Публикуем материалы австралийского еженедельника Australian Alert Service от 17 мая 2017 года.

STOP WORLD WAR III

Ukraine: Nazi hit squads attack opposition politicians Vitrenko and Marchenko

  By Rachel Douglas

12 May 2017-On 9 May the neo-Nazi "National Corps" staged a new attack on Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) leaders Dr Natalia Vitrenko and Vladimir Marchenko. Early that morning, as the USA, Canada and European countries had celebrated V-E Day (8 May), the 72nd anniversary of the Nazi surrender in World War II, and the countries formerly in the Soviet Union prepared for their customary marking of the occasion as Victory Day, 9 May, these leading anti-fascists in Ukraine, both of them former members of Parliament, heard their doorbells ring and threatening voices outside in the hallways. Gangs from the neo-Nazi "National Corps Party", formerly a unit of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion under the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, were attempting to break down the doors of their apartments. During a five-hour stand-off, police refused to remove the attackers forcibly. The neo-Nazis declared that their purpose was to prevent Vitrenko and her PSPU from holding Victory Day rallies or taking part in the Immortal Regiment march, in which people in Kiev, as in cities throughout the world, were set to honour family members who died fighting fascism, or survived as veterans of the war.

Vitrenko is famous not only for her nearly 25-year battle against the destruction of Ukraine through the imposition of neoliberal monetarist economic policies, but also for warning for two decades of an insurgent fascist movement in Ukraine, marching under Nazi-derived banners and those of Ukrainian 20th-century fascist Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. Even after her warnings came true, when the neo-Nazis provided shock troops in the US- and EU-backed coup of February 2014 that overthrew the elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, Vitrenko has continued to expose them and their backing from the West.

In October of last year, in the latest of a long series of dirty tricks, the PSPU’s national headquarters and all the party’s records of 20 years were seized on the pretext of a commercial dispute, and turned over to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which continues to gestate a case against Vitrenko on trumped-up charges of "separatism".

 In a communication today to friends abroad, Vitrenko voiced hope that Western leaders could be organised to pressure the Ukrainian government to put a stop to the attacks on the PSPU by the Azov Battalion and its political spin-offs like the National Corps Party. She noted, especially, that the US Congress has officially recognised that Azov is "neo-Nazi". Dr Vitrenko situated the attacks on her party within an evaluation of the political situation in Ukraine, where one current scenario is for a military coup to be staged by Internal Affairs Minister Avakov and allies of his who have also been sponsors of the neo-Nazi gangs.

 In this feature, we provide translations of Vitrenko’s 4 May appeal, her 9 May statement after the attacks, and a background article by Victor Silenko of the PSPU. The Russianlanguage originals are available at www.vitrenko.org. On 10 May Dr Vitrenko released a video statement (in Russian) on her website and on YouTube.

Appeal by Vitrenko to Merkel, Putin, Trump, and Poroshenko

4 May 2017

Dear heads of state and authorised representatives of the Ukrainian government,

The present appeal is motivated by the publicly displayed lawlessness of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, who are threatening Ukrainian citizens, including me personally, with reprisals in connection with the upcoming Victory Day, marking the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

I cite just three examples of the threats and intimidation, disseminated in the Ukrainian media:

1. Right Sector Press Secretary Artyom Skoropadsky stated in a commentary for Obozrevatel: "Provocations, of course, are a possibility. The Kremlin likes to exploit such events, dedicated to so-called shared aspects of history. As for our participation, of course we won’t be tearing St. George’s Ribbons off old men, even if they come here. That’s their business. But if any scum like [Communist Party leader] Symonenko or Vitrenko comes crawling out, people who openly support Moscow, then we’ll act, shall we say, using our methods," commented Skoropadsky.

 2. Ukrainian nationalists are planning to impede the holding of the Immortal Regiment action in Kiev on 9 May, says Mykola Kokhanivsky, leader of the OUN [Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists] Volunteer Movement, a nationalist organisation. "On 9 May the communists and their supporters in Kiev will once again stage this march, which originated in Moscow and is called the Immortal Regiment... We will not permit the red hydra to infiltrate Kiev!"-Kokhanivsky wrote in Facebook. He reported that the nationalists are planning to hold their own action in Kiev on 9 May under the name "Mortal Regiment" [or "Death Regiment" –Translator].

