{"id":59615,"date":"2015-06-15T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=59615"},"modified":"2015-06-15T05:15:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T04:15:43","slug":"u-s-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/06\/u-s-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. House of Representatives has admitted an ugly truth that the\u00a0U.S. mainstream\u00a0media has\u00a0tried to hide from the American people \u2013 that the post-coup regime in Ukraine has relied heavily on Nazi storm troopers to carry out its bloody war against ethnic Russians.<\/em><\/p>\n

June 12, 2015 – <\/em>Last February, when ethnic Russian rebels were closing in on the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, the New York Times rhapsodically described the heroes defending the city and indeed Western civilization \u2013 the courageous Azov battalion\u00a0facing down\u00a0barbarians at the gate. What the Times didn\u2019t tell its readers was that these\u00a0\u201cheroes\u201d were Nazis, some of them even wearing Swastikas and SS symbols.<\/p>\n

The long Times article<\/a> by Rick Lyman fit with the sorry performance of America\u2019s \u201cpaper of record\u201d as it has descended into outright propaganda \u2013 hiding the dark side of the post-coup regime in Kiev. But what makes Lyman\u2019s sadly typical story noteworthy today is that the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has just voted unanimously to bar U.S. assistance going to the Azov battalion because of its Nazi ties.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.<\/p><\/div>\n

When even the hawkish House of Representatives can\u2019t stomach these Nazi storm troopers who have served as Kiev\u2019s tip of the spear against the ethnic Russian population of eastern Ukraine, what does that say about the honesty and integrity of the New York Times when\u00a0it finds these same Nazis so admirable?<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t like the Times didn\u2019t have space to mention the Nazi taint. The article provided much color and detail \u2013 quoting an Azov leader prominently \u2013 but just couldn\u2019t find room to mention the inconvenient truth about how these Nazis had played a key role\u00a0in the ongoing civil war on the U.S. side. The Times simply referred to Azov as a \u201cvolunteer unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet,\u00a0on June 10, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bipartisan amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act \u2013 from Reps. John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan, and Ted Yoho, R-Florida \u2013 that would block U.S. training of the Azov battalion and would prevent transfer of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to fighters in Iraq and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions,\u201d said Conyers on Thursday.<\/p>\n

He described Ukraine\u2019s Azov Battalion as a 1,000-man volunteer militia of the Ukrainian National Guard that Foreign Policy Magazine has characterized as<\/a> \u201copenly neo-Nazi\u201d and \u201cfascist.\u201d\u00a0And Azov is not some obscure force. Ukraine\u2019s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who oversees Ukraine\u2019s armed militias, announced<\/a> that Azov troops would be among the first units to be trained by the 300 U.S. military advisers who have been dispatched to Ukraine in a training mission codenamed \u201cFearless Guardian.\u201d<\/p>\n

White Supremacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Friday,\u00a0a Bloomberg News article<\/a> by Leonid Bershidsky noted that \u201cit\u2019s easy to see why\u201d Conyers \u201cwould have a problem with the military\u00a0unit commanded by Ukrainian legislator Andriy Biletsky: Conyers is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biletsky is a white supremacist. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBiletsky had run Patriot of Ukraine [the precursor of the Azov battalion] since 2005. In a 2010\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0he described the organization as nationalist \u2018storm troops\u2019 \u2026 The group\u2019s ideology was \u2018social nationalism\u2019 \u2014 a term Biletsky, a historian, knew would deceive no one.\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2007, Biletsky\u00a0railed<\/a>\u00a0against a government decision to introduce fines for racist remarks: \u2018So why the \u201cNegro-love\u201d on a legislative level? They want to break everyone who has risen to defend themselves, their family, their right to be masters of their own land! They want to destroy the Nation\u2019s biological resistance to everything alien and do to us what happened to Old Europe, where the immigrant hordes are a nightmare for the French, Germans and Belgians, where cities are \u201cblackening\u201d fast and crime and the drug trade are invading even the remotest corners.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bloomberg article continued, \u201cBiletsky landed in prison in 2011, after his organization took part in a series of shootouts and fights. Following Ukraine\u2019s so-called revolution of dignity last year, he was freed as a political prisoner; right-wing organizations, with their paramilitary training, played an important part in the violent phase of the uprising against former President Viktor Yanukovych. The new authorities \u2014 which included the ultra-nationalist party Svoboda \u2014 wanted to show their gratitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war in the east gave Biletsky\u2019s\u00a0storm troopers a chance at a higher status than they could ever have hoped to achieve. They fought fiercely, and last fall, the 400-strong Azov Battalion became part of the National Guard, receiving permission to expand to 2,000 fighters and gaining access to heavy weaponry. So what if some\u00a0of its members had\u00a0Nazi symbols<\/a>\u00a0tattooed on their bodies and the unit\u2019s\u00a0banner<\/a>\u00a0bore the\u00a0Wolfsangel<\/a>, used widely by the Nazis during World War II?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an interview with Ukraine\u2019s Focus magazine last\u00a0September, Avakov, responsible for the National Guard, was protective of his heroes. He said of the Wolfsangel: \u2018In many European cities it is part of the city emblem. Yes, most of the guys who assembled in Azov have a particular worldview. But who told you you could judge them? Don\u2019t forget what the Azov Battalion did for the country. Remember the liberation of Mariupol, the fighting at Ilovaysk, the latest attacks near the Sea of Azov. May God allow anyone who criticizes them to do 10 percent of what they\u2019ve done. And anyone who\u2019s \u00a0going to tell me that these guys preach Nazi views, wear the swastika and so on, are bare-faced liars and fools.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the House vote on June 10 may have shined a spotlight into this dark corner\u00a0of the U.S.-embraced Kiev regime, the reality has been well-known for many months \u2013 though played down in most of the Western news media, often dismissed as\u00a0\u201cRussian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the Times\u00a0has included at least one brief reference to this reality, though buried deep inside an article. On Aug. 10, 2014, a Times\u2019\u00a0article<\/a> mentioned the Nazi taint of the Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat,\u201d the Times reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.\u201d [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cNYT Discovers Ukraine\u2019s Neo-Nazis at War.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

