Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered sweeping changes to the country’s top law...

[TheWorldNewsOrg]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered sweeping changes to the country’s top law enforcement agency. The overhaul could scuttle some ongoing probes, including two related to President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort https://t.co/ZhMtNdBAUM pic.twitter.com/66pOaAZyYJ

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 2, 2019

via .ORG

World News

[JW Insider]

12 hours ago, TheWorldNewsOrg said:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered sweeping changes to the country’s top law enforcement agency.

In the United States, when Obama was elected, several pundits spoke of a post-racial Society in the United States -- as if racism was obviously obsolete. Similarly, when Zelensky was elected, a non-practicing Jewish person, some Ukrainian and international pundits pushed the idea that Ukraine was now a post-Nazi society. 

The extent of neo-Nazi influence in the government and the inability of Zelenskiy to respond effectively was just shown in the attacks on him last week. But to understand those recent attacks you have to go back at least a few years to the Maidan rebellion that ousted Yanukovych.

The attacks this week were basically about the new "Jewish" president Zelensky in public asking the Azov battalion how they still get American weapons (among other things) and threatening that he is going to get to the bottom of it. A police chief in the crowd overruled Zelensky's request, and threats were recorded that focused on his Jewishness, and some stated proudly in post-threats that "we should have thrown a grenade at him."

There had always been a question about whether the far right factions in Ukraine would continue to gain ground in spite of Zelenskiy's overtures to peace and unity.

The Nation gives the following reports from various sources earlier this year (February 2019), to reduce space I am only covering a few of them, (many more here https://www.thenation.com/article/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/) but they also could give the idea that the US has been a willing participant with Nazis in Ukraine as a means of helping to present Russia in a worse light than the United States. When the United States props up Ukrainian Nazis with training and weapons, it's a sure way to keep the violence tuned against Russia. It's not so different than the reasons the United States trained and supported Osama bin Laden as an anti-Russian measure. This has been going on well prior to the Crimea based conflicts.

Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine

Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.

Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.

Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.

These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.

Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march.

A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe

“Volunteer Ukrainian Unit Includes Nazis.”—USA Today, March 10, 2015

The DC establishment’s standard defense of Kiev is to point out that Ukraine’s far right has a smaller percentage of seats in the parliament than their counterparts in places like France. That’s a spurious argument: What Ukraine’s far right lacks in polls numbers, it makes up for with things Marine Le Pen could only dream of—paramilitary units and free rein on the streets.

Post-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces. The Azov Battalion was initially formed out of the neo-Nazi gang Patriot of Ukraine. Andriy Biletsky, the gang’s leader who became Azov’s commander, once wrote that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” Biletsky is now a deputy in Ukraine’s parliament.

...

While the group officially denies any neo-Nazi connections, Azov’s nature has been confirmed by multiple Western outlets: The New York Times called the battalion “openly neo-Nazi,” while USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Telegraph, and Haaretz documented group members’ proclivity for swastikas, salutes, and other Nazi symbols, and individual fighters have also acknowledged being neo-Nazis.

...

In 2017, Congressman Ro Khanna led the effort to ban Azov from receiving U.S. arms and training. But the damage has already been done: The research group Bellingcat proved that Azov had already received access to American grenade launchers, while a Daily Beast investigation showed that US trainers are unable to prevent aid from reaching white supremacists. And Azov itself had proudly posted a video of the unit welcoming NATO representatives.

(Azov isn’t the only far-right formation to get Western affirmation. In December 2014, Amnesty International accused the Dnipro-1 battalion of potential war crimes, including “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Six months later, Senator John McCain visited and praised the battalion.)

Particularly concerning is Azov’s campaign to transform Ukraine into a hub for transnational white supremacy. The unit has recruited neo-Nazis from Germany, the UK, Brazil, Sweden, and America; last October, the FBI arrested four California white supremacists who had allegedly received training from Azov. This is a classic example of blowback: US support of radicals abroad ricocheting to hit America.

Far right ties to government

“Ukrainian police declare admiration for Nazi collaborators”—RFE, February 13, 2019

Speaker of Parliament Andriy Parubiy cofounded and led two neo-Nazi organizations: the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later renamed Svoboda), and Patriot of Ukraine, whose members would eventually form the core of Azov.

Although Parubiy left the far right in the early 2000’s, he hasn’t rejected his past. When asked about it in a 2016 interview, Parubiy replied that his “values” haven’t changed. Parubiy, whose autobiography shows him marching with the neo-Nazi wolfsangel symbol used by Aryan Nations, regularly meets with Washington think tanks and politicians; his neo-Nazi background is ignored or outright denied.

Even more disturbing is the far right’s penetration of law enforcement. Shortly after Maidan, the US equipped and trained the newly founded National Police, in what was intended to be a hallmark program buttressing Ukrainian democracy.

The deputy minister of the Interior—which controls the National Police—is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of Azov and Patriot of Ukraine. In 2014, when Troyan was being considered for police chief of Kiev, Ukrainian Jewish leaders were appalled by his neo-Nazi background. Today, he’s deputy of the department running US-trained law enforcement in the entire nation.

Earlier this month, RFE reported on National Police leadership admiring Stepan Bandera—a Nazi collaborator and Fascist whose troops participated in the Holocaust—on social media.

The fact that Ukraine’s police is peppered with far-right supporters explains why neo-Nazis operate with impunity on the streets.