Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby Jerky » Sat Jun 02, 2018 2:06 am

The hysteria evinced by the Putin fans in this case is no less gobsmacking for being so goddamn predictable.

Fact is, we know next to noting about what happened yet. For anyone to say that with this incident the "Kiev regime discredits itself for all time" does nothing but expose their own strange prejudice and the bulletproof level of brainwashing they've undergone.

Here's an interesting turn...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-hit ... -1.4688440
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jun 02, 2018 5:19 pm

You are a funny one.

No worries about a bit of hyperbole, after all I learned it at your knee. Not the nation-state of Ukraine but obviously the 2014 coup regime with its Nazi allies deputized as paramilitary death squads and its chocolate-king-president were fully discredited from the first day, let alone after this stunt.

We know one very big thing, which is they saw fit to lie to the entire world for 24 hours about an assassination that never happened, that they completely fabricated -- and that they accused another nation of committing! And then they revealed their stunt, moronically thinking it would be applauded. So unscrupulous and incredibly stupid. The reasons for which all this discredits them radically and permanently with real journalists all around the world are self-evident. Go ahead, call them all "Putin fans," DW and the Independent and everyone else. Shameful.

So then you decide it's "a turn" that this same entity, immediately after its self-demolition, claims it has a list of 47 victims yet to be targeted! Which, of course, is basically the same shit they're always claim.

And I will see you and your tabloid hysterics off this board soon if you continue with the false defamation of calling people "Putin fans," always as a non-sequitur. I'm serious, you are way too unstable and you don't want this fight, you will go off the rails again and get yourself banned this time.

This thread is about the Kiev regime and its fans of fascism (like yourself) and its NATO arms. This thread is about how Kiev and Babchenko have disrespected and endangered real journalists everywhere, oh fan of Bandera and assorted Nazi death squads. I think you have about 45 different current threads to state your Cold War 2.0 paranoid fantasies about Russians under your bed. Not that it matters, but I was posting stuff here about the Moscow 9/99 years before you appeared, oh proven fan of Hitler.

But don't take my shit. You should not stand for this and best thing for you to do is start a new thread to attack me. Okay?

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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby Jerky » Mon Jun 04, 2018 3:25 pm

Whatever other stuff you're blathering about, you were NOT "here before me". This is like my fifth or sixth iteration on the Rig-Int message boards, and I was here participating way before there WAS a fucking message board.

And if it's Nazis you fear, then you DEFINITELY should be hating on Putin and his gang, which is far more ethno-fascist simpatico than the current Ukraine regime.

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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Jun 04, 2018 4:16 pm

:ohno:

FFS. I had really enjoyed the peace in this forum the past couple weeks.

Jerky, do not call anyone on RI a Putin fan unless they call themselves that first. Do it again and you will get suspended.

Jack, don't take that bait by calling him a fan of fascism. A repeat of that will get you a week off.

Now be fucking nice!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyqwCeAMRsM
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jun 04, 2018 5:45 pm

Ok, SRP, I shall comply with the ruling. I was merely illustrating turnabout as a legitimate response to non-sequitur acts of absurd and stupid ad-hom labeling (and one that in this case happened to fit better than the initial offense).
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby Sounder » Mon Jun 04, 2018 5:49 pm

Ya gotta laugh, I wonder what Arkady thinks now about 'Right Sector', knowing they were perfectly willing to kill him to "frame Russians". And an extra guffaw for the 'intelligence service' being so drunk on their own Russia fear, they fail to see the possibilities and implications.


http://theduran.com/two-men-busted-in-u ... nce-video/
Via Zerohedge (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06- ... cial-story)…

The Ukrainian government’s staged assassination of anti-Putin journalist Arkady Babachenko has taken an even stranger turn, as evidence has emerged that his would-be “Russia-ordered” assassin and the man who supposedly hired him, both say they worked for Ukrainian counterintelligence, casting serious doubt on the official story.

To review, Ukrainian authorities announced last Tuesday that Babachenko had been assassinated after returning home from the store. On Wednesday, Babachenko appeared at a press conference with Ukrainian authorities who said that the faked assassination was an elaborate sting to bust an actual hit planned by Russia.

Only now we find that the hitman, Oleksiy Tsimbalyuk, is an outspoken critic of Russia who says he worked for Ukrainian counterintelligence – a claim Ukraine initially denied but later admitted to be true. Meanwhile the guy who supposedly hired Tsimbalyuk, Boris L. German, 50, also says he worked for Ukrainian counter-intelligence, a claim Ukraine denies as its immediately destroys the carefully scripted, if rapidly imploding, Ukrainian narrative meant to scapegoat Russia for what has been a “fake news” story of epic proportions, emerging from the one nation that not only was the biggest foreign donor to the Clinton foundation, but has made fake news propaganda into an art form.

The New York Times reports that Tsimbalyuk – a former Russia-hating priest was featured in a 10-minute documentary in January 2017 in which “he called killing members of the Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine “an act of mercy”, further calling into question why Russia would hire him for the supposed assassination in the first place.

Facebook pictures also reveal Tsimbalyuk wearing a Ukrainian ultranationalist uniform from “Right Sector,” a group deemed to be neo-Nazis.
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:22 pm

.

Now, getting back to the subject of the Kiev regime and its enormously stupid stunt with the clownish Babchenko, an act that discredits both him and them permanently (no biggie) but also endangers real journalists everywhere, which is why real journalists are angry about it:

- http://www.counterpunch.org -

The Faked Assassination of Arkady Babchenko

By Patrick Cockburn
June 4, 2018 @ 1:56 am


The faked assassination of Arkady Babchenko is a bizarre affair which has intriguing features similar to the murder of another journalist in Ukraine 18 years ago. The difference is that this previous killing was all too real, but in both cases the Ukrainian government and its security services showed the same weird capacity to discredit themselves by engaging in ill-conceived plots always likely to do them more harm than good.

The first of these scandals, which rapidly developed into a political crisis, began in November 2000 when a headless body was found by villagers in a wood on the outskirts of Kiev. The authorities were slow in identifying the corpse, but it seemed likely to be that of Georgiy Gongadze, the editor of an online paper called Ukraina Pravda that specialised in investigating official corruption.

Gongadze had disappeared on 16 September after dining with a friend and was last seen alive buying cat food in a shop on his way home. From the beginning, his friends suspected that his disappearance had been arranged by the security services of Leonid Kuchma, the Ukrainian president who was known to resent any criticism of his corrupt and authoritarian rule.

