I wrote this for me shortly after the conflict began but it is also for you. If you want it.

It was completed in august 2022 and I won’t be updating, my post looks only looks back.

I don’t know if what I have written is truly ‘true’ but I do know it’s been well researched by me and I’ve evaluated all sides of the marketplace of truth, and lies.

Let’s begin…

CHAPTER 1: The history of Ukraine eugenics

The Ukrainians were inter-war Europe’s largest stateless group, their  area of settlement spanned several European states. The 1926 Soviet census reported:

• 31.2 million ethnic Ukrainians lived in the USSR
• 23.2 million of them in the Ukrainian SSR
• 5.87 million Ukrainians lived in Poland
• 1.1 million in Romania
• 500,000 lived in interwar Czechoslovakia

The landmass as it existed then spanned from the Lublin area in what today is Poland, to what today is Dagestan on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Many of the residents did not choose to self-identify as Ukrainians but instead identified with rivaling identity projects: Russian, Polish, Rusyn, and others.

Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi

In 1903, Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi endorsed revolutionary violence as a means to establish an ethnically defined Greater Ukraine “from the river Sian to the Caucasus.”

Mikhnovs’kyi published the so-called “Decalogue of the Ukrainian National Party” which was intended to guide the ideological and private ethics of Ukrainian nationalists. 

• Third “commandment” demanded a “Ukraine for the Ukrainians”
• Sixth “commandment” designated Muscovites (moskale), Poles (liakhy) and Jews (zhydy) as enemies and ethnic others
• Tenth “commandment” called for policing the sexual life of its adherents:

Dmytro Dontsov

Another pioneer of this radical ethno-nationalism thought was Dmytro Dontsov who emphasized genetic continuity as a supreme value at the center of Ukrainian nationalist ideology.

From 1923 Dontsov was an enthusiastic admirer of fascism; he extolled Benito Mussolini’s “creative leadership” and praised Adolf Hitler in quasi-religious terms, as “the real Messiah”.

Dontsov became an important transmitter of the völkisch movement – which considered the Jews to be an “alien people” who belonged to a different Volk (“race” or “folk“) from the Germans. He was a translator and publisher of the works of Alfred Rosenberg, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler, and Hans F. K. Günther, the leading ideologue of National Socialist racial theory. 

Dontsov rejected the more tolerant stance of earlier Ukrainian activists, viewing Jews and Poles as parasitical communities to be suppressed or eradicated, while regarding Russians as the major oppressor. 

Dontsov argued that there were five original racial groups in Europe:

• Nordic
• Mediterranean
• Alpine (Ostisch)
• East Baltic
• Dinaric racial groups, with the Nordics at the top of this evolutionary hierarchy.

Eugenics, biopolitics, and Ukrainian nationalism

Nationalism, in the common understanding of the word – is the desire to build a nation-state for a particular group.

From 1919, the racial-eugenic current in Ukrainian nationalist thought was increasingly dominated by Galician Ukrainians who up until 1918 had been Austrian citizens.

The attempts to establish a Ukrainian nation state ended in the 1921 Riga Peace Treaty, which divided the Ukrainian lands and reduced Ukrainians to national minorities in intensely nationalistic – and nationalizing – States like Poland and Romania, where they were submitted to attempts at political assimilation. 

Armed Struggle. UVO and OUN

Under the leadership of Colonel Konovalets’ (1891–1938), the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrains’ka Viis’kova Orhanizatsiia, UVO) was established in 1921 by Ukrainian war veterans who sought to set up a Ukrainian state through armed struggle.

Increasingly under the influence of Dontsov‘ian nationalism, in 1929, the UVO united much of the Ukrainian far right into the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiia Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN). 

The OUN policed the sexual and reproductive life of its imagined community, which it understood in biological and spiritual terms. Organized in biopolitical postulates in terms of violent, mystical, quasi-religious doctrines articulated as “44 Rules of Life of a Ukrainian Nationalist,” the new “Decalogue characterized intermarriage with other races “a crime of national treason” which would lead to “degeneration” and therefore needed to be banned. Its 40th rule read: “Cherish motherhood as the source of re-generation of life. Make your family a ciborium for the purity of Your Race and Nation”.

Practical guidelines to direct the Nationalist vanguard in the most intimate aspects on life was one thing; bringing about their revolutionary, Ukrainian ethno-state would require state planning and eugenic engineering on a grand scale. 

Iurii Lypa

Lypa admired Dontsov’s style and “implacable militancy” and was a contributor to his journal Vistnyk over the 1930s. 

After the 1940/41 split, Lypa came to side with the more radical Bandera wing of the OUN. Lypa worked as a military doctor in the UPA, the Ukranian Insurgent Army, the OUN‘s armed wing, and was killed by the Soviets at the end of the war. Radical nationalists today refer to him as a “classic of Ukrainian geopolitics and raciology”. 

Lypa called for a more systematic eugenic managing of his ethnocommunity. In his 1936 essay “The Ukrainian Race,” Lypa argued marriage is the duty of women to their own kin (rid). To aid her in that task is the duty of the state. 

“Sexual prodigality (statevoho marnotratsva) is not acceptable, neither among women, nor among men. We need to realize that the 300 ovulations of every Ukrainian woman, as well as 1,500 ejaculations of every Ukrainian man are the same sort of national resources, as, say, its energy supplies and iron, coal, or oil deposits. The state has to relate to the sexual lives [of its citizens] in the same way it does to other matters – in accordance with its traditions and culture.”

In order to achieve these aims, Lypa called for extensive authority of a future Ukrainian state to intervene into the most intimate aspects of its citizens’ lives. “In order to maintain that order of life there will be sexual and eugenic advisors, sexual courts and tribunals.”

Volodymyr Martynets: The Jewish Problem in Ukraine

In 1938, from his Paris exile, Martynets’ published a booklet entitled The Jewish Problem in Ukraine, where he argued “Our Jews are, from a political perspective, a hostile element, from a socio-economic perspective parasitic, from a cultural and national perspective harmful, from a moral and ideological perspective corruptive and from a racial perspective unsuitable for mixing and assimilation.” 

Martynets’ pondered five methods to solve the “Jewish problem”:

1. assimilation
2. racial-national isolation
3. agrarianization or settling on the land
4. expulsion
5. complete isolation

In order to prevent miscegenation with Jews, which, he argued, would lead to the “Judaization” (ozhydovlennia) of Ukrainians, Martynets’ argued that a whole range of methods be introduced – not only a ban on mixed marriages, but the total isolation of Jews from any economic, political, and cultural contacts with Ukrainians, something he hoped would force the Jews to a mass exodus.

“All of the options, especially if combined, will decrease the current strength of Jewry, stop their expansion in our country, and assure their continuous decline in numbers, not only through emigration, but also through the decline of their natural growth rate. As the Jews will not be able to make a living, they will take care of this themselves.

Mykhailo Kolodzins’kyi: The Military Doctrine of Ukrainian Nationalists

On March 10, 1938, Konovalets tasked the young firebrand Iaroslav Stets’ko (1912–1986) to draft a military doctrine for the OUN. Stets’ko, who was also arranging the ideological preparations for a second Grand Assembly of the OUN, scheduled to be held in Rome in August 1939, in turn delegated this to Mykhailo Kolodzins’kyi (1902–1939). A member of the UVO since 1922, and the military referent of the Galizian OUN since 1929, Kolodzins’kyi had considerable military experience. 

If Martynets, had proposed “total isolation” of its Jews, Kolodzins’kyi now called for a partial extermination of minorities “who are hostile to Ukr[ainian] independence.

“The fury of the Ukrainian people towards the Jews will be particularly horrific…We have no need to hamper this rage; on the contrary, we need to increase it, since the more Jews killed during the uprising, the better for the Ukrainian state, because the Jews will be the only minority, which we will not be able to envelop through our denationalizing policies. All other minorities who will remain alive after the uprising, we will denationalize.”

On May 23, 1938, Konovalets’ was assassinated by an NKVD agent in Rotterdam. This, notes historian Taras Kurylo, “paved the way to the adoption of Nazi anti-Jewish discourse and the further radicalization of anti-Jewish motifs in the Ukrainian nationalist movement.” 

Iaroslav Stets’ko

As an OUN leader, in 1938 Stets’ko denounced democracy “as a corruption of morality: “The rule of money is absolute, and the financial bourgeoisie, Masonry, and a clique of international criminals led by Jews control governments.”

Novyi Shliakh, the leading OUN paper in Canada, published Stets’ko’s article “We and Jewry” (“Zhydivstva i my”), penned under his pseudonym Zynovyi Karbovych, in which he described Jews as “nomads and parasites” a nation of “swindlers, materialists, and egoists”.

He argued that Ukrainians constituted “the first people in Europe to understand the corrupting work of Jewry” which, according to Stets’ko, was the reason why they had separated themselves from the Jews for centuries, something which, in turn, had enabled them to retain “the purity of their spirituality and culture.” 

Stets’ko was of the opinion that the “minority question” in Ukraine would be solved by means of the minorities ceasing to exist. He envisioned three paths to achieve that goal: assimilation, deportation or “physical measures” proposing the setup of ghettos, even though he felt that the ideal solution to the Jewish question would be the deportation of all Jews from Ukraine to the far east. 

The preference for exclusion and isolation is reflected also in Mykola 

Bandera and Ukrainian nationalism in the Generalgouvernement

The German and Soviet partition and occupation of Poland in September 1939 radically altered the preconditions for Western Ukrainian Nationalist activism. The top leadership of the Galician OUN, among them Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) and Mykola Lebed (1909 or 1910–1998) – who both served lifetime sentences for terrorism and murder – were released from prison. 

Bandera’s radicals soon set up their own organization, taking the bulk of the Galician “homeland” organization with them. Stets’ko sided with Bandera and became his first deputy.

Krakow quickly became the most important center for Ukrainian Nationalist activism in 1939–41. In the Generalgouvernement, the OUN was not only tolerated, but actively supported by the German authorities. 

In April 1941 the radical splinter group that refered to itself as the Revolutionary Leadership of the OUN, but is better known as the OUN-Bandera, or OUN(b).

The OUN(b) regarded Ukrainians as the sole autochthonous people, and thereby exclusive proprietors to the multiethnic borderlands of Eastern Galicia, Volhynia, and Podlachia. 

The 1941 program stipulated that the “Jews in the USSR are the most dedicated supporters of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine” and that “the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists fight the Jews as supporters of Muscovite-Bolshevism, at the same time enlightening the popular masses the Moscow is the main enemy”. 

Bandera, Stets’ko and their colleagues Stepan Lenkavs’kyi and Roman Shukhevych drafted a 71 page master plan for action, entitled “Struggle and Activities of the OUN(b) in Wartime.”

