By David Shavin
[Print version of this article]
April 23—Those actually concerned about “war crimes” will put a priority upon competent examinations of physical evidence. The waving of a bloody shirt does a great injustice to the victims of an actual war crime. They deserve a serious and early drive for peace, followed by a concerted and sober-eyed investigation. However, those more concerned about waging a propaganda war will rush to judgment, prior to any attempt at credible examinations. Further, those covering up war crimes will display hysteria over any questioning of their “narrative,” meting out immediate “justice” in their righteous fury—as in traditional lynch mobs. There is no attempt to hide the lie. In fact, pushing a lie into people’s faces is a key aspect of this method. The logic of the hostage situation applies—in this case, with the Ukrainian population having been taken hostage, and the world community subjected to blackmail.
However, the flurry of events and charges over the last two months—short of a yet-to-come, competent investigation of actual war crimes—has presented an identifiable, prima facie case of a nasty revival of the “beast-man.” And calling it “radical nationalism” or “neo-Nazism” may be accurate up to a point, but, in a sense, too polite—because it allows people a psychological disconnect. It is insult added to injury to allow the real Nazi horrors of Babi Yar, of the concentration camps, etc., to be merely labeled as something about “history”; and therefore, right or wrong, not something that one has to take seriously. Rather, here, the reality is that you, the reader, have been fed a theatrical series of “narratives,” crafted around your own psychological weak points. (These involve primarily the “buzz” words of “nuclear,” “Nazi,” “motherhood,” and “rape.”)
Do not look to this report for a final adjudication of war crimes. Admittedly, it will be hard to resist certain ugly conclusions. But, presently, that would be a pathetic game about a serious matter.
Several questions worth re-examination in your own quiet moments may arise. For example: Why was not Russia embraced by the West for having departed from communism thirty years ago? Why have such vast sums been spent on expanding the NATO military alliance since then? Why does NATO even exist? What was so threatening about 2013 Ukraine’s decision to work with both Russia and the West, that it required its democratically elected government to be violently overthrown? Who benefits from pitting Ukraine against Russia? What happened to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s massive 2019 electoral mandate to end the rule of billionaire oligarchs and to work with Russia in ending the war in the Donbas? Such questions are not the direct subject of this report, but should naturally arise if it does its job.
There’s also no attempt here to reprise the solid background found in the excellent EIR study from May 16, 2014. [Reprinted in this issue.]
I. What is the Neo-Nazi Problem in Ukraine?
By March 2021, even the pretense that Kyiv respected the Minsk Accords that it had signed was buried. The possibility of Ukraine peacefully reuniting with the Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts, as arranged for by those Accords, was openly renounced. Kyiv announced that only a military solution would work. Readers would spend their time profitably to simply acquaint themselves with the step-by-step process outlined in the Minsk Accords—both the 2014 Minsk Protocol and the 2015 Minsk II—designed to walk both sides back from civil war.
After more than six years of Kyiv’s most cursory lip-service to the Accords, and after thousands of civilian deaths from shelling of the Donbas regions by Ukrainian forces, a new and aggressive military buildup ensued. On Feb. 17, 2022, as reported by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers there, renewed war broke out with Kyiv’s greatly increased artillery shelling. This was one week before Russia’s intervention. Explosions in Donetsk went from one on Feb. 15, to five on the 16th, and 128 on the 17th. In Lugansk, they only quadrupled over those 48 hours. (It turns out that all the “forecasting” in the Fall and Winter, of an impending Russian invasion, had mostly to do with the simple intent to militarily reduce the Donbas.)
Russia, after years of turning down the requests of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics out of respect for Ukraine’s sovereign commitment to the Minsk Accords, officially recognized the two republics and then their appeal for military assistance to save them from Kyiv’s military solution.
