By: Vyacheslav Tetekin, Dr.Sc. (History), Member of the CC CPRF
This article was originally published “Soviet Russia” newspaper, March, 26, 2022

Today, as the military operation in Ukraine goes on, it is becoming increasingly evident that the ideological basis of the present Ukrainian government is extreme nationalism, or rather, overt Neo-Nazism. It is the continuation of the pro-Fascist Bandera movement which took the side of Hitler’s Germany during its invasion of the USSR in 1941-19445. After the defeat of the Bandera movement in 1953 Nazism hunkered down. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence Bandera Neo-Nazism reared its head again.

Creeping Nazification of Ukraine was greatly aided by the USA which after 1991 strongly encouraged extreme nationalist elements in Western Ukraine. In fact, the CIA was the most active sponsor of Bandera terrorist groups in Western Ukraine between 1945 and 1953. It is not surprising that the Neo-Nazi Banderaites, well-organized and well-trained ideologically and physically, carried out the state coup in February, 2014. After the coup Ms Victoria Nuland, the current US Under Secretary of State, admitted that the US had spent 5 billion dollars on preparing the coup.

Since that time the influence of Neo-Nazis on Ukraine’s political life has been steadily growing. Even US Congress took notice of this. On November 24, 2019 forty US Congress members signed a letter to the US State Department demanding that the Azov Regiment, which is part of Ukraine’s National Guard, be declared a terrorist organization. Earlier, in 2015 and again in 2018, the US Congress officially forbade the US Defense Department to render any kind of help to the Azov regiment because of its Nazi character.

Moreover, the letter, citing FBI data, noted that the Azov regiment and Ukraine as a whole had turned into a center of the world Neo-Nazi movement. Azov training grounds enabled Neo-Nazis from across the world to practice the use of various weapons to become the nuclei of Neo-Nazi units in their countries.

The hostilities in Ukraine brought more and more proof that Neo-Nazis are the base of the current regime. Thus, because the Kiev ruling group and its American masters were not quite sure of the reliability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces they took the precaution of embedding the units and “commissars” from Nazi battalions in the Ukrainian Army. The aim was barely disguised: if Ukrainian troops tried to retreat or individual soldiers to surrender, they were to be shot. Such incidents have already been recorded. In other words, the Nazi battalions are acting as “barrier squads” terrifying the Ukrainian troops into resisting. Exactly the way SS troops were used in Nazi Germany to control the Werhmacht (Army) units.

When hostilities started President Zelensky released Nazi extremists serving jail sentences for serious crimes, including murder and robbery, so that they could take up arms and join Nazi battalions. Kidnapping, torture, humiliation and murder of political opponents of the current regime became a daily occurrence.

After Mariupol airport was liberated torture chambers were found in the location where the Azov regiment was stationed. With utter cynicism, the torture center was referred to as the “Library” and the torture victims as “books.’ Investigators from the Donetsk People’s Republic are currently establishing the number of terror victims and the circumstances of kidnapping, torture and murder of people by members of the Nazi Azov regiment. US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has recently declared that America should not spend billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money to provide lethal weapons to possible Nazi groups which torture innocent people, especially women and children.

Atrocities are not one-off cases, but the result of sophisticated Neo-Nazi propaganda. The world was shocked by the public statement of a Bandera doctor who told the Ukraine24 TV channel that he had instructed his subordinates to castrate captured Russian servicemen. 

The use of civilians as human shields is becoming more and more widespread. After the start of the Russian military operation Ukrainian Army units and Nazi battalions started to retreat from their defense positions which they had fortified for a whole eight years. Instead, they have been setting up firing positions in residential neighborhoods in cities and villages. Ukrainian Army manuals instruct that guns and mortars should be placed on the ground floors, civilians be kept on the second and third floors and snipers and machine guns should be positioned on floors four to five and higher. This amounts to mass seizure of fellow-citizens as hostages, something even the German Nazis did not do during the 1941-45 war.

At the same time President Zelensky banned all Centrist  opposition parties. These include Opposition Platform for Life, Nashi Party, Opposition Bloc, Sharia Party, and Vladimir Saldo Bloc. However, the Nazis’ prime target is always the left-wing parties ­- always the staunchest opponents of Nazism. In Ukraine, Pres Zelensky recently banned the Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, the Progressive-Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine and Socialists. The Communist Party of Ukraine was banned in 2015 and has been underground since.

All this shows that fraternal Ukraine is de facto controlled by US-backed Neo-Nazis. One of the main instruments of ideological brain-washing of the population is rabid Russophobia particularly aggressive in recent years. We remember that in the eight years between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and the start of his aggression against the USSR in 1941 the Nazis managed to change the mentality of German society so much that the nation of great philosophers, poets and musicians turned into a nation which exterminated tens of millions of people in the USSR and the occupied European countries.

Very much the same is happening in Ukraine in very much the same timeframe. While some were inclined to wave aside suggestions that Nazism is being revived in Ukraine today, after entire cities and hundreds of thousands of people have been turned into “human shields,” we can say with confidence and great regret that the contagion of Nazism has penetrated deep into the organism of Ukrainian society.