The language of this document echoed that of Kolodzins’kyi: “Jews are to be isolated, eliminated from official positions in order to avoid sabotage, Russian and Poles all the more so.” 

Stets’ko, Bandera, Lenkavs’kyi and Shukhevych wrote. “If there should be an insurmountable need to leave a Jews in the economic administration, place one of our militiamen over him and liquidate him for the slightest offense. Administrators of various branches can only be Ukrainians, never hostile aliens.”

Operation Barbarossa and the Ukrainian National Revolution

Operation Barbarossa was to be the deployment of the 71 page ‘action plan’. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, marked the beginning, as Hitler put it, not only of a world crusade against Bolshevism, but also of a national uprising, a Ukrainian national revolution, as envisioned by the OUN(b).

Not Bandera, but his deputy, the 29-year-old Stets’ko was the dominant figure in the crucial final week of June 1941, which the OUN(b) referred to as the “Ukrainian national revolution.” 

Having crossed the Soviet border in the first days of the German-Soviet war, Stets’ko wrote to Bandera on June 25, 1941, “We are establishing a militia that will help eliminate Jews and protect the population.” 

In Lviv, on June 30, 1941, Stets’ko declared himself head of a government of a “renewed” Ukrainian state which, he emphasized, would “work closely together with National Socialist Greater Germany which under the leadership of its Führer Adolf HITLER creates a new order in Europe.” 

The renewal of Ukrainian statehood was followed by a wave of anti-Jewish mass violence. The discovery of thousands of bodies of inmates, murdered by the retreating NKVD, stoked local resentment further, as OUN(b) militia launched a wave of pogroms in which thousands of Jews were murdered, many in locations without a local prison where there had been no NKVD massacres.

In letters to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Pavelic, Stets’ko reassured them that his newly declared state was part of Adolf Hitler’s New Order in Europe. 

The German authorities refused to recognize this state, and both Stets’ko and Bandera were detained and brought to Berlin, where they were questioned by the Gestapo but were otherwise free to move around in the city, meet other OUNites, and petition the German government to cooperate with him. 

At this point, Stets’ko’s attitude to Jews has been further radicalized. Stets’ko had advocated the expulsion and ghettoizing of Jews.

In May 1941, the OUN(b) issued a blueprint for a national uprising which spelled out the need for mass violence against Jews and its intended head of government drew up the lines for a eugenic agency to specify the requirements for who would be allowed to assimilate into the Ukrainian national organism. 

in July 1941, the self-proclaimed Prime Minister of Ukraine now explicitly spelled out what to do with those inassimilable: “I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like.”  

Stets’ko spent the time from September 15, 1941, to September 30, 1944, in German captivity, albeit in relative comfort in an annex to the KZ Sachsenhausen. During this period his, and Bandera’s influence on their movement was marginal. The OUN(b), struggling with how to relate to its former sponsor, initially urged its activists to volunteer for, and infiltrate the auxiliary police formations. 

After Stalingrad, as it became clear that Nazi Germany would lose the war, thousands of policemen defected from the police, and went underground, where they formed the backbone of the (UPA), under OUN(b)’s command. In 1943, the rivalry over the claims to the ethnically mixed Polish-Ukrainian borderland escalated into a brutal violent conflict as the UPA launched a campaign of mass ethnic cleansing of the Polish minority in Volhynia and East Galicia, in which at least 70,000 people, perhaps as many as 100,000 were killed. 

Following the return of the Soviets, the OUN(b) launched a tenacious insurgency against the Soviet authorities, which was crushed with utter brutality, claiming the lives of 110,825 people.

Upon their release, Stets’ko and Bandera resumed strategic cooperation with Nazi Germany for the remainder of the war.

After a meeting with Dontsov in Prague during the final days of the war, Stets’ko was seriously wounded as the German caravan in which he traveled was attacked in the vicinity of Prague by the US Air Force on May 10, 1945. 

A bullet fired from the air tore off his arm at the elbow before ricocheting into his lower abdomen, causing irreversible injury of his genitalia and permanently paralyzing his left arm. Stets’ko received seven serious wounds, was hospitalized for five months, and underwent surgery eight times. He would suffer from poor health and spend the remainder of his life in physical pain and spent the rest of his life in Germany.

“National and National Jewry”

 After the war, Dontsov immigrated to Canada where he found employment as an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal.  

Presenting himself as the “Former Prime Minister of Ukraine” in 1946 Stets’ko set up the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), an OUN(b) front organization which brought together veterans the now-defunct “New Order.”

Funded and underwritten by Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist China and Franscisco Franco’s Spain from the mid-1950s, the ABN connected the émigré Ustasha, Romanian Iron Guardists, and former members of Tiso’s Slovak government.

Stets’ko remained preoccupied with Jewry and Freemasonry for the rest of his life. 

Following the assassination of Bandera by a Soviet agent in October 1959, Stets’ko further strengthened his position in the OUN(b), becoming the leader of that organization in 1968.

Following the Eichmann trial of 1961–62, and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of 1963–65, the Holocaust was slowly entering public consciousness in Bavaria, and Munich, a process that would continue over the following decades.

To the Nationalist faithful, the biological language was integral to their conceptualization of their nation, their community, and the Organization itself. If, to its members and followers, “the OUN was like a mother for the nation,” they regarded Stets’ko as the “father of the nation”

CHAPTER 2: National memory and distortion

In May 2015, then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a law that mandated the transfer of the country’s complete set of archives to a government organization called the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory run by Volodymyr Viatrovych who was charged with “implementation of state policy in the field of restoration and preservation of national memory of the Ukrainian people.” The institute received millions of documents.

Under the archives law, one of four “memory laws” written by Viatrovych, the institute’s anodyne-sounding mandate is merely a cover to present a biased and one-sided view of modern Ukrainian history.

The controversy centers on a telling of World War II history that amplifies Soviet crimes and glorifies Ukrainian nationalist fighters while dismissing the vital part they played in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union.

Viatrovych’s vision

Viatrovsky’s conception of history instead tells the story of partisan guerrillas who waged a brave battle for Ukrainian independence against overwhelming Soviet power. It also sends a message to those who do not identify with the country’s ethno-nationalist mythmakers — such as the many Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who still celebrate the heroism of the Red Army during World War II, that they’re on the outside. 

Although events of 75 years ago may seem like settled history, they are very much a part of the information war raging between Russia and Ukraine.

Revisionism focuses on two Ukrainian nationalist groups:

1. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)
2. Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought to establish an independent Ukraine.

During the war, these groups killed tens of thousands of Jews and carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed as many as 100,000 Poles.

Created in 1929 to free Ukraine from Soviet control, the OUN embraced the notion of an ethnically pure Ukrainian nation. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its leader, Stepan Bandera, welcomed the invasion as a step toward Ukrainian independence. Its members carried out a pogrom in Lviv that killed 5,000 Jews, and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists militias played a major role in violence against the Jewish population in western Ukraine that claimed the lives of up to 35,000 Jews.

Hitler was not interested in granting Ukraine independence, however. By 1943 the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists violently seized control of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and declared itself opposed to both the Germans, then in retreat, and the oncoming Soviets. Many Ukrainian Insurgent Army troops had already assisted the Nazis as Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in the extermination of hundreds and thousands of Jews in western Ukraine in 1941 and 1942, and they now became foot soldiers in another round of ethnic cleansing in western Ukraine in 1943 to 1944, this time directed primarily against Poles. When the Soviets were closing in 1944, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists resumed cooperation with the Germans and continued to fight the Soviets into the 1950s, before finally being crushed by the Red Army.

This legacy of sacrifice against the Soviets continues to prompt many Ukrainian nationalists to view Bandera and the OUN-UPA as heroes whose valor kept the dream of Ukrainian statehood alive.

Denying legitimacy

The new Ukrainian law, which promises that people who “publicly exhibit a disrespectful attitude” toward these groups or “deny the legitimacy” of Ukraine’s 20th century struggle for independence will be prosecuted (though no punishment is specified) also means that independent Ukraine is being partially built on a falsified narrative of the Holocaust.

By transferring control of the nation’s archives to Viatrovych, Ukraine’s nationalists assured themselves that management of the nation’s historical memory is now in the “correct” hands.

Rewriting kids

The OUN-UPA mythology has caused the rewriting of school textbooks, renaming streets, and honoring OUN-UPA leaders as “heroes of Ukraine.” 

Though his political star continued to rise, Viatrovych’s integrity as a historian was been widely attacked within Western countries as well as by a number of respected historians in Ukraine.

According to Jared McBride, a research scholar at the Kennan Institute and a fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the glorification of the OUN-UPA is not just about history. It’s a current political project to consolidate a very one-sided view within Ukrainian society that really only has a deep resonance within the western province of Galicia.”

Though Viatrovych’s view is popular in western Ukraine where many Bandera monuments and street names exist, many Ukrainians in the south and east of the country don’t appreciate the World War II-era nationalist’s legacy. In Luhansk, in the country’s east, and Crimea, local governments erected monuments to the victims of the OUN-UPA. In this regard, imposing the nationalists’ version of history on the entire country requires eradicating the beliefs and identity of many other Ukrainians who do not share the nationalists’ narrative.

To that effect, Viatrovych has dismissed historical events not comporting with this narrative as “Soviet propaganda.”

In his 2006 book, The OUN’s Position Towards the Jews: Formulation of a position against the backdrop of a catastrophe, he attempted to exonerate the OUN from its collaboration in the Holocaust by ignoring the overwhelming mass of historical literature. The book was widely panned by Western historians. University of Alberta professor John-Paul Himka, one of the leading scholars of Ukrainian history for three decades, described it as “employing a series of dubious procedures: rejecting sources that compromise the OUN, accepting uncritically censored sources emanating from émigré OUN circles, failing to recognize anti-Semitism in OUN texts.”

Viatrovych also denied the OUN and UPA ethically cleansed Jews and Poles after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, dismissing the accusations as an “integral part of the USSR’s informational war against the Ukrainian liberation movement beginning from the Second World War.”

The problem is that Viatrovych’s defense of the OUN and UPA doesn’t comport with the detailed evidence presented by numerous Western historians. The OUN’s ideology was explicitly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as a “predominantly hostile body within our national organism” and used such language as “combat Jews as supporters of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime” and “Ukraine for the Ukrainians! … Death to the Muscovite-Jewish commune!” In fact, even before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, OUN leaders such as Yaroslav Stetsko explicitly endorsed German-style extermination of Jews.

“We should carry out a large-scale liquidation action against Polish elements. During the evacuation of the German Army, we should find an appropriate moment to liquidate the entire male population between 16 and 60 years old.” Given that over 70 percent of the leading UPA cadres possessed a background as Nazi collaborators, none of this is surprising.

