UKRAINE: Historical Context PRIOR to the Current Russia-Ukraine Conflict

[JW Insider]

In the event of war, American main-stream media (MSM) becomes State Media. MSM outlets can become partisan on public bipartisan issues and might lose half their population of listeners, but at least they believe they will gain loyalty from the remaining half. But with the State apparatus pushing against a common national enemy or antagonist, these outlets can't afford to be seen as anti-American. Today, even attempts at neutrality are seen recently as pro-Putin, and therefore anti-American.  BBC journalists who just recently exposed the corruption of ultra-nationalists at all levels of the Ukrainian government are already re-writing their position to claim it's a recently coined "Putin myth." Wikipedia articles that discussed Russian issues with Ukraine, Georgia and Crimea have been undergoing very recent changes in the last few weeks, even to the point of re-titling links and names of newspaper articles so that it appears they were saying the opposite of what they originally said.

 

So I thought it would be a good idea to review some of the well-documented history, even as that "history" changes before our eyes.

 

For the first part, I'll deal mostly with the early background.

 

1930s through WW2:

The German Nazis worked with the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in order to sabotage, destabilize, and hopefully destroy the Soviet Union. Prior to WW2, the US and UK had not decided which side they would support in the event of war, and Churchill was ready to side with the "Axis Powers" wanting Germany to invade the USSR. Thus, pre-WW2, the US and UK supported the OUN. Immediately after WW2, the US and UK began supporting the OUN again. The OUN's UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) had been guilty of dozens of horrendous massacres, including the rounding up of Jews in barns,  for example, and then burning them alive in those locked barns. There is a direct link between this practice and the praise of OUN leaders by the current Ukrainian Nazis. In fact, during the Euromaidan uprising (around 2014), one of the most famous repetitions of this practice was the rounding up of about 50 counter-protesters into a building, and burning them alive in Odessa. 

 

To get a better understanding of OUN history, one can look up Category:War crimes committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army  Here there are links to articles about nearly 20 of the more famous Nazi war crimes and massacres committed by this Ukrainian army. Under Stepan Bandera, the OUN massacred Jews, Russians and communists. The Ukrainian Nazis established a so-called independent government allied with Germany and joined Hitler's attacks. They led their end of the Holocaust and pledged allegiance to Hitler, while Hitler's invasion of the USSR (1941) ultimately resulted in the deaths of about 26,000,000 Soviets and communists. By the end of the war, the OUN was forced "underground." 

 

Stepan Bandera's name is still celebrated in Ukraine. The anniversary of his birth is celebrated. His picture is still carried. Streets are named after him. Imagine if every major US city had streets and avenues named "Hitler Boulevard."  President Zelensky himself has been forced to acknowledge Bandera's "hero" status, although appears very uncomfortable about the number of streets named after Bandera:

 

"There are indisputable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing. He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine. But I think that when we name so many streets, bridges by the same name, this is not quite right," 

 

The commonly heard Ukrainian chant: "Glory to the Heroes" is actually a reference to the WW2-era Ukrainian "Nazi heroes" and has become the equivalent of the "Sieg Heil" among modern Ukrainian Nazis. 

 

There are dozens of modern pictures of Ukrainians with Nazi swastikas and other Nazi symbols. I won't put them here, but it's easy to find pictures of single large rallies with all these things at once, including the Svoboda party, Right Sektor, the red-black OUN flag, images of Stepan Bandera, and the "Sieg-Heil" salute. Of course, there are also pictures of American politicians (e.g., John McCain) standing with members of these same white supremacist, nationalist parties.

https://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/

 

In spite of the bad optics, the US and Ukraine were the only two countries that voted against a UN resolution condemning Nazism and Neo-Nazism just a few months ago (December 2021). Overwhelmingly, 130 countries voted in favor. Why not just abstain like several other countries, including Germany and all members of the EU, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand? It's because Russia is among the 30+ co-sponsors of the anti-Nazi resolution every year since 2015. And the US always votes against it, and US allies also feel they must abstain. As this article points out: https://countercurrents.org/2021/12/u-s-and-ukraine-only-two-countries-vote-against-un-resolution-condemning-nazism/  

 

On December 16, the UN General Assembly passed its annual resolution on “Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” with 130 countries voting in favor and only two in opposition. . . .

Sponsored by Russia and more than 30 other UN members, the resolution expresses concern about any form of glorifying Nazism, including putting up monuments and holding public parades honoring the Waffen SS – combat units within Nazi Germany’s military – or declaring them national liberation movements, among other things.

