Eric Zuesse

The Ukrainian Government said on April 7th that any country sending representatives to Russia’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler, will be blacklisted by Ukraine. That celebration will take place on May 9th.

According to the Russian news report, “Over the weekend, Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov noted that the leaders of at least 25 states from across the world will attend Moscow's celebrations. … The leaders of China, Vietnam, the Czech Republic, Cuba and North Korea have confirmed their attendance. Meanwhile, the leaders of Germany, Britain, Poland, the Baltic States and the United States have confirmed that they won't be attending.”

The United States and Ukraine were two of only three countries that voted at the United Nations against a recent resolution condemning the resurgence of fascism or racist fascism (nazism), or of Holocaust-denial. The resolution didn’t name or identify any particular country or countries. The U.S. representative to the UN said that she voted against it because Ukraine’s UN representative voted against it. The third nation that voted against it was Canada, which voted against it because the U.S. voted against it. Germany, Britain, Poland, and the Baltic States, abstained from voting on it.

Ukraine’s statement opposing any nation that sends a representative to Russia’s May 9th celebration of the victory against Hitler asserts that Russia is itself a fascist country.

Ukraine will hold its own celebration on May 9th, of victory against Hitler, even though Ukraine had no victory against Hitler and was instead conquered by Hitler’s forces; and, in northwestern Ukraine, welcomed them. After the Nazis moved in, the first leader of Ukraine was Yaroslav Stetsko. He was the second-in-command of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. As wikipedia puts it:

“In 1940, the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members, supported Andriy Melnyk (OUN-M) while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera (OUN-B). The OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in June 1941, while the region was under the control of Nazi Germany.[3] In response, the OUN leadership was suppressed by Nazi authorities. In October 1942 OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In 1943 UPA military units carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing against Polish and Jewish populations.[3]”

UPA was not anti-Nazi, but it was instead anti-Semitic, and anti-Russian.

Bandera is considered a hero to the current Ukrainian government, and he lived the rest of his life in Germany. He hated Russians and wanted to have nothing to do with a Ukraine that was ruled by them. Stetsko, who said that the Nazi extermination program against Jews was good, and who oversaw that extermination in Ukraine during the brief period when he ruled Ukraine for the Nazis, organized after the war the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), because he hated Russians. Stetsko’s book became the foundationstone for today’s Ukrainian party “Svoboda,” whose original name was the “Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine,” and which was patterned on Hitler’s National Socialist Party of Germany.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s statement on April 7th said: “Under conditions of Russian aggression against Ukraine, there can be no participation of Ukrainian representatives in events in Moscow.”

The current government of Ukraine was installed in February 2014, and Ukraine’s Prime Minister was selected by Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department on 4 February 2014, in what the head of Stratfor, the “private CIA” firm, calls “the most blatant coup in history.” From that time on, Ukraine’s government has been as anti-Russian as its World War II heroes were.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .