Radio liberty featured a video from the summit of the National Front, a Ukrainian party gathering such giants of Ukrainian politics as Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, Oleksandr Turchynov and Arsen Avakov. It features a bit from the Minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov. I have given it English subtitles, and posted it below. My commentary is further below…

As you can see, the programme of the National Front boils down to simple geopolitics, which in Ukraine is traditionally based upon the elite casting illusions, and telling the poor people lies.

Nevertheless, Avakov does say some things that are true. Let’s begin with the first, “Ukraine is Europe”. So is Albania, Chechnya and a part of Turkey. But what follows are lies.

1. Promises of EU and NATO are quite frankly unrealistic. Poroshenko recently promised Ukraine (not he) will file for EU membership in 2024. He also expressed hope that accession talks with NATO will begin. I have explained before why these claims are unrealistic. Anyway, 2024 was conveniently chosen to be at the end of Poroshenko’s potential second presidential term. I think he leaves the application to his successor.
2. Another lie of Avakov is about Russia being the aggressor. While it is true that Russia helped militarily the separatists in the Donbass, and irredentists in Crimea but “Russia is aggressor” has become a convenient argument of those that want to blame Russia but do not want a war with Russia. Instead of Ukraine breaking ties with Russia, declaring a state of emergency and martial law, we see Russia and Ukraine doing business. I personally think that despite all the Ukrainian bravado, any real war with Russia would end in a bitter defeat for Ukraine. A Ukrainian politician cannot say that however, so they lie.

The another true statement perhaps is that Putin is a dickhead but that is a matter of opinion…

Like I said before, trolling Ukrainian nationalists may be dangerous because they may block you. But it may also yield funny stuff before they block you…

The most rewarding is to ask how “Rusyns” and “Little Russians” became Ukrainians (see my posts here and here):

This is what I fished today before the user blocked me:

I translate the above below, since the editor is acting up and I cannot make a caption to the picture

A fan of Pinochet, Ostap Vishnya Slava Ukrayini answers me, Michele Berdy, who writes for the Moscow Times, and a Ukrainian blogger, and likely grant eater Denis Kazansky: “Rusyns of Transcarphathia remained Rusyns because they were isolated from the rest of the people for centuries. The term “Ukraine” has been used for the land around Dnieper since the 12th century. Later, when the Muscovites stole this word (that is the name of Rus), the people switched to calling themselves Ukrainians.”

I don’t know if the term “Ukraine” was used for the area of Dnieper in the 12th century. Perhaps it was but that’s not very relevant. “Ukraine” simply means borderland and the area of Middle Dnieper was a borderland that divided the settled people of the woodland from the nomads of the steppe.

Much more interesting is the assertion that Muscovites stole the name Rus’. And therefore poor Ukrainians had to adopt a new name. Mostly, the people who claim this, operate with maps published in the Rzeczpospolita (Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth) that indicate Moscovia at the place of the Russian Tsardom. This does not mean the official name of the state was Moscovia. But Ukrainian nationalists are not exactly the brightest of people. I still don’t get how a name can usurped by other people but fair enough.

This myth is actually very common among Ukrainian nationalists, and is called to explain why a nation called “Ukrainians” should have any claim to the history of Rus’ after they wilfully abandoned the name Rus’, and declared themselves separate from the Greater Russians with a new ethnonym. It turns out, the Russians stole their name… LOL

He further wrote: “If you were Slavs and not Ugrofins, you would understand well what the word “ukrayaty” means in the Ukrainian language.”

I am actually a Western Slav and the word means “to slice off”. It is etymologically related to “Ukraine” in the sense, “the edge”. I don’t quite understand however why this polonism is relevant.

But another belief of the Ukrainian nationalists is that the Russians are Ugrogins and not Slavs. Ukrainian historiography attempts from the start to divide genetically the people of Ukraine and Russia. The more crude versions resort to Russophobic canards such as the assertion that the Russians are slavicised Ugrofins, who have apparently, not only stolen the name Rus’ but also the Slavic language, and the history of Ukrainians. This legend about the katsaps (der. meaning “Russian”), who stole the name Rus’ comes from the Polish literature much like the claims about Moscovia.

No originality in their bullshit…

Simple search of the internet of “Muscovites stole the name Rus'” yields thousands of results in Ukrainian and tens of thousands in Russian. This isn’t something marginal.

and in Russian

Somebody posted a link to my blog at a Ukrainian forum…

LMAO!

Unfortunately, most of my readers reside outside the EU, but if a fellow citizen of the Union is reading this, please join my “Fuck the EU!” initiative this May. It basically involves voting for anti-establishment candidates in the EU election…

I think I am a wrecker! I still remember BHL how he supported a pack of Russophobic baboons on the Maidan, and for this he deserves to get wrecked! Coincidentally, he and other sleazy writers such as Milan Kundera, and Salman Rushdie warn us against the rise of the wreckers, who threaten Europe.

Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes.

No doofuses! The wreckers threaten the EU, an illiberal, transnational behemoth that has the gall to tell countries of Central Europe to accept illegal immigrants from the Third World. No occupant of the Kremlin ever dared suggest to Czechoslovakia to accept boatloads of Africans. Milan Kundera cares little about the Czechs and chooses to live in the jungle France, by the way.

EU sucks, these gentlemen suck, and they should get wrecked!

Recent leaks from the Integrity Initiative, and the Institute of Statecraft, a British state funded propaganda effort, yielded some really funny material. 