In 2019, the Ministry of Education issued a directive to teachers regarding the“necessity to accentuate the patriotism and morality of the activists of the liberation movement” including depicting the UPA as a “symbol of patriotism and sacrificial spirit in the struggle for an independent Ukraine” and Bandera as an “outstanding representative of the Ukrainian people.” 

January 1 has been set aside in Ukraine to remember Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian city of Lviv, which was the nationalist’s home city, also announced this month that the next year forward, 2019, would be “Stepan Bandera Year.“

CHAPTER 3: Nazis, White supremacism in Ukraine

2005

Andriy Biletsky created the Kharkiv-based Patriot of Ukraine (PU) to champion white nationalist, anti-immigrant extreme-right ideas in Ukraine. 

2008

Biletsky created the umbrella Social Nationalist Assembly (SNA) movement.

The movement was a derivative of the earlier political party Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), which later became known as Svoboda.

The SNA contained members from a collection of nationalist and extreme-right groups in Ukraine which promoted a neo-Nazi ideology.

The Patriot of Ukraine became the de facto armed wing of the Social Nationalist Assembly.

2014

Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense encouraged volunteer military units to mobilize a resistance campaign against Russian-backed separatists in Donbas. Volunteer military units would help “fill the gap” in the Ukrainian military’s defenses.

Biletsky and several other Patriot of Ukraine members formed the Azov Battalion in response to this call. 

June 2014

Azov battalion assists the recapture of the southeastern city of Mariupol from Russian-backed forces. 

Regaining control of Mariupol for the government in Kyiv had critical strategic implications for the larger War in Donbas. Mariupol lies on major roads from its port on the Sea of Azov in Southeastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, as an access point into the rest of Ukraine.

During the Battle for Mariupol, the group came to attention for its neo-Nazi iconography on the battlefield including the battalion patch, which featured a Wolfsangel symbol. The Wolsfangel is a historical symbol of independence that was later co-opted by the German Nazi Party. Originally, Biletsky’s PU claimed the symbol was actually an amalgamation of the letters “I” and “N” (the Idea of the Nation), representing the organization’s nationalist beliefs. However, the symbol is widely associated with the modern far-right.

Azov leaders publicly downplay or deny the group as a white supremacist or Neo-Nazi organization.

The Azov Battalion denies the symbol’s far-right associations and invokes the reasoning as the PU. However, the Woflsangel is far from Azov’s only allusion to Nazi ideology. Biletsky once stated in 2010 that it was Ukraine’s national mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against semite-led untermenschen (subhumans)” 

Furthermore, interviews with members of the Battalion openly espouse neo-Nazi and white supremacist views. Many fighters hold an aspirational belief of marching on Kyiv once the war is over, and that Ukraine needs a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.

October 2014

Biletsky left the group to participate in politics. He used his unit’s victory in Mariupol to launch a successful political campaign. Biletsky was elected to Ukrainian Parliament as an independent in November 2014, and remained a member until 2019.

On his mission and Jews:

“The challenge of the current generation is to create a Third Empire, the Great Ukraine. The historic mission of our nation in this crucial century is to head and lead the white peoples of the world in a final crusade for their existence, a crusade against Semitic-led sub-humanity”.

On blood purity:

“The migrant issue is indeed a key one. Our credo is to destroy everything that destroys our people. As you know, you can restore everything – economy, order in the streets, demography, strong army and navy, nuclear weapons – but the only thing that you cannot restore is blood purity”.

November 2014

Ukraine designated the Azov Battalion “Special Purpose Regiment” status and formally integrated it into the National Guard, as a military unit, Azov was authorized to acquire artillery and tanks.

The Black Corps patches, which directly allude to Reichsführer SS Himmler’s military (“Das Schwarze Korps“, translated from the German as “Black Corps“, the official printed media of the SS), continued to be used by the Azov even after its incorporation into legal ranks commanded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

December 2014

Patriot of Ukraine formally disbanded and remaining members integrated into the Azov Battalion.

Azov Battalion

Early on, the Azov Battalion was able to fund itself due to patronage support from the Interior minister of Ukraine, Arsen Avakov. and:

Igor Kolomoisky

An oligarch who controls multiple assets across various sectors in Ukraine, including heavy industry, oil and gas through his stake in Burisma, media, ferrous metals and chemicals, agriculture and air transport. In the years prior to Zelensky’s presidency, Kolomoisky feared prosecution in Ukraine and resided in Switzerland and Israel. 

Kolomoisky’s media empire supported Zelensky during the election and the two have had a close business and personal connection since 2012, when Zelensky’s company, Kvartal 95, signed a contract with Kolomoisky’s media holding, 1+1, for the production of sitcoms and films, most notably a comedy show also called Kvartal 95.

Kolomoisky has publicly acknowledged that he has continued to talk via telephone with Zelensky since his election, albeit “rarely.” During a televised debate two days before the vote, Zelensky vowed Kolomoisky would not get any preferential treatment during his presidency: “If Kolomoisky breaks the law, he will go to jail,” he said. 

Kolomoisky’s luck seemed to turn in 2019 following Zelensky’s election. He returned home from exile and started winning a series of court cases related to the nationalization of PrivatBank, which he owned until 2016.

Kolomoisky also funded other volunteer battalions such as the Dnipro 1 and Dnipro 2, Aidar and Donbas units

Neo-Nazi ideology

As the Azov Battalion continued to grow, it pursued international relationships and recruitment of foreign fighters. The group was initially composed of half eastern Ukrainians and half foreign fighters from Sweden, Spain, Italy, Canada, France, and Russia. The group later recruited from Belarus, Germany, and the United States. Foreign fighters reported traveling to Ukraine to join the group due to their attraction to the group’s white ethno-nationalist views.

Members of the American “Rise Above Movement” have also openly publicized meetings with members of the Azov Battalion and National Corps. Robert Rundo, leader of RAM, traveled to Kyiv and fought in mixed martial arts matches with members of the Azov Battalion in a facility owned by Azov, called the “Reconquista Club.” 

Greg Johnson, an American white nationalist author, also traveled to Kyiv to give a lecture and meet with members of the Azov. A number of Russian nationals have also joined the Azov Battalion, due to their lack of political dissent options against Putin’s regime from within Russia, and the fact that Azov is a largely Russian speaking organization.

Over time, representatives of the Social National Assembly, Automaidan and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists activists, ultras (hooligans) of the Dynamo (Kiev) and Shakhtar football clubs, members of Dmytro Korchynsky’s Bratstvo party and the Cossack Rifle Brotherhood joined Azov.

From the outset, all of the volunteer battalions were haunted by scandals: looting and sexual violence (Shakhtersk and Tornado Battalions were the most prominent), kidnapping and killing of civilians (by the notorious Donbass Battalion) and the seizure of businesses.

In 2016, Biletsky partially returned to the Azov Battalion to found a far-right ultra-nationalist political wing called the National Corps. As part of this political wing’s creation, he toned down some of his political rhetoric and white supremacist views.

In 2017, Azov created an umbrella organization with other far-right groups to boost the National Corp’s presence in elections.

Described as a nationalist hate group by the U.S. government, National Corps barely registered in the national polls in 2019 And failed to meet the 5% threshold to obtain Parliamentary seats.

In 2017, the National Corps created a new street wing faction known as the National Druzhyna or National Militia.

The National Militia patrolled neighborhoods in small groups to ostensibly promote law and order. It also harassed public officials and clashed with police in January 2018. 

In February 2018, the National Militia formally announced its existence, and official recognition from the Poroshenko government, during a public assembly and torchlit march of 600 followers in Kiev. During the tiki torch lit march, members swore allegiance to Andriy Biletsky and the Azov Battalion.

In 2018, this from Reuters: 

“Azov and other militias have attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, foreign students and Roma. Brutal attacks on International Women’s Day marches in several Ukrainian cities prompted an unusually forceful statement from Amnesty International, which warned that “the Ukrainian state is rapidly losing its monopoly on violence.”

Also in 2018

An FBI affidavit asserted that Azov “is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” including members of the white supremacist Rise Above Movement, prosecuted for planned assaults on counterprotesters at far-right events, including the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that Joe Biden later co-opted as a rationale for his presidential campaign.

In 2019, Ukraine’s Central Election Commission granted the National Militia permission to officially monitor the presidential election. Although the commission specified the group was not permitted to use force, members openly stated they were willing to take matters into their own hands to stop “election fraud.”

Azov movement is not seeking to gain power through elections

There’s a word for what the Azov movement is doing, a common one in the parlance of the French New Right: metapolitics “the capture of cultural power [as] the precondition for the capture of political power.” 

And even as the National Corps barely registers in polls, Biletsky announced in January that he wasn’t going to take part in March’s first-round presidential elections.

Olena Semenyaka

is the female figurehead of the Azov movement: she has been the international secretary of the National Corps since 2018 (and de facto leader since the party’s very foundation in 2016) while leading the publishing house and metapolitical club Plomin (Flame). Gaining in visibility as the Azov regiment transformed into a multifaceted movement, Semenyaka has become a major nationalist theorist in Ukraine.

Semenyaka brags about everything the Azov movement does, from mixed martial arts sessions and weapons training with military equipment to hosting a network of youth camps and support groups for veterans of the ongoing war with Russian-backed forces in the country’s east.

It’s part of what Semenyaka calls an effort to neutralize resistance to far-right ideas in Ukrainian society. Ukrainians support their initiatives without knowing they’re linked to the Azov movement, she said, and are happy to support the movement when its sponsorship or involvement is revealed. It doesn’t hurt that it’s easier to garner support for a movement when it’s still associated in much of the public mind with a heroic defense of the country against foreign invaders. 

Azov has hosted neo-Nazi concerts replete with swastikas, tried to recruit foreign far-right extremists, openly assaulted feminist, LGBT, and leftist activists, and cleared a Roma camp with hammers and axe.

Bandera, Azov and metapolitics

On December 17, Ukraine voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution that aimed to combat the “glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” according to Tass news agency. The United States also voted against the measure, although 129 nations supported the move.

Violent criminals get released from jail 

In late February 2022. Zelensky announced that Ukrainians who are in jail and have combat experience will beF released to fight on the front lines in the war with Russia.

The prisoners will have their sentence commuted for paying a debt to society.

“Under martial law, Ukrainians with real combat experience will be released from custody and will be able to compensate for their guilt in the hottest spots of the conflict,”  –  Zelensky

But who are these convicts with “combat experience” and who were they combating against?

It has been widely reported that many were members of the Tornado battalion, let’s dig:

Tornado Battalion

The battalion was created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in September 2014, and its ranks included militants from the Shakhtersk battalion, which was disbanded for looting and crimes against local residents.