Even after the discovery of the decapitated body, it appeared unlikely that responsibility for the murder could ever be pinned on anybody in power. But this changed when Alexander Moroz, the well-regarded leader of the socialist opposition party in the Ukrainian parliament, revealed that he had been given a tape recording of Kuchma, his chief of staff and the interior minister in which they are heard denouncing Gongadze and discussing ways of silencing him, such as having him kidnapped by Chechen gangsters.50show all

It looked likely that the leaders had concluded that the simplest way of dealing with Gongadze was to kill him. What they did not know was that their conversations were being recorded on a tape recorder installed by an officer called Mykola Melnichenko who belonged to the Ukrainian SBU security service – the successor to the KGB. He was singularly well placed to bug because he was in charge of making sure that the presidential offices were not being monitored by listening devices. He placed a tape recorder under the presidential sofa and changed the tapes every day.

The senior officials tried to discredit the evidence that they had ordered Gongadze’s abduction and murder by a special squad of security men. They claimed that the voices were not theirs or the tape recordings were fabricated, though they had been authenticated by experts. The police investigation went on at a snail’s pace, keen not to identify the body or allow anybody else to do so.

By this time international interest was aroused and foreign journalists like myself were arriving in Kiev. I met a friend of Gongadze called Alyona Prytula, who worked with him on his magazine and told me that he had shrapnel wounds which he had received when reporting fighting in Georgia. She had seen the body and said that “the corpse had shrapnel in it in the same places he did.” It was already becoming clear that the decision to kill Gongadze had come from the top, but all of those involved spent years trying to shift the blame onto each other.

What fascinated me at the time was the way in which Kuchma and his chief lieutenants had become obsessed with Gongadze, though his magazine had limited influence and posed no real threat to them. They could well have left him alone. Yet the tape recordings show that these men who were running the second largest country in Europe with a population of 50 million had repeatedly discussed how to eliminate this brave, but not very important, critic.

The self-destructive idiocy of the conspiracy has much in common with the faked murder of Babchenko earlier this week. It should have been obvious to Kuchma and his underlings that Gongadze dead could be a lot more dangerous to them than Gongadze alive. It should likewise have been blindingly clear to the densest Ukrainian security chief that fabricating the assassination of Babchenko and lying about it to everybody would permanently discredit whatever the Ukrainian government says in future. The claim that the scheme had a precedent in a fictional investigation by Sherlock Holmes was scarcely likely to improve their credibility.

To be fair, the Ukrainian SBU is not the only security service that has a fondness for crackpot schemes which will do them little good if they work, but will have disastrous consequences if anything goes wrong. Remember how the French foreign intelligence service attached limpet mines to the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in New Zealand in 1985. This lunatic scheme, approved at the highest levels, sank the ship and killed one of those on board, all in order to prevent the minor irritant of Greenpeace protesting against a French nuclear test in the Pacific.

Politicians and intelligence agencies are easily pilloried for their failures in recent wars and crises, but the media generally gives itself a free pass. Governments lied or were misinformed about Saddam being a threat to the world, but why did journalists allow themselves to be so easily spoon-fed with official propaganda? This self-serving naiveté skewed reporting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and was very visible once again in the reporting of the Babchenko affair. There was a knee-jerk belief that Vladimir Putin must be responsible for any killing of a critic of Russia, even when all the evidence for this is being provided by a government hostile to Russia.

I have always found that Ukraine and Russia operate in much the same way, both drawing on their traditions of authoritarianism, violence, corruption and criminality.

There is something absurd about journalists and news organisations complaining that they had been misled by the Ukrainian SBU. Why should it have suddenly developed such an interest in the safety of journalists, except as useful counters in the renewed Cold War between Russia and the West? Pity the Ukrainian journalists who enjoy no such protection. According to the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists, there were 90 assaults on journalists last year and nobody was punished in a single case.

Those hoodwinked by Ukrainian security services about the non-death of Babchenko have only themselves to blame for relying on such a partisan source. As the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists points out: “Given the SBU is an intelligence agency, which engages in deception, obfuscation, and propaganda, determining the truth will be very difficult.”

URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/04 ... babchenko/

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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:47 pm

.

Not that I do not trust Zero Hedge -- oh, right, I don't -- or that I do trust the NY Times, but the original story in the Times is chock full of great stuff. Now the wife is being retconned as a witting participant to the faking of her husband's death -- phew! -- although it seems the intrepid journalist himself knows less and less about it by the day. But maybe he can sell the rights to the Coen brothers?



http://www.nytimes.com

After the Faked Journalist Killing in Ukraine, the Murk Deepens

By Neil MacFarquhar
June 1, 2018

The Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko said he was not privy to all the details of the operation, but went along with the faking of his death because he believed that his life was at risk. CreditPool photo by Valentyn Ogirenko


MOSCOW — The strange cast of characters emerging in the faked assassination of a prominent Putin critic — including a Russia-hating right-wing priest and the director of a Ukrainian arms manufacturer — set the already bizarre case on a path to a murky, up-is-down mess of the sort that Ukraine seems to specialize in.

Both the priest and the executive claimed to be working for Ukraine’s intelligence services. Ukrainian officials at first denied that but, in the case of the priest, subsequently reversed themselves and admitted he had played a role. They would not say what.

Senior Ukrainian officials have been on the defensive since Wednesday, when the head of the security services and the chief prosecutor announced that they had staged the shooting death of a dissident Russian war correspondent in order to trace his would-be killers back to Russian intelligence.

However, in the absence of solid facts and real evidence about any plot to kill the dissident, Arkady Babchenko, somewhat implausible figures have emerged from the shadows, perhaps the most unlikely being the priest, who claimed he was hired to carry out the hit.

Oleksiy Tsimbalyuk, once a monk and a deacon in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who used the clerical name Aristarkh, wrote on his Facebook page that he was the man who went to the authorities after being hired to kill Mr. Babchenko.

The cleric has never made a secret of his longstanding antipathy toward Russia, fighting Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine and switching his religious affiliation from the Russian Orthodox Church to a breakaway branch of the Orthodox Church that has declared its independence from Moscow.

Pictures on his Facebook page show him in green combat fatigues including a patch from the Right Sector, a Ukrainian ultranationalist organization that some, particularly the Kremlin, portray as a neo-Nazi group. In a 10-minute documentary about him that appeared online in January 2017, he called killing members of the Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine “an act of mercy.”

Given such strong and publicly avowed enmity toward Russia, it is odd to say the least that Mr. Tsimbalyuk would be selected to carry out the contract killing of a prominent Kremlin critic.

When he first posted the information on Facebook [why? because, where else, right?], a spokeswoman for the Security Service of Ukraine, known by its initials, S.B.U., denied that he was involved. But she later acknowledged that he had been. [It's okay. She can take it back tomorrow. See how that works?]

Then there is the accused organizer, who Ukrainian officials said was just warming up with the killing of Mr. Babchenko and had a list of some 30 others Moscow supposedly wanted to eliminate.

That man, Boris L. Herman, was arraigned in a Kiev court on Thursday night and ordered to be held in custody for two months. Prosecutors said he had given the supposed assassin a down payment of $15,000, half what he was promised for carrying out the hit.

