9. Whitewashing Terrorists into National Heroes (Nazis)

Ukraine Rewriting History: Let's stay with this era a little bit longer to see how the past becomes a base for the future. (A logical sequences from post #8.)

Creating “The Book of Facts” During Yushchenko’s reign, his government repeatedly moved to make national heroes out of the OUN and UPA. They claimed these SS henchmen were wonderful, inclusive organizations that not only saved Jews but fought as their allies against both Hitler and Stalin.[725] They said all claims to the contrary were Soviet Communist and later Russian propaganda. The fact; Jewish members of the OUN during the war were essentially slaves. Only skilled doctors, nurses, dentists and shoemakers were kept in concentration camps while their families were murdered by their captors. When the Soviets returned, they were all killed too.[726] (7,200 words - end notes 3,100 more)

While modern-day apologists for Ukrainian Nazis like to claim the OUN and UPA also fought the Germans, that is almost entirely false. Lebed was under explicit orders from Bandera to get along with the Germans as well as possible, since “the Ukrainian nationalists believe that German and Ukrainian interests in Eastern Europe are identical.” This was because they were “shaped in a sprit similar to the National Socialist ideas,” he wrote.[727] After the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943, Germany organized the Romanian Iron Guard, Hungarian Arrow Cross and OUN into the so-called Committee of Subjugated Nations—which was actually subordinate to the German military—and used them to defend their rear guard as they retreated.[728] The Ukrainian nationalists kept their relationship as servants of the Nazis until almost the bitter end. While there were some limited clashes,[729] their leaders continually forbade engagements against German forces, prioritizing their fight against the Poles, Jews and Soviets. Then, knowing what was coming, they started to rewrite history as soon as the tide turned against the Germans in the war. This included creating a predated “Book of Facts” which falsely portrayed them as refusing orders to participate in anti-Jewish pogroms in 1941.[730] The UPA’s Western allies and expatriates have been playing this game since the beginning of the last Cold War.[731] But even when they started working for the CIA and had reason to limit their anti-Semitism to make themselves more acceptable to the West, the post-war UPA underground could not restrain themselves as they threatened the country’s remaining Ukrainian Jews.[732]

Professor Rudling says the OUN-B censored documents that portrayed their service to the German regime, including Stetsko’s declaration of loyalty to Hitler from 1941. Their service in the SS was omitted from their biographies or “their break with the Nazis predated.” Rudling wrote that by 1946, Roman Shukhevych, who had “actively opposed attacks on German interests” during the war, began portraying the OUN as leaders of an insurgency by “the entire Ukrainian people” against the German Nazis. He added that other popular stories by Ukrainian nationalists about their alleged resistance against the Nazis, “such as Kosyk and Stets’ko’s postwar claims that the commander of the Nazi Stormtroopers (the Sturmabteilung, or SA), Viktor Lutze, was killed by UPA unit in Volhynia in 1943, are entirely fictional.” Many OUN-UPA refugees from the war took up academic posts in the West, telling and whitewashing their own histories as well.[733]

This Ukrainian lobby spent decades trying to revise the history of their collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. They argue that the OUN-UPA were not anti-Semites at all, but welcomed their Jewish friends, and if they did murder them, it was only because all Jews and Poles were Communists.

You say 98.5 percent of Volhynian Jews were eradicated? Sounds like a lot of them got away. How could that be true if we killed them all? And by the way, that Lebed character maybe was a Jewish false-flag leader sent by Zion to slaughter all those people just to make us on the nationalist-right look bad. Check out these great documents we forged. Says here we rescued a bunch of Jewish doctors and gave them great jobs. Stetsko never declared his loyalty to der Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. See: we edited that part out of his speech. Why, our guys never worked for the Nazis for even one day after they refused to accept our declaration of a state just after their forces arrived. And how can we be fascists if we never controlled a state for everything to be within, huh? The real German Nazis thought the OUN were not white enough to be their allies, so definitely gotcha there!

But it is all lies. The West had switched sides in their war, and so the Ukrainian Nazis had to lay the spin on thick to give the CIA and MI6 plausible deniability.[734] In fact, the OUN never once complained about the killings of Jews in their newspapers or pamphlets, nor did they set up any underground organization to assist them, as some Poles had done on the other side of the border.[735] Instead, their standing orders had been to kill every Jew they could find—along with anyone who dared to help hide them.[736]

Springtime Story-line for Hitler

After Viktor Yushchenko came to power in the 2004 Orange Revolution, these narratives invented by the diaspora about the heroism of Hitler’s loyal Ukrainian henchmen were elevated to official status. While Yushchenko himself was not exactly an ideological fascist, he was a member of the board of directors of a private university[737] called the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP)—which the U.S. State Department deemed “one of the most persistent anti-Semitic institutions in Eastern Europe”[738]—and he welcomed the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, direct descendants of the OUN-B, into his Nasha Ukraina (“Our Ukraine”) coalition.[739]

They were trying to form a nation based on collective victimhood and national hero worship. The victim narrative centered around the idea that the Holodomor was essentially a Russian genocide against ethnic Ukrainians, rather than a Communist plot against reason[740] and farmers of all ethnicities from Ukraine to Kazakhstan,[741] a claim the Yushchenko government attempted to make it illegal to deny.[742] Since there were so few heroes available, they decided instead to go with this pile of lies about how Stepan Bandera and his associates in the OUN-UPA were a bunch of great patriots, harmful only to Stalin and Hitler’s armed forces, never innocent people like you may have heard.[743]

Regarding Yushchenko’s mandate to Ukrainian historians to rewrite the 20th century, Rudling wrote that two major components were turning the Holodomor into an ethnic genocide: exaggerated estimates of 10 million people killed, and the rehabilitation of Bandera and the OUN as the founding fathers of the nation. “Ignoring the OUN’s antisemitism, denying its participation in anti-Jewish violence, and overlooking its fascist ideology, [SBU chief and later-Rada member Valentyn] Nalyvaichenko and his agency presented the OUN as democrats, pluralists, even righteous rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.”[744]

Yushchenko himself declared OUN-UPA leaders to be national heroes, denigrated Russian and other languages and supported the east-versus-further-east schism in the Orthodox Church.[745] Textbooks were rewritten to portray the new narrative. Shukhevych and Bandera were featured on postage stamps. Approximately 100 streets were named after Bandera, while at least 17 monuments to him were erected across the east in the Yushchenko years (2005–2010).[746]

“To establish the Galician interpretation of Ukrainian history as the new national standard,” as Professor Nicolai Petro put it,[747] in 2006 they created the Institute of National Memory, and Yushchenko hired an associate of the Social Nationalist Party[748] of the Hitler-saluting Tyahnybok[749] named Ihor Yukhnovs’kyi to run it. Soon thereafter they created the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement, a front for the OUN-B and what Rudling calls “an important link” between a new generation of nationalist activists and the Ukrainian diaspora, such as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the SBU.[750]

One story the modern revisionists keep pushing is that of “The Jewess Stella Krentsbakh,” who was a “nurse and intelligence officer in the UPA.” They claimed that in the spring of 1945, the NKVD captured a Jewish woman by that name and sentenced her to death. But then the heroes of the UPA had rescued her, helped her escape across the Carpathians to the English zone in Austria, and from there she made her way to Israel and became a great diplomat in the Foreign Ministry. Ms. Krentsbakh wrote in her diary: “The reason I am alive today, and have been able to give all the strength of my 38 years to the free Israel, I owe, apparently to God and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” adding for good measure, “I became a member of the heroic UPA on November 7, 1943. In our group I counted 12 Jews, of which eight were physicians.”