Neo-Nazis Threaten Zelenskyy and Hold Ukraine Hostage
Russia’s special military mission, launched Feb. 24, had two announced goals, denazification and the elimination of the massive NATO military buildup. The latter had to do with their repeated calls upon the West to agree in writing to no nuclear warheads five minutes away from Moscow. The former, denazification, had to do with the dangerous hostage situation inside Ukraine. In brief, no one inside Ukraine was being allowed to implement the Minsk Accords, due to the physical and verbal threats and actions of the armed neo-Nazi groups. (The Azov, the Aidar and the Right Sector groupings, e.g., certainly are “extreme nationalists,” but that is a euphemism for those who model themselves upon Hitler’s collaborator, Stepan Bandera, and who adorn themselves with Nazi symbology.)
Aside from arrests of opposition members of parliament and the shutdown of newspapers, radio stations and websites in the Ukrainian democracy, President Zelenskyy himself, early in his administration, was threatened with violence and even assassination should he take one step to implement the peace treaty. Dmytro Yarosh, a co-founder of the Right Sector and the commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, stated publicly, only a week after Zelenskyy’s inauguration: Zelenskyy “simply does not know the price of this world.” Rather, Zelenskyy speaks of securing a peace. And “Zelenskyy said in his inaugural speech that he was ready to lose ratings, popularity, position” for that peace. But, “No, he would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk [a main street of Kyiv] if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution [Maidan] and the War [Donbas].”
Indeed, Yarosh’s credentials revolve around, as he puts it, “the Revolution and the War.” When a compromise was struck by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych with the Maidan demonstrators, bringing an end to the confrontation, it was Yarosh who refused to disarm his Right Sector forces. Yarosh deliberately blew up the agreed-upon compromise, and Yanukovych fled the country. Hence, the Revolution. Two months later, it was Yarosh’s own 20-man Right Sector operation that went to sabotage the Sloviansk television tower in the Donbas—provoking the Siege of Sloviansk and the opening of the war against the Donbas. Hence, the War.
A few months after Yarosh threatened Zelenskyy, Andriy Biletsky, the first leader of the Azov Battalion, publicly threatened that if Zelenskyy took the first step for an armistice in the Donbas, Biletsky would call out tens of thousands of armed citizens to escalate the war.
Though Biletsky currently claims that he is not a neo-Nazi, his actions and words are pretty clear. He defended Ukraine’s “Social Nationalist” Party (a kissing cousin of the German “National Socialist” Party) and its use of swastikas, objecting to the effort to clean up its image for Western sensibilities. Biletsky set up his unvarnished “Patriot of Ukraine” organization in 2006, and stated that it had to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.” One would think that Biletsky’s choice to use Hitler’s own German term “Untermenschen” (“sub-humans”) should qualify the fellow as more than a white racist, and actually a full-fledged neo-Nazi.
Further, as with Yarosh, Biletsky has also repeatedly demonstrated violent methods against opponents. Even as late as August 2020, Biletsky’s National Corps, an outgrowth of his Azov Battalion, brazenly shot up a bus of Viktor Medvedchuk’s Patriots for Life opposition party, and in broad daylight. Several members were wounded. Russia has had pretty good grounds for its analysis that the neo-Nazi element was indeed holding Ukraine hostage and would never allow Russia and Ukraine to be at peace. But are the physical threats against President Zelenskyy more than just tough talk?
The Peace Negotiations Are Shot in the Head
On March 5 Denis Kireyev, one of Ukraine’s negotiators at the first session with Russia, five days prior, was executed—shot in the head and left on the street in Kyiv. Ukraine’s internal security, the SBU, admits they shot him, but claimed he was resisting arrest and the rough treatment was deserved, as they had recorded him talking with Russians, which proved that he was a traitor. (It doesn’t take much in Kyiv these days to be charged with high treason. Both opposition leader Victor Medvedev and the previous President, Petro Poroshenko, earned that honor in 2021, evidently based upon their involvement in purchasing coal from the Donbas.)
Independent of what the SBU may claim constitutes treason, it is reasonable to presume that Kireyev, given his history as a board member of UkrEximBank, and then as deputy governor of the state-owned Oschadbank, would have been genuinely interested, at least from a business standpoint, in ending the fighting and coming to a common understanding with Russia. Assumedly, some part of the SBU took exception to such an approach to negotiations.
