In part 1 of this series Fact Checking the Fact Checkers, the question was posed “why does Ukraine seem to have so many Nazis nowadays?” In that paper we were led to the further question “is the United States and possibly NATO involved in the funding, training and political support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and if so, for what purpose?” It was concluded that in order to answer such questions fully, we would have to look at the historical root of Ukrainian nationalism and its relationship with U.S. Intelligence and NATO post-WWII. It is here that we will resume.

The Historical Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism

The birth of Ukrainian Nationalism as it is celebrated today has its origins in the 20th century. However, there are a few important historical highlights that should be known beforehand.

Kievan Rus’ was a federation in Eastern-Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century and was made up of a variety of peoples including East Slavic, Baltic and Finnic, and was ruled by the Rurik dynasty.

Today’s Belarus, Russia and Ukraine all recognize the people of Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestors.

Kievan Rus’ would fall during the Mongol invasion of the 1240s, however, different branches of the Rurik dynasty would continue to rule parts of Rus’ under the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia (modern-day Ukraine and Belarus), the Novgorod Republic (overlapping with modern-day Finland and Russia) and Vladimir-Suzdal (regarded as the cradle of the Great Russian language and nationality which evolved into the Grand Duchy of Moscow).

The Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was under the vassalage of the Golden Horde during the 14th century, which was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate originating as the northwestern section of the Mongol Empire.

After the poisoning of Yuri II Boleslav, King of Galicia-Volhynia in 1340, civil war ensued along with a power struggle for control over the region between Lithuania, Poland and its ally Hungary. Several wars would be fought from 1340-1392 known as the Galicia-Volhynia wars.

In 1349, the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was conquered and incorporated into Poland.

In 1569 the Union of Lublin took place, joining the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which ruled as a large and major power for over 200 years.

From 1648-1657 the Khmelnytsky Uprising, also known as the Cossack-Polish War took place in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the creation of a Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine.

Under the command of Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, allied with the Crimean Tatars and local Ukrainian peasantry, fought against Polish domination and against the Commonwealth forces; which was followed by the massacre of Polish-Lithuanian townsfolk, the Roman Catholic clergy and the Jews.

Khmelnytsky to this day is a major heroic figure in the Ukrainian nationalist history.

By 1772, the once powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had too far declined to further govern itself and went through three partitions, conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire.

From the first partition of Poland in 1772, the name “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” was granted to the Habsburg Monarchy (Austrian Empire, which later became the Austria-Hungarian Empire in 1867). Most of Volhynia would go to the Russian Empire in 1795.

By 1914, Europe would be dragged into WWI. In March 1918, after two months of negotiations with the Central Powers (the German, Austria-Hungary, Bulgarian, and Ottoman Empire), the new Bolshevik government of Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceding claims on Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as the condition for peace (Note: the Bolshevik Revolution began in March 1917). WWI would officially end on November 11th, 1918.

As a result of the treaty, eleven nations became “independent” in eastern Europe and western Asia, Ukraine was among these nations. In reality, what this meant was that they were to become vassal states to Germany with political and economic dependencies. However, when Germany lost the war, the treaty was annulled.

With Germany out of the picture and the dissolution of both the Austria-Hungary and Russian Empire; Poland and Ukraine found themselves in a position to establish their independence.

During the Habsburg’s rule, due to their leniency toward national minorities, both Polish and Ukrainian nationalist movements developed, and both were interested in claiming the territory of Galicia for their own. Western Galicia at that point, with the ancient capital of Kraków had a majority Polish population, whereas eastern Galicia made up the heartland of the ancient Galicia-Volhynia and had a majority Ukrainian population.

The Polish-Ukrainian war was fought from November 1918 to July 1919 between the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian forces (consisting of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian People’s Republic). Poland won and re-occupied Galicia.

The Polish-Soviet war would be fought between February 1919 and March 1921. This coincided with a series of conflicts known as the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917-1921) which fought to form a Ukrainian republic.

By 1922, Ukraine was divided between the Bolshevik Ukrainian SSR, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The Second Polish Republic reclaimed Lviv, along with Galicia and most of Volhynia, the rest of Volhynia became part of the Ukrainian SSR.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was founded in 1929 in East Galicia (located in Poland at the time) and called for an independent and ethnically homogenous Ukraine.

From the beginning, the OUN had tensions between the young radical Galician students and the older military veteran leadership (who grew up in the more lenient Austria-Hungary Empire). The younger generation had only known oppression under the new Polish rule and underground warfare. As a result, the younger faction tended to be more impulsive, violent and ruthless.

During this period, Polish persecution of Ukrainians increased and many Ukrainians, especially the youth (who felt they had no future) lost faith in traditional legal approaches, in their elders and in western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine.

The OUN assassinated Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Among those tried and convicted in 1936 for Pieracki’s murder, were OUN’s Stefan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Both escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.

Support for the OUN increased as Polish persecution of Ukrainians continued. By the beginning of WWII, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and many times that number in sympathizers in Galicia.

In 1940 the OUN would split into the OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk, and OUN-B headed by Stefan Bandera which made up most of the membership in Galicia and consisted mainly of youth.

In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing Poland. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were reunified with Ukraine, under the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded western Ukraine, there were many western Ukrainians who welcomed the invading Nazis as their “liberators.” It should be noted here that this was not a sentiment predominantly shared by the rest of Ukraine, who fought in or alongside the Russian Red Army against the invading Nazis.

Both the OUN-M and OUN-B would spend much of the war collaborating closely with the Germans. They had no issues with the Nazi ideology for they too believed that a solution was found in returning to a “pure race.” In the case of Ukraine, this pure race consisted of a somewhat romanticised concept of “ethnic Ukrainian,” based on the golden age of Kievan Rus’.

The OUN believed that the “pure ethnic Ukrainian race” were the only true descendants of the royal bloodline of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus’. And rather than looking at Belarusians and the Russians as their brothers and sisters who shared the same ancestry, the OUN viewed them more so as “ethnic impostors” so to speak of this pure bloodline.

This can be seen today with Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups attacking Ukrainian ethnic Russians for the past 8 years in Ukraine. An issue that is almost entirely ignored in the West. See part 1 of this series.

It was believed that if the purity of the bloodline were returned, greatness would once again be bestowed on Ukraine (which had never really existed as a fully independent region).

It was for this reason that the OUN and the SS Galician division believed that exterminating tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and any other non-ethnic Ukrainian was justified. The SS Galician division (which had an overlapping membership with the OUN) were notorious for their extreme cruelty, including acts of torture and mutilation on par with Japan’s Unit 731.

To give an idea of the level of support in western Ukraine at the time for a “pure Ukrainian race,” the SS Galician division recruited 80,000 Galician volunteers in one and a half months.

The trident symbol, known also as tryzub, is an important symbol for Ukrainians, since it comes from the days of Kievan Rus’ and its earliest use was during the rule of Vladimir/Volodmyr the Great, about 1,000 years ago.

However, it is also most unfortunately why the OUN chose the tryzub for both their emblems and flag, to signify their desire to return to those glory days, which was thought could only be achieved through ethnic cleansing.

The above OUN-B flag (also used by their paramilitary unit UPA) is known as the “Blood and Soil” flag. The “Blood and Soil” nationalist slogan originated in Nazi Germany to express its ideal of a racially defined national body (blood) united with a settlement area (soil).

It is also why Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups that formed from 1991 onward (after Ukraine’s independence from the USSR), more often than not, also use the tryzub.

Image above shows flags of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine today. In the Azov flag shown above, there is a combination of the Wolfsangel and Black Sun, two symbols associated with the Wehrmacht and SS.

In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.

A research group was put together to compile and organise key elements of this massive newly declassified database, the result was the publication of “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” in 2005, and “Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War” in 2011, both published by the National Archives, and which will be used as a key reference for the rest of this paper.

