OK fine.
I would only invite anyone reading this exchange to read my article:
Indeed, Ukrainians to this day hold ceremonies and parades honouring those who fought for Hitler’s Waffen SS in WWII.
What Banderites believe
For the Banderites, the liberation from fascist occupation by the Red Army in October 1944 and the victory over fascism in Germany in May 1945 did not constitute a liberation, not a victory, but a new occupation of Ukraine by Soviet Russia.
They only accept as legitimate (1) the Ukrainian state that was proclaimed by Yaroslav Stetsko in 1941 under the Nazis and (2) the current Ukrainian state that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Since the Ukrainian Nazis were never held to account for their war crimes, today they are free to practice their ideology openly and without shame.
Asgardsrei — Ukraine’s Annual Neo-Nazi Music Festival
Asgardsrei is a festival of national socialist black metal (NSBM) that takes place every December in Kiev. It was started originally in Moscow by Russian far-right extremist Alexey Levkin, but moved with Levkin to Ukraine in 2014 when he left Russia to fight with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion (Levkin remains involved with the Azov movement).
Ukrainian Youth Nationalist Congress
The Ukrainian Youth National Congress, also known simply as the MNK, is OUN-B’s militant youth group in Ukraine. It was formed in 2001 and its website prominently quotes Yurii Lipa, a famous nationalist radical:
“Ukraine will be free not after the liberation of Kyiv, but after the destruction of Moscow as the capital of the Russian superpower” — Ukraine Youth Nationalist Congress (MNK)
The MNK is perhaps best know for the various regional “Summer Camps” it operates. These camps teach paramilitary skills and a virulent form of Banderite nationalism. In 2021, MNK operated 7 of these camps, with names such as “Avengers”, “Path of the Unconquered”. “Knight of Honour” and “Underground”. There is even one called “Lysonya” — referring to a famous WWI battle between Russians and Ukrainians (who were fighting for Austria).
Weaponising Youth for Nationalist Activism
The MNK also runs various “Public Campaigns” which embrace nationalist activist themes, such as the “Decommunization Campaign”.
Following the 2014 Maidan Coup in Kiev, Ukrainian lawmakers passed a series of bills known collectively as the Decommunization Laws, meant to sever the country’s ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of the bills prohibited what it called the “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century.”
Indoctrination through “Education”
Anna Novosad became Minister of Education for Ukraine following the Maidan Coup. Her biography always mentions that, in this role, she “contributed and led the comprehensive school reform in Ukraine”.
She is Western educated and served an internship in Canada under the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program before becoming minister. She is also a Fellow in the Open Societies Fund (a Soros foundation for “transforming civil society”).
Novosad described her mission during a speech in Kiev at the Yalta European Strategy forum:
According to Novosad, the past five years after the “revolution” showed that Russia is an enemy of Ukraine, and in history books it is still written about friendship with the “aggressor”. Therefore, she was convinced that history books should be rewritten and any mention of friendship with Russia removed from there.
Rewriting the textbooks = rewriting history
In 2008, the Institute of National Memory (UNIP) was tasked with writing new textbooks on Ukrainian history “in order to help bring up the younger generation in a spirit recognising their national identity, respect and love for their native land”.
This process became perverted, however, following the Maidan Coup. From 2014 to 2019, the UNIP was headed by Volodymyr Viatrovych, who was described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past”.
In 2018, Eduard Dolinsky writing for the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said it was clear that the UNIP was rewriting the history of Ukraine as it pertained to WWII and the Holocaust:
Given the Government of Ukraine’s wholesale rewriting of history we can now assume that Ukraine’s new generation will grow up with literally no knowledge of the Holocaust and how 1.4 million (in some estimates 1.5 million or more) Ukrainian Jews were massacred, many with the active and enthusiastic assistance of the Nazis’ Ukrainian nationalist collaborators.
In the eyes of numerous of Ukraine’s Western supporters, this represents an affront to all basic Western standards of human decency and is truly a tragedy for an ostensibly democratic Ukraine committed to future membership in the European Union.
Teaching the “Thousand Year” Ukrainian Reich
Ukrainian textbooks are still perverted in their portrayal of Ukraine and its place in history and the world.
In April 2023, Russian representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia came to the UN Security Council with a Ukrainian textbook, echoing the claim made by the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, adding some more colour along the way:
“The Ministry of Education of Ukraine is engaged in total rewriting of history. I took an 8th grade geography textbook. If you believe it, the ancestors of the French, Spaniards, Turks and even Jews came from Ukraine. I want to address my French colleague: Nicolas, did you know that you are actually Ukrainian? If you don’t believe it, read the textbook. It has an iron logic: since the ancestors of the French are Gauls, they came from Galicia in Ukraine. Do you know that, according to the author of the textbook, Ukrainians and Poles have Slavic origin, and Russians — Ugro-Finnish?”
“Slavs were also denied to Belarusians, they were referred to as Baltic peoples. The history textbook of Ukraine for the 7th grade says that “the formation of the Ukrainian people has 140 thousand years.” The history textbook for the 9th grade states that “by the end of the XIX century, Ukrainians were one of the largest nations in Europe.”
“The author of the book “The Ukrainian Nation” is generally convinced that “the population of Eastern Europe entered the first millennium of the new era under the name Ukrainians.”