Tornado was disbanded in June 2015 and many Tornado members simply joined other battalions.

In July 2021, the former commander of the Tornado battalion Ruslan Onishchenko was released by recently elected President Zelensky’s decree, after serving only a couple of years an eleven year sentence for torturing civilians and prisoners of war, extrajudicial executions, rape, robbery, possession of weapons and other crimes.

The investigation of Tornado Battalion crimes was 80 volumes, 111 witnesses and 13 victims, it lasted for almost two years, and in 2017 they were sentenced to 74 years in prison for all.

A report by Global Rights Compliance LLP, which was published under the aegis of the British Embassy in Kyiv called the absence of any charges of war crimes against them with such obvious evidence inexplicable. In addition, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union expressed concern about the nationwide tendency to justify grave crimes by pro-Ukrainian formations.

And now they, and scores of other violently bad people, are free. And violent neonazi criminals do violent neonazi criminal things.

Who is terrorizing the civilians, again

In March 2022 videos of Ukrainian civilians being tortured, held captive or brutally treated, went viral on Twitter.

In several videos the tying up and beating of Ukrainian citizens is performed by regular Ukrainian Armed Forces members and paramilitary groups..

Videos of floggings show victims including children, as well as members of the Sinti and Roma minorities.

In addition to being wrapped in plastic wrap and tied to a pole, the victims have their pants pulled down and are beaten with wooden sticks by passersby or members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the paramilitary forces. Some also have their faces painted in green or blue with iodine.

Crazy but true: Reporting on one such image, the Daily Mail said it showed “how proud Ukrainians are fighting back against lawless criminals wanting to take advantage of the ongoing chaos.”

The media “without evidence” reiterates battalion claims that the people are all looters or guilty of shoplifting. No journalists ask questions, cos that’s how you get taped to the poles and beaten.

CHAPTER 4: Propaganda and OD’ing on fake news

“atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection” 

“History stopped in 1936”

“I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened” – George Orwell

February 25, 2022

This date, at the very start of the conflict, was when the Ukraine Defense reported shooting down two IL-76 Russian cargo planes, these are used to transport troops and heavy equipment. A shootdown would be a significant achievement, I was interested in what air defense was used, it’s a subject I am very familiar with.

The news went viral and was covered, as though it had been verified by each news agency individually. But in fact none of them verified, or asked questions, or for proof.

Days after the reported downing no evidence had been shown, very unusual as these things are used not just for confirmation, but also to demoralize the enemy troops and boost morale amongst your own troops.

Washington Post reported confirmation for unnamed top sources in the US State dept who conclusively confirmed the shootdown.

The shootdown never happened. It was all a lie. All the Russian planes were accounted for and none were struck from enemy air defense and/or and forced to return to base.

The information space and you

Meet Laura Edelson

Her twitter bio is: She/Her, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Science. Cybersecurity for Democracy, NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Her tweets are revealing of Liberals using the ‘good nazi propaganda’.

I have reassembled her tweets so as to be a few paragraphs rather than their twitter, character limited, form.

Dated Mar 1, 2022:

As someone who studies misinformation, the past week has been a masterclass in how positive actors with a strong information operation and tech platforms being (somewhat) sensible can create an environment in which misinformation struggles to take hold.

First, we have to acknowledge the role of fortune. I’m wary of lionizing leaders, but Zelensky certainly is a man made for the moment. His personal bravery and outstanding communication skills have made it possible for the other stuff I’m going to talk about to work.

ONE NEAT TRICK for making an information space hostile to misinformation: Flood the zone! The US government deserves credit for doing this early. Not leaving an information vacuum for your opponent to fill makes their job much, much, harder.

US employs unusual intel strategy to counter Putin (she attaches link to article from The Hill) 

The White House has aggressively worked to rebut false narratives emanating from Russia about the crisis in Ukraine by proactively releasing intelligence information, a highly unusual strategy that… (here she links to this article from The Hill US employs unusual intel strategy to counter Putin )

CLICK HERE to see the #ghostofkyiv, that badass lady with the sunflower seeds, the heroes of Snake Island. These are, at minimum, factually questionable. But they are conveying a sense of the Ukrainian people that is sticking. Even after they’re debunked, the feeling remains.

BTW, if you’ve ever wondered why misinformation can be so effective and why debunking often doesn’t change beliefs, *this* is why. If you want to believe the story the misinfo supports, even after the specific claim is debunked, the overall impression sticks. Job Done.

Ukraine Misinformation Industrial Complex

Let’s do a quick sampling:

“It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance. Coordinated by the White House National Security Council, the unprecedented intelligence releases have been so frequent and voluminous, officials said, that intelligence agencies had to devote more staff members to work on the declassification process, scrubbing the information so it wouldn’t betray sources and methods.”

Here’s some more:

“…Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment “wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence.” 

Going back to even before the invasion began, American Intel agencies were softening up the public. In this interview, former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, boasts that many western “intel leaks” media outlets are dutifully conveying aren’t real leaks but propaganda messages designed to undercut Putin.

Let’s dig deep, from mint press news

Behind Ukraine’s public relations effort is an army of foreign political strategists, Washington DC lobbyists, and a network of intelligence-linked media outlets.

Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.”

The Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”

Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare.

According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm.

“From the first hour of war, we decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them distribute the official sources to show the truth,” the nameless figure told PR Week. “This is a hybrid war: the mix of a bloodily struggling fight with a huge disinformation and fake campaign led by Russia.”

According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.

The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingraham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organization, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.

Yaroslav Turbil

The folder is run by Yaroslav Turbil, Head of Ukraine.ua. Ukraine’s digital ecosystem for global communications. Turbil has worked at multiple “civil society” organizations closely linked to the U.S. government and interned at Internews, a U.S. intelligence-linked organization that operates under the guise of promoting press freedom.

Among the propaganda constructs distributed in the dossier, is a video of the Snake Island incident, which was quickly proven false, in which Ukrainian border guards stationed on a small island were reported to have been killed after they told an approaching Russian warship that had urged them to surrender to “Go f*** yourself.” President Zelensky held a press conference announcing he would award the men the Hero of Ukraine medal as mainstream media spread the story widely.

However, the supposedly-dead soldiers quickly turned up alive and well, proving their heroic stand to be a farce.

Luring violent war tourists

The dossier also contains a link to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs page called “Fight for Ukraine” which provides instructions for foreigners who wish to join Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi-infested armed forces – termed the “International Defense Legion of Ukraine.”

Key messages

Another document titled “Key Messages” contains specific propaganda claims that were widely disseminated in mainstream western media, but which have since been discredited.

• One section claims the “entire Europe was put on the brink of nuclear disaster, when the Russian troops began shelling the largest in Europe Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”

However, International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that the building hit by a Russian “projectile” at the Zaporizhzhia plant was “not part of the reactor” but instead a training center. Russian troops also left Ukrainian workers to continue operating the plant.

• Another section thanks Turkey for the decision “to block the access of Russian warships to the Black Sea.”

However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to all military vessels, preventing both NATO and Russian vessels from accessing the Black Sea.

• One message says that “On 16 March, the Russian forces dropped a bomb on a drama theatre where up to 1300 civilians were being sheltered. The number of casualties is still unknown.”

However, as Max Blumenthal reported the explosion appears to be the result of a false flag operation designed by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and aimed at triggering a NATO intervention.

One Philosophy, Nataliya Popovych

the founder of the public relations agency, One Philosophy, in Kiev, Popovych’s LinkedIn profile shows she has worked with the U.S. State Department and advised former President Petro Poroshenko. She is also co-founder and board member of Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a propaganda arm funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Embassy, and NATO, among many others.

On March 10, 2022 Zelensky tweeted his appreciation of propaganda diffuser, Facebook and other social media platforms:

“War is not only a military confrontation on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space. I want to thank Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.” 

The Biden administration loves young people, so they went to TikTok influencers, from March 11, 2022, just in time for Biden to start sending billions into the black hole.

This from Washington Post:

SCOOP: “The Biden administration has been briefing dozens of TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine, I obtained audio of yesterday’s big briefing which shines light on how the administration is promoting their messaging w/ creators

With millions getting their information about the war from the platform, the administration wants to get its message to top content creators.” 

Who is the U.S lying too? Is Putin, or Russians, or the army. reading the Washington Post and watching CNN, are they calling up “Karens in America” to get their news briefings?

CHAPTER 5: How much has America given Ukraine? Buckle up

The Ukraine Support Tracker tracks support by 37 governments, including all G7 and European Union member countries, plus by EU institutions (38 donors).

Private donations and aid through non-governmental organizations are not included due to a lack of systematic data, but their analysis does show their estimates on government costs of hosting Ukrainian refugees. To value in-kind support like military equipment or foodstuff their numbers rely on government statements as well as their own calculations using market prices.

Notes

• I have rounded the numbers
• In many cases I converted the report’s use of euros to dollars. Because of the strength of the dollar and weakness of the euro, I essentially did a simple one-for-one.
• Go to the sources for complete info, working paper The Ukraine Support Tracker (pdf) and its website Ukraine Support Tracker  – A Database of Military, Financial and Humanitarian Aid to Ukraine
• $85 billion has been committed in government-to-government commitments from January 24, 2022 to June 7, 2022
• The United States has committed $43 billion, or 50% of total country commitments.
• All EU country governments combined committed $13b, plus $13b from the EU Commission, and a further $2b from the European Investment Bank.

This brings total EU country commitments to 27b.

Notes

• Committed money and weapons is not the same as disbursed money and delivered weapons. The numbers I am giving are the commitments.
• The dataset contains the most recent data as of June 7th, 2022
• Their analysis also documents delays in aid delivery. As of early June only about 17% of the financial commitments have actually been disbursed to Ukraine. Many countries, like Germany or the US, have delivered less than half of the weapons they committed.Total commitments
  $43b (Rank: 1)
  0.214% of GDP (Rank: 5)Humanitarian commitments
  $9b (Rank: 1)Financial commitments
  $9b (Rank: 1)Military commitments
  $23b (Rank: 1)

And noting

• The United States mostly committed grants.
• The EU institutions mostly committed loans that are to be repaid and thus add to Ukraine’s already high debt burden.
• The UK and Germany promised significant grants to Ukraine, while France, Japan and Canada offered repayable loans rather than grants.

Lend Lease

Not included in the Ukraine Tracker analysis is the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022.”

The act authorizes the administration, through fiscal year 2023, to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The act would exempt the administration from certain provisions of law that govern the loan or lease of military equipment to foreign countries, such as the five-year limit on the duration of the loan or the requirement that receiving countries pay all costs incurred by the United States in leasing the defense equipment.

Lend-lease has been used before, during World War II.

