Peter Myers Digest: We are lying about Ukraine. Soros’ Foundation, NED and other fake NGOs are Brown Shirts and SS
|
(1) Senator Richard H. Black says, “We do not care how many Ukrainians die”
(2) Soros’ Foundation, NED and other fake NGOs are Brown Shirts and SS –
Lara Logan
(3) American journalist’s warning – We are lying about Ukraine on an
epic scale
(4) The Azov Battalion | The neo-Nazis of Ukraine
(5) Lara Logan compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele
(6) Western Ukraine was a headquarters of the Nazi SS – Lara Logan
(7) Robert Parry: Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change”
in 2014, & Neo-Nazi takeover
(8) Robert Parry: NYT didn’t tell its readers that Ukraine “heroes” were
Nazis, some even wearing Swastikas and SS symbols
(1) Senator Richard H. Black says, “We do not care how many Ukrainians die”
From: Kirill Borisovich Glasse <kirillborisovichglasse@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2022 19:10:22 +0400
Subject: senator Black (Schwarz) tells it like it is
Senator Richard H. Black – The US and NATO don’t care how many
Ukrainians die
28 Jun 2022
Djuki San
Russia Ukraine War: “We don’t care! The United States and NATO, we do
not care how many Ukrainians die. Not civilians, not women, not
children, not soldiers. We do not care. It’s become a great football
game. You know, we’ve got our team. They’ve got their team, rah rah. We
want to get the biggest score and run it up. And, you know, we don’t
care how many how many of our players get crippled on the playing field,
as long as we win.” ==
(2) We are lying about Ukraine. Soros’ Foundation, NED and other fake
NGOs are Brown Shirts and SS – Lara Logan
Lara Logan is a veteran reporter who has covered wars for 35 years. She
pulls no punches. – Peter M.
She’s a fighter! Watch the video, it’s less than 10 minutes, at
https://air.tv/?v=s7uh2HB1QI64xBIwgVG6SQ
On Soros’ OSF & NED:
4:50 “because the Open Foundation Societies and the National Endowment
for Democracy and all these other fake NGOs that are nothing more than
brown shirts and SS rolled into one were running their radical policy
through the United States embassy, through USAID, using our tax dollars
to slit our own throats. Now they’re covering their tracks in Ukraine,
not just hiding all the evidence of John Kerry’s son, Biden’s son, Nancy
Pelosi’s son, Mitt Romney’s son, by the way, who is disgusting as the
rest of them”
6:20 For crying in a bucket, wake up, people! Yes, there is real
suffering in Ukraine, there’s a real war going on, just as there were
real issues that were being protested in the wake of George Floyd’s
death, but they’re being exploited, by evil, horrible people who want to
rule over all of us and enslave us. And if you don’t think that’s true,
you think that’s a conspiracy theory, I got no time for you.
(3) American journalist’s warning – We are lying about Ukraine on an
epic scale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvfyBBnHABE
343,999 views 19 Mar 2022
There is so much misinformation about Ukraine that we have never seen
anything like it, we are lying on an epic scale, warned the famous
American journalist Lara Logan, who has been reporting on wars for 35
years, on the TV channel “Real America’s Voice “.
(4) The Azov Battalion | The neo-Nazis of Ukraine
The Azov Battalion | The neo-Nazis of Ukraine
G. Sampath
MARCH 20, 2022 09:17 UPDATED: MARCH 20, 2022 22:08
The far-right militia, once banned by the U.S., is part of Ukraine’s
National Guard
When Russia annexed Crimea in February 2014, it faced no military
resistance. Ukraine did not have an adequate number of combat-ready
troops to mount a defence. Subsequently, when Russia-backed separatists
took over government buildings in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region as a
prelude to full-fledged insurgency, the Ukrainian military again proved
unable to quell the rebellion. It was against this background that the
Azov Battalion was formed in May 2014.
The Azov began as a military infantry unit made up of civilian
volunteers drawn from far-right, neo-Nazi groups that were active in
Ukraine, such as the Patriot of Ukraine gang and the Social National
Assembly (SNA). With its highly motivated band of fighters, the Azov
unit recaptured the strategic port city of Mariupol from the
separatists. Following this crucial military triumph — which had eluded
the official forces of Kyiv — the Azov unit was integrated into the
National Guard of Ukraine in November 2014.