Department of “National Patriotic Education” (NPE)
The Strategy for the National-Patriotic Education of Children and Youth was ratified by the (Post-Coup) President of Ukraine in 2015. It was all about “Militarising Citizenship” in Ukraine.
As mentioned above, Kiev government funding of neo-Nazi militias and their associated youth groups has even been confirmed by the US government propaganda outlet RadioFreeEurope:
C14, a group whose members have openly expressed neo-Nazi views and been involved in the recent violent attacks on Romany camps in Kyiv, and the far-right affiliated Svoboda political party, are the recipients of Youth and Sports Ministry grants for “national-patriotic education projects,” according to a June 13 report by Hromadske Radio. [NOTE: Youth and Sports Ministry is the same Ministry that funds the Nazi Banderstadt Festival]
In several instances analysed by Bellingcat:
…organizations that were approved for and apparently received state NPE projects funding share leadership with C14 and National Corps; both of these groups attracted international attention in 2018 because of their reported roles in attacks on members of Ukraine’s Roma minority, LGBT populations, feminist activists, and journalists. Furthermore, in 2019, these same groups made headlines due to violent clashes they had with Ukrainian law enforcement in separate incidents that led to charges against these organizations’ members. For example, in March 2019, clashes between National Corps and police in Cherkasy left 22 members of law enforcement with injuries, according to a statement by Ukraine’s National Police.
The “Education Assembly” and C14
The so-called Education Assembly is another youth indoctrination group that is tied to the odious C14 militia, which was also designated by the US State Department as a nationalist hate group that instigated a Nazi-style pogrom against a Roma camp in 2018.
In fact, one of Education Assembly’s co-founders, Yevhen Karas, was actually the notorious leader of C14.
A comparison of Education Assembly and C14’s logos, from Estonian news site Delfi.
Karas is infamous for his outrageous statements like “we enjoy killing” and claiming that C14 were responsible for the Maidan Coup. Without the violent “muscle” of C14, he says, Maidan “would have been a gay parade”.
Russophobia on blast
The Hromadske Radio report on C14 also said: “Most of C14’s actions do seem to be directed at Russia, or those sympathetic towards Russia.” Clearly this anti-Russian hatred is what Education Assembly is designed to promote.
The Institute of National Memory (UNIP)
The Institute of National Memory (UNIP) was tasked with much more than its original mandate of just rewriting the history textbooks. Since the Maidan Coup it has become a “force multiplier” for the Nazis in Ukraine. The interpretation and teaching of history was moved from a regional to a national level, which allowed the Nazis in Kiev to flex their muscle and exert influence far beyond what their small numbers would normally allow.
First, it is important to know that the UNIP was originally formed in 2005 following the so-called Orange Revolution that saw a pro-Western government win control in Kiev.
In 2010, however, then President Viktor Yanukovych issued a decree that lowered its status to a mere research institution. This was reversed once the Banderites seized power.
After the Maidan Coup and the installation of the US-backed nationalist coup regime, the UNIP was elevated to an official government body with a substantial budget.
Following its 2014 revolution, when National memory became nationalised and centralised, Ukrainian lawmakers in Kiev passed a series of bills known collectively as the Decommunisation Laws, meant to sever the country’s ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of the bills prohibited what it called the “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century.”
It seems absurd and unnecessary on its face that Ukraine would need “de-communisation” 23 years after the fall of the USSR, but by using this “cover story” the Ukrainian nationalists were able to eradicate Russian heritage in Ukraine, while “rehabilitating” the criminal past of the OUN and UPA.
The Institute for National Memory (UINP), also translated as the “Institute for National Remembrance” was tasked with implementing Decommunisation.
Starting in 2015, the UINP fell under the de facto control of Ukrainian nationalist forces, specifically the Liberation Movement Research Center (LMRC). This is a hard-core Banderite organisation dedicated to the glorification of the OUN and especially the UPA, whom they portray as valiant heroes fighting for the “liberation” of Ukraine from the Nazis, and then the Soviets.
The nationalist forces, which were not popular in Ukraine and which never managed well in the national elections, suddenly received a significant instrument to influence Ukrainian education and politics.
They were relentless in their pursuit of de-Russification under the official Decommunisation Laws. Streets all over Ukraine have been renamed after people like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych — whom the Times of Israel reminds us were leaders of the OUN-UPA, and whose men collaborated with the Nazis and were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.
The UNIP, according to the Times, “undertook a massive campaign to rehabilitate their images, casting them as fighters for democracy whose followers saved Jews from the Germans”.
Rewriting history from the top down
Ukraine is moving to rewrite history on a European scale.
For example, in 2015, as Kiev’s colossal campaign of indoctrination, brainwashing and propaganda was hitting its stride, lavishly fuelled by Western dollars and supported by Neocons in Washington and Europe, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk appeared in a TV interview on ARD in Germany.
During this interview Yatsenyuk delivered an outrageously distorted version of the history of World War II, accusing the Soviet Union of having invaded Germany and Ukraine:
“Russian aggression in Ukraine is an attack on world order and order in Europe. All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. That has to be avoided. And nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. And that is exactly what Russia’s President Putin is trying to do.”
