No matter what anyone’s feelings are regarding the rights or wrongs of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, you have to admire the success of the public relations campaign behind Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The level and supreme coordination of the unlimited support he has received and achieved across Europe is unprecedented.
At its source is the power of a single idea, that in this wicked old world of ours there is still an antiseptic and clear division between good and evil. This idea has almost unlimited mileage in this world which was previously ever-rapidly moving toward total cynicism. Like Live Aid in the Eighties, the cause of Ukraine has allowed for a vast upsurge in idealism, a cleansing of the soul by a cathartic anger combined with compassionate grief.
Western humanity has taken Ukraine to its heart, oblivious to any warts that may be transferred in the process. No, it’s warts and all, till death do us part, a marriage ceremony blessed by every liberal institution across the western world. In furtherance of this marriage comes the weaponry to protect it, a sworn duty to assist in the defeat of all those who would tear this great union apart.
Blessed by every high priest that can be found and all those of the secular variety who have newly wiped the blood of the Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans and Libyans from their raiments… to be born again, cleansed by the holy public relations of total, unquestioned belief in their communal rightness.
It is said that up to a hundred public relations companies have been set to work devising strategies and campaigns to deliver the “truth” about every aspect concerning Saint Zelensky and his acolytes, his hand-maidens and supplicants. Every move he makes is choreographed with a precision usually accorded to the high and mighty of this world and to a far greater extent even than for those illustrious figures.
Technology has been brought to bear in every aspect of the bringing of Zelensky’s holy word to an adoring public who hang on his every word. Politicians of all descriptions go dewy-eyed at the mere mention of his name. The only personality that could possible do better and inspire such an outpouring of devotion would be JC himself come down on his fiery chariot to smite the heathens who besmirch his holy name.
For yes, this is a crusade, a mighty army has been recruited, indeed has volunteered. Such is the popularity and public relations success of Mr Z that the entire panoply of great liberal beats of the political, cultural, commercial and social whirls constantly arrive at his feet to touch his hem. (Or perhaps his trouser bottoms… but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?)
It’s all a tremendous success, a tour de force that social historians will reference for decades to come. A phenomenon to be studied in great detail mapping each triumph along the way…
Meanwhile, in the rather more real world, the Russian military grinds slowly forward tackling each massively fortified village, town and city one by one in Northern Lugansk and the vicinity of Donetsk City. Poposnaya (Popasna), a city of some 20,000 in normal times, the gateway to the more northerly much larger conurbations of Severodonetsk and Lysychank, has just fallen to the Russians. Expert analysis says that these too will fall given time, perhaps a month or a month and a half from now. Russian forces will then descend on the last remaining Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of Donetsk City and they will be eliminated also. That will be it. Game over. The entirety of the Donbass will be secured, one of the prime objectives of the Russian campaign
Will the Zelensky spectacular continue with this news? I don’t know. It’s quite hard to say as the momentum behind it is supremely strong having the near infinite backing of the entirety of western liberal power in both Europe and the USA. Will rump Ukraine be saved by Poland making it a protectorate, a sideways shuffle into the EU? Perhaps.
But in some form or other the show will go on. The power of that idea of good and evil battling it out in a passion play with as simple a plot as can be made possible will have a momentum and dedicated belief system behind it that I can’t see an instant deflation of its big PR balloon happening overnight.
What is most likely is that there will be the briefest of poses as might happen at the greatest party you’ve even been at when someone knocks something over and it sounds like a gunshot. There’s a momentary shocked silence and then the whole shebang kicks off again as if nothing happened, no one got scared, it didn’t reveal any jerks with weak-knees at all, everyone keeps laughing and dancing the night away with gay abandon.
When it is realised that Russia has permanently removed a great chunk from Ukraine I imagine there will be a brief wrinkling of brows and sturdy words of never-ending support for the “sovereignty of Ukraine” and so forth… but the brave willies of the West will certainly do nothing more than pout.
