OBVIOUS LIES
As someone with little understanding of the region, beyond the occasional news article and reading Applebaum's excellent Red Famine, I’ve been trying to make sense of the situation in Ukraine for about a month now. There's a lot to wrap one’s head around.
Before I even went looking, given the state of the conflict and the aggressive propagandizing on all sides, what seemed most obvious was that there's very little reliable information getting through. Also obvious was that too much of what’s on social media or our favourite news channels simply did not happen, was entirely staged from the start, reframed after the fact, or remains otherwise perfectly unverifiable.
Perhaps worse than that, plenty of news agencies continue to amplify "experts" who don't acknowledge their conflicts of interest. For example, a "retired general" or "former minister of defence" somehow forgets to mention that they now work on behalf of (or have huge sums invested in) weapons manufacturers. Of course, this is so normal at this point, particularly on all big US media outlets, that no one seems to notice or care. Still, they sit there and talk about how anti-tank rockets and drones are the only thing keeping Russian invaders from destroying all of the free world, while neglecting to at least provide the caveat that this opinion rests alongside their direct involvement in delivering $50 million dollars in government contracts to AeroVironment, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, or Raytheon. (I can't count how many times I've heard and read enthusiastic news reports and magazine articles in recent weeks about mini suicide drones or Javelin missiles. Both are certain to feature in the next Netflix hit.)
All of this is to say that it's rough out there in the information jungle. Still, I don’t think any of this can be ignored. At the very least, even disregarding all the death and the humanitarian crisis unfolding, what’s currently taking place is arguably one of the most strategically significant events of our time. I mean, is there anyone who would deny that degrading Russia's military, entire upper class, and overall standing on the world stage (to put it on par with somewhere like Iran) has nearly as much impact on China? As such, it feels like we need to up our media literacy game. At the very least, I think we have to accept that there can be no certainty about almost any aspect of any story on offer. From there, if any understanding is going to happen we have to figure out how to verify what we're getting or otherwise work around the noise.
So, what can we know about the situation and how? Well, I feel like the best opportunity for making sense of things is to look at past events and reporting, prior to the most vigorous information management of the last few months. Doing this simplest bit, reading everything I could find in popular media about this conflict and its origins, has made something obvious: it isn't a few minor details that have been left out or turned on their head but, instead, totally ridiculous are the most commonly heard and essential elements about the current conflict.
Three critical but laughably untenable assertions are: that Russia’s invasion was entirely “unprovoked”; that eastern separatists are “Russian insurgents [or militants or agents]” or are “taking orders from Moscow [or the Kremlin or Putin]”; and that Ukraine’s well-documented “Nazi [or fascism or white supremacy] problem” is “nothing more than Russian propaganda [or little different than the situation in Norway or New Zealand].”
The lies paired with the non-disclosure reveals the journalists and media outlets involved as no better than the street hustler who dazzles you with a survey, souvenir, or magic trick while his friend picks your pocket. How is it otherwise?
Most troubling is how obvious and intentionally misleading all of it is. Like, if we accept these proposals as premise for the conflict there is, clearly and absolutely, nothing we will not swallow. But if I can see through some of this – despite all my sympathy and empathy being with the Ukrainian people (a population already systematically exterminated by Stalin), my strong Gessen-informed bias against Putin and all of the leadership under him, and also all of my pro-Western, English-speaking blindspots – then surely anyone can. And, I think, together we must.
Below are what I believe to be essential missing details, following a loose chronology of recent events.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
It’s very hard to land at a starting place with this conflict. There’s more critical context everywhere you look, but one has to start someplace. Unanimous seems to be the view that the most significant flashpoint of the last decade in Ukraine occurred in late November of 2013. After failing to sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, preferring instead to strengthen ties with Russia, the Yanukovych government sparked what would become the Euromaidan protest. (And almost immediately Republican senator John McCain was there on the ground offering words of support to anti-government protesters.) After months of protest, February of 2014 saw what Russia and many on the political Left considered a US-sponsored and far-right extremist revolution, climaxing with the overthrow of the democratically elected government. Director Oliver Stone famously alleged as much at the time and then followed up with a documentary film two years later. His work was considered by some to offer nothing more than vulgar anti-American, pro-Russian disinformation.