In court, Mr. Herman tried both to link the plot to President Vladimir V. Putin and to claim that he, too, had been working for Ukraine all along. He was first contacted six months ago, he said.

Boris L. Herman was arraigned in a Kiev court on Thursday night and ordered to be held in custody for two months. Prosecutors said he had given the supposed assassin a down payment of $15,000. CreditStepan Franko/EPA, via Shutterstock

“I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives in Moscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turned out that he works for a Putin foundation precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine,” Mr. Herman was quoted as saying by Interfax Ukraine, a news agency.

Claiming that he was working for Ukrainian counterintelligence, he said he had known perfectly well that there would be no killing. A monk was hired because he would not kill an unarmed man, he said in court, and once Mr. Babchenko’s “assassination” had taken place, he said, his Russian contact had given him the list of 30 more names, which he says he passed to Ukrainian counterintelligence.

Mr. Herman’s lawyer, Eugene Solodko, wrote on Facebook that his client was the executive director of Schmeisser, a Ukrainian-German joint venture and the only arms manufacturer in Ukraine not owned by the government. It specializes in manufacturing sights for sniper rifles, he wrote.

The prosecutor’s office denied that Mr. Herman worked for Ukrainian counterintelligence.

In Moscow, Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for Mr. Putin, said on Friday that the Kremlin had nothing to do with the operation.

“No such foundation exists in Russia,” he told reporters. “Any allegations about Russia’s possible complicity in this staging is just mudslinging. They do not correspond to reality.”

Ukraine faced continued criticism from international organizations, foreign political leaders and journalists for faking the assassination, which they said had validated the Kremlin’s all-purpose claim that it is falsely blamed for every evil in the world by a “Russophobic” West.

Aside from hinting that catching the organizer hinged on completing the killing, Ukraine has not made it clear why such a deception was necessary. Nor has it provided any evidence about accomplices or a coherent time line. Officials said the ruse was two months in the planning stages.

The level of international criticism was such that the Ukrainian Embassy in London felt compelled to issue a statement justifying what it called a “special operation.” “The hybrid war waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine demands unorthodox approaches,” it said.

For his part, Mr. Babchenko said he was not privy to all the details of the investigation, but went along with the ruse because he believed his life was at risk. Numerous other critics of the Kremlin who have gone into exile in Ukraine have been murdered on the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, previously.

“They probably had their reasons,” he said of the security services at a news conference on Thursday. “Maybe they wanted to collect proof that was 100 percent solid.” [Hey, "they probably had their reasons" would be good enough for anyone to go along, right?]

A famous war reporter, Mr. Babchenko, 41, fled Russia in early 2017 after a campaign of intimidation against him following his criticism of Russian involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria. He said that Ukrainian agents approached him a month ago to tell him that the Russian security services had put out a contract on him.

“I said: ‘Great. Why have you been waiting a month?’ ” said Mr. Babchenko, who is now living under protection from the security services.

He also provided a few details about the staging of the crime last Tuesday night. Security officers took one of his sweatshirts and fired shots through it, then smeared it with pig’s blood after he put it back on.

Taken to a hospital after his wife, who was in on the plot, summoned an ambulance, he was first wheeled into an intensive care unit and pronounced dead, then taken to the morgue. It was only then that he stopped playing dead and began watching the tributes to him pour in on television.


Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter: @NeilMacFarquhar.
Iuliia Mendel contributed reporting from Ukraine and Oleg Matsnev from Moscow.
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Jun 06, 2018 2:25 pm

.

Not surprisingly the Kiev regime is now openly seeking to intimidate the journalists on its dubious list of people purportedly targeted for death by the "Russian" state.

Note that journalists in Ukraine and from all around the world have condemned Kiev for its extremely reckless stunt. They understand this endangers them. The following coverage is from the U.S. government outlet, Radio Free Europe. Condemnations of Kiev's attack on opposition media are also coming from European institutions like the OSCE -- and not only from Moscow (which presumably is basking in the schadenfreude of watching Kiev engage in self-initiated self-destruction).

www.rferl.org

In Ukraine, Prominent Journalists Targeted By 'Russian Hit List' Question Its Authenticity

KYIV -- The leak of an alleged "Russian hit list" has stirred anxieties and raised more questions about the bizarre Ukrainian staging of journalist Arkady Babchenko's death after journalists on the list said they doubted its authenticity.

Ukraine is still reeling nearly a week after authorities here faked the contract-style killing of Babchenko, a Russian dissident journalist, as part of a controversial and elaborate ruse they claim was necessary to foil a real Russian assassination plot.

Instead of details in the bizarre case becoming clearer, they have grown murkier by the day, with authorities fingering the director of a Ukrainian arms manufacturer that provides sights to snipers of its armed forces as the organizer who hired a right-wing, anti-Russian, former monk-turned-volunteer soldier to be the shooter.

Both have claimed to have been in league with Ukraine's intelligence services, something Ukrainian officials first denied, then partly corrected, saying the would-be shooter, Oleksiy Tsimbalyuk, had indeed been working with them. The manufacturer, Borys Herman, was remanded in custody by a Kyiv court on May 31.

The whole affair took a strange new turn on June 5 when a purported "hit list" of 47 people -- mainly journalists and political activists -- that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claims to have discovered during the Babchenko operation was leaked to Strana.ua, an opposition news site, and published online.

SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska told Interfax-Ukraine on June 5 that she was not familiar with the Strana.ua list and could not comment on its authenticity.

"The list is a secret of the investigation," she said.

But the SBU has confirmed the existence of a 47-person list of people it claims are potential Russian assassination targets. They first claimed to have discovered a list 30 names long. Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, said last week that all 47 people had been informed and arrangements were being made to ensure their safety.

Then later, on June 5, the SBU announced it had launched a criminal investigation into the unauthorized leak of "a list of persons whose details are contained" in materials related to a pretrial investigation, seemingly lending credence to Strana.ua's report.

The Kremlin had not commented on the list at the time of publication. But it denied any involvement after Ukraine accused it of ordering the assassination of Babchenko before he showed up alive at a press conference the following day.

List 'Multiplies Before Our Eyes'

The "hit list" caused worry and confusion for many journalists as they openly doubted the authenticity of a document that had been so variously described in such a short period of time.


Dmytro Gnap, a journalist for independent Hromadske TV’s Slidstvo.info investigative unit, who is not among those on the list, seemed to doubt its veracity in a post on Facebook, asking sarcastically how the number of people on the list seemed to "multiply before my eyes."

Others also doubted its provenance, saying they found the makeup of it odd, since so many people on it were critics of the Ukrainian authorities. Oleksiy Bratushchak, a journalist for the independent Ukrayinskaya Pravda news site, wondered whether this signaled an attempt by Ukraine’s intelligence services to control "all [the] movements, all [the] meetings" of its critics ahead of elections.

Borys Herman, accused by authorities of hiring someone to assassinate Babchenko, reacts in a Kyiv courtroom on May 31.