But what a party it will have been! Catharsis will have been achieved. A vast cleansing of the western psyche after the debauchery of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria will have taken place, the communal computer will have had its hard disk memory wiped. What joy. The PR party that saved Ukraine while destroying it will without doubt go on in some form or other, perhaps in a form where a great moral outrage arises due to the sudden influx of gun crimes and terrorist attacks across the most pristine of European capitals. Oh what a party THAT will be!
While, back in Ukraine, a country largely hollowed out, abandoned perhaps by 60% of its original population will have a permanent begging bowl extended to a Europe and USA seeking donors for their own begging bowls.
Perhaps a PR offensive will be called for? But who will pay the piper THEN?
Oh well, it all seemed a good idea at the time.
And what of Mr Z? Where will he end up?
No doubt he’ll be okay. His fans won’t let him down, surely?
I would expect he will become an EU commissioner, or some sort of ‘special adviser’ within that select liberal cabal. They do look after their own you know. So, he’ll be fine. A fresh shirt each day, a chauffeur and sleek black car with tinted windows, a high-security villa or two and a few hundred million euros in the bank.
It just goes to show you what can be achieved these days…
UKRAINE: THE POWER OF AN IDEA AND THE PR PRESIDENT
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.
Azov members in training. A photo by TIME magazine for an article they ran in 2019 focusing on the formation.
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.
Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.
Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.
Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.
By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device
Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.
Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.
Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion [Mariupol is now totally in Russian hands.—Eds], Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
Watch left & right wing factions of MSM unite to declare any allegations of Nazism in Ukraine to be Russian fake news because President Zelensky is Jewish. Featuring Senators Marsha Blackburn & Mark Warner, former CIA spy Dan Hoffman & "Ukraine Whistleblower" Alexander Vindman pic.twitter.com/vruyDUoWxv
A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):
PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify — their president is Jewish after all.”
On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is — ‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”
Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.
In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremist militias.
The Azov Battalion marches with Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel flags in Mariupol, August 2020
Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation
Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.
In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.
President Zelensky (C) meets with billionaire oligarch and business associate Ihor Kolomoisky [first on his left, white beard] on September 10, 2019
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”
Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.
In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the US State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”
Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Breaking! A bus carrying supporters and members of #Ukraine's opposition party "Patriots For Life" was attacked by Ukrainian National Corps and Azov Battalion in the east of the country (Kharkov), unconfirmed reports that some of the passengers have been murdered. pic.twitter.com/O0hB2sqbRA
Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them
Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”
A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
Zelensky meets with “veterans” including Yehven Karas (far right) and Dmytro Shatrovsky, an Azov Battalion leader (bottom left).
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.
C14 neo-Nazi gang offers to carry out violence-for-hire: “C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.”
A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.
As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.
The C14 Nazi terror gang signed an agreement with the Kiev municipal government to patrol its streets. This footage taken just a few months later in 2018 shows them carrying out a pogrom against a Romani camp. pic.twitter.com/9aAA86K8TQ
Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the US government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official US government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”
Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”
“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.
Then-Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk onstage at the neo-Nazi “Veterans Strong” concert
After Prime Minister attends neo-Nazi concert, Zelensky honors Right Sector leader
Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.
Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.
Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”
In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
Dmytro Yarosh poses with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
Dmytro Yarosh poses with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”
Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” award.
Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia
On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.
Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine's neo-Nazi terror gang C14's speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses' mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the left, the mainstream media and the State Department. pic.twitter.com/VWJqWPUGUp
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
Yevhen Karas delivering the Nazi salute.
“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”
When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.
With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv. (This was probably a publicity stunt suggested by US/UK advisors, who specialise in such devious tricks.—Ed)
As US media celebrated average Ukrainian citizens taking up arms against Russian troops, the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion's National Corps published a propaganda video of its fighters training and passing out arms to residents of Kharkiv, transforming them into combatants. pic.twitter.com/RVL1nyWkfw
On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.
Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs????
Бійці Азова Нацгвардії змастили кулі салом проти кадировських орків????
A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.
Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.
According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”
Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
BREAKING ???? Ukrainian NAZI are preventing people from leaving Mariupol and are shooting at them.
