“I want to draw Bandera Lobby, out of the dark”

On the background of the “Nazi gate”, the networks of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, and the new anti-Communist hysteria. A conversation with Moss Robeson. Interviewer: Susann Witt-Stahl.

The scandal surrounding the honoring of former Waffen SS member Yaroslav Hunka in September in the Canadian Parliament made waves internationally. But the Trudeau government pretends to be clueless and claims to have nothing to do with the Ukrainian fascists and the past of Hitler’s collaborators who immigrated to Canada after the Second World War. How believable is that?

Of course, it is difficult for the Canadian government to plead ignorance. The Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, is the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator, and her uncle, John-Paul Himka, wrote a standard work about the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN, and the Holocaust. Having said that, I don’t think MPs in the House of Commons really realized that they were applauding someone who had served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany. They probably thought they were cheering on a veteran of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA, of the OUN-B wing named after Stepan Bandera. For many years, Canadians have been conditioned, like seals in a circus ring, to applaud Banderists who fought “for independence” in the Second World War. But the UPA was a hotbed of Nazi collaborators, played a major role in the Holocaust, and unlike the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (First Galician, jW ), its grassroots organization OUN still exists today. This must be an open secret within the Canadian government, which funds numerous OUN front groups, including the official Banderist organ Ukrainian Echo in Canada. If she was so clueless, where is the official investigation into how Hunka came to be celebrated in Parliament? If this were to exist, then “Nazigate” could lead down politically dangerous paths and expose incriminating connections in high politics with fascists – for example to the Banderist-infested “Ukrainian Canadian Congress,” which plays an important role in Canadian-Ukrainian relations.

You coined the term “Bandera Lobby.” What exactly does that mean?

For many, Banderist is generally synonymous with Ukrainian nationalist. But I am specifically referring to people who are members of the OUN-B or another group that emerged from this now secret organization. The “Right Sector”, for example, falls into the latter category because its core is the “All-Ukrainian Organization ‘Trysub’ named after Stepan Bandera”, founded in 1993 and originally a paramilitary group of the OUN-B. The “Azov” movement is different: although it sees the OUN as its ideological ancestor, it emerged in the 1990s from the neo-Nazi scene in Ukraine, which was independent of the Bandera network. When I talk about the Bandera lobby, I mean the international OUN-B network, especially in the Ukrainian diaspora, including its many front groups. Likewise other organizations that the Banderists did not found but took over, such as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, UCCA. And then there are their friends and allies.

You have in your research on Ukrainian fascism on the OUN past and present specialized. The public in Germany and the Western world is not at all informed about the OUN, which split in 1940 into the already mentioned OUN-B wing and an OUN-M wing named after its then chairman Andrij Melnik and does not even know that this still exists. Where can the OUN’s structures and networks be found today?

It is not yet entirely clear to me whether the Melnik wing of the OUN is still significantly active today beyond the borders of Ukraine. However, I am certain about the OUN-B: although I concentrate my research on Ukraine and the Anglo-American countries, I have even found signs that it also exists in Germany, Italy, Portugal and Argentina. In the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Australia it is not even difficult to locate and investigate their networks. With a few exceptions, it has retained its structures since the first years of the Cold War. It’s all too easy to get lost in the jumble of letters and acronyms when talking about the various OUN-B front organizations or – as the Banderists call them – “facade structures.” These are linked together in the “World Council of Ukrainian Statehood Organizations”, also called the “International Council in Support of Ukraine”, a coordination body of the OUN-B, which was formerly known as the “World Ukrainian Liberation Front”. The current president, Borys Potapenko, comes from the USA. In the Ukrainian diaspora, the “Ukrainian Youth Association”, CYM, is usually the youth association of the Banderist group that has always led the “Ukrainian Liberation Front” in the individual countries – in the USA the “Organization for Defense of the Four Freedoms”. of Ukraine” and in Canada the “League of Ukrainian Canadians”. CYM also exists in Ukraine, but in 2001 the OUN-B founded a new organization that is more political and militant: the Nationalist Youth Congress. In 2019, this group was, among other things, at the head of the ultra-right “resistance movement against surrender,” and its members are increasingly taking over the leadership of the OUN-B in Ukraine.

