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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1348651)	3/15/2022 7:36:14 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 1573983

Chris Hedges: Waltzing to Armageddon March 15, 2022 Save The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter. Bus burning on a road from Kharkiv to Kiev as Russia invades Ukraine on Feb. 24. (Yan Boechat/VOA) By Chris Hedges ScheerPost.com The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism. That is why they have resurrected it. The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance. This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of U.S. troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a cynical goal of the Western alliance, has now solidified an expanding and resurgent NATO and a rampant, uncontrollable militarism. The masters of war may be ecstatic, but the potential consequences, including a global conflagration, are terrifying. Peace has been sacrificed for U.S. global hegemony. It has been sacrificed for the billions in profits made by the arms industry. Peace could have seen state resources invested in people rather than systems of control. It could have allowed us to address the climate emergency. But we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace. Nations frantically rearm, threatening nuclear war. They prepare for the worst, ensuring that the worst will happen. “The Butcher’s Cut,” illustration by Mr. Fish. So, what if the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point where trees will soon begin to die off en masse? So what if land ice and ice shelves are melting from below at a much faster rate than predicted? So what if temperatures soar, monster hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastate the earth? In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry. It is collective madness. The march towards protracted conflict with Russia and China will backfire. The desperate effort to counter the steady loss of economic dominance by the U.S. will not be offset by military dominance. If Russia and China can create an alternative global financial system, one that does not use the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, it will signal the collapse of the American empire. The dollar will plummet in value. Treasury bonds, used to fund America’s massive debt, will become largely worthless. The financial sanctions used to cripple Russia will be, I expect, the mechanism that slays Americans, if not immolation in thermonuclear war. Washington plans to turn Ukraine into Chechnya or the old Afghanistan, when the Carter administration, under the influence of the Svengali-like National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, equipped and armed the radical jihadists that would morph into the Taliban and al Qaeda in the fight against the Soviets. It will not be good for Russia. It will not be good for the United States. It will not be good for Ukraine, as making Russia bleed will require rivers of Ukrainian blood. Pandora’s Box of Evils The decision to destroy the Russian economy, to turn the Ukrainian war into a quagmire for Russia and topple the regime of Vladimir Putin will open a Pandora’s box of evils. Massive social engineering — look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Vietnam — has its own centrifugal force. It destroys those who play God. The Ukrainian war has silenced the last vestiges of the Left. Nearly everyone has giddily signed on for the great crusade against the latest embodiment of evil, Vladimir Putin, who, like all our enemies, has become the new Hitler. The United States will give $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Biden administration authorizing an additional $200 million in military assistance. The 5,000-strong EU rapid deployment force, the recruitment of all Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, into NATO, the reconfiguration of former Soviet bloc militaries to NATO weapons and technology have all been fast tracked. Germany, for the first time since World War II, is massively rearming. It has lifted its ban on exporting weapons. Its new military budget is twice the amount of the old budget, with promises to raise the budget to more than 2 percent of GDP, which would move its military from the seventh largest in the world to the third, behind China and the United States. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, left, visits NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, on right, Dec. 11, 2021. (NATO) NATO battlegroups are being doubled in size in the Baltic states to more than 6,000 troops. Battlegroups will be sent to Romania and Slovakia. Washington will double the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland to 9,000. Sweden and Finland are considering dropping their neutral status to integrate with NATO. This is a recipe for global war. History, as well as all the conflicts I covered as a war correspondent, have demonstrated that when military posturing begins, it often takes little to set the funeral pyre alight. One mistake. One overreach. One military gamble too many. One too many provocations. One act of desperation. Russia’s threat to attack weapons convoys to Ukraine from the West; its air strike on a military base in western Ukraine, 12 miles from the Polish border, which is a staging area for foreign