Other videos filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.
Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
These soldiers were sent to the Balkans ostensibly to monitor a peaceful protest organised by a Bosnian Serb veterans’ organisation, which was supported by the Bosnian Serb ruling party and its president Milorad Dodik.
The increasing visibility of EUFOR and NATO troops in Bosnia is exacerbating already high tensions in the former Yugoslav countries, following the dramatic escalation of violence in Ukraine this year.
The EUFOR intervention in Banja Luka followed similar “pre-cautionary” demonstrations of force in Bosnia over the last several months, including flyovers by French fighter jets and exercises in which EUFOR troops marched down commercial streets in central Sarajevo and drove around civilian areas in armored vehicles.
The protests in Banja Luka result from conflicting interpretations of jurisdiction under the Dayton Agreement, the deal that ended Bosnia’s four-year civil war in 1995.
The Dayton Accords established a tenuous political system for Bosnia and Herzegovina which saw power divided between two “entities” along the armistice line: the Croat and Muslim “Federation” and Serb “Republic”.
While Dayton formally incorporates Russia and other non-NATO countries into its oversight body, the agreement is in practice administered by NATO governments and by Austria, which together appoint a “High Representative” who has sweeping powers to overrule democratic decisions of the respective entity governments.
While nominally neutral, Austria plays a key role in implementing NATO policy in Bosnia, and its status within the former Yugoslav republics as a historic colonial power and major foreign investor undermine its claims to objectivity.
Dayton also laid the framework for what in effect became a permanent military occupation of Bosnia, first directly under NATO, and later under a joint EU-NATO operation known as the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina, or EUFOR.
The symbol of EUFOR
While the ostensible purpose of EUFOR is to prevent the re-emergence of armed conflict between Muslims and Serbs, its contribution to regional and inter-community security is ambiguous at best, and the military occupation of Bosnia is routinely used by the West to exert political domination over the region.
In 2014, a wave of anti-privatization and anti-corruption protests began in Tuzla, a mainly Muslim mining town in Bosnia known for a tradition of socialist and labour militancy.
The protests were notable for broad solidarity between Muslim, Croat, and Serb protestors, and the shared contempt for the dysfunctional administrative structures and nationalist elites (including the aforementioned Dodik) created by Dayton.
In response, the Western-appointed High Representative threatened to suppress the protests with Austrian troops.
In a region with vivid recent memories of a horrific civil war, such Western threats were sufficient to send protestors home.
US and European Union emphasize role of Balkans amid Ukraine war
In response to Russia’s military incursion in Ukraine this February, the United States, European Union, and NATO have increased their activities with EUFOR, holding meetings featuring senior representatives from the US, UK, Germany, France, and Italy.
This March, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, traveled to Bosnia to meet with EUFOR leadership.
COM EUFOR Maj Gen Anton Wessely had the great pleasure to welcome the ???????? High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Mr. Josep Borrell to Camp Butmir. @JosepBorrellFhttps://t.co/sxLPMmR1qzpic.twitter.com/qQl4YLbtzN
Then in April, a bipartisan group of US senators took a tour of the Balkans to, in their own words, “convey continued U.S. support for its allies amid Russian aggression against Ukraine and the implications for European security in the region.”
Democratic and Republican senators met with representatives from EUFOR and NATO in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The US embassy in Sarajevo said the meeting was held “to discuss ways we can bolster cooperation and partnership.”
EUFOR commanders have likewise been coordinating with the US ambassador to Bosnia, Michael J. Murphy, stressing “the importance of shared cooperation and partnership.”
Yesterday COM EUFOR Major General Anton Wessely was delighted to meet the U.S Ambassador to BiH Michael J. Murphy @USEmbassySJJ in his introductory office call to #EUFOR, where the importance of shared cooperation and partnership in supporting BiH authorities was discussed. pic.twitter.com/UOBUZEXZqU
Bosnia is not the only former Yugoslav country where NATO’s contributions to peace and security are dubious.
