The Ukraine Connection

Parts 4 and 5 - the Ukrainian Far Right Post-Cold War and Maidan

The Ukrainian Far Right Post-Cold War

In June 1990, Iurii Shukhevych, the son of the former UPA commander Roman Shukhevych, set up the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People's Self-Defence (UNA-UNSO). After Yaroslav Stetsko died in 1986, his widow, Slava, founded the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1992. These were fringe organisations: the UNA-UNSO, for instance, received only 0.39% of the vote in the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election and 0.08% in 2012. 

Yet, the Ukrainian far right received a major boost once the West set its sights on integrating Ukraine ca. 2005, the year in which, following the US-engineered “Orange Revolution” (Traynor, 2004; Mackinnon, 2007, p. 154), Viktor Yuschenko became president with the ambition to orient his country away from Russia and toward the EU, NATO, and IMF reforms. With its anti-Russian stance, Yuschenko’s presidency (2005-2010) saw repeated attempts to revise history by turning leading OUN and UPA figures into national heroes and expunging their record of Nazi collaboration, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder (Rudling, 2011, p.1). In this revised version of history, Rudling explains, the OUN and UPA “not only rescued Jews during the Holocaust, but invited them into their ranks to fight shoulder to shoulder against Hitler and Stalin.” Such gargantuan lies built on those of the ABN during the Cold War (amplified by Anglo-American intelligence), which erased all Nazi connections and replaced them with tales of great sacrifice made in the struggle for freedom (Anderson & Anderson, 1986, pp. 12, 36).

In 2007, Yuschenko posthumously awarded Roman Shukhevych the title Hero of Ukraine – the highest state honour – in recognition of his “special contributions to the national liberation struggle for the freedom and independence of Ukraine” (cited in Rudling, 2016, p. 27). Shukhevych was involved in the massacre of thousands of Jews and Poles during and after the war. Yuschenko also officially honoured the memory of Jaroslav and Slava Stetsko, who led the OUN-B between 1968-1986 and 1991-2003, respectively: streets and buildings were renamed after them, they were glorified in the media, and a museum was founded in their honour (Rudling, 2016, p. 28). At the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, a mausoleum was erected, dedicated to the “freedom fighters” of 1918/19 and 1941-1945, including the Nightingale battalion and SS Galizien (Bechtel, 2013, p. 7). In 2010, Yuschenko elevated Stepan Bandera to “Hero of Ukraine” status, and Bandera’s grandson praised him as the “symbol of the Ukrainian nation” as he toured Ukraine unveiling monuments to him (Lazare, 2015). Dozens of monuments to Bandera and Shukhevych have appeared across (mostly western) Ukraine, and many streets (including major boulevards) have been renamed after them (Golinkin, 2021). One such boulevard leads to Babi Yar, site of one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust, drawing condemnation from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the World Jewish Congress. Numerous other war criminals are commemorated on plaques, without reference to their crimes or their collaboration with the Nazis (Golinkin, 2021). 

Mearsheimer (2014, p. 3) notes that Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 “should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO.” NATO’s eastward expansion continued, however, with Albania and Croatia joining in 2009.

The National Endowment for Democracy stepped up its efforts at “civil society promotion” in Ukraine (i.e. integration with the West) following the election of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2010. However, Yanukovych refused to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement in November 2013, which would have required implementing IMF demands to lower wages, reduce social budgets, and increase gas bills by 40%; instead, he entered into a $15 billion trade deal with Russia.

Maidan

Yanukovych’s decision to side with Russia over the West in November 2013 triggered the so-called Maidan protests (named after the Independence Square in the capital city), in which US Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland participated. McCain, whose ties to the ABN dated back as far as the 1980s, appeared in public alongside Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far right party Svoboda (Whelan, 2013). The same month (December 2013), far right groups coalescing under the new banner of Right Sector, which had “significant but minority representation among the Maidan leadership and protesters” (Katchanovski, 2020), clashed with riot police, as the protests turned violent. Images of Bandera became increasingly prominent, and the old UPA war cry of “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes” rang out once more (Lazare, 2015).

On February 4, 2014, a recording of a conversation nine days earlier between Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked (Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call, 2014). In it, Nuland and Pyatt discuss which of the “big three” opposition leaders should enter government, with Arseniy Yatsenyuk being the preferred candidate. Yatsenyuk duly became Prime Minister on February 27, 2014. Apparently dissatisfied with EU support for regime change, Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, exclaimed “fuck the EU,” and recommended that Yatsenyuk maintain close ties with his rival Tyahnybok, indicating a willingness on the part of the US to work with Ukrainian fascists. 