mercenaries; the statement by Polish President Andrzej Duda that the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons, by Russia against Ukraine, would be a “game-changer” that could force NATO to rethink its decision to refrain from direct military intervention — all are ominous developments pushing the alliance closer to open warfare with Russia. Polish President Andrzej Duda, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Lask air base in Poland on March 1. (NATO) Once military forces are deployed, even if they are supposedly in a defensive posture, the bear trap is set. It takes very little to trigger the spring. The vast military bureaucracy, bound to alliances and international commitments, along with detailed plans and timetables, when it starts to roll forward, becomes unstoppable. It is propelled not by logic but by action and reaction, as Europe learned in two world wars. Staggering Hypocrisy The moral hypocrisy of the United States is staggering. The crimes Russia is carrying out in Ukraine are more than matched by the crimes committed by Washington in the Middle East over the last two decades, including the act of preemptive war, which under post-Nuremberg laws is a criminal act of aggression. Only rarely is this hypocrisy exposed as when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the body: “We’ve seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs which are banned under the Geneva Convention.” Hours later, the official transcript of her remark was amended to tack on the words “if they are directed against civilians.” This is because the U.S., which like Russia never ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty, regularly uses cluster munitions. It used them in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq. It has provided them to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. Russia has yet to come close to the tally of civilian deaths from cluster munitions delivered by the U.S. military. The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter. No diplomacy. No attempt to address the legitimate grievances of our adversaries. No check on rampant militarism. No capacity to see the world from another perspective. No ability to comprehend reality outside the confines of the binary rubric of good and evil. No understanding of the debacles they orchestrated for decades. No capacity for pity or remorse. March 24, 1986: President Ronald Reagan, right, meeting with Elliott Abrams, center, about a trip to Central America. John Whitehead on left. (Reagan White House, Wikimedia Commons) Elliott Abrams worked in the Reagan administration when I was reporting from Central America. He covered up atrocities and massacres committed by the military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and by the U.S.-backed Contra forces fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He viciously attacked reporters and human rights groups as communists or fifth columnists, calling us “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” He was convicted for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. During the administration of George W. Bush, he lobbied for the invasion of Iraq and tried to orchestrate a U.S. coup in Venezuela to overthrow Hugo Chávez. Jan. 25, 2019: Elliott Abrams, left, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, addressing the media on Venezuela. (State Department) “There will be no substitute for military strength, and we do not have enough,” writes Abrams for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow: “It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense. We will need more conventional strength in ships and planes. We will need to match the Chinese in advanced military technology, but at the other end of the spectrum, we may need many more tanks if we have to station thousands in Europe, as we did during the Cold War. (The total number of American tanks permanently stationed in Europe today is zero.) Persistent efforts to diminish even further the size of our nuclear arsenal or prevent its modernization were always bad ideas, but now, as China and Russia are modernizing their nuclear weaponry and appear to have no interest in negotiating new limits, such restraints should be completely abandoned. Our nuclear arsenal will need to be modernized and expanded so that we will never face the kinds of threats Putin is now making from a position of real nuclear inferiority.” Putin played into the hands of the war industry. He gave the warmongers what they wanted. He fulfilled their wildest fantasies. There will be no impediments now on the march to Armageddon. Military budgets will soar. The oil will gush from the ground. The climate crisis will accelerate. China and Russia will form the new axis of evil. The poor will be abandoned. The roads across the earth will be clogged with desperate refugees. All dissent will be treason. The young will be sacrificed for the tired tropes of glory, honor and country. The vulnerable will suffer and die. The only true patriots will be generals, war profiteers, opportunists, courtiers in the media and demagogues braying for more and more blood. The merchants of death rule like Olympian gods. And we, cowed by fear, intoxicated by war, swept up in the collective hysteria, clamor for our own annihilation. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show “On Contact.”