In 2016, the Azov set up its political wing, the National Corps Party,
under the leadership of Andriy Biletsky, an ultra-Nationalist who was a
Member of Parliament from 2014 to 2019 and has said on record it is
Ukraine’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final
crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior humans]”.
The military uniforms of the Azov feature Nazi insignia and its fighters
have been photographed with tattoos of Nazi symbols such as the
swastika. On the eve of the launch of National Corps, its members took
out a Nazi-style raised-fist, torch-lit march through the streets of
Kyiv. Members of the Azov militia also do street patrols where, in the
name of enforcing what it calls ‘Ukrainian order’, they have been known
to attack Roma and other ethnic minorities, and LBGT events. The
Ukrainian National Guard has released videos of Azov fighters greasing
bullets with pig fat, apparently for use against the Muslim Chechens
fighting among the Russian forces.
Rights violations
Different human rights bodies, including the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International, have accused
Azov fighters, along with those form other volunteer battalions, of
human rights violations, including torture, kidnappings, and
extra-judicial executions. Over the years, the U.S. stance on the Azov
has swung between proscription (driven by acknowledgement of its
neo-Nazi politics) and sly collaboration (on the grounds of geopolitical
pragmatism). In 2015, the U.S Congress passed a resolution stating that
military aid for Ukraine cannot be used for funding, arming or training
the Azov Battalion. But in 2016, the ban was rolled back, reportedly
under Pentagon pressure. Since then, there have been unsuccessful
efforts by Congress members — one of whom has described it as a
“neo-Nazi paramilitary militia” — to designate the Azov as a ‘Foreign
Terrorist Organisation’. For all that, Azov social media channels are
rife with videos of militia members training with American-made weapons.
Similar contradictions were also on display, for instance, in the way
Facebook has reacted to the Azov. In 2016, it designated the Azov
battalion a “dangerous organisation”. In 2019, it placed the Azov in the
same category as the Islamic State (IS) and banned it. But after the
Russian invasion on February 24, Facebook reversed the ban, allowing
expressions of praise for the Azov. Significantly, the Azov has always
had a pan-Ukrainian dimension, with documented links to American white
supremacist groups such as the Rise Above Movement (RAM). It has
volunteer fighters from different parts of Europe. It regularly conducts
military training camps for civilians, including children, and has tried
to build a ‘cool’ sub-culture around nationalism, militarism and
physical sports – its mixed martial arts tournaments are quite popular.
Its spokespersons have reiterated their intent to eventually ‘take over’
Kyiv and have said Ukraine needs a dictator to set things right.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military
operation” to carry out a “demilitarization” and “denazification” of
Ukraine, he appeared to be referring to the neo-Nazi militias such as
the Azov, who – with the blessings of the Ukrainian state – have been at
the forefront of Kyiv’s military campaign against the Russia-backed
separatist groups. Until the Russian invasion, many in the Ukrainian
mainstream viewed the rise of the Azov with concern. After all, they
were a law onto themselves and did not defer to the state — while their
military units could operate independent of the Ukrainian chain of
command, their street patrol units did not answer to the police, and
their defiance of the law went unpunished. But the Russian invasion —
belying its stated aim of denazification — may well end up laundering
the Azov’s neo-Nazi baggage, as seen with Facebook’s U-turn, and
strengthen the far-right forces, not just in Ukraine but beyond as well,
which isn’t good news for Europe’s liberal democratic order.
(5) Lara Logan compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele
https://www.thewrap.com/lara-logan-ukraine-nazi-comments-endorsed-kremlin/
Russian Officials Endorse Lara Logan’s Comments Linking Ukrainian
Soldiers to Nazis and Occultism
The disgraced Fox Nation host previously said she did not ”buy“ the fact
that the Russian-led invasion has created a humanitarian crisis
Natalie Oganesyan | March 21, 2022 @ 6:15 PM
Kremlin-affiliated officials on Twitter endorsed war correspondent Lara
Logan’s comments after she linked Ukrainian battalions to Nazis and
Third-Reich occultism, and dismissed Russia’s invasion as having caused
a humanitarian crisis in the former Soviet republic.
Last week, the former Fox Nation host — who was ghosted by the
organization after she compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Nazi war criminal
Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor known as the “Angel of Death” —
lamented the amount of misinformation from the front lines in an
interview with the far-right platform Real America’s Voice.
