![\"Julian](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Julian-Assange-compared.jpeg\")
<\/a>Julian Assange compared Ukraine\u2019s fascist torch marches with the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n
They also claim the same in regards to the Ukip and Brexit, Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France, and the overall trend of growth in far-right politics worldwide. Yet, the same Democrats have downplayed the role of far-right nationalism in Ukraine that played a large role in the Maidan protests and subsequent coup of the democratically-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n The right-wing extremism in Ukraine is acceptable to downplay because they share a common enemy in Russia. Any attempt to reveal the nature of the current regime in Ukraine is mechanically dismissed as \u201cRussian propaganda\u201d, concealing the very real fascist elements that have been weaponized by the west to achieve its foreign policy interests in the new Cold War against Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n The crisis between western and eastern Ukraine and that between Russia and the United States and Europe is not new. It has endured for the past century and its current manifestation originated following the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe. Known as the \u2018breadbasket of Europe\u2019, Ukraine with its 46 million people produced industrial goods and a quarter of the entire food in the Soviet Union prior to its independence.<\/span><\/p>\n Heavy in industry and rich in resources, as an independent country it maintained market integration with Russia but its economy has been in shambles with its politics notoriously rotten. Ukraine\u2019s stratified wealth gap is right beside Russia as the worst in the world due to the neoliberal looting of its former state industry which gave birth to its current ruling elite.<\/span><\/p>\n In western media, the term \u201coligarchs\u201d is being ubiquitously used to describe the political class dominant in Eastern Europe, which is the absolute height of hypocrisy since this class accumulated its wealth from the rapid privatization of state assets facilitated by the west. Widespread bankruptcy, closure of factories and rise in unemployment occurred in Ukraine after the neoliberal robbery of its state property just like in Russia, as Naomi Klein illustrated in her unequalled work The Shock Doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the priority for the west has been to pull Ukraine into the EU sphere of influence and away from Russia while expanding NATO to its borders. All of the former Warsaw Pact nations have been enrolled into NATO, in addition to the Baltic states and the former Yugoslavia, a total of 13 countries since 1991. This expansion happened despite Russia\u2019s disapproval, as it was promised to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand \u2018one inch\u2019 past East Germany. The last two decades of this broken promise have led the west and EU to directly interfere in the affairs of the Ukraine, culminating in the 2014 coup.<\/span><\/p>\n The first foray of western \u2018meddling\u2019 was after the run-off of Ukraine\u2019s 2004 presidential election was initially won by the Moscow-backed candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. Known as the Orange Revolution, it was one of many so-called \u2018color revolutions\u2019 in Eastern Europe featuring stage managed mass demonstrations leading to western approved regime changes that were coordinated by PR firms and NGOs promoting western foreign policy interests. They organized the protests in response to claims of election rigging on the part of Yanukovych but it was only after a mysterious and still unsolved dioxin poisoning of his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, that the voting scales tipped. Public sympathy for Yuschenko\u2019s poison scarred face was manipulated enough to give him the victory during the second round.<\/span><\/p>\n The characteristics and outcome of the Orange Revolution was similar to the Rose Revolution that had occurred in Georgia just a year earlier where the Moscow-backed President was ousted by the western puppet Mikhail Saakashvili, who would later play a direct role in Ukraine when he was appointed as Governor of Odessa after fleeing his own country for war crimes. Viktor Yanukovych\u2019s Party of Regions is supported by the ethnically Russian population in the east while his opponent Yushchenko, head of Ukraine\u2019s central bank, was supported by the western Ukrainian population and ran on a platform of enrolling the country into NATO membership. Western Ukraine has traditionally favored integration with Europe over Russia for historical reasons that are essential to understanding the entire conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n Historically, there has truly never been one Ukraine and this is no different today. The territory of Ukraine has for its entire existence served as a bridge between the east and west, having been conquered and divided by various occupying powers and empires going back several centuries. It finally became united only following extraordinary circumstances when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, resulting in a territory split between the Nazis and the Soviets.<\/span><\/p>\n The mostly ethnic-Ukrainian eastern side of Poland suddenly became western Ukraine overnight after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. Much of the population of western Ukraine were quislings that actually welcomed the invading Nazi army as liberators against the Soviets. When the Germans broke the pact and Operation Barbarossa began in 1941, more than 60,000 ethnic Ukrainians from the Galicia region volunteered to serve in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) to fight against the Red Army.<\/span><\/p>\n The most significant figure from this period of Ukraine\u2019s history to understand its enduring implications today is the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. Bandera was a leader of the 1930s Ukrainian independence movement who was jailed for his political activism as the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Founded in 1929, the OUN\u2019s stated creed was not just to establish an independent country but an ethnically pure Ukraine. It\u2019s red and black flag symbolized land and blood (\u201cblood and soil\u201d) and its character was indisputably fascist.<\/span><\/p>\n Bandera managed to escape from imprisonment when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and he took refuge in German-occupied territory in western Ukraine after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed. When the Nazis broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Bandera aligned with the Germans and openly collaborated with them. OUN members joined German units and carried out massive anti-Jewish pogroms. During this time, 33,000 Jews in just two days were executed by the Germans and their local Ukrainian collaborators in Kiev. Those massacred were buried in mass graves at Babi Yar, today the site of a famous holocaust memorial.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n