Tag: Stepan Bandera

Flashback: Chrystia Freeland Whitewashing Nazi Collaborators in 2008

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Ukraine rifles its history for heroes

But history may matter more to you if it has been rough, as Ukraine’s has. As Viktor Yushchenko, the president whose path to power included a disfiguring attempt on his life, told the Canadian parliament last month, Ukraine has declared independence six times in the past 90 years. His job, he said, was to make sure the most recent declaration, in 1991, was the last one. Even the national anthem takes a bleak view. Its first line is: “Ukraine has not yet died.”

…

Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus, was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on orders from Moscow in 1959. When the programme’s editor cried foul, alleging that Yaroslav’s backers had flooded the show with computerised phone-in votes, the story suddenly became irresistible abroad. After all, stuffed ballot boxes have figured prominently in recent Ukrainian politics, sparking the 2004 orange revolution.

The contretemps is being framed as yet another example of the divide between western and eastern Ukraine, where the Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That would be a mistake. The real story of Ukraine is the astonishing rapprochement between east and west, which began in 1991 and accelerated after 2004, when big business decided it paid to buy into independence.

Related:

Did Yushchenko Poison Himself?

Canada’s Secret Role in Ukraine (Orange Revolution)

Euromaidan 2014 – Orange Revolution – War in Donbass

Chas Freeman: The Many Lessons of the Ukraine War

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

I want to speak to you tonight about Ukraine – what has happened to it and why, how it is likely to emerge from the ordeal to which great power rivalry has subjected it; and what we can learn from this. I do so with some trepidation and a warning to this audience. My talk, like the conflict in Ukraine, is a long and complicated one. It contradicts propaganda that has been very convincing. My talk will offend anyone committed to the official narrative. The way the American media have dealt with the Ukraine war brings to mind a comment by Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

Chas Freeman: The Many Lessons of the Ukraine War

M-TAC: Nazis “R” Us

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Previously on “Ukes, Kooks & Spooks,” we peeked at the far-right underbelly of M-TAC, Ukraine’s “largest and most powerful brand of clothing and equipment in the tactical and military industry,” that became central to Volodymyr Zelensky’s “de facto uniform” after Russia invaded Ukraine. But “Zelensky branded by fascists?” just scratched the surface.

M-TAC: Nazis “R” Us (archived)

Previously:

Azov Recruitment Ad Sponsored by the US

Ukraine’ Assassination Program Has Gotten So Out of Control that Some of Its Members Are Starting to Speak Out

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Assassination Program Bears Parallels With the Vietnam Phoenix Program and Israeli Mossad Operations Targeting Palestinians

On September 9th, The Economist ran a remarkable story entitled “Ukraine’s Assassination Programme: Its Agents Have Become Expert in Dark Revenge.”

Ukraine Assassination Program Bears Parallels with the Vietnam Phoenix Program and Israeli Mossad Operations Targeting Palestinians

How Canada emerged as a haven for Ukrainian SS “Galicia Division” veterans and other Nazi accomplices and war criminals

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Aided by the corporate media, Canada’s political establishment is trying to claim that parliament’s honouring last Friday of the 98-year-old Nazi Waffen SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka was the result of an unfortunate gaffe—a gaffe for which the House of Commons Speaker, Anthony Rota, is exclusively responsible.

The World Socialist Web Site has already exposed this false narrative at length.

Here we are republishing an article that first appeared on the WSWS on July 29, 2019. It discusses how and why Ottawa threw open its doors to Hunka and some 2,000 Ukrainian SS veterans. As the article explains, this was part of a broader policy of providing a safe haven to the Nazis’ Ukrainian fascist allies, so as to use them to advance Canadian imperialism’s interests at home and abroad.

Working in concert with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), which had been founded at the government’s behest at the beginning of World War II, Ottawa used the Ukrainian fascists to combat left-wing influence among Canada’s large Ukrainian worker-farmer population and the labour movement more generally. The government also worked with the UCC to foment a rabidly anticommunist, virulently anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism in collaboration with the CIA and British intelligence.

In recent decades, as Canada’s government under Liberals and Conservatives alike has worked with Washington and its NATO partners to harness Ukraine to NATO and the European Union, Ottawa’s alliance with the UCC and the Ukrainian far right has become an ever more important element of Canadian foreign policy.

A more extensive examination of the alliance between Canadian imperialism and the Ukrainian far right can be found in the May 2022 WSWS series “Canadian imperialism’s fascist friends,” including its fourth part: “How Ottawa provided the Ukrainian fascists refuge and incubated and promoted far-right Ukrainian nationalism.”

How Canada emerged as a haven for Ukrainian SS “Galicia Division” veterans and other Nazi accomplices and war criminals