However, common knowledge in Kyiv is that the SBU had simply taken Kireyev into custody, questioned him, and then shot him in the head, before unceremoniously dumping him on the street. But even by the SBU “resisting arrest” version, there could not have been a more chilling message sent to Ukraine’s remaining negotiators regarding their priorities.
Looking back upon the Feb. 28 negotiating session, initial reports indicated that President Zelenskyy was on board and somewhat motivated. Indeed, he had initiated a ceasefire proposal after the second day of fighting, whereupon the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, specified two conditions: “This is neutral status, and this is a refusal to deploy weapons”—that is, a refusal to host NATO’s weaponry. Zelenskyy followed the first session by posting a video on Telegram: “We heard from Moscow today that they want to talk about the neutral status of Ukraine.” He seemed to want this to succeed, though compelled to phrase it in “tough guy” fashion: “We are not afraid of Russia, we are not afraid of engaging in talks with Russia, we are not afraid of discussing anything, such as security guarantees for our state, we are not afraid of talking about neutral status.”
However, shortly afterwards, Zelenskyy was nowhere to be found. When he finally re-emerged a few hours later, he was markedly less interested in securing a ceasefire. The location of the next meeting became his objection to taking another step. Conventional wisdom, credible but unconfirmed, has it that he received, in the missing hours, the word from London and/or Washington that he was not to allow the negotiations to go forward.
Peskov noted that during Zelenskyy’s disappearance, the situating of Ukrainian artillery in the residential areas of Kyiv, itself a war crime, began in earnest. It appears that a decision indeed had been made to sacrifice Ukrainian civilians to prevent Ukraine from assuming a neutral status between Russia and the West.
Of particular note, is that, in reporting on the SBU’s claim that Kireyev had been guilty of “high treason,” Kyiv’s Ukrayinska Pravda said Kireyev had had “free access” to the office of the head of the SBU. That office belongs to Ivan Bakanov, Zelenskyy’s longtime associate and colleague from their youth in their common hometown of Kryvyi Rih.
The Blatant Execution of a Former SBU Head
The execution of Kireyev is not proof that men with swastikas are running the SBU, but the execution five days later, on March 10, of Dmitry Demyanenko, the former head of the SBU’s Kyiv office, opens a whole can of worms. And, unlike the case of Kireyev, here, there is actually a video from a street camera of the execution, one that raises doubts about the official version.
Demyanenko’s body, riddled with bullets, was found on Kyiv’s Sadovaya Street. It is claimed that Demyanenko avoided a checkpoint in Kyiv and that the ensuing pursuit resulted in his death. The horrifying video evidences that he seemed to be travelling at a very moderate speed when pulled over, with no evidence of any dramatic situation. Then, aside from the vehicle that pulled him over, suddenly another pulled in front of his vehicle, and a third car appeared. Six to eight men jumped out and surrounded his vehicle, firing on it from all sides.
It is alleged that he pulled out a gun and was resisting arrest. But even if that were true, the former SBU head would have suddenly realized that he was not in a normal traffic stop, and he was going to go down shooting. The video, amongst other things, gives a strong sense of the “Wild West” nature of the Kyiv regime.
The group that dispatched Demyanenko is a protected group, the infamous Myrotvorets militia—the so-called “Peacemakers” militia. Their fame stems from their “enemies of Ukraine” list, begun in the Donbas in 2014. At that time, even a neutral account of an incident in the Donbas would earn the posting of the journalist’s name, address, and phone number on the list. When the UN condemned Myrotvorets for its list, Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, refused the UN request to ban the public posting of that list.
Demyanenko had not negotiated with the Russians over a halt to the hostilities. However, what is known, though not appreciated, is that his longtime role was as the SBU official posted to the Ministry of Health, beginning in early 2009. In the days before Demyanenko’s execution, the Russian Ministry of Defense had released documents from Ukraine’s Ministry of Health (MOH), exposing the involvement of the curious Dr. Ulana Suprun in the weaponization of the U.S.-run biological laboratories in Ukraine. We shall see that Dr. Suprun, an American citizen, and her husband, Marko Suprun, a Canadian citizen, were up to their necks in neo-Nazis. Controversially, she was installed as the acting head of the MOH in 2016 and oversaw the consolidation of U.S. control over the bio-labs, and the escalation of highly suspicious research.
On March 7, three days before Demyanenko’s execution, Igor Kirillov of the Russian Defense Ministry had begun a series of press conferences exposing the U.S.-run bio-labs. The one on the morning of Demyanenko’s execution included documents on a U.S. Project UP-4, where: “At least two species of migrating birds were discovered, whose migration routes go predominantly over Russian territory.” His documents exposed Dr. Suprun and others; one showed that in early 2017, the SBU regional office in Kherson had properly objected both to the increase of highly dangerous activity at the bio-labs, and to Suprun’s freezing Ukrainian officials out of knowledge and control of some of the labs. In early March 2022, the SBU had to wonder who Russia’s source was for the MOH documents. Whether or not Demyanenko was the actual source, it appears that the Myrotvorets gang evidently thought the retired SBU officer was suspect #1.
The Curious Dr. Ulana Suprun: Biological Weapons and Neo-Nazis
The matter of weaponization of biological laboratories is beyond the scope of this article. However, what makes the Ukrainian bio-labs suspicious, besides the pattern of secrecy and evasion from U.S. authorities, are the documents that have been made public indicating a) a concentration upon “the highly pathogenic avian influenza,” H5N1, some specifically connected to wild birds that migrate from Ukraine to Russia, b) specific research into strains of aerosolized infectious diseases, along with c) documentation of attempts to acquire drones especially rigged to dispense aerosols. Suprun’s role may have been no more than as a trusted ideologue, one who could be counted upon, as a loyal Banderite, to sacrifice Ukraine’s legitimate interests to wild and illegal ventures. A couple of years ago, she posted on her Facebook page:
Would Ulana Suprun be more likely to accommodate, or to rein in research into biological weapons to be deployed against Russia?
Further, while Acting Director of the MOH, she appeared with friends at anti-Russia rallies with her neo-Nazi associate, Serj Mazur, and spoke at his rally. Mazur, self-described as a “tattoo artist,” is a committed member of the C-14 neo-Nazi gang. Aside from their hardline ideology, they also perform the role of Mafia thugs. They have an advertisement that, if you are a friend and/or financial supporter of C-14, your enemies will find that their lives become much more difficult. In Suprun’s first year on the job, Mazur publicly warned Suprun’s “opponents” against feuding with “us.”
The larger role of the C-14 neo-Nazis was explained recently on an early February television broadcast in Kyiv by their leader, one Yevhen Karas:
But Karas claimed that a minority of only 8-10% accomplished 90% of what happened at the Maidan. “If not for nationalists, that whole thing would have turned into a gay parade.”
Hence, Ulana Suprun’s friends may be thugs, but, as with Hitler’s Nazis, they are fully capable of turning on the London-based gang that took pains to cultivate them.
Otherwise, it is hard to believe that the American citizen Ulana Suprun would be put at the head of Ukraine’s Department of Health at any time—except when something very unhealthy was afoot.
Marko Suprun and a Witches’ Brew of Nazis
However, Ulana looks tame compared to her husband, Marko—an interface of neo-Nazis, fight clubs, football hooligans, “white power rock,” and your friendly social media censor. A filmmaker, while in Canada Marko had served on the board of the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine, an OUN-B front group during the Cold War. In 2013, the Supruns deployed to Ukraine from Winnipeg, Canada, and were involved in documenting Maidan operations from the beginning. Marko then deployed in the Spring of 2014 into the Donbas along with his Maidan veterans. Later, around 300 of such veterans gathered for a special “pre-premiere” screening of what he called his Maidan/Donbas “comedy,” entitled “Lethal Kittens.” It must be said that none of this is made up, including what follows.