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1348651)	3/15/2022 9:36:39 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 1573983

We know where at stands...perhaps you won't move to Israel because you wouldn't be welcome there.... Israel stunned by Ukrainian neo-Nazis Thierry Meyssan Voltaire Network Tue, 08 Mar 2022 00:00 UTC © Reuters/AP German Chancellor Olaf Scholz • Israeli PM Naftali Bennett Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center The state-organized presence of neo-Nazis within the Ukrainian army is not anecdotal, even if it is not possible to quantify it in a certain way. On the other hand, it is easy to count their victims. In general indifference, they have killed 14,000 Ukrainians in eight years. This situation is one of the causes of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Israel is confronted for the first time with what it could never have imagined: the support of its US protector to its historical enemy, Nazism. Israel faces an unexpected problem in the Ukrainian crisis: is it true, as Moscow claims, that the country is in the hands of a "gang of neo-Nazis" financed by Ukrainian and American Jews? If so, it is a moral duty for Tel Aviv to clarify its position on Jews supporting Nazis, regardless of any position on the Ukrainian crisis. The question is all the more cruel because the few American Jews who support or instrumentalize Ukrainian Nazi groups are a tiny group of a few hundred people, the Straussians, who are now in power in President Joe Biden's immediate circle. WHAT DO THE UKRAINIAN NEO-NAZIS REPRESENT? In February 2014, the "Revolution of Dignity," also known as "EuroMaidan," was a regime change sponsored by Straussian Victoria Nuland, assistant to Secretaries of State Hilary Clinton and John Kerry. In this context, a group of hooligan supporters of the Kharkiv soccer club, "Sect 82", occupied the premises of the oblast governorate and beat up the employees of the former regime. Become Minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov, who had been governor of Kharkiv during the former regime and one of the organizers of Euro 2012, authorized the formation of a paramilitary force of 12,000 men, around the hooligans of the "Sect 82" to defend the "revolution". On May 5, 2014, the "Azov Battalion" or "Eastern Corps" was officially formed under the command of Andriy Biletsky. The latter, known as the "White Führer", is a theoretician of Nazism. He had been the leader of the "Patriots of Ukraine", a neo-Nazi grouping that supported a Greater Ukraine and was violently anti-communist. Andriy Biletsky and Dmitro Yarosh founded together the "Right Sector" which played the main role on Maidan Square in 2014. This openly anti-Semitic, homophobic structure was financed by the godfather of the Ukrainian mafia, the Jewish billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky. Internationally, the "Right Sector" is violently opposed to the European Union and intends instead to form an alliance of Central European and Baltic states, the Intermarium. This is also the project of the Straussians who, since the 1992 Wolfowitz report, consider the European Union to be a more dangerous rival for the United States than Russia. You remember the intercepted telephone conversation between Ms. Nuland and the US ambassador, in which she exclaimed: "fuck the European Union" (sic). Dmitro Yarosh is an agent of NATO's stay-behind networks who organized an anti-Russian congress in Ternopol in 2007 with the Emir Doku Umarov, under the watchful eye of Victoria Nuland, who was the US ambassador to NATO at the time. Yarosh gathered neo-Nazis from all over Europe and Islamists from the Middle East to wage jihad in Chechnya against Russia. Later, he was the leader of "Stepan Bandera's Trident" (also known as "Tryzub"), a small group glorifying Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis. According to Stepan Bandera, genuine Ukrainians are of Scandinavian or proto-Germanic origin, unfortunately, they have mixed with Slavs, the Russians, whom they must fight and dominate. At the end of 2013, Yarosh's men and the youth of another Nazi group were trained in street fighting by NATO instructors in Poland. I was heavily criticized when I revealed this case because I had quoted a satirical newspaper as a note, however the Polish Prosecutor General opened an investigation which, of course, never came to fruition because it would have implicated the Minister of Defense [ 1]. By the summer of 2014, the Azov Battalion already included all these neo-Nazi groups, but not only them. They were sent to fight the rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk, which they did with pleasure. Their pay was increased to more than twice that of regular soldiers. The Battalion took the city of Marinka from the self-proclaimed Donestk People's Republic, where they massacred "separatists." In September 2014, the interim government tasked the National Guard with absorbing the Azov Battalion and removing some Nazi leaders from the outfit. In the October 2014 elections, two former Nazi leaders of the Azov Regiment, Andriy Biletsky and Oleh Petrenko were elected to the Rada (National Assembly). While the "white führer" sat alone, Petrenko joined the parliamentary group supporting President Petro Poroshenko. The Azov Battalion then became the Azov Regiment of the National Guard. In March 2015, the Minister of the Interior (still