Even if both these men claim not to be Jewish, I’m guessing Azov may believe their parents or grandparents were Jewish.
“Another speaking to The Guardian, Dmitry, said “I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia. But Putin’s not even a Russian. Putin’s a Jew.”
Dmitry claimed not to be a Nazi, but waxed lyrical about Adolf Hitler as a military leader, and believes the Holocaust never happened.”
In 9/10/2014 Guardian article cited, Azov member also says they’ll kill Poroshenko after they put a new dictator in power: “President Petro Poroshenko will be killed in a matter of months, Dmitry said.” …9/10/2014, “Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat,” UK Guardian, Shaun Walker, Mariupol
If this is all true, and I don’t doubt that it is, one really must conclude, that to a quite extreme degree, most of Ukraine is basically a racist population. Because otherwise, Zelensky wouldn’t have been able to get away with all of his white supremacy. Not only are they all cool with it, they seem to revere him for his views. It looks like there is almost no diversity of ethnicity in the people that they’ve shown. Collusion with neo-nazis is not something we should support in any way, shape, or form. The media here loves to focus on the “Dancing with the Stars” side of Zelensky. The collusion with Azov is totally ignored. Shame on them.
Well we now know what the Western media frenzy is all about, a frantic deflection from some very inconvenient truths; the CIA, surely with State Department support (and especially in the person of Victoria Nuland), have been arming, training and encouraging Ukrainian Nazis for their assault on the Donbass region. Another very inconvenient truth is that that modern Germany is now arming Ukrainian Nazis as well. And of course the other nations of the EU. For example, the Netherlands has shipped a 100 sniper rifles to Ukraine. Note that the Azov and other Nazi forces in Ukraine have killed about 14.000 people in Donbass over the last eight years through various means, including snipers.
Do the EU leaders really think that these horrible actions will stay hidden. The absolute frenzy and crackdown on media; democracy and truth die in wars, is an indication, I think, of how badly this is going to go once the immediate passions die down. Of course, by then the EU in particular will be facing a wrecked economy (how much of that is be design; NATO: “keep Germany down, Russia out and America in”). How noble that EU citizens will have to endure all this for the sake of a rise of fascism in Ukraine and American hegemony in the world. Makes you proud…
they will also have to endure white nationalist nazi ‘refugees’ That will not end well in Europe, especially when they link up with the far right wing groups already present in the EU. The Ukrainians will bring all those small arms, javelins and MANPADs the US/UK gave them to the party. I can see well armed radical white terrorism in the streets of Europe within 3 years.
Gerald: Exactly. Good point.
Many US Nazis and fascists have gone to Ukraine to “train” by killing Eastern Ukrainians with Azov, Right Sektor, etc. Some will come home to the US and do the same thing here. It’s not only an EU future problem but a US one as well.
Based on this it’s easy to point the finger at Ukraine’s collaboration with fascists.
But save some finger pointing for the u.S. too. I believe it was Grayzone that also broke the story of how certain police forces from the states have sent members in recent years to train with these man-goons.
If Scott Ritter’s info is accurate then C.I.A has been training fascist forces in Ukraine as well as in neighboring states such as Poland along with private security outfits like Blackwater (or Ze or Pi or whatever they’re calling themselves today). Also training them in the U.S.?
As hard evidence of this continues to emerge it will be instructive, to say the least, to see how mass media corrects itself (haha) or rather jumps into their next chosen rabbit hole of denial.
No, no. According to our corporate-militarist Western media the neo-Nazi element in Ukraine is all a figment of Putin’s propaganda.
I posted a link to this article on a forum and it got removed in a flash with this accompanying message:
Reason For Action:
Sorry, this post is into the realm of conspiracy theory, which isn’t accepted on the forums.
So, it is getting to a stage where it’s forbidden to highlight facts that are contrary to the tsunami of anti-Russian / Putin propaganda
I live in the UK but I might as well be in Pyongyang
— “a forum”…. What forum? Owned and run by whom? Unless you have checked that, any complaints are a sign of an almost criminal naïvety
— The term ‘conspiracy theory’ was introduced into political debate by the CIA to use against European journalists who questioned the official story of the assassination of President Kennedy… ‘Nuf said!
I can only wonder where we would be without the handful of journalists with integrity and a thirst for knowledge.
Lots of legwork – and brilliant argument! The Q now is, how can the MSM continue to dictate the terms of discussion without compunction? A recent attempt to contact 2 leading ‘liberals’ does not yield a positive prognosis.
