Far-right politics in Ukraine

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During Ukraine's post-Soviet history, the far-right has remained on the political periphery and been largely excluded from national politics since independence in 1991. [1] [2] Unlike most Eastern European countries which saw far-right groups become permanent fixtures in their countries' politics during the decline and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the national electoral support for far-right parties in Ukraine only rarely exceeded 3% of the popular vote. [3] Far-right parties usually enjoyed just a few wins in single-mandate districts, and no far right candidate for president has ever secured more than 5 percent of the popular vote in an election. [3] Only once in the 1994–2014 period was a radical right-wing party elected to the parliament as an independent organization within the proportional part of the voting: Svoboda in 2012. [3] Since then far-right parties have failed to gain enough votes to attain political representation, even at the height of nationalist sentiment during and after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Russo-Ukrainian War. [3]

Contents

The far-right was heavily represented among the pro-Russian separatists with several past or current leaders of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk linked to various neo-Nazi, white supremacist and ultra-nationalist groups. The importance of the far-right on both sides of the conflict declined over time. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, the coalition of Svoboda and the other extreme-right political parties in Ukraine―National Corps, the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, and the Right Sector―won only 2.15% of the vote combined and failed to pass the 5% threshold. As a result, no party was able to win a proportional seat. [4] [5] One party – the Svoboda party – was able to secure a single constituency seat. [6]

History and background

1920s to 1930s

In the aftermath of the failed Ukrainian War of Independence, a radical wing of the Ukrainian nationalist movement [a] emerged in the 1920s that rejected the prewar nationalism that had reconciled Ukrainian national aspirations with democratic and humanist values. [7] The new movement blamed democracy, socialism, and a lack of will for the failure of the independence war. [10] Dmytro Dontsov fundamentally influenced the emergence of the movement and developed his own brand of radical Ukrainian nationalism. [11] [12] In 1923, the Conference of Ambassadors ruled in favor of Polish sovereignty over Western Ukraine. [13]

The Ukrainian Military Organization merged with several ultranationalist student movements in 1929 to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), described by Alexander J. Motyl as the organized movement of the new Ukrainian nationalists. [14] [15] The ideology of the OUN has been characterized by scholars as a Ukrainian form of fascism [16] [17] and [18] /or integral nationalism, [19] [20] itself sometimes characterized as proto-fascist. [21] Stanley G. Payne considers the OUN to be "at the extreme end of the radical right, but not fully fascist" in his classification of authoritarian nationalist movements. [22] The OUN's paramilitary wing continued the UVO's terror tactics against Polish rule and Ukrainian moderates, their most famous attack being the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki in 1934. [14] The OUN revived Mykola Mikhnovsky's slogan "Ukraine for the Ukrainians!" [14]

The OUN was regularly condemned by the leaders of the UNDO and Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, though Polish pacification campaigns in Eastern Galicia and repressions (partly incited by OUN acts of terror and sabotage) led to waves of support for the OUN. [14] [23] After Pieracki's assassination, the Polish government established Bereza Kartuska Prison for Ukrainian radicals. [14] Andrew Wilson considers the internment or concentration camp to have "merely served to radicalise its inmates and incubate a new generation of nationalist leaders". [14] In May 1938, OUN leader Yevhen Konovalets was assassinated by the NKVD with his successor, Andriy Melnyk, formally ratified to the post in August 1939. [24] [25]

1940s

Schutzmannschaft battalion with the Ukrainian national flag and tryzub of the OUN. 115th Battalion of Ukrainian Shuma 1943 (2).jpg
Schutzmannschaft battalion with the Ukrainian national flag and tryzub of the OUN.

Following the release of OUN members from Polish prisons during the German invasion of Poland, the organization split into two factions: the Melnykites (OUN-M) led by Andriy Melnyk and the Banderites (OUN-B) led by Stepan Bandera. [24] [26] During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, both factions sent expeditionary groups into Soviet Ukraine to shadow the Wehrmacht's advance and set up local administrations, with the OUN-B forming the Nachtigall and Roland battalions under the Abwehr in early 1941. [27] [28] Both factions of the OUN were antisemitic and engaged in pogroms, including the mid-1941 Lviv pogroms involving members of the OUN-B, but neither considered Jews their main enemy which remained the Soviet Union or Poland. [29] Members of both factions joined the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police which was complicit in the implementation of the Holocaust in Ukraine. [30] [31]

The OUN-B unilaterally proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv on June 30, in response to which the German authorities initiated a crackdown on the organization. [32] The crackdown intensified in September after the assassination of two leading members of the OUN-M in Zhytomyr. [33] The OUN-B created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in October 1942 that combatted Soviet partisans, resisted the German occupation, and pursued a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles in Volhynia and Galicia. [34] Following the Soviet counteroffensive in 1944, the UPA continued to wage an insurgency against the Soviet Union. [35] In August 1943, the OUN-B tactically liberalized its ideology and in 1945 publicly abandoned ethnonationalism. [36]

The OUN-M were more cautious and maintained a strategy of collaboration with Nazi Germany, though they were subjected to a crackdown by the German authorities from November 1941 onwards. [37] [38] The OUN-M renewed collaboration with the Nazis in 1943, with its members contributing to the formation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and forming the Ukrainian Legion of Self-Defense in collaboration with the SD. [39] [40] [41] In 1947, the émigré OUN-M moderated its ideology. [42] [26]

1950s to 1980s

The last OUN-UPA members in Soviet Ukraine were rounded up in the mid-1950s, with the OUN-B subsequently consigned to an existence in exile. [43] Disagreements regarding the earlier democratization of the OUN-B culminated in a split in the organization in the mid-1950s between the OUN-r, led by Bandera and which returned to Dontsovite authoritarianism, and the broadly social-democratic but short-lived OUN-z. [43] Bandera and OUN-z leader Lev Rebet were assassinated by the NKVD in 1959 and 1957, respectively. [43] [26] In 1970, the OUN-M declared itself to be a defender of democratic principles. [44]

The Sixtiers explicitly rejected Dontsovism and instead focused on individual rights, the rule of law, and constructing a common front with other Soviet dissidents. [45] According to Andrew Wilson, Soviet propaganda was successful in convincing many Ukrainians that all Ukrainian nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s had been Dontsovites, feeding into a mythologized tradition that many Ukrainian radicals would later seek to revive in the 1990s. [43] During perestroika in the late 1980s, the Ukrainian nationalist movement was dominated by national-democrats. [46]

1990s to 2000s

Several ultranationalist parties, largely confined to Galicia, splintered off from the established right wing, with most of them uniting to form the Ukrainian Inter-party Assembly (UIA) in mid-1990. [47] After independence, the UIA, led by Yurii Shukhevych, changed its name to the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA). [48] In response to the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, the UNA founded a paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Self-Defence Force (UNSO). [49] [50] The émigré OUN factions were initially reluctant to return to open political activity while the Communist Party continued to dominate public political life in Ukraine. [51] The OUN-r established the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists party (KUN) in 1992 and adopted the informal name '30 June' after the 1941 declaration of statehood. [52] In 1993, the OUN-M registered in Ukraine as a non-governmental organization and mainly engaged in publishing activities. [53] [54] Having served as its paramilitary wing, "Tryzub" broke off from the KUN in 1999 whereafter it was led by Dmytro Yarosh. [55]

The Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) emerged as a paramilitary group in Lviv in mid-1991. [56] It rose to prominence as shock troops for the 'Nationalist Block', a local alliance of ultranationalist groups led by Valentyn Moroz, that attempted a violent takeover of the local Rukh branch in October 1992. [56] In 2004, the SNPU renamed itself the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda and elected Oleh Tyahnybok as its leader. [57] [58] The SNPU also formally disbanded its paramilitary wing, Patriot of Ukraine. [59] In 2006, Patriot of Ukraine was revived under Andriy Biletsky and transformed into the paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly. [55]

2010s

Right Sector extremists wearing the Wolfsangel on Maidan, 2014. Maidan Kiev 2014-04-13 11-48.JPG
Right Sector extremists wearing the Wolfsangel on Maidan, 2014.

A broad coalition of far-right groups and activists came together in late 2013, in the early days of the pro-European protests, to form Right Sector. [60] This included "Tryzub", the UNA-UNSO, and Patriot of Ukraine among others. [60] Svoboda, its paramilitary wing C14, and Right Sector played a key role in the violence surrounding the Revolution of Dignity, although they made up a minority of the protestors. [61] [62] [63] According to Andreas Umland, Ukrainian society became more permissive of the far-right since the events of 2014, with there being repeated instances of cooperation between various government institutions and far-right groups. [64]

After Viktor Yanukovych's ouster in February 2014, the interim first Yatsenyuk government placed four Svoboda members in cabinet positions: Oleksandr Sych as Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy, Ihor Tenyukh as Acting Minister of Defense, Ihor Shvaika as Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, and Andriy Mokhnyk as Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. [65] [66] Svoboda left the coalition in July 2014, however they underperformed at the subsequent elections and received six seats in the 8th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada after failing to meet the 5% electoral threshold. [65] From April 2016 to August 2019, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament was Andriy Parubiy. [67] [68] Parubiy was a co-founder of the SNPU, however he had left such organizations in 2004 and later joined moderate political parties such as Our Ukraine, Batkivshchyna and the People's Front. [66] [69]

