The Coup Leadership in Ukraine is Fascist

No commentator has doubted that the 22 February 2014 coup would not have succeeded without the paramilitary violence of the far right that met police blockades with firearms and improvised explosives on 18 February 2014.

“Police fired guns, with both rubber bullets and, later, live ammunition (including automatic weapons and sniper rifles), while also using tear gas and flash grenades in an attempt to repel thousands of demonstrators, who fought back with crude weapons, firearms, and improvised explosives.” <“Four reported dead, more than 100 injured as violent clashes break out near Ukraine’s parliament (live updates)”. Kyiv Post. 18 February 2014> “

At least 82 people were killed over the following few days, including 13 policemen; more than 1,100 people were injured.” <“Ukraine Violence Leaves at Least 10 Dead”. ABC News. 18 February 2014.>

The pre-cursor of today’s far-right parties was the openly neo-fascist Social-National Party of Ukraine, a party modeled on Hitler’s Nazi Party, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. But now, after receiving finance and advice from the US state department, as documented here, the successor parties Svoboda, led by Oleh Tyahnybok, and Right Sector, led by Dimytro Yarosh, describe themselves as “right-wing nationalist”, but not fascistic or anti-semitic, as was the Social-National Party of Ukraine. Dmytro Yarosh has been appointed deputy head of the National Security and Defence Committee of the new unelected government of Ukraine.

The Right Sector is a confederation of several right and far-right organizations and groups such as “Patriots of Ukraine,” the Social-National Assembly, Stepan Bandera’s All-Ukrainian Association “Trident,” Kyiv Organization’s “White Hummer,” and the UNA-UNSO… The paramilitary right sector has de facto power at least in some Western Ukrainian regions, such as the Rivne and Volyn Regions. Anriy Parubiy, the commander of the “Maidan self-defense,” has been appointed the head of the National Security and Defense Council. [Source]

(Anriy Parubiy) founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok; the party combined radical nationalism and some neo-Nazi features (by its name and the “Wolfsangel“-like sign). In 1998-2004 Parubiy led the paramilitary organization of SNPU, the Patriots of Ukraine. Parubiy co-led the Orange Revolution in 2004 (with Yulia Tymoshenko).  [Source]

For people who ask for evidence that the core group of Ukrainian rebels is neo-nazi, consider this:

The 2004 Orange Revolution was lead by Yulia Tymoshenko and Anriy Parubiy, and that revolution occurred after an election “marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and direct electoral fraud.” [Source]

And in the recent coup ,”From December 2013 to February 2014 Parubiy was a commandant of Euromaidan. He was coordinator of the volunteer security corps for the mainstream protesters.” [Source]

But what has not been recognised …. Yulia Tymoshenko was herself found guilty of massive corruption, and Anriy Parubiy co-founded a neo-nazi party and his present party is attempting to replace all of the staff at the CEC with people sympathetic to the Right Sector.

It is worthwhile focussing on these points in detail.

It is quite a disconnect that Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party was leading protestors against massive corruption in 2004 when seven years later “a number of criminal cases were brought against her. On 11 October 2011, she was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of power, and sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay the state $188 million. [[Source]

The same article by RT at Global Research, has this further evidence of Right Sector displaying fascist behavior:

Regional parliament members in a Ukrainian city held a session at gunpoint when one of the radical nationalist opposition leaders came to them, armed to the teeth, as the law of power seems to be prevailing in the tumultuous post-coup country. (Video here)

A Kalashnikov appears to be the best argument in a debate for Aleksandr Muzychko, an activist of the nationalist “Pravy Sektor” (Right Sector) movement and one of the Maidan’s most prominent and controversial leaders. On Tuesday he came to the Rovno regional parliament, where he threatened the regional MPs with a machine-gun and a number of other weapons as he demanded a decision on granting apartments to the families of protesters who were killed during last week’s violent clashes in central Kiev. “Who wants to take away my machine-gun? Who wants to take away my gun? Who wants to take away my knives? I dare you!” Muzychko said. His lobbying methods have apparently been imported from Chechnya, where the man, aka Sashko Bilyi, was fighting alongside separatist forces in the 1990s…

On Monday, the prosecutor’s office in the Volyn region in western Ukraine and members of the Party of Regions in the adjacent Rovno region said they were being pressured and urged to resign by radicals. A statement by the 24 employees of the office in Volyn says that radicals from the Right Sector intimidated them with “physical threats to them and their families… by displaying firearms, entering premises of public institutions, including the prosecutor’s office and demanding the dismissal of management.”

Deputy Chairman of the Party of Regions in Rivne, Alla Ivoylovoy, said that “armed masked youths burst into the homes” of the party’s members, demanding a list of activists who “participated in the so-called anti-Maidan protest, threatening physical violence and arson of houses.” The Ukrainian Communist Party, which has been closely aligned with Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, has also been under attack. The house of the party’s leader, Pyotr Simonenko, was set on fire on Monday.

 And now Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Julia Tymoshenko’s right-wing Fatherland Party is the unelected PM of Ukraine after a Western-financed coup, and members of the previous ruling party of the country are now physically attacked by thugs connected to Right Sector, Svoboda, Patriots of Ukraine, Social-National Assembly, Tryzub (Trident), Bily Molot (White Hummer, УНА-УНСО (UNA-UNSO: Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense) and Spilna Sprava, who roam the streets with baseball-bats to check people’s accents!

This is fascist behaviour, without doubt!

The other successor party to the Social-National Party of Ukraine is the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda (Freedom) Party led by Oleh Tyahnybok. Unlike the Right Sector, Svoboda states that their politics are nationalist, but not fascistic or antisemitic. However, Stephen Grey noted in his article “In Ukraine, nationalists gain influence – and scrutiny” published in the Chicago Tribune on 18 March 2014:

“Expert opinions on Svoboda in particular are divided. Per Anders Rudling, an associate professor at Lund University in Sweden and researcher on Ukrainian extremists, has described Svoboda as “neo-fascist”… But Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa who has studied the far-right in Ukraine, disagreed that Svoboda was so extreme. “Svoboda is currently best described as a radical nationalist party, and not as fascist or neo-Nazi,” he said. “It is now not overtly anti-Semitic.” Andrew Srulevitch, director of European Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, an international group based in the U.S. that monitors anti-Semites and other political extremists, said: “Svoboda has been disciplined in its messaging regarding Jews since the Maidan demonstrations started in November, but they have a history of anti-Semitic statements to overcome, and a clear political program of ethnic nationalism that makes Jews nervous.”

In 2004, Tyahnybok was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction for a speech calling for Ukrainians to fight against a “Muscovite–Jewish mafia,” and celebrated the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for having fought “Moscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.”

Members of the fascist “Right Sector” stand in front of the entrance to the Ukrainian parliament to block members from the anti-coup parties from entering.

Ray Bergmann
28 April 2014