Aside from the audience of Azov aficionados, Marko paused for a photo with three special associates. One, Arseniy Bilodub, is the lead “singer” of what is described as a “hate-core band,” Sokyra Peruna, advertised as a Ukrainian “white power rock” group. Two of their “songs” are “Six Million Words of Lies” and “August 17th.” The former needs no explanation; the latter is an homage to Rudolf Hess, said to be the last of the Nazi leaders to die (yes, on August 17th). They have suffered for their “art,” as drummer Dmitry Volkov went to prison for his pogrom against the Brodsky Synagogue in Kyiv. Arseniy Bilodub is also the founder of SvaStone, the far-right clothing brand centered around marketing the Nazi “Black Sun” insignia.
It turns out there is one Russian that Bilodub liked, the neo-Nazi wacko, Denis Nikitin. Together, they launched an annual martial arts tournament in Kyiv. Nikitin also founded a clothing line, titled “White Rex,” with the same marketing draw, the Nazi “Black Sun.” However, Nikitin made sure to found his company on August 14, 2008—significant for its magical 14/08/08 code (a nod to the infamous white racist “14 Words,” combined with the ubiquitous homage, “88”—standing for the “HH” of “Heil Hitler”).
Nikitin has travelled the capitals of Europe organizing nihilistic youth around fight clubs. In trouble in Russia, he moved to Kyiv in 2017 and opened the “Reconquista Club,” a combination restaurant and martial arts center. Robert Rundo, who with three followers incited violence at Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, took part in Nikitin’s martial arts at “Reconquista,” met with Azov representatives, and got a tattoo with Nikitin’s “White Rex” logo. Bilodub is, in a sense, simply a Kyiv knockoff of Nikitin.
Next in that photo is Diana Vinogradova (aka Kamlyuk), a poetess for Bilodub’s band. She composed while serving time in prison for her role in a group assault upon a Nigerian, whose misfortune was simply walking down the street, and who died from his injuries. Her friend wielding the knife explained that she simply didn’t like blacks. Diana is otherwise known for reciting an anti-Semitic poem on the Maidan.
Last but not least is Oleksandr Voitko, an upstanding member of the C-14 neo-Nazi group, who did such fine work for Marko’s wife, Ulana. Voitko deployed to the Donbas with the militias, and never quite got it out of his system. He later, away from the Donbas, sought out one of his pro-Donbas opponents and kidnapped him. Two of the C-14 associates of Voitko and the above-cited Mazur are charged in the murder of the editor-in-chief of a Russian-language newspaper. Both are out on bail.
Bilodub and Marco Suprun had earlier shared the stage at a Ukrainian “Youth Nationalist Congress” with their “blood brother,” Andriy Sereda—the lead singer of a different rock band, Komu Vnyz. It was Sereda who told the audience that the three of them had been “born” as brothers through the Cossack ritual of mutual bloodletting. Sereda’s address to the Svoboda Party (the re-branded name of the Social Nationalist party), on the occasion of their 20th anniversary, explained that Ukraine was the “motherland of the Aryan race.”
Facebook Censors Neo-Nazi Charges
None of this will you read about or see on Facebook. It turns out that Marko Suprun is also Facebook’s expert on the subject of Russian allegations of neo-Nazi activity. So, if Marko frowns upon the material, it gets disappeared. Facebook says that it partners with “StopFake” to counter fake news and misinformation. And Marko is the go-to guy at StopFake, the “neutral arbitrator” on anything that sounds like Russian disinformation! Of note, the co-founder of StopFake, Evgeny Fedchenko, is an open supporter of the C-14 thugs. He founded StopFake in 2014, shortly after the coup in Ukraine, and it was sponsored by the British Embassy in Ukraine for the next four years. The Embassy offers: “The United Kingdom supports anti-disinformation activities and programs aimed at developing media literacy in Ukraine.”
Marko Suprun argues that what we are documenting here is Russian disinformation trying—
There are pictures taken out of context, he says, in order to create a fragment of truth, contributing to disinformation about Ukraine. Sure, he’s met with “people with swastika tattoos.” But tagging militia veterans as neo-Nazis simply defies rational thought. “If they have stood in defense of Ukraine, I will stand beside them.’