Reached by RFE/RL on June 4, three journalists on the list who spoke on the condition that their names be withheld due to the potential threat to their lives (and because the SBU had them sign a nondisclosure agreement) said they doubted the authenticity of the list for a number of reasons.

They confirmed the list published by Strana.ua was similar to the one they had been shown by the SBU but said it had some slight differences, including variations in the order of the names and some spellings. All of them noted that Babchenko's name was not on the list.

The three said they had been offered state security but declined it, saying they did not trust the Ukrainian authorities to protect them or not to spy on them.

One of the journalists brought in said the SBU had also questioned them. Among the questions they were asked: What is your opinion of Russian aggression in Ukraine?

No Criticism Allowed?


Journalists in Ukraine have long faced harassment, intimidation, doxing, and physical attacks -- some of which has come from authorities.

On May 30, Larysa Sarhan, spokeswoman for Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko, published on her Facebook page a list of journalists that included Myroslava Gongadze, head of Voice of America's Ukrainian service and the widow of murdered Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, and National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Chairman Serhiy Tomilenko.

Sarhan took them to task for criticizing the authorities' handling of the Babchenko operation, which was also lambasted by international groups.

Journalist Yevgeniy Kiselyov says he's not surprised that his name appeared on the alleged list release by the SBU.

Harlem Desir, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media, condemned Sarhan’s words.

"The publishing of a list including names of journalists, accusing them of being traitors, is unacceptable and dangerous. This can have serious repercussions for the safety of journalists," Desir wrote in a letter to the authorities. "I strongly encourage the authorities to intervene and suspend such practices, especially those undertaken by government officials, given the sensitive and difficult environment in Ukraine at the moment."

'I Got Used To Watching My Back'


Yevgeny Kiselyov, a veteran Russian journalist and TV news presenter at Ukraine's Pryamiy TV, a network that is supportive of President Petro Poroshenko, was among the few who spoke on the record about being on the list. He told RFE/RL he believed the list was real and that he was unsurprised his name turned up on it but that it did not rattle him.

Kiselyov, who moved to Ukraine in 2008 after he was pushed out of Russia’s media scene, and his Pryamiy colleague Matvey Ganapolsky, also a Russian who relocated here following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was given Ukrainian citizenship, were the first two journalists on the alleged list to come forward after authorities upped the count from 30 to 47 on June 1 to say they had been informed and offered state security.

"I got used to watching my back," Kiselyov said. "I always assumed that I can be on some kind of a hit list."
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby American Dream » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:54 am

Situation normal:

Chess in Kiev

Among Boyko’s few late-morning customers is Jenya, thirty-two, who shares Boyko’s political disdain but won’t share her surname. She is available to be interviewed, she says, only until her American boyfriend arrives, which might well result in the same jealous rage that was visited upon on her friend, Martin, in this same bar just a couple of hours earlier.

Jenya represents the opposite pole of a Ukrainian political divide either orchestrated or exacerbated by Russia. Pitting one half of Ukraine against the other was prologue to what Russia would do in the 2016 American presidential elections, and the result is that Jenya believes that the 2014 Maidan protests were fake—poor people paid to create turmoil. She argues that no current Ukrainian political candidate deserves any attention at all.

“Nothing will be changed,” she says.

Martin, thirty-four, is similarly reluctant to give his full name, and wears a bloody bandage over his left eye—the work of the volatile American. A Dutchman, Martin has visited Kiev six times in recent months for his import/export business. Asked whether “import/export” is code for the kind of corruption that he claims is preventing Ukraine from entering the European Union, Martin only smirks and shrugs.

“Kiev is like a city in Western Europe,” he says. “Except if you smile here people think you’re an idiot.”

The same 100 percent of Ukrainians who hate talking politics have no idea that Ukraine has now become a battleground of a Cold War the United States is waging with its executive branch tied behind its back. They have never heard of Paul Manafort, they have no idea that an American played a role in electing a president it took bloody riots to expel from office, and they are oblivious to the fact their current president paid Michael Cohen, President Trump’s dimwitted personal attorney, for a meeting, and thereby wound up entering into an unholy arms-for-charges bargain that has enabled Trump to end Manafort investigations that he would not otherwise have been able to interrupt.

Every appearance of conflict between Trump and Putin is propaganda—about as believable as the body slam that Trump once delivered at a professional wrestling match.


Does that sound farfetched? The timeline is circumstantially conclusive: Poroshenko paid Michael Cohen $400,000 for a “drop-in” meeting with President Trump in June 2017. The approval process for the sale of weapons to Ukraine began six months later. Ukrainian authorities launched several thousand corruption investigations a month after that, including four investigations into payments made to Paul Manafort. Three months later, final approval for the sale of 210 Javelin missiles was provided, and just weeks after that members of Poroshenko’s inner circle acknowledged that the four Manafort investigations were being dropped, so as not to annoy the Trump administration.

Ukraine might be corrupt, but to Ukrainian officials what was most remarkable about this episode was “how dirty [the] whole arrangement was.”

To make it a bit clearer: President Trump has no soft spot for Ukrainian independence, and every appearance of conflict between Trump and Putin is propaganda—about as believable as the body slam that Trump once delivered at a professional wrestling match. Just one question remains, really. Would Vladimir Putin accept or sanction the sale of a few missiles to Ukraine, to be used against his own forces, if it meant that he might confound investigations into the one man who could unravel the administration of his Manchurian president?

Of course he would. Putin plays chess, not poker—short-term material sacrifices can ensure a long-term positional advantage.


https://thebaffler.com/latest/chess-in-kiev-hallman
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:04 pm

Interesting report but kind of superficial (style of Hitchens walks into a bar) and I can hardly share several of the claims the author takes as fixed premises:

Jenya represents the opposite pole of a Ukrainian political divide either orchestrated or exacerbated by Russia. Pitting one half of Ukraine against the other was prologue to what Russia would do in the 2016 American presidential elections...

[...]

President Trump has no soft spot for Ukrainian independence, and every appearance of conflict between Trump and Putin is propaganda—about as believable as the body slam that Trump once delivered at a professional wrestling match. Just one question remains, really. Would Vladimir Putin accept or sanction the sale of a few missiles to Ukraine, to be used against his own forces, if it meant that he might confound investigations into the one man who could unravel the administration of his Manchurian president?



"His own forces," yeah no actual Russians in Ukraine.

And Manchurian candidates, oh please. The post-2016 common sense of neoliberal cold war 2.0 warriors, in which evidence against the main thesis is spun into evidence for it.

And it's such an easy puzzle to solve. Presidents come and go, the MIC and the logic of its interests are as much in control as ever.

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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby American Dream » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:11 pm

I'll accept most of your quibbles but I have to say that every time I read the headline "Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time", my immediate thought is "Compared to What?.
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:44 pm

.

