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Short Version.
- Russia and USA/EU states have each lied, told deliberate inaccuracies and operate their own versions of censorship.
- The vast majority of Ukraine voters absolutely turned their back on extreme right-wing parties and their militant supremacists who continued to cause further headaches for them.
- President Zelensky is falsely portrayed as connected to or supportive of extreme right-wing elements – when in fact, he actually strongly opposed them to the point where they started to issue death threats.
- NATO bears some responsibility for either aiding Putin’s reasons for invasion or at least, further inflaming internal sides that were already at political loggerheads.
- Much has been misrepresented by various sides – as many have their own agendas and/or views they don’t wish to see exposed as wrong or inaccurate.
- Previous elected Ukraine governments were connected to extremist’s in the South-East region. This CANNOT be denied. The current one under attack, was opposed to them. So much so, that new elected gained death threats for opposing them.
Russia President Putin claims that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government – while Western officials, such as former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.”
There is truth, deliberate inaccuracies and lies from both.
The Ukraine government that formed after 2014 suffered problems with extreme right-wing groups and neo-Nazi parties that grew within it’s own borders. This sort of situation will be familiar to the awake of Ireland that have seen more extremists also rise on an Ireland isle over the last few years.
The truth is that:
(a) Russia – or Putin and his sycophants and international supporters to many, more exact – exaggerate core facts as a pretext for starting a war and invasion upon a democratic country and innocent people.
(b) Many European countries are also trying to bury the rise of the extreme-right groups that have grown in worrying number, right across Europe – including in Ukraine.
More truth? USA, other Western states and Ukrainian based allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, to first to pull off the 2014 coup, then redirecting them to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. Of course, a lot of this has been much media censored while Western states give out about Russia and China censorship – that does also exist and equally continues to grow too.
More truth? Far from “denazifying” Ukraine as a country, the current Putin started invasion is likely to further empower neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for. Russia has further exacerbated a problem rather than further suppress it.
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History.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiy played leading roles in the US-backed coup in February 2014. Western states and media continues to massive hide this – and if not deliberate hide it, just about keep total silent about their activities during this time period.
Assistant Secretary Nuland (former member of USA foreign service, served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State from 2015 to 2017 and US Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 to 2008. She held the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United States Foreign Service.) and Ambassador Pyatt (member of the Foreign Service, class of Career Minister, was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic in September 2016) mentioned Tyahnybok (extreme right – LINK – leader of the Ukrainian nationalist far-right Svoboda political party) as one of the leaders they were working with on their infamous leaked phone call before their created coup, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the post-coup government.
Peaceful protests in Kyiv then gave way to pitched battles with police. Violent, armed marches tried to try to break through police barricades and reach the Parliament building, Svoboda party members and the newly-formed Right Sector militia, led by Dmytro Yarosh (a far-right Ukrainian activist – LINK), battled police, spearheaded marches and raided a police armoury for weapons. By mid-February 2014, these men with guns were the de facto leaders of the Maidan movement – LINK.
Yarosh took the stage in the Maidan movement and rejected a February 21, 2014, agreement negotiated by French, German, and Polish foreign ministers, under which Yanukovich and opposition political leaders agreed to hold new elections later that year.
Instead, Yarosh and right sector others refused to disarm and this led the climactic march on Ukraine’s Parliament that then ousted the government.
Since 1991, Ukrainian elections had swung back and forth between leaders like President Viktor Yanukovych, who was from Donetsk and had close ties with Russia, and Western-backed leaders like President Yushchenko, who was elected in 2005 after the “Orange Revolution” that followed a disputed election. Corruption was engrained within every government. Quick grown public disillusionment with leaders and parties that each won power, led to back and forth arguments between Western and Russian-aligned factions.
In 2014, Nuland and the USA State Department got their favoured, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Ukrainian politician, economist and lawyer – LINK), installed as Prime Minister of a post-coup government. He lasted two years, until he, too, lost his job due to endless corruption scandals. Petro Poroshenko (businessman and politician – LINK) who then took over, another post-coup President, lasted a bit longer until 2019. He hung on even after his personal tax evasion schemes were exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – matters that many Ireland business people and connected elected are wrapped up in too – but you are not supposed to know all this either! #RTEcensored.