In March, a Tupolev Tu-141 drone carrying a bomb entered Croatian airspace via Hungary and crashed in a residential neighbourhood in central Zagreb, likely as a result of an error.
A Tupolev Tu-141 drone
It was later revealed that this drone, which is similar to a cruise missile, belonged to the Ukrainian military, and had sought to attack Russian forces.
While no one was hurt, the passage of the explosive-armed drone through hundreds of kilometres of NATO airspace without being intercepted raised questions in Croatia about the ability of NATO to provide for the country’s safety.
Western pressure on Serbia
The Serbian and Bosnian Serb governments have faced increasing pressure from Western governments seeking to harm bilateral relations with Russia, despite their repeated statements deploring the escalation of violence in Ukraine and calling for a peaceful resolution for the conflict.
This pressure led Serbia to vote in the United Nations General Assembly to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, which was a broadly unpopular move within Serbia.
According to the stated goals of US policy, the pressure on Serbia makes little sense: Serbia is a small, middle-income country that plays no role in Russia’s war effort.
Serbian neutrality is much less important for Russia than the roles played by Israel and Turkey, which unlike Serbia, have received little criticism in the Western press for their ambiguous position in the conflict.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has repeatedly implied that the pressures placed on his country are intended to destabilize the Balkans, not to help Ukraine.
Whatever one thinks of Vučić or the war, given the pattern of facts, this explanation is more plausible than the official Western one.
The Kosovo precedent
The Serbian government has also expressed its concerns with Russia’s invocation of the 1999 NATO intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) as a legal pretext for Russia’s own actions in Ukraine.
NATO’s 1999 intervention, conducted intentionally without UN Security Council authorization partly as a demonstration of NATO’s willingness to act unilaterally in violation of international law, nonetheless offered a flimsy legal pretext for military action: it first recognized a secessionist republic in Kosovo before immediately bombing Serbia to protect it.
While Kosovo independence has never received broad international recognition – mainly because of the global consensus that its secession and NATO’s intervention were both in direct violation of the UN charter – NATO was nonetheless able to force Serbia to accept a permanent occupation of Kosovo after 78 days of bombing.
Camp Bondsteel, that US Army base that hosts NATO’s Kosovo presence, is a key logistics hub for military operations across Asia. It is one of the world’s largest US military bases and has been implicated in grave human rights violations by US personnel, including rendition.
Much like the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Camp Bondsteel’s location in a legal grey area, under military occupation and without civilian oversight, offers advantages for covert operations.
Ukrainian soldiers being trained at the US Army’s Camp Bondsteel base in Kosovo in 2010
Proxy conflict in the Balkans
As in Bosnia, the constant threat of renewed NATO aggression is an ever-present phantom in Serbian politics.
Despite claims that its military occupations are intended to preserve regional stability, NATO has never demonstrated a desire to see durable peace and reconciliation among the Balkan countries.
On the contrary, perceived regional instability is a reliable pretext for maintaining a permanent military presence in a strategic location, without the democratic oversight, control, or transparency that would come with regular NATO membership.
The Balkans have experienced major wars every few decades throughout the history of modern states – often proxy conflicts between neighbouring superpowers – and during a period of intensified conflict in Europe, the region needs renewed diplomacy, not militarist provocations.
Yet in line with NATO’s maximalist, escalatory posture in Ukraine itself – explicitly seeking to sacrifice Ukraine in an apocalyptic proxy war to weaken Russia – NATO has done nothing to secure or reassure the peoples of the Balkans.
Perhaps the biggest danger is the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Claims that the region is doomed to instability and violence risk feeding an escalatory cycle that may bring about the very violence one hopes to avoid.
While this may be good news for Western arms manufacturers, it does nothing to protect the lives of Croats or Albanians.
Despite racist lies about “ancient ethnic hatreds” and violent cultures, however, armed conflict and instability have been repeatedly imposed on the Balkans by self-interested foreign powers, exploiting the same internal fractures and divisions that exist anywhere else.
