{"id":226429,"date":"2023-01-02T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=226429"},"modified":"2022-12-31T05:50:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T05:50:59","slug":"on-the-influence-of-neo-nazism-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/01\/on-the-influence-of-neo-nazism-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to <\/em>NewsGuard\u2019s charge that <\/em>Consortium News published false content about its extent.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Torchlight parade behind portrait of Bandera on his birthday, Jan. 1, 2015.
(Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

29 Dec 2022 – <\/em>The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing<\/a> at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.\u00a0 Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study<\/a> by the U.S. National Archives.<\/p>\n

The government study said, \u201cBandera\u2019s wing (OUN\/B) was a militant fascist organization.\u201d Bandera\u2019s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: \u201c\u201cI\u2026fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine\u2026. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study says: \u201cAt a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lw\u00f3w, Bandera loyalists determined that Jews \u2018have to be treated harshly\u2026. We must finish them off\u2026. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lebed himself proposed<\/a> to \u201c\u2019cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,\u2019 so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.\u201d Lebed was the \u201cforeign minister\u201d of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d yet said he was \u201clooked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The C.I.A. was not interested in working with Bandera, pages 81-82 of the report<\/a> say, but the British MI6 was. \u201cMI6 argued, Bandera\u2019s group was \u2018the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization\u2026.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, \u201cthe operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations \u2026 \u201c<\/p>\n

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C.I.A.\u2019s Allen Dulles asks U.S. Immigration to allow Lebed re-entry to U.S. despite murder conviction. (From Hitler\u2019s Shadow. Click to enlarge.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Britain ended its collaboration with Bandera in 1954. West German intelligence, under former Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen, then worked with Bandera, who was eventually assassinated with cyanide dust by the KGB in Munich in 1959.<\/p>\n

Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency\u2019s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.\u00a0 The U.S. government study says:<\/p>\n

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\u201cCIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. \u2026 Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian \u00e9migr\u00e9 groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe. Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA\u2019s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his \u2018cunning character,\u2019 his \u2018relations with the Gestapo and \u2026 Gestapo training,\u2019 [and] the fact that he was \u2018a very ruthless operator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine\u2019s independence in 1991. \u201cMykola Lebed\u2019s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,\u201d the study says. \u201cWhile most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed\u2019s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bandera Revival<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Bandera monument in Lvov. (wikimapia.org)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved. \u201cMykola Lebed, Bandera\u2019s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University,\u201d the U.S. National Archives study says.<\/p>\n

The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him, however. \u00a0It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to IBT.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBy the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,\u201d IBT<\/em> reported.<\/a> \u00a0\u201cFollowing the\u00a0demise of Yanukovich\u2019s regime<\/a>, the UCCA\u00a0helped organise<\/a>\u00a0rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,\u201d it reported.<\/p>\n

That is a direct link between Maidan and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.<\/p>\n

Despite the U.S. favoring the less extreme Lebed over Bandera, the latter has remained the more inspiring figure in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In 1991, the first year of Ukraine\u2019s independence, the neo-fascist Social National Party, later Svoboda Party<\/a>, was formed, tracing its provenance directly to Bandera. It had a street named<\/a> after Bandera in Liviv, and tried to name the city\u2019s airport after him. (Svoboda won 10 percent of the Rada\u2019s seats in 2012 before the coup and before McCain and Nuland appeared with its leader the following year.)<\/p>\n

In 2010, pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared<\/a> Bandera a Hero of Ukraine, a status reversed by Yanukovych, who was overthrown.<\/p>\n

More than 50 monuments, busts and museums commemorating Bandera have been erected<\/a> in Ukraine, two-thirds of which have been built since 2005, the year the pro-American Yuschenko was elected. A Swiss academic study<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

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\u201cOn January 13, 2011, the L\u2019vivs\u2019ka Oblast\u2019 Council, meeting at an extraordinary session next to the Bandera monument in L\u2019viv, reacted to the abrogation [skasuvannya] of Viktor Yushchenko\u2019s order about naming Stepan Bandera a \u2018Hero of Ukraine\u2019 by affirming that \u2018for millions of Ukrainians Bandera was and remains a Ukrainian Hero notwithstanding pitiable and worthless decisions of the courts\u2019 and declaring its intention to rename \u2018Stepan Bandera Street\u2019 as \u2018Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera Street.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Torchlit parades behind Bandera\u2019s portrait are common in Ukrainian cities, particularly on Jan. 1, his birthday, including this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mainstream on Neo-Nazis<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the start of the 2013-2014 events in Ukraine, Consortium News<\/em><\/strong> founder Robert Parry and other writers began providing the evidence NewsGuard says doesn\u2019t exist, reporting extensively on the coup and the influential role of Ukraine\u2019s neo-Nazis. At the time, corporate media also reported on the essential part neo-Nazis played in the coup.<\/p>\n

As The New York Times<\/em> reported,<\/a> the neo-Nazi group, Right Sector, had the key role in the violent ouster of Yanukovych. The role of neo-fascist groups in the uprising and its influence on Ukrainian society was well reported by mainstream media outlets at the time.<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a>, the\u00a0NYT,<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Daily Telegraph<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0CNN<\/a> all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists\u2019 role in the overthrow of Yanukovych. The BBC ran this report a week after his ouster:<\/p>\n