Richard Breitman writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (1):

“What must be the earliest history (or mini-history) of the extermination of the Jews in Lvov [Lviv] was prepared on June 5, 1945. The ten-page document pointed out that, as soon as German troops took Lvov, Ukrainians in the city denounced Jews who had cooperated with Soviet authorities during the period of Soviet occupation, 1939-1941. Those Jews were arrested, gathered near the municipal building, and beaten by the Germans and local inhabitants. Later, local inhabitants, especially from the villages nearby, ravaged the Jewish quarter and beat Jews who stood in the way of their robbery. Starting on July 1, a pogrom was organized; German police, soldiers, and local Ukrainians all took part. Many of those arrested were tortured and killed… More than twelve thousand Jews were killed in the first weeks of the German occupation of Lvov.” [emphasis added]

Norman J.W. Goda writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (2):

“In its work to destabilize the Polish state, the OUN’s ties with Germany extended back to 1921. These ties intensified under the Nazi regime as war with Poland drew near. Galicia was allotted to the Soviets under the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the Germans welcomed anti-Polish Ukrainian activists into the German-occupied General Government. In 1940 and 1941, in preparation for what would become the eastern campaign, the Germans began to recruit Ukrainians, particularly from Bandera’s wing, as saboteurs, interpreters, and police, and trained them at a camp at Zakopane near Cracow [Kraków]. In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht also developed two Ukrainian battalions with the approval of the Banderists, one code named ‘Nightingale’ (Nachtigall) and the other code named ‘Roland’.”

What showcases the youth, and unfortunately ignorance, of the OUN-B, is that the “blood and soil” slogan originating with the Nazis, to which they chose for their own OUN-B flag, was also tied to the belief that the German people were to expand into Eastern Europe, conquering and enslaving the native Slavic and Baltic population via Generalplan Ost. Thus, these Ukrainian nationalists were never considered worthy of sharing in this vision of Nazi Germany but had been regarded as the ultimate slaves for the new German empire from the very beginning.

The OUN-B would learn this lesson the hard way. Eight days after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, on June 30th, 1941, OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State in the name of Bandera in Lviv and pledged loyalty to Hitler. In response, the OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned or killed outright by the Gestapo (approx. 1500 persons). The Germans had no intention of even allowing a semi-independent Ukraine to form. Stefan Bandera and his closest deputy Jaroslav Stetsko were initially kept under house arrest and then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (a comparatively comfortable confinement to the other concentration camps).

Mykola Lebed was able to slip through the German police net and became the de facto leader of the OUN-B leadership, also known as the Banderists.

On July 16th, 1941, the Germans absorbed Galicia into the General Government. In October 1941, the German Security Police issued a wanted poster with Lebed’s photograph.

The Germans transferred administrative and senior auxiliary police positions in western Ukraine to Melnyk’s group, OUN-M. (3) German security police formations were ordered to arrest and kill Bandera loyalists in western Ukraine for fear that they would rise against German rule, though this order was eventually revoked.

The following year Lebed would become the leader of the underground terror wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which continued in function until 1956.

Image to the left: Stefan Bandera. Image to the right: Mykola Lebed

Eastern Ukrainians later claimed that Mykola Lebed as leader of the OUN-B, took over the UPA by assassinating the original Ukrainian leaders. (4)

The OUN counted among its enemies those that had denied Ukrainian independence (including Poles and Soviets), those in the Ukraine who had failed to assimilate (Jews) and at times when it suited them the Germans. They also regarded the Jews as the primary support and “spreaders” of Bolshevism.

Breitman and Goda write (5):

“When the war turned against the Germans in early 1943, leaders of Bandera’s group believed that the Soviets and Germans would exhaust each other, leaving an independent Ukraine as in 1918. Lebed proposed in April to ‘cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918. Ukrainians serving as auxiliary policemen for the Germans now joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)… On a single day, July 11th, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing… 10,000 Poles…The Banderists and UPA also resumed cooperation with the Germans.” [emphasis added]

This was all done under the command of Mykola Lebed.

By 1943, aware that their situation was becoming increasingly insecure, the OUN tried to re-centralise their forces. However, infighting occurred between the OUN-B against the OUN-M and the UPA unit of Taras Bulba-Borovets (of the exiled Ukrainian People’s Republic) who in a letter accused the OUN-B of among other things: banditry, of wanting to establish a one-party state, and of fighting not for the people but in order to rule the people.

In their struggle for dominance in Volhynia, the Banderists (OUN-B) would kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians for any link to the networks of Bulba-Borovets or Melnyk (OUN-M). (6)

By September 1944 German Army officers in northern Ukraine told their superiors in Foreign Armies East that the UPA was a “natural ally of Germany” and “a valuable aid for the German High Command,” and Himmler himself authorized intensified contacts with UPA. (7)

Norman J.W. Goda writes (8):

“Though UPA propaganda emphasized that organization’s independence from the Germans, the UPA also ordered some young Ukrainians to volunteer for the Ukrainian SS Division “Galicia,” and the rest to fight by guerilla methods. Lebed still hoped for recognition from the Germans.” [emphasis added]

The SS Galicia Division existed from April 1943 to April 15th, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7th, 1945.

In September 1944, the Germans released Bandera and Stetsko from Sachsenhausen.

The Ukrainian Nationalist Movement Post-WWII: Bought and Paid for by the CIA and served à la Lebed

“[Lebed] is a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans” (9)

– 1947 Report by The U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC)

In July 1944 Mykola Lebed helped form the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council (UHVR), which would claim to represent the Ukrainian nation and served as an underground government in the Carpathian mountains, in opposition to the Ukrainian SSR. The dominant political party in UHVR was the Bandera group and the UPA, which from that point on served as the army of UHVR and continued to fight the Soviets until 1956.

A feud erupted in 1947 between Bandera and Stetsko on one side for an independent Ukraine under a single party led by Bandera himself vs. Lebed and Father Ivan Hrynioch (chief of the UHVR Political Section) who were against Bandera being head of state.

At an August 1948 Congress of the OUN Foreign Section, Bandera (who still controlled 80% of the UHVR) expelled the Hrynioch-Lebed group. He claimed exclusive authority on the Ukrainian national movement and continued terror tactics against anti-Banderist Ukrainian leaders in Western Europe and maneuvered for control of Ukrainian émigré organizations. (10) However, Lebed who had become close with the Americans at that point was recognized, along with Hrynioch as the official UHVR representation abroad.

With the war lost, Lebed adopted a strategy similar to that of Reinhard Gehlen – he contacted the Allies after escaping Rome in 1945 with a trove of names and contacts of anti-Soviets located in western Ukraine and in displaced persons camps in Germany. This made him attractive to the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) despite their above admission in their 1947 report.

In late 1947, Lebed who it was feared would be assassinated by the Soviets in Rome, was smuggled along with his family by the CIC to Munich, Germany in December 1947 for his safety.