Consider [1], Jason Stanley’s 2/25 Guardian article, ‘The antisemitism animating Putin’s claim to ‘denazify’ Ukraine’: ‘…Ukraine does have a far-right movement, and its armed defenders include the Azov battalion, a far-right nationalist militia group. But no democratic country is free of far-right nationalist groups, including the United States. In the 2019 election, the Ukrainian far right was humiliated, receiving only 2% of the vote.’
That settles it! My twitter response to it was deleted, so I emailed him c/o his Yale email. No response.
Ditto, [2]: Olivia Waxman’s 3/3 TIME piece, “Historians on What Putin Gets Wrong About ‘Denazification’ in Ukraine.” She quotes Timothy Snyder: “It’s a classic form of antisemitism to say that the Jews are the Nazis. And that’s what he’s doing,” says Snyder. “The purpose of this war is to target a government which is headed by a Jew. So if you call that denazification, what you’re saying is, the Jews are the real Nazis, and we are the real victims. [Putin]’s appealing to a certain tradition in antisemitism, which tries to flip around who are the victims and who are the perpetrators…”
Ah, the classic Flip. I forwarded them both the link to your article. Response expected? No; any answer would be an admission that they ‘got’ it. Honesty is not the name of the Academic game.
Perhaps Zelinsky is more Zionist than Jewish. There is a difference.
Thanks to Consortium News for reporting. The arrogance of Biden and Victoria Nuland (and others) in 2013 and 2014 when they led the US in removing an elected president and installed a puppet president of US choosing is the root of the current conflagation. How would the US have responded if Russia had done the same in Mexico, Canada or Cuba? And what about the warm water ports in Crimea which prevent Russia from being ice-locked-in during winter?
When Biden can control a billion dollars of foreign aid to Ukraine in order that a Hunter Biden investigation be ended, an elected Ukraine president can be removed from office at the whim of corrupt politicians and a puppet president of US choosing can be installed, the US bears the responsibility of this world upheaval. Corruption is spun into leadership. Biden looks different each time I see him. He and Nuland should be prosecuted. Thanks CN! For info on the history of US Nazis, I love Jim Marrs’ The Rise of the Fourth Reich. The worst criminals didn’t go to Nuremberg…they came to the USA.
Patricia, I’m not sure who was advising Biden or Nuland at the time, suffice to say none of their actions made any sense to me. Other, that is, than Biden got played by some group CIA, Deep State etc. regardless their actions and involvement seemed sorely out of touch at the time.
After reading and rereading this article I still cannot make sense of what the U.S. calls diplomacy. Learning of political conditions in Ukraine here inidcate their efforts wreak of disingenuousness at the best or total ignorance at the worst.
Can our leadership be so terribly inept that U.S. input since 2014 is the product of the U.S. becoming dysfunctional to the point of creating a series of events that has led to this fiasco that could lead to nuclear conflict? The result of losing contact with the realities displayed here. Or is has Deep State / intelligence community lost their minds?
Brings to mind a Latin phrase, Ros Ipsa Loquitur;
“A Latin term meaning “The thing speaks for itself”, which is a doctrine that infers negligence from the nature of the accident, when evidence regarding the behavior of the defendant is lacking. For example, the elements of a tort , (that is duty of care, breach and causation) are inferred from an injury circumstance that would not normally occur without negligence.”
This from Thompson Reuters PRACTICAL LAW.
Seems to me the US cannot manage to do squat, without being a causation of enormous death, destruction and suffering. Could this be by negligence or design? Haven’t we all had just about enough of this bullshit?
” For what It’s Worth” Buffalo Springfield 1966 hXXps://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/buffalospringfield/forwhatitsworth.html
Excellent journalism which should be disseminated amongst the left, many of whom seem to be very confused about the morality of all this. Attacks against women, LGBT and the Romano are all indicative of a reactionary nationalist core of the Ukrainian government. This is a defining moment in 21st century power politics and it will be for the betterment of all humanity that Ukraine is federalised and neutralised.
We have to have sympathy for the West. They really cannot criticize or oppose the Nazis in Ukraine because if they did then someone might, unfairly, ask why the West isn’t also opposing the Zionists in Israel. Apparently, Zionists are mostly Jewish so they cannot be Nazis.