There’s a recent piece in Canadian Dimension magazine, from January of 2022, titled "The hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine-Russia conflict." What's offered there seems to corroborate Stone's assessment, at least in part. It goes further as well. The article's author, a University of Ottawa professor, Dr. Katchanovski, spells out how, contrary to the official narrative, it wasn’t pro-Russian government snipers or riot cops that shot and killed Maidan protesters in what became known as the Maidan massacre (the event within the event that turned the tide and global opinion against the sitting government.) Instead, he shows how the shootings were carried out by foreign snipers on orders from Maidan leaders convinced that Western nations would no longer recognize the legitimacy of the Yanukovych government if enough peaceful protesters were killed. The author asserts that, eight years later, there’s overwhelming first-person testimony, forensic evidence, and expert opinion (and, at this point, also court cases and academic papers providing analysis all of the above) to back up this version of events. Videos from the BBC, Belgium’s VRT, Ukraine’s ICTV, and many more are said to show protesters and police alike pointing out snipers in the Hotel Ukraina. We’re told investigations demonstrate shooters attacked from the Maidan protester-controlled hotel and, more, at least one sniper operating out of a room known to be occupied by a leader of Svoboda – a political party which most consider to be ultra-nationalist and, at least in effect, neo-Nazi.
Now, I'm not telling you what to think, or even taking a side myself (I haven't waded through hundreds of hours of evidence), I'm only noticing how different and substantive these accounts are compared to the official narrative. From there I realize how each version frames the current conflict very differently, which makes sorting out fact from fiction on this point alone feel essential.
UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM
However it happened, just two days after Yanukovych fled, the first legislative move of Parliament was a vote to repeal his government’s language law (often referred to as the 'Kolesnychenko-Kivalov language bill.') Doing so makes this language issue seem a top priority to those now calling the shots. (They didn't bring in novel election transparency or universal basic income...) So, what was the bill? As far as I can tell, the bill was intended to give the country’s minority languages not status on par with Ukrainian, as national languages, but merely acknowledging them as ‘regional languages.’ Approximately 18 languages were included, but by far the most dominant was Russian. The law would have made these minor regional languages available for use within government institutions, courts, and schools in those places where minorities exceeded 10% of the population. Of course, in many parts of the south and east of Ukraine native Russian-speakers make up more than 70% of the population. Dominant in some smaller communities are Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Moldovan, and Tartar languages. In fact, and importantly, only something like 65-70% of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian their native tongue, while just 50% speak it at home as their preferred language. Still, the law offended nationalists who said it threatened to divide and destroy the nation.
Coming from Canada, this assertion seems insane to me and begins to frame this whole thing in a certain light. Of course, the situation here is very different from Ukraine; however, even in the province of Quebec only 80% of the population speaks French as their native language. That’s pretty similar to the status of the Russian language in Crimea and Donetsk. And it’s inconceivable to me that the federal government would suddenly decide French was not to be spoken at school or suggest the country was somehow made lesser by encouraging folks to speak their mother tongue or by asserting a multilingual status. But maybe that's just me...
Worried about the sudden multi-dimensional threat – including not only what it saw as an imminent danger to ethnic Russians, Russian-speakers, and allies but also its essential, centuries-old naval base at Sevastopol – Russia responded to the revolution by sending troops in to control key sites on the Crimean peninsula. (Crimea is its own messy issue. Of note is that in 1954 Crimea was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; with the collapse of the USSR, the independence of Ukraine, and after a referendum on the question in 1991, the peninsula declared status as an autonomous republic, sovereign within Ukraine. But it’s complicated…) On March 18th of 2014, Crimea was formally and very controversially annexed by Russia.
Violent repressions in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, and Odessa followed. There were even reports of massacres in the cities of Mariupol and Odessa. In Odessa, Western media typically reported the events of May 2nd as something like 'football fans' fighting with 'pro-Russian militants.' What the reporting commonly avoided mentioning was that these attacks were more like a one-sided progrom, with roughly 2,000 'pro-Maidan' (or 'pro-unity') nationalists attacking maybe 300 hundred Russian-speakers (or the 'anti-Maidan', 'pro-federalism' group). Also not always fully explained was that those fleeing the much larger mob ran into the near-by Trade Union building, which then had its exits blocked as the building was set on fire. The 2016 investigation of these events by the UN Human Rights office is revealing. It found that:
On 2 May 2014 in Odesa, 48 people died as a result of clashes between ‘pro-unity’ and ‘pro-federalism’ groups. Deliberate inaction in the face of the violence, ill-preparedness or negligence on the part of various authorities contributed to this death toll. First, the police did not intervene to prevent or stop the violence at Kulykove Pole square. Then the fire brigade, which is located very close to the House of Trade Unions where many protestors suffocated to death, received repeated urgent calls for intervention but responded with a fatal delay of 45 minutes.