Norman J.W. Goda writes (11):

“By late 1947, Lebed had thoroughly sanitized his prewar and wartime activities for American consumption. In his own rendition, he had been a victim of the Poles, the Soviets, and the Germans – he would carry the Gestapo “wanted” poster for the rest of his life to prove his anti-Nazi credentials…He also published a 126-page booklet on the UPA, which chronicled the heroic struggle of Ukrainians against both Nazis and Bolsheviks, while calling for an independent, greater Ukraine that would represent the human ideals of free speech and free faith. The UPA, according to the booklet, never collaborated with the Nazis, nor is there any mention of the slaughter of Galician Jews or Poles in the book. The CIC considered the booklet to be the ‘complete background on the subject.’ The CIC overlooked the fact that under its own watch an OUN Congress held in September 1947 had split, thanks to Lebed’s criticism of the creeping democratization of the OUN. This was overlooked by the CIA which began using Lebed extensively in 1948…In June 1949…the CIA smuggled him [Lebed] into the United States with his wife and daughter under the legal cover of the Displaced Persons Act.” [emphasis added]

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began investigating Lebed and in March 1950 reported to Washington that numerous Ukrainian informants spoke of Lebed’s leading role among the “Bandera terrorists” and that during the war the Bandersists were trained and armed by the Gestapo and responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish [sic]…In all these actions, Lebed was one of the most important leaders.” (12)

In 1951, top INS officials informed the CIA of its findings along with the comment that Lebed would likely face deportation. The CIA responded on October 3, 1951, that all of the charges were false and that the Gestapo “wanted” poster of Lebed proved that he “fought with equal zeal against the Nazis and Bolsheviks.” (13)

INS officials as a result suspended the investigation on Lebed.

In February 1952, the CIA pressed the INS to grant Lebed re-entry papers so that he could leave and re-enter the United States at will. Argyle Mackey, Commissioner of the INS, refused to grant this.

On May 5, 1952, Allen Dulles, then Assistant Director of the CIA wrote a letter to Mackey stating (14):

“In connection with future Agency operations of the first importance, it is urgently necessary that subject [Lebed] be able to travel in Western Europe. Before [he] undertakes such travel, however, this Agency must…assure his re-entry into the United States without investigation or incident which would attract undue attentions to his activities.”

Above image is the original document of the Dulles letter to Mackey on behalf of Mykola Lebed.

What was in West Germany? General Reinhard Gehlen, former chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence, who had been conveniently allowed to re-enter West Germany to establish his Gehlen Organisation which would later form the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany) in 1956 .

Dulles also wanted Lebed’s legal status changed to that of “permanent resident,” under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949. The INS never investigated further after Dulles’ letter and Lebed became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 1957.

Bandera would also be stationed in West Germany with his family after the war, where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations as well as with British Intelligence. (15) At this point Bandera had become too much of a liability and there were multiple attempts, by both the Americans and British starting in 1953, to get Bandera to step down and for Lebed to represent “the entire Ukrainian liberation movement in the homeland.” Bandera refused and went rogue.

It is said that Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by a KGB agent in Munich, however, one cannot help but note that it was excellent timing and extremely beneficial for the Americans that Bandera was taken out when he was, considering what they had planned for Ukraine’s future…

Among the declassified records are that of Hoover’s FBI, who had a small trove of captured German General Staff documents from 1943 and 1944, which revealed German appreciation of the UPA’s work while mentioning Lebed by name. (16) It appears this was never shared with any agency or institution, other than the CIA, despite requests from the INS during their investigation of Lebed.

Interestingly, Goda writes (17):

“The full extent of his [Lebed’s] activities as ‘Foreign Minister’ [of the UHVR] may never become known, but FBI surveillance of him gives some idea. Partly, Lebed lectured at prestigious universities such as Yale on such topics as biological warfare used by the Soviet government in the Ukraine.” [emphasis added]

The following is an indication as to what Dulles may have been referring to as the urgent need for Lebed’s re-entry into Western Europe.

Breitman and Goda write (18):

“By 1947 some 250,000 Ukrainians were living…in Germany, Austria, and Italy, many of them OUN activists or sympathizers. After 1947 UPA fighters began crossing into the U.S. zone, having reached the border on foot through Czechoslovakia.”

However, Lebed was not only urgently needed in Europe, but also within the United States. Once in the United States, Lebed was selected as the CIA’s chief contact/advisor for AERODYNAMIC.

Breitman and Goda write (19):

“AERODYNAMIC’s first phase involved infiltration into Ukraine and then exfiltration of CIA-trained Ukrainian agents. By January 1950 the CIA’s arm for the collection of secret intelligence (Office of Special Operations, OSO) and its arm for covert operations (Office of Policy Coordination, OPC) participated [author’s note: the Allen Dulles rogue faction of the CIA]…Washington was especially pleased with the high level of UPA training in the Ukraine and its potential for further guerilla actions, and with ‘the extraordinary news that…active resistance to the Soviet regime was spreading steadily eastward, out of the former Polish, Greek Catholic provinces… [However] By 1954 Lebed’s group lost all contact with UHVR. By that time the Soviets subdued both the UHVR and UPA, and the CIA ended the aggressive phase of AERODYNAMIC.

Beginning in 1953 AERODYNAMIC began to operate through a Ukrainian study group under Lebed’s leadership in New York under CIA auspices, which collected Ukrainian literature and history and produced Ukrainian nationalist newspapers, bulletins, radio programming, and books for distribution in the Ukraine. In 1956 this group was formally incorporated as the non-profit Prolog Research and Publishing Association. It allowed the CIA to funnel funds as ostensible private donations without taxable footprints. To avoid nosey New York State authorities, the CIA turned Prolog into a for-profit enterprise called Prolog Research Corporation, which ostensibly received private contracts. Under Hrinioch [Hrynioch], Prolog maintained a Munich office named the Ukrainische Geseelschaft fur Auslandsstudein, EV. Most publications were created here.

Prolog recruited and paid Ukrainian émigré writers who were generally unaware that they worked in a CIA-controlled operation. Only the six top members of the ZP/UHVR were witting agents. Beginning in 1955, leaflets were dropped over Ukraine by air[,] and radio broadcasts titled Nova Ukraina were aired in Athens for Ukrainian consumption. These activities gave way to systematic mailing campaigns to Ukraine through Ukrainian contacts in Poland and émigré contacts in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain, Sweden, and elsewhere. The newspaper Suchasna Ukrainia (Ukraine Today), information bulletins, a Ukrainian language journal for intellectuals called Suchasnist (The Present), and other publications were sent to libraries, cultural institutions, administrative offices and private individuals in Ukraine. These activities encouraged Ukrainian nationalism…” [emphasis added]

The CIA bought and paid for a brand of Ukrainian Nationalism à la Lebed. One of the most horrifying butchers of OUN/UPA was given reign to shape the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people around their nationalist identity, an identity as defined by the OUN. It is also shaped historical and cultural interpretation such as to further romanticise the concept of the great Ukrainian race of Volodomyr the Great, encouraging a further sense of superiority and further divide between themselves and Belarussians and Russians.

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and…there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (20)

Breitman and Goda continue:

“…Prolog [also] influenced [the next] Ukrainian generation…Prolog had become in the words of one senior CIA official, the sole ‘vehicle for CIA’s operations directed at the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and [its] forty million Ukrainian citizens.’

Lebed overtly distanced himself and the Ukrainian nationalist movement from the overt anti-Semitism of his Banderist days…More to protect the name of Ukrainian nationalism, he publicly condemned the ‘provocative libel’ and ‘slanderous statements’ against Jews, adding in a particularly forgetful note that, ‘the Ukrainian people…are opposed to all and any preaching of hatred for other people.’…Former Banderists…now attacked the Soviets for anti-Semitism rather than with it.

Lebed retired in 1975 but remained an adviser and consultant to Prolog and the ZP/UHVR…In the 1980s AERODYNAMIC’s name was changed to QRDYNAMIC and in the 1980s PDDYNAMIC and then QRPLUMB. In 1977 President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski helped to expand the program owing to what he called its ‘impressive dividends’ and the ‘impact on specific audiences in the target area.’ In the 1980s Prolog expanded its operation to reach other Soviet nationalities, and in a supreme irony, these included dissident Soviet Jews. With the USSR teetering on the brink of collapse in 1990, QRPLUMB was terminated with a final payout of $1.75 million. Prolog would continue its activities, but it was on its own financially.

