Escalation possibilities in Ukraine... Habakkuk

"In relation to the escalatory potentials of this situation, the passions liable to be aroused by the readiness of the U.S. and E.U. to identify themselves with West Ukrainian nationalists should not be underestimated. An article by Patrick Cockburn which has just appeared in the ‘Independent’ deals with the Lviv pogrom of July 1941, to which ‘harry’ referred in a previous thread, recalling the murder of his uncle’s family. An excerpt: ‘I thought about Lviv again last week when I saw a sentence in a newspaper referring to it as “a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism”. ‘I wondered just how much the writer knew about Ukrainian nationalists in Lviv and the strong evidence that, in 1941, they had played a leading role in one of the horror stories of the Second World War. ‘This was the Lviv pogrom of 1 July 1941, when thousands of Jews were dragged from their homes, beaten and executed by either German troops or their Ukrainian helpers. Ukrainian politicians and historians have denied complicity, but surviving Jewish victims, other witnesses and contemporary photographs prove that Ukrainian militiamen and mobs of supporters carried out the pogrom, though the Germans oversaw it and committed many of the murders.’ Drawing on a study by the Canadian-Ukrainian historian Professor John-Paul Himka, Cockburn notes that the pogrom: ‘was primarily carried out by the militia of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) acting under German auspices. It happened quickly after the German occupation because the OUN wanted to show “the Germans that it shared their anti-Jewish perspectives and that it was worthy to be entrusted with the formation of a Ukrainian state.”

(See http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/to-see-what-ukraines-future-may-be-just-look-at-lvivs-shameful-past-9178968.html )

Actually it was not simply Jews who were murdered. The purge of the Polish ruling elite in the area initiated by Stalin was carried on by the Germans and their Ukrainian allies. Among the transcripts of the bugged conversations among captured German generals recorded at Trent Park, one finds the following explanation by General Rothkirch to General von Choltitz: ‘Of course masses of people were shot at Lvov. Thousands of them! First the Jews, then Poles who were also shot in thousands, non-Jews, the whole aristocracy and great landed proprietors and masses of students.’ As Cockburn notes, one cannot simply assume that the present generation of Ukrainian nationalists are ideological descendants of pro-Nazi Ukrainians. The truth actually appears to be that many aren’t, but some, and in particular some of the most active and influential, may well be. In any case, it might perhaps be advisable if people like Victorian Nudelman/Nuland, and Mr and Mrs Sikorski looked a little more closely at who some of their little friends are. Similarly, before Hilary Clinton compared Putin to Hitler she might perhaps have reflected on the fact that he was born in what was then Leningrad eight years after the end of the siege, and that his older brother died as a child of diptheria in the siege."  Habakkuk

Comments

[b]

I doubt that it is lack of knowledge that Nuland et al support the Parvyi Sektor and Svoboda.

One can find a whole chapter of the relations between the Badera (Ukrainian Nazi) movement and "western" intelligence (Gehlen, BND, CIA etc) services in this book from the national archive.

HITLER’S SHADOW
Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf

The latest item involving the Ukrainian Nazis and the CIA mentioned in the book plays in 1991 when the CIA tried to cover up the relation. But was it the last one? Or are their old contacts that were reactivated when Nuland and co needed "muscle" for their color revolution vs. 2.0?

During the Maidan "protests" Badera's portrait was hung up prominently in the Kiev city hall after the Svoboda movement sized it.

From the book, Chapter 5
/quote/
Maltz recorded that “Bandera men ... are not discriminating about who they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages.... Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are iterally hacking Poles to pieces. Every day ... you can see the bodies of Poles,
with wires around their necks, floating down the river Bug.” On a single day,July 11, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing perhaps 10,000 Poles.
/endquote/

And:
/quote/
CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. Hrinioch stayed in Munich, but Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after
operational trips to Europe. His identification in New York by other Ukrainians as a leader responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish
(sic),” has been discussed elsewhere.
...
[The CIA] thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more
complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the
OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed. Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, ...
/endquote/

One wonders what WaPo's Anne Applebaum and her also neoconned husband, the Polish foreign minister, think about these people they today promote.