While the ‘pro-unity’ and ‘pro-federalism’ groups both played a part in the escalation of violence, the subsequent criminal prosecutions for hooliganism or public disorder appear to have been initiated in a partial fashion. Only activists from the ‘pro-federalism’ camp have been prosecuted so far, while the majority of victims were supporters of ‘pro-federalism’ movement. Despite a large number of deaths during the 2 May 2014 violence, the trial of the only person to be accused of an act of killing in the city centre has not yet started. It is persistently transferred from one court to another court in Odesa. Judges have refused to try the accused, reportedly due to pressure from the ‘pro-unity’ camp.
OHCHR remains concerned that to date, the investigations into the violence have been affected by systemic institutional deficiencies and characterized by procedural irregularities, which appear to indicate an unwillingness to genuinely investigate and prosecute those responsible. There has also been direct and indirect political interference into the investigations, consisting of deliberate acts leading to the obstruction of, and the delay in, the judicial proceedings.
Odessa, 2014: (Top) Anti-Maidan ('pro-federalism') protesters at the Odessa Trade Union building. (Bottom) Pro-Maidan ('pro-unity') counterprotest.
As for to the Mariupol massacre, some referred to the event as “clashes between separatists and Ukrainian government forces.” Others noted that the ultra-nationalist, fascist militias composing Ukraine’s “volunteer National Guard” were at war with locals and even local police, with orders to “not take anyone alive.” In fact, Ukrainian navy veteran and resident of Mariupol, Zorin Nicolaivitch, explained that there was no surprise the violence arrived when it did, coinciding with the anniversary of Russian victory over Nazi Germany – a much revered celebration in the Russian-speaking half of Ukraine. “This is not about 2014 in Ukraine, this is taking us back to Berlin in 1945, that is what they want to avenge, the defeat of their Nazi masters,” insisted Nicolaivitch.
Mariupol, 2014: Ukrainian "anti-terrorist" forces attacked the police headquarters. After their defeat, locals rejoiced by climbing their abandoned armoured vehicle.
Along with the violence, the language issue came up in the EU Parliament later in the year. There, international condemnations arrived against what was starting to be seen as a ban on languages other than Ukrainian. The President of the Federation of Greek Associations in Ukraine, suggested the language ban was an act of extremism, “a direct violation of human rights and the ‘privilege’ of a totalitarian regime.” The Hungarian government expressed “great concern at attacks on members of the Hungarian minority.” Also reported was a personal account by a local of the growing climate of fear, including threats and physical violence.
As a result of these repressions, not only did 730,000 Ukrainians flee to Russia and another 117,000 become internally displaced (according to the UNHCR) but entire battalions of Russian-speaking members of Ukraine’s armed forces fled to the other side of what was becoming a broader conflict, one creeping ever-closer to a civil war. Given the significant unrest in the Donbas and the desire of the world community to see the de-escalation of violence, an agreement was arrived at in Geneva. Great idea. Terrible idea: the agreement was negotiated between the US, EU, Russia, and Ukraine but locals weren’t invited and had no say. As a result, the deal was rejected by many locals and their leadership who insisted neither the Ukrainian nor Russian governments represent them or their interests. They declared no intention of abiding by an agreement they were not party to.
To me, expecting and demanding to be at the table to determine your own course doesn’t seem so radical. And, given their rejection of what Russia agreed to, with what were considered by the West to be substantial concessions to Russia, the whole thing looks far less like a “Russian-backed insurgency” or the actions of “Russian separatists”, as is typically claimed. Yes, certainly a pro-Russian (or perhaps better: ‘not anti-Russian’) movement is far better for Russia than an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian one. For sure. But that’s nothing like the whole story.
This rejection of the agreement resulted in locals holding their own referenda in May of 2014. As they did so, the government of Ukraine launched “anti-terrorist operations” to halt them. According to The Guardian:
With heavily armed men keeping watch, ambiguous wording on the ballot slip and a bungled Ukrainian attempt to stop voting in one town that ended with one dead, it was clear that this was no ordinary referendum. … There was a further bloody incident on Sunday as a detachment of Ukraine's National Guard arrived in the town of Krasnoarmeisk. According to witnesses, they were angrily accosted by unarmed locals and subsequently opened fire, killing one and wounding two. The authorities in Kyiv have said these are "anti-terrorist operations", but they have resulted in a number of deaths, most recently in the city of Mariupol on Friday when at least seven people died as Ukrainian forces entered the city.
Also significant (and supporting my assessment that locals were not installed by or taking orders from Moscow) is that Vladimir Putin's personal request of these so-called pro-Russians was rejected. Putin wanted folks in the Donbas to postpone their vote and any talk of referenda, along with relaxing the violence, to better engender an atmosphere for dialogue. Not only was this recommendation rejected by vocal parties in the Donbas but their attempt at a vote was reciprocally rejected by critical voices in the EU.