It is external provocations that threaten the region, not any fundamental conflicts between its peoples.
None of this is to say that recent Russian diplomacy in the region has been particularly positive either. Remarks by Russia’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor Kalabukhov, were widely condemned, after he threatened retaliatory action should the country begin a process of NATO accession, citing Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine as an example of a possible response.
Escalatory rhetoric and actions on both sides – but particularly on the side of NATO, which has an extensive recent history of military aggression in the region and a significant military presence in both non-NATO former Yugoslav republics – is enhancing the grave danger of renewed violent conflict in the region.
Bombings in Transnistria threaten to expand war
The western Balkans is not the only place that has seen efforts from various actors to broaden the scope of the Russia-NATO proxy war by opening new fronts.
Transnistria, the disputed region on Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine, which hosts a small Russian peacekeeping force, was hit by a series of bombings of unknown origin this April, targeting government institutions and radio infrastructure.
Moldova’s pro-EU president Maia Sandu has made similar remarks to Vučić, suggesting efforts to destabilize the formally neutral country. Exactly which forces are encouraging escalation in each of these cases, and why, is not always clear.
Both Russia and NATO have acted in ways that undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weaker states, and both have engaged in escalatory rhetoric. However, efforts to prolong, intensify, and broaden the geographic scope of armed conflict, including efforts to draw Moscow into secondary proxy conflicts, are entirely consistent with the stated US program to maximize costs and destabilization within Russia itself.
The situation in Ukraine has made it abundantly clear that US policy makes no effort to protect its ostensible allies, including NATO members.
Not only does Washington see Ukrainian lives as an acceptable price to pay in a proxy conflict against Russia; economic devastation of Europe and explosive-armed drones landing in Zagreb are also acceptable.
This is an extremely dangerous period of history, for the Balkans, for Europe, and for the world.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even stated that the risk of a nuclear war in the current circumstances is “considerable.”.
Coordinated efforts to encourage diplomacy, de-escalation, and peace have never been more urgent.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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Ukraine is none of America’s business!
Be sure to circulate this article among friends, workmates and kin.
EXPOSING CAPITALISM'S MULTITUDE OF VICES AND INCURABLE PROBLEMS
Eric Zuesse
With the incorporation of the Donbass region in the Southeast, Kiev will lose access to the sea (Black Sea and Azov), thereby becoming a rump, landlocked nation. In the western regions, where Lviv currently is, Poland and Romania will probably take control, further shrinking the original Ukrainian territory. Note that in the north, the border with Belarus may also be regarded as a border with Russia, given Belarus' integration with the Russian Federation.
Ukraine borders Russia, not America.
Mexico borders America, not Russia.
For this democratic response by Russia to America’s Ukrainian coup (and to America’s attempt to grab Russia’s naval base in Crimea to transform it into a U.S. naval base there), America and its vassal nations repeatedly sanctioned Russia — another step in America’s World War III aggression against Russia — and refused even to consider Russia’s demand that Ukraine must never be a member of America’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO or otherwise become a staging-area for a possible U.S.-and-allied invasion of Russia (a modern-day version of Adolf Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” blitz-attack to grab Russia).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwc-XBjl1tc
U.S.-and-allied publics have been psychopathically deceived. NATO — America’s anti-Russian and anti-Chinese military alliance — is the world’s real satanic entity.
Ukraine is none of America’s business! But it very much is the business of the American empire — a business that still might yet be stopped, before it’s too late (for everyone).
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
This song goes out to all peace-loving people who are taking a courageous stand against US empire building and expansion of the aggressive, warmongering military alliance, NATO.
Website: https://www.mistahi.com/ No to NATO Lyrics Hear the warmongers speak, “NATO must expand to the East”, “Trust us”, they say, “Russia and China are enemies”, “They won’t get down on their knees!”, But we know who’s to blame, For the path to WWIII, We say no, we say no NATO! Right before our eyes, US/NATO commits heinous war crimes, Empire leaders of the day try to hide their crimes away, War in the name of peace, But we know what to blame, Their bloody crusades, We say no, we say no NATO! They spread fear - lies - and hate, To justify regime change, World control is their aim – state terror on display, Violence is their only way, And we know who’s to blame,
as the war machine gets paid, We say no, we say no NATO!