Well indeed, but hyperbole is sometimes appropriate. Anyway, there are like 45 threads currently concerned with ideological projections of something labeled "Russia," the enemy of the world, the controller of Trump, the decider of U.S. elections, the sole cause of wars in Syria and the Ukraine, the divider of an otherwise harmonious American political scene, the coddle-object of "Putin fans," etc. etc. So one on Kiev can be withstood.

As in the Baffler article, talking about the reality of the current Kiev regime - yet another former Soviet-bloc kleptocracy run by an oligarch, whitewashing history, and with the added bonus of deputizing literal Nazis to act as death squads - seems to be impossible for U.S. writers unless they somehow also declaim that even the counter-evidence to this mess being due to a "Russian" plot is, in fact, evidence of the opposite, since of course them Russians be very devious.

Now I'm going to post an article from Newsweek and the summary of a report from nothing less than the pro-"Euromaidan revolution" Freedom House...

I see the recent Newsweek article was actually edited to delete the former sub-head, which found a way to blame Russia for anti-Russian Ukrainian fascists. (How? Because those terrible Russians report on the exact same Ukrainian right-wing threats as Newsweek, but they do so while being Russian, thus deriving benefit from making the Ukrainian fascists and their enablers look bad. Sneaky Russians! Wait, that also describes the problem with RT, especially when it's playing to the left... they keep saying true things not reported in the U.S. press, but they do so while being Russian!.)


http://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-under-t ... als-962062

Ukraine has a growing problem with far-right extremists, a new report revealed Wednesday.

Far-right extremist groups have existed on the margins of society since Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. But a new report by Washington, D.C.-based think tank Freedom House suggests that these groups have recently become more active and are hurting the country’s fledgling democracy. Far-right extremists still lack the popular support needed to be a meaningful force in organized politics, but law enforcement officials in Ukraine are allowing them to threaten civil society groups and operate with impunity, according to the report.

“In the last few months, extremist groups have become increasingly active. The most disturbing element of their recent show of force is that so far it has gone fully unpunished by the authorities," according to the report, written by Kiev-based historian and political scientist Vyacheslav Likhachev. "Their activities challenge the legitimacy of the state, undermine its democratic institutions, and discredit the country’s law enforcement agencies.”

941363768
Activists of the far-right Ukrainian National Corps Party rally as they take part in the 'March of power for the Ukrainian future without oligarchs' in the so-called 'Government ward' in the center of Kiev on April 3, 2018.
SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES



And just to twist up the people who see the Ukrainian 2014 events as some kind of exclusively Soros color-revolution job, here is the report... from Freedom House.

And while not mincing on the details, the report is packaged to underplay the impact. So it is repeatedly said Russians are exaggerating this (really?) and that the Ukrainian fascists on the street are not popular, they are not going to win elections. But clearly they have free rein to go around terrorizing, beating and killing people, even cops, without consequences. In other words, they are already in power, or occupy a sphere of power separate from the state without challenge from the state. And on the front, as is not covered here, they are the shock troops and death squads.


https://freedomhouse.org/report/special ... -democracy

FREEDOM HOUSE

Special Reports

Far-right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy
Vyacheslav Likhachev, Kyiv-based expert on right-wing groups in Ukraine and Russia

Far-right extremism represents a threat to the democratic development of Ukrainian society. The brief provides an overview of the activities and influence of the far right, differentiating between groups that express radical ideas but by and large operate within a democratic framework and extremist groups, which resort to violence to influence society.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Far-right political forces present a real threat to the democratic development of Ukrainian society. This brief seeks to provide an overview of the nature and extent of their activities, without overstating the threat they pose. To this end, the brief differentiates between radical groups, which by and large express their ideas through peaceful participation in democratic processes, and extremist groups, which use physical violence as a means to influence society.

For the first 20 years of Ukrainian independence, far-right groups had been undisputedly marginal elements in society. But over the last few years, the situation has changed. After [really? they weren't there during?] Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan Revolution and Russia’s subsequent aggression, extreme nationalist views and groups, along with their preachers and propagandists, have been granted significant legitimacy by the wider society.

Nevertheless, current polling data indicates that the far right has no real chance of being elected in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in 2019. Similarly, despite the fact that several of these groups have real life combat experience, paramilitary structures, and even access to arms, they are not ready or able to challenge the state. [Except insofar as they are already integrated into it at the front and serving a repressive agenda on the ground in the capital.]

Extremist groups are, however, aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views. They are a real physical threat to left-wing, feminist, liberal, and LGBT activists, human rights defenders, as well as ethnic and religious minorities.

In the last few months, extremist groups have become increasingly active. The most disturbing element of their recent show of force is that so far it has gone fully unpunished by the authorities.
Their activities challenge the legitimacy of the state, undermine its democratic institutions, and discredit the country’s law enforcement agencies.

Given the increasingly worrying situation, Ukrainian society, law enforcement agencies, and other state bodies as well as the international community should take effective measures to counter far-right extremism in Ukraine.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few years, Ukrainian far-right groups have become a subject of attention in the media and the international community. The interest partly originates in the dramatic events the country has undergone, namely the 2014 revolution and the ongoing war. But it has also been bolstered by the scandals surrounding the presence of these groups in public spaces and that of members of the armed forces who propagate radical views and use radical symbols. Russian propaganda exaggerating ultranationalist tendencies in modern Ukraine has also had an impact on the perception of these trends.

Despite the abundance of articles and television dispatches, the field lacks high-quality analytical research on the Ukrainian far right, making it difficult for foreign observers to understand the place of these groups in Ukraine’s political system, the threat they pose, and the future of such movements. This brief will attempt to define what we mean by far-right extremist and radical groups in the modern Ukrainian context; list the main groups belonging to this field, summarize the specifics of their ideology, political strategies, and future prospects; and formulate a general picture of the threat they pose to the democratic development of Ukrainian society.

DEFINITIONS OF RADICALISM IN UKRAINE

The borders of right-wing radicalism in modern Ukraine are blurred because it exists within a political system where party lines fail to neatly follow ideologies. They are also blurred because of current historical events, which have compelled a turn to the legacy of the early 20th century Ukrainian nationalist movement. After the war began in 2014, Ukrainians felt a genuine threat to Ukrainian sovereignty and the existence of the Ukrainian state. This prompted a return to the symbols and rhetoric used by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the first half of the 20th century, which were previously exclusively associated with far-right and extremist groups. These symbols have become acceptable recently and are being used by a wider portion of society, including people in positions of authority and the elite. At the same time, attempts to revive the ideology of the historical OUN in a modernized form are extremely rare. [No doubt in the same way that open expressions of Nazi ideology are fairly rare in the American alt-right, that's kind of the idea behind rebranding, nothing new in the history of these kinds of groups.] Instead, this revival materializes in the use of symbolic elements such as the red-and-black flag and individual slogans. A significant part of the population (if not the majority) today associates these with the struggle for independence, rather than with a radical ethnocentric or xenophobic ideology.[1] [Disturbing mass idiocy. No, wait, success for anti-communist freedom propaganda.]