While it is likely the case that only a minority of the members of various Ukrainian militia outfits these days are literate neo-Nazis, in the sense of having read the works of Stepan Bandera, Hitler, or Nietzsche, a tour of the world of Marko Suprun makes clear that nihilistic youth, lacking a future, full of rage, are building identities based upon a lethal combination of martial arts, body-building, “white power rock” and mindless acts of violence.
To paraphrase the trenchant analysis of Lyndon LaRouche: You don’t have to wear a swastika to be a Nazi; you just have to be a Nazi. Would militia groups steeped in such a culture have a problem in committing war crimes?
II. War as a Bizarre Theater
Reckless Russians + Nuclear Material = End of World
For a while, the West was treated to bizarrely scripted horror stories. Early on, Ukraine posted troops at the site of Chernobyl’s former nuclear power site. It had no strategic value and is of no use in war or peace. Rather, spent nuclear fuel from the 1986 accident lies in vats of water. However, as the passing Russian armies in the first week were forced to chase the posted troops away, the staged incident could generate the appropriate headlines, with “Russian army” and “Chernobyl” next to each other. There was no other purpose to the affair.
A couple of weeks later, Ukrainian militia deployed to attack a substation and its power lines, temporarily stopping the delivery of electricity to the general area, including the Chernobyl facility. Kyiv announced to the world that Chernobyl had less than 48 hours left before the reserve diesel generators would give out, and the Russians fighting in the area risked a thermonuclear disaster. The head of Foreign Affairs for the European Union, Josep Borrell, snapped to attention. He tweeted that he had just spoken with the IAEA chief, Rafael Grossi “about the very worrying situation regarding the Chernobyl power plant…. I call on Russia to preserve safety of nuclear infrastructure in #Ukraine. Full support for efforts to find an agreement on practical solutions in these dramatic circumstances.”
Yet the IAEA had to clarify that they weren’t doing anything. There was no need. The electricity ran lights at the facility, where nothing nuclear had been going on for decades, but for the spent fuel lying in the unheated water. Whether or not Kyiv knew there was no danger, they could still count on idiotic bureaucrats in Brussels to push the panic button.
Ukraine does have active nuclear power plants. There are sixteen nuclear reactors producing electricity, thirteen of them installed during USSR days. The largest power plant in Europe is at Zaporizhzhia, with six active reactors. Russia’s army did occupy the facility, early on March 4, with no stoppage of energy generation, and certainly no radiation leakage. There was a fire at a separate building, a training facility, with no injuries. The plant’s operators, who are there to this day, reported that there was never any danger of explosions, nor even radiation, nor even the disruption of electricity. However, President Zelenskyy, in the middle of the night, broadcast:
The two Chernobyl events were obviously staged. Military forces were deployed for no military reason, but only as stage-hands in a nuclear scare story. The actual “military” objective was to get the West into a direct war with Russia.
Russia’s Supposed Desecration of the Holocaust Site, Babi Yar
On March 1, the world learned that the unspeakable Russians had bombed the Holocaust memorial, Babi Yar. Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s Office of the President, announced:
Yermak’s boss, Zelenskyy, tweeted:
Babi Yar was the site where in 1941, the German Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators shot and killed over 33,000 Jews in two days. They were left in a mass grave in the ravine. However, over the course of the Nazi occupation, roughly 100-150,000 people were executed there—Jews, gypsies, Russian soldiers, and Ukrainians suspected of being anti-Nazi. It is, on its face, both ignorant and insulting to think the Russians would desecrate such a site.
In fact, Babi Yar memorial was never bombed nor damaged. The chairman of the advisory board for the Babi Yar memorial, Natan Sharansky, reported from the site that there was no damage. Further, as was standard operating procedure, the Russian military, prior to their attack on the broadcast tower of the Ukrainian Army’s 72nd Main Psychological Operations Unit, broadcast sufficient warnings to everyone in the area that the military site was going to be hit with high-precision weapons. That did occur and evidently five members of the Ukrainian military died in the attack.
Anybody in the Kyiv government who wanted to know what had happened was able to do so. Zelenskyy, in particular, constructed his language to say, “on the same site” as Babi Yar. The site encompasses 370 acres, including various cemeteries for the array of Nazi victims. As Sharansky explained, there was collateral damage to an unfinished sports complex, but the “bomb was of course targeting the radio tower.” The 72nd Main Psychological Operations Unit, by the way, is perhaps the hardest working section of the Ukrainian army, and key to the fraud at Bucha (below).