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Our NeoConservative/NeoLiberal elites are ahistorical; partly as a matter of ideology, partly as a reflection of their arrogance, but largely as a matter of convenience. Actually, on a limited basis, they are capable of recollection of history, but only of those events the remembrance of which comport with their ideology, and which advance their agenda.

The truth is not in them.

[Harry]

This was precisely what my uncle told me before he died.

He was 14 when the Russians first came. They killed all the Communists, and the local community leaders. No one knew about it. They just disappeared. You already know when the Germans came. One day my uncle was standing in a bread line because he was blond and could pose as Polish (not Jewish). But one of his schoolmates saw him and informed the Ukrainian police. They arrested him for breaking the Jewish curfew and took him to the Town Hall. He was pressed into helping remove the bodies from the basement - the people the russians had killed. The Germans had the news services with them and were making a news reel of the scene. It stank so bad he couldn't bear it for long and eventually begged the German officer who supervised him to let him go.

The officer said "then fly away", which my uncle didn't understand cos his German was rudimentary. "But I have no wings". At which point the German officer picked him up and threw him out of the basement.

He tried to make his way back to his family but was arrested by another detachment of Ukrainian police who were looking for Jews breaking curfew. However he smelt so bad they released him rather than take him to custody. Very few people ever came back from their "custody".

The rest of the history of the City you can look up. My uncle was warned about the coming pogrom by his brother who shaved German officers. His family gave him leather to trade (they used to own a leather factory) and sent him on his way to just get out.

None of the rest of his family survived. It was a large orthodox family.

Its worth noting, once when I expressed anti-Russian sentiment to him he chided me very sternly and said he knew of no people he liked better. Whatever you have heard of Russian anti-semitism, he considered it nothing. I have found the same. Russians are "racist" and "anti-semitic". But it would never stop them from doing business with you, eating with you, or sleeping with you.

He died a very rich man and both Israeli and Belgian. I knew of no better man and no better speculator.

I know what the Lviv neo-Nazi grandfathers did during the war. I know how it sounds to the Russians when the Poles and Germans lecture them about Ukraine.

[Babak Makkinejad]

David Habakkuk

And Ha'aretz carried news about a certain Mr. Delta - un nome de guerre - and other armed Israelis giving a hand in Maidan.

Politics creates strange bedfellow - usually with a lasting disastrous impact.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

Preparing for war:

http://news.yahoo.com/brzezinski-formally-recognize-ukraine-prepare-nato-troops-193009083--politics.html

[Eakens]

ZBig spoke with some clarity about Syria and Iran. It appears his defense of Iran was probably more about his respect for Iranians historic distrust of the Russians than it was about his concern for Iran.

It also appears that his deep rooted resentment against the Russians will not abate, and he is willing to go all in this time. He was probably overjoyed by the Russians going into Crimea as to him it was likely the opportunity he had been waiting for, to see the western media jump all over Putin in earnest, and with cause.

I think the success he feels from drawing the Russians into the Afghanistan "trap" has blinded him this time.

[DH]

Zbig:
"Since Germany is the most prosperous and strongest economy in the EU, it should take the lead [in economically stabilizing Ukraine]."

[Charles I]

I saw a documentary on PBS last year recreating some of those conversations, quite an eye-opener. As was the fact they only came to light by accident during a civilian researcher's archive work on a different mundane bit of war history.

What our leaders knew then and what we don't now come back to haunt us. Or haunt somebody, I'll be gardening soon.

[Tyler]

Sometimes if you live in a tough neighborhood you have to make friends with rough characters. I think that's something most of America tends to forget.

[David Habakkuk]

b,

‘I doubt that it is lack of knowledge that Nuland et al support the Parvyi Sektor and Svoboda.’

This seems to me difficult to work out. You probably saw the report on RT last Wednesday headlined ‘Russia slams Ukraine's UN envoy for publicly justifying Nazi collaborators’. An extract:

‘Russia has slammed Ukraine's UN envoy for justifying Ukrainian Nazi collaborators on the sidelines of the Security Council session. The diplomat said the USSR fabricated accusations against Ukrainian nationalists during the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s.

‘“With these words, [the] Ukrainian representative at the UN offended the memory of killed Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, and citizens of other nationalities who fell victims to the atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazi supporters,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement responding to Ukrainian diplomat Yuriy Sergeyev.