“I don’t buy it for a second, and I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “I
really think that there’s so much misinformation. We’ve never really
seen anything like it. I mean, I’ve been covering wars now for 35 years.”
She added, “There’s a long history of the United States and our
intelligence agencies funding and arming Nazis in Ukraine.” Logan
continued to point out that there are photographs available online
depicting Ukrainian soldiers holding up the NATO flag alongside Nazi
emblems like the swastika and black sun.
Snippets of her conversation were widely spread by the verified accounts
of Russian officials, like Russia’s deputy permanent representative to
the United Nations Alexander Alimov. The official account for Russia’s
Council of Europe — whose rights of representation were recently
suspended — also tweeted the conversation.
Emmy Award winner ??journalist Lara Logan: Western MSMs deliberately
turn a blind eye to the facts of manifestations of Nazism in ??. ‘You
can find pictures of the Azov battalion, funded by US & NATO, online
holding up the NATO flag and swastika’.
Source: https://t.co/5i96Oje1p5 pic.twitter.com/vICoGWBuuB
— Alexander Alimov (@A__Alimov) March 19, 2022 “The Azov battalion,
which is founded by the United States and NATO has been killing
civilians in eastern Ukraine” – News and Documentary Emmy Award-wining
journalist Lara Logan spoke out about Ukraine, Nazism and the Western
media. pic.twitter.com/m6LODHmFkF
— RussianMissionCoE (@CoE_Russia) March 20, 2022 According to reporting
from Newsweek, “far-right and even neo-Nazi elements” are present within
some Ukrainian military forces, but analysts have also condemned Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s “propaganda” that the invasion is a “special
military operation” attempt to “de-Nazify” the country.
(6) Western Ukraine was a headquarters of the Nazi SS – Lara Logan
Lara Logan goes off in epic rant on Ukraine, citing ‘fake NGOs,’
Vindman, Hunter Biden, Romney’s son
March 21, 2022 | Terresa Monroe-Hamilton |
Journalist Lara Logan appeared on the Cowboy Logic podcast and proceeded
in an epic rant to expose Ukrainian connections involving those such as
Sen. Mitt Romney’s son, retired Colonel Alexander Vindman, the country’s
alleged ties to the occult, and its purported history involving the Nazis.
The wild ride highlighted her brutally honest and frank opinions
concerning Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She didn’t hold
back and made one controversial statement after another, tearing into
globalists and politicians alike during her rant.
Logan began by saying that “no one wants the people of Ukraine to
suffer.” Having said that, she then got to the meat of her allegations
charging that there are those here and abroad that want a bigger war and
don’t want de-escalation of the conflict.
“Sure, there’s disinformation on both sides, no doubt. The Russians are
good at it and so are we. However, there are certain things here that
are true and we need to ask more questions about them. For example, when
Putin says he’s going to rid the Ukrainian military of its Nazis and we
all jump up and down and say, ‘Oh! My gosh! That’s not true because look
at all the hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.’
Well, absolutely there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims of
the Holocaust. And you know what? They weren’t just killed by Germans. A
lot of them were killed by Ukrainians because western Ukraine backed the
Nazis and was a headquarters of the Nazi SS,” Logan stated.
“And when you see that black sun of the occult on uniforms of Ukrainian
soldiers… and by the way, not just one battalion, not just a handful of
soldiers… look at the pictures of female Ukrainian soldiers being
lionized and you know, sort of worshipped by the US media, right?
They’ve got that black sign of the occult. Now, why is that significant?
Well, that was another emblem of the SS, wasn’t it? Because there was an
occult dimension to the SS that we again don’t like to talk about,” she
continued.
“And why is that significant? Well, go to the Azov Battalion in the
Ukrainian military that is funded by the United States and NATO. Not
only do they have the black occult as the background of their logo, but
they have the sideways lightning symbol of the SS,” she pointed out,
noting that it is foundational to who the unit is. She also said to just
imagine how that would be viewed if one unit in the US military used
symbols of the Nazi SS.
“I encourage everybody to look at the work of a journalist, an American
journalist in Ukraine who has been there for years and years and years
and has done extraordinary work trying to uncover how Ukraine is at the
center of this cult of globalists. How it is a center of money
laundering for the oligarchs and their allies in the United States. How
it is at the center of Russia collusion and the whole false narrative.
How it was amazingly a Ukrainian dossier, right, that put Paul Manafort
behind bars…,” she railed.