Russia has long taken issue with Ukraine and the three Baltic states – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – honoring individuals and organizations affiliated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

[JW Insider]

Assuming that many world-watchers these days were much younger than I am, and assuming that most of us also have short memories, I will jump to the major events of 1991-1994 or so, before going back to pick up more history from between the 1930s and the 1960's.

1991 to 1994:

The fall of the USSR included the US selecting Yeltsin and his vice-president (PM) Putin, to put into power. It was a violent coup in the midst of very large pro-communist protests in Moscow. The US gave tons of money and intelligence support. Naturally, the US backed the privatization of all major industries and factories. Yeltsin/Putin had US support to abolish the constitutional bicameral legislature to rule by Presidential Decree only and ban political parties (1993). Yeltsin sent tanks and shelled his own government buildings when the elected representatives refused to accept this.

 

The US then promised Yeltsin/Putin that NATO would no longer try to expand even "one inch to the East." But seeing that Russia might be able to integrate economically into Europe because of its control of 30% to 40% of Europe's gas supply (along with oil, potash and other resources) the US decided to break that promise. The US capitalists wanted the gas/oil monopoly, and used NATO as a bullying army to protect monopolistic interests against resources in Yugoslavia, Syria, and Iraq -- literally killing MILLIONS. The Nord Stream 2 was a cooperative effort between Germany and Russia to supply natural gas, which would also have interfered with the monopolistic goal of the US. Russia had already figured this out when NATO bombed Yugoslavia and when NATO used the strategy of recruiting parties of former European Nazis/ultra-nationalists to help use ethnic differences to split up countries.

 

Russian officials had declared countries along their border as the "Red Line" that NATO wouldn't cross, so the US pushed, not just NATO expansion to Russia's border, but even nuclear weapon across that line wherever possible -- so that Russia would be surrounded with US-supported troops and weapons. 

 

This is the part of the background to the recent statement by Adam Schiff, when he declared in January 2020, that we are using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there so we don't have to fight Russia here.”

 

But back to the 1990's. With the fall of the USSR, nearly all the once-Soviet countries suffered from the capitalist privatizations. In Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, for example, it quickly led to deep poverty, unemployment, etc. What was rarely reported in the West was actual starvation, mass emigrations, and even millions of deaths across these countries. With employment, trade and production interrupted, people tried to provide for their own dietary needs through gardening. This was much greater damage in Eastern Europe even than that of the Great Depression.

 

In GDP terms, the Ukraine itself has still not recovered from the 1991 independence. This makes a country ripe for partisan strife and civil war. About 30% of the population is Russian (or Russian-Ukrainian). The ethnic diversity around the ex-Soviet states left Russians, Georgians. Poles. Armenians in additional potential conflict in many places.  Examples were the conflicts in Azerbaijan and Armenia, and even worse in the case of Georgia, where wars occurred in 1991, 2004 and 2008 between Georgians in the south and "pro-Russia" Ossetians in the north bordering with Russia. Russia intervened especially in 2008.

 

Although Putin sees the fall of the USSR a "major geopolitical disaster of the century," he has not given indications that he supports reconstituting it, as the West will often claim. (Even by purposely mistranslating Putin's comments.) But he does acknowledge that tens of millions of Russians "patriots" immediately found themselves outside Russian territory.

 

This is why most of the Ukrainians who fled Ukraine during the last 8 years of US-supported bombing of their own citizens were actually fleeing to Russia. Even now many Ukrainians who end up fleeing to Poland would prefer to flee to Russia but the entire border is now an "eastern front."  A third of Ukrainians still claim nostalgia for the USSR, since their standard of living was somewhat higher for most of them. And Moscow's leadership often showed preferential treatment for Ukrainians, since many of those leaders were from Ukraine to begin with.  Polls (Gallup, Pew) show that this nostalgia, believing things were better, is actually a majority view in many former Soviet states, even parts of Germany.

 

But with the former state-backed industries sold off to capitalists and "oligarchs," there has also been a terrible influence of corruption along with an associated right-wing influence in politics. The oligarchs (and oligarch-backed politicians) were inclined to pay the OUN and neo-Nazi street gangs to serve as their own mafia protection, which helped legitimized the Nazi problem. (Should note that the word "oligarch" tends to imply non-Western corruption, but it's just as true in the West that the billionaire pharmacy leaders, the billionaire tech leaders, the billionaire petroleum giants, etc., are just as much oligarchs, and also spend millions upon millions in the West to influence decisions of government.)

 

Ukraine's Nazi problem is openly out of control, but similar issues have arisen in Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, etc.

[Anna]

Thanks for your analysis JWI. All I can say is Satan has his grubby fingers in everything. It's hard to know what are facts and what is fake. So much corruption in every facet of life...