Out of the wide spectrum of political forces that can be described as nationalist, this brief will focus on groups that are defined not only as right-wing radicals but also as extremists[2]. The brief thus separates groups that express radical views on the reorganization of society, which can nonetheless be peaceful in nature and expressed through law-abiding participation in democratic processes, and extremist groups, which reject democratic principles and resort to force to influence society and political processes. The main way to determine if a group is extremist is by its attitude to political violence: groups that systematically direct physical violence against groups they oppose, glorify historical instances of terrorism and ethnic cleansing, and openly and aggressively propagate hate are included among the extremist ones. [As if there can be a clear line in a fluid ecology of groups rebranding, mutating, recombining and splitting, often merely covering the two functions under different names - exactly as many such movements have done in the past.]

Based on the above criteria, the following political parties qualify as extremist nationwide: the All-Ukrainian Union Party ‘Svoboda’ (led by Oleh Tyahnybok, the party achieved 4.71 percent of the vote during the last parliamentary elections and has six MPs in the Verkhovna Rada); the National Corpus (headed by Andriy Belitsky, who during the last elections participated as an independent candidate and became an MP); and the Right Sector (led by Andriy Stempitsky, the party received 1.8 percent in the last elections; its one representative in the Rada, Dmytro Yarosh, has already left the party). These three parties are currently in negotiations to run together ahead of the upcoming elections. All are nationwide parties with representation in almost every region of the country, and with youth and sports groups as well paramilitary and cultural movements connected to party structures. Sometimes these groups and movements attract members who are more radical than the party’s mainstream, activists who specifically focus on the use of force.

Besides the parties, significant number of extremist groupings, with a few dozen to a few hundred activists, also exist. In some cases, they do not have recorded membership, reflecting a sort of subculture environment. These small groups do not seek to participate in elections but remain visible in the public sphere because of their aggressive propaganda and illegal actions. According to our definitions, they include the OUN Volunteer Movement (Волонтерський Рух ОУН), the Brotherhood (Братство), C14, the Carpathian Sich (Карпатська Січ), the Social-National Assembly (Соціал-національна асамблея), the UNA-UNSO (УНА-УНСО), Tradition and Order (Традиція і порядок), Revenge (Реванш), the Revolutionary Right Forces (Революційні праві сили), and others.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OR STREET POLITICS

Due to the far right’s limited success and in some cases unwillingness to participate in official politics, it has recently taken to focusing on strengthening its organizational structures, propaganda, and “street politics.” This latter often consists of violent actions and aims to aggressively impose these groups’ political and cultural agenda on society. In its overwhelming majority and with the exception of right-wing political parties, these activities are not connected with elections, but with the forceful imposition of their views on a number of topics—including on the role of LGBTI, ethnic, and religious groups, and cultural movements—on society.


Demonstrations of Far Right Groups in Ukraine
Photo by Aleksandr Volchanskiy

Extremist groups perpetrate ideologically motivated violence to suppress and eliminate any force that they believe does not have the right to public representation in society. Their actions are aimed at “cleaning” the public space of everything that they regard as harmful to the nation or unacceptable in the context of the ongoing war. The targets of their aggression are organizations that defend the rights of the LGBT community as well as political opponents, who for the most part support left-wing politics. Far-right as well as radical groups accuse them of being pro-Russian or of supporting separatism. [God that's depressing. LGBT getting shit from everyone as usual. Here they have to be called pro-Russian!] The obviously hypocritical nature of their accusations is evidenced by numerous cases where nationalist extremists have attacked war volunteers and fighters under the pretext of "separatism.”

Violence (usually in the symbolic form of vandalism) has less frequently been directed at institutions and monuments associated with national minorities. Recently, however, additional targets have been added to the list of objects that inspire right-wing xenophobic attacks. In addition to memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, which have been targeted in the past as well, these include objects associated with recent political debates or conflicts such as the Polish military cemeteries in Volhynia, memorials of Hungarian national and cultural heritage in Transcarpathia and, of course, buildings belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Nowadays, such attacks occur much more often[3] than five or ten years ago, as shown in the data on antisemitic vandalism attacks gathered by the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine. According to incomplete calculations, in the first three months of 2018, extremist groups tried to disrupt 12 different events (this is aside from individual attacks they carried out against political and/or cultural opponents) and attacked a variety of objects and events. Among the incidents that have occurred since the beginning of 2018 are:

The disruption of a lecture on the Holocaust in Lviv in January, which involved throwing a smoke bomb into the room;

A homophobic attack on visitors to the office of the Queer Home Kryvbas in Kryvyi Rih in February, as well as disrupting a lecture on the LGBT movement in Kharkiv;

Also in February, an attempt to disrupt the presentation of a project aimed at overcoming discrimination against the Roma community in Lviv;

Several attacks on demonstrators on March 8 marches devoted to gender equality in Kyiv, Lviv and Uzhgorod;

An attempt to disrupt events held in conjunction with Docudays, a human rights film initiative in Kyiv in March, and subsequent attacks on event participants;
In April, a number of violent incidents involving the Roma community in Kyiv, including physical and arson attacks.[4]

While direct physical violence was not deployed in all of the above-mentioned cases, extremist groups have managed to restrict the rights and freedoms of Ukraine’s citizens; in particular, the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of speech. Law enforcement agencies have either failed to stop the attackers or banned the event on the grounds that they cannot guarantee the security of its participants. In some instances, they detained the participants themselves attacked at the event. Hence, wide swathes of society and the media generally either tolerate or do not notice the violence perpetrated by these far-right, extremist groups, who are actively undermining the government's monopoly on violence. [Again, undermining or actually extending it? How do these people even kill cops and get away with it? Who's the protection on the inside? Biedermann and Brandstifter? Official by day, hood by night?]

The increasing use of street politics by the right-wing groups, including illegal activity, can be interpreted, in part, as an attempt to influence the sociopolitical climate in Ukraine by those who do not have sufficient and legitimate tools to do this. After unsuccessfully competing in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the ultranationalists are extremely poorly represented in the Ukraine’s parliament, particularly when compared to the previous parliament where Svoboda held 37 seats. Moreover, those elected in majority districts, such as Andriy Biletsky and Dmytro Yarosh, pay almost no attention to the task of law-making and rarely attend parliamentary sessions.

Current polls show that the far right is unlikely to win more seats in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. According to the latest data gathered by the authoritative Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, out of all far-right parties, only Svoboda has any chance of passing the 5 percent barrier required to gain seats.[5] As of February, the party was supported by 2.3 percent of all respondents (and 5.8 percent among those with a party preference). This represented a drop in Svoboda’s ratings—in September 2017, 7.1 percent of those certain to vote had said they would vote for Svoboda. Other right-wing radical parties register even less support. The Right Sector polls at around 0.5 percent and the National Corpus at 0.2 percent. Although a hypothetical bloc of nationalist parties could claim some kind of representation in parliament, at present it is difficult to imagine that the right-wing radicals are capable of uniting. Their ideological differences are too great, as are the ambitions of their individual leaders. [All this is a relief. What is often attempted in such cases is a coup d'etat. They obviously have a network supporting them within the state.]