Logan continued to point out Ukraine’s history while taking a smack at
retired Colonel Alexander Vindman, whom she called “moron” and said he
was “obviously a spy.” She mocked his staged history endlessly and
thoroughly. Then she astutely asked, “Where is counterintelligence?” and
said “There’s a reason that man was escorted from the White House at the
end of that theatrical trial,” referring to the impeachment of former
President Donald Trump.
She called George Soros’ Open Foundation Societies and “all these other
fake NGOs that are nothing more than brown shirts and SS rolled into
one” and who “were running their radical policy through the United
States embassy, through USAID, using our tax dollars to slit our own
throats.”
“Now they’re covering their tracks in Ukraine, not just hiding all the
evidence of John Kerry’s son, Biden’s son, Nancy Pelosi’s son, Mitt
Romney’s son… by the way, who is disgusting as the rest of them,” she raged.
Logan spoke of the bio labs there, some of which were leftover from the
Russians. She pointed out that the whole truth of that has not been
aired either.
List of Ukraine Biolabs removed by US Embassy – previously disclosed the
locations/details of these labs in a series of PDF files online. On Feb
26 2022 the official embassy website shut down the links to all 15
bioweapon labs.https://t.co/Eqr0xSeL5Ghttps://t.co/JX5Butp7W3
https://t.co/gp6CHwqvBA
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) March 11, 2022
She spoke of no one trying to de-escalate the conflict and then called
Zelenskyy a “moron,” claiming he was “selected” while prancing in
stilettos and black leather pants on “Dancing with the Stars.”
The journalist concluded by telling people to wake up. That there is
real suffering and a real war going on but there is also a lot of
propaganda out there coming from all sides.
“…they’re being exploited by evil, horrible people who want to rule over
all of us and enslave us. And if you don’t think that’s true, you think
that’s a conspiracy theory, I got no time for you,” she concluded.
(7) Robert Parry: Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change”
in 2014, & Neo-Nazi takeover
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/
The Mess that Nuland Made
July 13, 2015
Exclusive: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered
Ukraine’s “regime change” in early 2014 without weighing the likely
chaos and consequences. Now, as neo-Nazis turn their guns on the
government, it’s hard to see how anyone can clean up the mess that
Nuland made, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
As the Ukrainian army squares off against ultra-right and neo-Nazi
militias in the west and violence against ethnic Russians continues in
the east, the obvious folly of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy
has come into focus even for many who tried to ignore the facts, or what
you might call “the mess that Victoria Nuland made.”
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs “Toria” Nuland was the
“mastermind” behind the Feb. 22, 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine,
plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of
President Viktor Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible U.S.
mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for
“democracy.”
{photo} Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria
Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup
leaders.
To sell this latest neocon-driven “regime change” to the American
people, the ugliness of the coup-makers had to be systematically
airbrushed, particularly the key role of neo-Nazis and other
ultra-nationalists from the Right Sektor. For the U.S.-organized
propaganda campaign to work, the coup-makers had to wear white hats, not
brown shirts.
So, for nearly a year and a half, the West’s mainstream media,
especially The New York Times and The Washington Post, twisted their
reporting into all kinds of contortions to avoid telling their readers
that the new regime in Kiev was permeated by and dependent on neo-Nazi
fighters and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who wanted a pure-blood
Ukraine, without ethnic Russians.
Any mention of that sordid reality was deemed “Russian propaganda” and
anyone who spoke this inconvenient truth was a “stooge of Moscow.” It
wasn’t until July 7 that the Times admitted the importance of the
neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in waging war against ethnic
Russian rebels in the east. The Times also reported that these far-right
forces had been joined by Islamic militants. Some of those jihadists
have been called “brothers” of the hyper-brutal Islamic State.
Though the Times sought to spin this remarkable military alliance
neo-Nazi militias and Islamic jihadists as a positive, the reality had
to be jarring for readers who had bought into the Western propaganda
about noble “pro-democracy” forces resisting evil “Russian aggression.”
Perhaps the Times sensed that it could no longer keep the lid on the
troubling truth in Ukraine. For weeks, the Right Sektor militias and the
neo-Nazi Azov battalion have been warning the civilian government in
Kiev that they might turn on it and create a new order more to their liking.
