NINE years ago in Odessa, Ukrainian neo-Nazis burned 42 people alive in the House of Trade Unions and killed six more in the street. I thought the whole world would be horrified by this event, condemning it, calling the organizers and the Kiev authorities to account. Yet the world remained silent, and only Russia appreciated the horror of what had happened. So far, no one has answered for this crime.
But why did it happen? In late February, Elon Musk wrote on his page on Twitter that in 2014 there was undoubtedly a coup d’état and a violent change of power in Ukraine.
After the Maidan in Ukraine in 2014, forces promoting the ideology of neo-Nazism came to power. Now, the Kyiv regime promotes neo-Nazism. Nationalist sentiments among people are cultivated in Ukraine through state policy and efforts by authorities of all levels to whitewash and glorify Nazism.
Ukrainian officials express support for Nazis openly and frequently. Some examples: In September 2018, former Verkhovnaya Rada Speaker Andrey Paruby said on air in an ICTV show that “the greatest man who practiced direct democracy was Adolf Hitler.” On March 17, 2022, head of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service Sergey Deineko called for killing Russian women and children in a Facebook post, which was later deleted.
On January 1 of each year, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities host torch marches honoring the birthday of the Nazi henchman Stepan Bandera. Nationalist slogans are shouted and a show of Nazi symbols accompany the marches. Since 2019, Bandera’s birthday is celebrated as an official holiday. Supported by the authorities and with no accountability, the radical far-right forces use methods of violence and intimidation against their political opponents, activists, human rights advocates and journalists, putting pressure on government agencies to adopt decisions that suit their purposes. Neo-Nazi groups are openly active in Ukraine, the most famous being the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The radicals act with impunity. The open aggressiveness of these forces, combined with the negligence and sometimes connivance of law enforcers, is creating a dangerous situation in which marginal groups intimidate the rational majority.
Despite these, Western media have kept mostly silent about the role of neo- and classical Nazi groups in the Maidan and the war in Eastern Ukraine, choosing to airbrush them out of the narrative about “Russian aggression” they have created.
Still, the truth still comes out. After visiting Kyiv in May 2021, a group of French senators said the activities of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine were a cause for concern. Attending a fair in central Kyiv during the Kyiv Day celebrations, they said they came across members of the Azov Battalion who taught children to assemble guns, a stand where volunteers were enlisted for a war in Donbass, and a shooting range where the far-right invited young people to shoot at a paper image of the Kremlin. In November 2020, the NGO Centre for Countering Digital Hate published a report naming Ukraine among the main promoters of the neo-Nazi ideology.
For the most part, neo-Nazi crimes are at best hushed up. In light of Russia’s special military operation, the Western media and NGOs are clearly ramping up their efforts to whitewash Ukrainian neo-Nazis whom they cast as fighters for freedom and independence in a “democratic” country struggling against the “aggression of a dictatorial regime.” The American IT companies provide tangible assistance to Kyiv. YouTube administrators and moderators do not object to dissemination of information by extremist organizations, primarily the Right Sector and Azov.
Nazism is also being promoted on UN platforms. Thus, the United States and Western countries ignore the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism, thereby supporting the neo-Nazi regime of Ukraine. The countries of the former Hitler coalition set out to revise the causes and results of World War II, which contradicts the UN Charter. I hope the world community gives its negative assessment of the actions of these countries, especially Japan and Germany, which seek to obtain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in the case of reform of the organization, and Article 107 of the UN Charter will be the basis for rejection of these plans.
And the real facts they try to hide and quickly forget. A report drafted by Amnesty International, which acknowledged that war crimes were committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against civilians, in particular, the use of civilians as “human shields” highlights the collective West’s efforts to whitewash Kyiev’s crimes. In fact, Amnesty has revealed Kyiv’s true nature and its terrorist tactics. But this report, after numerous threats to its authors by the Nazis, was discredited.
In other words, Ukraine, enjoying the silent encouragement of the collective West, ignores the concern of the international community and continues to promote neo-Nazi ideology.
Returning to the events of September 2, 2014 in Odessa: if the international community had condemned this heinous crime, perhaps there would not have been a conflict in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Nazis continue to march with torches and poison Ukraine with their ideology of racial and national hatred.