In June 1985 the General Accounting Office mentioned Lebed’s name in a public report on Nazis and collaborators who settled in the United States with help from U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Department of Justice began investigating Lebed that year. The CIA worried that public scrutiny of Lebed would compromise QRPLUMB and that failure to protect Lebed would trigger outrage in the Ukrainian émigré community. It thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed.” [emphasis added]

Mykola Lebed died in 1998 under the protection of the CIA in New Jersey at the age of 89. His papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

And there you have it, the true story of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement in its form today, bought and paid for by the CIA. Thus, it is no coincidence that the OUN ideology is inextricable from the western Ukrainian nationalist identity today, nor that several neo-Nazi groups have formed since 1991 (since Ukraine’s independence from the USSR) who all view the OUN and Stepan Bandera as the Father of their movement.

[Shortly to follow, Part 3 will discuss NATO and the Gehlen Organization and how this ties into the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and neo-Nazism in Ukraine today.]

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com 

(1) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 65
(2) Ibid. pg. 249
(3) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 74
(4) Ibid. pg. 74
(5) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 75-76
(6) Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 164
(7) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 250
(8) Ibid pg. 250
(9) Ibid pg. 251
(10) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 78
(11) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 251
(12) Ibid. pg. 252
(13) Ibid. pg. 252
(14) Ibid. pg. 253
(15) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 81
(16) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 254
(17) Ibid. pg 254
(18) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 76
(19) Ibid. pg 87
(20) Ibid. pg. 89

This year, more than 120,000 people took part in celebrations throughout Poland to mark Independence Day. The most well-attended was a march in Warsaw (75,000 people), during which a Ukrainian flag was publicly desecrated: demonstrators ripped it apart and stamped on it before setting it alight, while shouting obscenities aimed at the OUN-UPA and ‘icons’ of Bandera’s Ukrainian nationalists. It should be recalled that it was militants from the OUN and UPA, both Ukrainian nationalist organisations that collaborated with Hitler during the Second World War, who are responsible for the mass murder of Poles in Volhynia in 1943.

Other incidents that took place on 11 November were less widely reported in the media: a Facebook flag was set alight at the National Stadium to cries of “Poland against corporations!” This was the response of Polish patriots to Facebook’s attempts to block the pages of right-wing activists known for their anti-Bandera views on the eve of the march.

In Wrocław, demonstrators set light to a UPA flag to shouts of “Poland against Banderites!”, “Down with the Brussels’ occupation!” and “Give us a way out of the EU!”

Jacek Międlar, a former Catholic priest who is now a social activist, declared from the podium that there was a threat lurking on Poland’s eastern border far greater than Islamic fundamentalists, and that threat was Ukrainian Bandera worshippers. 

Anti-Banderite sentiment is gripping increasingly larger segments of the Polish population. For some time now, there has been a popular Facebook page called “Ukrainians are not my brothers” with a tag line aimed at Polish politicians: “Do you want to fight for Ukraine? Then fight without us and not with our money.” 

Polish leaders need to take these feelings into account lest they squander the public trust they currently have. That is why members of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, have supported a bill introduced into the Sejm by the opposition party Kukiz’15 that proposes a sentence of up to three years’ imprisonment for anyone denying the criminal nature of the OUN-UPA.

“There are a million Ukrainians in Poland, some say there are two million. The majority of these are infected with the bacillus of Ukrainian nationalism and Banderism. We soon risk facing the mass propaganda of Banderism and the relativisation of history, after which we will find out that we murdered the Poles in Volhynia ourselves,” said Tomasz Rzymkowski, a Kukiz’15 party deputy, commenting on the bill. 

Whether Paweł Kukiz’s bill is approved or not depends on the future behaviour of the Law and Justice Party. For the time being, Jarosław Kaczyński’s party is taking a tactical break, while keeping a close eye on the public mood. 

But the mood of the people, agitated by the release of the film Volhynia directed by Wojciech Smarzowski, is once again on the boil. There is also a new reason. The authorities of Ukraine’s Ternopol region have refused to give a local academic theatre its 444,000 hryvnia academic theatre subsidy as punishment for the fact that four of its actors were in Smarzowski’s film. The artistic director of the Maria Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv, Fyodor Strigun, supported the actors: “If someone invited me to film in Moscow tomorrow, then I would go! Just to spite everyone!” 

In Poland, meanwhile, the economic sanctions against the theatre’s actors have been regarded as an offensive against historical truth and an anti-Polish démarche. 

Recently, Kiev has been taking steps in its relations with Warsaw that cannot but elicit a response. For example, monuments to the OUN-UPA are being illegally erected in areas of Poland with a dense Ukrainian population; Andrei Tarasenko, People’s Deputy and Pravy Sektor leader Dmytro Yarosh’s right-hand man, is calling for 18 Polish border districts (powiat) to be given back to Ukraine and for the consul general of Poland in Lviv, Wiesław Mazur, to be reprimanded for calling Bandera a thug; not to mention the Verkhovna Rada’s condemnation of the Polish Sejm’s resolution to recognise the Volhynia massacre as genocide. 

Poland is aware of the danger posed by the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. It has been argued that recent initiatives by the Polish Ministry of Defence to create territorial defence units numbering some 100,000 men to help the army and police protect vulnerable areas on Poland’s eastern border were established to prevent acts of provocation by Ukraine. At the very least, the territorial defence units will be more than capable of catching illegal immigrants crossing the Ukrainian-Polish border. 

It is no accident that Warsaw vigorously began putting these units together after Pravy Sektor militants exchanged fire with the Ukrainian police in July 2015 in the Ukrainian city of Mukachevo, just a few dozen kilometres from the Polish border. At that time, the Polish authorities were worried that the fleeing Pravy Sektor militants would head towards the Polish village of Ustrzyki Górne and slip across the poorly protected Ukrainian-Polish border.

With its current regime, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a real headache for Poland.

The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński came to power mainly on promises to raise the topic of the massacre of the Polish population of Volhynia during the WWII by the butchers from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Kiev. «The crimes committed against our compatriots by the UPA should be termed genocide. I will not permit any excuses for what happened during the most terrible era in our history», exhorted Jarosław Kaczyński during the heat of the election campaign.

However, his actions never went beyond promises. Like its predecessors in the Civic Platform party, the PiS refuses to declare July 11 as Kresy Martyrdom Remembrance Day. (Kresy is the name for the region of western Ukraine, western Belarus, and Lithuania that was once part of the Second Polish Republic. On July 11, 1943, at the height of a wave of violence committed by the UPA, 100 Polish villages and farmsteads were attacked by Stepan Bandera’s gangs.)

Instead of commemorating July 11, Jarosław Kaczyński proposes to move Martyrdom Day to Sept. 17 (Sept. 17, 1939 was the day the Red Army launched its Polish campaign, returning of western Ukraine and western Belarus, respectively, to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics).

The state-run Polish Press Agency (Polska Agencja Pracowa – PAP) has joined in these efforts to distort the historical record. In order to subdue anti-Banderite tensions among the Polish public, one story published by the press agency called the UPA militants who were killed in clashes with the Polish army near the village of Bircza in 1946 as «Ukrainian war heroes» (bohaterów wojennych).

Sejm deputy from Przemyśl Wojciech Bakun sent the PAP a formal request to clarify what kind of war took place near Bircza in 1946 that had produced those «Ukrainian war heroes». The PAP formally responded that it was not possible to retract or edit the text of the report.

And then an information bomb exploded.

The chairman of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, Andriy Parubiy, tweeted about a meeting he had had with the chairman of the Polish Sejm Marek Kuchciński. The leader of Poland’s parliament promised that the Sejm would not debate the bill to commemorate the victims of the Volyn massacre prior to the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9.