At that time, total of $50.1 billion, equivalent to $690 billion in 2020, worth of supplies were shipped. 

CHAPTER 6: Corruption in Ukraine

Before

Prior to the current crisis, Americans knew little about Ukraine, which consistently ranked as one of the poorest and most corrupt nations in Europe.

When Ukraine became a big news story during the 2014 coup, the Washington Post found that only one in six Americans were able to find the country on a map. The median guess was 1,800 miles off.

2015:

Carnegie Endowment “Corruption is an inadequate word to describe the condition of Ukraine. Since the country achieved independence in 1991, the problem is not that a well-functioning state has been corrupted by certain illegal practices; rather, those corrupt practices have constituted the rules by which the state has been run. Ukraine’s political system is best described as state capture.”

“For years, Ukraine has had more in common with states in Africa or Latin America than with other parts of Europe. Business and politics have been fused, the rule of law has been weak, and almost all transactions, from visiting the doctor to managing a business to running a political campaign, have incurred informal taxes or rents. Formal political and bureaucratic offices are held on a basis of dependence on powerful masters, who exact rents and pay incomes to ‘members of their networks—thereby robbing the state of revenue at every stage.“

2018

“Ukraine most corrupt country in Europe after Russia” – Council of Europe (Europe’s leading Human Rights Organization)

2020 

“Since early March, when Zelenskyy changed the government for no apparent reason with unknown people, there has been no direction in the government…” “We have seen that Zelensky’s new people have undone everything that was done before. It seems for me that it is done to restore corruption and oligarchs seem to influence this development. Everything is getting destroyed.” Anders Åslund, an economist and senior fellow at theAtlantic Council 

2021

Pandora Papers Reveal Offshore Holdings of Ukrainian President and his Inner Circle

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property.

• Zelensky owned a network of offshore companies business based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize
• Around the time of his 2019 election, Zelensky handed his shares in a key offshore company over to his Chief aide, Serhiy Shefir,
• Zelensky’s family continued receiving money from offshore accounts.
• Offshore companies were used by Shefir and another business partner to buy pricey London real estate.

January 2022

Ukraine scored 32 points out of 100 possible in the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2021.

With Russia, they are ranked as the most corrupt country in Europe and score only one point different than Swaziland, Zambia, Nepal, Egypt, Philippines and Algeria are one point ahead.

UPDATE: As I am writing this, a new article came up, it’s from NPR. At first glance the issues of Ukraine’s corruption are getting recognition as an obstacle to its ‘progress’. But this article is a smoke screen, it is meant to shush people’s concerns for Ukrainian corruption and stall further awareness.

Here’s the headline, and then a key sentence. 

• Headline: Corruption concerns involving Ukraine are revived as the war with Russia drags on
• Key sentence: “But as the war continues, part of the long-term American strategy in Ukraine will have to include addressing waste and mismanagement of resources“

CHAPTER 7: Martial law and you

Under the Poroshenko regime, bill №5114 was signed into law. It introduced amendments to legislation aimed at “restricting access to the Ukrainian market of foreign printed material with anti-Ukrainian content’. The law imposes a permit system for import of printed material from an aggressor state or from Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia or Kremlin-backed militants.

The law applies exclusively to countries identified as aggressor states, which only applies to Russia.

In April 2019 Zelenesky became President of Ukraine.

Zelensky was an early adopter of the Western Bureaucrat Totalitarianist tool, using social media’s veneer of accessibility to sidestep the demand for transparency. It is a technological rhetorical device that allows them to propagate their message unadulterated. It’s an inversion of the traditional relationship between the leadership and the press.

Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, argues that journalists are corrupt and are no longer necessary, and has said that a press conference with Zelensky will take place “when society demands such a press conference. So far society wants to communicate directly with the president, without intermediaries.”

His argument is essentially that journalists have no role in deciding what the people want, and provide only one microphone of many the government can choose from. And this is also his applying that “flood the zone” strategy.

In late 2020 Zelensky’s culture minister was drafting regulations to counter disinformation, regulations to restrict press access and a presidential appointment of an information commissioner.

In February 2021, in the political murk of covid, Zelensky, without a court order, and with only the stroke of his pen, unplugged three television networks that he said spread Kremlin-funded “propaganda” and served as a bullhorn of an increasingly popular pro-Moscow party.

This was a direct continuation of President Poroshenko’s policies that banned journalists, media and websites such as those implemented as sanctions in May 2017 that targeted 1,228 people and 468 companies.

Ukraine is polarized linguistically and politically. Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and removing those channels also serves to continue an aggressive policy of making Ukrainian the official and if possible only official language.

Zelensky shut down TV networks in Ukraine owned by several regional competing oligarchs, as all media in Ukraine is monopolized by warring competing oligarchs. The shutdown networks produced exclusive content, covered the entire spectrum of Ukraine’s political life and refrained from directly praising the Kremlin.

The networks were nominally owned by Taras Kozak, a politician with the Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL), a party that has the second-largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament.

Their anchors often called the central government’s conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass a “civil war”, said that Crimea’s population overwhelmingly supported their peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in 2014, and called for the restoration of peace and trade with Moscow, all legitimate observations.

The shutdowns happened as Zelensky’ approval rating by Ukrainians went down to 40%, an enormous decline considering his overwhelming win in the presidential election only two years prior.

After

As the Russian invasion commenced, Zelensky imposed a sweeping martial law.

It was initially given a 30 day limit, extended another 90 days and set to expire, possibly in August 2022.

First let’s look at two issues of it, then we’ll get into the weeds, and we will also look at how it’s spun:

1. All Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 (since then a new order has extended to men up to 70 years old, and women are now eligible for conscription) are now banned from leaving the country, according to Ukraine’s state border guard service (DPSA). Military officials and soldiers, rather than civilian leaders, are charged with deciding and enforcing the laws of the nation. This takes out all civilian social structures and gives militias full authority, second to none, in the areas they patrolled and operationally oversaw. Restrictions require Ukrainian conscripts, reservists and others subject to military service to obtain permission from military territorial recruitment and social support centers to leave their territory.
2. Zelensky banned 11 political parties with “ties to Russia” “Any activity of politicians aimed at splitting or collaborating will not succeed.”

Protecting democracy requires martial law.

If you disagree, it’s because you’re a Russian sympathizer, or a Putin agent, or repeating Russian propaganda or you are a Russian combatant in the “information war”, you are the enemy.

This is the substantive content from the letter sent to the United Nations by the The Permanent Mission of Ukraine transmitting “herewith the texts of the Decree of the President of Ukraine…On imposition of martial law in Ukraine“

(i have made small changes to the document and removed notations that cite sections and articles of the constitution, that information is available at the source:

UKRAINE: NOTIFICATION UNDER ARTICLE 4 (3)

‘On the imposition of martial law in Ukraine’ in connection with the imposition of martial law in Ukraine temporarily, for the period of martial law, may be limited constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen provided for in Articles 30 – 34, 38, 39, 41 – 44, 53 of the Constitution of Ukraine, as well as temporary restrictions on the rights and legitimate interests of legal entities within the limits and to the extent necessary to ensure implementation and execution of martial law are introduced, which are provided for in part one of Article 8 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Legal Regime of Martial Law’.

2.1. Article 30 of the Constitution. Everyone is guaranteed the inviolability of their home. It is not allowed to enter a house or other property of a person, conduct an inspection or search in them other than by a reasoned court decision.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

2.2. Article 31 of the Constitution. Everyone is guaranteed the secrecy of correspondence, telephone conversations, telegraph, and other correspondence.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under articles 19 to 20 of the Covenant and Article 10 of the Convention.

2.3. Article 32 of the Constitution. No one may be interfered with in his personal and family life, except as provided by the Constitution of Ukraine. The collection, storage, use, and dissemination of confidential information about a person without his or her consent is not permitted, except in cases specified by law and only in the interests of national security, economic well-being, and human rights.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 17 of the Covenant and Article 8 of the Convention.

2.4. Article 33 of the Constitution. Everyone who stays lawfully on the territory of Ukraine is guaranteed freedom of movement, free choice of residence, the right to leave the territory of Ukraine freely, except for restrictions established by law. A citizen of Ukraine may not be deprived of the right to return to Ukraine at any time.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under articles 12 to 13 of the Covenant and Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention.

2.5. Article 34 of the Constitution. Everyone is guaranteed the right to freedom of thought and speech, to freely express their views and beliefs. Everyone has the right to freely collect, store, use and disseminate information orally, in writing, or otherwise – at their discretion.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 19 of the Covenant and articles 9 to 10 of the Convention.

2.6. Article 38 of the Constitution. Citizens have the right to participate in the management of state affairs, in all-Ukrainian and local referendums, to freely elect and be elected to state authorities and local self-government bodies. Citizens enjoy equal access to public service, as well as to service in local self-government bodies.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 25 of the Covenant and Article 3 of the Additional Protocol to the Convention.

2.7. Article 39 of the Constitution. Citizens have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, and to hold rallies, meetings, marches, and demonstrations, which are notified in advance to the executive or local government.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 21 of the Covenant and article 11 of the Convention.

2.8. Article 41 of the Constitution. Everyone has the right to own, use and dispose of their property, the results of their intellectual and creative activities. No one may be unlawfully deprived of his property. The right of private property is inviolable.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 25 of the Covenant and Article 1 of the Additional Protocol to the Convention.

2.9. Article 42 of the Constitution. Everyone has the right to engage in entrepreneurial activity, which is not prohibited by law.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under article 17 of the Covenant and Article 1 of the Additional Protocol to the Convention.

2.10. Article 43 of the Constitution. Everyone has the right to work, which includes the opportunity to earn a living by work which he freely chooses or agrees to freely.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under articles 22, 25 of the Covenant, and article 14 of the Convention.

2.11. Article 44 of the Constitution. Those who work have the right to strike to protect their economic and social interests.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under articles 21, 22 of the Covenant, and Article 11 of the Convention.

2.12. Article 53 of the Constitution. Everyone has the right to education.

The restriction of this right necessitates a waiver of obligations under articles 24, 25 of the Covenant and Article 2 of the Additional Protocol to the Convention.

