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This week, Ukrainian Prime Minister A P Yatsenyuk said that the USSR invaded Germany and the Ukraine in World War II. Despite attempts by the Western press to bury the story, now, Russia’s demanding answers from Berlin. Nothing is louder than silence. I know this, you know this, and you can be sure that Angela Merkel knows it too. Why then is Merkel’s government refusing to comment on Yatsenyuk’s extraordinary remarks? The reasons are complex, as I’ll shortly outline. First, though, let’s see what Yatsenyuk actually said. He told German TV outlet ARD, “All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine and Germany. We need to avoid [repeating] it. Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. Russian President Putin is trying to do exactly this”.
Initially, when I saw the comments on my Twitter timeline, I was sure that it was a joke. So much disinformation circulates on the platform that I automatically dismissed it as a misquote. Surely, a senior politician wouldn’t say something like that? Only 24 hours later, when I saw Yatsenyuk’s words still swooshing through the Twitter-sphere, did I realise that he actually did utter those words. Yatsenyuk, apparently handpicked for the PM post by American diplomat Victoria Nuland, believes that the USSR invaded Germany in World War II. This runs contrary to the almost universally accepted history that Germany actually attacked the Soviets first in Operation Barbarossa. After repelling the attack, eventually, Soviet forces made it to Berlin, where they met the other liberating powers, the USA and Britain.
Naturally, some claim that Yatsenyuk made a slip of the tongue. This is hogwash. The only thing that dropped was his mask. I’ve heard similar remarks before… in the Western Ukraine, where the PM is from. Yatsenyuk hails from Chernovtsy, widely regarded as the region’s second cultural capital, after Lvov, which many see as the foremost nationalist stronghold. Something interesting used to happen each 9 May in the Ukraine (the anniversary of the German surrender in 1945). Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and all other major cities, bar one, honoured the defeat of the Nazis. Many in Lvov have never looked too happy with the day. In fact, in 2011, local “patriots” went a step further by attacking a small gathering of veterans who commemorated the occasion.
The reason for this feeling is simple. Western Ukrainians believe that they lost the war. Their side was defeated. Put simply, Yatsenyuk’s merely a product of his environment. However, this time, he expressed publicly a view that was probably previously restricted to private discourse. Possibly, he felt that a German audience might be sympathetic to his position. If so, that was a huge misread of the German people. Standard North American and Western European history textbooks give students the impression that World War II in Europe was a fight between Germany, the USSR, France, and the UK, with the USA getting involved later. Largely, the books depict the other countries where the war was fought as victims of Germany. This is simplistic. In reality, Germany wasn’t alone in its invasion of the USSR in 1941. Forces from Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia also took part and Western Ukrainian elements collaborated with Hitler’s war machine.
For example, the difference between the Ukraine and Slovakia is that Slovaks have come to understand that their wartime behaviour was wrong. The majority in Košice and Bratislava rightly revile the pro-Nazi leader Jozef Tiso. However, in the Western Ukraine, their chief Hitler acolyte, S A Bandera has “hero” status. Indeed, there’s a gigantic statue of him in front of the main railway station in Lvov. Ukrainian reverence for relics of the Nazi past is both embarrassing and worrying for Germany. I’m sure that Merkel often wishes that her NATO allies had found a more reasonable client state to antagonise Russia with. The Ukraine’s refusal to deal with its past head-on is a festering boil for EU diplomats.
Just this week, Czech President, Miloš Zeman argued with Bandera fanboys in Ukrainian academia. He wrote, “You’re aware of the Bandera statement, ‘You must kill every Polish person between 16 and 60 years of age?’ If you say you don’t know this… then, what kind of scholars of Ukrainian studies are you? I want to tell you that Bandera wished to make out of the Ukraine a vassal state of Germany… I can’t congratulate a country that has such ‘national heroes’”. This also explains the silence of German media on Yatsenyuk’s words. If the German public were fully aware of what their visitor from Kiev said, it’d outrage them. So much so that it could force Merkel to withdraw all support for the Ukraine. If Yatsenyuk’s comments received wider circulation, they’d embolden revisionists in Germany and beyond… something there is, sadly, no shortage of. Just as it seemed the story would fade away, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a late intervention, asking Berlin to outline its official position on Yatsenyuk’s verbiage. The reply, assuming it ever arrives, will be telling.
