Ukraine’s Banderite Nazis: Useful Idiots’ Sampling Error:
“(Zelenskiy) has assumed the status of the acceptable face of Europe’s ISIS, otherwise known as the Azov and Aidar Battalions, Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2, Kiev 1, Ukraina, Centuria, Right Sector — in total around thirty different hard right neo-Nazi groups, assimilated into the country’s armed forces, for whom the historical legacy of Stepan Bandera is that of national hero rather than Nazi collaborator:
Hyperinflating about a real, but limited far right populism problem in Ukraine ignores that it’s common to all European democracies. But it’s smaller in the bottom-up civic nationalist society of Ukraine than in more mono-ethnic European states. Does western Ukraine have a history of fascist ethno-nationalism represented by the figure of Stepan Bandera? Certainly. Is it an essentialistic and immutable feature of Ukrainian political identity? If it were Ukraine would never have elected a native Russian speaking Jew with 73% of the vote.
This Ukrainian’s 2019 Quora post about Bandera, Zelenskiy and Ukrainian nationalism paints a much more nuanced and realistic picture than the caricature of Code Pinkos’ and John Wight’s imagination:
“If Zelensky really supported Bandera, it would mean his undoing. Zelensky is a comedian, speaking mostly Russian, and a Jew….For Bandera those are enough reasons that Zelensky must not exist in Ukraine. As far as I remember the poll of early 2019 or late 2018, a bit more Ukrainian citizens dislike Bandera than like him. Bandera support never wins you majority of Center, South, and East of Ukraine. They never needed Bandera, he is nothing for them at best, rather an enemy. Most of my family, except one insane alcoholic, never said a good word about Bandera or his followers. More to it, to stand for Bandera means to be at odds with every neighbor country of Ukraine — what most Ukrainians need not. The more you support Bandera, the less votes you win in all-Ukrainian elections, as only in the West majority is really supportive of Bandera praisers. Zelensky faces an impossible job: he tries to win support in different ends of Ukraine, which were and are antagonists in their political choices. He may say that he likes Bandera, but that will cost him votes, and if he really supported Bandera, he wouldn’t win the elections.
P.S. Disclaimer: I voted for Zelensky in presidential elections, but just to bring down Poroshenko. I don’t like Zelensky and I’m not going to vote for his party in the parliament elections. If I believed that Zelensky really supports Bandera, I wouldn’t vote for him in any case.
I’ve had arguments with a Ukrainian friend about Bandera as an unacceptable hero. My American veteran friend in Kyiv married to a Ukrainian from Zelenskiy’s home town of Kryvih Rih says those in the center, south and east hate the Bandera hero worship of some westerners. Bandera support is clearly far less than the crazy Trumpster uncles at Thanksgiving dinner tables in America or Leghisti in Milan or Turin.
To prove Nazism is immutably embedded in Ukrainian society and institutions, Putinist disinformation parrots quote Jacques Baud, the Swiss ex-NATO staffer who denies the Russians’ Bucha killings and blames Ukraine for provoking the war:
“A key claim made by Baud, both to Delingpole and elsewhere, is that Ukraine’s armed forces have been thoroughly infiltrated by ‘far-right’ ultra-nationalists, and consequently that Russian ‘denazification’ was and is a legitimate Russian goal. Baud cites Reuters as having said there are 102,000 ‘far-right extremists’ in the Ukrainian armed forces, a figure that he appears to have considered ‘too good to check’. The Reuters article in fact says there were 102,000 ‘paramilitary’ soldiers in 2022, which isn’t quite the same as ‘far-right extremists’. The ultimate source for this number, of which Baud is seemingly unaware, is the 2022 edition of IISS’s Military Balance, which makes an estimate of 102,000 troops in the Ukrainian ‘Gendarmerie and Paramilitary’ forces, which consist of the National Guard (60,000) and the Border Guard (42,000).
The National Guard was formed from a core of 33,000 Internal Troops personnel in 2014 and was later expanded to include some volunteer battalions, including the Azov Battalion (with pre-war numbers perhaps approaching 2,500 troops) and the Donbas Battalion (~900), although not the ‘Right Sector’ (~5,000 strong). Of course we know that some members of Azov (at least) are far-right or neo-Nazi, but Baud is essentially making the ludicrous claim that everyone in every unit of the National and Border Guard has ultra-nationalistic, far-right political beliefs.
To smear everyone in the Ukrainian National Guard in this way is like the BBC’s smearing of UKIP as a ‘far-right’ organisation. Even if we just consider the so-called volunteer battalions (perhaps a few thousand in total), the notion that anyone volunteering to defend their country must be ‘far-right’ or ‘ultra-nationalist’ (rather than just patriotic or nationalist) isn’t credible, and it’s notable that James in particular has railed against ginned-up fears of the so-called ‘far-right’ plenty of times in the past — even making reference to this in the same London Calling podcast.
