Six on History: Russian Invasion of Ukraine (not available on MSNBC)
panaritisp
Welcome back to Six on History
If you like what you find on the "Six on History" blog, please share w/your contacts.
Click here for Detailed Search Help h/t John Elfrank
"The USA Today reported that a photo that went viral about a high-rise in the Ukraine being hit by Russian bombing turned out to be a high-rise from the Gaza Strip, demolished by the Israeli Air Force in May 2021. A few days before that, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister complained to the Israeli ambassador in Kiev that “you’re treating us like Gaza”; he was furious that Israel did not condemn the Russian invasion and was only interested in evicting Israeli citizens from the state (Haaretz, February 17, 2022). It was a mixture of reference to the Ukrainian evacuation of Ukrainian spouses of Palestinian men from the Gaza Strip in May 2021, as well as a reminder to Israel of the Ukrainian president’s full support for Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in that month (I will return to that support towards the end of this piece).
Israel’s assaults on Gaza should, indeed, be mentioned and considered when evaluating the present crisis in the Ukraine. It is not a coincidence that photos are being confused – there are not many high-rises that were toppled in the Ukraine, but there is an abundance of ruined high-rises in the Gaza Strip. However, it is not only the hypocrisy about Palestine that emerges when we consider the Ukraine crisis in a wider context; it is the overall Western double standards that should be scrutinized, without, for one moment, being indifferent to news and images coming to us from the war zone in the Ukraine: traumatized children, streams of refugees, sights of buildings ruined by bombing and the looming danger that this is only the beginning of a human catastrophe at the heart of Europe.
Lesson One: White Refugees are Welcome; Others Less So
The unprecedented collective EU decision to open up its borders to the Ukrainian refugees, followed by a more guarded policy by Britain, cannot go unnoticed in comparison to the closure of most of the European gates to the refugees coming from the Arab world and Africa since 2015. The clear racist prioritization, distinguishing between life seekers on the basis of color, religion and ethnicity is abhorrent, but unlikely to change very soon. Some European leaders are not even ashamed to broadcast their racism publicly as does the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov:
“These [the Ukrainian refugees] are not the refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent, they are educated people. … This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…”
He is not alone. The Western media talks about “our kind of refugees” all the time, and this racism is manifested clearly on the border crossings between the Ukraine and its European neighbours. This racist attitude, with strong Islamophobic undertones, is not going to change, since the European leadership is still denying the multi-ethnic and multicultural fabric of societies all over the continent. A human reality created by years of European colonialism and imperialism that the current European governments deny and ignore and, at the same time, these governments pursue immigration policies that are based on the very same racism that permeated the colonialism and imperialism of the past.
Lesson Two: You Can Invade Iraq but not the Ukraine
The Western media’s unwillingness to contextualize the Russian decision to invade within a wider – and obvious – analysis of how the rules of the international game changed in 2003 is quite bewildering. It is difficult to find any analysis that points to the fact that the US and Britain violated international law on a state’s sovereignty when their armies, with a coalition of Western countries, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Occupying a whole country for the sake of political ends was not invented in this century by Vladimir Putin; it was introduced as a justified tool of policy by the West.
Lesson Three: Sometimes Neo-Nazism Can Be Tolerated
The analysis also fails to highlight some of Putin’s valid points about the Ukraine; which by no means justify the invasion, but need our attention even during the invasion. Up to the present crisis, the progressive Western media outlets, such as The Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post etc., warned us about the growing power of neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine that could impact the future of Europe and beyond. The same outlets today dismiss the significance of neo-Nazism in the Ukraine.
The Nation on February 22, 2019 reported:
“Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultra nationalism 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.”
Two years earlier, the Washington Post (June 15, 2017) warned, very perceptively, that a Ukrainian clash with Russia should not allow us to forget about the power of neo-Nazism in the Ukraine:
“As Ukraine’s fight against Russian-supported separatists continues, Kiev faces another threat to its long-term sovereignty: powerful right-wing ultra-nationalist groups. These groups are not shy about using violence to achieve their goals, which are certainly at odds with the tolerant Western-oriented democracy Kiev ostensibly seeks to become.”
However, today, the Washington Post adopts a dismissive attitude and calls such a description as a “false accusation”:
“Operating in Ukraine are several nationalist paramilitary groups, such as the Azov movement and Right Sector, that espouse neo-Nazi ideology. While high-profile, they appear to have little public support. Only one far-right party, Svoboda, is represented in Ukraine’s parliament, and only holds one seat.”