When the previous Yatsenyuk became prime minister, he rewarded Svoboda’s party role in the coup with three cabinet positions, including Oleksander Sych (Ukrainian politician. Svoboda party member – LINK) as deputy prime minister, and governorships of three of Ukraine’s 25 provinces. Svoboda’s Andriy Parubiy was appointed chairman (or speaker) of Parliament, a post he held for the next 5 years. Tyahnybok ran for president in 2014, but only got 1.2% of the votes, and was not re-elected to parliament.
…THEN CAME THE 2019 NATIONAL ELECTION.
Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme right in later elections, reducing Svoboda’s 10.4% share of the national vote in 2012 to 4.7%. Again, for the record – can be independently checked – Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme right.
After a previous coup, the far-right factions helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader Yarosh described to Newsweek as a “war” to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. They were using the existence of pro-Russian supporters as an excuse to do what they wanted to do – just like Putin in return in 2022, would also overuse the existence of a much unwanted far-right, to justify his own war invading actions.
Yarosh’s campaign climaxed on May 2 with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.
After previous anti-coup protests evolved into declarations of independence in Donetsk and Luhansk by a tiny minority of Pro-Russian supporters – who did not reflect majority thinking in their own region – this should be noted – the then extreme right in Ukraine shifted gear to full-scale armed combat. The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for fighting its own people, so the post coup government formed new National Guard units to do so.
The far-right sector formed a battalion. Neo-Nazis also dominated the Azov Battalion (LINK), which was founded by Andriy Biletsky (white nationalist far-right politician and the leader of political party National Corps – LINK), who claimed that Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races.
NOTE: It was the Azov battalion that led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics – now in 2022, Putin used as an excuse to “Liberate” Ukraine – and the Azon battalion retook the city of Mariupol from pro-Russia separatist forces.
2015 came with a “Minsk II agreement”. This helped to end a lot of the then fighting. It helped to also set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics, but a low-intensity civil war continued between extreme right-wing elements and the pro-Russia fanatic on the other side of political ideology.
USA Congressman Ro Khanna and more peace loving, progressive members of Congress tried for years to end White House allowed US military aid to the extreme right-wing Azov Battalion. They finally did so in the FY2018 Defense Appropriation Bill, but Azov reportedly continued to receive US arms and training despite the ban. ALL these facts can be independently verified.
Despite Svoboda’s declining success in national elections due to a mass nation coping on to what the hell was going on in their name, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups linked to the Azov Battalion, maintained some power on streets in Ukraine, and in local politics in the Ukrainian nationalist heartland around Lviv in Western Ukraine. Again, they did NOT represent the vast majority of people there!
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Another New President.
After President Zelensky’s election in 2019, the extreme right-wingers then threatened him with removal from office, or even death, if he even entertained any notion of negotiating with pro-Russia separatist leaders from the Donbas region – or if he followed through on the Minsk Protocol and stuck to the peace creating condition in it.
Zelensky had run for election as a “peace candidate,” but under threat from the right, he found himself unable to even talk to Donbas leaders, whom he dismissed as terrorists.
Around this same time, during USA Donald Trump’s presidency, the White House reversed a previous ban on weapons sales to Ukraine. Zelensky’s assessed (by those that opposed him from Russia and the extreme-right) aims raised new fears in the Donbas region, fears greatly created by the extremists – and by Russia – that he was building up Ukraine’s forces for a new offensive to retake Donetsk and Luhansk by force. The president that was being threatened by right-wing extremists on one side – and opposed by pro-Russian activists on another, tried to continue to keep the peace while also purchasing White House supplied military equipment in case he might need it to defend his state and people against either of the South-East factions.
While in office, prior to Russia’s war invasion – excuse being that (a) NATO was about to be on it’s border and that the president himself was a NAZI (despite the real NAZI’s wanting to kill him!), Zelensky managed to persuade the IMF to give the democracy growing state $40 billion bailout. As part of this deal 342 state-owned enterprises were then privatised.