The only problem is that the story is an utter and complete hoax. The woman never existed. She was made up by liars to whitewash murderers. Her story was a forgery, completely debunked by the historians Philip Friedman,[751] John-Paul Himka[752] and Per Anders Rudling.[753]

They pulled a similar scam with the story of Leiba-Itsko Iosifovich Dobrovskii, who wrote leaflets for the UPA in 1942 and 1943. He was included in an exhibition at the Institute of National Memory. But his legend was invented by the so-called historian Volodymyr Viatrovych in the W. Bush-Yushchenko years. In fact, the man hid his Jewish identity from the UPA because he was terrified that they would murder him, as revealed by the actual records examined by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In fact, the man himself also debunked their claims that they had fought the German Nazis. They “did not kill a single local German leader in the area” of Volhynia, he told his Soviet interrogators. “Did Viatrovych and his supporters think that no one would ever read Dobrovskii’s arrest file?” Haaretz reporter Jared McBride wondered.[754]

In 2005, in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, the UNA-UNSO—again, direct descendants of the OUN-UPA—for the first time held a rally in Kiev, instead of just the far west, to mark the anniversary of the founding of the UPA, leading to violent clashes with pro-Russian leftist counter-protesters.[755]

Erased

In 2007, scholar Omer Bartov published Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, which documents the obliteration of Jews from the history of Eastern Galicia. He shows how in now-western Ukraine, the right has made a concerted effort to erase the memory of the previous Jewish population and what happened to them. While some of it can be blamed on the Soviet Communists, who for example, paved over a Jewish cemetery in Lviv,[756] or simple poverty and neglect in other cases,[757] he also showed how the Nazis had made a park out of what had been the Drohobych ghetto, featuring a giant statue of Stepan Bandera—that is deliberate.[758] In Kosiv, where half the population had been Jewish before the war, there is nothing to commemorate the Holocaust, but there is a museum to the legacy of the UPA in the former home of the local rabbi.[759]

The EU Parliament had formally complained when Yushchenko decorated Bandera with the “Hero of Ukraine” award in February 2010.[760] Similar awards were also posthumously given to OUN-UPA members Shukhevych, Stetsko, Olena Teliha and Oleh Olzhych.[761] Polish President Lech Kaczyński denounced the move,[762] while protesters marched on the Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw.[763]

Yale’s Timothy Snyder thought this was why Yushchenko was defeated in the first round of voting in the 2010 presidential election, “perhaps in some measure because far more Ukrainians identify with the Red Army than with nationalist partisans from western Ukraine.” He wrote that “by conferring the highest state honor of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ upon Stepan Bandera . . . Yushchenko provoked protests from the chief rabbi of Ukraine, the president of Poland, and many of his own citizens.” He added, “It is no wonder. Bandera aimed to make of Ukraine a one-party fascist dictatorship without national minorities. During World War II, his followers killed many Poles and Jews.” Snyder could not understand it, wondering, “Why would President Yushchenko, the leader of the democratic Orange Revolution, wish to rehabilitate such a figure?”[764]

Reversed

When Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010, he had the courts declare the designation of Bandera and Shukhevych as national heroes to be illegal and repealed it. He fired the Social Nationalists from the SBU Archives and Institute of National Memory, put a Communist in charge of it, then closed it down.[765]

The nationalists were down but not out. According to journalist Palash Ghosh, “European and Israeli leaders expressed shock in October 2012, when Svoboda, (The Social National Party (SPNU)), gained more than 10 percent of the electorate in parliamentary elections, entering the legislature for the first time. (In some western regions of Ukraine, Svoboda gained as much as 40 percent of the vote.)”[766]

Revenge of the Right

But after the 2014 coup, President Petro Poroshenko decreed October 14, the anniversary of the founding of the UPA, to be “Defender of Ukraine Day.”[767] Journalist Max Blumenthal wrote that “when the European Parliament condemned Yushchenko’s proclamation as an affront to ‘European values,’ the UCCA-affiliated Ukrainian World Congress reacted with outrage, accusing the EU of ‘another attempt to rewrite Ukrainian history during WWII.’” On its website, the UCCA dismissed historical accounts of Bandera’s collaboration with the Germans as “Soviet propaganda.”[768]

The next year, the new Rada, led by the Nazis, passed supposed “de-communization laws” that prohibited criticism of fascists in Ukrainian history.[769] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a statement saying they were “deeply concerned” about how this law would be used to rehabilitate the OUN and UPA.[770]

Svoboda Party members were given jobs running the Institute of National Remembrance and Archive of National Memory to force the change in the nation’s official history through control of education and regulation of major media.[771] The Lviv Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement (TsDVR)—which had been founded by the OUN-UPA and specialized in publishing books whitewashing their history of atrocities and cooperation with the Nazis during World War II[772]—received millions of euros from EU governments and hundreds of thousands of dollars from USAID.[773] Volodymyr Viatrovych, who got his start at the TsDVR, and was happy to defend the legacy of not just the OUN-UPA, but also the Galician SS,[774] had previously been appointed by Yushchenko to head the Security Service of Ukraine’s archives. Poroshenko named him to run the Institute of National Remembrance. The government then transferred millions of historical documents to his group so that he could destory them or whitewash the history of the OUN-UPA.[775]

As Lev Golinkin documented in the Forward, after 2014, the new government made glorification of the OUN-UPA a national phenomenon. They began putting up shrines to “Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators at an astounding pace—there’s been a new plaque or street renaming nearly every week.” There were by then “several hundred monuments, statues and streets named after Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.”[776] Rossoliński-Liebe documented the same, noting dozens of statues and hundreds of street name changes, and that the effort was led by the “social nationalist” Svoboda.[777] Andriy Parubiy hosted the unveiling of a massive Bandera monument in Lviv in 2007.[778]

In April 2015, Poroshenko signed a law recognizing the OUN and UPA as “resistance fighters.” Forty historians signed a letter asking him not to. The UPA “took part in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine and, in the case of the Melnyk faction, remained allied with the occupation regime throughout the war,” they wrote.[779]

The coup government soon banned any media that cast relations between the two countries in a positive light, including Russian movies,[780] Russian language newspapers[781] and Russian songs on the radio.[782]

In 2018, while Ukraine was undergoing an “unprecedented new surge of anti-Semitism,” according to the World Jewish Congress,[783] the government in Kiev passed a law rehabilitating members of the OUN and UPA, giving them the status and social welfare guarantees of war veterans,[784] and made Bandera’s birthday a national holiday.[785] The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff criticized the move: “Glorifying the person whose men committed countless heinous crimes is an insult to the victims and an unthinkable distortion of the history of the world’s most horrific genocide.” He continued, “Unfortunately in recent years, Ukraine has been one of the major propagators of a distorted version of Holocaust history which seeks to hide or minimize crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists.” His colleague Mark Weitzman added, “It is clear that Ukraine is choosing to rehabilitate antisemitism and to censor history.” He cited the fact that the Ukrainian region of Lviv had declared 2019 would be “Stepan Bandera Year,” and that a book criticizing politician Symon Petliura, who led pogroms against Ukrainian Jews in 1919, was banned.[786]

Jochen Hellbeck wrote in The New Republic that “Ukraine makes amnesia the law of the land.” He added, “One of the laws condemns ‘the Communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and bans propaganda of their symbols.’ For the most part, however, the law focuses on the Soviet era.” When it came to the Germans and the Holocaust, “All that it has to say about Nazism is that its racial theories drove certain groups out of their professions. It makes no mention of the mass murder of Jews, let alone the participation of Ukrainians in these atrocities.” This was no accident, Hellbeck wrote, recounting the role of the UPA in the Holocaust. “The new law glorifying the UPA was drafted by Yuri Shukhevych, Roman Shukhevych’s son.”[787]

Since it was founded in 2006, The Institute of National Memory (INP) has promoted pro-Nazi revisionism. As Petro wrote, its first director, Ihor Yukhnovskyi, “publicly supported the neo-Nazi, Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine, and argued that all government policies should be ‘based on the Ukrainian idea.’” They pushed the lie that OUN-UPA was a friend of Jews while building monuments to Bandera’s men at their memorial sites.[788] Again, it is true that in a few isolated instances the OUN-UPA also fought the Nazis when they were not collaborating with them. However, Bandera and his followers subjected all sorts of different ethnic and political enemies, including Jews, to ethnic cleansing, mass violence, crimes against humanity and intentional genocide. Welcome them, they did not.[789]

INP leader Volodymyr Viatrovych was actually fired in 2019 for his efforts to rehabilitate Bandera and his followers.[790] But he was replaced by the philosopher Anton Drobovych, who in practice was no better. As Drobovych told the story, “We now know that there were people in these organizations who opposed both the Nazis and the communists, and also cooperated with, for example, the partisans against the Nazis or with locals against the Red Army.”[791] This was essentially a lie, since he omitted Ukrainian nationalists’ direct collaboration with the Nazis to kill Jews, Poles and other Ukrainians, and implied they were instead some neutral third force, stuck in the middle and innocent of the others’ crimes.