All of the above makes me feel the image I’ve been given of the region’s key actors being installed by or merely subservient to Moscow is less than accurate. Even a Time Magazine article from April of 2014 spelled out how “Kiev’s cries of a separatist insurgency fueled with money, weapons and troops from the Russian government look out of sync with the reality…” So, what other evidence is there? What do we know about sentiment on the ground and the actual intentions behind the proposed votes?
STAY OR GO?
There are plenty of NGO and media reports from the time that referred to the referenda as locals not seeking separation from Ukraine but only “a greater degree of autonomy.” Moreover, as reported in The Guardian then, there were also a bunch of polls done from organizations within and outside of Ukraine. Of course, you can’t blindly trust polls but with a little context and enough of them from different sources they do paint a picture. That picture is one of strong support among locals for regional autonomy within Ukraine.
Polling from the local Donetsk Institute for Social Research and Political Analysis, for one example, found that the smallest group, just 5%, wanted Donetsk to become its own independent state; 18% polled opposed any changes; 27% wanted to join Russia in some unspecified form; while the largest cohort, 47%, favoured federalization or greater economic independence from Kyiv. Further polling conducted by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology (a Ukrainian-American research group that belongs to the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research) showed only 10% supported the present structure without changes; 27% favoured secession from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation in some manner; 38% were in support of transforming Ukraine into a federation; and 41% of respondents wanted the decentralization of Ukraine, with powers transferred to oblasts, but Ukraine remaining a unified state.
Pew Research Centre conducted a similar survey and found 14% of all Ukrainians across the country favoured the idea of Kyiv allowing regions to secede, while 77% wished for Ukraine and its regions to remain united. Even narrowed to Russian-speakers in the east of the country, 15% were unsure, 27% wished regions to be permitted to secede, and 58% said they supported the current unification. Another poll by Baltic Surveys and the Gallup Organization (for the International Republican Institute and funded by the US Agency for International Development) found around 55% in the south and east of the country were unhappy with the status quo, with only a minority keen to keep Ukraine a unitary nation.
Sure, all of these polls show some desire among those in the region to disrupt the way things have been, but no part of that feels to me like the existential threat it's typically framed as. Not only did the self-proclaimed separatist leadership rejected the pro-Russian terms of the Geneva agreement and refused Putin’s demands withhold their vote, but polling doesn’t show so much as 30% of folks in the region supporting separation from Ukraine or becoming a federated state of Russia.
Again, I can’t help but think of Canada. Yes, of course there are tremendous differences. Still, insisting Ukraine’s eastern regions are “pro-Russian” or “pro-Putin” seems obviously silly; something like calling French-speaking parts of Canada “pro-France” or “pro-Macron”. Sure, you could make an argument about these people being pro-Russian in all kinds of ways but these Ukrainians seem, from where I’m sitting, like Russian-speakers who don’t inherently despise Russia and are skeptical of the hardcore, history-rewriting narrative of the country's extreme nationalists. As someone from Vancouver, this is perfectly relatable. I want neither Liberals or Conservatives running Canada but no other party will ever get elected and every election is over before polling stations out West are even closed.
We’ve also had our own separatist referenda here in Canada, first in 1980 and then again in 1995. The '95 Quebec referendum resulted in 49.4% voting ‘yes’ to a proposal for that province to proclaim sovereignty and become its own independent nation. And they did so with an incredible turn-out of 93% of eligible voters. The world did not end. Canada survived. And today there remains a strong Québécois autonomism movement, such as expressed by the Coalition Avenir Québec, which does not seek full Quebec independence but the defence of its cultural and political specificity within Canada and the broadening of Quebec's powers and autonomy. And, of course, this is similar to the aims of many First Nations here in Canada, as well. As a result, and as it has always been, Canada is merely more messy and interesting than otherwise – a continuous complex negotiation toward cooperation rather than a make-believe or enforced homogeneity.
From what I’ve read, the situation in the Donbas feels less like Russia trying to carve up bits of Ukraine, with a westward eye, and more like people who aren’t ultra-nationalists saying ‘Hey, we’re also Ukrainian.’ None of this feels so radical, impractical, or insurmountable, unless you’re viewing it from the all-or-nothing vantage of a nationalist.
THE MINSKS
From what I can tell, it was the aforementioned losses of tremendous numbers of vital Russian-speaking troops from the Ukrainian military that resulted in Kyiv relenting and signing on to what are known as the Minsk Agreements. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was then, as now, monitoring the situation, particularly the ceasefire and demilitarization requirements. But immediately after signing the first Minsk Agreement, in September of 2014, along with continuous ceasefire violations and regular intense shelling, Ukrainian President Poroshenko launched further "anti-terrorist operations" in the Donbas region.