The portion of the site occupied by the Babi Yar Museum has been desecrated with some regularity, but by Ukraine’s finest neo-Nazis, and not by Russian attacks upon Ukrainian military installations. Zelenskyy’s scandalous abuse of the memory of the Holocaust victims of Babi Yar displays a seriously defective part of his personality.
Russia Bombs Mothers at Maternity Hospital, Rapes by Policy
Mariupol, the port city of Russian-speaking Donetsk, was seized by the Azov Battalion in 2014 and has been ruled by them ever since. There should be no dearth of testimony and documentation coming out of Mariupol, now that the Azov occupiers no longer control the city. Amidst a lot of contradictory claims, serious conclusions cannot be confidently asserted; however, answers are within the grasp.
While it is pretty clear that there were explosions both at the Mariupol Hospital No. 3 on March 9, and at the Mariupol Theater a week later, testimony, along with some video evidence, indicates that neither was the result of bombs being dropped from the air. However, there should be physical evidence at both sites that might address that question. Suffice it to say that Marianna Vishegirskaya, the pregnant woman photographed in front of the hospital March 9, later complained of misrepresentation of her comments by AP. She said that the explosions occurred without accompanying sounds of a missile.
British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons is the rape source:
Her quote was featured for the opening of Radio Free Europe’s Svoboda Radio eye-catching article: “Everyone Is Raped … The Sexual Crimes of the Russian Military.” The author, Sashko Shevchenko, attained his master’s degree in journalism from City University, London, and the bolder the claim, the less need for documentation. The closest thing to evidence was the claim that it might be presented at some point: “[T]welve women have agreed to publicly say that they became pregnant due to rape by the occupiers.” After that, it is a matter of really salacious charges. Shevchenko has heard that someone said, “that in the Kherson region, the Russian military raped a 78-year-old grandmother.” The more salacious, the less comfortable anybody is about asking for evidence.
The investigation is in the hands of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Irina Venediktov, who reported April 7, on Ukrainian TV: “Today in Borodyanka the fact of rape of the grandmother is recorded!” Evidently, since the fact has been recorded, the investigation is completed. Regardless, were normal investigative and judicial procedures allowed to do their work, and were every allegation proven true, this is still a pretty far piece from “rape is part of [the Russian] military strategy.”
Bucha: Russia Leaves Slaughtered Victims Out on the Streets
The Ukrainian Army now claimed they had routed the Russians, who, in their hasty retreat on March 30, left the evidence of their murders of Ukrainian citizens on a main street of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. For those who wonder how 20 or so bodies in one city block were not noticed for more than three days after the Russians left, satellite photos prove that the Russians shot a bicyclist a week or two before they left. People stare at photos of a destroyed Russian tank in Bucha, without even a glimmer of a thought that it is possible Ukrainian artillery had fired upon the town at some point.
The Russians announced on March 29 that they would pull back from the suburbs of Kyiv, as a good faith gesture, in recognition of the Ukrainians actually committing to paper their draft of what they would need to adopt a “neutral” status. It fell far short of recognizing Crimea or the Donbas republics, but the world that Tuesday was given a glimmer of hope. Russia had to put to one side the ugly video from 48 hours earlier, of Ukrainian militia torturing and shooting bound Russian POWs at point blank range, murdering at least one of them. Between that Wednesday and Friday, peace threatened to break out, and something had to be done.
Bucha’s mayor, on Thursday March 31, didn’t know of the filthy preparations going on, and simply celebrated his town’s freedom in a video. Things were looking beautiful—and certainly multiple dead bodies were not lying in Yablunska Street, one of the main streets. He was clearly off script. By Friday morning, a bold and nasty two-day operation was set into motion. The National Police announced that the “Safari” team—variously described as a “special operations” force, a “commando regiment,” and “the representatives of subdivisions of the Special Tasks Police, the Rapid Operational Response Unit, the Tactical Operational Response Police”—was deploying into Bucha to check for Russian mines, and to deal with remaining “saboteurs.” There is video of men with “Safari” patches that Friday and Saturday.