The fallout was all the more deafening because one of the participants in the negotiations was Yuriy Shukhevych – the son of the chief culprit in the massacre of the Poles in Volhynia, the UPA commander Roman Shukhevych. Although the Polish mainstream media have kept silent about Kuchciński’s negotiations with Parubiy and Shukhevych Jr., the Kukiz’15 and Right Wing of the Republic party leaders demanded that Banderite ideology be banned in Poland and urged Kuchciński to resign.

Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a Polish Roman and Armenian Catholic priest and author of Subdued Genocide in Kresy 2008 documentary book, has called upon the public to protest the PiS policies that maliciously distort history. «Contrary to previous assurances, the leaders of the PiS have again deferred a vote to pay tribute to the memory of the citizens of the Second Republic who were killed during the Banderite genocide in the Eastern Kresy region… This postponement of the voting procedure is yet another blow to the families of the victims of the UPA and the SS Galicia Division… I urge everyone who is affiliated with the Kresy to protest at the Sejm building on July 7 at 1:00 pm».

The very next day the PiS tried to get a jump on events. «I am opposed to reopening wounds… If I were Isakowicz-Zaleski I would have lowered the bar. If we want to have a talk with someone we shouldn’t set preconditions from the start», commented Stanisław Karczewski, the chairman of the Polish Senate, about the priest’s anti-Banderite initiative. But it was too late. A number of Polish parliamentarians had already posted videos supporting the idea of staging a protest at the door of the Sejm.

The very fact that negotiations were held between representatives of the Polish government and Ukrainian nationalists shows the desire of the ruling Law and Justice party to divert the public’s attention away from the subject of the Volhynia massacre as an act of genocide and to take the heat off Ukrainian nationalism as an ideology. This is a direct betrayal by the PiS of its voters.

If Sept. 17 is declared as a remembrance day instead of July 11, then eventually Poles will begin to approve of the crimes committed by the Ukrainian cutthroats, just like today many Japanese believe that Washington was correct in its decision to have the US Air Force drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Volhynia massacre was an «atomic bomb» for Poland. By 1950, over 140,000 Japanese had died as a result of the 1945 US nuclear bombardment and its aftermath. The UPA militants slaughtered approximately the same number of Poles.

As the incumbent Polish leaders see Ukrainian nationalism as its strategic ally, the first victim of this policy will be the Polish people and its national conscience.

RELATED VIDEO:

The full implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, along with the opening of the Free Trade Area between the two parties on Jan. 1, 2016, was expected by Kiev to be an important historic milestone, upon which all of Ukraine’s problems would miraculously melt away. But what actually happened?

The beginning of the year brought dismal news to Kiev from Holland. An extensive survey showed that a large majority of the Dutch (78%) intend to vote against the ratification of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement during the upcoming April 9 referendum in Holland. No one was expecting this number to be so disastrously high. The Hague and Kiev have until now not been inclined to attach much importance to the impending vote, reminding everyone that it is non-binding, since the Dutch parliament already completed the procedure to ratify the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement back on July 7, 2015. However, the survey results have shaken their confidence.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has stated that although it is a non-binding referendum, the law requires the government to define its position and present that to parliament. But Rutte promised that his government would work to ensure a positive outcome, as that agreement is in the Netherlands’ best interests. And he tried to be clear that this document in no way represents Ukraine’s first step toward joining the EU: «We have these association agreements with countries in middle America, in the Middle East, and they are not applying for membership. Maybe for the Eurovision song contest, but not for the European Union».

In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Guillaume Van der Loo, a researcher with the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, noted that ignoring the results of the referendum will leave Mark Rutte’s cabinet vulnerable to his political opponents, who will be able to score points by claiming that Rutte does not hear the voice of his constituents. The fact that the referendum will take place while the Dutch hold the EU’s rotating presidency is another complicating factor. However, even assuming that the country totally refuses to ratify the agreement with Kiev, the EU will still be able to continue to use it as a «provisional application» that «could last forever». For Brussels that would even be convenient, as it would make it possible to keep Ukraine in limbo and offer an additional lever for exerting pressure on that country. But that would be extremely bad for Ukraine itself, since the Ukrainian economy would be unable to break free of many discriminatory restrictions during the transition period.

Sizing up the Dutch mood, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker noted that the referendum in the Netherlands «could open the doors to a continental crisis» and that Russia «stood to benefit most». In essence, these arguments suggest that the EU’s leaders feel that Ukraine’s interests are less important than their top priority – the benefits to the European Union, plus their motive of confronting Russia. If there are grounds for a pan-European crisis, Ukraine has little to do with it. That crisis would more likely be due to the differing viewpoints of European leaders vs. public opinion in Europe.

However, Kiev quickly seized upon Juncker’s statements about a possible «continental crisis» over Ukraine, using them for propaganda purposes. Journalist Yuri Romanenko even proposed the creation of a «SaveEU» foundation, tasked to «collect resources and wage an all-out campaign in the Dutch media, involving journalists, experts, and politicians, to discuss Ukrainian issues and to assemble a pool of bloggers who are fluent in the language and could work within Dutch social networks». He thinks that «if the Netherlands derail the association agreement, that would have truly serious consequences for both Ukraine and Europe».

However, the real question is: what kind of content will Kiev bring to the work of «saving Europe»? No one has yet come up with anything more rational than talking about the «hand of Moscow». For example, the Ukrainian media has reported that two members of the Dutch parliament have asked their Foreign Ministry to ascertain whether there are signs of Russian influence on the upcoming referendum on the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine. And they referred to an article in the British newspaper The Telegraph, which itself cited anonymous sources to claim that James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has been instructed to conduct such a review. In other words, there are no «signs of influence, the «issue» is merely being studied. The only argument in favor of a «Russian fingerprint» is the fact that these arguments by the authors of the Dutch referendum are «too similar» to what Moscow is saying about the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. They act as if the flaws in that agreement are not apparent to any rational person, and the 430,000 Dutch citizens who signed the petition calling for the referendum (only 300,000 signatures were needed) have an insufficient grasp of what is happening!

There was a mistaken assumption that public opinion in the Netherlands would be sympathetic to Ukraine because of the findings of the work of the commission on the Malaysia Airlines flight that was shot down over Ukraine, primarily carrying Dutch passengers. Even accepting the scenario that militia members were to blame, the Dutch still wonder why Kiev did not close its combat-operations areas to civil aviation. For this reason, the Dutch public does not absolve the Ukrainian government of responsibility for what happened. Moreover, the Dutch Safety Board, which must publish its final report in February 2016 on the causes of the tragedy of flight MH17, rejected a proposal to include a note that Kiev had lobbied for, stating that the area near the town of Snezhnoe – the site from which the missile was presumably launched – was controlled by militia groups at the time of the incident.

The Ukrainian media seems to have somehow forgotten about the story of Boris Gumenyuk, the former deputy commander of an OUN volunteer battalion, who demanded 50 million euros when he offered to sell back to the Dutch some of their own paintings that had been stolen nearly 11 years ago from the Westfries Museum. At the time that crook even made reference to his connections with the leader of the Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok and the former head of the SBU, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, and he vaguely hinted that the collection had been seized from «someone» from within Viktor Yanukovych’s circle. The incident was brought to Petro Poroshenko’s attention, where it was «buried». However, the Netherlands have not forgotten about this and their resentment toward the Ukrainian hustlers is still high.

One senses that the leaders in Kiev themselves have little faith in the future of European integration, placing a higher priority on their relations with the United States. For example, Kiev effectively dropped the ball during the meeting of the EU-Ukraine Association Council in Brussels on Dec. 7, the last before the opening of the Free Trade Area. Poroshenko, who had been expected to attend the meeting, never showed up. Arseniy Yatsenyuk flew in accompanied only by his minister of justice, rushed through all the meetings, signed the proposed documents «without even looking at them», and left the same day for Kiev, although the program had been scheduled to include two days of weighty negotiations. The Ukrainian delegation did not even raise the issue of reviewing the very limited duty-free quotas that have been imposed on their country that affect some key exports. But the explanation is simple. US Vice President Joe Biden was in Kiev that day, and every Ukrainian leader was vying for an audience with him.