In 2017, Vasily Vovk, a general with the Security Service of Ukraine—their central intelligence agency—wrote that Jews “aren’t Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with [Jewish-Ukrainian oligarch and MP Vadim] Rabinovych.” He continued, “I’m telling you one more time—go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it to-here with you. Ukraine must be governed by Ukrainians.”[792]

That same year, Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, wrote about his concerns in the New York Times. He recounted the true legacy of the OUN’s atrocities during the war and its avowed hatred of Jews and worried about Kiev’s campaign to “whitewash” this history and glorify the guilty. He noted the 2015 law that threatened jail for anyone disrespecting these supposed heroes, the renaming of streets after OUN-UPA leaders, a proposed law to retroactively exonerate members convicted of war crimes by the USSR and unchecked vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials. “This is not just a fight over history. Virulent right-wing nationalist groups have found new prominence in Ukrainian politics in recent years,” he wrote, noting that politicians were already afraid of provoking them by saying a word against Bandera or the OUN-UPA. He also said that during a January 1, 2017, torch-lit march in honor of Bandera, the marchers chanted “Jews out.” Rada member Nadia Savchenko had recently said on Ukrainian TV, “I have nothing against Jews. I just do not like ‘kikes.’ Jews possess 80 percent of the power when they only account for 2 percent of the population.”[793]

It is a wonder how the Times has never investigated itself for collusion with Russia for posting so many too-late, but still-true articles about the mess that Nuland made in Ukraine.[794] They could win a Pulitzer.[795]

Two months later, Dolinsky denounced the city of Lviv for holding a festival in honor of Shukhevych.[796] They held a similar march the next year, literally “honoring the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Dolinsky again condemned this as “a scandalous event that should not be allowed to happen in Ukraine in which murderers of Jews and others are glorified.”[797]

Imagine a European city with thousands of marchers demanding “Jews Out!”[798] and instead of becoming a great crisis deserving authorities’ full attention, it is treated like an embarrassing old skeleton in the closet, of no real importance; or worse, just the dastardly lies of the Russians and their all-powerful propaganda machine.

In 2017, over the strenuous objections of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, the Poroshenko government erected a statue of the OUN propagandist and poet Olena Teliha at the Babi Yar memorial. She was shot by the Nazis there. But she was a Nazi too. One might imagine how this was taken—as a sign of equivalent victimhood by the descendants of the OUN and a major affront by Ukrainian Jews whose forebears were slaughtered there by the tens of thousands by her then-allies.[799]

Soon after, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, after denouncing pogroms against Roma and desecrations of Jewish memorial sites, also condemned “the continuing effort led by the leadership of the government’s Ukrainian Institute of National Memory to praise certain leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and cleanse their murderous records.”[800]

Russians Noticed, Too

Perhaps it is true that the Russian government embellishes this narrative of Ukrainian fascism to smear Ukraine as “a nation unworthy of statehood,” as one local critic put it.[801] But they hardly need to. The country does have the largest number of influential Nazis in the world today. Nowhere else compares, and as will be shown below, the reality has been bad enough to serve as an inspiration to other neo-Nazi factions around the world. Unlike the typical establishment foreign policy advice, the purpose here is not to cry Munich and demand America invade Ukraine or support the Russians in their current war. But it is clearly enough reason to avoid getting mixed up in any conflict on the western Ukrainian nationalists’ side, as our government has been so determined to do.

Aftermath

A Clean Nation

Gabriel Gatehouse, the BBC reporter from the Maidan documentary, performed his own study of the post-revolution Ukrainian Nazi movement. One young Right Sector fighter told him, “National Socialist themes are popular among some of us. The idea of one nation.” He continued, “I like the idea of one nation, one people, one country. . . A clean nation. Not like under Hitler. But in our own way, a little bit like that.” (Ethnic Purity)

Svoboda’s C14 leader Yevhen Karas added, “No I don’t think I’m a Nazi. I’m a Ukrainian nationalist. . . . The main confrontation is that some ethnic groups have control [of] many business structures, some economics and political forces.” When Gatehouse asked, “Which ethnic groups?” Karas replied, “Russians and Jews and . . . it may be some non-Ukrainian group control a huge percent of some economic or political power.”

He showed a photo of members of Svoboda in parliament holding up small signs that read “14” and “88,” code for David Lane’s slogan and “Heil Hitler,” as “H” is the eighth letter of the English alphabet. Gatehouse summarized: “It’s clear that it was the radical groups who kept up the pressure on Viktor Yanukovych and many of them feel that this really is their victory. The question is how much power will that give the far right in the new Ukraine.” Leftist activist Maksim Butkevich warned that after their success in the Maidan, and the outbreak of fighting in the east, the Nazi fringe would have more influence than ever.[802]

Foreign Policy

In March 2014, the American establishmentarian journal Foreign Policy ran an important article called, “Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government.” Its authors, Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler, are foreign policy hawks associated with the neoconservative think tanks, the Henry Jackson Society and Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But even they had to admit, “The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kiev’s current government—and the protesters who brought it to power—are, indeed, fascists.” They noted the influence of Oleh Tyahnybok and his party, and that “today, Svoboda holds a larger chunk of its nation’s ministries (nearly a quarter, including the prized defense portfolio) than any other far-right party on the continent.” This included the deputy prime minister, prosecutor general and deputy chair of parliament. They wrote that “Svoboda’s fresh faces are scarcely different from the old: one of its freshmen members of parliament is the founder of the ‘Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center’ and has hailed the Holocaust as a ‘bright period in human history.’”[803] Svoboda’s deputy chief, Ihor Miroshnychenko, wrote that actress Mila Kunis “is not Ukrainian, she is a Yid. She is proud of it, so Star of David be with her.”[804]

The member of parliament mentioned by Foxall and Kessler was Tyahnybok’s partner at Svoboda, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn. He really did found an institution called “the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center.”[805] After getting some bad publicity, he renamed it after the German conservative war veteran and philosopher Ernst Jünger.[806] Mykhalchyshyn had proclaimed at the Bandera memorial in Lviv, “Our Banderite army will cross the Dnipro and throw that blue-ass gang, which today usurps the power, out of Ukraine. . . . That will make those Asiatic dogs shut their ugly mouths.”[807] Historian Rossoliński-Liebe noted that Mykhalchyshyn’s “approach to Ukrainian history confused many patriotic and ‘liberal’ historians and intellectuals who were accustomed to deny the fascist tendencies of the OUN and UPA, or who understood Ukrainian nationalism to be a ‘national liberation movement.’”[808]

When this guy says “everything within the state,” he means it. For example, he approvingly reprinted the Ukrainian Nazi poet Yurii Lypa: “Marriage is the duty of the woman to her own gender. The duty of the state, in turn, is to assist her in this . . . the 300 ovulations of every Ukrainian woman, as well as the 1,500 ejaculations of every Ukrainian man are the same national treasures as, say, energy resources, or deposits of iron, coal or oil.”[809] He was elected to the Rada in the new eastern and southern regions-free vote of October 2014.

Foxall and Kessler railed in disbelief at Sen. McCain’s embrace of Tyahnybok, the EU overseeing a deal including him and the State Department dismissing the far right’s influence as Russian propaganda. The U.S. denials came just as the Rada attempted to pass a law requiring all government business to be done in Ukrainian, which led to a massive backlash in Crimea and the rest of the south and east of the country. It was not that they were about to seize total power. “In fact,” the two noted, “it was the same French- and German-backed peace deal that gave Svoboda its disproportionate share of the resulting government’s ministries. Western governments, then, are at least partially complicit in facilitating Svoboda’s rise.” They advised, “Sound policy . . . can only be based on sound analysis of the players involved. That requires conceding the point—even when made by the Kremlin—that more than a few of the protesters who toppled Yanukovych, and of the new leaders in Kiev, are fascists.”[810]

Liberals

Instead, the Obama administration went to work to rehabilitate the reputation of these Ukrainian Nazis. They talked to Reuters, saying they would never have dealt with a guy like Tyahnybok, but this time it was necessary “because he headed one of the three principal opposition factions leading the Ukrainian protests.” How else were they supposed to force the president from power? Besides, “since entering the Ukrainian Parliament in October 2012, the Svoboda leadership has been working to take their party in a more moderate direction and to become a modern, European mainstream political party,” a senior U.S. official claimed.[811]

To America’s liberal Democrats, conservative Republican voters are unrepentant, irredeemable, fascist white supremacists.[812] But actual Democrat’s armed militias of avowed Hitler-loving, Jew-hating, national socialists, who just launched a bloody street putsch to overthrow a democratically elected leader? Hey, they are working hard at doing better.