Who are the leaders?

If you know the board members of the facade structures, then you can pretty much assume that they are the leaders of the OUN-B networks in the respective countries where it still exists. This is not just a guess. Stefan Romaniw, leader of the international OUN-B from 2009 to 2022, is the long-time chairman of the “Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations” and at the same time one of the heads of the “Ukrainian World Congress”, which is based in Toronto. Romaniw’s predecessor, Andrij Haidamakha, a Belgian-born Banderist, is now probably number one in Germany, where he worked for the US-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFE / RL , and in Munich the OUN-B- published the newspaper Shlyach Peremogi (The Road to Victory, jW ). Walter Zaryckij, the leader of the OUN-B in the USA, heads the two most important front organizations in the country: the “Center for US-Ukrainian Relations”, CUSUR, and the “Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation”, which, according to reports, owns 40 percent of the OUN-B headquarters is in Kiev. Mykola Matwijiwskij, a Greek Catholic priest and probably the leader of the OUN-B in Britain, is listed as the beneficiary of the income from this building and is apparently one of the main financiers of the OUN-B. Also worth mentioning is Oksana Prociuk, probably the leader of the Canadian OUN-B: she is the former treasurer of the World Ukrainian Liberation Front and managing director of the Buduchnist Credit Union Financial Group, the largest Ukrainian financial institution in Canada. Tracking down and uncovering such connections is fairly easy, but time-consuming and a little depressing – it makes you feel like you’re a conspiracy theorist.

This should be especially the case when you take a closer look at the activities of Walter Zaryckijs CUSUR. Politicians, representatives from think tanks such as the Atlantic Council and the Rand Corporation, who are among the Biden administration’s advisers, also speak at CUSUR conferences, as do high-ranking US generals. D., for example Ben Hodges, who regularly calls for a tougher confrontational course towards Russia in media appearances, including in Germany. How do you assess the OUN-B’s relations with the political class in the USA?

The OUN-B is far from having the say in Washington. Nevertheless, it has significant connections to prominent think tanks, including the US–Ukraine Foundation and the American Foreign Policy Council, as well as the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. These relationships were largely built and established through the UCCA and CUSUR. One generally reliable anonymous source has even claimed that Banderist leaders in the US have used front organizations such as CUSUR to “provide CIA operatives with reports on the Ukrainian community, its political activities and fraudulent activities.” It is unknown whether U.S. intelligence agencies directly supported the OUN-B in the early stages of the Cold War. If they didn’t, that may have changed under the Ronald Reagan administration, after the Banderists began working for RFE/RL , which was essentially a CIA front organization. There is evidence that relations changed after Ukrainian independence, as the Banderists pursued their next long-term goal – building a strong Ukrainian nation-state allied with the West against Russia. For example: In 2000 – when the first CUSUR conferences were organized in Washington with the support of Democratic and Republican institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy, which had been taken over by the CIA – Andriy Haidamakha became leader of the OUN-B after being in the who headed RFE/RL ‘s Kyiv bureau in the 1990s . The OUN-B has made an important contribution to the escalation of the conflict with Russia: it played an outstanding role in the “Euromaidan”, in decommunization, the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, the normalization of fascism and the “Banderization” of civil society. The factions in Washington committed to sabotaging Zelenskiy’s 2019 peace agenda are also believed to be sponsors of the “resistance movement against surrender” led by the OUN-B and promoted by Azov. John Herbst, a leading representative of the Atlantic Council, ambassador to Ukraine under George W. Bush and a regular speaker at CUSUR conferences, told supporters of the “resistance movement” in Kiev in 2020 that Zelensky had a choice: he could follow the dictates of the Bow to the Kremlin or pursue a policy that will ensure him the support of the West. Therefore the decision for the latter is inevitable.