‘“There is a lot of proof of their violent crimes. We are ready to acquaint Sergeyev with them.”

‘Speaking after the UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, the Ukrainian envoy accused “the Russian-Soviet side at the time” of attempts to press on “the Western allies to declare [the] Bandera movement members and others murderers.”

‘“The Nuremberg Trials (a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1949) did not declare it. Why? Because the facts were falsified and the Soviet Union's position at the time was unjust," the diplomat told reporters.’

(See http://rt.com/news/russia-ukraine-justifying-nazi-840/ )

Leaving aside the fact that Nudelman/Nuland is herself Jewish, if she and her like – and also the Sikorskis, a Pole married to a Jew – had had any serious grasp of the history, one would have expected that they could have understood that such exchanges were likely.

One would also have thought they would have realised that passions might be aroused which may materially increase the chances of events spirally out of control.

And – as a result – one might have expected that they would have attempted to make their little friends make at least some kind of attempt to accomodate the sensitivities of those in the Ukraine who do not regard Bandera as a national hero.

It may be the key to the puzzle lies in the suggestion by ‘JerseyJeffersonian’ that our elites are ‘capable of recollection of history, but only of those events the remembrance of which comport with their ideology, and which advance their agenda.’

[David Habakkuk]

JerseyJeffersonian,

As I wrote in my response to ‘b’, your explanation may provide a key to making sense of what an insouciance which I have found very hard to comprehend.

A problem, however, is that people whose understanding of history is so selective that, in effect, they are acutely aware of their own grievances, but have minimal grasp of the sensitivities and neuralgic points of others, are unlikely in the long term even to ‘advance their [own] agenda.’ Such selective memory is a recipe for catastrophic miscalculation.

[David Habakkuk]

Harry,

A fascinating glimpse into the past. One small point. You write about your uncle:

‘He was 14 when the Russians first came. They killed all the Communists, and the local community leaders. No one knew about it. They just disappeared.’

Am I right in thinking that ‘communists’ was a slip?

Certainly the Soviets massacred their political prisoners before they pulled out of Lvov/Lviv – probably including a lot of Ukrainian nationalists. As to the Polish elite, the Soviets had liquidated their Polish officer prisoners ‘en masse’. But many of those in who ‘just disappeared’ would have been deported.

Recently I came across on the Imperial War Museum site a long interview they did with an old family friend of ours, who was deported to Kazakhstan, and got out with General Anders’ army, with whom he fought from Normandy to Berlin.

(See http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80023974 )

A few weeks ago I had a letter from him in response to some remarks I had made about Ukraine when writing to him at Christmas. He was hoping that the E.U. and the Russians would find a compromise. And while he is most certainly a Polish patriot, I have never heard him talk with personal bitterness about Russians.

[Alba Etie]

Tyler
To paraphrase FDR
"Somoza is a SOB - but he is our SOB " ...

[b]

I believe that the neocons know that they work with the devil and don't mind to do so. They are doing it in Syria by feeding weapons to the Jihadis. Why then not feed nazis in the Ukraine?

The neocons simply don't care. There aim is destruction in the fervent believe that after destruction comes inevitably the paradise they envision. Crazies.

The people of the Right Sektor in Ukraine have had military training. Who trained them?

How were the long standing ties between the CIA and the Bandera fans used in preparation of the current conflict?

[Highlander]

NATO is a paper tiger, hell they had to go to the USAF to get the munitions and assets to take out Libya (not exactly mother Russia).

The draw down now underway on US military forces will be draconian. We have a expeditionary field army that could easily be stranded in Afghanistan. Our economy is in the middle of the weakest economic recovery of modern times. In approximately 30 months we will probably be entering the next recession.

European homes and industry depend on Russian natural gas. The Ukrainian region has always been a doormat for the local great powers. It always will be, and there will always be periodic tribal massacres of one sort or the other. We have no key interests in this unfortunate land.

As for the spooks dancing with the descendants of the Nazis, so what? That is what spooks do. They deal with all the bad guys and good guys, and play them all against each other. Yea it is a messy business, but somebody has to do it. Do you want to?

Even the incompetents who constitute our national leadership understand these facts, there will be no war for the Ukraine.

