Even as Polish support for The Ukraine War has led to
tensions with fellow V4-member Hungary, Warsaw is not entirely happy with the
Zelenskiy government. 1 January marked the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the
fascist OUN-B leader and Nazi collaborator whose paramilitaries (such as the
UPA) were responsible for tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish deaths during
the World War II.
Bandera has been rehabilitated by the Ukrainian state which
emerged when the USSR broke up in 1991. Though contemporary war apologists and
anti-Russian campaigners such as Timothy Snyder appeal to Zelenskiy's Jewish
heritage in order to dispel the notion that his government has fascistic and
Neo-Nazi ties, the truth is that his government and that of his predecessors
have openly celebrated Bandera and that of his paramilitary organisation –
which was pro-Nazi and its descendants remain so. Svoboda, the Azov Battalion,
and other political movements and paramilitaries are replete with imagery
associated with Bandera and he is upheld as a national hero by these groups and
a large sector of the military and the Kyiv government.
As I've stated before, if this sort of thing was happening in
any other European country and connected to its government, it would be a major
news story and a global scandal. And yet because it's twenty-first century
Ukraine, the tip of NATO's spear in its campaign to break up the Russian
Federation – the West has chosen to ignore this story. The 2017 Charlottesville
imagery of fascist marchers bearing torches that shocked Americans and led to
violence has taken place multiple times and on a much larger scale in Kyiv and
across Ukraine. And yet apart from some international and specifically Israeli
coverage – the Establishment media in the West chooses to ignore this reality.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/torchlit-march-in-kyiv-honors-nazi-linked-nationalist/
Poland hasn't forgotten the events connected to Bandera
during the war and they're rather unhappy that he has been both rehabilitated
and lionised by the pro-Western and supposedly liberal post-Maidan governments
in Kyiv.
And did we mention the role his militias played in the
massacre of Russians? As Nazi collaborators they were part of Operation
Barbarossa which resulted in the death of 27 million Russians.
Once again, the fact that Russia might express concern over
the Kyiv regime's affection for and elevation of this man would in any other
context be deemed legitimate. But not for the West. Kyiv continues to celebrate
this man, and did so just days ago, with the dawn of 2023.
It's certainly a news story in places like Poland and Israel but it has received virtually no coverage in the West. That in itself is a story.
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