Clashes in the West
Then, on Saturday, violent clashes broke out in the western Ukrainian
town of Mukachevo, allegedly over the control of cigarette-smuggling
routes. Right Sektor paramilitaries sprayed police officers with bullets
from a belt-fed machinegun, and police backed by Ukrainian government
troops returned fire. Several deaths and multiple injuries were reported.
Tensions escalated on Monday with President Petro Poroshenko ordering
national security forces to disarm “armed cells” of political movements.
Meanwhile, the Right Sektor dispatched reinforcements to the area while
other militiamen converged on the capital of Kiev.
While President Poroshenko and Right Sektor leader Dmitry Yarosh may
succeed in tamping down this latest flare-up of hostilities, they may be
only postponing the inevitable: a conflict between the U.S.-backed
authorities in Kiev and the neo-Nazis and other right-wing fighters who
spearheaded last year’s coup and have been at the front lines of the
fighting against ethnic Russian rebels in the east.
The Ukrainian right-wing extremists feel they have carried the heaviest
burden in the war against the ethnic Russians and resent the politicians
living in the relative safety and comfort of Kiev. In March, Poroshenko
also fired thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky as governor of the
southeastern province of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Kolomoisky had been the
primary benefactor of the Right Sektor militias.
So, as has become apparent across Europe and even in Washington, the
Ukraine crisis is spinning out of control, making the State Department’s
preferred narrative of the conflict that it’s all Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s fault harder and harder to sell.
How Ukraine is supposed to pull itself out of what looks like a death
spiral a possible two-front war in the east and the west along with a
crashing economy is hard to comprehend. The European Union, confronting
budgetary crises over Greece and other EU members, has little money or
patience for Ukraine, its neo-Nazis and its socio-political chaos.
America’s neocons at The Washington Post and elsewhere still rant about
the need for the Obama administration to sink more billions upon
billions of dollars into post-coup Ukraine because it “shares our
values.” But that argument, too, is collapsing as Americans see the
heart of a racist nationalism beating inside Ukraine’s new order.
Another Neocon ‘Regime Change’
Much of what has happened, of course, was predictable and indeed was
predicted, but neocon Nuland couldn’t resist the temptation to pull off
a “regime change” that she could call her own.
Her husband (and arch-neocon) Robert Kagan had co-founded the Project
for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change”
in Iraq, a project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George
W. Bush’s invasion.
As with Nuland in Ukraine, Kagan and his fellow neocons thought they
could engineer an easy invasion of Iraq, oust Saddam Hussein and install
some hand-picked client in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi was to be “the guy.” But
they failed to take into account the harsh realities of Iraq, such as
the fissures between Sunnis and Shiites, exposed by the U.S.-led
invasion and occupation.
In Ukraine, Nuland and her neocon and liberal-interventionist friends
saw the chance to poke Putin in the eye by encouraging violent protests
to overthrow Russia-friendly President Yanukovych and put in place a new
regime hostile to Moscow.
Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded National
Endowment for Democracy, explained the plan in a Post op-ed on Sept. 26,
2013. Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important
interim step toward toppling Putin, who “may find himself on the losing
end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
For her part, Nuland passed out cookies to anti-Yanukovych demonstrators
at the Maidan square, reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the U.S.
had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” declared “fuck
the EU” for its less aggressive approach, and discussed with U.S.
Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who the new leaders of Ukraine should be.
“Yats is the guy,” she said, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Nuland saw her big chance on Feb. 20, 2014, when a mysterious sniper
apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor shot
and killed both police and protesters, escalating the crisis. On Feb.
21, in a desperate bid to avert more violence, Yanukovych agreed to a
European-guaranteed plan in which he accepted reduced powers and called
for early elections so he could be voted out of office.
But that wasn’t enough for the anti-Yanukovych forces who led by Right
Sektor and neo-Nazi militias overran government buildings on Feb. 22,
forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives.
With armed thugs patrolling the corridors of power, the final path to
“regime change” was clear.
Instead of trying to salvage the Feb. 21 agreement, Nuland and European
officials arranged for an unconstitutional procedure to strip Yanukovych
of the presidency and declared the new regime “legitimate.” Nuland’s
“guy” Yatsenyuk became prime minister.
While Nuland and her neocon cohorts celebrated, their “regime change”
prompted an obvious reaction from Putin, who recognized the strategic
threat that this hostile new regime posed to the historic Russian naval
base at Sevastopol in Crimea. On Feb. 23, he began to take steps to
protect those Russian interests.