So there you have it, there are good Nazis and bad Nazis but there are only bad Russians.
this is very pertinent when you look at the zionist russophobes littering the white house and in Europe (Baerbock – whose father was a brave nazi defending Germany from the Russians apparently – her words not mine)
It is, as you say, ok to consort with Nazis as long as they are killing Russians, same as in Germany after the mid thirties, nazis were fine because they only hated and persecuted the jews and minorities etc. American political class are just extremists wearing Rolex and Gucci.
Jewishness as Western Media PR Device
This is an extremely stupid device, but nevertheless effective. If you want to fill the “information space” and tighten “Overton Window” and you lack intelligent arguments, you use all you can. Create memes and repeat, preferably they have rhythm and rhyme, and they stay in peoples mind even when nonsensical.
In the real world, fascists need hatred, and use whatever subjects are at hand. Kazakh fascists may indulge in pogroms of Dungans (descendants of Chinese Muslim), Kyrgyz can massacre Uzbeks, Hindu fascist may massacre Muslim, etc. Jewish fascists focus on Arabs and “self-hating Jews”. Fascism also entails cult of force and shows of force. An Italian movie about fascist era had a scene of a young fascist making a speech to young people, and to show strength and resolve, grabs a cat and smashes it. Liberals, being more gentle, merely ban Russian cats etc. to feel strength and resolve.
Lamentably, Western liberals love to hate Communists and Russians, and when Communists are outlawed and Russian-speakers are clobbered, they cheer. Thus the approval of extra-legal closures of Russian-language (or “pro-Russian”) media in Ukraine, and impunity of murders of “pro-Russians” like in Odessa trade union building.
I think Orwell, when writing his dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm and 1984, was imagining something like what is happening today.
The huge irony behind this story is that banksters funded both Nazism & Communism.
Both Lenin & Hitler were funded by New York Banksters.
The book: Pawns in the Game by WWII Canadian naval intelligence officer William Guy Carr is informative.
It can be read free online at bibliotecapleyades.net
JD
By Lenin I assume that you mean the Soviet Union which really struggled to get much in the way of foreign credits, which mainly came via German banks. The ruble was a soft currency so they usually exchanged grain for imported goods. The level of loans given to Nazi Germany was on a different scale altogether.
I recommend ‘When the Soviet Union entered World politics’ by Jon Jacobson.
I’ve forgotten who it was that said (a US politician): “The business of the United States, is business.”
From an address President Calvin Coolidge gave to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”
According to the Library of Congress, the speech also included warnings about the evils of propaganda, by which I assume he meant anything coming from communists and union organizers.
Great research. Thanks!
A number of the links in the article are not accessible where I live. I copy paste articles I find interesting to my hard disk before they disappear from the net. But I don’t know how to download videos. Is there any simple way of downloading videos to my hard disk for later reference?
Dancing with the Devil is so fun until it is time to pay the price. These Nazis will soon learn the hard bitter truth that hate only brings destruction upon themselves and others.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!” These are the words of a terrified man who now see’s the consequences of his deluded actions coming home to roost.
I don’t think it’s because they are terrified. It’s a cold calculation of how to win a war by terror on the Islamist model. Since can hardly use Islam as driving force to motive their fighters, they have to fabricate their own crude fascist ideology. Their holy war is identical to the Islamists jihad.
The “C” in C14 sounds like it comes from Combat, as in Combat 18 (known in graffiti as “C18” and also “318”), the British neo-Nazi guerilla group of the early 1990s which may or may not still exist. Larry O’Hara thought it had been a “legitimate” neo-Nazi group taken over by state actors in his booklet “Searchlight for Beginners” (1996) (hxxp://www.searchlight.org.uk/o-hara/index.html). The long lineage of expatriate Ukrainian far-Right groups (for example, Yarsoslav Stetsko’s Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations which became the World Anti-Communist League, a complicated story in itself) after WWII has come back into the country and taken the form of Pravii Sektor, Aidar, Azov, etc. And now with the Russian “Wagner Group” inside Ukraine, it’s a war with neo-Nazis fighting each other.
It’s S14, in fact. S is written C in Ukrainian & Russian.
You fellers (once again) RAWKED it!
So glad to know that you are among the stalwarts demanding the truth. Your generation is well-represented and it is for you to carry forward the torch just as you have been doing. And thanks to CN for acknowledging this and reprinting it for a hopefully ever-larger audience.
Good job!
Well as we always knew they’re not friendly and hopefully Russia will solve this problem that Amerika, Britain, and the EU have cast upon Europe. Great job Amerika in your support of Nazi of the ukraine. Amerikas neo-conn are destroying Amerika.
Thanks to those that wrote this and to CN for posting it.