A Shiver Down the Spine<\/strong><\/p>\n

The conservative London Telegraph offered more details about the Azov battalion in an article<\/a> by\u00a0correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: \u201cKiev\u2019s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk \u2018people\u2019s republics\u2019\u2026 should send a shiver down Europe\u2019s spine.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf\u2019s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Biletsky, the Azov commander, \u201cis also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,\u201d according to the Telegraph article which quoted a\u00a0commentary by Biletsky as declaring: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population \u2013 and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned\u00a0Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware\u00a0of the extremist ideologies of some\u00a0militias but insisted that\u00a0the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cIgnoring Ukraine\u2019s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

But a rebel counteroffensive led by ethnic Russians last August reversed many of Kiev\u2019s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy\u2019s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered the\u00a0Nazis. He wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol\u2019s 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\u00a0wolfsangel<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(\u2018wolf trap\u2019) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cPro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and \u2018fascists\u2019 in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.\u201d<\/p>\n

SS Helmets<\/strong><\/p>\n

More evidence continued to emerge about the presence of Nazis in the ranks of Ukrainian government fighters. Germans were shocked to see video of Azov militia soldiers decorating their gear with the Swastika and the \u201cSS rune.\u201d NBC News reported<\/a>: \u201cGermans were confronted with images of their country\u2019s dark past \u2026 when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.<\/p>\n

\"Nazi<\/a>

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine\u2019s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe video was shot \u2026 in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2. \u2018We were filming a report about Ukraine\u2019s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,\u2019 Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television station, told NBC News. \u201cMinutes before the images were taped, Bogen said he had asked a spokesperson whether the battalion had fascist tendencies. \u2018The reply was: absolutely not, we are just Ukrainian nationalists,\u2019 Bogen said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the newsworthiness of a U.S.-backed government dispatching Nazi storm troopers to attack\u00a0Ukrainian cities, the major U.S. news outlets have gone to extraordinary lengths to excuse this behavior, with the Washington Post\u00a0publishing a rationalization\u00a0that Azov\u2019s use of the\u00a0Swastika\u00a0was merely \u201cromantic.\u201d<\/p>\n

This curious description of the symbol most associated with the depravity of the Holocaust and the devastation of World War II can be found in the last three paragraphs of a Post lead story<\/a> published in September 2014. Post correspondent Anthony Faiola portrayed\u00a0the Azov fighters as \u201cbattle-scarred patriots\u201d nobly resisting \u201cRussian aggression\u201d and willing to resort to \u201cguerrilla war\u201d if necessary.<\/p>\n

The article found nothing objectionable about\u00a0Azov\u2019s\u00a0plans for \u201csabotage, targeted assassinations and other insurgent tactics\u201d against Russians, although such actions in other contexts are regarded as terrorism. The extremists even extended their threats to the government of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko if he agrees to a peace deal\u00a0with the ethnic Russian east that is not to the militia\u2019s liking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Kiev reaches a deal with rebels that they don\u2019t support, paramilitary fighters say they could potentially strike pro-Russian targets on their own \u2014 or even turn on the government itself,\u201d the article stated.<\/p>\n

The Post article \u2013 like almost all of its coverage of Ukraine \u2013 was laudatory about the Kiev forces fighting ethnic Russians in the east, but the newspaper did have to do some quick thinking to explain a photograph of a Swastika gracing an Azov brigade barracks. So, in the last three paragraphs of the story, Faiola reported: \u201cOne platoon leader, who called himself Kirt, conceded that the group\u2019s far right views had attracted about two dozen foreign fighters from around Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But Kirt \u2026 dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers \u2014 many of them still teenagers \u2014 embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of \u2018romantic\u2019 idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite these well-documented facts,\u00a0the New York Times excised this reality from its article about the Azov battalion\u2019s defense of Mariupol last\u00a0February. But isn\u2019t the role of Nazis newsworthy? In other contexts, the Times is quick to note and condemn any sign of a Nazi resurgence in Europe. However, in Ukraine, where neo-Nazis, such as Andriy Parubiy served as the coup regime\u2019s first national security chief and Nazi militias are at the center of regime\u2019s military operations, the Times goes silent on the subject.<\/p>\n

Rather than fully inform its readers about a crisis that has the potential of becoming a nuclear showdown between the United States and Russia, the Times has chosen to simply be a fount of State Department\u00a0propaganda, often\u00a0terming any reference to Kiev\u2019s\u00a0Nazi storm troopers to be\u00a0\u201cRussian propaganda.\u201d Now, however, a unanimous U.S. House of Representatives \u2014 of all things \u2014 has acknowledged the unpleasant truth.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for <\/em>The Associated Press and <\/em>Newsweek in the 1980s.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. House of Representatives has admitted an ugly truth that the U.S. mainstream media has tried to hide from the American people \u2013 that the post-coup regime in Ukraine has relied heavily on Nazi storm troopers to carry out its bloody war against ethnic Russians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}