The previous warnings of an outlet such as The Hill (November 9, 2017), the largest independent news site in the USA, are forgotten:
“There are, indeed, neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine. This has been overwhelmingly confirmed by nearly every major Western outlet. The fact that analysts are able to dismiss it as propaganda disseminated by Moscow is profoundly disturbing. It is especially disturbing given the current surge of neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.”
Lesson Four: Hitting High-rises is only a War Crime in Europe
The Ukrainian establishment does not only have a connection with these neo-Nazi groups and armies, it is also disturbingly and embarrassingly pro-Israeli. One of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first acts was to withdraw the Ukraine from the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People – the only international tribunal that makes sure the Nakba is not denied or forgotten.
The decision was initiated by the Ukrainian President; he had no sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, nor did he consider them to be victims of any crime. In his interviews after the last barbaric Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in May 2021, he stated that the only tragedy in Gaza was the one suffered by the Israelis. If this is so, than it is only the Russians who suffer in the Ukraine.
Even when genuine human solidarity in the West is justly expressed with the Ukraine, we cannot overlook its racist context and Europe-centric bias. The massive solidarity of the West is reserved for whoever is willing to join its bloc and sphere of influence. This official empathy is nowhere to be found when similar, and worse, violence is directed against non-Europeans, in general, and towards the Palestinians, in particular.
We can navigate as conscientious persons between our responses to calamities and our responsibility to point out hypocrisy that in many ways paved the way for such catastrophes. Legitimizing internationally the invasion of sovereign countries and licensing the continued colonization and oppression of others, such as Palestine and its people, will lead to more tragedies, such as the Ukrainian one, in the future, and everywhere on our planet."
" ... Lieven: I think this crisis is a paradise for NATO, for Western staff officers and military bureaucrats everywhere. It’s back to the Cold War: You move troops around on paper; you talk constantly about defense; you spend huge sums on exercises and papers and papers and papers and more papers, but you never have to fight! The NATO nightmare was Afghanistan, where you actually had to fight and face opposition from Western publics and [for European nations] did your absolute utmost not to fight—with the usual exception of the British. Wind it up and they’ll run.
NATO has made absolutely clear over and over again, just as the U.S. has, that they will not fight to defend Ukraine. And there is no chance whatsoever—none, zero—that Russia will attack NATO, that’s not part of Moscow’s plan at all. Who can say what may happen at some stage in the future if the West supports a Ukrainian guerrilla war, but at present, all these NATO deployments to Poland and the Baltic are completely symbolic and therefore can also afford to be small-scale.
This is also paradise for the U.S. Army. One thing to watch in Washington is the struggle that goes on between the Army and the Navy and the Air Force about who gets most of the money. Once again, you know you get money pouring back to the Army, which was going to lose it as a result of the prioritization of China. But once again, they don’t have to actually fight, because we’re not going to go into Ukraine and the Russians are not going to go into Poland.
We never had the slightest intention of defending Ukraine, not the slightest. Even though Britain and America and the NATO secretariat to the Bucharest Conference in 2008 came out for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia (the NATO HQ was completely behind it on American orders), no contingency plans were drawn up, not the most remote or contingent ones, for how NATO could defend Ukraine and Georgia. There was no intention of ever doing that at all.
That raises the question, since we never intended to defend them, of what in God’s name were we doing? Claiming that we were going to admit them to NATO: It goes beyond actual irresponsibility. In my view, this was deeply immoral, to make such a commitment that we had no intention of fulfilling. This does not in any way excuse or justify the Russian invasion or the monstrous lies with which Putin justified this invasion. Maybe this isn’t the moment, but at some stage, I do hope that we have an honest and searching discussion of the errors of Western strategy that led to this disaster.
Cooper: I’m reminded of the economic aspect of this before the Maidan Revolution, when the Ukrainian economy was in very deep doo-doo and the European Union offered a pitiful amount, like a half a billion euros. I remember Adam Tooze saying that the Ukrainians looked at this like, “What are you talking about? There are oligarchs in this country with personal fortunes bigger than this, with which we’re supposed to rescue our entire economy?” And then Putin leaped in with an offer of a big loan that was also predicated on some very serious concessions. Do you see this in the mix of bungled Western diplomatic policies and unwise promises?
