DETROIT, October 27 (RIA Novosti), Russ Bellant — Ukrainians once commemorated October 28 as the anniversary of the final defeat of Nazism in Ukraine in 1944. But on October 15, that observance was eliminated; in August another commemoration had been introduced: of the October 14, 1942 founding of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was widely implicated in the mass murder of Ukrainian Jews and Poles during World War II.
Why did the Ukrainian politicians make such a decision? Most immediately, it was due to meetings and rallies that had been held annually on October 14 that were organized by two political parties, Svoboda and Right Sector. Both openly claim to have origins in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists headed by Stepan Bandera, who worked in varying circumstances with the Nazis after they released him from prison in Poland following their invasion of the country in October, 1939. He had been in prison for assassinating a Polish government minister in 1934.
These rallies commemorating the anniversary of UPA’s founding were intended to deepen the official embrace of those responsible for some of the darkest episodes of Ukrainian history. But while this embrace of the UPA may seem extreme, it does not mean that the Svoboda and Right Sector parties are on the fringe of politics in Kiev. The most disturbing aspect of the cult of Bandera and UPA is that they have spread beyond these fringe groups to gain broad-based appeal, particularly among the country’s ostensibly “pro-European” parties. During Ukraine’s Independence Day celebrations on August 24, 2014 when the country adopted October 14th as a holiday, replacing February 23, which Russia commemorates as Defender of the Fatherland day, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated:
“In the rich and varied history of Ukrainian armies, there are countless battles and dates worthy of being elevated to a Day of the Defender of the Fatherland. I repeat: Ukraine will never again commemorate this holiday by following a historical battles calendar of a neighboring country. We will honor defenders of our Fatherland, not a foreign country’s!”
Many cabinet positions in the Ukraine administration after the coup that replaced the Victor Yanukovych went to Svoboda party leaders, including the Ministry of Defense post as well; a Svoboda party leader also serves as head of the National Security and Defense Council. Even Right Sector head Dymtro Yarosh was offered a position as Deputy Minister of Defense but declined the position. As wiretapped conversations revealed, the American embassy was closely involved in setting up the new regime.
At that point these ministers began planning the utilization of neo-Nazi groups in the National Guard, resulting in the arming of the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary formation of Right Sector. In May, the Right Sector was implicated in the burning and shooting to death as many as 116 people in Odessa, which was largely ignored in Western media. Yet in June, they were given military control over Mariupol.
Recently, Kiev decided to expand Azov to a regiment. On October 9, a ceremony was held outside of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where a heavy-duty vehicle with a pair of machine guns on a roof turret was ceremoniously given to Azov by the National Guard Commander, Stepan Poltorak. Five days later, Poltorak was promoted to Minister of Defense and asked to repeat the Azov-type model for military operations in eastern Ukraine.
The use of neo-Nazis appears to be acceptable to Western embassies, despite the fact that they are capable of terrorizing civilian populations in eastern Ukraine in ways that regular forces may find unacceptable. Few citizens know in the United States that their government recruited Nazis from the eastern front that were responsible for tens of millions of deaths in World War II and used them, especially in Ukraine, for underground operations and open warfare. Groups such as Bandera’s UPA were welcomed when they arrived in Western Europe, despite their collaboration with the Germans between 1939 and 1945, when they murdered 100,000 Poles and helped the Germans kill 1.5 million Jews.
While they claim that they fought the Germans as well as the Soviet Union, in their own history they say that they began by taking five counties controlled by Red partisans and continued to fight them and the Red Army throughout the war. After studying hundreds of interviews of former OUN and UPA members, as well as archive in the Ukraine and the US, Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa concluded that the OUN/UPA "served in various police and militia formations, collaborated with security and intelligence agencies of Nazi Germany and took part in the Nazi genocide…"
Multinational formations that grew out of the UPA evolved into an umbrella group that included SS collaborators from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Baltic countries. They were sponsored through Western intelligence agencies that kept them alive to this day, apparently to be able to wage the war we see today.
Azov continues in their tradition, wearing the symbol of the Second Waffen SS Division Das Reich emblazoned on their armbands and flags. That SS division acted as a Nazi spearhead into Ukraine over 70 years ago, which culminated in the Battle of Kharkov.
As a US Army veteran who was part of an honor guard that represented the US Army on Normandy beach on the 25th anniversary of D-Day and whose parents both helped defeat the Axis powers, I still believe that it is the duty of humanity to see Nazism everywhere put in the dustbin of history, no matter what sinister forces seek to perpetuate it. All people of good will must let Kiev know that their commemoration and restoration of Naziism will bring world condemnation and illegitimacy to their regime. Their western sponsors must be exposed as well.
Russ Bellant (Detroit, USA) – an American writer, author of “Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic fascist networks and their effect on US cold war politics”.