Arsen Avakov) negotiated with the Pentagon for military training to be given by U.S. Special Forces to the Azov Regiment as part of Operation Fearless Guardian. But immediately Representatives John Conyers, Jr. (Democrat, Michigan) and Ted Yoho (Republican, Florida) denounced this as folly. They argued that arming Islamists in Afghanistan had made possible the formation of al-Qaeda and the spread of terrorism. They convinced their colleagues that the United States could not train neo-Nazis without risking the consequences. The congressmen therefore forbade the Pentagon to pursue and arm the Azov Regiment with rocket launchers (MANPADs) during the vote on the defense budget [ 2]. However, the Pentagon returned to the charge and succeeded in having the amendment withdrawn. [ 3], prompting protests from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. © twitter During this period, Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona), a supporter of Russia's enemies, after having maintained links with the leaders of al-Qaeda and Daesh in Libya, Lebanon and Syria [ 4], visited a unit of the Azov Regiment, Dnipro-1. He warmly congratulated these brave Nazis who defy Russia as he had once congratulated these brave jihadists. It was at this time that the Azov Regiment recruited from abroad. They came from all over the West, including Brazil, Croatia, Spain, the United States, France, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Russia. However, the Minsk Agreement, which is guaranteed by Germany and France, formally forbids the Kiev authorities to hire foreign mercenaries. The Azov Regiment also organized youth camps for 15,000 teenagers and associations for civilians, so that the whole Regiment comprised about 10,000 men and at least twice as many "sympathizers. Andriy Biletsky could declare that the Regiment's historic mission was to unite "the white races of the world in a last crusade for their survival"...a crusade against the subhumans led by the Jews. Two reports by Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein, in his capacity as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, mention the war crimes committed by the Azov Regiment [ 5]. In 2017, an official Nato delegation, including officers from the United States and Canada, met officially with the Azov Regiment. A huge number of media outlets have devoted reports to Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups. All of them, without exception, were horrified by the ideology and violence of the Azov Regiment. As an example, the Huffington Post warned against the complacency of Ukrainian politicians in an article titled: "Note to Ukraine: Stop whitewashing the political record" [ 6]. In 2018, the FBI again came into conflict with the CIA. This time it was over US neo-Nazis who had trained with the Azov Regiment and returned to perpetrate violence on US soil. The enemy from within, the Rise Above Movement (RAM), was trained by the CIA in Ukraine [ 7]. After the Christchurch (New Zealand) attacks, which killed 51 people and injured 49 in October 2019, 39 members of the US House of Representatives wrote to the State Department to demand that the Azov Regiment be labeled a "foreign terrorist organization" (FTO) because the terrorist had frequented the Ukrainian organization. In 2020, billionaire Erik Prince, the founder of the private army Blackwater, signed various contracts with Ukraine. One of these contracts gave him the authority to supervise the Azov Regiment. Prince hoped to eventually take control of the Ukrainian arms industry inherited from the Soviet Union [ 8]. On July 21, 2021, President Zelensky promulgated a law on "indigenous peoples". It recognizes the enjoyment of human and civil rights and fundamental freedoms only for Ukrainians of Scandinavian or Germanic origin, but not for those of Slavic origin. This is the first racial law passed in Europe in 77 years. At the suggestion of Victoria Nuland, on November 2, 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Dmitro Yarosh as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, with the task of preparing the attack on the Donbass and Crimea. It is important to keep in mind that Yarosh is a Nazi, while Victoria Nuland and Volodymyr Zelensky are Ukrainian Jews (originally for Ms. Nuland who is now American). In eight years, from regime change to the Russian military operation not included, neo-Nazis in Ukraine have killed at least 14,000 Ukrainians. © twitter ISRAEL'S MORAL CHALLENGE President Zelensky replied to his Russian counterpart who denounced a "bunch of neo-Nazis" in power in Kiev that it was impossible because he was Jewish. As this was not enough, on the sixth day of the conflict, he accused Russia of having bombed the Babi Yar memorial where 33,000 Jews were massacred by the Nazis. Not only was he not supporting the Nazis, but the Russians were erasing their crimes. Without waiting, the Yad Vashem Memorial, the Israeli institution that preserves the memory of the Nazi "final solution of the Jewish question", issued an angry statement. It seemed outrageous to the Israelis that Russia would compare the Ukrainian far right with the Nazis of the Shoah and even more so that it would bomb a place of memory. Then Israeli journalists went to the crime scene to find that it had never been bombed. The Ukrainian president had lied. Then the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Preskov, invited the