Poroshenko’s terrible losses during this incursion forced his government to submit to the second Minsk Agreement, in February of 2015. Minsk II required constitutional reform in Ukraine – a key element of which was the decentralization of the country, with special status and local self-governance given to the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Perfectly clear within the agreement was the requirement that Kyiv negotiate with regional authorities, providing autonomy within but not separation from Ukraine. (Once again, not entirely unlike Quebec or First Nations and Canada.)
However, none of this happened. Radical ultra-nationalists leading paramilitary units in the region, such as notorious fascist Dmytro Yarosh and his Right Sector unit, declared from the start that the Minsk Agreements were contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. As such, they proclaimed their obligation to continue fighting “until complete liberation of Ukrainian lands from Russian occupants”, promising “death to Russian terrorist-occupiers.” And, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, such views won Yarosh appointment to a key role as advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army.
These kinds of sentiments are still pervasive at the highest levels today. In 2019, when Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority of the vote he sought to implement Minsk II. His inaugural address proclaimed that he was "not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings," and was "prepared to give up my own position – so long as peace arrives." Dmytro Yarosh, now commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, responded that Zelensky would not lose his popularity or position if he negotiated with Russia but instead, "He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War." Nationalist Svoboda party member Yuriy Syrotyuk said of this decision that Zelenskiy had "committed treason." Leader of the far-right National Corps, Andriy Biletsky, agreed and explained that his new president "chose shame and now he will get war too."
Similarly, prior to the recent Russian invasion, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said "The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction. When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel, and the German and the French watched, it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement those documents." The same fellow said on January 31st of 2022, on the eve of Russian invasion, that the decision of Canada, Australia, Britain, German, and the US to pull diplomats from Kyiv was inappropriate because, by his determination, the amassing of 130,000 Russian troops on the Ukraine border was not a real or significant threat. This seems to be the nationalist mindframe: dialogue and compromise are the real menace, not militarism and war...
PROMOTING THE RIGHT
To compensate for their self-induced deflation of Ukraine’s armed forces, the government promoted increasing numbers of paramilitary militias, dozens of privately funded volunteer battalions (sometimes even called "reprisal battalions", which seems a little too on the nose), to form the country’s National Guard. The World Socialist Web Site reported at that time how the Ukrainian army formally expressed appreciation for the outstanding contributions of volunteer battalions toward the defense of Ukraine; as well as the public declaration by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence that Colonel-General Muschenko and Dmitri Yarosh that both had agreed to “cooperation between the Right Sector and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Later it was reported that by 2020 these militias made up roughly 40% of Ukraine’s armed forces, numbering at least 100,000 men. (For scale, Canada’s regular troops sit at something like 68,000 and its reserves around 27,000.) Too, these units were increasingly financed and armed by NATO countries, including Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and primarily trained for urban warfare and the patrolling of key cities such as Odessa, Mariupol, Kharkov, and Kyiv.
The ideology of these militias, now officially the country’s National Guard, is terrifying. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, the German government-funded Counter Extremism Project, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and others have all been warning us for nearly a decade about Ukraine becoming a global hot-spot and training ground for violent, anti-Semitic, white supremacy. The situation is so bad and so well understood that, as reported in popular media, when seeking to fund and arm Ukraine, the United States Congress was forced to amend its rules to allow for direct support of neo-fascists. There was not a threat of resources potentially ending up in the hands of anti-Communists (who also happen to be far-right, ethno-nationalist extremists) but these folks were the intended beneficiaries. In fact, though our own media insists that the label "Nazis" or "neo-Nazis" for any of these groups is pure Russian propaganda, it’s the view of many that these militias are less like a branch of the Ukrainian military and more like the anti-Semitic, white supremacist analog to ISIS. What we know is that, being ultra-nationalist, these individuals and groups in Ukraine are not Nazis insofar as they would prefer their totalitarian, xenophobic ethno-nationalism (with strong anti-Semitic and homophobic overtones) to have a uniquely Ukrainian flavour and not be tainted with German identification. True. Fine. Still, it's hard not to notice all of the inspiration nationalists get from Nazis and their collaborators as well as their public celebration of these folks (with flags, banners, statues, and paintings of these people adorning everything from the offices of government officials to public parks and sports fields.