However, let’s try to establish the true extent of far-right ‘infiltration’ of the armed forces of Ukraine. We can do no better than by digging up the only other source that Baud makes reference to, which is a Jerusalem Post article that itself references a George Washington University report focusing on a far-right group called ‘Centuria’ that has supposedly infiltrated the Ukrainian armed forces. Baud calls this ‘disturbing’, but I have to admit I didn’t read the full 93 pages because I was disturbed by a spontaneous fit of giggles halfway down the first page. Perhaps I can illustrate my misgivings with some quotes:
[Centuria …] has attracted multiple members, including [some] now serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine
That’s multiple members — more than one. And some are in the military. One apparent member of the group […] attended an 11-month Officer Training Course at […] Sandhurst […]. Another apparent member […] attended the 30th International Week held by the German Army Officers’ Academy […] in Dresden
That’s exactly two with a military background.
The truth? In “Nazified” Ukraine’s 2019 election the far right got 2% of the vote that Zelenskiy got 73% of. If Ukraine’s Nazis justify Russian-sponsored DPR and LPR separatism and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then Wight should hope for a Russian invasion of Meloni-governed Italy, a 45% LePen-voting France, a 13% AfD voting Germany, Orban’s “migrants are poison” Hungary, Kaczynski’s Poland, Sweden’s misnamed xenophobic far right Democrats, Belgium’s Flemish Vlams Blok-governed region, 10% Golden Dawn voting Greece, Erdogan’s neo-Islamist Turkiye, Duterte’s Philippines….I’ll stop here since you’re smart enough to get the idea Wight and Code Pinkos can’t.
You need to take Tim Snyder’s Yale history course The Making of Modern Ukraine (free! no tuition!). You could then shed his neo-imperial Russified prejudices about Ukraine as a weak, corrupt failed state that’s contingent and negotiable. He could then stop seeing the “anti-hegemonic” Russia empire built on four centuries of genocidal conquests as permanent, when it’s this shambolic, brittle Eurasian hegemon that’s contingent and permanently prone to institutional collapse.
Grzegorz Rosslinski's biography of Stepan Bandera documents the tense ambiguity of the OUN-German relationship, in which Bandera spent most of the German-Soviet war imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
"At a meeting organized by Koch on 12 July 1941 in Lviv, all Ukrainian groups except for the
OUN-B expressed loyalty to the German authorities. The OUN-B activists came to the meeting
and wanted to discuss the questions of Ukrainian sovereignty and the release of their
Providnyk. Koch informed them that only the Führer could decide these issues.[1158]
According to Lebed’s autobiographical sketch from 1952, he, Iaryi, Shukhevych and Klymiv
met with five German officers of the Wehrmacht, a few days after Stets’ko’s arrest. The
German officers proposed to the OUN-B members to “improve cooperation on the basis of a
transfer of administrative power [to the OUN-B] on the territory occupied by the Wehrmacht”
if the OUN-B withdraws the “Declaration of Independence.” The OUN-B refused this
proposition.[1159]
As early as the second half of July 1941, the Germans were trying to prevent the printing and
distribution of OUN-B papers and other propaganda material.[1160] In late July, the OUN-B
leaders in Galicia assured the German side that they were prepared to collaborate, although
they were not pleased with the political situation.[1161] In August 1941, Klymiv reminded
OUN-B members that the organization was not fighting against the Germans but was trying to
improve relations with them, a statement that was reported to Berlin.[1162] At about the same
time, the Germans discovered an inscription in Kovel’: “Away with Foreign Authority! Long
Live Stepan Bandera!” This indicates that some sections of the OUN-B were ambiguous about
Germany and that Bandera was becoming a symbol of opposition to the Germans, even if he
himself wanted to collaborate with them.[1163] The German authorities dissolved the OUN-B
militia and parts of the OUN-B administration and established a new administration, which,
however, still included many OUN-B members.".....
In July and August 1942, 48 OUN-B members, among them Bandera’s brothers Vasyl’ and
Oleksandr, were delivered to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. In October 1943, a further
130 OUN-B members were delivered to Auschwitz from Lviv. In the camp, they had the rank
of political prisoners. They stayed in KZ Auschwitz I and worked where the chances of
survival were good, such as the kitchen, bakery, tailor’s workshop, and storerooms for objects
confiscated from new arrivals. They also received food parcels from the Ukrainian Red Cross.
Some OUN-B members at Auschwitz were released in December 1944. Some were evacuated
in January 1945 to other camps. Of the 48 delivered in 1942, 16 did not survive the camp."
The alternative to huge numbers is extinction, as Russia's leaders have made clear: https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection/.
The difference between the situation of today's Ukraine and the Jewish rebels of the Warsaw ghetto: western weapons and a sovereign state that can defend itself.
The common denominator between today's Ukraine and 1948 Israel: a secular Jewish leader like Ben-Gurion and a militarily incompetent adversary screaming with exterminationist rhetoric in inverse proportion to its military competence.