Then the Ukrainian presidential administration unexpectedly backtracked on their own previous agreement to recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), instead proposing to delay this recognition for three years. Ratification of the ICC’s Rome Statute is one of the requirements of the EU Association Agreement. But Kiev has suddenly claimed that that statute poses certain risks for Ukraine, specifically, «from the point of view of Ukrainian soldiers who are forced to take part in the military conflict in the Donbass». They figured out that any investigation could lead to unwelcome findings for Ukrainian officials. The president of the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee, Mykola Gnatovskyy, claims that this is «legal nonsense», because Ukraine has already recognized the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over all events occurring during the armed conflict on its territory, and submitted this declaration to the ICC last August. On Feb. 4, 2015 the Verkhovna Rada adopted the declaration On the Recognition of the Jurisdiction of the ICC. On Sept. 8, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin tweeted: «A historic moment. On behalf of the president, today I am presenting to the International Criminal Court a declaration recognizing the jurisdiction of the ICC». And now he has to pretend that nothing of the sort actually happened.

Incidentally, the International Criminal Court is located in The Hague, and this issue about recognizing its jurisdiction does not add to Ukraine’s credibility in the eyes of the Dutch. This is hardly an example of «saving Europe»!

(to be continued)

Throughout its entire history, the Union of Ukrainians in Poland (founded in the 1950s and originally called the Ukrainian Sociocultural Association) has not once condemned the criminal acts of the OUN-UPA and Ukrainian SS divisions. UUP representatives have always supported the cult of OUN-UPA among Polish Ukrainians, denying the guilt of Ukrainian nationalists for the 1943 massacre of Poles in Volhynia. Moreover, the official publication of the UUP, Nashe Slovo, is financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In the 1990s, a UUP activist, a certain Vasil Vasiliv, called for help in returning ‘Ukrainian-ness’ to south-eastern areas of Poland in an article entitled «Lemkivshchyna at the Crossroads». The UUP is still working at this even now. 

The Polish authorities, meanwhile, are turning a blind eye in the hope of deriving foreign policy dividends from the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. For the gamble to definitely succeed, UUP members are being promoted to senior positions. Thus the parliamentary support group for Ukraine includes Polish Sejm deputy Miron Sycz from the Civic Platform Party (the party to which Bronislaw Komorowski also belongs), who is the son of a UPA militant sentenced to death by a Polish court in 1947. 

In 2011, the UUP filed a complaint with the ECHR requesting that Poland be punished for the deportation of the Ukrainian population in 1947 (Operation Vistula). The court rejected the complaint but in the same year, the UUP published a human rights bulletin accusing the Polish media of distorting the image of OUN-UPA «fighters». 

Since then, the amount of information being pushed onto Polish society by the UUP has grown continuously. Monuments in honour of the OUN-UPA have begun to appear in provinces in eastern Poland, while attacks on dissenting Polish authors like Maria Pyz-Pakosz, who has referred to nationalist Ukraine as «a diseased state», or Catholic priest Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, in a debate with whom the UUP leader decorated by Komorowski, Piotr Tym, defended Bandera and argued that the Polish genocide in Volhynia never took place, have become more frequent.

Little by little, the UUP has reinvented itself from a group of marginals into a full-fledged participant in the social and political processes in Poland.

In the border city of Przemyśl (the UUP has dreams of transforming this city into the capital of Polish Ukrainism), the local police are involving UUP members as experts on the national question (!). One of these, Bogdan Guk, delivered a not-guilty verdict regarding the public display of the UPA flag by Ukrainian students against whom criminal proceedings had been initiated.  

The Union of Ukrainians in Poland operates in cahoots with Oleh Tyahnybok’s Svoboda party. Vasily Pavliuk, a high-ranking functionary in the party (currently the Consul General of Ukraine in Lublin where the headquarters of the joint Lithuanian–Polish–Ukrainian Brigade ‘LitPolUkrBrig’ is located) supported Guk’s ‘expert’ decision and even visited the Przemyśl police station in person.

Relying on support from the leaders of districts in western Ukrainian, the UUP and Svoboda are making noticeable attempts to create a cross-border Przemyśl-Lviv «Ukrainian axis». The activities of the Ukrainian Consul General in Lublin, Pavliuk, along with his nationalist colleague Alexander Bachik (Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Przemyśl) are aimed at strengthening the positions of Ukrainian nationalists in Poland’s Transcarpathian provinces. 

Following events in Mukachevo in July 2015, when militants from the nationalist organisation Pravy Sektor exchanged fire with Ukrainian police then fled to the Polish border, Poles are once again recognising the dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. Hungary and Slovakia subsequently declared they would be reinforcing their borders with Ukraine with additional military detachments. 

The Polish government took no action for a long time, although the area where the shooting took place is just 60 km from the nearest Polish village of Ustrzyki Górne It later sent reinforcements to the border, but did so somewhat quietly, apparently so as not to upset Kiev. 

Seeing such passivity from Warsaw, Polish patriots have organised voluntary patrols to protect vulnerable corridors on the Polish-Ukrainian border. The UUP reacted instantly. The several Polish military units based in Przemyśl and the build-up of forces along this section of the border has evidently not escaped the notice of UUP activists. A member of the union’s main council, Miroslav Cech, has called what took place in Mukachevo an act of provocation aimed at igniting a Polish-Ukrainian conflict and called on Warsaw to adopt a hard-line response to… the propagandist activities of so-called Donbass «separatists» honouring the memory of the victims of the Volhynia massacre. 

At the present time, the Union of Ukrainians in Poland has virtually monopolised the role of mediator between the Ukrainian diaspora, Ukraine and Poland, while Warsaw is repeating mistakes of the past by placing a double-edged bet on Ukrainian nationalism. Back then, many Poles paid for it with their lives. What will happen this time, only time will tell.

The report, titled «The Ukrainian Nationalist Movement: An Interim Study», was prepared by William Holzmann and Zolt Aradi. Little is known about the two authors except for the fact that Zolt Aradi also spelled his name «Zsolt» and was born in Hungary and was a Hungarian historian. The authors cited the Ukrainian nationalist movement as a potentially advantageous ally of U.S. anti-Soviet activities: «Whether these groups operate in the homeland or in exile in Europe and the Western hemisphere; whether they are of socialist, democratic, monarchist or fascist persuasion; whether they agree on methods, policies and tactics, or whether they are engaged in internecine, factional struggles, they all stand for an independent Ukrainian state… They are unified only through their concept of Ukrainian independence and in the face of their common enemies».

When one fast forwards to today, the interest of the United States in supporting Ukrainian nationalists, whether they are, like Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, beholden to the World Bank and European bankers; like Right Sector chief Dmytro Yarosh and Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok, linked to the cause of fascism; or like Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, fervently committed to Zionism, has not changed one iota from 1946. Today, like in 1946, the United States sees Ukrainian nationalists as natural allies to confront Russia. 

However, even in 1946, the United States recognized the fact that there were «two Ukraines». Western Ukraine, which had been Polish, was referred to as «Malopolska», or «Little Poland», in the OSS/Army G2 intelligence report while it was stressed that «Eastern Ukraine» once belonged to Czarist Russia. The report also refers to Ukrainians as «Little Russians» and claims they are «closely related» to the «Great Russians». 

The report also states that «much of the formative history of Russia took place in the Eastern Ukraine. Kiev, its capital, is the oldest city of Russia, and laden with tradition».