Ukrainian jarheads visited Britain, and likely tried to impress their British handlers by alluding to some English history:

The presenters made clear that Ukraine was preparing for a long war, a Ukrainian “hundred years war” as one of them put it. The discussion of equipment procurement programmes and the nature of the equipment being procured and developed by the Ukrainians, particularly in conjunction with the Croatians gave some insight into the way they saw their own military strategy developing and what for them is likely to be the best counter to Russian attacks.

Indeed, it will take them one hundred years to emulate the Croatians. LOL

Stuck up nationalists show how they are geographically and historically challenged once again…

I need to lay low on these Ukrainian nationalist profiles, and keep myself from commenting and pointing out their stupidity. This stuff is gold…

Actually, what is marked by the term “RVSSIA” are the territories of the Tsardom of Russia which roughly span the North-Eastern part of the European continent. What is called Tartaria are the lands of the Siberian Khanate in Western Siberia that were conquered by Yermak Timofeyevich in 1582.

I am interested whether this fan of SS Halychyna can explain why the map contains “RVSSIA” and not Ukraine? Why there isn’t any mention of Moscovia some 100 years before Peter the Great? Ukrainian nationalists actually believe Peter the Great renamed Moscovia to Russia and usurped the rightful name of Ukraine in this way. In reality, Ukrainian nationalists chose to call themselves “Ukrainians” in the nineteenth century. Indeed, certain Western maps do designate North-Eastern Europe as Moscovia in order to differentiate it from the Russian lands held by the king of Lithuania and Poland, who struggled for Rus’ with Moscow. But Francis Drake apparently cared little for this squabble among Slavs.

The current regime in Kiev, and its supporters in the West, may like to claim that it is not anti-Russian but how then do we explain this?

The other day, a monument to the Russian general Alexander Suvorov was dismantled in Kiev. The statue was set up in 1974, in front of the Suvorov Military School, renamed in 1992 to Ivan Bohun Military High School.

Suvorov’s only crime was being Russian. I personally cannot name a single crime of this eighteenth century general against the Ukrainian nation, which did not even exist back then. There haven’t even been attempts to write in the Little Russian dialect when Suvorov was active, let alone the notion of Ukrainian nationhood. Matter a fact, he conquered for Russia many of the lands that Ukrainian nationalists claim as theirs.

Ukrainian nationalists haven’t conquered anything in their 100 years of existence. They have been given a country completely made by the Soviet Union. The initiator of this
démontage was Volodymyr Viatrovych of the Institute of National Memory. He wrote on Facebook: “Suvorov out. Decolonisation marches forth.” Suvorov conquered for Russia former Turkish territories, that were previously the pastures of nomadic tribes, and Russia settled these lands with Slavs.

This is the only colonisation we can objectively talk about. Colonisation allowed by the might of the Russian state.

Any memory of there ever being a link with Russia is something the Ukrainian nationalists, who now control “Ukraine’s historical memory”, want to erase. They want to erase any link that connects Ukraine to Russia in fact. This includes not just the dismantling of monuments but also efforts to create an independent Ukrainian Church, and the marginalisation of the Russian language in the public sphere through mandates and quotas favouring Ukrainian. Everything must be replaced by images that are anti-Russian.

Dmitry Dontsov was one such activist, who wanted to see Ukraine’s complete estrangement from Russia. This was actually his programme in the nutshell, and it is being enacted by Viatrovych in the 21st century. What are the chances that this derussified, and anti-Russian Ukraine will ever return Crimea and the Donbass?

Ukraine lives in a lie, and that lie is about European integration, and even bigger lie is about an Euro-Atlantic integration of the country…

TV station “Pryamyi” belongs to the current president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, and naturally it runs a black PR against other candidates in the presidential race. Accusations of a lack of patriotism against Tymoshenko has been a steady feature on these channels. Recently one of its shows featured former member of parliament and general-lieutenant of SBU, Hrihoriy Omel’chenko, who said he heard Tymoshenko utter the unimaginable in 2009. She dared to put in question the Euro-Atlantic direction of the Ukrainian state on a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe conference. I translate:

“Yulia Volodymirovna, without regard to the fact that it is written in the law on national security that the aim of Ukraine is to join NATO and the EU, said after a speech delivered by the Deputy Vice-Premier of the Russian Federation, Ivanov: “Ukraine will not enter the EU or NATO because it goes against the national interests of the Russian Federation, and we will work on a collective plan of European security…”

I am not going to debate here whether this hearsay is true. Tymoshenko certainly sings a rather different tune now. What I would like to discuss are Ukraine’s chances to join the two organisations. I will start with the EU, which I believe there is greater chance Ukraine will join in the future.

At present however, Ukraine is not even a candidate for membership in the EU. I don’t dispute Ukraine will become one in near future, there is good chance she will, but why didn’t she become one in the last 5 years? Why is it so hard to simply join the queue with Serbia and Turkey? On the website of the European Parliament, only the countries of Western Balkans are seen as candidates, or potential candidates for EU expansion.

The EU at present is gripped by an internal crisis. And there is a strong chance, the EU may cease to exist in its present form within the next decade. I certainly hope it will, and will do my bit to make this happen. By the time Ukraine is ready economically and socially to join the union there may be no union left to join. But perhaps there will be a Visegrad Union. There are many who dream of Intermarium out there.

With NATO things look rather bleak, an ongoing conflict in the East of the country makes Ukraine rather unattractive for NATO membership. Wishful thinkers, such as the academic Taras Kuzio liken Ukraine to West Germany, which was part of NATO. However, West Germany was a rather special case. There has not been an open armed conflict between West Germany and East Germany. East Germany, having risen out of the Soviet occupation zone, had more or less clearly defined borders, which the DNR and LNR do not. And finally, West Germany did not complain about Soviet aggression.