[Anna]

I have just been listening to a discussion.... actually it was the presentation of a bill to the house of commons about cracking down on illegal wealth in the UK. Finally! However, the funny, or I should say the sad thing is that no doubt some of the MPs there may have friends, or may themselves be directly or indirectly involved in illegal wealth. Ha! 

Addition: the reason for this bill of course is because of the recent spotlight on corrupt Russian oligarchs and the fact that London is the money laundering capital of the world. 

[Space Merchant]

7 hours ago, Anna said:

I have just been listening to a discussion.... actually it was the presentation of a bill to the house of commons about cracking down on illegal wealth in the UK. Finally! However, the funny, or I should say the sad thing is that no doubt some of the MPs there may have friends, or may themselves be directly or indirectly involved in illegal wealth. Ha! 

Addition: the reason for this bill of course is because of the recent spotlight on corrupt Russian oligarchs and the fact that London is the money laundering capital of the world. 

It should be noted that those of a specific Status may dodge a couple of bullets in the UK; smaller fish will get hit, but not the largest ones in the pond. Likewise with other countries, even the US, in which there is a lot of corruption revolving around money.

[JW Insider]

The situation from about the time of the "Orange revolution" in the decade or so prior to the 2014 "Maidan revolution:"

2000s-2013:

Ukraine was pretty much split into two political groups. Each election allowed them only two choices, and neither of them ever did much good. One choice would be a politician who wanted to work with the EU, NATO and have US support. The second option would be a politician who wanted to work with Russia, or was at least for neutrality. But neither choice ever really resulted in help from US/NATO or Russia. Still, western Ukraine tended for option 1, and eastern Ukraine tended for option 2.

Easterners, more of them Russian-language speakers, still saw the old Soviet factories as a way to provide employment and products for economic trade, and this was seen as a way out of the severe economic hardship of the 1990s. Westerners, more of them Ukrainian-language speakers, looked for new opportunities with the EU and the US. (Languages were actually very mixed on both sides.)

The 2004 election was close, and resulted in mostly western Ukraine protesting when Yanukovych won. He was considered too "pro-Russian." They ran the election again and this time Yushchenko won. He was considered pro-EU. The protests on both sides at this time was dubbed the "Orange Revolution" (2004). Right-wing nationalists and white supremacists, Nazis, and Neo-Nazis (Svoboda, Popular Front, Right Sektor, etc.) also ran for positions in parliament, the cabinet, and the military. Especially from 2004 to 2007 was a time when statues of Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera went up all over Ukraine.

[TrueTomHarley]

Let’s feed this one to @JW Insiderfor his inspection. Will he believe it? It’s from the same people who said there’s not a chance they would invade when they were quite obviously amassing for invasion. On the other hand, we all know about the love affair with gain-of-function research.

https://youtu.be/YdGsVXMdbxs

[JW Insider]

3 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Will he believe it?

Yes. I believe the US funded bio-labs in Ukraine were openly admitted in 2016. They didn't become an "accusation" until just now.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 minute ago, JW Insider said:

Yes. I believe the US funded bio-labs in Ukraine were openly admitted in 2016. They didn't become an "accusation" until just now.

You almost would think it would make more sense for Russia to raise this admission before invasion, not after. Get a few more people to see their point of view that way. 

[JW Insider]

Copied from https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-03-07/Russia-reveals-evidence-of-U-S-funded-bio-program-in-Ukraine-18cUbBlPXhu/index.html

--------------------------all of the below is copied---------------------

U.S. embassy deletes files on Ukrainian bio-labs

According to a report of The Rio Times and a Twitter message posted by the Brazilian new agency's investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, the American Embassy in Ukraine on February 26 removed all documents about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in Ukraine from its website. But they forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kyiv and Odesa.

One of the old labs financed by the U.S. in Ukraine is located in Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city. In January 2016, at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers died there from a flu-like virus in two days while another 200 soldiers were hospitalized. However, the Ukrainian government did not provide details on the soldiers who died.

 

A screenshot of The Rio Times' investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva's Tweet.

U.S.-funded overseas bio-labs concerns

The U.S. has set up over 200 bio-labs in 25 countries and regions across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union, with 16 in Ukraine alone.

Some of the places where the labs are based have seen large-scale outbreaks of measles and other dangerous infectious diseases, triggering international concerns about the safety of U.S. overseas laboratories.

[Anna]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

You almost would think it would make more sense for Russia to raise this admission before invasion, not after. Get a few more people to see their point of view that way. 

That's exactly what I was thinking.

[Anna]

Some interesting reading here from the Russian side. (Google translate reads a little like Dmitar in places).

https://ria-ru.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

The link may not open right so here is the original page:

https://ria.ru/