According to the first part of Article 8 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Legal Regime of Martial Law’ in Ukraine or in certain localities where martial law is imposed, the military command together with military administrations (if formed) may independently or with the involvement of executive bodies, the Council Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, local governments introduce and implement temporary restrictions of constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen, as well as the rights and legitimate interests of legal entities under the decree of the President of Ukraine on martial law, the measures of martial law are as follows:

1) to establish (strengthen) the protection of objects of state importance, objects of state importance of the national transport system of Ukraine, and objects that ensure the livelihood of the population, and to introduce a special regime of their work. The procedure for establishing (strengthening) the protection of such facilities and their inventory that are subject to protection with the imposition of martial law, as well as the procedure for the special regime of their work shall be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine;

2) to introduce compulsory labor for able-bodied persons not involved in work in the field of defense and livelihoods and not reserved for enterprises, institutions and organizations for the period of martial law in order to perform work of a defensive nature and eliminate the consequences of emergencies that arose during martial law, and to involve them in martial law in socially useful work performed to meet the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, other military formations, law enforcement agencies and civil defense forces, ensuring the functioning of the national economy and life support system population and do not require, as a rule, special training of persons. For employees involved in the performance of socially useful work, the previous place of work (position) is retained for the time of such work. The procedure for involving able-bodied persons in martial law in socially useful work and issues of their social protection, taking into account the requirements of the law, shall be determined by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine;

3) use the capacity and labor resources of enterprises, institutions and organizations of all forms of ownership for the needs of defense, change the mode of their work, make other changes in production activities and working conditions in accordance with labor legislation;

4) forcibly expropriate property in private or communal ownership, confiscate property of state enterprises, state economic associations for the needs of the state under the legal regime of martial law in the manner prescribed by law and issue appropriate documents of the prescribed form;

5) to introduce a curfew in accordance with the procedure established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (ban on staying on the streets and in other public places during a certain period of the day without specially issued permits and certificates), as well as to establish a special light masking regime;

6) to establish, in accordance with the procedure established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, a special regime of entry and exit, to restrict the freedom of movement of citizens, foreigners and stateless persons, as well as the movement of vehicles;

7) to check the documents of persons in the manner prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and if necessary to inspect things, vehicles, luggage and cargo, office space and housing of citizens, except for restrictions established by the Constitution of Ukraine;

8) prohibit holding peaceful assemblies, rallies, marches and demonstrations, other mass events;

9) to raise in the manner prescribed by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine the issue of banning the activities of political parties, public associations, if it is aimed at eliminating Ukraine’s independence, forcibly changing the constitutional order, violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state, undermining its security, illegal seizure power, propaganda of war, violence, incitement of interethnic, racial, religious hatred, encroachment on human rights and freedoms, public health;

10) to establish, in accordance with the procedure established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, a ban or restriction on the choice of the place of stay or residence of persons in the territory where martial law is in force;

11) regulate in the manner prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the work of suppliers of electronic communications networks and / or services, printing companies, publishers, broadcasters, broadcasters and other enterprises, institutions, organizations and cultural institutions and the media, and use local radio stations, television centers and printing houses for military purposes and conducting outreach work among the troops and the population; prohibit the operation of transceiver radios for personal and collective use and the transmission of information via computer networks;

12) in case of violation of the requirements or non-compliance with the measures of martial law, to withdraw from enterprises, institutions and organizations of all forms of ownership, individual citizens electronic communication equipment, television, video and audio equipment, computers and, if necessary, other technical means of communication;

13) to prohibit, in accordance with the procedure established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, trade-in weapons, strong chemical and poisonous substances, as well as alcoholic beverages and substances produced based on alcohol;

14) to establish a special regime in the field of production and sale of medical products containing narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursors, other potent substances, the list of which is determined by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine;

15) to seize from enterprises, institutions and organizations training and combat equipment, explosives, radioactive substances and materials, potent chemicals and toxic substances;

16) prohibit citizens who are on the military or special register at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine or the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, change residence (location) without the permission of the military commissar or head of the Security Service of Ukraine or the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine; limit the passage of alternative (non-military) service;

17) to establish military and housing conscription for individuals and legal entities for the accommodation of servicemen, members of the rank and file of law enforcement agencies, personnel of the Civil Protection Service, evacuated population and the location of military units, subdivisions and institutions;

18) to establish the procedure for using the fund of protective structures of civil protection;

19) to evacuate the population if there is a threat to their life or health, as well as material and cultural values, if there is a threat of damage or destruction, according to the list approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine;

20) to introduce, if necessary, in the manner prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, standardized provision of the population with basic food and non-food goods;

21) take additional measures to strengthen the protection of state secrets;

22) intern (forcibly settle) citizens of a foreign state that threatens to attack or carry out aggression against Ukraine;

23) to carry out the obligatory evacuation of detained persons in temporary detention facilities in accordance with the procedure established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine; suspects, accused persons subject to precautionary measures – detention in pre-trial detention facilities; transfer of convicts serving sentences such as arrest, restriction of liberty, imprisonment for a term and imprisonment from penitentiary institutions located in areas close to the areas of hostilities to the relevant institutions located in a safe area.

The application of these measures necessitates a derogation from the obligations under articles 3, 8″

End of letter to the United Nations

With Democracies like that, who needs dictators and fascist regimes?

Ukraine is a democracy just as much as China, Iran, Iraq.

Democracy is a blob.

I’ve been told by the media and its apparatchiks that Ukrainians support the war in staggering percentages and they demand that the war continue to be fought…

Why is extreme martial law being used?

Zelensky has never negotiated for peace with far superior powered Russia, why?

And because of the ultra clamp down on people’s rights including to speak freely, how do we know that war is what the people desire?

And with a hundred+ PR agencies and lobbyists in DC representing Ukraine’s claimed interests, what methods are those PR agencies and lobbyists employing to earn their pay? How do we know it’s truthful and morally responsible?

Martial law lite and martial law heavy

The same punditry and professional influence technicians applauded the most extreme actions of China and other tyrannical systems to clamp down on Covid, and the most unscientific measures used in the U.S and the western world such as the use of masks, questionable vaccines, closures of in person education for our youth, and so on.

Because this extremeness is “transitory” and paraphrasing Malcolm X, just as we have experienced with covid, when this crisis is over, ’the knife will still be halfway in the people’s back.’

And of course, America is on this path quickly, but it will find another reason, cos the “Russia” invasion excuse has already been taken.

Regime media

(after martial law)

How Democracies Can Respond to the Invasion of Ukraine 

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s passionate speech in Congress underscored the broader consequences of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, tying it to the struggle for global democracy. He thanked President Biden for “his sincere commitment to the defense of Ukraine and democracy all over the world” and argued that “Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine” but are “fighting for the values of Europe and the world.”

Ford Foundation: Supporting Ukraine and the values of democracy

“Moreover, Putin’s actions—his assault on the Ukrainian people’s liberties, freedoms, and their republic itself—are not new to history.”

Why the War in Ukraine is not about Democracy versus Authoritarianism 

“The Ukrainians are seen to be defending freedom and democracy. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson argues that ‘It is about Ukrainian democracy against Putin’s tyranny. It is about freedom versus oppression’.”

What Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means for democracy promotion in the Middle East

“Russia invaded Ukraine because of a man, one man to be precise. Authoritarian regimes, by their very nature, are unstable, as Putin has reminded us. If they were truly popular and stable, they wouldn’t need to resort to brutality. The very resort to repression at home is an expression of insecurity.” 

Ukraine: The Stakes for Democracy

“We are all mesmer­ized, horri­fied, furi­ous about Russi­a’s barbaric attack on Ukraine. The human toll, the wanton viol­ence aimed at civil­ians, the 2 million refugees . . . the inspir­ing sight of ordin­ary people mobil­iz­ing to fight for their homes . . . all impel us to care so deeply.

Some­thing else stirs our hearts, too: Ukraine is a demo­cracy. Russia is a dictat­or­ship. So the battle for Ukraine today is the front­line of the fight for demo­cracy.”

The Global Struggle for Democracy Is in Ukraine

“One of the key differences between autocracies and democracies is that democracies protect the rights of free speech and assembly, and hence of popular protest. As citizens of democracies know, some regulation of protests is necessary to keep the peace, and sometimes this regulation goes too far, preventing these rights from being exercised.

But dictatorships, like Putin’s, simply cannot tolerate protests – at least of the sort that criticize the government.”

Supporting Democracy After the Invasion of Ukraine

“One specific dimension of these trends relates to the future of democratic governance and international policies in support of democracy. Will the invasion prompt democratic powers to strengthen their commitments to defend and extend democratic values?”

Why Democracy in Ukraine Matters 

“Nearly two months into Russia’s assault, Ukraine stands strong. The country has become a bulwark against authoritarian aggression, and it is critical that democratic institutions continue their support. As historian Serhii Plokhy phrases it, Ukraine stands at “the gates of Europe” and the world – and it should not stand alone.”

On the road to democratic consolidation since the country’s independence in 1991, Ukraine has reiterated its commitment to democracy.

CHAPTER 8: Inflation and human sacrifices

Almost immediately after becoming president inflation started soaring, the most politically convenient measure is the CPI, consumer price index, which observes many inputs of inflation, but not energy or food.

Around April 2021 the media began responding to this by propagandizing that inflation was desirable it was a PR campaign that lasted for months and was worked into many news and business programs, it tried to insert his thinking into the common vernacular, if the german have a word for “inflation is good for you” it would have been every every minute on some program or another.

The “experts’ ‘ blamed supply chain breakdowns, rarely mentioning that the breakdowns were intentionally inflicted, for example by new laws that dramatically cut down the ability for truckers to haul and for dock workers to unload. And so on.

When the Russian invasion began inflation was already causing massive economic disruption around the world as third world countries that relied on imports were being priced out of buying foods, basic supplies, and energy.

But the invasion allowed America and the West to continue to break things, they were vandals in the world’s store.

The war allowed them to divert attention from their own break everything policies, to Putin.

Putin price hike was a focus group tested PR drive, it was uttered relentlessly by pundits and politicians.

America nor Zelensky sought a practical peace, repelling Russia and thereby “winning” was an impossibility, but it was sold to the public as achievable. Then goal posts got moved and there was no longer a goal for America, or for Ukraine.

Did the people want peace? We don’t know, peace is Russian propaganda.

Simultaneously, the American and Western “great PR machine in the sky” was also moving the goalposts on its rhetoric about inflation. In Europe an economic crash and its consequences was the people’s sacrifice in a war against Putin. “Take that Putin ” was another euro style focus group tested slogan to get people to tolerate empty shelves, staggering inflation, staggering energy cost increases and food prices.

America has been eased of much of this pain thru a incredibly strong dollar, nevertheless, despite that cushion, inflation in the U.S is historic.

I’ll give you some of the news headlines of the last few months and then we’ll move on.

Work from home to beat Putin, says EU 

The nine-point plan, entitled “Playing My Part”, urges citizens to drive less, by using public transport, or working from home three days a week.