Canada, too, appears to have been covertly involved in undermining the Yanukovich government. For example, when riot police moved in on anti-government protesters on February 18, 2014, the protestors were able to take refuge, for several days, in the Canadian embassy, which had otherwise shut its doors during the tumult. The Canadian government and media tried to close down the story, creating the impression that Canada was an “active participant in regime change” (Brewster, 2015).

On February 20, 2014, snipers opened fire on a crowd of protestors in Independence Square, killing 67 and injuring hundreds more. Maidan forces blamed Yanukovych/Russia, while President Putin claimed that the snipers could have been opposition provocateurs (MacAskill, 2014). Two days later, Yanukovich was impeached, whereupon he described what had taken place as a coup and compared it to the rise of the Nazis to power (“Ukraine President Yanukovich impeached,” 2014). Although we may never know for sure, the assassination of innocent civilians to achieve a political objective bears the hallmarks of a false flag attack on the deep state model, as does the use of neo-fascist/neo-Nazi elements to carry out the attack (Hughes, 2024, pp. 94-95). 

On the day of Yanukovich’s impeachment, newly appointed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, given carte blanche to reform Ukraine’s police, vowed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs would include a representative of Right Sector. On February 24, 2014, various political prisoners were freed, including Andriy Biletsky, who had revived the far right Patriot of Ukraine in 2005 and founded the affiliated Social-National Party in 2008, both of which, along with other far right groups, had merged into Right Sector on November 28, 2013. Avakov began transferring police bases and equipment to Right Sector forces (Reif, 2022). On March 12, 2014, with Russia having captured strategic sites across Crimea and days before the  declaration of Crimea's independence, Biletsky became a leader in special operations for “Right Sector – East,” focused on the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, and Poltava oblasts. 

On May 5, 2014, Biletsky, notorious for his pledge to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade [...] against Semite-led Untermenschen” (Golinkin, 2019), became the founder and first commander of the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary unit notorious for its neo-Nazi tendencies. May 5 was also the day when so-called “self-defence” forces cornered anti-fascist activists inside the Odessa Unions Building and pelted it with Molotov cocktails, burning many of those inside, before butchering the survivors with hammers, axes, and (in the case of a pregnant woman) the so-called “Banderite garotte” (Reif, 2022). 48 people were killed; no one was prosecuted.

Pro-Maidan Propaganda

Pro-Maidan commentators sought to downplay the fascistic/neo-Nazi aspects of the coup. 41 academics, mostly Ukrainian, signed a petition on February 3, 2014, rejecting claims that the “pro-European movement” had been infiltrated by “radically ethnocentrist groups” (the terms “Nazi” and “neo-Nazi” do not appear in the petition, thus erasing links to the Nazi past) (“Kyiv’s EuroMaidan,” 2014). Protestor violence, according to the signatories, was a response to “police ferocity and the radicalization of Yanukovych’s regime,” implying that the democratically elected government was to blame, as opposed to far right, anti-Russian agitators. Left-wing commentators, the petition warns, should be careful to avoid “sensationalist” and “alarmist” claims about “radical Ukrainian ethnonationalism,” lest they play into Kremlin propaganda, thus the petition reveals its own authoritarian hue.  

In March 2014, Western propagandists came out in force. On March 1, 2014, Yale’s Timothy Snyder (2014) wrote: “Russian leaders and the Russian press have insisted that Ukrainian protesters were right-wing extremists and then that their victory was a coup.” The tactic here, which has since worn threadbare, is to portray any critical analysis of Western foreign policy as (pro-)Russian propaganda. The Guardian’s Luke Harding (2014), suspected of being an “MI6 tool” (Murray, 2018), wrote on March 13, 2014, that Svoboda “appears to have mellowed” and was “eschewing xenophobia.” Harding uncritically cites US Ambassador Pyatt’s claim that Svoboda members “have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,” as well as an anonymous diplomat: “If any country in Europe is close to a classical fascist state it’s Russia. You behave like a fascist and blame the other side for fascism.” The irony is palpable. Politico on March 31, 2014, referred to “Putin’s imaginary Nazis,” as though allegations of Nazism in Ukraine were purely the product of Russian propaganda (Kirchick, 2014). 