Hawks like to emphasize that the Nazi parties did not do very well in the October 2014 elections.[813] But the Nazis did. They just joined up with larger parties to gain influence. Andriy Biletsky, the self-proclaimed “White Ruler” (Bely Vozd),[814] formerly of Patriot of Ukraine and the Social-Nationalist Assembly,[815] won his election for parliament as the People’s Front party candidate. Shortly thereafter, he officially founded the paramilitary Azov Battalion[816] alongside the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, a close ally from his stint as the governor of Kharkiv[817] and the Maidan protests.[818] Svoboda’s Andriy Parubiy joined Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party and became speaker of the Rada.[819]

10 Important Nazis

NBC News reported that “Svoboda . . . was given almost a quarter of the Cabinet positions in the interim government formed after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych,”[820] and reminded us that in 2012 the European Parliament had passed a resolution that asked democratic parties in the Rada “not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party due to its racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views.” They added that Parubiy’s appointment to secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee has “raised eyebrows,” and went on to note, “Although now a member of the liberal-conservative Fatherland party, Parubiy led anti-Yanukovych street militias in Kiev in the wake of protests that erupted in December.”[821]

Historian Per Anders Rudling told Britain’s Channel 4 News, “Two weeks ago I could never have predicted this. A neo-fascist party like Svoboda getting the deputy prime minister position is news in its own right.” He continued, “There are seven ministers with links to the extreme right now. It began with Svoboda getting 10 per cent of the vote in the last election, it is certainly a concern in the long run,” adding, “According to Svoboda’s website, the party’s ideology stems from Yaroslav Stetsko, a former leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).”[822]

Rudling undercounted. As mentioned, ✓Andriy Parubiy was given a senior defense position[823] and later made the speaker of the parliament,[824] a seat he held for five years.[825] ✓Ihor Tenyukh, a member of Svoboda’s political council, became the interim defense minister.[826] ✓Dmitry Yarosh from Right Sector was offered the role of deputy head of the National Security Council,[827] and later deputy chief of the national police,[828] before deciding to run and win a seat in the Rada instead.[829] He is currently an adviser to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian military.[830] Svoboda’s ✓Oleksandr Sych was named deputy prime minister.[831] ✓Andriy Mokhnyk, the deputy head of Svoboda and envoy to other European fascist parties, got the ministry of ecology and natural resources.[832] ✓Ihor Shvaika, a right-wing big-ag oligarch, became agriculture minister.[833] ✓Oleh Makhnitsky, a member of parliament from Svoboda, became acting prosecutor general.[834] ✓Serhiy Kvit, also from Svoboda, was picked to lead the Education Ministry.[835] ✓Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Battalion’s founder, was elected to parliament, a seat he held until 2019.[836] ✓Vadim Troyan, an Azov deputy commander and “leading member” of the “Patriot of Ukraine” Nazi group, was appointed as police chief of Kiev Oblast.[837] He was later promoted to deputy interior minister under Arsen Avakov,[838] then to deputy chief of Ukraine’s national police, a position he held until the autumn of 2021.[839]

That was 10 Nazis in major positions of power in the new government.

Proud Fascists

In his 2011 essay “Axioms of Social Nationalism,” Svoboda Party ideologist Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn wrote that Ukraine’s Nazis were defending against “a total and permanent national, class, and racial war of destruction,” which “has been declared against the Ukrainians: they are trying to liquidate us as a community of blood and spirit.” He outlined the “positive values” of social nationalism, including: “force,” “hierarchy,” “order,” “authority,” “discipline,” “passion” and ✓“hatred.” He explained that the social-nationalist worldview was formed “through opposition to negative, anti-human, and anti-national phenomena of today, raising its battle banners over the conquered strongholds of the enemy spirit: Anti-bourgeoism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, anti-democratism, anti-liberalism, anti-bureaucratism, anti-dogmatism.”[840]

Dimitry Yarosh narrated a recruitment video for Right Sector: “We are the fighters of the Right Sector. This is just the beginning. The renaissance of Europe begins with our Maidan against marginal and corrupt democracy, against degeneration and totalitarian liberalism, for national morals and family values.” He said, “For healthy youth in body and mind. Against the cult of illicit gain and debauchery, against any form of integration that would be imposed on Ukraine for the unity and greatness of the Ukrainian nation, for a great Ukraine, a great European reconquest.”[841] That phrase is the loudest alarm for America and Britain’s liberal media establishments,[842] except when Ukrainian Nazis use it.

Is The New Republic’s Anne Applebaum an agent of a foreign power posing as an American participating in the public debate like a regular citizen or journalist might? She certainly has a massive conflict of interest, being a dual citizen married to Polish politician Radosław Sikorski. Applebaum endlessly writes hawkish screeds for American audiences that seem to coincide with his views and interests exactly. Shortly after Svoboda-C14 and Right Sector’s violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, Applebaum, a self-identified liberal fighting against the evils of right-wing authoritarianism everywhere except Ukraine,[843] took to the pages of that most hawkish of American magazines[844] to promote Ukrainian nationalism. Lamenting the failure of the Orange Revolution to abolish corruption and chaos, she called for a new order in Ukraine. “Nationalism is fundamentally emotional. In truth, you can’t really make ‘the case’ for nationalism; you can only inculcate it, teach it to children, cultivate it at public events.” She said that “Ukrainians need more of this kind of inspiration, not less—moments like last New Year’s Eve, when more than 100,000 Ukrainians sang the national anthem at midnight on the Maidan.” Applebaum added, “They 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 in the 1940s, but has been adopted to a new context.” Controversial. She concluded, “And then of course they need to translate that emotion into laws, institutions, a decent court system, and police training academies. If they don’t, then their country will once again cease to exist.”[845]

Torches Out for Bandera

On New Year’s Day in 2014, in the midst of the Maidan movement, USA Today described a massive torchlight parade through the streets of Kiev. “About 15,000 people marched through Kiev on Wednesday night to honor Stepan Bandera, glorified by some as a leader of Ukraine’s liberation movement and dismissed by others as a Nazi collaborator.” They added, “Some wore the uniform of a Ukrainian division of the German army during World War II. Others chanted ‘Ukraine above all!’ and ‘Bandera, come and bring order!’”[846]

Jewish Leaders Concerned

The chief rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Reuven Asman, urged Jews to flee after several violent anti-Semitic attacks, the Israeli Embassy warned Jews not to go outside[847] and canceled Hanukkah ceremonies out of fear of Svoboda thugs among the protesters.[848] While Jews have not been targeted by the ultra-nationalist groups in large numbers, there was no mystery why local leaders were so concerned after the coup. The World Jewish Congress called for an official ban of Svoboda, a member of the Alliance of European National Movements, a group that includes the British National Party (BNP) and French National Front.[849] In January 2021, Israeli Ambassador Joel Lion condemned a torchlight march in honor of Bandera. In response, the Nazis held a rally at the Israeli Embassy demanding that Israel and “the Jews” apologize for Communism and the Holodomor.[850]

Renowned Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, said the promotion of Biletsky’s deputy Troyan to police chief was “very worrying,” and “sends the worst possible message about the intentions of the new Ukrainian government. If they are appointing people like this to positions of such importance and power, it is a very dangerous signal to the Jewish community of Ukraine.” He continued, “This is a very strange way of convincing the justifiably concerned Jewish world that there is no intention to encourage fascist sympathies or neo-Nazi activities.”[851]