We’ve all heard about the Azov Battalion at this point. The unit officially denies any allegation they are inspired by Nazi ideology or that they promote anything of the sort. And without any context the press within NATO nations presently offer similar denials. But what do we know? The original head of Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, wrote his History thesis on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, that WWII ultra-nationalist paramilitary unit who’s political leadership was headed by Stepan Bandera (the Nazi collaborator who helped organize Ukrainian nationalism around a hatred of ethnic Russians, Poles, and Jews – and, for his efforts, became a national hero with streets and monuments all over the country baring his name.) So inspired, Biletsky went on to found and lead not one but two radical far-right neo-Nazi political parties: Patriots of Ukraine (Патріо́т Украї́ни), renamed National Corps (Національний корпус) in 2016, and the Social-National Assembly (SNA). In the 2013 Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, Anton Shekhovtsov explains that:
Interestingly, 'street combat movements' like the SNA no longer focus on ethnic issues: in contrast to the older Ukrainian far right, the new groups are, first and foremost, racist movements. Their disregard for the perceived 'Ukrainian versus Russian' ethno-cultural cleavage allows them to gain support from many 'white' ultra-nationalists. Once drawn to these movements, 'white racists' also contribute to the organizational efficiency of the Svoboda party, which is, to reiterate, considered the only representative of 'white racism' in the Ukrainian electoral sphere. (p. 256)
Andriy Biletsky, this visionary of modern Ukrainian nationalism and avowed white supremacist, famously wrote that Ukraine’s “historic mission” was to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival.” (This kind of talk sounds disturbingly familiar if you've ever consumed any ISIS propaganda.) All of the above is easily discoverable and well-understood. Still, the denials persist. Folks demand modern Ukrainian nationalism either has no such association or that any link is ancient history and no longer relevant.
The same apologists who would reject any parallels or connections (such as FactCheck.org) will argue it was the Azov battalion’s success winning back the city of Mariupol from Russian terrorists in 2014 that made Biletsky and his battalion national heroes, not their violent and racist ethno-nationalist extremism. I mean, well, perhaps. Still, it seems clear that, at the very least, the West has materially supported and emboldened militias like Azov and many others. And these same people, often under the same flags and insignia, are happily accepting heavy weapon systems from Canada and every one of our allies as they form an essential fighting force in the current war. We do so knowing these groups don't merely have bad ideas and slogans but are guilty of abductions, violent attacks, and torture against not just their federalist/separatist neighbours but journalists, anti-war activists, the LGBTQ community, and even members of International Women’s Day marches. The situation is so bad that Amnesty International has warned several times that the Ukrainian state is losing its monopoly on violence. They tell us that, “Given the police’s repeated inaction over such attacks, it is no surprise that members of Ukrainian far-right groups take full advantage of their impunity – repeatedly attacking individuals and groups whose views or identity they dislike.” Crimes including the rape, torture, and massacre of Ukrainian civilians are also documented. Similarly well-documented are these groups' popular training camps for kids.
So, were Odessa-born Russian-speaking opponents to the Maidan ambushed and burned alive in 2015 by right-wing nationalists as police looked on? Seems like it. Did local far-right thugs engage in a full-on pogrom against regional Roma in 2018 – and did nobody have a problem with that until promotional videos of these events went viral on social media? Seems like it. Have self-described ultra-nationalist, gay-bashing, neo-fascists (with the visible tattoos to prove it) been enlisting children into their ranks for years, training and brainwashing them in camps all over Ukraine? And are there whole mini-documentary news reports about this? There does seem to be. And have human rights organizations been rightfully freaking out about and calling attention to all of this and more not in the distant past but recently? Why, yes.
As a result of all of this it seems very hard to understand how, as many presently assert, all of the politics and ideology on the ground could be remarkably different just months (not generations) later. The kind of worldview and extremism I highlight above does appear to be animating far too many of the folks we've been so enthusiastically backing from 2014 through to the present. (But I suppose we support ISIS in Syria, so...)
FURTHER PROVOCATIONS AND THE MARCH TO WAR
Despite what Biden or the mediasphere has to say, current Russian aggression was not "unprovoked." From a Russian vantage point, their amassing of troops on the Ukrainian border was an obvious reaction to what they saw as the coordinated attempt of Zelensky and Biden administrations to upset the fragile situation in eastern Ukraine. That doesn't appear ridiculous. In September of 2020, NATO published that, "President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO." This was a move always understood to be maximally provocative to Russia. But this wasn't isolated. As this was happening, Azerbaijan (with the assistance of NATO member Turkey) was finishing mopping up Russia’s ally Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh. That war, ending on November 10th, 2020, demonstrated for the world the limits of Russia’s capabilities – highlighting both the vulnerability of Russian equipment to NATO drones and also demonstrating Russia’s unwillingness to become involved in further serious conflicts. This revelation prompted the Atlantic Council, that notoriously hawkish Washington think-tank, to insist continued talks in eastern Ukraine were futile and that there were suddenly options available for a much-preferred military resolution, including increasing military assistance to Ukraine by $500,000,000 per year. So not only had Ukraine's Russia-friendly government been overthrown but their military almost tripled in size in just a few years, their defence budget doubled from 3% to 6% of GDP, all while huge sums (along with the modern systems they would buy) were pouring in from the US and her friends.