In 2016, Patriot of Ukraine was reconstituted as the National Corps. [70] Amid poor electoral prospects, Svoboda formed an alliance with the National Corps, Right Sector, the KUN, the OUN-M, and C14. [65] In March 2017, these groups signed the 'National Manifesto' [ukr]. [65]

2020s

Electoral record

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, far-right groups in Ukraine have largely remained on the political margins in spite of consistently high social domestic tensions. [71] Svoboda was more successful at the local level in the 2010s from where they engaged in memory activism. [65] [72] In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the Svoboda bloc received 2.15% of the vote, below the 5% electoral threshold, and one single-mandate seat. [73]


National

election [74] [75]

National Front Bloc

(KUN, UKRP & URP)/
URP/ KUN

 UNA/

Right Sector (PS)

'Fewer Words' (MS)

Bloc (VPO-DSU & SNPU)/
Svoboda (VOS)

1991 (Presidential) 4.5 (Lukianenko)
1994 (Presidential)
1998 (Parliamentary) 2.71 (NF)0.39 (UNA)0.16 (MS)
1999 (Presidential)
2002 (Parliamentary) 0.04 (UNA)
2004 (Presidential) 0.02 (Kozak, OUN [b] )0.17 (Korchynsky)
2006 (Parliamentary) 0.06 (UNA)0.36 (VOS)
2007 (Parliamentary) 0.76 (VOS)
2010 (Presidential) 1.43 (Tyahnybok)
2012 (Parliamentary) 0.08 (UNA-UNSO)10.44 (VOS)
2014 (Presidential) 0.05 (KUN)0.70 (Yarosh) [c] 1.16 (Tyahnybok)
2014 (Parliamentary) 1.81 (PS)4.71 (VOS)
2019 (Presidential) 1.62 (Koshulynskyi)
2019 (Parliamentary) 2.15 (VOS bloc) [d]

Hate crime

Hate crimes were relatively uncommon in Ukraine compared to other Eastern European countries, with increase after 2005, [76] and decrease after 2008 - 2009. The increase was mostly due to informal youth groups, in particular skinheads. 2007 was the most violent year in terms of racially motivated crimes with 88 registered assaults with 6 fatalities. [77] By comparison, in Russia during the same year there were a reported 625 casualties with 94 deaths attributed to far-right violence. The significant difference results in part the from the different sizes of the racist youth and skinhead scene in Ukraine and Russia. [77] According to estimates, in 2008 Ukraine had a maximum of 2,000 organized skinheads whereas in Russia the estimates range between 20,000 and 70,000 members of skinhead groups. [78] [79] Since 2008, there has been a more explicit response to such crimes by law enforcement and the justice system, which has led to a decrease of violent right-wing offences. [76] Ukraine has seen a decrease in both the frequency and the severity of hate crimes since their high in the mid-2000s. [77] Between 2006 and 2012, there were 295 reported violent hate crimes and 13 hate-crime-related deaths, the last reported death occurred in 2010 before the start of the war with Russia. [77]

In 2008, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, issued an open letter complaining about the radical right-wing organization Patriot of Ukraine which according to the author had close ties to Russian and Ukrainian extremists. The author warned that the spread of extremist ideology was reminiscent of that in Russia 2000-2001. [80]

In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a letter stating that, in the months preceding the letter's publication, there have been a series of hate-motivated violent incidents and harassment by radical groups against LGBT people, Roma people, feminists and rights activists. According to the letter, the violent incidents were not prosecuted adequately by the Ukrainian authorities. [81] According to a 2018 report by Freedom House, in the first three months of 2018, extremist groups tried to disrupt twelve public events and attacked a variety of targets. While direct physical violence was not deployed in all twelve cases, extremist groups sought to restrict the rights and freedoms of Ukraine's citizens. Overall, the report argues that far-right groups have been marginal in Ukrainian society and especially in Ukrainian politics. [82] The 2018 report by Freedom House concluded that far-right groups in Ukraine had no significant representation in parliament nor any plausible path to power, but had "a serious impact on everyday life and societal development in the country." The report identified three extremist political parties―Svoboda, National Corps and Right Sector—and argues that their lack of relevance in official politics has resulted in right-wing groups seeking avenues outside of politics to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society. Such attempts have included efforts to disrupt peaceful assemblies and violence against those with opposite political and cultural views including the left, feminists, LGBT groups, and human rights activists. One particular area of concern noted in the report is that Ukrainian law enforcement had failed to properly stop or punish far-right disruption. The report called on Ukrainian authorities to take more effective measures. [2]