Anne Applebaum (2014) wrote in New Republic on May 13, 2014, that Ukrainians “need more occasions when they can shout, ‘Slava Ukraini – Heroyam Slava’ – ‘Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes,’ which was, yes, the slogan of the controversial Ukrainian Revolutionary Army [sic.] in the 1940s, but has been adopted to a new context,” i.e. a democracy-enabling variant of nationalism. Alexander Motyl (2015), writing for the Atlantic Council, alleges that a Russian-speaking mother of a young Ukrainian killed in the conflict cried “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!) in front of an audience that responded “Heroyam slava!” (Glory to the heroes). Thus, under the banner of Ukrainian nationalism, Western commentators were keen to give the Ukrainian far right and its Nazi collaborationist heritage an unlikely democratic respray.

References

Anderson, S., & Anderson, J.L. (1986). Inside the League. Dodd, Mead, & Company. 

Applebaum, A. (2014, May 13). Nationalism is exactly what Ukraine needs. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/117505/ukraines-only-hope-nationalism. 

Bechtel, D. (2013). The 1941 pogroms as represented in western Ukrainian historiography and memorial culture. In: The Holocaust in Ukraine. New sources and perspectives. Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies. 

Brewster, M. (2015, July 12). Canadian embassy used as safe haven during Ukraine uprising, investigation finds. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-embassy-used-as-safe-haven-during-ukraine-uprising-investigation-finds-1.3148719. 

Golinkin, L. (2019, February 22). Neo-Nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/. 

Golinkin, L. (2021, January 27). Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine. Forward. https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine/. 

Harding, L. (2014, March 13). Kiev’s protesters: Ukraine uprising was no neo-Nazi power-grab. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/ukraine-uprising-fascist-coup-grassroots-movement. 

Hughes, D.A. (2024). Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State. Skyhorse.

Katchanovski, I. (2020). The far right, the Euromaidan, and the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. Journal of Labor and Society, 23(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12457.

Kirchick, J. (2014, March 31). Putin’s imaginary Nazis. Politico Magazine. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/putins-imaginary-nazis-105217/. 

Kyiv’s EuroMaidan is a liberationist and not extremist mass action of civic disobedience. [Petition] (2014, February 3). Change.org. https://www.change.org/p/to-journalists-commentators-and-analysts-writing-on-the-ukrainian-protest-movement-euromaidan-kyiv-s-euromaidan-is-a-liberationist-and-not-extremist-mass-action-of-civic-disobedience. 

Lazare, D. (2015, September 24). Who was Stepan Bandera? Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2015/09/stepan-bandera-nationalist-euromaidan-right-sector/. 

MacAskill, E. (2014, March 5). Ukraine crisis: bugged call reveals conspiracy theory about Kiev snipers. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/ukraine-bugged-call-catherine-ashton-urmas-paet.

Mackinnon, M. (2007). Revolutions, Rigged Elections, and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union. Basic Books. 

Mearsheimer, J. (2014, September/October). Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault. Foreign Affairs. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf. 

Motyl, A.J. (2015, July 8). Here’s why more Ukrainians admire nationalists, and why the West shouldn’t freak out. The Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/understanding-contemporary-ukraine/. 

Murray, C. (2018, September 23). Extraordinary and deliberate lies from the Guardian. Craig Murray. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/extraordinary-and-deliberate-lies-from-the-guardian/. 

Reif, E. (2022, July 29). What the U.S. government and the New York Times have quietly agreed not to tell you about Ukraine. Covert Action Magazine. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/29/what-the-u-s-government-and-the-new-york-times-have-quietly-agreed-not-to-tell-you-about-ukraine/. 

Rudling, P.A. (2011). The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A study in the manufacturing of historical myths. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies, 2107. 

Snyder, T. (2014, March 1). Ukraine: The haze of propaganda. The New York Review. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/03/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/.

Traynor, I. (2004, November 26). US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa. 

Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call. (2014, February 7). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957.

Ukraine president Yanukovich impeached. (2014, February 22). AlJazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/2/22/ukraine-president-yanukovich-impeached. 

Whelan, B. (2013, December 16). Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator. 4 News. https://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests.

Image Credit: A march of the Azov Battalian, Svoboda, and other far-right radical groups in Kiev, October 14, 2017. (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)