It also calls on citizens to:

• Heat their homes less in winter, and turn the air conditioning down in summer
• Drive more slowly on highways, with the car air conditioning turned down, which uses less fuel
• Use the train instead of flying

“Murkowski: Blocking Russian oil to stop Putin is worth the ‘hurt’ to Americans”

The author of that article also made a twitter thread of some of its highlights, here’s one, word for word quote “Her full poignant quote. “We’re going to see price increases. Nobody wants to see that. This is going to hurt. But we need to recognize Europe is in the midst of a war w/ Russia. Innocent people are dying. We have not been in as volatile as a situation as anytime in my life.”

“I’m asking the people of the United States to also make that kind of sacrifice because in the long run, democracy is at stake,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.).

Psaki: “The American people also deserve a lot of gratitude for their sacrifices in their support of this war.”

Twitter celebrity, progressive circus barker George Takei Americans: We can endure higher prices for food and gas if it means putting the screws to Putin. Consider it a patriotic donation in the fight for freedom over tyranny.” 

Axios in march 2022 got the memo “Democrats ask Americans for “sacrifice” on gas prices” 

Canadians love inflation?

April 14, 2022, the headline: “Canadians too anxious about the future to enjoy the vibrant present, say economists”

Below that: “Focus on rates, prices and calamity make it hard to relish Canada’s good fortune”

The story has these beauties: “We’re the richest anybody’s been in the history of the universe,” said professor emeritus Jon Cohen with the hyperbole permitted to an 82-year-old economic historian who says he’s seen it all. “That doesn’t mean we necessarily stay that way, but right now, yeah, it’s the best of times.”

And “Krugman said he’d seen polls of people in the U.S. convinced the country was losing jobs. Instead, the North American economy is in a time of record-low unemployment.

The U.S. economist called that “a media failure.” He also said that U.S. self-identified conservatives were the ones most convinced the economy is in terrible shape, “worse than it was in 1980 when we had eight per cent unemployment and 14 per cent inflation.”

“Beware when the media uses the language of war, it was used as well in days of yore: covid”. Front line workers, Merkel, Boris Johnson, Trump and so on, all called it a “war.”

CHAPTER 9: UKRAINIAN AGRICULTURE AND THE TRAIL OF TEARS

In 2022, Ukraine became the top recipient of US foreign aid – marking the first time since the Marshall Plan that a European country holds this top spot.

As of December 2022, less than one year into the war, US assistance alone amounted to over US $113 billion, nearly twice the entire budget of the State Department and USAID globally (US $58 billion).

Ukraine has large swaths of the most fertile farmland in the world, 41 million hectares of agricultural land, 33 million hectares of which are arable – equivalent to one-third of all arable land in the European Union. 

WHO CONTROLS AGRICULTURAL LAND IN UKRAINE? 

Control of Ukrainian land eludes research, its almost entirely off-shore tax havens and an opaque land tenure systems.

What is discoverable is that around 4 million hectares are under large-scale agriculture, with the bulk of it, over three million hectares, in the hands of just a dozen large agribusiness firms and most of these firms are registered overseas – in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg, USA, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia. 

OLIGARCHS

1. Kernel is the largest land holder and also the largest producer and exporter of sunflower oil and controls 582,062 hectares. Andriy Verevskyi, is Ukraine’s 16th richest person
2. UkrLandFarming is the second largest landholder with 403,370 hectares. Founded by oligarch Oleg Bakhmatyuk, who was the 28th richest person in Ukraine in 2016 and has since lost much of his land and assets with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it specializes in grain, egg, milk, and meat production.
3. The third largest landholder, with 360,238 hectares, is MHP, the largest producer and exporter of chicken in Ukraine, founded by its current CEO, Yuriy Kosyuk, the country’s 10th richest person.
4. With 264,270 hectares, Astarta is Ukraine’s largest producer of sugar and is also active in industrial milk production and soybean processing. Its founder and current CEO, Viktor Ivanchyk, is the 95th richest person in the country.
5. Nibulon’s founder, Oleksiy Vadatursky was Ukraine’s 24th richest person, but passed away in July 2022 as a result of a Russian missile strike. Nibulon grows grain for export on 82,500 hectares.
6. System Capital Management (SCM) is a major financial and industrial holding firm controlled by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov. SCM owns various agricultural subsidiaries, notably HarvEast, which produces wheat, sunflower, legumes, corn, and cattle. The firm manages 26,000 hectares of land, having lost control of over 100,000 hectares to the war. 

FOREIGN FIRMS

Several foreign firms have consolidated some of the largest agricultural areas of the country. The three largest are: 

• The fifth largest landholder in the country, with 290,749 hectares, is NCH Capital, a US-based private equity firm that invests on behalf of prominent US pension funds, university endowments, and foundations. It operates in Ukraine through the company AgroProsperis
• P I F Saudi, owned by the Sovereign Fund of Saudi Arabia, operates on 228,654 hectares through the Saudi Agriculture and Livestock Investment Company (‘SALIC’) and its subsidiary, Continental Farmers Group.
• TNA Corporate Solutions, another US-based firm, is owned by American businessman Nicholas Piazza. It controls 295,624 hectares through several subsidiaries, including Pivden Agro Invest, Podillya Agroproduct, Hetmanske, and Prydniprovske. Most of the land leased by TNA comes from transfers from UkrLandFarming made in recent years. 

SHAREHOLDERS

UkrLandFarming is 100 percent owned by its founder Oleg Bakhmatyuk and has no other known shareholders. Similarly, the founders of Kernel, MHP, and Astarta respectively own 42 percent, 59 percent and 41 percent of their firms’ shares. 

However, a number of the largest firms have opened their capital to foreign investors. Due to a lack of transparency around such transactions, public information is limited. 

Key investors in the largest landholders in Ukraine are mainly prominent investment funds:

• Vanguard Group
• Kopernik Global Investors
• BNP Asset Management Holding
• Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings
• Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund

FOREIGN SHAREHOLDERS AND OLIGARCHS

• NN Investment Partners Holdings N.V. is a Netherlands-based private investment firm, which owns shares in both Kernel and Astarta. In April 2022, it was acquired by investment banking firm Goldman Sachs Group and was combined with Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
• Kopernik Global Investors LLC is a US-based private investment firm with US $4 billion assets under management. It owns shares in Kernel, MHP, and Astarta, and was the third largest private investor in Ukraine in 2020. 
• Heptagon Capital LLP is a London-based private investment firm, which manages US $12. billion in assets. It owns shares in Kernel, MHP, and Astarta. Along with Kopernik Global Investors LLC, it manages the Kopernik Global All-Cap Equity Fund, which has holdings in agriculture, palm oil production, gold and silver mining, uranium production, and natural gas
• Norges Bank Investment Management owns shares in both Kernel and MHP. It manages the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global – also known as the Oil Fund – which is Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. With over US $1. trillion worth of assets, it is the largest single owner in the world’s stock market, controlling 1. percent of all shares in the world’s listed companies. As of 2020, it was the fourth largest investor in Ukraine
• Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a Toronto-based financial management company. Holding close to 31 percent of Astarta’s shares, it is the firm’s largest shareholder after its founder – granting it significant power in the company. Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. also controls 70 percent of FFH Ukraine, the holding company of three Ukrainian insurance firms, and has a 10 percent share in Ovostar Union, a Ukrainian egg producer. 

NCH CAPITAL

US-based private equity firm NCH Capital was founded in 1993 by George Rohr and Moris Tabacinic owns 700,000 hectares in Ukraine and Russia.

The US government has also invested US $10 million in NCH Capital through its Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) – now part of the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), an agency supporting “US businesses to enter challenging international markets” – for a project tied to AgroProsperis.

NCH Capital has also received investments from a number of renowned private foundations. 

Other institutional investors are prominent US pension funds, including General Electric Pension Trust, Dow Chemical Company Pension Fund, and Lockheed Martin Pension Plan, as well as renowned university endowments, such as the University of Michigan Endowment. It has also received investments from Harvard University. 

CREDITORS 

Beyond the shareholders and investors, who controls the largest landholding firms also depends on their level of indebtedness, which is very significant for some of the companies, providing creditors with some level of control over the firms and their assets. If a firm fails to meet its payment obligations, its creditors become entitled to take possession of its assets and sell them – essentially transforming into the owners of the company’s assets.

European banking institutions and the World Bank have been key lenders to Ukrainian agribusinesses. The EBRD, EIB, and IFC have lent US $1. billion to just six of Ukraine’s largest landholding firms over the past 15 years. 

UkrLandFarming owns two of Europe’s largest poultry farms, as well as two of its largest grain storage facilities. It is also the owner of Avangardco IPL, Europe’s largest egg producer. As of 2020, it was estimated that UkrLandFarming’s debt burden stood at US $1 billion, of which US $1 billion was owed to foreign creditors including the US-based Gramercy Funds Management LLC, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Pala Assets Limited, and Denmark’s Export Credit Agency.

Other creditors included Deutsche Bank, Sberbank of Russia, and Canada’s Export-Import Agency.

Kernel Holding S.A. has received loans from the Dutch banking group ING Bank, the French bank Natixis, the German bank Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, and the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen. In 2019, the firm entered into credit agreements of US $390 million with ING Bank and US $300 million with Natixis. Kernel and its subsidiaries also obtained a credit facility of US $20. million from Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in 2013, and one amounting to EUR2. million from Raiffeisen Bank in 2017.

MHP S.E. entered into loan agreements worth US $125. million with ING Bank in 2011 and 2018, EUR 11. million with the German Landesbank in 2011, EUR 65. million with the Slovenian bank ABANKA in 2016, and US $26. million with the Dutch bank Rabobank between 2015 and 2017.

Astarta Holding N.V. received a US $25 million loan from the Netherlands Development Finance Company in 2017. In 2019, it also obtained a US $20 million credit facility from the German development finance institution Deutsche Investitions-und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG), a subsidiary of the German national development bank KfW Bankengruppe.

Nibulon has received loans from Canadian and Danish financial institutions, as well as a US $80 million syndicated loan agreement arranged by ING Bank in 2018.

The weight and level of control over these firms by foreign creditors is hidden by the opacity of the system. Nevertheless, the recent history of UkrLandFarming illustrates the relationship and sometimes the tension between Ukrainian agribusinesses and their lenders.

In 2016-2017, the firm was forced to restructure its debt, reaching an agreement with a majority of its foreign creditors to restructure its Eurobonds worth US $500 million.

This led to drastic organizational changes, including layoffs of 6,000 employees. In 2019, UkrLandFarming and its subsidiary Avangard agreed to restructure US $119 million of debt with state-owned bank Oschadbank.

In December 2021, US investment fund Gramercy, which holds 10 percent of UkrLandFarming’s debt, sued the founder Oleg Bakhmatyuk in Wyoming and in Cyprus for allegedly siphoning US $1 billion out of the company to avoid paying its debt to the fund.

STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM 

Since the installation of a pro-EU government following the Maidan Revolution in 2014, the World Bank, the IMF, and EBRD have been laying the groundwork for large-scale privatization in Ukraine through a massive structural adjustment program. 

In 2014, Ukraine had to commit to a set of austerity measures in return for a US $17 billion bailout from the IMF, as well as an additional US $3. billion aid package from the World Bank.

These measures included slashing public pensions and wages, reforming the public provision of water and energy, the privatization of banks, and changing the country’s VAT system.

As a precondition for European integration, the EU also imposed legally-binding political and economic reforms to privatize the economy, as codified in the 2014 Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTA), which entered into force in 2017.

FOREIGN DEBT

With the Ukrainian government continuing to borrow money to keep the economy afloat, its foreign debt has ballooned. As of July 2022, the public sector’s debt stood at US $60 billion, while Ukrainian private businesses owed a total of US $68 billion. 

Ukraine is the world’s third-largest debtor to the IMF

This debt was contracted at the expense of a drastic decline in the living conditions of a large part of the country’s population.

Measures like the introduction of market tariffs for utilities and pension reform, imposed as part of the structural adjustment program, have led to the erosion of public services, rise in the price of gas and utility tariffs, and the impoverishment of Ukrainians. 

Between 2013 and 2019, the average monthly wage dropped the equivalent of US $80 million.

This drop was coupled with a high rate of inflation – which peaked at 43 percent in 2015. During that time, the price of gas – which is the main source of heat, hot water, and cooking fuel for most Ukrainians – increased twelvefold. Pension reforms introduced in 2017 have similarly played a part in the impoverishment of the population – around 80 percent of single pensioners in Ukraine live below the official poverty line, while 65 percent receive a pension below 3,000 hryvnia [US $82] per month.

THE POOREST COUNTRY IN EUROPE

In 2014, the country’s poverty rate stood at 28. percent; by 2016, it had doubled, reaching a staggering 58 percent. While it has declined slightly in recent years, it remained high at 41 percent in 2019. 

In 2021, Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe, with a GDP per capita of US $4,835.

UKRAINE AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR SALE

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, all land was the property of the state, with farmers working on state and collective farms. In the 1990s, guided and supported by the IMF and other international institutions, the government privatized much of Ukraine’s farmland, which resulted in the growing concentration of land in the hands of a new oligarchic class.

To stop this process, the government instituted a moratorium in 2001, which halted further privatization and prevented almost all transfers of private land.

While the moratorium prevented further purchases of land, farmland could still be leased.

Many small landowners leased their land to both domestic and foreign corporations. Although the moratorium was meant to be temporary, it was extended multiple times until it was lifted in July 2021 under the pressure of international financial institutions. 

Lifting the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land and the creation of a land market had been a key demand of Western financial institutions since 2014. 

The EBRD’s 2011-2014 Ukraine Country Strategy (EUROPEAN BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT) aimed to “[unlock its] agricultural and industrial potential” by addressing a number of challenges, including the agricultural sector’s low productivity, uncertainty tied to land ownership and user rights, limited access to finance, and the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land. According to the EBRD, all of these stood in the way of investments.

Despite widespread opposition, on March 31, 2020, Ukraine passed a law legalizing the sale of farmland and lifting the country’s 19-year moratorium on land transactions.

Ending the moratorium was part of a series of policy reforms that the IMF conditioned a US $8 billion loan package upon.

Faced with a deep economic crisis, an ongoing civil war, and the rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine risked plunging into default without the loan package. The timing of the bill’s passage coincided with mandatory COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in place across the country, effectively quelling any further protests or demonstrations.

Law 552-IX established a land market

Starting in July 2021, the law makes it possible for individual Ukrainian citizens to purchase up to 100 hectares. The second stage begins in January 2024 and will raise the limit to 10,000 hectares and permit sales to legal entities.

FARMER PROTEST LAND REFORM, 2020

Since the first year of the land market’s opening after July 2021, 111,307 land deals have been signed, covering 262,679 hectares of land.

A longstanding prohibition on foreign individuals and companies buying land in Ukraine remains, although they retain the ability to lease land.

The few concessions included in the final version of the bill, however, are inadequate in preventing further consolidation of land ownership.

For instance, the ban on foreign or unknown owners from acquiring land would require tracing and enforcement, which are highly unlikely to materialize within the current global economic system where companies and subsidiaries constantly change hands and are financed and owned without transparency. Additionally, the very high level of indebtedness of Ukrainian agribusinesses calls the ban into question.

Because a vast number of these agribusinesses’ lenders are Western banks and international financial institutions, in the case of a default, their land and assets would likely be taken over by these creditors, which raises legal and practical questions given the land law prevents foreign entities from purchasing land in the country.

THE LAND MARKET

The government and international institutions have promoted land reform, the main argument put forward has been that it will have a “positive impact on economic growth.”

According to the World Bank, lifting the moratorium on land sales would add around 1-2 percent to Ukraine’s annual GDP growth rate for five years. However, this increase is expected to mainly come from the “expansion of producers with higher productivity and incentives for lower productivity producers to improve or exit, as the price of land rises.”

The institution thus explicitly expects the land reform law to push poorer, smaller farmers out of agriculture and help grow larger land holdings. 

Once the legal limitations are lifted in 2024 and UkraineInvest, the government agency created to attract foreign investments, promotes Ukraine as being “the land of agri opportunities,” with “cheap labor” and “cheap land rent.”

WAR ON AGRICULTURE IN UKRAINE

Ukraine’s staggering and growing foreign debt makes it likely that reconstruction will be dictated by international financial institutions and foreign interests, which have already indicated that they will use their leverage to further privatize the country’s public sector and liberalize its agriculture.

Ukraine’s external debt, estimated at US $132 billion in 2020 – has continued to swell because of the war. In 2022, the EBRD, the IMF, and the World Bank approved close to 

US $7 BILLION OF ADDITIONAL LOANS

In August 2022, after months of pressure, Ukraine’s creditors agreed to a two-year freeze on payments on US $20 billion in international bonds. However, this agreement excludes major creditors, including the IMF and the World Bank.

In any case, these loans will eventually have to be repaid, along with their associated charges, fees, and interest that continues to rise – locking Ukraine in a cycle of unsustainable debt obligations. 

UKRAINE SPENT US $5 BILLION SERVICING DEBT

Despite the war, it repaid the World Bank US $496 million and the IMF US $2 billion (plus US $312 million in charges and interests) the same year.

These debt repayments weigh heavily on an economy already strained by war and economic crisis, exceeding what the country spends on key sectors. For instance, educational expenditures for 2022 stood at US $1. billion, US $400 million less than the reimbursement to the IMF.

Ukraine’s crippling debt burden means that it will likely face significant pressure from its creditors, bondholders, and international financial institutions on how its post-war reconstruction – estimated to cost US $750 billion – should happen.

Already, international financial institutions are calling on Ukraine to further the “market-enabling agenda that was underway before the war,” including privatization, deregulation, and reduced social spending.

An April 2022 World Bank paper titled “Relief, Recovery, and Resilient Reconstruction” states that “post-war reconstruction may present an opportunity to think differently about social services, […] geared toward a new model of care that is no longer primarily institution-based (e.g. orphanages, old age homes, institutions for those with disabilities), but oriented toward home and community-based care” and responsibility for social support solely onto individuals.

WHILE SMALL FARMERS ARE DYING THEIR LAND IS BENG TAKEN

In December 2022, a coalition of farmers, academics, and NGOs called on the Ukrainian government to suspend the land reform law and all market transactions of land during the war and post-war period, “in order to guarantee the national security and preservation of territorial integrity of the country in wartime and post-war reconstruction period.”

Ukrainians are putting their lives down to defend their land but are well aware of the corrupt forces that are threatening that very same land and the whole economy of the country, as demonstrated by the very widespread consensus against the land reform law passed in 2020. 

“Today, thousands of rural boys and girls, farmers, are fighting and dying in the war. They have lost everything, housing, land, livelihoods. They are practically unable to realize their right to land. The processes of free land sale and purchase are increasingly liberalized and advertised. And this really threatens the rights of Ukrainians to their land, for which they give their lives.”  – PROFESSOR OLENA BORODINA, NATIONAL  ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF UKRAINE

UPDATE ON AGRICULTURE, SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

This piece from 60 minutes came out in September 2023. It’s the usual puff piece about the nobility of transferring American wealth.

Nonetheless, the preview is interesting  in that it clearly is trying to lure ‘skeptics’ and people who have an appetite for transparency into how their money is being spent, for example buying seeds/fertilizer for farmers, paying the salaries of 57,000 first responders and subsidizing small businesses.

CHAPTER 10: LABOR LAWS AND THE JOBS UKRAINIANS ARE TOO DEAD TO DO

On 17 August 2022, Zelensky ratified Law 5371, effective for as long as the country is under martial law – a qualification added at the last minute, under pressure from trade unions.

Under the new law, people who work for firms with up to 250 employees will now be covered by contracts they negotiate as individuals with their bosses, rather than the national labor code.

This means that around 70% of workers in Ukraine have been stripped of many labor protections. Collective agreements negotiated by unions – over salary or holidays, for instance – no longer apply. The law also removes the legal authority of trade unions to veto workplace dismissals.

The Ukrainian government has claimed it is trying to alleviate the difficulties faced by companies in wartime. However, it first tried to introduce the new law in 2021.

Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party argued that “the extreme over-regulation of employment contradicts the principles of market self-regulation [and] modern personnel management.”

The policy is opposed by Ukraine’s Federation of Trade Unions and has been criticised by a joint European Union-International Labour Organisation project. Some of its critics argue that the government is using Russia’s invasion as an excuse to push for deregulation and the stripping back of social support.

Law 5371 is not an isolated measure. In July, two other laws were passed:

1. Allowing employers to stop paying workers who have been called up to fight
2. Legalizes zero-hours contracts, remaining in place even when martial law is lifted.

Another draft bill proposes a drastic overhaul of Ukraine’s labor code itself. This would introduce a maximum 12-hour work day and allow employers to dismiss workers without justification.

Martial law prevented workers, their families and unions and their members to even call for protests and strikes to oppose the legislation.

Will be a good labor pool as corporations seize agri stuff. Like I said, is this a Ukrainian Trail of Tears?

ADDENDUM 1: HOW TO WIN THE WAR ON “WAR ON…”

This is a post I wrote and also recorded in August 2022, it’s about all the “war on…” we’ve been sold on before. War on Hunger, War on Homelessness and so on. 

UPDATE October 2023: MAIDAN MASSACRE, report debunks foundational myth of modern Ukraine

In October 2023 a well researched and authoritative report came out that debunked the foundational mythology of the creation of the modern founding of Ukraine, the 2014 Maidan uprising.