Lieven: In 2013, I think both sides blundered very badly. The Russian offer to Ukraine was not just the specific offer of 2013, but the fact that Russia had been massively subsidizing Ukraine with subsidized gas to the tune of billions of dollars a year ever since Ukrainian independence. On the basis of that, Putin tried to draw President Yanukovych and Ukraine into refusing to join the European Union.
I wrote a book about it called Ukraine and Russia, which came out in 1999. And in that book, I warned specifically that any attempt by one side or the other, by Russia or the West, to take Ukraine fully into an alliance with either of them would disastrously split Ukraine. That is of course exactly what happened. .... "
"In late 1996, the impression was allowed, or caused, to become prevalent that it had been somehow and somewhere decided to expand NATO up to Russia's borders. This despite the fact that no formal decision can be made before the alliance's next summit meeting, in June.
The timing of this revelation -- coinciding with the Presidential election and the pursuant changes in responsible personalities in Washington -- did not make it easy for the outsider to know how or where to insert a modest word of comment. Nor did the assurance given to the public that the decision, however preliminary, was irrevocable encourage outside opinion.
But something of the highest importance is at stake here. And perhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.
It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?
I am aware, of course, that NATO is conducting talks with the Russian authorities in hopes of making the idea of expansion tolerable and palatable to Russia. One can, in the existing circumstances, only wish these efforts success. But anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it.
Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions. They would see their prestige (always uppermost in the Russian mind) and their security interests as adversely affected. They would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.
Acknowledging all of this, however, doesn’t leave the West blameless in what’s now happening. Or as political scientist Stephen Walt recently put it: “one can believe that Russia’s present actions are wholly illegitimate and also believe that a different set of US policies over the past several decades would have made them less likely.”
Or a different set of US policies over the past few months. Already, the army of war-hawk pundits that has been predicting — salivating over, may be more accurate — a Russian invasion has seized on this latest move as vindication of their usual talking points: Putin is Hitler, he seeks to revive the glory of the Soviet Union, he can’t be reasoned with, and only a show of force, not further “appeasement” or negotiations that “reward” his behavior, can make him stop. This is, incidentally, exactly the approach Washington and its allies, principally the UK, have taken to get us to this point.
Throughout this crisis, the Western position has been to take a caricaturishly hard line against negotiation. All the way back in December Putin put together his initial, maximalist opening bid calling for, most prominently, a legal, written pledge that neighboring Ukraine and Georgia wouldn’t join NATO, for Washington reenter the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty Trump had recklessly pulled out of, and a host of less realistic demands about NATO activities in former Soviet republics. But it was the first item on the list that was what Putin was really after. Limits to NATO’s eastward drift, after all, had long been a sore point for not just Putin, but even pro-Western Russian elites for years, something various US officials and thinkers had once openly recognized as understandable.
"On Monday, a video was posted on Twitter of Azov fighters lining their bullets with lard. They would be used against Chechen Muslims - Russia's allies - growing in Ukraine, so that those who embrace the Muslim religion can. .. can not reach paradise. As is well known, Muslims are not allowed to eat pork.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its tenth day, Ukraine's far-right military constitution is now back on the front pages of the international press.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited the Order's presence in the Ukrainian army as one of the reasons for launching a "special military operation to demilitarize and demilitarize Ukraine."
It is an extreme right-wing, voluntary military infantry unit, whose members - estimated at 900 - are supranationalists and are accused of embracing Nazi "visions" of Aryan supremacy.
With the Wolfsangel emblem, the runic symbol used by various SS units, the Azov Order became "famous" for its atrocities against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The unit was originally founded as a volunteer group in May 2014 by the supranationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang and the neo-Nazi group SNA. Both groups shared the same Nazi ideals and carried out savage attacks against minorities, immigrants, Roma and, more generally, those who did not share their views.
As a battalion, the group fought on the front lines against pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk.
A few months after the recapture of the strategic port of Mariupol by Russian-backed separatists, the unit was officially incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014 and received high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko.
"These are our best warriors," he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. "Our best volunteers."
The unit was headed by Andrei Bilietski, who served as head of both the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005) and the SNA (founded in 2008).
In 2010, Biliecki stated that Ukraine's national goal was to "lead the world's white tribes to a final crusade Unt against the Untermenschen [lower races]."