A notorious Azov leader, Sergey Korotkin (aka “Malyuta”), posted a video of a briefing given to some of the deployment team. One fighter asks whether they can shoot at people not wearing the blue armbands, and the answer is, “You bet.” (Since the blue armbands identify their own forces, it seems there is very little of the civilian population of Bucha that is off limits for the safari.) Korotkin removed the incriminating video, but here is Korotkin with an enthusiastic Nazi salute.
A woman in military fatigues named Ekaterina Ukraintsiva appeared on the “Bucha Live” Telegram page that Friday, as a representative of the Bucha City Council. She announced “the cleansing of the city” that now had to occur, and the need to stay off the streets for the duration of the mission. (Evidently, a similar announcement, that Bucha was “being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces,” was put out by Ukraine’s Gorshenin Institute.) There was at least one follow-up message, also supposedly from the City Council, both emphatic and strange:
The very large Delicia factory and its popular outlet are both right next to Yablunska, though several blocks from where the bodies were found.
Residents of Bucha that had stayed in town and had accepted food and supplies from the Russians were now in the category of collaborationists. By mid-day Saturday, the Bucha kill-shot appeared around the world, both video and photos of multiple dead bodies left on Yablunska Street. It was of course too horrendous to inquire as to who actually carried out the killings and/or “cleansings.” Finally, there is the rather embarrassing detail that this was a video of bodies that the world was supposed to believe had lain on Yablunska Street for at least four days, with no signs of decay, no damage from animals.
The British ambassador to the UN, Dame Barbara Woodward, who had just taken the chairmanship of the Security Council for the month of April, delayed the Russian call for an emergency Security Council session from Sunday, April 3 to Tuesday, April 5, allowing the European Union to arrange with Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Irina Venediktov on an “investigation” without the UN or any other normal international channels. Venediktov is the same one who (see above) seems to think the “recording” of an accusation is an investigation, at least in the case of alleged rape.
Postlude
So, at this point, dear reader, how are your thought processes and your sense of humanity doing? You’ve had nuclear meltdowns and/or explosions, bombings of the dead victims of the Nazi Holocaust at Babi Yar, the targeting of a maternity hospital and rape of grandmothers, topped with multiple executions of Ukrainian civilians left unburied on the street. Does the mere volume of cynical manipulation crush your will to fight through such evil? Does the presence in the world of serial liars, liars who long ago departed from even the pretense of cover stories, depress you, or even scare you?
Perhaps there’s not much choice left, but to become more fully human each and every day. Witness, in conclusion, two different views of Ukrainians. The first is the lawful outcome of the last two months, the horror of the rage-dominated “beast-man.” The second reflects what most Ukrainians have been, and, with an effort, still have the potential to be.
On Palm Sunday, a supposedly pro-Ukrainian video was posted on the Instagram page of Lviv actress Andrianna Kurylets, which shows the self-degradation and sadism of the Nazi “blood and soil” mentality being called forth amongst nihilists, who would destroy Ukraine. In less than two minutes, one witnesses a Ukrainian maiden in a lovely costume, transformed into a vicious beast, performing an ISIS-like execution on camera, for a mysterious and vengeful “Ukrainian God.”
It begins:
Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, brought this to the attention of the UN Security Council, remarking that it, unfortunately, is what makes denazification necessary. Evgeny Popov, the host of Russia’s “60 Minutes,” told his national audience:
The “beast-man” is the lawful result of the British Empire, or any empire, succeeding in manipulating countries into a box, where the rules are, “dog-eat-dog.” However, a recent presentation invites the world to remember the Ukraine that was and still can be:
This is from the July 12, 2021 article by Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”—a presentation much attacked and reviled in London.
The choice is easy. The hard part is getting up in the morning, getting nasty with those juvenile fantasies that sadistic empires play upon, and wrapping one’s identity around building the world out of this mess, knowing that one can make history.
—davidshavin@larouchepub.com