In 2019, a Bellingcat investigation revealed that the Ukrainian government gave over 8 million hryvnias (over US$300,000)) for "national-patriotic education projects" targeting Ukrainian youth. A proportion of this (845,000 hryvnias — over $30,000) went to several far-right nationalist groups, including National Corps and possible fronts for C14. [83]

Political scientist Tamta Gelashvili noted in 2023, "the Ukrainian far right is louder in words than in action. Empirical studies of the far-right movement in dicate that while active on the streets, the movement mostly engages in peaceful rallies and performances." Their anti-Russian stance took roots from the WWII-times fight for the independence against the Soviet Union. "To this day, opposition to Russian influence on Ukraine and any Ukrainian political actor perceived as pro-Russian is the defining feature of the Ukrainian far right." [84]

Antisemitism

A survey by the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that antisemitic sentiments were less prevalent in Ukraine than other Eastern and Central European countries. While 5% of Ukrainians stated that they would not like to have Jews as their fellow citizens, the figure was 14% in Russia and Hungary, 16% in Greece and 32% in Armenia. [85]

According to a 2024 survey by the Anti-Defamation League Ukraine has a 36% index score (answering 'probably true' to a majority of the antisemitic stereotypes tested), compared to 36% for Hungary, 40% for Poland, 43% for Romania, and 62% for Russia. [86]

Mierzejewski-Voznyak and Bustikov stated that the antisemitic rhetoric used by far-right activists relatively rarely translates into violent actions. [77] [87] Between 2004 and 2014, there were 112 anti-Semitic violent attacks, with a decrease over time, in Ukraine. [77]

Historical memory

In April 2015, Ukraine passed four decommunization laws regulating official memory of the Soviet period. The laws ban Nazi and Communist ideology and symbols and the "public denial of the criminal nature of the Communist totalitarian regime 1917–1991"; they open former KGB archives; replace the Soviet term "great patriotic war" with the European second world war, and provide public recognition to anyone who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century. [88] The laws represent attempts to reorient historical memory and pivot more decisively away from the Russian-Soviet narrative of the Soviet period, and in particular the World War II era. [89] They laws were criticized by intellectuals in Ukraine and abroad who argued that the laws limited freedom of speech. [89] [90] The fourth bill in the package, "On the Legal Status and Honouring of Fighters for Ukraine's Independence in the Twentieth Century", has been particularly controversial because it covers a long list of individuals and organisations from human rights activists to fighters accused of committing crimes during World War II, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). [88] [91] [92] [93]

Monuments in honor of members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army such as Stepan Bandera, [94] Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko have been controversial and, in one case, earned official protest notes by Israel and Poland. [95] [94]

Ukrainian professor Marta Havryshko said that during her history studies at Ivan Franko University in Lviv in the 1990's she was taught that Ukrainian nationalists fought for the country's independence but omitted collaboration with Nazi Germany, she added that the collaboration is also ″kept quiet and swept under the carpet″ in current Ukrainian historical scholarship. According to Havryshko, the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a division of the German Nazi Party military wing Waffen-SS, are heroized by Ukrainian military units, citing an example in the Kyiv Museum of History where parallels are drawn between members of the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Waffen-SS Division. [96]

Havryshko said that the differentiated view of the 1943 Volhynia massacre of Polish civilians is straining relations with Poland, with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski linking Ukraine's accession to the EU to the resolution of the historic dispute. She added that these Ukrainian narratives favor Russian propaganda by ″pouring oil on its own identity politics fire″, which in turn favors Russian propaganda narratives where the Kremlin exaggerates the influence of the extreme right in Ukraine to justify the invasion of Ukraine. [96]

Ukrainian paramilitary units

Following the February 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied Crimea, and armed detachments of Russians seized towns in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and, by their claims, "pulled the trigger" of the Donbas War. [97] In response, several Ukrainian volunteer battalions formed to help the regular Ukrainian military. One of these self-funded volunteer militias was the Azov Battalion. [98] [99] In 2014, some members of the battalion were reported as openly white supremacists. [100] Its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, the head of the ultra-nationalist and far right political groups Social-National Assembly and Patriots of Ukraine. [101] [100] The battalion was taken under the command of the National Guard of Ukraine in 2015. In June 2015, United States Democratic Representative John Conyers and his Republican colleague Ted Yoho offered bipartisan amendments to prevent U.S. military training of the Azov Battalion—called a "neo-Nazi paramilitary militia" by Conyers and Yoho. [102] [103] [104]