Yad Vashem Memorial to send a delegation to Ukraine to see for themselves, under the protection of the Russian army, what President Putin was talking about. A great silence followed. What if the Kremlin, like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was telling the truth? What if the Straussian Jews in the United States, the Ukrainian Jewish leader Ihor Kolomoysky and his employee the Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky were working with real Nazis? Immediately, the Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, went to Moscow and received Chancellor Scholtz in Tel Aviv, then phoned the Ukrainian president, whose bad faith was evident to all. Presented as yet another attempt at peace, this trip was in fact intended only to find out whether or not the United States was relying on real Nazis. Confused by his findings, Bennett called President Putin, whom he had left the day before. He was also phoning various heads of NATO member states. Questions It would be desirable for Naftali Bennett to make public what he has verified, but it is unlikely. He would have to open a forgotten file, that of the relations between certain Zionists and the Nazis. Why, then, did David Ben Gurion insist that Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism, was a fascist and possibly a Nazi? Who were the Jews who, before Adolf Hitler came to power, warmly welcomed an official delegation of the Nazi party, the NSDAP, to Palestine while it was practicing pogroms in Germany? Who negotiated the 1933 transfer agreement (the so-called "Haavara Agreement") and maintained an office in Berlin until 1939? How did half-Jew Vollrath von Maltzan become the purveyor of Zyklon B gas to the death camps? So many questions that historians usually leave unanswered. And today, is it true, as many witnesses claim, that Professor Leo Strauss taught his Jewish students that they had to build their own dictatorship, using the same methods as the Nazis, to protect themselves from a new Shoah? Clearly, Naftali Bennett did not buy into the Ukraine/NATO narrative. He said that the Russian president was not theorizing a plot, was not irrational and did not suffer from mental illness. On the contrary, when asked about the support of the Jewish state, President Zelensky replied: "I have spoken to the Prime Minister of Israel. And I tell you frankly, and this may sound a bit insulting, but I think I have to say it: our relations are not bad, not bad at all. But relationships are tested at times like these, at the most difficult times, when help and support is needed. And I don't think he [Bennett] is wrapped up in our flag." Israel should withdraw from the Ukrainian conflict. If it suddenly changes his mind about something else and gets into a fight with Washington, you'll know why. About the Author: *Thierry Meyssa*n is a political consultant and President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire ( Voltaire Network). References:

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1348651)	3/15/2022 9:37:00 PM
From: Broken_Clock	1 Recommendation Recommended By Winfastorlose Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1573983

Note to Ukraine: Stop Whitewashing the Political Record Listen too much to Kremlin pronouncements, and one might get the impression that the Ukrainian government in Kiev is comprised of nothing less than a malevolent and sinister fascist junta. By Nikolas Kozloff, Contributor New York-based political writer and photographer. Jan. 23, 2015, 05:34 PM EST \| Updated Mar. 25, 2015 This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email. Listen too much to Kremlin pronouncements, and one might get the impression that the Ukrainian government in Kiev is comprised of nothing less than a malevolent and sinister fascist junta. In light of Putin's own authoritarian tendencies, not to mention Russia's support for Ukrainian separatists, such talk is highly ironic and that is putting it mildly. But while Kremlin propaganda should be roundly dismissed, Ukraine still displays rightist-nationalist traits that are worrying and such trends must be addressed forthrightly, without resort to white-washing or side-stepping. For some time now, the political right in Ukraine has been gaining visibility. That, at least, is the impression I get after speaking with local activists on the independent left circuit in Kiev. During a recent research trip, I caught up with Denis Pilash, a veteran of student politics who participated in last year's Maidan protests which helped to topple the unpopular government of Viktor Yanukovych. Pilash tells me he first came into contact with the hard right long before Maidan ever took place. Rise of Svoboda "All the trouble started when rightists started targeting blacks, even though there were very few of them here in Ukraine," Pilash says. He adds that far right party Svoboda tried to stir up "anti-migrant hysteria" by holding rallies. Indeed, the party has sought to halt immigration and reserve civil service positions for "ethnic Ukrainians." In 2006, Pilash adds, he attended a punk rock concert in Kiev and at one point witnessed Nazi skinheads attacking an Azeri man. Pilash and his friends flew to the aid of the gentleman, which prompted the rightists to turn against them in turn and attack. According to Anton Shekhovtsov, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and an expert on Ukrainian politics, Svoboda