About a hundred years have passed as Anglo-Saxon elite made another attempt to use Nazism for launching a ram attack against Russia. This time the role of Germany in the 1930s is to be played by Ukraine of our time, or to be more precise, the segment of Ukraine’s society which has failed to draw lessons from WWII. The five months of Ukraine’s «nationalist revolution» offer ample food for thought allowing to get to the bottom of what is behind the staged coup, what goals it pursues and who acts as its driving force…
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Pravy Sector radical nationalist group has come to power as a result of Maidan events in Kiev. Respectable opposition parties Batkivschyna and UDAR have become hostages in the hands of radicals who grabbed the key government posts after the coup, including the Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine. It has resulted in establishing their control over the military, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and special services. Now they appoint their people to top positions in the emerging National Guard being formed by Maidan Self-Defense, Trizub, the Patriot of Ukraine and other radical and anarchist armed groups making up Pravy Sector. The National Guard is created to carry out a broad range of missions from guarding private property to quelling protests. No matter Turchinov and Yatsenyuk put on airs trying to look important, the real control over the defense and power enforcement establishment is exercised by secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council Andriy Parubiy (Patriot of Ukraine) and his deputy, former mercenary in the ranks of Chechen separatists, Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of Trizub (full name – Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organization «Tryzub»).
Ukrainian radicals stepped on this path long ago adamant to achieve the set goals. They got support from Ukrainian nationalist centers abroad and foreign special services, especially American ones. After WWII the United States, Canada, Germany and some other states provided refuge to thousands of Ukrainian nationalists who escaped to the West trying to evade responsibility for collaboration with Hitler’s fascists and crimes committed against their own people. They got safe haven to be used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The remaining Nazi collaborators cherished a hope to take revenge with the help of Western special services.
The Bandera followers united under the banners of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-R) were the most die-hard ones, the ideology, traditions and even the structure of the organization, including the OUN security service, have remained unchanged. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) joined the ranks creating the union of OUN-UPA.
In 1991 after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Bandera ideology oriented diaspora started to restore the OUN-R cells on Ukrainian soil. The Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists was used as a cover. The West believed the Congress could come to power by winning the majority of seats in the Ukraine’s parliament. There were multiple feminist, educational, youth and other groups emerged to pursue the same goal – the promotion of the idea to re-establish a united, independent national state on Ukrainian ethnic territory, which according to their views includes the chunks of land to be taken away from Russia, Belarus and Poland.
The OUN-UPA Brotherhood named after General Roman Shukhevych was formally established by the end of April 1991 in Lviv. In October 1993 Trezub, a kind of closed club group named after Stepan Bandera, emerged to become a militarized wing of OUN-R.
It should be made clear that Trezub was not created upon people’s initiative; it’s not a public organization. The group is a direct heir of OUN-R and UPA which have their hands soaked in blood killing hundreds of thousands of Russian, Ukrainians, Jews and all those who were not «pure Ukrainians» and did not support the idea of creating a totalitarian Ukrainian nationalist state following the example of fascist Germany.
Later Trizub maintained partner-like relationship with the OUN-R foreign branches but went out of the group’s control after it made a failed attempt to bring to power the Congress of Ukrainian nationalists together with other nationalist groups united into the «National Front».
The Front suffered electoral defeat by the end of the 1990s, the Trizub ideologists said the OUN failed to fulfill its historic mission and is unable to continue revolutionary struggle. The Trizub leaders said the events confirmed once more that Bandera was right saying parliamentary was an invention of Western liberals and other enemies of Ukraine and the creation of a self-sufficient nationalist state from «San to Don» could become a reality only in case a «national revolution» under Bandera slogans takes place. The revolution will put an end to democracy in Ukraine to allow the nation concentrate its efforts on establishing «a new order» inside the country and return the territories lost to other states as history unfolded.
By the 2000s Trizub leaders deviated for the old Bandera slogan «Leaflets-first, rifles – second!» and started talks with other like-minded nationalist groups, first of all the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), which changed the name for Svoboda in 2004. Before that the party called itself a messianic all-European movement. Its founding documents stated that they «remained the last hope of the white race and humanity as a whole against the background of peoples' mass degradation». Outright fascist symbols and ideology scared the voters away, so Svoboda made a deal with Trizub. The latter was to share the fundamental provisions of their program while becoming a paramilitary wing of Bandera movement in Ukraine. In exchange Svoboda was to act as a cover to allow Trizub have representation in local councils and the national parliament.
Along with that Trizub held negotiations with other radical nationalist groups growing like mushrooms in independent Ukraine. UNA-UNSO (The Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People's Self- Defense), a far-right political organization with the Ukrainian National Assembly being its legal political party-wing, was the largest. It had many Chechnya and Abkhazia wars vets as members. Another example is the Patriots of Ukraine, a paramilitary group formerly associated with the Social-National Party of Ukraine, revived later as a group independent from Svoboda with roots in eastern regions on the country.
The talks have also been held the Youth Nationalist Congress, the National Alliance, the Ukrainian Republican Party, the nationalist organization Volia named after Yevhen Konovalets and other groups which, unlike real Bandera movement members, support parliamentary democracy.
In 2013 the drawn-out talks between Trezub and relatively moderate OUN-Melnikov (OUN-M) ended up successfully, the both organizations joined together to coordinate their activities.
The growing discontent with the ruling regime of oligarchs gave an impulse for consolidation of radical nationalist groups. In autumn 2013 they agreed to create an informal organization with Trizub-Stepan Bandera as a leading element.
To stage a nationalist revolution in Ukraine, their fundamental goal, they had to either wait for a revolutionary situation or create it themselves. On December 1, 2013 the good-for-nothing Ukrainian leadership did its best to offer Pravy Sector such an opportunity by breaking up a group of students taking part in peaceful protest on Maidan.
(To be continued)