While far-right volunteers played a role in the early stages of the Donbas War, their importance was often exaggerated, and both sides had less need to rely on them as the conflict progressed. [105] Alexander Ritzmann, a Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, wrote of the Azov Battalion: "when your country is under attack by foreign invaders, it is understandable that Ukrainians will not focus on the political views of their co-defenders, but on who can and will fight the invaders". [106]

American scholar and journalist Stephen F. Cohen wrote in The Nation in 2018 that the resurrection of Nazi ideology could be observed all around the globe, including Europe and the United States, but that the growing Ukrainian Neo-Nazi movement posed a special danger due to its well-armed and well-organized nature. [107] Cohen cited the Azov Battalion and Right Sector in this regard. [107] In 2020, Taras Kuzio criticized Cohen, noting research finding that these groups were largely made up of Russian speakers and national minorities. Kuzio says despite Cohen's claims, even Right Sector and the Azov Regiment that are often described as 'Ukrainian nationalist', included minorities such as Georgians, Jews, Russians, Tatars, and Armenians. [108]

British scholar Richard Sakwa wrote in 2015 that "The creation of the National Guard, consisting largely of far-right militants and others from the Maidan self-defence forces, had the advantage of removing these militants from the centre of Kyiv and other western Ukrainian towns, but they often lacked discipline and treated south-east Ukraine as occupied territory, regularly committing atrocities against civilians and captured 'terrorists'." [109]

Pro-Russian separatism

Flags of three far-right Russian separatist groups in Ukraine: Rusich, Russian National Unity, and the Russian Imperial Legion. Far-right pro-Russian forces in the Russian-Ukrainian war.png
Flags of three far-right Russian separatist groups in Ukraine: Rusich, Russian National Unity, and the Russian Imperial Legion.

According to a 2016 report by French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), far-right Russian nationalism, neo-imperialism and Orthodox fundamentalism has shaped the official ideology of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, [110] the two self-proclaimed states controlled by pro-Russian separatists but internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. During the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially at the beginning, far-right groups played an important role on the pro-Russian side, arguably more so than on the Ukrainian side. [111] [112]

Members and former members of Russian National Unity (RNU), the National Bolshevik Party, the Eurasian Youth Union, and Cossack groups formed branches to recruit volunteers to join the separatists. [105] [113] [114] [115] A former RNU member, Pavel Gubarev, was founder of the Donbas People's Militia and first "governor" of the Donetsk People's Republic. [105] [116] RNU is particularly linked to the Russian Orthodox Army, [105] one of a number of separatist units described as "pro-Tsarist" and "extremist" Orthodox nationalists. [117] Neo-Nazi units such as the 'Rusich', 'Svarozhich' and 'Ratibor' battalions, use Slavic swastikas on their badges. [105] 'Rusich' is part of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group in Ukraine which has been linked to far-right extremism. [118] [119]

Some of the most influential far-right nationalists among the Russian separatists are neo-imperialists, who seek to revive the Russian Empire. [105] These included Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin, first "minister of defence" of the Donetsk People's Republic, who espouses Russian neo-imperialism and ethno-nationalism. [105] The Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist militant group, [118] has recruited thousands of volunteers to join the separatists. [117] Some separatists have flown the black-yellow-white Russian imperial flag, [105] such as the Sparta Battalion. In 2014, volunteers from the National Liberation Movement joined the DPR People's Militia bearing portraits of Tsar Nicholas II. [113]

Other Russian volunteers involved in separatist militias included members of the Eurasian Youth Union, and of banned groups such as the Slavic Union and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration. [114] Another Russian separatist paramilitary unit, the Interbrigades, is made up of activists from the National Bolshevik (Nazbol) group Other Russia. [105]

Russian far-right groups gradually became less important in Donbas as the need for Russian radical nationalists faded. [105]

Russian disinformation

Despite the fact that far-right parties in Ukraine have been unpopular with the electorate and received less support than far-right parties in other European countries, the Russian government and media started to label Ukraine a "fascist state" following the Orange Revolution in 2004. [1] The subject of the far right's alleged influence in Ukraine became especially politicized during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity when small radical groups received disproportionate media attention not only in Russia but also in the West. The impact of these organizations on Ukrainian politics and society has been greatly exaggerated in Russian state media and also in some West European media. [3] Media coverage has been focused largely on Right Sector and on Svoboda, [1] whose members stand accused of killing four national guardsmen using hand grenades during a rally outside Ukrainian parliament in August 2015. [120]

Russian president Vladimir Putin used the pretext of "denazification" to launch the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, falsely claiming that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis. [121] Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", where he argued that Ukraine and Ukrainian national identity must be wiped out, because he claimed most Ukrainians are at least "passive Nazis". [122] [123]

