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Another group who survived the war but did not return to the USSR to play a role in its politics are the survivors of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) who survived the Battle of Brody. Later captured by the Americans they were treated as Poles and not repatriated to USSR as were the million or so other Soviets that fought on the opposing side. Many emigrated, with a number in Canada.
I hardly think the American soldiers knew the difference between Ukrainians and Poles. Pretty sure Ukrainians knew enough Polish to pretend they were Poles. I am not sure why you brought it up.
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Yet few Canadians may be aware that this memorial commemorates a major battle fought by the Ukrainian Galician Division of the Waffen-SS against the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War. Fewer still may connect it with a more insidious form of far-right nationalism—one that quietly glorifies Nazi collaborators while giving credence to a far-right brand of historical revisionism.
Around June 21, the stone cenotaph was vandalized and spray-painted with the words “Nazi war monument.” Halton Regional Police initially began investigating the incident as a “hate-motivated” crime, but issued a statement on July 17 to clarify that the incident is now being treated as vandalism.
This was not the first time the monument has come under fire. In 2017, the Russian Embassy to Canada was accused of fomenting division by posting comments online that the memorial glorifies a Nazi history. In the context of Moscow’s then-recent annexation of Crimea, however, Canadian media immediately dismissed this criticism as part of a Russian “disinformation campaign.” Ihor Michalchyshyn, executive director and CEO of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, denounced the comments as an attempt to “stir up controversy” and “obfuscate the [situation]” taking place in Europe at the time.
Since then, many others have urged a more serious reckoning with the monument, the sordid history of the Ukrainian independence movement, and the political allegiances of some of its forebears during the Second World War. The Ukrainian nationalist movement that first arose during the Tsarist era of the Russian Empire, culminating in defeat at the end of the Ukrainian-Soviet War in 1921, became split between moderates and the more radical Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). This split was most apparent in the historical region of Galicia, which until the First World War was a part of Austria-Hungary, located in what is now western Ukraine.
The OUN was a far-right insurgency movement that fostered a sometimes-complicated relationship with the Nazis. The OUN and its two splinter groups—a conservative wing, the OUN-M, led by Andriy Melnyk, and an extremist ultranationalist faction, the OUN-B, headed up by Stepan Bandera—viewed Russia as the greatest enemy of Ukrainian nationhood, along with other neighbouring non-Soviet countries at the time such as Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The ‘Banderists’ in particular saw Jews as the “vanguard of Muscovite imperialism,” and were openly willing to commit barbarous crimes against them, as they believed it would lead to Ukraine’s independence from Russia and the Soviet Union. In 1941, under the OUN-B’s command, the Ukrainian People’s Militia spearheaded pogroms which led to the massacre of more than 6,000 Jews in Lviv.
The OUN also maintained informal control over many units of the auxiliary police, especially in Galicia. The local police helped to implement the Nazi genocide of Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians, and Poles by assisting in mass executions.
True enough, there were two somewhat separate Ukraines for all the reasons discussed here. Over the last 20 years the government did work to increase common identity. It taught the history of the NKVD-led post war terror experienced in the west. Along with emphasizing the Holomodor to easterners. To say: we both suffered (at the hands of the Russians), but together we are Ukrainian. (Yanukovych rejected this approach.)
So, yes, that "binding of the country together" does encourage a patriotic identity that potentially crosses the lines to nationalism. That appeared to be further inflamed by the 2014 invasion. To where some ethnic-Russians may well be uncomfortable by the increasing displays of nationalism. Not denying.
But to turn this invasion into a fight against Nazism or even Bandera-ism is IMHO nonsense. The evil is the invasion, the use of power of force for Putin's version of nationalism.
Crimea was not part of Ukraine until 1954. It is ethnically Russian and had been a part of Russia since 1783. Donbas region was never a part of Ukraine until 1917. Great, you can see how an anti-Russian language, anti-Russian identity, anti-Russian history would rattle them.
However, if this is pure nonsense, then how do you explain away 14,000 deaths?
Quote:
The visual explainer below focuses not on the full-scale escalation that began on 24 February, but on fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. This provides crucial background for understanding what is happening today.
The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine started in 2014. Between then and early 2022, it had already killed over 14,000 people. Over the course of eight years, Ukrainian government forces fought Russian-backed separatists for control over much of the two heavily industrialised regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, also known as Donbas. Fierce battles in 2014-2015 ended with one third of the regions' territory, its most urbanised part, occupied by two Russian proxy statelets, the self-described Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Between September 2014 and February 2015, Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany signed several iterations of the so-called Minsk agreements, which eventually stopped the forward movement of troops and reduced fighting significantly. But the agreements were never implemented, and the fighting transformed into a trench war, with roughly 75,000 troops facing off along a 420-km-long front line cutting through densely populated areas. The war ruined the area's economy and heavy industries, forced millions to relocate and turned the conflict zone into one of the world’s most mine-contaminated areas.
The Russian manifesto for genocide was released today.
State website RIA Novosti calls for UA statehood to be destroyed. Openly justifies the need for ethnic cleansing and mass repression.
"Denazification" = "de-Ukrainization". Moscow's Ukraine Solution.
Here are some highlights from their article on "What should be done in Ukraine:
-The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible.
-The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification.
-The name "Ukraine" apparently cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime.
-Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization.
-Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries , Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation state, and attempts to "build" one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization.
-The denazifying state - Russia - cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification.
-Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship
The article referred to, is an opinion of an editor (or maybe a journalist) - Timothy Sergeytsev. That is not an official plan of actions of the Kremlin.