exhibits several ideological strands, "including anti-communism, anti-liberalism, racism, anti-Russian sentiments, glorification of Ukrainian historical right-wing extremism and fascism, and heterosexism." In 2012, Svoboda was able to exploit the notion that it was the most radical party opposing Viktor Yanukovych, and the outfit garnered more than 10% of the vote in parliamentary elections. Some believe that Svoboda is ideologically inchoate. Take for example Tetiana Bezruk of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine. At a local Kiev café, I catch up with Bezruk, a researcher who is writing her thesis on Svoboda. The party, she says, isn't right wing precisely but more populist in orientation. Svoboda pretends it is nationalist but it favors European integration. "How do you reconcile such a strange contradiction?" I ask. "Exactly," Bezruk chimes in. Whatever the case, Svoboda espouses many traditional and conservative views. For instance, the party has argued that religious affiliation and ethnicity should be listed on official identity documents. Socially conservative, Svoboda also seeks an end to abortion in Ukraine. Moreover, the party has glorified Ukrainian partisans from World War II and brandishes rightist flags. Rightists On The Maidan Perhaps, the far right realized that its anti-immigrant messaging had been only modestly successful in Ukraine and so it shortly changed tack by opposing anarchists, feminists, and the LGBT community. According to the BBC, "ultra-nationalists, and their extreme right fringe," were "a small part of the overall campaign - a subgroup of a minority" during Maidan protests. Nevertheless, "for its numbers," the right has "played an outsized, though not decisive, role." Furthermore, "Euromaidan's political heads have at various points seemed unable, unwilling or even afraid to rein in the radical right." The BBC adds that many EuroMaidan supporters "bristle at, or deny, any claim that the movement contains an influential ultra-nationalist element, fearful this will be used to tar the entire movement...they simply call them 'patriots.'" During Maidan, Pilash began to feel a little politically uncomfortable. A native of the culturally diverse western Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia [also known as Ruthenia or Zakarpatts'ka Oblast'], Pilash has mixed ethnic roots. Over the course of protests, Pilash observed how many Ukrainians uttered nationalist slogans such as "glory to the nation and death to enemies." A couple of years ago, he adds, "this slogan was only used by a couple of fringe right wing groups." In Maidan, however, the slogan was embraced by a wider cross-section of people. The Guardian writes that Ukraine has paid a high price for tolerating right wing political theater. Though the right was very visible in Kiev during the Maidan, it played an even bigger role in eastern and southern regions of Ukraine where the protest coalition did not enjoy majority support. As a result, the local population became alienated and was pushed "even further away from the protest message." The Guardian adds, "This was not a Russian media invention. On the contrary, it happened as a result of the preceding protest coalition of the centrist opposition parties with Svoboda." Rightists in the Fold In the wake of Maidan, some leftist activists grew concerned that the right might achieve real political power. Take for example Denis Gorbach, an organizer with Autonomous Workers' Union, an anarcho-syndicalist group which seeks to organize industrial workers around Ukraine. At the end of February, 2014 Gorbach tells me, "there was a dangerous point when the entire governmental apparatus lay in ruins and the neo-Nazis were one of the few organized forces on the ground. So, that was kind of scary." Fortunately the right never took over the reins of power, though later Svoboda was incorporated into the new government and party members acquired various cabinet positions. Shortly thereafter, Svoboda suffered an electoral defeat in further parliamentary elections when the party failed to garner a 5% barrier to qualify. Nevertheless, the BBC notes that if far right parties had banded together and not splintered the vote, they might have qualified. The Guardian meanwhile notes "it is short-sighted and formalistic to conclude that the Ukrainian far right is insignificant based on the lack of electoral success. The rhetoric of many politicians which could be called centrist or even liberal has moved significantly to the right, competing for the increasingly patriotic and even nationalist voters." Indeed, an ominous air of impunity has seemed to descend upon Ukraine and leftists tend to agree with such interpretations. After Maidan protests ended, Pilash says, he was physically assaulted by a local right wing blogger. The man spotted Pilash on the street and beat the leftist activist while repeatedly shouting "communist!" Fortunately, Pilash managed to escape and wasn't severely injured. Nationalism and War If anything, the war with Kremlin-supported eastern separatists has made it even more difficult to question Ukrainian nationalism. Speaking in a local café near Maidan square, Bezruk tells me there's been a recent surge in patriotic feeling. For example, people are speaking more Ukrainian these days, and it's become important to demonstrate one's patriotism in school. Bezruk says that in some, but not all public elementary