These allegations of Nazism are widely rejected as untrue and part of a Russian disinformation campaign to justify the invasion, with many pointing out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. [124] Some of the world's leading historians of Nazism and the Holocaust put out a statement rejecting Putin's claims, which was signed by hundreds of other historians and scholars of the subject. It says:

"We strongly reject the Russian government's ... equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression. This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it". [125]

The authors say that Ukraine "has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups" like any country, but "none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine". [125] The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, [126] the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's abuse of Holocaust history. [127] [128] [129] Ukrainian Jews likewise rejected claims of Ukraine being a neo-Nazi state. [130]

Kremlin claims of Nazism against Ukraine are partly an attempt to drum-up support for the war among Russians, framing it as a continuation of the Soviet Union's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, "even as Russia supports extreme-right groups across Europe". [131] [132] Experts on disinformation say that portraying Ukrainians as Nazis also helps Russians justify war crimes against them, such as the Bucha massacre. [133] Historian Timothy Snyder said the Russian regime calls Ukrainians "Nazis" to justify genocidal acts against them. He said pro-war Russians use the word "Nazi" to mean "a Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian", and he called Putin's Russia "the world center of fascism" (ruscism). [122]

Observers commented how Russia has used real issues, such antisemitism in Ukraine and Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany, for its own propaganda in support of Putin's debunked de-Nazification claim, [134] as Ukraine is not a Nazi state, Russia has been supported by the European far-right, and Russian fighters in the war include neo-Nazis, [135] and its de-Nazifications claims and invasion are not true or justified. [134] [136] By June 2023, some observers, such as Bellingcat analyst Michael Colborne in a New York Times article and war reporter since 2014 and Kyiv Independent journalist Illya Ponomarenko, [137] [138] argued that Ukraine should consider more seriously the media damage produced by the partial negligence in the condemnation of some symbols, which are present in the most radical military communities of both sides in the conflict, including Azov, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Wagner, and the numerous neo-Nazis within the Russian Imperial Movement.[ citation needed ] According to Colborne, Ukraine must understand that any communication failure can undermine Western support and the country's international credibility.[ citation needed ] Ponomarenko proposed to tighten punitive measures against individual soldiers who display neo-Nazi symbols but also commented how the presence of these symbols is not unprecedented for Western armies, citing similar cases in the Australian Army and a US Marine Corps during the war in Afghanistan. [139] Russian responses to the Yaroslav Hunka scandal in September 2023 were designed to cause their conduct of war in Ukraine to appear more legitimate, [140] [141] with James L. Turk calling the scandal "a gold mine for Russian propagandists", [142] who shared on Twitter an image of a fake Ukrainian postage stamp featuring the SS Galician veteran Hunka. [143]