Ethnic Hatreds
What the coup also did was revive long pent-up antagonisms between the
ethnic Ukrainians in the west, including elements that had supported
Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War Two, and
ethnic Russians in the south and east who feared the anti-Russian
sentiments emanating from Kiev.
First, in Crimea and then in the so-called Donbas region, these ethnic
Russians, who had been Yanukovych’s political base, resisted what they
viewed as the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president. Both
areas held referenda seeking separation from Ukraine, a move that Russia
accepted in Crimea but resisted with the Donbas.
However, when the Kiev regime announced an “anti-terrorism operation”
against the Donbas and dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias
to be the tip of the spear, Moscow began quietly assisting the embattled
ethnic Russian rebels, a move that Nuland, the Obama administration and
the mainstream news media called “Russian aggression.”
Amid the Western hysteria over Russia’s supposedly “imperial designs”
and the thorough demonizing of Putin, President Barack Obama essentially
authorized a new Cold War against Russia, reflected now in new U.S.
strategic planning that could cost the U.S. taxpayers trillions of
dollars and risk a possible nuclear confrontation.
Yet, despite the extraordinary costs and dangers, Nuland failed to
appreciate the practical on-the-ground realities, much as her husband
and other neocons did in Iraq. While Nuland got her hand-picked client
Yatsenyuk installed and he did oversee a U.S.-demanded “neo-liberal”
economic plan slashing pensions, heating assistance and other social
programs the chaos that her “regime change” unleashed transformed
Ukraine into a financial black hole.
With few prospects for a clear-cut victory over the ethnic Russian
resistance in the east and with the neo-Nazi/Islamist militias
increasingly restless over the stalemate the chances to restore any
meaningful sense of order in the country appear remote. Unemployment is
soaring and the government is essentially bankrupt.
The last best hope for some stability may have been the Minsk-2
agreement in February 2015, calling for a federalized system to give the
Donbas more autonomy, but Nuland’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk sabotaged
the deal in March by inserting a poison pill that essentially demanded
that the ethnic Russian rebels first surrender.
Now, the Ukraine chaos threatens to spiral even further out of control
with the neo-Nazis and other right-wing militias supplied with a bounty
of weapons to kill ethnic Russians in the east turning on the political
leadership in Kiev.
In other words, the neocons have struck again, dreaming up a “regime
change” scheme that ignored practical realities, such as ethnic and
religious fissures. Then, as the blood flowed and the suffering
worsened, the neocons just sought out someone else to blame.
Thus, it seems unlikely that Nuland, regarded by some in Washington as
the new “star” in U.S. foreign policy, will be fired for her dangerous
incompetence, just as most neocons who authored the Iraq disaster remain
“respected” experts employed by major think tanks, given prized space on
op-ed pages, and consulted at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
(8) Robert Parry: NYT didn’t tell its readers that Ukraine “heroes” were
Nazis, some even wearing Swastikas and SS symbols
visit the link to see trooops flying the Wolfsangel symbol:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/06/robert-parry-when-us-house-saw-ukraines-neo-nazis/
ROBERT PARRY (2015): When US House Saw Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis
The U.S. government and media think Nazis in Ukraine are a myth. It
wasn’t always the case, as Robert Parry reported in 2015.
{photo} The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.
US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine Exclusive: The U.S. House of
Representatives has admitted an ugly truth that the U.S. mainstream
media has tried to hide from the American people: that the post-coup
regime in Ukraine has relied heavily on Nazi storm troopers to carry out
its bloody war against ethnic Russians, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry Special to Consortium News
June 12, 2015
Last February, when ethnic Russian rebels were closing in on the
Ukrainian port of Mariupol, The New York Times rhapsodically described
the heroes defending the city and indeed Western civilization the
courageous Azov battalion facing down barbarians at the gate. What the
Times didn’t tell its readers was that these “heroes” were Nazis, some
of them even wearing Swastikas and SS symbols.
The long Times article by Rick Lyman fit with the sorry performance of
America’s “paper of record” as it has descended into outright propaganda
hiding the dark side of the post-coup regime in Kiev. But what makes
Lyman’s sadly typical story noteworthy today is that the
Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has just voted
unanimously to bar U.S. assistance going to the Azov Battalion because
of its Nazi ties.