schools children are singing the national anthem more so than before. "It all forms part of this cute patriotism," she says, "where you supposedly love your country so much that you are willing to sing the anthem several times a day." To be sure, such a surge in patriotism may be natural in light of the war with Russian backed separatists and the very real possibility that Vladimir Putin might succeed in splintering Ukraine even further. The question, however, is whether the current government has gone too far in seeking to appease the nationalist right in the midst of hostilities. In light of recent developments, there's some evidence that President Poroshenko has done exactly that. Indeed, according to human rights activists Poroshenko has provided a Ukrainian passport to a Belarusian neo-Nazi. The man, Serhiy Korotkykh, served as a fighter in the eastern conflict zone and helped to defend Donetsk airport from Russian separatists. During a ceremony, Poroshenko awarded a medal to Korotkykh and praised the Belarusian as "courageous and selfless." Experts however claim that Korotkykh was a founder of a neo-Nazi group in Russia and point out the Belarusian had been charged for involvement in a Moscow bombing and was also detained in Minsk for allegedly stabbing an anti-fascist organizer. Needless to say, top Ukrainian authorities reject such claims as defamatory. Far Right and Azov Battalion Perhaps, Poroshenko is trying his utmost to get on the good side of volunteer battalions fighting in the east. As it turns out, Korotkykh is a member of the so-called Azov Battalion which espouses far right nationalism. According to the BBC, Azov is run by an extremist patriot group which considers Jews and other ethnic minorities "sub-human." The outfit has called for a white Christian crusade against such minorities, and sports Nazi symbols on its insignia. While Azov is only one of many volunteer groups fighting in the east, it has the backing of some top authorities in Ukraine. One infamous Azov commander is Andriy Biletsky, who has been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the police. The military figure has openly admitted that some men in his unit "are interested in their historical roots," though this may be difficult to understand for more modern, "uprooted" nations such as the United States. Biletsky moreover makes no apology for his controversial military insignia, which he says goes back some 600 years in Ukrainian heraldry. Though figures like Korotkykh and Biletsky are promoted by official circles, the Ukrainian media is notoriously shy about taking on rightist politics. According to the BBC, prominent Ukrainian newspapers ask no controversial questions when interviewing notable right-wingers. What is more, another news agency airbrushed out accusations of extremism when reporting on Poroshenko's awarding of a new passport to Belarusian Korotkykh. "There are significant risks to this silence," notes the BBC. "Experts say the Azov Battalion, which has been widely reported on in the West, has damaged Ukraine's image and bolsters Russia's information campaign." Left Activists' Growing Concern As the far right gains respectability in wider society, left activists watch with growing unease. When asked if he's concerned about the Azov battalion, Pilash remarks "Of course. These people attacked us even before the war and committed hate crimes. But now, they have real combat experience and have actually killed people. It's very dangerous when they return, and such fighters are glorified as heroes because they struggled for Ukraine and therefore one shouldn't question their loyalty or credentials. The mainstream has no real problem with these figures, and to the contrary fighters are promoted as heroes and true patriots." "There's no danger of the far right coming to power in Kiev," notes Denis Gorbach of Autonomous Workers' Union, though in a long-term strategic sense rightists may hope to install a dictatorship once the war is over. For the time being, the activist adds, there's an alliance of convenience between Kiev authorities and far right groups. Nevertheless, Gorbach says the authorities would like to rid themselves of extremists and "the army and police are trying to suppress the rightists. It's kind of obvious that all these far right folks are being sent to the front to make them die in high numbers and thereby lessen the threat to the government." In a report, the BBC sums up the situation in Ukraine quite succinctly. "The question of the presence of the far-right in Ukraine remains a highly sensitive issue, one which top officials and the media shy away from," notes the news outlet. "No-one wants to provide fuel to the Russian propaganda machine." Such "blanket denials," however, also hold dangers since this allows ultra-nationalists to "fly under the radar." Rather astoundingly, many Ukrainians are totally oblivious of the far right and don't even know what a neo-Nazi or fascist really is. "Nevertheless," the BBC adds, "neo-Nazis are indeed a fixture in Ukraine's new political landscape, albeit in small numbers. As a result, they have achieved a level of acceptance, even though most Ukrainians are unfamiliar with their actual beliefs. Ukraine's public is grossly under-informed about this. The question is, why doesn't anyone want to tell them?" It's a well taken question, and one which is certainly on the minds of Ukraine's independent left activists.