Defend the rights of all, Don’t let them demonize the world,
Disband NATO, Bring the troops home,
It’s the only way to peace, ‘Cause we know who’s to blame,
So raise up your fist and sing, We say no, we say no NATO!
Techniques of Torture and Assassination Deployed by the SBU (Ukraine’s CIA) Recall the U.S.’s Brutal “Operation Phoenix” in Vietnam
Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014.
Vasily Prozorov (left) at work in the anti-terrorist operation zone in Donetsk region with Colonel Sergey Krivonos. [Source: mirror.co.uk]
Prozorov’s revelations take on extremely ominous implications in light of a new report by The Grayzone Project detailing the SBU’s participation in a campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture overseen by Ukrainian President and Western media darling Volodymyr Zelensky.
The campaign bears comparison with Operation Phoenix in South Vietnam, which resulted in the killing, imprisonment and torture of thousands of South Vietnamese, including civilian officials accused of being loyal to the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (NLF).
Phung Hoang or Phoenix program image. [Source: youtube.com]
During congressional hearings in 1971, Ogden Reid (D-NY) said that, “if the Union had had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia.”[1]
On March 1, Struk was kidnapped by men in military uniform and then shot in the heart, with his tortured body displayed before the public. Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to compromise and negotiate with pro-Russian officials.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page: “There is one less traitor in Ukraine.”
Gerashchenko has compiled a “blacklist of enemies of the state.” It includes journalists who have been murdered by state-backed death squads, such as prominent columnist Oles Buzina, whose name had appeared on the list.[2]
As of today, eleven mayors in Ukrainian towns are missing. On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylypko, was found murdered. Prylypko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents—a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office. (The Ukrainians claim that Prylopko was killed by Russian soldiers while distributing food and medicine).
Yuri Prylypko [Source: ukrinform.net]
Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kyiv after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”
Denis Kireev [Source: timesofisrael.com]
President Zelensky stated that “there would be consequences for collaborators,” indicating his support for the Phoenix-style operations.
Police State
Currently, Zelensky is promoting a bill that would expand the SBU’s powers. The head of the SBU, Ivan Bakonov, is a close friend of his.
Ivan Bakonov [Source: wikipedia.org]
The director of SBU’s counterintelligence, Oleksandr Poklad, is nicknamed “The Strangler.” He has a reputation for using torture and assorted dirty tricks to set up his bosses’ political rivals on treason charges.
Zelensky signing legislation to expand the powers of the SBU. [Source: globalhappenings.com]
In a March 19 executive order, Zelensky invoked martial law to ban 11 opposition parties. The outlawed parties consisted of the entire left-wing, socialist or anti-NATO spectrum in Ukraine. They included the For Life Party, the Left Opposition, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Union of Left Forces, Socialists, the Party of Shariy, Ours, State, Opposition Bloc and the Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.
Openly fascist and pro-Nazi parties like the Azov National Corps were left untouched.
On April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by the SBU. In a photo released to the public, Medvedchuk’s face appeared to be swollen and bruised, the likely result of beatings by SBU goons.
Inmates considered SBU-run prisons to be “like a small Guantanamo.” Beatings took place at all hours of the night amidst the backdrop of Ukrainian nationalist music.
Phoenix Redux
Douglas Valentine, author of the seminal book The Phoenix Program (1990), sees eerie parallels between the original Phoenix program and Zelensky’s operations today. In both cases, Valentine told CAM in an exclusive interview, “neutralism wasn’t tolerated.”
Valentine recounted how legendary CIA officer Lucien Conein had told him that Phoenix was, “a very good blackmail scheme for the central government. ‘If you don’t do what I want, you’re VC [Vietcong].’”
This is similar to Ukraine today—exemplified by the killing of government negotiators who advocate for peace with Russia, or mayors adopting a compromising or neutralist line.