Having said that, it would be great if it happens ! Ukrainian Nazi regime must be destroyed for good. Everyone guilty of war crimes must be hanged swiftly. Everyone guilty of any murders, must get prison time for their actions. Any member of any of the nationalist parties in Ukraine must be banned from any managerial position for life. That would be a good start. Look what happened to Nazies in German Democratic Republic or to former Stazies (German KGB) in Germany after 1999.
The article referred to, is an opinion of an editor (or maybe a journalist) - Timothy Sergeytsev. That is not an official plan of actions of the Kremlin.
Having said that, it would be great if it happens ! Ukrainian Nazi regime must be destroyed for good. Everyone guilty of war crimes must be hanged swiftly. Everyone guilty of any murders, must get prison time for their actions. Any member of any of the nationalist parties in Ukraine must be banned from any managerial position for life. That would be a good start. Look what happened to Nazies in German Democratic Republic or to former Stazies (German KGB) in Germany after 1999.
That Russian Kool-Aid must be good.
I like how on one hand, you call Ukrainians fascists, and on the other, you have a very fascist take on how to deal with the Ukrainian population.
I like how on one hand, you call Ukrainians fascists, and on the other, you have a very fascist take on how to deal with the Ukrainian population.
Not population in general. Those criminals that committed the crimes and proven guilty with supporting facts in courts.
Again, look at precedents in the modern history.
I say that California cops murdered Mexican women and raped their corpses...
And I say you haven't actually got a 'valid' argument - because there simply isn't one! Thanks to Putin Russia is the pariah of the world and his 'so called' army are just as bad! They're not 'soldiers' they're cowards that rape women and children while they run.
so now the narrative is, without names addresses it didnt happen?
when and if the war crimes tribunal meets - hopefully someday - to march putin on deck, all the propagandists, are by law, suffering same fate. Just ask Joey-G. You gonna be willing to take those steps as well?
I know, right?
Of course in this thread, alone, numerous posts including full names and ages and pictures of actual people---standing amidst the death and destruction of their friends and communities ---relaying first-hand accounts of war crimes and their horrifying personal experiences have been provided and validated by ethical journalistic sources. And they are dismissed and ignored by the prolific Putin apologists.
The list of the atrocities and barbaric actions, of the Russian forces were, once again, exposed and documented by journalists from highly regarded news organizations and professionals from international aid groups. The truth of this savage war, and the latest repulsive civilian slaughter in Bucha, currently being revealed, has the world justifiably stunned and shocked. The verbal and visual documentation that indeed shows the cruelty and criminality of Russia's monstrous warfare is repugnant reality and is clear evidence of war crimes.
The promoters of autocracy over democracy are hell bent on pushing ever more absurd agitprop in disgusting defense of these monstrous massacres and the megalomaniac who is responsible.
As the world expresses outrage over mounting evidence that Russian troops slaughtered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, officials in Moscow are denying Russian involvement and dismissing images of dead bodies as fraudulent.
Pro-Kremlin accounts on Monday amplified that view on social media, going so far as to suggest that corpses in video footage were actors participating in a hoax to discredit Russia. The reaction was one of the starkest examples yet of the extreme propaganda the Kremlin is using to try to control the narrative of a war that has obliterated Ukrainian cities and villages, killed thousands of Russian soldiers and turned Russia into a global outcast.
Reaction from the Kremlin and its supporters grew more outlandish by the hour, as officials accused Kyiv and Western allies of staging the atrocities.
“The other day, another fake attack was launched in the city of Bucha,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised remarks Monday. “Ukraine staged this fake, which is being dispersed through all channels and social networks by Ukrainian representatives and their Western patrons.”
Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the upper house of Russia’s parliament, said Ukraine staged Bucha and “ the West is an accomplice of this cynical and immoral crime,”
President Biden said that evidence emerging from Bucha showed that he was right when he previously called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.
Video posted on Saturday and verified by The Washington Post showed at least nine bodies, including one child, lying in the street in Bucha, north of Kyiv, after Russian forces retreated. One, still atop a bicycle, lies at the corner of an intersection. Others are huddled together on the side of the road. Turn on any news channel in any nation, other than Russia, and the footage and interviews are heartbreakingly authentic as well as authenticated.
Mass graves have been identified and video documentation provided. Hourly more and more video--- including interviews and verified footage of civilian damage and destruction---are being broadcast and shared across the globe by highly regarded and credible print and photo-journalists from around the world.
The Kremlin, as expected, just an hour ago, put out a ridiculous statement saying the dated and verified video from everyone is fake and “from what we have seen — the video materials — in many ways they cannot be trusted, because our specialist from the Ministry of Defense has revealed signs of video fraud and various fakes and Russia will take them as a provocation and not a single local resident in Ukraine has suffered from any violent action".
Russian evidence for their claims: Nil
World evidence of brutality against civilians: Too numerous to count.
No one is buying your lies, Russia. No one!
Putin can deflect, distract and deny but he can't hide.
Last edited by corpgypsy; 04-04-2022 at 02:38 PM..
Look at their kind faces and eyes of innocent children full of wisdom. These guys are most most kind and merciful, don't you think?
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! Ukrainian Nazi regime must be destroyed for good. Everyone guilty of war crimes must be hanged swiftly. Everyone guilty of any murders, must get prison time for their actions. Any member of any of the nationalist parties in Ukraine must be banned from any managerial position for life. That would be a good start. Look what happened to Nazies in German Democratic Republic or to former Stazies (German KGB) in Germany after 1999.