Three neonazis in the Russian city of Voronezh were arrested by the police for spreading hateful propaganda…
However, a report about them in the Russian media was censored by Facebook because it said the radicals had links to Ukraine. They were basing this claim on information provided by an insider in the security forces. Facebook has blocked the Russian media report after an analysis done by their Ukrainian fact checkers, the Stop Fake group. I have already featured them on this blog once. Their integrity is impeccable.
The Stop Fake argues that in the official press release of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, there isn’t anything said about Ukrainian affiliation of the arrested, and that they were all Russian citizens. This however does not mean anything. It has to be noted that following the Maidan and the outbreak of military conflict in the Donbass, many Russian Neonazis, literal Hitler worshipers, went to exile to Ukraine because over there they can practice their love for Hitler without repercussions.
I have recently found, for instance, this Neonazi Black Metal group which migrated from Tver, Russia to Ukraine. They recently held a concert in Kiev.
Many of these types have served in Ukraine’s armed forces and they have veteran organizations. My knowledge about them only scratches the surfaces, the topic of Russian neonazis in Ukraine’s forces is a topic for a separate discussion.
But bottom line is that there aren’t just links between Ukrainian and Russian neonazis and an existence of a neonazi group in Russia with contacts in Ukraine is not something implausible.
Links of Stop Fake to Neonazis
Recently, the Ukrainian Soros funded publication Zaborana mentioned some cozy relationships between representatives of Stop Fake and radical nationalists:
One month earlier on June 2nd, Zaborona’s official Facebook page shared a publication about Denis Nikitin, a key figure among European ultra-right radicals, which the social network then blocked 18 hours later. Soon after, Facebook explained that the post was removed by mistake (assumingly, due to a photograph illustrating the material, in which a Ukrainian man wrapped in a swastika flag throws his hand in the Nazi salute) and reinstated it the next day. Zaborona decided to follow up on the incident and later released the material discussing alleged links of the fact-checking project StopFake to Ukrainian far-right and neo-Nazi organisations. Zaborona journalists explained their interest by the fact that after the removal of the Facebook post, some readers recommended to search for possible motives of the new fact-checking partner of Facebook in Ukraine– StopFake.org. On March 27th, Facebook indeed confirmed its partnership with StopFake and VoxUkraine to increase its fact-checking capacities on social network pages in Ukraine.
Zaborona eventually released material that first focused on Yevhen Fedchenko – the co-founder and chief editor for StopFake and director of the Mohyla School of Journalism at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. It pointed out Fedchenko’s habit of taking political stances, speaking against freedom of the press and on one occasion even whitewashing the reputation of a Ukrainian far-right group C14 (Sich), Ukraine’s controversial group of far-right radicals, by singling out one of its members as his respected colleague. Fedchenko has also been accused of taking the side of Myrotvorets, or Peacemaker, a Ukrainian nationalist website that in 2016 doxed the personal data of more than 5,000 Ukrainian and foreign reporters with press passes issued by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, labeling them “terrorist collaborators”. A closer look, however, reveals that Zaborona’s allegations seem to be taken out of context and might conceal more complex motives in explaining such statements.
Later the Zaborona report moves on to Marko Suprun, “the main face of StopFake” and the person in charge of the English-language StopFakeNews project on YouTube. According to Zaborona’s findings, Suprun has often been spotted in the company of Ukraine’s infamous far-right figures, notably Arseniy Bilodub, the founder of the far-right clothing brand SvasStone and the leader of the hatecore band Sokyra Peruna, and Andriy Sereda, the frontman of another controversial rock band Komu Vnyz. The material refers to photographs of Suprun spotted together with both Bilodub and Sereda, as well as other Ukraine’s far-right radicals, and cites the opinions of experts, who point out that StopFake has become “too politicised,” and that Marko Suprun’s friendship with the extreme right may affect the organisation’s image.
Yevhen Fedchenko blocked me on Twitter after I shared information on Jakub Janda to him. Marko Suprun is the husband of the Ukrainian-American, former Minister of Health of Ukraine, Ulyana Suprun. I am not surprised a Ukrainian-American would hang out with neonazis since many of them are descended from fugitive Nazi collaborators, who were given shelter by the CIA as useful assets in the fight against the Soviet Union. It is without question that having not undergone any denazification, these people still adhere to radical nationalist ideals.
Earlier on this blog, Facebook hires a member of a radical nationalist party to police its website.
Meanwhile, EU vs. Disinfo is trying to say the information that information regarding Neonazis moderating Facebook is disinformation of the Kremlin and says there isn’t any evidence to make this claim. Nothing new, this blog already reported on instances of apologetics for Neonaziism in Ukraine made by that website.
