The current hysteria about the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine brings to mind images of old. This is what I found on Mark Ames’ Twitter.
It seems like hysterical bleeding about an imminent Russian invasion are almost a yearly ritual for Ukraine. No invasion ever comes. The Kremlin is not forthcoming and would not liberate Ukraine from its misery.
Reports have it that Lukashenko, the Belarusian president said he will side with the republics of Donbas should Ukraine attack them.
The season is over, and I have free time to dedicate to this blog again. And I would like to introduce a new thesis to this blog. “UKRAINE DOES NOT HAVE ANY FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURS”. However, Ukraine has a perfect geographical location that it absolutely does not exploit. I think we have a case of Peremoha & Zrada, they are the two sides of the karbovanets coin. While Ukraine was gifted this perfect location by fate, or Bolsheviks, the regime there chose radical nationalism and cannot make any use of the advantages Ukraine has in any way. Similarly, the system favours a narrow orientation towards the West, which makes things even more complicated. It is like having a perfect graphics card but running old drivers for it. Outdated, caveman nationalism is hampering Ukrainian relations on all fronts.
The other day, the Polish foreign ministry complained about the treatment of Poles in Ukraine. The Polish deputy of the Polish foreign minister, Szymon Szynkowski said that the Poles in Ukraine are discriminated on the basis of religion, access to education, and freedom of speech. He also mentioned that in Ukraine, people responsible for genocide of the West Ukrainian Polish population are being glorified in Ukraine. The latter has long been a major complaint of Poles towards Ukraine. However, complaints about the treatment of coethnics in Ukraine has so far been the preserve of Hungary.
You see, Ukraine lacks friendly relations with any of its neighbours, despite having a perfect geographical location that it could exploit to the fullest.
After the victorious Maidan, then president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko introduced a new tradition in connection with the Victory Day, which is on the level of Prince Philip cargo cults somewhere in the Pacific. They started to wear poppies, and Zelensky seems to continue this “tradition”.
British readers may be familiar with poppy wearing because it is worn to commemorate the fallen in the First World War in UK. The Ukrainian poppy is worn on 8 May, the day victory in the Second World War is celebrated in the West. The Victory Day is celebrated on the 9 in Russia and was celebrated on the 9 in Ukraine too until recently.
Or rather it is worn by government flunkies because by far not everyone has accepted this new idiocy and some mean individuals have even called it “ochko bandery“ – Bandera’s anus…
Made me feel old…
I went through the whole playlist and haven’t heard the Ukrainian language once. And this sort of proves one of the central thesis of this blog, and that is Russian is the dominant language in Ukraine. It dominates the charts on Spotify too.
Meanwhile though, the Ukrainian language is propped up by the government through quotas on radio and the television. Maybe they should send a delegation to California, or wherever these companies are based, and tell them to practice some affirmative action. We need to speak the language Americans will understand. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities have also banned the rapper Morgenshtern from coming to Ukraine.
Now Morgenshtern is a controversial figure. The Russian conservatives would like to see him removed from public space. I understand that his music is degenerate but look around, the world around you is degenerate. Meanwhile in Ukraine, this article even calls Morgenshtern an element of Russian soft power. I think Morgenshtern must be laughing his socks off at what is happening. Evil Russians have found some Bashkir degenerate to plant seeds of doom in Ukraine. LMAO
And Morgenshtern truly is an influential cultural product. I personally found out about Morgenshtern through a Czech girl I dated, who was 15 years my junior. Now you may say, but Leoš, isn’t Apple Music and Spotify for wealthy urbanite hipsters, and the usual Ukrainian does not have access to it because he has no money? Yes but the cool kids have it, and poor kids want to be cool too. So I think the charts are a good reflection of what the people want to listen to.
From time to time you might see a Western commentator say that Ukraine does not have a Nazi problem because… fill in your lame reason… Usually they say that explicitly nationalist parties do not score significant electoral victories. That is partially true but when Svoboda was propped up financially under Yanukovych, they actually got seats in the Rada (the national parliament of Ukraine). The whole argument falls apart when you consider that the big oligarch supported parties in Ukraine that form the Rada now have pretty much adopted the nationalist program that consists of forcible Ukrainization, attack on canonical links between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches, rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, and the demonisation of the Soviet past, and overall Russophobia.