Far-right political parties

Other far-right groups

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ In his book The Turn to the Right, Alexander J. Motyl terms this "Ukrainian Nationalism". [7] Contemporary scholars have referred to it as "radical Ukrainian nationalism". [8] [9]
  2. ↑ 'OUN in Ukraine' was founded in 1993 in Lviv and is distinct from the KUN and OUN-M. [54]
  3. ↑ Yarosh formally ran as an independent but was publicly known as leader of Right Sector.
  4. ↑ The Svoboda list was a unified bloc of the most relevant far-right parties, but was officially registered only as a VOS list. [75] Among others, the bloc consisted of Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Yarosh's State Intitiative, the OUN-M, and the KUN. The top five candidates on the party list were Oleh Tyahnybok, Andriy Biletsky, Dmytro Yarosh, Andrey Tarasenko, and Ruslan Koshulynskyi. [65]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Mierzejewski-Voznyak 2018, p. 861.
  2. 1 2 Likhachev 2018, p. 1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Mierzejewski-Voznyak 2018, p. 862.
  4. ↑ Aram Terzyan: Towards Democratic Consolidation? Ukraine After the Revolution of Dignity. Open Political Science, 2020; 3: 183–191, p. 186. doi:10.1515/openps-2020-0015
  5. ↑ CEC counts 100 percent of vote in Ukraine's parliamentary elections, Ukrinform (26 July 2019)
    (in Russian) Results of the extraordinary elections of the People's Deputies of Ukraine 2019, Ukrayinska Pravda (21 July 2019)
  6. ↑ "Результаты внеочередных выборов народных депутатов Украины 2019". Украинская правда (in Russian). Retrieved 4 August 2023.
  7. 1 2 Motyl 1980, p. 1.
  8. ↑ Himka 2022, p. 1.
  9. ↑ Zaitsev 2014, pp. 17, 35, 61.
  10. ↑ Motyl 1980, p. 2.
  11. ↑ Zaitsev 2014, p. 141.
  12. ↑ Motyl 1980, p. 61.
  13. ↑ Motyl 1980, p. 35.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wilson 1996, p. 47.
  15. ↑ Motyl 1980, p. 4.
  16. ↑ Rossoliński-Liebe 2011, pp. 85–90.
  17. ↑ Gomza 2015, p. 5 (99).
  18. ↑ Rudling 2011 , pp. 2–4: "The term integral nationalism was applied to the OUN by the American historian John Armstrong.3 The term has stuck, and many pronationalist historians find it preferable to the term fascism, which today carries strong negative connotations and is used colloquially as a term of abuse. There is no contradiction between fascism and integralism, which is a variety within the fascist tradition... Belonging to a tradition of European generic fascism, the OUN emerged out of an amalgamation between the Ukrainian Military Organization and a number of other extreme right-wing organizations".
  19. ↑ Armstrong 1963, pp. 19–21.
  20. ↑ Zaitsev 2015, p. 184.
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  105. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Likhachev, Vyacheslav (July 2016). "The Far Right in the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine" (PDF). Russie.NEI.Visions in English. pp. 18–28. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 March 2022. Retrieved 1 March 2022. The National Bolshevik Party (NBP), the Russian National Unity (RNU), the Eurasian Youth Union, newly formed armed Cossack units and other groups were active in opening branches... The involvement of "The Other Russia" ("descendants" of the outlawed NAtional Bolshevik Party) supporters in the war against Ukraine is entirely consistent with the party's activities... The first "separatist people's governor of Donetsk...had also been an RNU member... During the war in Donbass, the RNU altered the symbols on its chevrons, dispensing with the modified swastika it had always used in the past. Other Russian neo-Nazi groups were less careful, however. The round eight-pronged swastika-kolovrat (a neo-pagan swastika) appeared on the badges of the neo-Nazi "Rusich" and "Ratibor" [units].
  106. ↑ Ritzmann, Alexander (12 April 2022). "The myth that far-right zealots run Ukraine is Russian propaganda". Euronews .
  107. 1 2 Stephen F. Cohen America's Collusion With Neo-Nazis. Neo-fascists play an important official or tolerated role in US-backed Ukraine Archived 2019-12-27 at the Wayback Machine The Nation, 2018
  108. ↑ Kuzio, Taras (2020). Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War. E-International Relations. p. 135. ISBN   978-1-910814-55-0 . Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  109. ↑ Sakwa 2015, p. 159-160.
  110. ↑ Likhachev, Vyacheslav (July 2016). "The Far Right in the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine" (PDF). Russie.NEI.Visions in English. pp. 25–26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-10-26. Retrieved 1 March 2022. The ideas of Russian imperial (and, to some extent, ethnic) nationalism and Orthodox fundamentalism shaped the official ideology of the DNR and LNR. ... Anti-Semitism and homophobia play a lesser, though still significant, role in public rhetoric. ... It can therefore be argued that the official ideology of the DNR and LNR, which developed under the influence of Russian far-right activists, is largely right-wing, conservative and xenophobic in character.
  111. ↑ Likhachev, Vyacheslav (July 2016). "The Far Right in the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine" (PDF). Russie.NEI.Visions in English. pp. 21–22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 March 2022. Retrieved 1 March 2022. Members of far-right groups played a much greater role on the Russian side of the conflict than on the Ukrainian side, especially at the beginning.
  112. ↑ Averre, Derek; Wolczuk, Kataryna, eds. (2018). The Ukraine Conflict: Security, Identity and Politics in the Wider Europe. Routledge. pp. 90–91. Separatist ideologues in the Donbas, such as they are, have therefore produced a strange melange since 2014. Of what Marlène Laruelle (2016) has called the 'three colours' of Russian nationalism designed for export—red (Soviet), white (Orthodox) and brown (fascist) ... there are arguably more real fascists on the rebel side than the Ukrainian side