When even the hawkish House of Representatives can’t stomach these Nazi
storm troopers who have served as Kiev’s tip of the spear against the
ethnic Russian population of eastern Ukraine, what does that say about
the honesty and integrity of The New York Times when it finds these same
Nazis so admirable?
And it wasn’t like the Times didn’t have space to mention the Nazi
taint. The article provided much color and detail quoting an Azov leader
prominently but just couldn’t find room to mention the inconvenient
truth about how these Nazis had played a key role in the ongoing civil
war on the U.S. side. The Times simply referred to Azov as a “volunteer
unit.”
Yet, on June 10, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bipartisan
amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act from Reps. John Conyers Jr.,
D-Michigan, and Ted Yoho, R-Florida that would block U.S. training of
the Azov battalion and would prevent transfer of shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft missiles to fighters in Iraq and Ukraine.
“I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my
amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members
of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep
the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable
regions,” said Conyers on Thursday.
He described Ukraine’s Azov Battalion as a 1,000-man volunteer militia
of the Ukrainian National Guard that Foreign Policy magazine has
characterized as “openly neo-Nazi” and “fascist.” And Azov is not some
obscure force. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who oversees
Ukraine’s armed militias, announced that Azov troops would be among the
first units to be trained by the 300 U.S. military advisers who have
been dispatched to Ukraine in a training mission codenamed “Fearless
Guardian.”
[Later, under pressure from the Pentagon in December 2015 the amendment
barring funding to Azov was removed from the 2016 House Defense
Appropriations Act (HR 2685).]
White Supremacy
Torchlight parade of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Jan. 2015.
(Frest777/Wikimedia Commons)
On Friday, a Bloomberg News article by Leonid Bershidsky noted that
“it’s easy to see why” Conyers “would have a problem with the military
unit commanded by Ukrainian legislator Andriy Biletsky: Conyers is a
founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biletsky is a white
supremacist.
Biletsky had run Patriot of Ukraine [the precursor of the Azov
battalion] since 2005. In a 2010 interview he described the organization
as nationalist ‘storm troops’ … The group’s ideology was ‘social
nationalism’ — a term Biletsky, a historian, knew would deceive no one.
In 2007, Biletsky railed against a government decision to introduce
fines for racist remarks: ‘So why the “Negro-love” on a legislative
level? They want to break everyone who has risen to defend themselves,
their family, their right to be masters of their own land! They want to
destroy the Nation’s biological resistance to everything alien and do to
us what happened to Old Europe, where the immigrant hordes are a
nightmare for the French, Germans and Belgians, where cities are
“blackening” fast and crime and the drug trade are invading even the
remotest corners.’”
The Bloomberg article continued,
“Biletsky landed in prison in 2011, after his organization took part in
a series of shootouts and fights. Following Ukraine’s so-called
revolution of dignity last year, he was freed as a political prisoner;
right-wing organizations, with their paramilitary training, played an
important part in the violent phase of the uprising against former
President Viktor Yanukovych. The new authorities — which included the
ultra-nationalist party Svoboda — wanted to show their gratitude.
The war in the east gave Biletsky’s storm troopers a chance at a higher
status than they could ever have hoped to achieve. They fought fiercely,
and last fall, the 400-strong Azov Battalion became part of the National
Guard, receiving permission to expand to 2,000 fighters and gaining
access to heavy weaponry. So what if some of its members had Nazi
symbols tattooed on their bodies and the unit’s banner bore the
Wolfsangel, used widely by the Nazis during World War II?
In an interview with Ukraine’s Focus magazine last September, Avakov,
responsible for the National Guard, was protective of his heroes. He
said of the Wolfsangel: ‘In many European cities it is part of the city
emblem. Yes, most of the guys who assembled in Azov have a particular
worldview. But who told you you could judge them? Don’t forget what the
Azov Battalion did for the country. Remember the liberation of Mariupol,
the fighting at Ilovaysk, the latest attacks near the Sea of Azov. May
God allow anyone who criticizes them to do 10 percent of what they’ve
done. And anyone who’s going to tell me that these guys preach Nazi
views, wear the swastika and so on, are bare-faced liars and fools.’”
Though the House vote on June 10 may have shined a spotlight into this
dark corner of the U.S.-embraced Kiev regime, the reality has been
well-known for many months though played down in most of the Western
news media, often dismissed as “Russian propaganda.”