Another argument that I have heard from Anton Shekhovtsov, an NGO worker that focuses on far right movements, is that the Nazis of the Azov battalion are not really a problem because they are under the control of the Ministry of Interior. Recently, I have watched Anatoly Shariy on the Vladimir Slovyov’s podcast, and he said: “Who cares if the Neonazis get low scores in elections, they have guns.” Well, they literally have tanks. My take on this has been that the West keeps a blind eye on Nazis in Ukraine because:
Neonazis were instrumental in the victory of the Maidan and radical nationalism is used to repress pro-Russian people, and the Russian cultural element in Ukraine. I do not think the Azov Nazis would last against a Russian military but should the Russians intervene in Ukraine on behalf of the separatists, the West is going to enact sanctions and embargoes. Hence we have a situation where Nazis shell villages in Eastern Ukraine and it makes Russia look bad.
The other day, an interview with a former journalist of RFE/RL, Alexander Orlov for RT came to my attention, particularly because of this passage.
I translate: “There was a story from Ukraine. A story about a youth camp run by the battalion “Azov”, where children with the Wolfsangel rune on their jackets are playing war games. I have made a trailer with the title “From the heart to the Sun. A Neonazi camp youth camp was opened near Kiev.” Everyone was unhappy with it, and the Ukrainian section demanded I be sacked. (To their credit, a number of Western publications reported on the Azov Neonazi summer camp, although I believe the story of Neonazis in Ukraine deserves more attention than it gets)
“You are wrong, you are wrong” – Said [my] colleague Michael, the vice president actually, “Ukraine needs a little bit of this “national socialism” to win.”
One only wonders what they are winning by supporting a bunch of Hitler worshipers? We see a case of presenting American interests, which is to cause problems for Russia, as the interests of the Ukrainian people. But the opposite is the case, enmity with Russia is actually a detriment to the entire region, and it is in the interest of Eastern Europe to shed this enmity and mute the agents of American influence.
As for the brand of “national socialism”, this is basically the violent street culture of the Neonazis, which is not something you want to cultivate in your society. Ukraine has seen the murders of ordinary citizens by Neonazi thugs in recent years, in drunken street brawls, because since they have gained social acceptance, they have become much too bold and now prey on Ukrainian normies. There is some indication that the Ukrainian secret service is making attempts to spread this vile ideology among the youths of Russia but the FSB works rather well at countering it.
PS: Another interesting moment in the Alexander Orlov interview is where he tells that he was chastised for calling members of the Al Qaeda in Syria “terrorists”. Clearly, US is pimping and giving information cover to radical Muslims in Syria, and here you have an answer to why Russia is involved there. These terrorists employed against Assad’s regime will next be employed against Russia and their allies. A similar situation is with Ukraine and sooner or later Russia will be militarily involved there too.
This is what I read in this screen shot:
It says: “Work out the anus with a carrot”. A new scandal has erupted in Ukraine because of a book with a sexual advice for boys.
The above is an article in the newspaper Strana about a book by the Swedish author, Inti Chavez Perez, Respect, Respect: Everything a Guy Needs to Know about Sex, Love, and Consent that was to be translated in Ukraine with a grant from the European Union. It has caused scandal among some because of some of the contents.
The translator was not ok with a passage that recommended boys with homosexual proclivities work out the anus with a carrot. She says she was witness to people getting objects stuck in there, (because arse is for shitting) while working in hospital.
Earlier Strana reported that the Ministry of Culture and the Government Institution “The Ukrainian book institute” have obtained 1,240 issues of Princess and princess, ever after. (Only thing with that name I found was this comic book).
Intended for 5 year olds, the book is about two princesses that marry each other.
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.
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.
Apparently, Ukraine gets more money than anyone from the EU:
The European Union has provided Ukraine with over 600 billion euro for seven years. It is the largest aid of the EU than to any other partners as President of the Council of Europe Charles Michel reported at Ukraine 30.
“Over 600 billion euro during seven years – the aid of Ukraine in the European choice. It is the largest aid from the EU than to any other partners, if we do not consider the EU members,” Michel stated.
Where exactly has the money gone? Do you see any improvement in Ukraine?
Browsing Twitter for mentions of my website I encountered this…
I thought the Western commentariat is now over such comments. It ain’t 2014 now and 6 years have passed to assess Ukraine’s success. These people must have their head so up the ass they do not see how good their post-Maidan Ukraine has faired.
Honestly, the Russians ought make a quick process of anyone, who wants this kind of democratization in their home country. It is not even clear to me why Russia is deemed less democratic than Ukraine?
Insomniac Resurrected 