Thus, it can be assumed that the ideological violence and the radicalization of attitudes toward the current government—which, for example, the Right Sector officially regards as a "regime of internal occupation"[6]—is to some degree a consequence of the lack of effective and, in the far right’s opinion, legitimate means available to them to influence the processes taking place in society. From this premise, it follows that the defeat of the far right in next year’s elections will only exacerbate the street violence currently carried out by extremists.

A THREAT TO THE DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

There is no doubt that right-wing nationalism and extremism in modern-day Ukraine poses a threat to the democratic development of society. Organizations that hold far-right views reject democratic values (such as freedom of expression, freedom of assemblies, equality, etc.), yet actively use the opportunities that democracy offers. Aside from the transformations society is undergoing, the actions of Ukraine’s far right are particularly concerning for several reasons.

First, the place of right-wing organizations in society has changed after the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution. Despite not having decisive influence on the events of the revolution and the defense of the country in the face of Russian aggression,[7] [that's the mantra, yes] the far right has managed to achieve a certain degree of success by “riding” the patriotic wave. [as with the effort to separate "far-right" from "extremist," here is one to distinguish between good and bad nationalism] Nationalist-radical symbolism and rhetoric in the public sphere has become legitimized. In the absence of alternative traditions, society used the symbolic language of nationalist organizations of the mid-20th century to express their desire for independence, both during the protests, and following the outbreak of the war. Furthermore, as a result of an aggressive PR campaign executed in the context of Russia’s aggression, the far right has ceased to be perceived as marginal groups consisting of largely antisocial adolescents. The members of these groups have taken advantage of the opportunity provided by the war and created a new, attractive image for themselves as "true patriots” and “defenders of the fatherland.”[8]

With a few exceptions, this legitimization has failed to convert to electoral popularity and successes for nationalist and radical groups. Yet, the presence of radical leaders in the media has sharply increased and their societal perception has changed. Far-right activists actively use social networks, which makes it possible for them to freely disseminate the most radical demands and aggressive language. Right-wing public events enjoy considerable media attention thanks to the participation of a few but well-disciplined and motivated activists as well as the use of fireworks. The public legitimization of nationalist symbolism and rhetoric has provided even the most radical groups with a largely benevolent or at least neutral media reception[9]. Before the war, the leaders of these marginal groups received little interest, while today they comment on a wide range of issues in mainstream media.

Second, partly due to this legitimization by society, and in part because of their participation in the war, a gradual rapprochement has taken place between some far-right forces and the state, and primarily Ukraine’s law enforcement bodies. This rapprochement has been bolstered by the need to integrate the volunteer military formations—set up by nationalists at the start of the war—into the country’s existing structures. There has also been a degree of mutual interest between the two sides and the entente has not been confined to the war zone. One of the most striking appointments—though not the only such example—was that of a former neo-Nazi activist from Patriot of Ukraine Vadym Troyan, who received a high-ranking position in Ukraine’s national police in March 2016. Previously known for his racist statements, Andriy Biletsky, the head of the Azov battalion, has also been promoted to lieutenant colonel. Although media assertions that Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is closely linked to the National Corpus and its paramilitary wing, National Druzhina, are exaggerated, there is no doubt that that Biletsky had used Avakov's patronage and had been elected to parliament in a single-mandate district with his support.

During confrontations between right-wing groups and law enforcement bodies, the police show unacceptable passivity when it comes to preventing or suppressing unlawful activities, investigating incidents, and bringing perpetrators to justice. For example, the Svoboda party activists who threw grenades during a rally outside parliament in 2015, killing four national guardsmen, have not yet been convicted. One of the latest examples of the authorities’ tolerant attitude was on display in February 2018, during clashes in Kyiv following a hearing of a case involving Odessa’s mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov. After the hearing, National Druzhina activists and members of other radical groups attacked police officers using gas cartridges and even firearms. The officers reacted rather passively; one activist, who shot and wounded a police officer, has yet to be taken into custody.

Finally, the place of violence in Ukrainian society has changed, and right-wing radicals have played an important part in this transformation. The idea of what is permissible and acceptable has completely transformed. Tens of thousands of people have personally suffered trauma from the events of the revolution and the war, and currently suffer from PTSD. Hearing about the war in the news and its social consequences on the streets of cities throughout Ukraine has become part of the everyday reality for the whole country. Easy access to weapons has changed and increased the nature and extent of illegal business seizures and other violent actions in Ukraine’s general economic and political struggle. The far right has found a home for themselves in this context. Moreover, they have a competitive advantage in the market of paid-for thugs. Known popularly as “titushki,” these people often come from sports clubs and are used to attend protests, to protect commercial interests, or to seize properties sometimes under the guise of being genuine activists. Unlike regular thugs, they can mobilize additional support with the help of radical propaganda and lend an ideological purpose to an exclusively commercial dispute.

This atmosphere has created favorable conditions for right-wing radicals and extremists, despite not being attractive as an electoral option. It has also left the state and society very vulnerable to their expansion. Radical groups no longer have to worry about societal or government reactions when it comes to recruiting members, they also face few restrictions when it comes to spreading their ideas. Effectively, they exist in an environment characterized by lack of accountability and impunity.

CONCLUSION

Far-right radicals and extremists at present can claim neither significant parliamentary representation nor any plausible path to power in Ukraine. However, their street activities are having a serious impact on everyday life and societal development in the country. Particularly worrying is their use of violence in an attempt to restrict the expression of views they consider unacceptable in Ukraine.

This danger should be soberly assessed. The first step is to establish better monitoring of illegal and extremist activities of the far right on an ongoing basis. It would also be extremely useful to undertake an in-depth mapping of ultranationalist groups.

Additionally, those interested in the democratic development of Ukraine, including human rights activists and experts, should draw public and media attention to the real and existing problem of far-right extremism. Civil society should form a broad coalition in support of groups and activists who are being attacked by the far right. Regardless of people’s attitudes toward the ideologies of groups attacked by radicals, they have the right to freely express their opinions.

At the same time, society and the state should make significant efforts to ensure that the activity of extremist groups does not circumscribe the rights of other Ukrainians to peacefully assemble, associate, and express themselves freely. The state and law enforcement bodies need to genuinely ensure freedom of assembly and effectively prevent attempts by far-right groups to disrupt public events. In cases where they commit extremist acts, it is essential to investigate the incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice. This also needs to be applied to those who have already committed violence.