Valentine noted that under Phoenix, or Phung Hoang as it was called by the CIA’s South Vietnamese counterparts, due process was totally non-existent. South Vietnamese civilians whose names appeared on blacklists could be kidnapped, tortured and murdered simply on the word of an anonymous informer—which is again happening in Ukraine.
Tellingly, after Volodymyr Struk’s death, Anton Gerashchenko claimed that Struk had been judged by the “court of the people’s tribunal” rather than any formal legal state court structure.
Struk: killed after a “people’s trial,” Phoenix-style. [Source: thegrayzone.com]
‘Rampage Against Any and All Iterations of Internal Political Opposition”
On March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the homes of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda.
While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”
“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the German publication Junge Welt.
The Azov members and SBU agents recorded the torture session and published images of Matjuschenko’s bloodied face online.
The torture of left-wing activist Alexander Matjuschenko on March 3 in Dnipro, recorded by Azov members and posted on Telegram by the city of Dnipro. [Source: thegrayzone.com]
Matjuschenko was jailed on the grounds that he was “conducting an aggressive war or military operation,” and now faces 10 to 15 years in prison. Despite enduring several broken ribs from the beating by state-backed ultra-nationalists, he has been denied bail. Meanwhile, dozens of other leftists have been jailed on similar charges in Dnipro.
Among those targeted by the SBU were Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich, members of the outlawed Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine. Both were arrested and jailed on March 6 and accused of “spreading pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.”
In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavovna, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism”; and an untold number of others.
Oleg Novikov under arrest. [Source: thegrayzone.com]
These cases are all reminiscent of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, where Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) goon squads trained by the CIA targeted human rights and other political activists, journalists and opponents of the Thieu-Ky clique that Washington had propped up in South Vietnam.
Nguyen Van Thieu, left, and Nguyen Cao Ky, center. [Source: nytimes.com]
Anatoly Shariy [Source: delfi.it]. Currently a guest of the Spanish police, also collaborating with the fascist Ukraine, at the request of the Americans, of course.
It has been heavily involved in efforts by the Ukrainian state to rehabilitate the Nazi collaborationist organizations, the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was headed during World War II by fascist Stepan Bandera.
An offshoot of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists pose for a photo with American supporters in the early 1930s. [Source: encyclopediaofukraine.com]
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime-change operation of 2013-2014, declared in 2015 that the SBU “does not need to invent anything new, it is important to build on the traditions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA in the 1930–1950 years.”
During World War II, Ukrainian fascists of the OUN-B were involved in the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, as well as of Ukrainian opponents of fascism. After the war and well into the 1950s, both the OUN-B and UPA were engaged in an insurgency against Soviet rule, with backing from the CIA, during which the UPA killed another 20,000 Ukrainian civilians.
CIA Pacification
Not surprising perhaps given his historical outlook, Nalyvaichenko nurtured close ties to Washington when he served as general consul to the Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. During that time, Nalyvaichenko was recruited by the CIA, according to his predecessor at the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko, who served under the Russian-oriented government of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.[3]
Douglas Valentine believes that the CIA “is applying the same organizational structure in Ukraine as it used in South Vietnam to conduct an updated version of the typical ‘two tier’ Phoenix program. The top tier is to assure political control, the lower tier to pacify the population.”
SBU Headquarters in Kyiv. [Source: dreamstime.com] Where is Mr Kinzhal when you need him?
Valentine continued:
“Organizationally, Phoenix coordinates CIA foreign intelligence and covert action officers and operations from the highest national level through the provinces down to the most remote territorial outposts.
Foreign intelligence officers advise SBU security service to assure ‘top tier’ internal security and political control; and Ukrainian CIA agents run ops into Donbas, Russia and Belarus, sending illegal travelers, smugglers, and agents to set up agent nets and penetrate the enemy in his territory, [and carry out] sabotage and subversion. SBU and Ukrainian CIA are where hit-lists get authored. CIA officers advise military, militias and mercenaries in deniable political, paramilitary and psychological operations to terrorize and otherwise persuade civilian population to support Zelensky while demoralizing and fighting the enemy.”