Shortly after, on February 1st, 2021, President Zelensky then gave an interview on American television expressing, once again, Ukraine’s eagerness to acquire NATO membership. This was followed just weeks later, on February 16th, by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister publishing a piece on the Atlantic Council’s website entitled Why is Ukraine still not in NATO? And then on March 5th the Atlantic Council presented the Biden administration a list of recommendations on Ukraine, including granting them special status as a “major non-NATO ally” intended to force Russian capitulation or otherwise trigger a strategy for NATO membership. President Zelensky followed this by signing a National Security and Defense Council decree on March 24th, establishing the intention to retake Crimea (or, rather, “implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration of the peninsula.”)
None of the above was non-provocation or de-escalation but the steady march away from Minsk (which was fiercely opposed by the Ukrainian government and nationalists all along) and toward full-blown conflict with Russia. So it's hard to see how the above wasn't intended to provoke. It's also hard to see, in this light, how the current conflict wasn't years in the works.
TO THE PRESENT
As we know, everything came to a head last month. On the 7th of February, 2022 during his visit to Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. This was reported in the Ukrainian press as:
French President Emmanuel Macron tried to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold direct talks with Russian-controlled militants, an idea that would effectively echo the Russian-promoted fake narrative of a 'civil war' in Ukraine. ... German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who traveled to Kyiv on Feb. 14, tried to talk Zelensky into granting Russian-occupied regions autonomy, which is one of the key demands made by the Kremlin.
To my eye, given what I've learned about this conflict and spelled out above, statements about "Russian-controlled militants", "Russian-promoted fake narrative of a 'civil war'", and "one of the key demands made by the Kremlin" expose this take as a clear example of disinformation.
Ukrainian preparations in the south and east continued, and as they did the Russian Parliament became increasingly agitated. On February 15th they asked Putin to recognize the independence of the two republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Putin initially refused, noting that while Russians were sympathetic to those in the region their problems had to be resolved by observing the Minsk Agreements. The following day, Ukrainian forces ramped up their shelling of the Donbas, as reported by OSCE observers. Neither the EU, NATO, nor the international press had much to say about Ukrainian forces shelling cities and towns full of Ukrainians.
On February 17th, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, the US Secretary of State said Russia "plans to manufacture a pretext" for an attack on Ukraine. President Biden announced a Russian attack on Ukraine was imminent. But why were these men so certain? The announcement was deemed to be out-of-the-blue and wrong, silly even, by virtually everyone. It's almost like the US was sure that convincing Ukraine it didn't need to observe Minsk, offering them all the moral support and arms they like, failing to condemn the escalation of attacks and unrelenting shelling (as above, more than 25/hour, 600+ internationally-observed explosions in just one day), along with mobilizations promising to push Russia out of Crimea would cause Russia to intervene.
The bombardments continued and on February 23rd the two self-proclaimed eastern republics formally asked for military assistance from Russia. The following day Putin used ‘Article 51’ of the UN Charter to provide military assistance under the framework of a friendly defensive alliance. But, to make Russian assistance appear illegal in the eyes of the public, our own media made it seem like Ukrainian forces hadn’t been attacking the Donbas this whole time, hadn’t been preparing for a major offensive for years, and didn’t officially launch that offensive against their own people a week earlier.
On February 24th, Vladimir Putin deepened the conflict by sending in the troops he'd been amassing at the border. He stated the primary objectives of his invasion were to "demilitarize" and "denazify." To me, however inappropriate it was and how critical you wish to be of Putin or Russia, it’s hard to see how both of these aims are not critical to future peace (or at least not total chaos) in the country. Notice these are effectively the obligations built into Minsk and the recommendation of nearly every human rights organization on the planet. And then notice that every NATO leader and virtually everyone in the media simultaneously rolled their eyes and guffawed at the mere suggestion. The lunchrooms and dinner tables of the West rang out with laughter about Putin and his talk of Ukrainian Nazis. And then, we might note, rather than requiring the upholding of Minsk, pushing for demilitarization of the region, or helping ease the increasingly ugly nationalistic tone, all of NATO has decided that what needs to happen is to send every weapon system we have to Ukraine and as quickly as possible.
