Whitewashing Ukraine

 “There are no Nazis Ukraine”

This statement by former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, which has been used by the media as part of their characterization of Ukraine as a liberal democracy, is blatantly false. While the statement by Putin, that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government is also false, the truth is that the recent history of Ukraine is rife with evidence of the sway of neo-Nazi forces.

The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders played leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. As the Maidan movement moved from peaceful protests to pitched battles with police and violent, armed marches and rejected the agreement negotiated by the French, German and Polish foreign ministers for new elections, the Right Sector (associated with Svoboda) refused to disarm and led the climactic march on Parliament that overthrew the government.

After the coup, the Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader described to Newsweek as a “war” to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2nd with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.

What followed was a struggle of Russian separatists for autonomy in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where over 14,000 have died since 2014. The Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races, led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics. In 2014 the Battalion was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.

While this is the history of extreme rightwing involvement in the coup that established the current government, the question might be posed, what about today. The Svoboda Party’s standing in the government has diminished significantly, but that could well be due to the rise of other anti-Russian parties. It also may be due to the acceptance of the ultra-nationalist and racist ideas by the mainstream in Ukraine.

A recent report from the NAACP about the refugees from the Russian invasion, discloses that Black and brown men and women have been forced off trains and buses, others have been verbally and physically attacked and still more have been refused entry in Poland by Ukrainian security forces and border guards. In the letter to the EU, the NAACP wrote:

"We write today with an urgent concern regarding reports that Black families, immigrants from the African diaspora, and other people of color who reside in Ukraine have been treated in a discriminatory manner as they flee the escalating war in Ukraine. Press reports and online videos reflect the use of racial hierarchy, violence, and state action taken against refugees of color as they attempt to flee Ukraine and enter bordering states of the European Union."

The NAACP, the African Union and a coalition of Black lawyers have filed an urgent appeal with the UN seeking to ensure that border guards and security forces respect the human rights of Black and brown people.

The cleansing of the Ukraine’s current government is clearly necessary for the US and NATO to take sides and escalate the crisis, rather than work towards negotiations and de-escalation. Ramping up arms shipments to Ukraine and putting sanctions on Russia are not going to resolve this crisis, but they will increase the suffering of the people of Ukraine. If we understand the backstory of the war (see my earlier post) then an article I saw recently rings very true: the US and NATO ignited the crisis in Ukraine and have left the Ukrainians to do the fighting and dying.

What’s next if the two sides continue to escalate could be even worse - for the Ukrainians, for the Russians, for the Americans, for the world. What is needed to end this crisis is diplomacy to guarantee the independence of Ukraine and the security concerns of the Russians. To have those negotiations, a third party (the US/NATO) must agree to end its attempts to expand its military power and come to the table with sincere proposals for nuclear and other military drawdown in Europe.