Finally, it would be counterproductive to repress these groups and drive radical ideas underground. Past experience demonstrates that for many a gradual deradicalization and evolution towards more moderate right-wing views is a real option.

[1] Poll conducted by the sociological group Rating in September 2017 http://ratinggroup.ua/research/ukraine/ ... rainy.html

[2] Radicalisation, extremism and terrorism: Words matter, EPRS, 12 July 2016 https://epthinktank.eu/2016/07/12/radic ... ds-matter/

[3] Association of Jewish Organizations and communities of Ukraine http://www.vaadua.org/elektronnyy-infor ... nshinstv-v

[4] A significant portion of these incidents is highlighted in: Гриценко А. «Зиг хайль, смерть п..рам»// UPDATE. 22 марта 2018 http://update.com.ua/istorii_tag924/zig ... goda_n3948

[5] Support of political parties and leaders: February 2018// Kyiv international institute of sociology. March 19, 2018. http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=rus&cat=re ... page=1&t=2

[6] The national program of Right Sector: https://pravyysektor.info/novyny/progra ... tverdzheno

[7] Likhachev V. The “Right Sector” and others: The behavior and role of radical nationalists in the Ukrainian political crisis of late 2013 – early 2014// Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Volume 48, Issues 2–3, June–September 2015. P. 257-271; Likhachev V. The Far Right in the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine – Russie.Nei.Visions, No 95, Ifri, July 2016 https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/file ... _final.pdf

[8] “Люди, які вразили Україну,” [“People who amazed Ukraine”], TCН, 2014 http://tsn.ua/special-projects/people2014/

[9] “Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict,” BBC News, 13 December 2014 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30414955


© 2018 Freedom House

Last edited by JackRiddler on Sun Jun 10, 2018 10:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby American Dream » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:53 pm

There are always "true facts" about various political entities that might be characterized as bad actors. In a certain limited way, this sort of discourse is valid- and important. More to the point for me is fostering social praxis that rather than invisibilizing/ignoring Capitalism as such, the State as such, fosters the building of social movements based in a critique of top-down power generally, tempered with the recognition that we do need organization and sometimes even leaders.

So there is definitely life beyond Coke vs. Pepsi.
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Re: Kiev Regime Discredits Itself for All Time

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:13 pm

Like they have to ask the question in the headline.

Anyway, from John McCain Street, another charm offensive from the Nazi-allied Kiev regime.


https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/u ... ine-corbyn

www.newstatesman.com

Is the “deep state” trying to undermine Corbyn?

That weekend break in Dnipropetrovsk is off. I have been banned from entering Ukraine. I learned of this edict via the Mail on Sunday, naturally. I was unlikely to be appraised any other way, since I have never sought to go to Ukraine in my life. Doubtless frustrated at being unable to turn down a visa application they were never going to receive, the Kiev authorities simply issued a ban anyway – just in case, as it were.

Being prohibited from setting foot in Ukraine will not trouble me particularly. Unlike, for example, Donald Trump’s disgraced campaign manager Paul Manafort, I do not need the assistance of an unwitting Ukrainian hairdresser to conduct my tax affairs. Nor was I planning a political visit to a country where the parliamentary speaker is a Hitler admirer and pogromists and Nazi collaborators are national heroes – a place where as much as a favourable mention of the Red Army’s wartime record risks prosecution.

As for Ukrainian state security service the SBU, its only other claim to distinction this year has been to fake the murder of a journalist, to the distress of his wife and friends, before revealing that he was alive and well a day later. So, no, visiting a land where the morality of the brownshirts meets the methods of the Keystone Cops was not on my to-do list. I may as well be barred from eating celery or listening to the Eagles.

What prompted my appearance on what looks like a British blacklist-of-one maintained by the super-corrupt Poroshenko government? Ostensibly, a speech I made more than four years ago protesting the takeover of Ukraine by ultra-nationalists. So the SBU has not moved fast, but what with deaths to stage, ministerial mobsters to protect, not to mention munificent hairdressers to keep an eye on, it has had other things to do.

The SBU claim is that I am part of “Putin’s global propaganda network”. For the record (again) I am no admirer of the Putin regime. Those charmed by its authoritarian conservative nationalism are found on the alarmingly well-populated authoritarian conservative nationalist wing of contemporary politics. However, I empathise with those millions of ex-Soviet citizens who found themselves in the “wrong” country when internal boundaries became state frontiers after the dissolution of the USSR and who have since had to live under regimes they didn’t want and that often don’t want them either. Those who don’t understand that tragedy will always be at a loss to explain Putin’s popularity in Russia.

Doubtless the Mail on Sunday’s interest in this arcana was stimulated by the revelation that I have not been issued with a parliamentary security pass nearly a year after applying for one. Not that such a pass has been denied either – the application has been met with stony silence from those who process such things. Now, I would like to go to the House of Commons more than I want to go to Ukraine, but the inconvenience is only that. My role in Jeremy Corbyn’s team is advisory, and advice can be tendered from almost anywhere. But the story of the pass-that-isn’t fits snugly into the endless agenda of attacks on the Labour leadership.

Thus, the news that I have no Commons security clearance was followed immediately by “revelations” that I have presided at anti-war meetings and made speeches criticising Nato. Pity the poor trainee spook trawling through decades of Stop the War rally videos in the service of the next Mail exclusive. The charge sheet rolls on. I am accused (accurately) of having said that Russia’s intervention in the Middle East was “miniscule compared with the serial and disastrous interventions of the Western powers”. Hello? Has someone missed the last 15 years – the last 250 in fact? There are two issues of substance in all of this. The first is that the establishment at home and abroad deplore Labour’s approach to foreign policy more than anything else. They fear the popularity of Corbyn’s opposition to war, backing for global human rights and support for the Palestinian cause and their loss of control over the international narrative. The powers-that-be can perhaps live with a renationalised water industry but not, it seems, with any challenge to their aggressive capacities, repeatedly deployed in disastrous wars, and their decaying Cold War world view.

The second is the manoeuvrings of what is now called the “deep state”. Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail’s sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the SBU. Yes, they got a copy of an SBU letter allegedly banning me back in June, although it is dated 14 September and does not mention me anyway. Don’t publish what you can’t read guys!

Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows? We are often told that the days of secret state political chicanery are long past and we must hope so. But sometimes you have to wonder – this curiously timed episode seems less rooted in a Kiev security scare than in a political stunt closer to home.

My trouble is that I will have to phone in my advice for now. Senior parliamentary sources tell the Mail – they’re not speaking to me, by the way – that I have “vetting problems”. Still, I am not despairing – they may yet prove speedier than the SBU. And this much I know: the millions of people headed by Corbyn who were right on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan when the elite, the security services included, were wrong, are near to office – in significant part because of those views. Britain could soon have an anti-war government. Vet that, comrades.

This article first appeared in the 21 September 2018 issue of the New Statesman, Corbyn’s next war
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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