To what extent does the war ideology of such NATO propagandists relate to the fascist worldview of the OUN?

When they talk about Russia, certain circles in the West have long sounded like Banderists. This applies, for example, to the claims that there are no Nazis in Ukraine, that NATO is not imperialist, that Russia is the new Nazi Germany, and that there is even a “prison of nations” that must be broken up into small countries – otherwise there will never be peace. Likewise for the narrative that waging war against Russia is anti-imperialist and there should be no compromise because the Kremlin is the source of ultimate evil in the world.

We are experiencing a new wave of anti-communist hysteria, particularly in the United States, helped by the Bandera lobby. They are also researching the “Victims of Communism Foundation” in Washington, D.C., which was founded in 1993 under the Clinton administration, today agitates primarily against China and Cuba and has also had its own museum since 2022. What kind of project is Victims of Communism, VoC, who are its initiators and historical predecessors, and what is its main goal?

VoC was founded by an obscure ultra-right organization called the National Captive Nations Committee, NCNC, in which Banderists and other former Nazi collaborators played an important role – as was the case in the Captive Nations Movement, which was essentially lobbying for the advocates of a third world war, at that time against the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, VoC has emerged as an influential organization that is now shedding tears over the “captive nations” of China. Although the Bandera lobby is one of its initiators, VoC is far less interested in Ukraine than its predecessors. Their main goal appears to be to convince Americans that China is 21st century Nazi Germany in order to generate support for World War III.

A powerful “Azov” lobby has also emerged in the USA. Delegations from the neo-Nazi movement from Ukraine are invited by congressmen and senators, including to Harvard and other elite universities. All sorts of well-known personalities, such as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, support them and have their photos taken with them for PR purposes. Even Rachel Denbar, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia and Europe – although the ” Heroes of Azov Valley ” only have anything to do with human rights when it comes to violating them. “Azov” has risen to A-list prominence in the Western public. How was that possible?

For years, a small circle of so-called experts in the West have spread the lie about the “depoliticization” of the “Azov” regiment. After Russia invaded Ukraine, their myths became gospel. Critics of Ukrainian neo-Nazism have largely remained silent because they did not want to be seen as providing ammunition for Russian propaganda. I initially belonged to the latter category, but broke my silence after seeing that Azov could easily send delegations to the USA and other Western countries and establish close ties with the Ukrainian diaspora that had not existed before. A similar development can be observed as with the Bandera lobby, which, partly with the support of Western governments, has been rewriting the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust for years. The myth makers in Washington probably convince themselves that they can move “Azov” in a more positive direction. In reality, they are just doing public relations for a powerful neo-Nazi movement to win the information war against Russia.

You have been publishing on the OUN and Bandera lobby for five years. This is an unusual focus of work for a 27-year-old American – especially since there are currently only a handful of historians in the world who conduct critical research on it. Why are you investing so much time and energy into this topic?

In 2014, I was very disturbed by US support for Ukrainian neo-Nazis. And I started researching the OUN’s hidden history in the Cold War. This soon turned out to be extremely interesting. But it wasn’t until 2019 – when I found out that I lived near the world’s oldest Bandera monument, located in upstate New York – that I finally realized that the OUN-B is still there. Practically overnight, I went from being an amateur historian to being an amateur journalist. And at that point I knew I couldn’t let go until I uncovered the OUN-B networks.

At the conference “The Bandera Complex” organized by Junge Welt and Melodie & Rhythm on October 29th, you will present the results of your research to a German audience for the first time. What is your main concern and what is the most important thing you want to convey to antifascists?

My main concern is to raise awareness that the OUN-B still poses a threat. I want to pull the Bandera Lobby out of the dark because I don’t think it can survive in sunlight. I want to make it clear that it is a missing piece of the puzzle without which we cannot get a complete picture of the Ukraine conflict. Maybe my research can also make people think about what else they haven’t heard and help them break through the media’s silence and propaganda that whitewashes fascism in Ukraine.

UKRAINISCHER FASCHISMUS – Translation by Google