Oleksandr Feldman, president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee and a member of the Ukrainian parliament, wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had been trying without success to get the Fatherland and UDAR parties to break their alliance with Svoboda. He said that not only were Svoboda and Right Sector worrisome, but that there were many other anti-Semites among the Maidan movement, for example putting on an anti-Jewish play on New Year’s Eve and Svoboda-sponsored torchlight parades in honor of Bandera.[852] Washington’s own Radio Liberty described the founding ceremony of the National Corps Party, which was based on Biletsky’s group Patriot of Ukraine: “That inaugural ceremony arguably had pomp more reminiscent of 1930s Germany than of postwar democracy. It included nationalist chants, raised fists, and a torchlight march through central Kyiv.”[853]

World Jewish Congress (WJC) president Ronald Lauder wrote a letter of protest to the leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in the summer of 2013. He told the church’s Patriarch Filaret, “I was horrified to see photographs . . . of young Ukrainians wearing the dreaded SS uniform with swastikas clearly visible on their helmets.” He asked the church to “prevent any further rehabilitation of Nazism or the SS” in Ukraine.[854] In 2016, the WJC complained—along with the Wiesenthal Center[855]—that the government was renaming the most important boulevard in Kiev after Bandera. The group’s CEO Robert Singer said that “it is ironic and perplexing that the Kyiv municipality would decide to honor a man whose followers joined the German death squads in murdering the Jews of Ukraine during the Holocaust,” noting that it was also at the same time “planning to build Ukraine’s first Holocaust museum.”[856]

The Washington-based National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ), formerly known as the National Council for Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), wrote to President Poroshenko to “protest in the strongest possible terms” after the Ukrainian Order of Freedom was awarded to Vasil Kvasnovsky, an anti-Semitic author who blamed the Holodomor on Ukrainian Jews and had helped found the Spanish Svoboda party.[857] They later put out a statement condemning recent anti-Semitic attacks in Ukraine and asked the police to investigate them.[858]

Then-Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett released a report in January 2018 saying there had been a major recent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, including violent assaults, in western Ukraine, more than any other nation in the former Soviet Union.[859]

In 2017, the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz worried when the western city of Vinnitsa dedicated a statue to Symon Petliura,[860] the leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic at a time when as many as 50,000 Jews were killed in pogroms during the Russian Civil War between 1918 and 1921.[861]

This is the only country in the world where these questions are at issue. Other major European nationalist parties like the French National Rally and BNP do not go around making heroes out of Hitler’s death squads. In Germany, a national party leader was criminally convicted in 2024 for daring to cross that line by using a slogan of the Nazi party’s SA stormtroopers, “Everything for Germany!”[862]

De-recognizing Russian

In 1991, the Rada had passed a Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine, promising official status for any major minority language group in the country. Ukraine’s 1996 constitution guaranteed “the free development, use and protection of the Russian [language].”[863] But the Yushchenko administration, after the 2004 Orange Revolution, launched a sort of codified culture war of Galician Ukrainian nationalism against the predominantly ethnic Russian people of the south and east. This included a ham-handed attempt at Ukrainianization, including efforts to marginalize the use of Russian in education and public documents.[864]

But under Yanukovych, in 2012, the Rada passed the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law, which allowed the use of other languages in official matters if regional parliaments agreed. Petro writes that “half of Ukraine’s regions immediately voted to do so. The passage of this law, however, similarly galvanized Ukrainian nationalists.”[865] After the 2014 coup, the first act of the new Rada was to repeal Kivalov-Kolesnichenko, a top demand of Svoboda.[866] Though ultimately Acting President Turchynov did not sign it, this was still taken as a declaration of war against the people of the east.[867]

Turchynov’s successor, Poroshenko, signed a similar bill in 2017 that made Ukrainian the required language in all public schools from the fifth grade up. Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and Russians, all of which have large communities in Ukraine, tried to prevent it. Russia denounced the law as an attempt to “forcefully establish a mono-ethnic language regime in a multinational state.”[868] This came after a series of measures when the Zhytomyr, Lviv and Ternopil regions banned movies, books and songs in Russian,[869] and the national parliament mandated quotas for Ukrainian-language broadcasting over TV and radio.[870]

Our government insists the regime in Kiev is a democracy, but that is little more than a hoax. Twice in 10 years, the U.S. directly intervened to put their friends in power. Russian-leaning parties are separated from their voters by the conflict in the east[871] or outright banned, and the new regime has waged a full-scale culture war against them. Not that they had much choice at that point. When parliament refused to honor Bandera and the UPA in October 2014, approximately 8,000 members of Right Sector and C14 descended on Kiev and attacked police guarding the building.[872]

Even Freedom House?

April Gordon from George Soros’s Freedom House, in a report about rising nationalism and racialism across Eurasia, wrote that though the most right-wing parties in Ukraine had not done so well in the 2019 election, “the narrow vision of pro-Ukrainian nationalist orthodoxy and vehement anti-Russian rhetoric championed by Svoboda and its allies became a dominant political narrative” within “mainstream political discourse.” They had already won. “With his slogan ‘Army, language, faith!’ former President Petro Poroshenko helped to popularize an exclusivist brand of patriotism that continues to draw significant support from both moderate and radical segments of society.” She added, “Poroshenko’s political rhetoric ultimately culminated in a series of severe legal measures purporting to preserve Ukrainian identity, but which often infringe upon the rights of the country’s minority groups.”[873] Not that they said they were sorry for installing these people in power.

NOTES:

[725] David Pugliese, “Whitewashing The SS: The Attempt to Re-Write the History of Hitler’s Collaborators,” Esprit de Corps, October 30, 2020, https://espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/whitewashing-the-ss-the-attempt-to-re-write-the-history-of-hitlers-collaborators.

[726] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160; Philip Friedman, “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, Vol. 12 (1959), 259–96, reprinted in Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (New York, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), 176–208; Rossoliński-Liebe, 274–75.

[727] Rossoliński-Liebe, 252–53.

[728] Paul H. Rosenberg, “Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret, An interview with Russ Bellant, author of Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party,” Foreign Policy in Focus, March 18, 2014, https://fpif.org/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-secret.

[729] Himka, 215, 361; Rossoliński-Liebe, 283–84.

[730] John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews, and the Holocaust (Saskatoon: Heritage Press, 2009), 46–47; Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust, 111–12.

[731] Rossoliński-Liebe, 322.

[732] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[733] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[734] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160; Himka, 149–51, 367–69; Marco Carynnyk, “‘A Knife in the Back of Our Revolution,’ A Reply to Alexander J. Motyl’s ‘The Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and the Jews: Theoretical Reflections on Nationalism, Fascism, Rationality, Primordialism, and History,’” American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, 2014, https://academia.edu/6313351/A_Knife_in_the_Back_of_Our_Revolution_A_Reply_to_Alexander_J_Motyls_The_Ukrainian_Nationalist_Movement_and_the_Jews_Theoretical_Reflections_on_Nationalism_Fascism_Rationality_Primordialism_and_History.

[735] Himka, 370–71; Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky, “Natsionalizm I Totalitarianism,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Fall 1982), 85, https://archive.org/details/journalofukraini72cana/page/80/mode/2up.

[736] Himka, 372–74, 378–91.

[737] De Ploeg, 23–24.

[738] Gregg J. Rickman, “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism: A Report Provided to the United States Congress,” US State Department, March 13, 2008, https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/102406.htm.

[739] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[740] Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1922).

[741] Jason Steinhauer, “Interview of Sarah Cameron: ‘The Kazakh Famine of the 1930s,’” Library of Congress, August 24, 2016, https://blogs.loc.gov/kluge/2016/08/the-kazakh-famine-of-the-1930s.

[742] Hahn, 145–46.

[743] Rossoliński-Liebe, 469–80.

[744] Per Anders Rudling, “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right – The Case of VO Svoboda,” in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson (eds.), Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 228–55, http://academia.edu/2481420.

[745] Petro, 82.

[746] Georgiy Kasianov, “Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s,” Nationalities Papers (2023), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2023.10.

[747] Petro, 82.

[748] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[749] Photo of Oleh Tyahnybok giving a proud Hitler salute, http://i.imgur.com/s0sR7dL.jpg; Photo of Vice-President Joe Biden shaking Tyahnybok’s hand with a big smile on their faces, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJgCT7qVUAAXzc-?format=jpg.

[750] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[751] Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman, introduction by Salo Wittmeyer Baron, New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), 203–04.