The arguments against arming Ukraine were clear back in 2015. Forceful opinion came from folks such as: Thomas Graham (former senior director for Russia at the National Security Council), Eugene Rumer (former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council), Jeremy Shapiro (Brookings fellow and former member of the State Department’s policy and planning staff), Andrew Weiss (vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment and a former staff member at the National Security Council), and Micah Zenko (from the Council on Foreign Relations), among many others. Together they claimed that supporting Ukraine with arms shipments was likely to do little more than prolong instability, suffering, and violence, strengthen extremist militias and promote reprisal attacks, all with the additional perk of pushing NATO into what could only be a regrettable conflict with Russia. It's not clear to me what changed, making shipments of guns, anti-tank weapons, and long-range artillery an obvious strategy for lasting peace. But here we are.
CONTRADICTION AND UNTRUTH
As many have noted by this point, despite all the horror expressed, particularly in the English-speaking world, it's unclear what makes Russia's current involvement in Ukraine so much more egregious than the actions of those who've fueled the conflict in Yemen, considered by many the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Similarly, where are the economy-ending sanctions levied against those who deliberately lied to their citizenry, their allies, and the whole of the international community in order to wage deadly forever-wars across the globe? At the very least, where was the unified international outrage and cooperation against countless and ever-mounting civilian deaths in these places? As ever, the avalanche of contradiction transcends palatable absurdity.
And again, it’s hard to avoid relating the media reporting and popular discourse around all of this to events here in Canada. Our most recent crisis was the Ottawa Trucker Convoy. The government and media framed it as an unprecedented calamity, a nation-wide insurrection and explicit existential threat to no less than our territorial integrity and democracy. They passed the Emergencies Act permitting extraordinary powers on these exact grounds. Not only that but we were told day after day that a single individual holding or expressing a bad idea (at any time past or present) was inexcusable and rendered the whole protest (regardless of any other affiliation or intention) inherently corrupt and indefensible. In fact, so much as a ‘like’ on social media or a $1 donation implicated Canadians as despicable participants in a Kremlin-backed right-wing extremist insurgency. Yes. And from that footing we then pivoted to excitedly sending extremist thugs untold billions and a full complement of high-powered weapons – people who just recently overturned their elected government, spent the last eight years terrorizing and killing their neighbours (for being gay or disloyal to the vision of those seeking ethnic purity.) And to help get us on board, media pundits and government officials alike assured us Ukraine’s well-documented and persistent problem with authoritarian ultra-nationalism is nothing more than a Russian hoax.
This is like-
We're only-
I just-
I don't-
It's-
All I know for sure is that the people and institutions we rely upon for making sense of the world and what is going on around us have no regard whatsoever for uncovering what might be true.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine
"In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia" - The Guardian (2014)
“Why Everything You’ve Read About Ukraine Is Wrong” - Forbes (2014)
"Denying the Far-Right Role in the Ukrainian Revolution" - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (2014)
“In Ukraine, nationalists gain influence - and scrutiny” - Reuters (2014)
"Ukraine crisis: Bloody assault in Mariupol in south-east dashes hopes of avoiding civil war" - Independent (2014) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-bloody-assault-in-mariupol-dashes-hopes-of-avoiding-civil-war-9347972.html
“Ukraine: pro-Russia separatists set for victory in eastern region referendum” - The Guardian (2014) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/11/eastern-ukraine-referendum-donetsk-luhansk
"Ukraine's Azov Regiment Opens Boot Camps For Kids" - Radio Free Europe (2015)
“The Assault on Kiev Pride” The New Yorker (2015)
“The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past” - Foreign Policy (2016)
“Ukrainian Nationalists Stage Torchlit March in Kyiv as New Far-Right Party is Born” - Radio Free Europe (2016) https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-nationalists-torchlight-march-azov-party/28053936.html
“The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda” - The Hill (2017)
"Ukraine's Hyper-Nationalist Military Summer Camps for Kids" - NBC News (2017)
"Ukraine's far-right children's camps: 'I want to bring up a warrior'" - The Guardian (2017)
“Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem” - Reuters (2018)
“After series of attacks, why is the far right ‘granted impunity’?” - Al Jazeera (2018)
“Ukraine: A year after attack on Roma camp in Kyiv, no justice for victims” - Amnesty International (2019) https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/ukraine-a-year-after-attack-on-roma-camp-in-kyiv-no-justice-for-victims/
"'Defend the White Race': American Extremists Being Co-Opted by Ukraine's Far-Right" - Belingcat (2019)
“La situation militaire en Ukraine” - Centre Francais de Recherce sur le Renseignement (2022)
"Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US Off the Hook" - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (2022)
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