Even the Times has included at least one brief reference to this
reality, though buried deep inside an article. On Aug. 10, 2014, a
Times’ article mentioned the Nazi taint of the Azov battalion in the
last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.
“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular
army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic,
violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups
surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat,” the
Times reported.
“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their
actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry
and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the
village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its
flag.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at
War.”]
A Shiver Down the Spine
Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of
Stepan Bandera, Kiev, Jan. 1, 2015. (All-Ukrainian Union CC BY 3.0,
Wikimedia Commons)
The conservative London Daily Telegraph offered more details about the
Azov battalion in an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote:
“Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed
Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’ should send a shiver down
Europe’s spine.
Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several
thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of
the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training
inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the
neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of
the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”
Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that
some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed
admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.
Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian
group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph
article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The
historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the
White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A
crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had
dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population and
officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned
Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of
the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher
priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]
But a rebel counteroffensive led by ethnic Russians last August reversed
many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back
to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn
also encountered the Nazis. He wrote:
“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city
administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but
at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is
just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely
used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups.
Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian
nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and
other battalions, these claims are essentially true.”
SS Helmets
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As
filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV) Nazi symbols on
helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a
Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
More evidence continued to emerge about the presence of Nazis in the
ranks of Ukrainian government fighters. Germans were shocked to see
video of Azov militia soldiers decorating their gear with the Swastika
and the “SS rune.” NBC News reported:
“Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past when
German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with
Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.
The video was shot in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian
broadcaster TV2. ‘We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV
battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these
soldiers,’ Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television
station, told NBC News. Minutes before the images were taped, Bogen said
he had asked a spokesperson whether the battalion had fascist
tendencies. ‘The reply was: absolutely not, we are just Ukrainian
nationalists,’ Bogen said.”
Despite the newsworthiness of a U.S.-backed government dispatching Nazi
storm troopers to attack Ukrainian cities, the major U.S. news outlets
have gone to extraordinary lengths to excuse this behavior, with The
Washington Post publishing a rationalization that Azov’s use of the
Swastika was merely “romantic.”
“In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had
dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population and
officials in Kiev knew what they were doing.”
This curious description of the symbol most associated with the
depravity of the Holocaust and the devastation of World War II can be
found in the last three paragraphs of a Post lead story published in
September 2014. Post correspondent Anthony Faiola portrayed the Azov
fighters as “battle-scarred patriots” nobly resisting “Russian
aggression” and willing to resort to “guerrilla war” if necessary.
The article found nothing objectionable about Azov’s plans for
“sabotage, targeted assassinations and other insurgent tactics” against
Russians, although such actions in other contexts are regarded as
terrorism. The extremists even extended their threats to the government
of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko if he agrees to a peace deal
with the ethnic Russian east that is not to the militia’s liking.
“If Kiev reaches a deal with rebels that they don’t support,
paramilitary fighters say they could potentially strike pro-Russian
targets on their own, or even turn on the government itself,” the
article stated.
The Post article like almost all of its coverage of Ukraine was
laudatory about the Kiev forces fighting ethnic Russians in the east,
but the newspaper did have to do some quick thinking to explain a
photograph of a Swastika gracing an Azov brigade barracks. So, in the
last three paragraphs of the story, Faiola reported: “One platoon
leader, who called himself Kirt, conceded that the group’s far right
views had attracted about two dozen foreign fighters from around Europe.
“In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But
Kirt dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers, many
of them still teenagers, embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions
as part of some kind of ‘romantic’ idea.”
Despite these well-documented facts, The New York Times excised this
reality from its article about the Azov Battalion’s defense of Mariupol
last February. But isn’t the role of Nazis newsworthy? In other
contexts, the Times is quick to note and condemn any sign of a Nazi
resurgence in Europe. However, in Ukraine, where neo-Nazis, such as
Andriy Parubiy served as the coup regime’s first national security chief
and Nazi militias are at the center of regime’s military operations, the
Times goes silent on the subject.
Rather than fully inform its readers about a crisis that has the
potential of becoming a nuclear showdown between the United States and
Russia, the Times has chosen to simply be a fount of State Department
propaganda, often terming any reference to Kiev’s Nazi storm troopers to
be “Russian propaganda.” Now, however, a unanimous U.S. House of
Representatives — of all things — has acknowledged the unpleasant truth.
The late investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the
Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
He founded Consortium News in 1995.