SBU emblem and military intelligence officer with SBU emblem on uniform. [Source: informnapalm.org]
According to Valentine, the disaster now unfolding in Ukraine has long been in the works. Starting in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, the CIA began buying property and setting up organizations and businesses in Ukraine so it would have fronts and safe houses.
“All these things serve as places where CIA officers can meet and plot and engage in unilateral recruitments to put politicians and civil servants and businessmen in place who can assure that the CIA can reorganize the economy and the government and put a Defense Minister and Minister of the Interior in place who is on their payroll, who will then appoint police chiefs who will be on the CIA payroll—for the purpose of furthering U.S. policy, not Ukraine policy.”
[Source: gettotext.com]
The ultimate goal since 1991 was to start a war in the Ukraine against Russia, which weakens Russia but also forces Ukrainians to flee the war zones. As soon as that happens, the prices go down and who is going to go swooping in there to buy it up?
Meanwhile, Valentine says, “the CIA is building a compatible civil base through unilateral recruitments. Also, U.S. universities and unions send advisers to help create schools and indoctrinate youth and workers.
Business advisers create a Rotary Club and a Chamber of Commerce. They create a foreign relations council. This is how the CIA rules a foreign society: through the ownership of property and having the proper people in government security and defense industries and control of the civic institutions.”
According to Valentine, “the CIA is working with bankers. They want Ukrainians putting their money in a Morgan Stanley brokerage firm in Kyiv. They want to suck the life out of Ukrainians. People do it on the promise of a brighter future—others are bribed, still others like Zelensky in my humble opinion are blackmailed.”
Volodymyr Zelensky—was he bribed? [Source: theweek.in]
“Whatever, the CIA is manipulating them toward U.S. policies. CIA officers are recruiting people and putting them in place, having them sign contracts.
It would be like the Russians coming here to the United States and recruiting people and our police forces and our government institutions. It’s illegal. You can’t do it. You can’t take money from a foreign intelligence agency and work against your own government, but that is what the CIA is doing in the Ukraine right now on a massive scale.”
Valentine further notes:
“They’re always finding a reason to start a war, so they can send the next generation of young men into battle, to learn how to kill people in the most brutal fashion—that’s Phoenix, always rising from the ashes of war. The U.S. has an imperative to be as super-aggressive as it can be, so it doesn’t lose its edge. If its predatory impulse to dominate was stilted in Vietnam, that doesn’t mean the soldiers and spies aren’t going to pop up someplace else. They’re always going to pop up someplace else. They always do. Like in Ukraine.”
Where Is the Congressional Oversight?
Valentine pointed out that, at the conclusion of the congressional hearings into the original Phoenix program in 1971, Representatives Pete McCloskey (R-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Ben Rosenthal (D-NY), and Bella Abzug (D-NY) stated their belief that “the people of these United States … have deliberately imposed on the Vietnamese people a system of justice which admittedly denies due process of law…. In so doing, we appear to have violated the 1949 Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian peoples” in time of war.”
“Some of us who have visited Vietnam,” they further said, “share a real fear that the Phoenix program is an instrument of terror… and that U.S. civilian and military personnel have participated for over three years in the deliberate denial of due process of law to thousands of people held in secret interrogation centers built with U.S. dollars.” They added that “Congress owes a duty to act swiftly and decisively to see that the practices involved are terminated forthwith.”[6]
Now, where is the congressional oversight of the CIA’s abuses in Ukraine? And mainstream media scrutiny, which would generate the kind of public outrage necessary for instituting congressional hearings?
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2000), 13. ↑
Buzina advocated for unity among Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and campaigned to outlaw neo-Nazi organizing. ↑
For the historical pattern, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012). ↑
CIA agents trained their Ukrainian counterparts, according to a Yahoo News exposé, in sniper techniques and use of Javelin anti-tank missiles. ↑
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Aearnur
