I know this is now common knowledge, but it needs a repost on as many websites as possible… Read more at Russia-Insider.

Several days ago, the Lvov city council decided to commemorate the 110th jubilee of Stepan Bandera by declaring 2019 the “Year of Bandera”. The Israeli ambassador to Ukraine published this document on the Facebook page of the Israeli embassy…

Number of western outlets (see Daily Mail, and this major Czech newspaper) reprinted an Associated Press story about a camp organised by Svoboda party that teaches kids to kill Russians, and about the toxicity of West European leftism…

It begs a question, why suddenly does the American press see fashiks in Ukraine? I thought they were rather cool with that in Washington.

I quote from the AP story:

“We never aim guns at people,” instructor Yuri “Chornota” Cherkashin tells them. “But we don’t count separatists, little green men, occupiers from Moscow, as people. So we can and should aim at them.”

It is important, he says, to inculcate the nation’s youth with nationalist thought, so they can battle Vladimir Putin’s Russia as well as “challenges that could completely destroy” European civilization.

Among those challenges: LGBT rights, which lecturers denounce as a sign of Western decadence.

…

“You need to be aware of all that,” said instructor Ruslan Andreiko. “All those gender things, all those perversions of modern Bolsheviks who have come to power in Europe and now try to make all those LGBT things like gay pride parades part of the education system.”

…

During a break in training, a teenager played a nationalist march on his guitar. It was decorated with a sticker showing white bombs hitting a mosque, under the motto, “White Europe is Our Goal.”

Ever since the Maidan, pundits and Ukrainian officials have been trying to minimise, or outright deny the role of radical nationalists in Ukrainian life. Their reasoning is that Russia used it to justify takeover of Crimea, and operation in support of separatists in the Donbass. However, the fact Russians are saying it does not mean they don’t have a point…

But the denial has a deeper dimension, the denial of radical nationalism is in my opinion caused by Ukrainian society’s indifference. The Ukrainians have been conditioned to accept radical nationalism. Take for instance the story of Vasyl Marushynets, former Ukrainian consul in Hamburg. Vasyl suffers from a peculiar form of advanced Svidomism with symptoms of Hitlerophilia. Marushynets was writing various Antisemitic posts on Facebook, and his posts were liked by colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And likely, he would continue doing this if Anatoly Shariy didn’t out him, and did not threaten to inform German MPs about his activities. Marushynets has filed a lawsuit against his sack from the ministry, claiming that Shariy is a Russian propagandist.

Even more recently, Shariy outed a journalist from Channel 5 (a major purveyor of Russophobia belonging to the president, Petro Poroshenko), Natalka Kotskovych (seen above in Vienna), who likes to throw “Sieg Heils”. Her colleagues came to troll the Netherlands resident Shariy, bleating something about “Russian World”.

In 2016, Tomasz Maciejczuk brought attention to pictures of neo-nazi, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, whose pictures were presented at a photo presentation of Ukrainian war amputees, at the European Parliament. The presentation titled “Peremozhtsi” was organised by the TV channel TSN and journal VIVA. They even did an interview with Vasyanovych to which he arrived in hoodie with SS symbols. The reaction of the Ukrainian organisers was to deny Vasyanovych is a neo-nazi, and to label incriminating evidence a fake.

Which brings me to a question, do Ukrainians want to deny neo-nazis helped the Kiev regime to maintain power in the South-East of Ukraine? Well, not quite and not always! When earlier this year, US congressmen expressed concern about there being rehabilitation of naziism and an openly pro-neo-nazi battalion, the “Azov” fighting in the east of the country. The Ministry of Interior, had this to say:

“This professional subdivision is one of the most motivated and capable of fighting, from the first day of Russian armed aggression are resisting it, is defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state, functions in strict compliance with the law, [has] military and disciplinary statutes of military formations of Ukraine, and has a heroic victorious history, among others liberation from pro-Russian occupiers of the city of Mariupol.”

The Ministry of Interior does not deny they are neo-nazis, does not deny the Ukrainian state uses neo-nazi goons to suppress its own population. And everything is cool because they have been able to win over poorly armed protesters and policemen in Mariupol.

It is commonly asserted by the Maidan supporting crowd that nationalist parties in Ukraine, like Svoboda and the Right Sector, do not score election victories, and therefore the accusation of there being a prevalent and socially accepting attitude towards radical nationalism is false. But they fail to mention the almost complete absence of ideological parties in Ukrainian top politics. And I have a theory of why this is?

Elections require a lot of money and electoral base, and this is even further accentuated in Ukraine, where the population is very poor and generally apathetic and distrustful towards politicians. The result of this is that the only parties represented in Ukrainian parliament are oligarch projects with an unclear ideology but good financial backing. Svoboda actually had some notable electoral support, and even won a majority on a regional level in Western Ukraine, and all this was when it was allegedly cultivated by the oligarchs before the Euromaidan. After the Maidan, in which Svoboda took active part, it became useless and embarrassing to the new regime, and quickly faded from top politics.

Parties such as Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, or Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, or Narodny Front, do not have a clearly defined ideology, and therefore can be filled with any ideological content the leaders see fit. It therefore begs a question of how much of radical nationalist ideology do these parties espouse. For instance, Poroshenko has been very actively promoting nationalist causes regarding the supremacy of the Ukrainian language, unification and independence of the Ukrainian Church, and promotion of symbols and “heroes” of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

The problem of rehabilitation of radical nationalism in Ukraine should not be dismissed as a disinformation by red herrings like the electoral failures of a certain political party. Electoral success depends upon factors such as money and the size of membership, Ukrainian radical nationalist parties do not have either in abundance. However, that does not mean radical Ukrainian nationalism does not factor in Ukrainian society.