[The Twisted Genius]

All,

Tyler is absolutely correct. "Sometimes if you live in a tough neighborhood you have to make friends with rough characters." In order for the Nuland gang to meet their ends of putting Ukraine firmly out of the Russian camp and firmly into the Western camp, they had to work with the likes of Pravy Sektor, Svoboda and the oligarchs/mafiya. Of course, Putin is fully aware of Tyler's truism and will not shirk from the dirty work ahead. Sergey Aksyonov, the new Crimean prime minister, is no angel. He has a past that earned him the nickname goblin. The MSM is quick to point this out, but won't touch the background of those now in charge in Kiev. I think things are going to get a lot uglier in Ukraine and many in the West will be getting the vapors over what has been wrought in their name.

[Haralambos]

William Blum http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/08/explaining-us-hypocrisy-on-ukraine/ has a piece up that offers some background on the neocon agenda. Although this quote is dated, it succinctly expresses a view of the world that seems accurate to me: '“Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO some years ago, “is this is a military organization? Yes, it’s military. … Is it moving towards our border? It’s moving towards our border. Why?” [Guardian Weekly (London), June 27, 2001].'

[David Habakkuk]

Babak Makkinejad,

Writing from one of the ‘midget Satans’, I have to say that it would appear that the behaviour not simply of the U.S. neoconservatives, but also of Israel, is a decisive refutation of ‘rational choice’ theory.

Rightly or wrongly, I detected an imputation in one of Colonel Lang’s recent posts that Fareed Zakaria had had part of his ‘education’ over here. However, to my relief I think this is wrong. This imbecile was wholly American-trained.

The recent exchange about Putin between him and Stephen Cohen, to which I think the Colonel was referring in that post, would be comic if it was not tragic. But perhaps it is both of those things. An extract:

‘ZAKARIA: You say he's actually one of the most liberal rulers of Russia in its history.

‘COHEN: I wouldn't put it that way. I mean, I wouldn't use the word “liberal.” What I would say is, is if we view Putin in the context of the last 400 years of Russian history, with the exception of Gorbachev and possibly the first post-Soviet president, Yeltsin, well, there's an argument there.

‘Putin is the least authoritarian; let's call him the most soft authoritarian of Russian rulers in centuries.

‘And by the way, so far as it matters, because Jews and the status of Jews in Russia is often a barometer of how Russian rulership treats its society, Putin has been better for Russian Jews than any leader in Russian history. And if you want evidence of that, just ask Israel.’

(See http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1403/02/fzgps.01.html )

And this is the leader whom the likes of Nudelman/Nuland and McFaul dream of toppling.

How can anyone claim to defend ‘realism’ as a theory of international relations any more? Quite patently, it is simply another kind of ‘rationalist’ piffle.

[Fred]

I have to agree with Brzeninski: ".... interference in Ukrainian affairs should be considered a hostile act by a foreign power." Perhaps he should be explaining this to Mrs. Kagan i.e. Victoria Nuland. I for one would like that $5 billion back. What the hell did Obama buy with that except a gang of fascists and a potential nuclear war? What congressional legislation authorized that spending?

[turcopolier]

David Habakkuk

I apologize. I was trying to denigrate elite institutions like the Ivies and went too far. pl

[different clue]

( I hope Harry replies to your question. I will just venture to guess that Stalin's USSR Communists did indeed kill the local indigenous Communists in order to clear the ground for eventually sending in USSR's colonial Communist administrators to rule Galicia without local Communist obstruction or opposition. I wait to see just how wrong I may be about that.)

[William R. Cumming]

ALL: Any open source rundown of US Armed Forces in NATO as of today?

[Babak Makkinejad]

I agree.

Israel's security is near and dear to their hearts yet I do not see them flying to Tehran and kiss the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei; for that part of the world has had the longest continuous presence of Jews over the last 2500 years.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think the time for a workable solution analogous to what obtains in Finland or what obtained in Austria during the Cold War is passed.

I suspect that TTG's post above will come to pass and I think this is a story that will continue well past Obama's presidency.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I do not think Realists are running the show in US.

I think there are Realists in UK but they cannot pursue realistic policies since UK leaders have determined that UK has to be absolutely "on the right side of the United States" - right or wrong.