[752] John-Paul Himka, “How does the OUN treat the Jews? Reflections on the book of Volodymyr Viatrovich,” Ukraina Moderna, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2008), 252–65; Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists, 112–15, https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/ukrainamoderna.13.252.

[753] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[754] Jared McBride, “Ukraine’s Invented a ‘Jewish-Ukrainian Nationalist’ to Whitewash Its Nazi-era Past,” Haaretz, November 9, 2017, https://haaretz.com/opinion/2017-11-09/ty-article/ukraine-nationalists-are-using-a-jew-to-whitewash-their-nazi-era-past/0000017f-e717-d97e-a37f-f777b9fe0000.

[755] Georgiy Kasianov, “Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s,” Nationalities Papers (2023), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2023.10.

[756] Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 22–23.

[757] Bartov, 61–70, 73–75.

[758] Bartov, 52–53.

[759] Bartov, 91–93.

[760] Staff, “European parliament hopes new Ukraine’s leadership will reconsider decision to award Bandera title of hero,” Interfax-Ukraine, February 25, 2010, https://kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/european-parliament-hopes-new-ukraines-leadership-60430.html.

[761] Georgiy Kasianov, “Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s,” Nationalities Papers (2023), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2023.10.

[762] Staff, “Polish president condemns hero title award for Bandera,” Interfax-Ukraine, February 5, 2010, https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/world/polish-president-condemns-hero-title-award-for-ban-58755.html.

[763] Jan Cienski, “Why Poles cheered Yushchenko’s ouster,” GlobalPost, March 10, 2017, https://theworld.org/stories/2017/03/10/why-poles-cheered-yushchenkos-ouster.

[764] Timothy Snyder, “A Fascist Hero in Democratic Kiev,” New York Review of Books, February 24, 2010, https://nybooks.com/daily/2010/02/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev.

[765] Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacture of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2107 (November 2011), https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/164/160.

[766] Palash Ghosh, “Euromaidan: The Dark Shadows Of The Far-Right In Ukraine Protests,” International Business Times, February 19, 2014, https://ibtimes.com/euromaidan-dark-shadows-far-right-ukraine-protests-1556654.

[767] “President proclaimed October 14 the Day of Defender of Ukraine,” Consulate General of Ukraine in New York, October 14, 2014, https://ny.mfa.gov.ua/en/news/28702-prezident-vstanoviv-14-zhovtnya-dnem-zahisnika-ukrajini.

[768] Max Blumenthal, “Is the US Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?” AlterNet, February 24, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140302022450/http://alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine.

[769] Josh Cohen, “Vladimir Putin calls Ukraine fascist and country’s new law helps make his case,” Reuters, May 20, 2015, https://reuters.com/article/idUS2080246569.

[770] Staff, “Statement on Ukrainian Legislation on Historical Research and Debate,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 11, 2015, https://ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/statement-on-ukrainian-legislation-on-historical-research-and-debate.

[771] Georgiy Kasianov, “Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s,” Nationalities Papers (2023), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2023.10.

[772] Rossoliński-Liebe, 469–80.

[773] Georgiy Kasianov, “Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s,” Nationalities Papers (2023), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2023.10.

[774] “Historian Volodymyr Vyatrovych about the Ukrainian SS Halychyna division,” BBC, June 13, 2011, https://bbc.com/ukrainian/multimedia/2011/06/110613_vyatrovych_galychyna_video.

[775] Josh Cohen, “The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past,” Foreign Policy, May 2, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/the-historian-whitewashing-ukraines-past-volodymyr-viatrovych.

[776] Lev Golinkin, “Nazi Collaborator Monuments in Ukraine,” The Forward, January 26, 2021, https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine.

[777] Rossoliński-Liebe, 492–99.

[778] Rossoliński-Liebe, 496–97.

[779] Staff, “Ukraine to Honor Groups That Killed Jews in World War II,” Haaretz, May 21, 2015, https://haaretz.com/2015-05-21/ty-article/ukraine-to-honor-wwii-jews-killers/0000017f-e78b-dea7-adff-f7fb08bd0000; Anna Nemtsova, “Ukraine Tears Down Soviet Symbols, Winks At Nazi Ones,” Daily Beast, May 29, 2015, https://thedailybeast.com/ukraine-tears-down-soviet-symbols-winks-at-nazi-ones.

[780] Vladimir Kozlov, “Ukraine Bans All New Russian Film Releases,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 6, 2015, https://hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/ukraine-bans-all-new-russian-770842.

[781] Staff, “Ukraine bans Russian media outlets, websites,” Committee to Protect Journalists, May 17, 2017, https://cpj.org/2017/05/ukraine-bans-russian-media-outlets-websites.

[782] Staff, “Ukraine imposes language quotas for radio playlists,” BBC, November 8, 2016, https://bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37908828.

[783] Tweet by the World Jewish Congress, May 3, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20211219195221/https://x.com/WorldJewishCong/status/992128585300414466.

[784] Zakon Ukrainy, Law of Ukraine, “On Amendments to the Art.6 of the Law ‘On the Status of the Veterans of War and Guarantees of Their Social Protection’ in Terms of Enhancing the Social Protection of the Participants of the Struggle for Independence of Ukraine in the 20th Century,” December 6, 2018, https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2640-19.

[785] Cnaan Liphshiz, “Ukraine celebrates Nazi collaborator, bans book critical of pogroms leader,” Times of Israel, December 27, 2018, https://timesofisrael.com/ukraine-celebrates-nazi-collaborator-bans-book-critical-of-pogroms-leader; Cnaan Liphshiz, “Ukraine designates national holiday for Nazi collaborator,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 27, 2018, https://jta.org/quick-reads/ukraine-bans-history-book-on-leader-of-anti-semitic-pogroms.

[786] “Wiesenthal Center Harshly Criticizes Decision By Ukrainian Parliament To Designate Birthday Of Nazi Collaborator Bandera As National Holiday,” Simon Wiesenthal Center, December 27, 2018, https://wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-center-harshly-4.html; Jason Lemon, “Ukraine Makes Birthday of Nazi Collaborator a National Holiday and Bans Book Critical of Anti-Semitic Leader,” Newsweek, December 27, 2018, https://newsweek.com/ukraine-nazi-collaborator-birthday-holiday-anti-semitic-1272911.

[787] Jochen Hellbeck, “Ukraine Makes Amnesia the Law of the Land,” The New Republic, May 21, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/121880/new-laws-ukraine-make-it-illegal-bring-its-ugly-past.

[788] Petro, 82–83.

[789] Rossoliński-Liebe, 81, 168, 273–80.

[790] Erika Solomon, “History Haunts Ukraine’s Undiplomatic Voice in Berlin,” New York Times, July 13, 2022, https://nytimes.com/2022/07/13/world/europe/ukraine-germany-ambassador-melnyk.html.

[791] Kateryna Iakovlenko, “Meet the man in charge of Ukraine’s national memory,” Open Democracy, June 11, 2020, https://opendemocracy.net/en/odr/anton-drobovich-natsionalnaya-pamyat-en.

[792] Sam Sokol, “Ukrainian General Calls for Destruction of Jews,” The Jewish Chronicle, May 11, 2017, https://thejc.com/news/world/ukrainian-general-calls-for-destruction-of-jews-1.438400.

[793] Eduard Dolinsky, “What Ukraine’s Jews Fear,” New York Times, April 11, 2017, https://nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/what-ukraines-jews-fear.html.

[794] Robert Parry, “The Mess that Nuland Made,” Consortium News, July 13, 2015, https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made.

[795] “Staffs of the New York Times and the Washington Post, The 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner in National Reporting,” The Pulitzer Prizes, https://pulitzer.org/winners/staffs-new-york-times-and-washington-post.

[796] JTA, “Ukraine city to hold festival in honor of Nazi collaborator,” Jerusalem Post, June 28, 2017, https://jpost.com/Diaspora/Ukraine-city-to-hold-festival-in-honor-of-Nazi-collaborator-498159.

[797] Staff, “Nazi symbols, salutes on display at Ukrainian nationalist march,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 30, 2018, https://timesofisrael.com/nazi-symbols-salutes-on-display-at-ukrainian-nationalist-march.