10 January 2015
Bryan MacDonald
RT
http://rt.com/op-edge/221459-ukraine-germany-invade-russia/
Editor:
My own experience with diaspora Galicians, both Uniates and “Orthodox”, in the 70s and 80s confirm the above… indeed, it’s a bit UNDERSTATED. Understand that when I outline the evil committed by institutions, I’m not condemning individuals. In many cases, believers turn their heads and refuse to deal with the manifest malice… that’s not good, but I wouldn’t call it culpable. The nationalists make the most noise, so, most people allow them to operate unhindered. Besides this, sources tell me that some diaspora nationalists don’t scruple at violence. Both the Uniates and the “Orthodox” glorify those who collaborated with the Nazis and the CIA… they glorify those who murdered Poles, Jews, Roma, Russians, Little Russians, and even Galicians who didn’t knuckle under to the rightwing nutters. They glorify Nazi collaborators… if you support the present Ukrainian neofascist junta, you spit in the face of all World War II vets of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. If you support the present Ukrainian neofascist junta, you support those who helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust. That’s what you do. Let’s not prettify it.
You can honour the veterans of the Red Army or you can honour Nazi collaborationist criminals… that’s the only choice on offer. You can’t honour both. After all, the Red Army LIBERATED Auschwitz… Western Ukrainian collaborators helped OPERATE it. Note well that the Ukrainian Catholics and “Ukrainian Orthodox” honoured and upheld the latter, not the former. The US Republican Party, in particular, refuses to see this. Fancy that… that tells about them and that you should NEVER vote for such an amoral organisation (all their bleats of “Pro-Life” are vacuous hot air compared to this).
BMD
Voices from Russia 
P N Simonenko: If We Don’t Stop the War Now… The Ukraine Will Disappear from the Political Map of the World Tomorrow
Tags: civil unrest, communism, Communist Party of the Ukraine, Communists, diplomacy, diplomatic relations, EU, European Union, Kiev, KPU, Left, Left-wing, Left-wing politics, Novorossiya, political commentary, politics, Pyotr Simonenko, Russia, Russian, Socialist, Socialists, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, United States, USA, war and conflict
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We appeal to the political leadership in the EU, Russia, and the USA to help us stop the fratricidal war in the Ukraine and to act as guarantors of a peace settlement. We demand that the leaders of the major world powers act to see that all parties implement the Kiev, Minsk, and Geneva agreements to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. We should see to it that all parties respect the rights and freedoms of all citizens, regardless of their political, religious, ideological, and spiritual orientation, so long as they act within legal limits, don’t issue calls for war, or incite ethnic and sectarian strife. From the beginning, the KPU insisted on a peaceful solution to the crisis that arose after the coup d’état that overthrew Yanukovich, a change in power fomented by oligarchic clans with the backing of ultranationalist and pro-fascist elements. From the beginning, we offered peaceful solutions… we want a free referendum, not a phony election held with an avtomat aimed at our head; we want to restore consensus and national harmony. Now, despite the fact that the junta ruling in Kiev destroyed the Ukraine’s territorial integrity, ripped apart its unity, and plunged the country and people into a bloody war after their oligarchic coup in February 2014, we Communists keep the hope alive that we haven’t yet “crossed the Rubicon”. However, with each passing day, the chance to keep the Ukraine on the political map of the world becomes less and less. The victims of violence pile up higher and higher! We must stop the war! Stop it now… stop it immediately! Stop it by throwing the oligarchs out of power and giving power back to the working people!
21 January 2015
P N Simonenko
First Secretary TsK KPU
KPU.ua
KPU official website
http://www.kpu.ua/ru/79843/petr_symonenko_esly_ne_ostanovyt_vojnu_sejchas__zavtra_ukrayna_yscheznet_s_polytycheskoj_karty_myra