  113. 1 2 Yudina, Natalia (1 June 2015). "Russian Nationalists Fight Ukrainian War". Journal on Baltic Security. 1 (1). Walter de Gruyter GmbH: 47–60. doi: 10.1515/jobs-2016-0012 . S2CID   157714883. Less known organisations are more active in sending fighters to the conflict area, such as Alexander Barkashov's Russian National Unity, RNE (or rather a fragment thereof which somehow remained loyal to the leader)...The National Liberation Movement (NOD) led by United Russia deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov is busy forming volunteer units and transporting them to Ukraine... Other Russian volunteers spotted in Ukraine included activists of the Eurasian Youth Union (the youth branch of Alexander Dugin's party), the Russian Imperial Movement led by Stanislav Vorobyov, and the National Democratic Party.
  114. 1 2 Laruelle, Marlene (26 June 2014). "Is anyone in charge of Russian nationalists fighting in Ukraine?". The Washington Post . Many mercenaries are related, directly or indirectly, to the Russian National Unity (RNU) movement of Alexander Barkashov ... The RNU is supposedly closely associated to members of the self-proclaimed government of Donetsk and in particular of Dmitri Boitsov, leader of the Orthodox Donbass organization ... The volunteers come from several other Russian nationalist groups: the Eurasianist Youth inspired by the Fascist and neo-Eurasianist geopolitician Alexander Dugin; the now-banned Movement Against Illegal Immigration led by Alexander Belov; the group 'Sputnik and Pogrom'; the national-socialist Slavic Union of Dmitri Demushkin; several small groups inspired by monarchism such as the Russian Imperial Movement
  115. ↑ Saunders, Robert (2019). Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. pp. 581–582. Russian National Unity (RNU), banned ultranationalist political party ... neo-Nazi party ... a number of RNU members joined separatist forces in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk
  116. ↑ Snyder, Timothy. Far-Right Forces are Influencing Russia's Actions in Crimea. The New Republic . 17 March 2014.
  117. 1 2 Kuzio, Taras (2015). Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism. ABC-CLIO. pp. 110–111. the Russian Orthodox Army, one of a number of separatist units fighting for the "Orthodox faith," revival of the Tsarist Empire, and the Russkii Mir. Igor Girkin (Strelkov [Shooter]), who led the Russian capture of Slovyansk in April 2014, was an example of the Russian nationalists who have sympathies to pro-Tsarist and extremist Orthodox groups in Russia. ... the Russian Imperial Movement ... has recruited thousands of volunteers to fight with the separatists. ... separatists received support from Russian neo-Nazis such as the Russian Party of National Unity who use a modified swastika as their party symbol and Dugin's Eurasianist movement. The paramilitaries of both of these ... are fighting alongside separatists.
  118. 1 2 Townsend, Mark (20 March 2022). "Russian mercenaries in Ukraine linked to far-right extremists". The Guardian . Russian mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, including the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group, have been linked to far-right extremism ... Much of the extremist content, posted on Telegram and the Russian social media platform VKontakte (VK), relates to a far-right unit within the Wagner Group called Rusich ... One post on the messaging app Telegram, dated 15 March, shows the flag of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), a white-supremacist paramilitary ... Another recent VK posting lists Rusich as part of a coalition of separatist groups and militias including the extreme far-right group, Russian National Unity.
  119. ↑ Šmíd, Tomáš; Šmídová, Alexandra (2021-06-01). "Anti-government Non-state Armed Actors in the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine". Mezinárodní vztahy. 56 (2). Institute of International Relations Prague: 35–64. doi: 10.32422/mv-cjir.1778 . ISSN   2570-9429. S2CID   236341469. Another group of Russian citizens who became involved in the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine were members of the so-called right-wing units of the Russian Spring. Here we mean mainly extreme-right activists... the members of Rusich around [Aleksei] Milchakov are activists of various Russian extreme-right groups... Varyag is one of the few not to hide their extreme-right orientation, as it endorses its neo-Nazi ideology quite openly...
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  128. ↑ Hollinger, Andrew, ed. (2022-02-24). "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum condemns Russia's invasion Of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's exploitation of Holocaust history as a pretext for war". Washington, DC, USA: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 2022-02-25. Retrieved 2022-02-25. […] In justifying this attack, Vladimir Putin has misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history by claiming falsely that democratic Ukraine needs to be "denazified." Equally groundless and egregious are his claims that Ukrainian authorities are committing "genocide" as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine. […]
  129. ↑ "Yad Vashem Statement Regarding the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" (Press Release). Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem. 2022-02-27. Archived from the original on 2022-03-09. Retrieved 2022-03-04. […] the propagandist discourse accompanying the current hostilities is saturated with irresponsible statements and completely inaccurate comparisons with Nazi ideology and actions before and during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem condemns this trivialization and distortion of the historical facts of the Holocaust.
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  140. ↑ Karadeglija, Anja (2023-09-26). "Parliament's Nazi scandal a 'top headline story' for Russian propaganda news". National Post. Archived from the original on 30 September 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2023. One of the main narratives pushed by Russia since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine is that it is engaged in de-Nazifying Ukraine. The Russian narrative is that 'resisting Russian influence or direct rule is an act only a Nazi would consider, the thinking goes, so they — Ukrainians today — are Nazis, or are at least controlled by Nazis,' said Michael Habegger, an advisor at the University of Delaware who studies disinformation. Rota's actions 'made this almost too easy' for the Kremlin and Russia Today, the Russian-propaganda news network, he said.
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