Commentary

We always suspected it. We tried to tell reporters, politicians, police investigators, even a few of those ranged against us in the public arena about what we were certain was true — but they wouldn’t believe us. I can’t blame them. There was no hard proof, not in the 1980s, to confirm Soviet agents of influence had initiated “active measures” to undermine the anti-Communist Ukrainian community in the West Now there is. Code-named Operation Payback, this plan was cynically orchestrated to exploit the understandable desire of the Jewish diaspora to see perpetrators of some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century — the Nazis — brought to justice. By the late 1960s, quite alarmingly from a Soviet point of view, Jewish and Ukrainian émigrés had begun to stand together in defense of human rights activists and refuseniks in the USSR. By propagating stories about “thousands” of Nazis supposedly hiding within North America’s Ukrainian and Baltic communities Moscow’s men effectively fragmented this common front... 

These various branches of the organization of Heinrich Himmler unfortunately wore the same uniform, though they had different insignia. [1] Polish eyewitnesses, and many historians are quick to identify various individuals as “Waffen SS Galicia” and the current fashion, even in Ukraine, is to lump them all as “SS-men”. But in actual fact, the subject of Rudling’s article, the 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1), did not take part in nor was present at the atrocity described, nor any other. It is true that some two months later the personnel of these police regiments were added to the actual 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) and many later took part in the battle of Brody on July 18-22 1944. The fact that many members of the Waffen SS Division Galicia that joined it at various times may have carried baggage of misdeeds and crimes committed previously, does not affect the record of the Division itself...

Disinformation: The OUN / UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists / Ukrainian Insurgent Army) were collaborators with the German Nazi regime. Facts: An image had been created that somehow, in contrast to WW1, the Second World War in Europe was actually a “good” war. Today we realize that in its essence this war was a conflict of two imperialist tyrannies: the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Other WWII combatants found themselves allied to one or the other side. Very few fighting forces can claim to have fought simultaneously against both tyrannies. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA, mobilized by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to fight for an independent state for the Ukrainian nation, was one such major force. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was the underground political organization that struggled for that same goal and, as such, maintained contacts with many states including England, Japan, Italy, Lithuania as well as Germany for a decade before the war. The June 30, 1941 Proclamation of the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and proposed anti-Soviet alliance was a surprise and a challenge to the Third Reich. It took the German leadership but a week to begin arresting the OUN leadership and participants in that Proclamation. Hitler was thus forced to show his hand much earlier in his campaign than he would have liked...

Disinformation: The leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera, “collaborated” with Hitler. Facts: On June 30, 1941, the Nachtigall Battalion reached Lviv, and OUN leaders headed by Yaroslav Stetsko declared the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and formed a government. Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were arrested by the Germans in early July 1941 for refusing to withdraw the official Declaration of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood of June 30, 1941 in Lviv. They spent most of WWII in Germany’s Sachsenhausen concentration camp in a special block for political prisoners. Bandera’s two brothers ( Alexander and Wasyl) died in Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp. Bandera and Stetsko were released in the fall of 1944, placed under house arrest in Berlin, but refused to collaborate with the Nazis. In 1945 Bandera and Stetsko escaped during a bombing raid on Berlin, and went underground until the war was over...

Having read Per Anders Rudling’s article ‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited, I am reminded why, a half century ago, I chose to study Engineering rather than the “Humanities” to which my aptitude tests should have steered me. Even at that tender age I understood the lack of objectivity, truth and reality in the Humanities. I knew that my marks would always depend on currying favor with professors; and being a born contrarian, that was never going to happen...

The following contains researched material made available to swiftly counter cases of defamation and calumny against Ukraine and Ukrainians. “Project FACTS” Backgrounder: Conflicting Disinformation The Ukrainian Resistance/Liberation Movement led by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) had been accused by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia of supporting the opposing side during World War II. FACTS: This conflicting disinformation that was promoted by Hitler’s and Stalin’s propaganda machines is reflected in countless documents of the time. To witness...

On what grounds was the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783 after Crimea came out of Ottoman protection with the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca in 1774? What was the reaction of the Ottoman Empire to what happened in this period? It’s all about geopolitics. The Tsardom of Muscovy, the predecessor of the Russian Empire, was a land-locked country. Muscovy’s first access to the sea was in the far north, but for much of the year the waters there were frozen. Access to warm-water ports became the major goal of Muscovy and later Russia. After gaining access to the Baltic Sea in the west, Russia set out to reach the Black Sea in the south. There it confronted the Ottoman Empire against which Muscovy/Russia conducted a series of wars from the mid-seventeenth to late eighteenth century. As long as Russia persisted, sooner or later Ottoman lands, including the Crimean Khanate, would be annexed to the tsarist empire...

'Russia has proven, time and again, that it's willing to flout international law, invade neighbouring states, target civilian aircraft, and use chemical and radioactive weapons, endangering the lives of hundreds of people.' On Nov. 22, 2006, a man died an agonizing death three weeks after drinking tea in a London hotel. On July 17, 2014, a civilian airliner was shot down in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board died. On Oct. 16, 2014, an explosion occurred at an arms depot in Vrebtice, Czech Republic, killing two people. On March 4, 2018, a man and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, England. What do these four seemingly unconnected events have in common? The Russian government was behind all of them...

Hot information war, creeping escalation and other warnings and developments indicate that Russia is moving towards another attack on Ukraine. Will it be annexation of Donbas, a launch of full-scale military operations or insertion of Russian ‘peacekeepers’? More than six years have passed since the so-called Minsk II accords brought an end to the last high-intensity military conflict in Ukraine. But it would be unduly complacent to suppose that this hiatus will last much longer. Since the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreement [of 5 September 2014] was signed by the representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE and the unrecognised leaders of the two self-proclaimed Donbas republics on 12 February 2015, more Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the ensuing low-intensity conflict than in...

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz used a private jet linked to fugitive oligarch Dmytro Firtash to travel from a high-profile meeting in Tel-Aviv. The young Austrian chancellor isn’t the first Austrian politician caught in bed with the Kremlin-linked oligarch, who is fighting off a U.S. extradition warrant. The U. S. has charged Firtash with bribery and racketeering. According to Austrian news website ZackZack, Firtash lives in a Vienna villa owned by Alexander Schutz, a major donor to Kurz’s governing Austrian People’s Party. The website also writes that the party’s former leader, Michael Spindelegger, who is also Austria’s ex-vice chancellor, is employed by the oligarch’s Agency for the Modernization of Ukraine, which exists only on paper. Firtash’s connections to the top echelons of Austrian politics aren’t surprising. The oligarch made his fortune on mingling with political heavyweights. Firtash, who was described by the U. S. Department of Justice as an “upper-echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime,” made a fortune on reselling Russian gas to Ukraine at inflated prices...