Ukraine: Ultra-right groups support Yushchenko

Justus Leicht

In its enthusiasm for the Ukrainian opposition, the Western media 
has conveniently overlooked the fact that ultra-right groups are 
active inside the opposition movement known as the "Orange 
Revolution".

Members of fascist organisations represent a small minority among 
opposition supporters and have not played a leading role in the 
ongoing demonstrations in Kiev. Nevertheless, their participation 
in the mass rallies is not coincidental.

They are neither unwanted fellow travellers, nor troublemakers 
smuggled in by the regime of President Leonid Kuchma. Both of the 
most prominent opposition leaders, former prime minister Viktor 
Yushchenko and multi-millionaire and former deputy prime minister 
Yulia Tymoshenko, have maintained political relations for several 
years with organisations that have expressed and defended fascist 
and anti-Semitic viewpoints.

Alongside anti-communists, neo-liberals and Christian Democratic 
parties, Yushchenko's parliamentary group "Our Ukraine" includes 
an organisation calling itself the "Congress of Ukrainian 
Nationalists" (KUN).

The KUN was founded in 1992 as the political exile organisation 
of the "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists — Stepan Bandera 
fraction". The followers of Bandera espouse a fascist ideology 
and a militantly anti-communist, anti-Russian and anti-Polish 
policy.

Bandera's movement fought in the Second World War — initially on 
the side of Nazi Germany against the Soviets — and demanded 
"independence" for the Ukraine in those regions invaded by the 
German army.

Following the conquest of Ukraine, the Nazis no longer needed the 
assistance of "Slavic sub-humans". They rejected independence for 
Ukraine and began to persecute Ukrainian nationalists.

The Bandera faction was forced to oppose the German army, but 
during and after the war it focused its activities against the 
Soviet army.

This is the tradition which the KUN represents.

Up until July of this year, Yushchenko's "Our Ukraine" included a 
second fascist group, the "All-Ukrainian Party of Liberty" 
(Svoboda), led by Oleh Tyahnybok.

It was originally called the "Ukrainian National Socialist Party" 
(SNPU), and used a combination of a trident and swastika as its 
party symbol. At the start of 2004, in preparation for the 
presidential election campaign, the party changed its name and 
symbol.

Nevertheless, in July, Tyahnybok publicly praised nationalist 
Ukrainian partisans in the Second World War who had "cleansed the 
country of Russians and Jews".

"There is a need", he explained, "for Ukraine to be finally 
returned to Ukrainians" and liberated from the "Muscovite Jewish 
mafia that runs Ukraine today".

Media outlets close to the government took up this statement to 
attack the opposition. As a result, Yushchenko banned Tyahnybok 
and his group from "Our Ukraine".

The forces aligned with Yulia Tymoshenko also include extreme 
right-wing organisations, e.g., the "Ukrainian Conservative 
Republican Party" (UCRP), which was founded in 1992 by the former 
dissident Stepan Khmara.

The group is fanatically anti-communist and calls for the 
"overthrow of the Russian Empire". In the course of public 
protests against Russia, the UCRP collaborated with the 
"Ukrainian National Assembly — Self-Defence" (UNA UNSO), led by 
Andrei Shkil, which likewise belongs to the bloc headed by 
Tymoshenko.

The Ukrainian National Assembly was created in 1990, and its 
paramilitary arm (UNA UNSO) in 1991, following the attempted 
putsch in Moscow. It is reputed to have more than 1000 fighters, 
who are alleged to have been active in the first Chechnya war on 
the side of the Chechens, in the Yugoslavia war on the side of 
the Croats, and also in Georgia.

The English-language section of its web site includes such items 
as a statement of solidarity with the Chilean ex-dictator General 
Augusto Pinochet, a report on a congress of the UNA UNSO, at 
which the organisation signed an agreement for "friendship and 
cooperation" with representatives of the German neo-Fascist NPD, 
and a long essay on the ideology and politics of UNA UNSO.

The essay states that Andrei Shkil, the editor-in-chief of the 
magazine Nationalist, sports the emblem of the Ukrainian division 
of the Nazi SS Galicia.

In the Nationalist, Shkil not only praises the racist ideologists 
Count Gobineau and Walter Darri, but also the book Mein Kampf 
and its author (Hitler's name is not mentioned) for "re-
examining these ideas (of Gobineau and Darri) at the highest 
level". It is therefore not surprising that Shkil has used his 
position as parliamentary delegate to call for the transfer of 
the bodies of Stepan Bandera and Simon Petlyura.

The latter's troops fought against the Bolsheviks in 1918-19 and 
killed some 30,000 Jews in pogroms.

In March 2001, Shkil and his organisation generated headlines 
when they fought street battles with the police in the course of 
protests against President Kuchma.

As a result, Shkil was condemned 18 months later to a term of 
imprisonment. Following the sentencing of Shkil, Yushchenko and 
other politicians of the opposition condemned the court decision 
as a political judgment.

Speaking in parliament, Tymoshenko called 15 members of Shkil's 
organisation sentenced to prison terms of 2-5 years "the best 
representatives of the nation".