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NOTE: The Soufan Center (LINK) has compared the Azov Battalion’s antics to that of Al Qaeda and ISIS. US and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks like previously, their support for Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria ten years ago. The stuff of which in the past, came back to haunt the backers involved when they spawned ISIS – who then turned against their very Western backers!
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When Russia decided to invade – exploiting and exaggerating matters in the Donbas region, the White House with Trump gone, decided to back the current Ukraine president, if only for one reason – that while he continued to oppose the NAZI’s in the South-East, he also remained opposed to pro-Russian fringe supporters and indeed, the Russian government.
At this same time, NATO was increasingly making it own presence, more known. With some justification, Russian government concerns that NATO would be on it’s very borders soon if it got it’s way, further gave Russia top heads further reason to do something about the whole situation.
How they have further reacted, rightly or wrongly will be judged in times to come! Could they have acted more professionally? More peacefully? NATO with it’s own antics, has certainly not helped. Previous White House occupants have certainly not helped. EU governments have certainly not helped. They all to some degree, own responsibility for helping to create the current Ukraine mess.
As things stand now, for people around the world, the current international crises is being shown as one side against the other. In the midst of it all, is a democratic population right now fighting to hold on to their democracy principled ways. They are paying a heavy price for trying to do just that and paying a heavy price due to the antics of others!
All the above can be independently checked and verified.
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Thank you to the staff of therealnews.com and many others for content assistance with the above.
I utterly recommend people check genuine research sources. Not just swallow social media lies.
UPDATE:
It turns out that Volodymyr Zelenskiy came under pressure to tackle corruption from the moment he was elected in April 2019. As already indicated above, his county and elected were in dire straights financially after a series of political scandals that had also brought about the country’s biggest bank collapse – following allegations of looting. Soon after, it was nationalised. To add to the Ukraine woes’ the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country’s main benefactor, was threatening to withdraw a $19bn funding package.
In order to stave this off, Zelenskiy tried to clean up some of the previous made mess and further tried to satisfy the IMF that its money was safe in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded, in an effort to clean things up, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that targeted oligarchs – people who were partly responsible for the previous political scandals and state financial mess. The new laws were brought in to try ensure the interests of society were served above those of a narrow elite of the rich and powerful.
Putin and his friends didn’t like this happening. They feared much. After all, here was a state on their border where there was still billions in money to be made (research the serious amount of rare minerals in Ukraine). So, between that quiet financial reason and publicly, NATO coming sniffing around, as far as Putin and rich mates were concerned, they claimed – with some merit and help from NATO – all these moves were further evidence of Ukraine’s shift to Western ways.
It was bad enough that the Ukraine was a new democratic state. Now Zelenskiy’s government were introducing more transparency to end decades of oligarch domination that followed the end of communism. All this had to be put a stop to as far as Putin was apparently concerned. However, if he was to do that, he needed more public usable reasons to try justify his actions. Cue his inaccurate claims of a democratic government being a NAZI one – when in fact the South-East real NAZI factions in the Ukraine open threatened Zelenskiy himself with continuous death threats! Putin and sycophants quickly gloss over these further facts. It doesn’t suit an incorrect narrative they still spin to this day.
Again, with some merit and further accuracy, critics were able to claim that Zelenskiy had struggled to distance himself from a man that Americans accused of looting the country’s biggest bank (just before it collapsed). This man was Ihor Kolomoisky. A billionaire often cited as Ukraine’s most powerful oligarch. It was Kolomoisky, Americas say, who controlled PrivatBank when it was taken into public ownership in 2016 after an alleged fraud left $5.5bn missing from its balance sheet. In March last year, the Biden administration banned Kolomoisky and his family from entering the US over these allegations of “significant corruption”. Kolomoisky has denied wrongdoing.
The end result of all this goings-on is that Zelenskiy, by the time of nearing invasion, had changed Ukraine enough to anger Putin, but also not enough to please his western allies.
On one hand, one side saw what they thought, was slow reforms and on the other side, started reform – with more to come! Putin and his mates had to therefore do something. Cue inaccurate claims (example: LINK), totally false propaganda too easy swallowed by Westerners too lazy to actually research details and the use of Russian teenagers in an state army, who were told they were going on a military exercise to Ukraine.
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Again, All the above can be independently checked and verified.