The report further states: «Culturally, the Eastern Ukraine, by virtue of its close ties with Czarist and Soviet Russia, belongs to the Russian orbit, while the Western Ukraine was exposed to Polish and Austro-Hungarian influences. In the Eastern Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church is predominant, in the Western Ukraine the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church. National consciousness in naturally strongest in the Western Ukraine».

Even the OSS and U.S. Army intelligence personnel saw that the West’s attempts to counteract the Soviet Union at the end of World War II could only be successful in the Western Ukraine, where the OUN forces under Bandera and his German Nazi allies had been most successful. 

The OSS authors of the report recognized that Ukrainian nationalists were split into two camps: «At the outbreak of World War I, the Ukraine and Ukrainians were divided into two parts. The Eastern Ukraine belonged to Russia, and the Western Ukraine [Eastern Galicia] belonged to the Austrian empire which was at war with Russia. Accordingly, the nationalist movements in the Eastern and the Western Ukraine pursued different courses», This is an important admission which has relevancy in today’s discourse on the Western-initiated civil war in Ukraine. The Eastern Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are, according to Western and George Soros-financed propaganda operations, products of the Russian government. However, as stated in the OSS report, eastern Ukrainians have maintained, for at least a hundred years, their own brand of organic Ukrainian nationalism quite distinct from that of western Ukrainians.

The OSS report provided some interesting descriptions of the true nature of Ukrainian nationalism but also proceeded to describe the groups and individuals that American intelligence could rely upon to engage in activities intended to undermine the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Kiev and the USSR in general. The report describes how Nazi Germany provided early support for the OUN and its clandestine military arm, the Ukrainian Military Organization, or UWO. These radical right-wing Ukrainian nationalists were as much anti-Polish and they were anti-Soviet. The OUN established their headquarters in Berlin and two publications – «Surma» and «Rosbudova Natzi» [Birth of a Nation] — were financially supported by Hitler’s government and Benito Mussolini in Rome. When a delegation of OUN leaders visited Rome, Mussolini presented them with a yellow and blue flag representing the national colors of Ukraine.

The chief of the OUN military branch in Poland was Stepan Bandera, whose «warrior units» in «Danzig, Drohobycz, Lwow, Stanislaw, Brzezeny», and other Polish cities would later provide key support to the Nazi SS units responsible for countless atrocities against Poles, Jews, Roma, and other ethnic and religious groups. In addition to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the OUN’s terrorist activities received support from other countries, including the then-independent Baltic republics. Between 1933 and 1934, OUN terrorists assassinated Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki; Polish Sejm Deputy H. Holowko; and Alexei Mailov, the Soviet consul in Lvov. Bandera was arrested for the Pieracki murder but others who helped carry them out escaped to Czechoslovakia and were ultimately welcomed in Buenos Aires by the Nazi German Gestapo chief who ran all OUN activities in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Pieracki’s murderer, Gregory Maciejko, eventually traveled from Argentina to the United States with a Lithuanian passport. Maciejko, along with Christian Zinsser, the Gestapo chief in Buenos Aires, whose cover was German embassy press attaché, was involved in a plot to assassinate President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Zinsser promised Maciejko one million Reichmarks if he murdered President Roosevelt. The mere fact that individuals like U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt are now in league with the political and ideological descendants of Ukrainian nationalists who planned to assassinate President Roosevelt in the 1930s should disgust every true and loyal American citizen.

After the fall of fascism in Europe, the OSS report makes it clear that contrivances established by the Nazis, for example, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, or «ABN», were natural allies for anti-Soviet OSS and later, CIA, activities in the East. In April 1946, the Nazi-era ABN was re-established under the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council in Ukraine (UHWR) headed by General Charlton Popov, the wartime head of an anti-Soviet Cossack group in Prague supported by the Gestapo. Under Popov, he ABN was transformed into a group of anti-Soviet nationalist organizations and the OSS and CIA replaced the Gestapo as their chief benefactors. Joining Popov in the ABN’s leadership was Armenian General Shanayan Dro, a British MI-6 intelligence agent who served as an official of the Astro-Romana Oil Company, and anti-Soviet groups from Poland, Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, and France. Because of its extensive network in Latin America, the OUN was able to assist in the exfiltration from Yugoslavia of Croatian Nazi Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic to Argentina at the end of the war. These clandestine units served as a major basis for the later creation by the CIA of the Gladio «stay behind» network of Western and Eastern European fascist terrorists.

Ukrainian Nazi collaborators took up residence in such far-flung places as Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Munich, Jersey City, Frankfurt, Paris, Detroit, New York, Vienna, Rome, Bern, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo. When the Euromaidan uprising succeeded in overthrowing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in a coup, the family and ideological heirs of the post-war OSS- and CIA-supported Ukrainian Nazi collaborators celebrated as much among the Ukrainian nationalist groups of the U.S., Canada, and Latin America as they did in the neo-Nazi meeting halls of Right Sector and Svoboda in Kiev, Lvov, and other Ukrainian towns and cities.

Foto: George H. W. Bush  shaking hands with Yaroslav Stetsko. Yaroslav Stetsko was the leader of the terrorist "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists" from 1968 to 1986. The US ruling class embraced fascists of all stripes almost as soon as the WW 2 guns fell silent, since Washington was already pivoting to fight “the Communist menace.” The Cold War was soon initiated by the Washington-London axis. 

Poles perceive the OUN as a terrorist organization involved in mass murder of civilians during WWII acting hand in hand with Ukrainian policemen and German fascists. OUN militants perpetrated assassinations of Polish politicians in the period between the two wars. The organization took part in the Volyn massacre in 1945 and attacks against Polish servicemen in late 1940s – early 1950s. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a Polish Catholic priest, author and activist, is known for his uncompromised position on the policy of making advances to Ukrainian nationalists. According tohim, the Polish Minister of Defense desecrated the memory of those who lost lives in the fight against Ukrainian nationalists and terrorists. He called on the Minister to resign on moral grounds. 

The plans to train Ukrainian nationalists have become public domain. The military rushed to refute the fact. They said the information about OUN fighters was false, as well as the news about training the fighters of Ukrainian battalions manned by nationalists, such as Aidar, Azov, Kharkiv, Prikarpatye and others. But the Polish Ministry of Defense confirmed the fact that the Ukrainian regular military are included into the training program.

The problem still exists. The OUN fighters became part of the 81th air-assault brigade formed on the basis of the 95 th separate air mobile and 25 th air borne brigades. The unit has ill fame. One of its soldiers got drunk. He knocked down a woman with an 8-year old child while riding a trailer near Konstantinovka (the Donetsk region). The child died. 

Polish media ask if there were any guarantees the 81th brigade with OUN soldiers in its ranks will not be included into the training program. Is there any way the Defense Minister could check that there were no OUN ideology followers among the Ukrainian military coming for training? There is nothing like a special statement on the part of the Ministry of Defense saying OUN fighters (the followers of Bandera and Shukhevych) are not eligible for the program. It should be noted that Tomasz Siemoniak is Ukrainian by origin; his father was deported during the Vistula Operation in 1947.The Polish authorities wanted to weaken the Banderite underground, so they relocated the local population from the border areas to the western parts of the country.

Janusz Adam Onyszkiewicz, former Minister of Defense, is a nephew of the militant known as Orest who was handed down a death sentence by Polish court in 1950. 

Warsaw is an awkward position. On the one hand, it says the memory of Poles who lost their lives as a result of atrocities committed by the OUN-UPA (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Insurgent Army) should be honored. On the other hand, driven by hostility towards Russia the government fosters the re-emergence of Ukrainian political radicalism. Condemning the crimes committed by OUN-UPA, Polish politicians never mention the United States, Canada or Germany – the major NATO allies and the countries that contributed into the rebirth of Ukrainian nationalism. 

