Ukraine cannot deal with Nazi Barbarism

It used to be axiomatic in the West post-WW II that the Nazi swastika would for evermore remain a symbol of pristine barbarism and evil, and that wherever and whenever it showed or appeared it would become the solemn duty of all people to take a stand against it.

This, so the thinking went, was something we were bound to do both out of respect for the 30 million Russians, Gypsies and Jews slaughtered in the name of this execrable symbol in the past.

This to ensure that nothing like the slaughter, including the Holocaust unleashed in Europe in the name of the heinous ideology it represents, ever comes close to happening again in the future.

In 2022, this settled view of the swastika and all it represents has in the West clearly and egregiously been lost to geopolitical and strategic expediency.

Confirming that history is not, as Irish thinker Edmund Burke stated in the 18th century, ‘a pact between the dead, the living and the yet unborn, but today is instead a pact between dead, the living, and rank opportunism.

The conflict in Ukraine, let us be clear, did not begin on February 24, 2022 with the start of Putin’s so-called ‘special military operation’, as Western ideologues would have us believe.

In truth it began in 2014 with the Maiden coup against the country’s then democratically-elected government in Kiev, leading inexorably to an uprising against the pro-West regime installed in its place by Russian speaking Ukrainians in the south and east of the country.

Since then Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and Neo-Nazis have been key in ensuring that the government in Kiev, under both Poroshenko and his successor Zelensky, could not implement any of the conditions set out in the Minsk I and II Agreements.

The legislation for a ceasefire in the Donbass was followed up by regional elections being held in recognition of the Donbass enjoying not independence but devolved autonomy within a wider Ukraine framework, under supervision of France and Germany.

This leads us to the astonishing encounter that took place between a freshly-elected Volodymer Zelensky and Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalists/Neo-Nazis in the Donbass in 2019.

Zelensky had arrived on a visit to the town of Zolote, close to the then front-line between Kiev’s forces deployed there and their pro-Russian speaking Ukrainian adversaries.

The men Zelensky encountered were members of the Azov, and they made clear that they would defy any instructions to lay down their arms in accordance with Minsk or the peace plan upon which the new president had just been elected by a thumping majority.

The leader of the Azov, Andriy Beletsky, went even further, threatening to bring thousands of Nazi and Israeli mercenary fighters to Zolote if Zelensky refused to back down.

Covered in depth by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal for The Grayzone, this encounter confirmed the chilling extent to which Neo-Nazis managed to box in the country’s president and force him to dance to their tune, rather than the other way round.

It is simply the case that no other state in Europe has uniformed and armed regiments and battalions of Neo-Nazis incorporated into their armed forces, replete with Nazi insignia and symbols adorning their uniforms.

And it’s not just the Azov Regiment. There is also the Aidar Battalion, Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2, Kiev 1, Ukraina, Centuria, Right Sector — in total around 30 such volunteer Neo-Nazi/Ultra-Nationalist terror groups fighting against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens in Donbass.

A recent Newsweek report showed that these groups have engaged in ‘ISIS-Christian style atrocities’, involving the beheading and dismemberment of Russian POW’s and pro-Russian ‘saboteurs’ and ‘accomplices’.

Based on a report by Amnesty claiming that these heavily armed far right terror groups were operating with virtually no oversight or control regrading the Geneva convention.

The article highlights the consequences of Western governments opting to embrace opportunism rather than principle in their engagement with Ukraine since 2013.

This, doing so while turning a blind eye to what the Kremlin has known all along — namely that Nazi ideology has deeply entrenched cultural roots in western Ukraine, a part of the world with a baneful legacy of collaboration with the Nazis during WW II.

The veneration in which the infamous Ukrainian fascist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera is a case in point and constitutes an indictment Kiev’s political establishment’s failure to address this hostile fascist legacy and condemn it.

Never forgotten should be the fact that specially formed Ukrainian auxiliary police units and an SS division (Galicia) were responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities carried out against Russian and Ukrainian Jews, Roma gypsies and other minorities during Hitler’s Nazi occupation.

Their Neo-Nazi progeny in Ukraine today have likewise been responsible for attacks against minorities. A 2018 report by the Helsinki Commission revealed that over the course of 2018, attacks on Roma in Ukraine have escalated dramatically.

Several of the mob attacks have been filmed and broadcast in an attempt to intimidate Roma gypsy communities. The attacks have destroyed property, injured many, and officially killed at least one victim.

In providing unconditional military aid to Ukraine in its Zionist conflict against Russia, while conveniently overlooking the uncomfortable truth about the normalization of fascist and Nazi ideology.

This ideology has taken place within Ukrainian society, the West is merely sowing dragon’s teeth in what amounts to a quite astonishing and shameful refusal to learn from history.

PressTV / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2022.