When he was elected to parliament in 2014, Biljetsky left Azov as an elected official he could not be in the army. He remained an MP until 2019. The 42-year-old, in October 2016, founded the far-right National Corps party, whose main group are Azov veterans.
Who funded them firstThe unit received support from Ukraine's interior minister in 2014, as the government acknowledged that its own army was too weak to deal with pro-Russian separatists and relied on paramilitary volunteer forces.
It was also funded by oligarchs - the best known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy tycoon and then governor of the Dnipropetrovska region.
In addition to the Azov Battalion, Kolomoisky funded other volunteer battalions such as the Dnipro 1 and Dnipro 2 units, Aidar and Donbas.
The group also received funding and assistance from another oligarch, Serhiy Taruta, a billionaire governor of the Donetsk region.
Neo-Nazi ideologyIn 2015, Andriy Diachenko, a spokesman for the Order at the time, acknowledged that 10 to 20 percent of Azov's recruits were Nazis.
The unit officially denies embracing Nazi ideology, but Nazi symbols such as the swastika are scattered throughout its members' uniforms and bodies (as tattoos).
For example, the uniform has a neo-Nazi symbol that looks like a black swastika on a yellow background. The group claims that it is just an alloy of the letters "N" and "I" representing the "national idea".
Individual members have, of course, blatantly declared themselves neo-Nazis, while hard-core far-right supranationalism is pervasive among members.
In January 2018, the Battalion set up a militia unit, the National Druzhyna, to "restore" order in the capital, Kyiv.
The unit carried out a pogrom against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community.
"Ukraine is the only nation in the world that has a neo-Nazi formation in its Armed Forces," wrote in 2019 a correspondent for the US-based magazine The Nation.
Human rights violations and war crimes
The Azov Battalion is based in Mariupol and is believed to be responsible for some of the worst atrocities in recent years in the Donbas civil war.
Reports from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have linked the organization to war crimes, including torture, mass looting and illegal detention.
The report describes, among other things. incidents during the period from November 2015 to February 2016, where the Group proceeded to loot and disarm residents of pro-Russian Donbas.
Many videos, the authenticity of which is difficult to verify , show Azov attacks on unarmed civilians. Members of the organization often brag on Twitter about the killings of civilians or separatists, even mentioning the number of victims of each of their attacks.
What was the international reaction?In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced that they would not support or train Azov's constitution, citing its neo-Nazi connections.
The following year, however, the United States kept its commitments under pressure from the Pentagon.
In October 2019, 40 members of the US Congress, led by spokesman Max Rose, signed a letter calling - unsuccessfully - for the US State Department to classify the Order as a "foreign terrorist organization". Last April, spokeswoman Elissa Slotkin reiterated her call for the Biden government to include other "white supremacist" groups.
The group's international support was ultimately broad, highlighting Ukraine as a new hub for the far right around the world. Men with similar ideologies, from three continents, have been documented to have joined the Order.
A ban taken backIn 2016, Facebook first described Azov's constitution as a "dangerous organization."
However, on February 24, the day Russia began its invasion, Facebook lifted its ban.
"At the moment, we are making an exception, strictly in the context of Ukraine's defense and in the role of the battalion as part of the Ukrainian National Guard," said a spokesman for Facebook's parent company, Meta. Insider.
"But we continue to ban all hate speech, hate speech, praise for violence, support or Azov's constitution and any other content that violates our Community standards," he added."
JTA — Hundreds of Ukrainians attended marches celebrating Nazi SS soldiers, including the first such event in Kyiv.
The so-called Embroidery March took place in the capital on April 28, the 78th anniversary of the establishment of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician. It was a force set up under German occupation auspices comprised of ethnic Ukrainian and German volunteers and conscripts. The marchers held banners displaying the unit’s symbol.
The Kyiv march by about 300 people was an import from the western city of Lviv, which for several years has hosted such events. A day earlier, hundreds attended a larger Embroidery March there.
Ukraine has a large minority of ethnic Russians, who oppose the glorification of Nazi collaborators. Such actions were taboo in Ukraine until the early 2000s, when nationalists demanded and obtained state recognition for collaborators as heroes for their actions against the Soviet Union, which dominated Ukraine until 1991.
President Vlodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, condemned the embroidery marches, which had been conducted legally.