The authorities of the country should realize that they are responsible before the world for allowing this ideology, which is hostile to humanity, to revive and spread around. Polish politicians strictly comply with the instructions of “senior partners” even to the detriment of their own people. 

 “We supply a range of non-lethal military equipment,” Harper said…  While disappointed about this, Poroshenko praised Canada for supporting Ukraine since “the first hours” of his presidency and said the military aid it had provided to his country, such as medical kits and mobile hospitals, “addressed an acute problem. (National Post, June 6, 2015, emphasis added)

Harper also announced that Canada would be sending 10 police officers to Ukraine to help reform the country’s security sector in a partnership with the United States.

Harper announced the $5 million project during a visit in which he watched training exercises by police cadets. … (CP News 24, June 6, 2015, emphasis added)

This story contradicts earlier reports and government statements.

The gist of Harper’s flash visit to Kiev prior to the G7 Summit was to reaffirm Canada’s  commitment to the dispatch of “military instructors” in support of Ukraine’s National Guard, which is controlled by the two Neo-Nazi parties, Svoboda and Right Sector.

Below is the Nazi emblem of the National Guard  [Національна гвардія України] which is defined as Reserves of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They operate under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The National Guard is part of the so-called “Internal Troops of Ukraine.” The emblem is a stylized swastika (see below).

The main battalion of the National Guard under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs involved in the Donbass region is The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов).

This battalion is supported by the Western military alliance including Canada.

The Azov Battalion -which displays the Nazi SS emblem – (below left) is described by the Kiev regime as “a volunteer battalion of territorial defense”.

It’s a National Guard battalion under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  Officially based in Berdyank on the Sea of Azov, it was formed by the regime to fight the opposition insurgency in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. It is supported by the US and NATO.

These militia bearing the Nazi SS emblem supported by the US and Canada are casually referred to as “Freedom fighters”.

Scroll down for Selected Images of the Azov Battalion “Freedom Fighters”

Imagine what would happen if  Canada’s RCMP or the US National Guard were to display swastika-like symbols.

Media Disinformation

Unknown to both Americans and Canadians, the West is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity. Both Washington and Ottawa have sent in military instructors.

Nobody knows about it because the use of the words “Neo-Nazi” and “Fascist” in relation to Ukraine is a taboo. The have been excluded from the lexicon of investigative reporting. In media reports they have been replaced by “Ultra-conservative”, “Extreme Right” and “Nationalist”.

Ukraine’s National Guard –which is supported by Canada– glorifies Adolph Hitler  and Stepan Bandera, Ukraine’s World War II Nazi leader and collaborator of the Third Reich.

People holding UPA (horizontal red and black) and Svoboda (3 yellow fingers on blue) flags march through Kyiv to the honor of the Nazi ally, Bandera. 

It is worth noting that Ukrainian Jews were the target of the Third Reich’s Einsatzgruppen (Task Groups or Deployment Groups) which were supported by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators led by Stepan Bandera . These “task forces” were paramilitary death squads deployed in occupied territories.

Surely Canadians should be made aware of the fact that their government is sending military instructors to train Neo-Nazi recruits.

In contrast to the scanty news which is fed to Canadians, the Ukrainian media’s coverage of Harper’s visit to Kiev has nonetheless acknowledged Canada’s support for the country’s National Guard:

Canada will allocate $5 million to train new police officers and military instructors for the National Guard of Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatseniuk said.

Besides, Canadian military instructors will arrive to Ukraine to train the National Guard, the premier said. (Interfax-Ukraine, June 6, 2015)

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, globalresearch.ca

There is another example – the pogroms in Wola that took place during the Warsaw uprising (Wola – a district of western Warsaw). German fascists killed around 60 thousand Poles in two days (August 5-6, 1944) – the largest single massacre in WWII. 

Today the Polish authorities do the best to get around the details that led to the tragedy. A lot has been said in Poland about the Warsaw uprising. By and large it all boils down to denigrating Soviet soldiers who deliberately remained where they were as allowing the Wehrmacht time to regroup and put the insurgence down. It is said that, whatever Russians say about liberating Poland «Bolsheviks are even worse than Hitlerites», no matter German fascists killed Poles just because they were Slav people. That’s exactly what they did in Wola. 

The reason Germans were so cruel towards Poles is an open secret. In their statements Nazi top officials were candid enough explaining their attitude. But Polish and Ukrainian propaganda outlets keep silent about it. The following examples are eloquent enough. Just one week prior to the launching of the attack on Poland, Hitler made an address to his chief military commanders at Obersalzberg on August 22, 1939. He said, «Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need.» 

Hans Frank was appointed Governor General of the Occupied Polish Territories by a Hitler decree dated 12 October 1939. On January 1, 1940 the official told the conference of department heads that he was given an order to devastate the territory leaving no traces of economy, culture, social and political structures. He said Poland was wartime a booty to be treated accordingly.

The Nazi really made no difference between their words and deeds. The destruction of Warsaw and the Volyn massacre provide a good evidence to go upon. Neither the contemporary Polish Russophobe propaganda warriors, nor overseas story-tellers shed light on who was behind the tragic events. One has to get acquainted with the testimony provided right after the massacre by witnesses, those who saw what happened with their own eyes to testify right after the events. Underground Trybuna Wolnosci (the edition N 64, 1944), a newspaper of Polish Workers Party, published an article signed by Lieutenant Zenon (real name Zenon Kliszko), deputy commander of Army Liudova (the People's Army of Poland) at the time of Warsaw uprising. He said, «The very thought of bloodshed in Warsaw, the city lying in ruins, never leaves the minds of those who fight for full liberation of the country from the Hitler’s yoke. The stronger is the pain, the more clearly we realize how hard our people suffered and how important it is to pinpoint the real culprits. All the details have to be clarified and come into the open. The problem of uprising in Poland has been many times discussed on the pages of party press. The leadership of party noted that such an action cannot be improvised. It has to be thoroughly planned taking into consideration the experience gathered by guerilla movement. It has to coincide with an active phase of mass struggle. It is imperative to coordinate activities with allied military, especially with the Red Army liberating Poland…

These days the German Eastern Front was rolling back. There was an impression that the Red Army and Polish people were about to liberate Warsaw from Hitler’s occupants. The great victories of Red Army made leaders of Armia Krajowa (the Home Army) panic. They decided to seize Warsaw and bring their reactionary clique to power. 

Contrary to good reason and logic and ignoring the opinion of others, the Armia Krajowa incited the uprising in August 1. The rebellion unleashed by Bor (meaning «the Forest» – the code-name of General Count Tadeusz Komorowski, the commander in chief a day before the capitulation of the Warsaw uprising) and his accomplices happened to be a criminal political venture. 

As soon as the uprising started the real intentions of its leaders became known. The staff of Armia Krajowa failed to come up with an operational plan. The action was not well-prepared. True, the state of combat readiness had been declared a number of times for training purposes. There was no clarity about the start of combat action – the H-hour was changed all the time. Many Armia Krajowa units were not engaged in the operation at all. The real intent was not to organize an uprising against Germans, but rather liberate the city without the participation of Soviet forces. That’s what the root of the problem was and that’s what doomed the action to failure. Two days before the insurgence the «convent of independent organizations» spread around leaflets denigrating the Red Army. The leadership of Armia Krajowa was blinded by hatred. It forgot about Germans in Warsaw. It said that the units of Red Army deployed at the forward edge of battle area were nothing else but dozens of tank divisions ready to enter the city at any given moment. The Armia Krajowa commanders did not consider Germans to be their enemies anymore. 

They considered the Soviet Union and entire camp of Polish democracy as the prime target. That’s what made the leadership of Armia Krajowa and the Polish London-based government-in-exile commit this grave crime in Warsaw». 

The testimony adduced here provides undisputed evidence which allows to strictly define what really caused the Wola tragic events.