Thanks. When Putin says he’s fighting to de-Nazify the Ukraine, the MSM has made it sound as if it is just trying to scare people. I’ve been sending comments to individuals and MSM media news for several months that they have never been told about the Azov Battalion or the Svobodas (who have entered the political machinery of the country.) I think the hysteria that our propaganda machine stirred up if these openly Nazi groups are unveiled. Here’s an old one: hxxps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Please keep it up.
I have read this article several times to get my head around the story. If this is true, i can’t understand why there is not more written or spoken about this in western media. If these people who purport to be Far-Right or Neo-Nazis are in fact Nationalists, this happens in many countries, which i am not saying is acceptable. If their goal is to eradicate other cultures – particularly Russian – and make Ukraine unique to Russia, they shall never achieve this since both countries have deep historical slavic traditions which they share for hundreds of years.
The fact that Western media focus on Putin saying his goal is to De-Nazify Ukraine, just makes the Western reader believe that the current Ukrainian government ARE NAZIS. When, reading this story, it looks more to me that the current government are utilising Far Right organisations to drive the Russian culture out of Ukraine with their independent militias.
As the world gets smaller with more countries accepting different cultures, we see right wing facist leaning organisations springing up all around the world believing their “white and endogenous” culture to be the purist. This is hard enough for well established countries to control, however, in the case of Ukraine, where it is trying to develop its own non-Russian identity since the “revolution” in 2014, extremists shall take advantage of any void in this developing culture. Thats what we seem to be seeing here. This was exactly what happened post WW1 in Germany.
The mainstream western media counter Putins allegations of Ukraine run by Nazis simply by highlighting the presidents Jewish heritage. There appears to be very little presented within the same media of these rightwing organisations contained within your article. I categorically do not agree with Russia invading Ukraine, but i see Putins frustration with Ukraine being a rightwing country, joining NATO and the EU right on his doorstep AND ethnic Russians being persecuted in the East of Ukraine.
These neo-nazi groups are small in number but wield tremendous political power in Ukraine through intimidation. They revered the WWII-era Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera and others, responsible for killing thousands of Jews and Poles. They have built monuments to him and there are torchlit parades carrying his portray in today’s post US-backed 2014 coup. Nazi groups like Right Sektor took part as the vanguard of the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected president, and then took part in the war against ethnic Russians in Donbass who resisted the coup. This is not just some skinhead problem that most countries have.
My fear is that insufficient numbers will see this truth until much too late. It’s certainly true that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but it does, at times, appear to be true that you can fool most of the people all of the time, especially when they are hearing what they want to hear. The more people’s individual lives seem meaningless, the more they want to identity with a cause. Patriotism allows one to overlook his/her shortcomings to self identify with the sanctity of a powerful nation, which, in their minds, can do no wrong.
Stepan Bandera was the political leader of the neo-nazi movement, but it was Roman Shukhevych who headed the military wing of the movement, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – UPA. The fact that this organization not only still exists but has celebrations in Kiev every 2 January – Bandera’s birthday.
Of course no mention is made of the massacres, particularly of Poles in Volhynia the western Ukraine in 1943 carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, (UPA), with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945.The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children. Many of the Polish victims regardless of age or gender were tortured before being killed; some of the methods included rape, dismemberment or immolation, among others. The UPA’s actions resulted in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.
Whisper it softly but these rejuvenated animals are allies of the west! I also think the present Polish government are a little embarrassed about bringing up the subject.
Assuming that the 2019 election that brought Zelensky to that position was a (mostly) free and fair election, then he won on promises of reconciliation with Russia and other non-fanatical and sensible positions that were supported by the majority of the Ukrainian electorate. The obvious subterfuge here – as Ukraine lost their sovereignty to the US in ’14 – is to say and campaign on what the majority will support and, once elected do the bidding of your masters which is contrary to those campaign promises.
That is speculation. From my very distant observation point, and supported by the recounting here of his effort in Zolote, Zelensky was in fact quite naive and quite out of his depth, and whether he knew it or not was a de facto puppet and absolutely dispensable and disposable. Considering how the Nazi fanatics regarded him, he is probably only alive today by the orders and protection of the US puppet-masters. Whether or not it was formulated earlier on, his Jewishness has been useful in the western propaganda campaign to deflect the truth of the Nazi influence on the Ukraine government and military.
This comment seems reasoned, coherent and unbiased. None of us are perfect and sometimes have to make questionable decisions to accomplish a just objective.