[798] Staff, “Ukrainian marchers in Kiev chant ‘Jews out,’” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 3, 2017, https://jta.org/2017/01/03/global/ukrainian-marchers-in-kiev-chant-jews-out.

[799] Staff, “US embassy in Kiev criticized for praising Ukrainian nationalist,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 29, 2017, https://jta.org/2017/03/29/global/us-embassy-in-kiev-criticized-for-praising-for-ukrainian-nationalist.

[800] “Museum Expresses Deep Concern About Anti-Romani Violence and Antisemitism in Ukraine,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 14, 2018, https://ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/museum-expresses-deep-concern-about-anti-romani-violence-and-antisemitism-i.

[801] Simon Shuster, “Is Ukraine’s New Holocaust Memorial Also an Instrument of Kremlin Propaganda?” Time, September 29, 2021, https://time.com/6102593/ukraine-holocaust-memorial-kremlin-propaganda.

[802] Gabriel Gatehouse, “Neo-Nazi Threat in New Ukraine,” BBC Newsnight, February 28, 2014,

[803] Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler, “Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2014, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/18/yes-there-are-bad-guys-in-the-ukrainian-government.

[804] “Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator,” Channel 4, December 16, 2013, http://channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests.

[805] Jon Sebastian Shifrin, “It’s all relative,” Baltimore Sun, June 7, 2019, https://baltimoresun.com/2014/04/22/its-all-relative-commentary.

[806] Per Anders Rudling, “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right – The Case of VO Svoboda,” in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson (eds.), Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 228–55, http://academia.edu/2481420.

[807] Per Anders Rudling, “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right – The Case of VO Svoboda,” in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson (eds.), Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 228–55, http://academia.edu/2481420.

[808] Rossoliński-Liebe, 480; Taras Wosnjak, “Neo-Nazism and ‘Svoboda,’” Ukrainska Pravda, October 27, 2011, https://pravda.com.ua/articles/2011/10/27/6708115.

[809] Per Anders Rudling, “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right – The Case of VO Svoboda,” in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson (eds.), Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 228–55, http://academia.edu/2481420.

[810] Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler, “Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/18/yes-there-are-bad-guys-in-the-ukrainian-government.

[811] Sabina Zawadzki, et al., “In Ukraine, Nationalists Gain Influence – and Scrutiny,” Reuters, March 18, 2014, https://reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-farright-insight/in-ukraine-nationalists-gain-influence-and-scrutiny-idUSBREA2H0K620140318.

[812] Jamelle Bouie, “What the Reactionary Politics of 2019 Owe to the Politics of Slavery,” New York Times, August 14, 2019, https://nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/republicans-racism-african-americans.html; James Risen, “Racism Is Why Trump Is So Popular,” Intercept, August 10 2024, https://theintercept.com/2024/08/10/republicans-trump-vance-racism-white-nationalism; Simon Clark, “How White Supremacy Returned to Mainstream Politics,” Center for American Progress, July 1, 2020, https://americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/; Dana Milbank, “199 House Republicans have embraced anti-Semitism and violence,” Washington Post, February 5, 2021, https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/199-house-republicans-have-embraced-anti-semitism-violence; Lindsay Kornick, “Scientific American editor blasts ‘f---ing fascists’ who elected Donald Trump,” Fox News, November 7, 2024, https://foxnews.com/media/scientific-american-editor-blast-f-ing-fascists-who-elected-donald-trump.

[813] Robert Beckhusen, “Ukrainian Election’s Real Losers – Far Right Parties,” War Is Boring, October 26, 2014, https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ukrainian-elections-real-losers-far-right-parties-94f4f7c0cdab.

[814] Joe Sommerlad, “Who are Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion?” Independent, March 24, 2022, https://independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-azov-battalion-mariupol-neo-nazis-b2043022.html.

[815] Staff, “Azov Movement,” Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University, August 2022, https://archive.is/aCFVJ.

[816] See below.

[817] Staff, “Azov Movement,” Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University, August 2022, https://archive.is/aCFVJ.

[818] Hahn, 190.

[819] Staff, “Rada appoints Andriy Parubiy its speaker,” Interfax-Ukraine, April 14, 2016, https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/337629.html.

[820] Staff, “Analysis: US Cozies Up to Kiev Government Including Far Right,” NBC News, March 30, 2014, https://nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/analysis-u-s-cozies-kiev-government-including-far-right-n66061.

[821] “Resolution on the situation in Ukraine,” 2012/2889(RSP), EU Parliament, December 13, 2012, https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/summary.do?id=1239823&t=e&l=en.

[822] “How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum,” Channel 4, March 5, 2014, https://channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right.

[823] Staff, “US Cozies Up to Kiev Government Including Far Right,” NBC News, March 30, 2014, https://nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/analysis-u-s-cozies-kiev-government-including-far-right-n66061.

[824] Damien Sharkov, “Ukraine’s Parliament Fully Behind Joining NATO: Speaker,” Newsweek, June 14, 2016, https://newsweek.com/ukraines-parliament-fully-behind-joining-nato-speaker-470313.

[825] Staff, “Ukraine Parliament Speaker Signs New Electoral Code Long Pushed For By The West,” RFERL, August 27, 2019, https://rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-speaker-signs-new-electoral-code-long-pushed-for-by-the-west/30132165.html.

[826] Marcus Lütticke, “Far-right millstone,” DW, March 26, 2014, https://dw.com/en/far-right-weighs-on-ukraine-government/a-17519960.

[827] Simon Shuster, “Many Ukrainians Want Russia To Invade,” Time, March 1, 2014, https://time.com/11005/many-ukrainians-want-russia-to-invade; Roman Olearchyk, “Arseniy Yatseniuk poised to become Ukraine prime minister,” Financial Times, February 26, 2014, https://ft.com/content/88987cf8-9f12-11e3-8663-00144feab7de.

[828] Mustafa Nayyem, “Behind the scenes of the Right Sector,” Ukrainska Pravda, April 1, 2014, https://pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2014/04/1/7020952.

[829] Oksana Grytsenko and Shaun Walker, “Ukraine’s new parliament sits for first time,” Guardian, November 27, 2014, https://theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/27/ukraine-new-parliament--war-east-mps.

[830] David Stern, “Ukraine crisis: Tension over rise of nationalist Yarosh,” BBC, April 8, 2015, https://bbc.com/news/world-europe-32216738; Staff, “Former leader of Right Sector becomes advisor to Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces,” UA Wire, November 3, 2021, https://uawire.org/former-leader-of-right-sector-becomes-advisor-to-commander-in-chief-of-ukrainian-armed-forces.

[831] Harriet Salem, “Who exactly is governing Ukraine?” Guardian, March 4, 2014, https://theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/04/who-governing-ukraine-olexander-turchynov.

[832] Press Release, “Environment Minister Andriy Mokhnyk held a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart,” Ukrainian Government Portal, March 19, 2014, https://kmu.gov.ua/en/news/247117920.

[833] Staff, “Agriculture minister declares almost Hr 339,000 income in 2013,” Interfax-Ukraine, April 1, 2014, https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/agriculture-minster-declares-almost-hr-339000-income-in-2013-341686.html.

[834] Guy Faulconbridge, et al., “Toppled ‘mafia’ president cost Ukraine up to $100 billion, prosecutor says,” Reuters, April 30, 2014, https://reuters.com/article/world/toppled-mafia-president-cost-ukraine-up-to-100-billion-prosecutor-says-idUSBREA3T0KA.

[835] Serhiy Kvit, “Serhiy Kvit: The ideology of the EuroMaidan Revolution,” Kyiv Post, March 24, 2014, https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/serhiy-kvit-the-ideology-of-the-euromaidan-revolution-340665.html.

[836] Staff, “Azov Movement,” Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University, August 2022, https://archive.is/aCFVJ.

[837] Sam Sokol, “Kiev regional police head accused of neo-Nazi ties,” Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2014, http://jpost.com/Diaspora/Kiev-regional-police-head-accused-of-neo-Nazi-ties-381559.

[838] Staff, “Cabinet appoints Troyan as deputy interior minister of Ukraine,” Interfax-Ukraine, February 8, 2017, https://kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/cabinet-appoints-troyan-deputy-interior-minister-ukraine.html.

[839] Daria Zubkova, “National Police Deputy Head Troyan Resigns,” Ukra News, November 5, 2021, https://ukranews.com/en/news/812359-national-police-deputy-head-troyan-resigns.

[840] Cited in Per Anders Rudling, “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right – The Case of VO Svoboda,” in Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson (eds.), Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 228–55, http://academia.edu/2481420.

[841] Paul Moreira, Ukraine: Masks of the Revolution, Notre Monde, November 6, 2021,

[842] David Broder, “The Far Right Wants to Take Over Europe, and She’s Leading the Way,” New York Times, April 22, 2024, https://nytimes.com/2024/04/22/opinion/meloni-europe-elections.html; Antony Paone and Leigh Thomas, “Far-right French presidential hopeful promises ‘reconquest’ at rally,” Reuters, December 6, 2021, https://reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-french-presidential-hopeful-promises-reconquest-rally-2021-12-05; Francesc Badia i Dalmases and Sergio Calderón, “Reconquering Europe? VOX and the extreme right in Spain,” Open Democracy, March 27, 2019, https://opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/reconquering-europe-vox-and-extreme-right-spain; James Masters and Laura Perez-Maestro, “Spain’s Vox party wins seats as far-right party surges for first time since Franco,” CNN, December 3, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/03/europe/spain-far-right-vox-andalucia-intl/index.html; Ishaan Tharoor, “Right-wing nationalists are marching into the future by rewriting the past,” Washington Post, February 11, 2022, https://washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/11/history-patriotism-right-wing-politics.

[843] Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (New York: Doubleday, 2020).

[844] Murray N. Rothbard, “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 1989), https://cdn.mises.org/9_1_5_0.pdf.

[845] Anne Applebaum, “Nationalism Is Exactly What Ukraine Needs,” The New Republic, May 12, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/117505/ukraines-only-hope-nationalism.

[846] Nataliya Vasilyeva, “15,000 Ukraine nationalists march for divisive Bandera,” AP, January 1, 2014, https://apnews.com/international-news-general-news-bbc1075c59c44076b6284dcb008ac6c7.

[847] Devansh Dutt, “Chief rabbi of Ukraine orders Jews to flee after recent violent attacks on yeshiva students,” Your Jewish News, March 12, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140312203245/http://yourjewishnews.com/2014/02/n31613.html.

[848] Sam Sokol, “Ukrainian Jews split on dangers of protest movement,” Jerusalem Post, December 4, 2013, http://jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Ukrainian-Jews-split-on-dangers-of-protest-movement-333907.

[849] Brian Whelan, “Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator,” Channel 4, December 16, 2013, http://channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests.

[850] Cnaan Liphshiz, “Hundreds march in Ukraine in annual tribute to Nazi collaborator,” Times of Israel, January 4, 2021, https://timesofisrael.com/hundreds-march-in-ukraine-in-annual-tribute-to-nazi-collaborator; Cnaan Lipshiz, “Far-right protesters in Ukraine demand Israel apologize for communism,” Jerusalem Post, January 8, 2021, https://jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/far-right-protesters-in-ukraine-demand-israel-apologize-for-communism-654711.

[851] Sam Sokol, “Kiev regional police head accused of neo-Nazi ties,” Jerusalem Post, November 9, 2014, http://jpost.com/Diaspora/Russians-accuse-Kiev-of-hiding-crimes-against-Jews-381252.

[852] Oleksandr Feldman, “Op-Ed: Ukraine protest movement must shun anti-Semitic elements,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 15, 2014, https://jta.org/2014/01/15/opinion/ukrainian-protest-movement-must-shun-anti-semitic-elements.

[853] Christopher Miller, “In Ukraine, Ultranationalist Militia Strikes Fear In Some Quarters,” RFERL, January 30, 2018, https://rferl.org/a/ukraine-azov-right-wing-militia-to-patrol-kyiv/29008036.html.

[854] “WJC: Ukrainian priests must stop glorifying Nazis,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 23, 2013, http://jta.org/2013/08/23/news-opinion/world/wjc-ukrainian-priest-must-stop-glorifying-nazis.

[855] Efraim Zuroff, “Wiesenthal Center Condemns Initiative to Name Kiev Streets for Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators Stefan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych,” Simon Wiesenthal Center, July 5, 2017, https://wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-center-condemns-37.html.

[856] Staff, “WJC concerned by Ukraine’s decision to rename Kyiv boulevard after ultra-nationalist complicit in murdering Jews during Holocaust,” World Jewish Congress, July 8, 2016, https://worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wjc-concerned-by-ukraines-decision-to-rename-kyiv-boulevard-after-ultra-nationalist-complicit-in-murdering-jews-during-holocaust-7-1-2016.

[857] Daniel Rubin, et al., “Letter to President Petro Poroshenko,” National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, January 23, 2017, https://d2zhgehghqjuwb.cloudfront.net/accounts/10513/original/2017_01_23_Poroshenko_Kvasnovsky_Order_of_Freedom.pdf.

[858] Mark B. Levin, “Statement of Ukrainian Jewish Organizations on Anti-Semitism,” National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ), May 22, 2018, https://robly.com/archive?id=17a4e5aba5a15e798f16c80277e534a5.

[859] Cnaan Liphshiz, “Report: Ukraine had more anti-Semitic incidents than all former Soviet countries combined,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 28, 2018, https://jta.org/2018/01/28/israel/report-ukraine-had-more-anti-semitic-incidents-than-all-former-soviet-countries-combined.

[860] Staff, “Ukraine Unveils Statue Honoring Nationalist Leader Behind Regime That Killed Up to 50,000 Jews,” Haaretz, October 17, 2017, https://haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2017-10-17/ty-article/ukraine-unveils-statue-honoring-leader-who-killed-up-to-50-000-jews/0000017f-db18-d856-a37f-ffd846110000.

[861] Jeffrey Veidlinger, “The Killing Fields of Ukraine,” Tablet, February 22, 2022, https://tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/killing-fields-ukraine.

[862] James Angelos, “German far-right leader intentionally used banned Nazi slogan, court rules,” Politico Europe, May 14, 2024, https://politico.eu/article/german-far-right-leader-found-guilty-of-using-banned-nazi-slogan-bjorn-hocke-afd-alternative-for-germany-thuringia.

[863] Petro, 75.

[864] Hahn, 147–48.

[865] Petro, 75–76.

[866] Hahn, 150.

[867] Palash Ghosh, “Watch Your Tongue: Language Controversy One Of Fundamental Conflicts In Ukraine,” International Business Times, March 3, 2014, https://ibtimes.com/watch-your-tongue-language-controversy-one-fundamental-conflicts-ukraine-1559069.

[868] Staff, “Ukrainian President Signs Controversial Language Bill Into Law,” RFERL, September 26, 2017, https://rferl.org/a/ukrainian-poroshenko-signs-controversial-language-bill-into-law/28757195.html.

[869] Staff, “Zhytomyr region bans movies, books, songs in Russian language,” UNIAN, October 26, 2018, https://unian.info/society/10313430-zhytomyr-region-bans-movies-books-songs-in-russian-language.html; Staff, “Lviv region bans movies, books, songs in Russian until end of Russian occupation,” UNIAN, September 19, 2018, https://unian.info/society/10266729-lviv-region-bans-movies-books-songs-in-russian-until-end-of-russian-occupation.html; Staff, “Russian music, movies banned in public places in Ternopil region,” July 11, 2018, https://ukrinform.net/rubric-society/2574636-russian-music-movies-banned-in-public-places-in-ternopil-region.html.

[870] Staff, “Rada approves Ukrainian language TV quotas,” Kyiv Post, May 23, 2017, https://kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/rada-approves-ukrainian-language-tv-quotas.html; Staff, “Ukraine imposes language quotas for radio playlists,” BBC, November 8, 2016, https://bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37908828.

[871] See below.

[872] Kateryna Choursina, “Ukrainians Fight Police Over Recognitioin [sic] of WWII Rebels,” Bloomberg News, October 14, 2014, https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-14/ukrainians-fight-police-over-recognitioin-of-wwii-rebels.

[873] April Gordon, “Special Report 2020: A New Eurasian Far Right Rising,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/new-eurasian-far-right-rising.

.