The media, abetted by Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies (or in cahoots with them), is without question conducting informational and political terror, making Ukrainian citizens who have beliefs different from those of the neo-Nazis into targets for physical reprisals.

Sticking loathsome labels on me and people like me, humiliating us by vulgarising our sincere convictions and values as orders from Moscow-these are the methods used to prepare the public for harassment and physical reprisals against us.

Statement by Dr Natalia Vitrenko after the 9 May attacks Unchained Nazis commit acts of terror against Vitrenko and Marchenko on 9 May

At 8:00 AM on the same day a group of 15 armed men attacked my deputy, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Convocations Vladimir Marchenko. First they blocked the driveway of the building where Marchenko lives with his family, and then they physically pushed aside the concierge, broke into the building, and went upstairs to Marchenko’s apartment. They began to ring the doorbell and demanded the door be opened, and then cut off the lights and started smashing the door and trying to break the lock. They spray-painted the door with some kind of poisonous paint, the smell from which (or from some kind of gas) got into the apartment. At that time, in addition to Vladimir Romanovich [Marchenko], his wife and daughter, also his two minor grandchildren were in the apartment, and were naturally terrified.

Political terror: Azov neo-Nazis continue persecution of PSPU

By Victor Silenko, political observer, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) press service

10 May 2017-On 9 May 2017 fighters from the neoNazi National Corps Party blockaded the apartments of Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) Chairman Natalia Vitrenko and her deputy Vladimir Marchenko, in order to prevent these anti-fascist opposition politicians from taking part in an Immortal Regiment march in the Hero City of Kiev.

The attempts to intimidate these participants in the celebration of 9 May were in vain, however: the Progressive Socialists posted on their party website congratulations to the citizens of Ukraine on Victory Day, marking the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, thus confirming their unflagging devotion to the cause of their great and glorious ancestors, whose feats on the battlefield saved humanity from the brown plague of fascism, which now has raised its head in Ukraine under the Maidan regime.

 Avakov’s ?private army’ project

As is well known, the National Corps Party was founded 14 October 2016, based on the public organisation called the Azov Civil Corps, a youth wing of the special forces Azov Battalion within the National Guard of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

This new political force was created by renaming the Ukrainian Patriot Party, which had already been registered by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice and was headed by the former Azov fighter, independent member of the Supreme Rada Andriy Biletsky aka White Boss.

 The party convention was held under the occult sign of the Black Sun (German Schwarze Sonne), which is one of the Azov symbols borrowed from the German Nazis and meant to denote belonging to the "higher master race".

At the same time the newly formed party abandoned the other, better-known Azov symbol, a mirror image of the runic Wolfsangel, symbolising capture of the enemy (which had been used in Nazi Germany, in particular by the Waffen-SS Tank Division Das Reich), in favour of a stylised trident with lightning.

The ideology of this political superstructure of the Azov Regiment, often called in the media the "private army" of Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, is "social nationalism", based on principles of "race identity, social orientation, and a great-power concept"; this is a modern variety of Nazism.

"Disgusting neo-Nazis" even for the United States

This is why, as recently as 3 May 2017, the US House of Representatives officially forbid Ukraine from spending any US funding on support for this particular armed unit.

The law they passed allows the Pentagon to allocate $150 million through September of this year for military aid to Ukraine, including for training, lethal defensive weapons, machinery and equipment.

 But the USA also defined the purposes for which money received by Kiev is not to be spent. "None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion", states the document.

 Here it should be noted that earlier, in 2015, the US House of Representatives had already passed amendments to the law on Pentagon assistance to Ukraine for fiscal 2016, banning the financing of any training programs for the Azov volunteer battalion because of its neoNazi character. [The restriction was stripped from the bill before its passage by the Senate and adoption. –Editor.]

"If there’s one simple lesson we can take away from US involvement in conflicts overseas, it’s this: Beware of unintended consequences... Overzealous military assistance or the hyper-weaponisation of conflicts can have destabilising consequences and ultimately undercut our own national interests. I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments ... to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion", said one of the co-authors of the amendments, Rep. John Conyers, at the time.

Acts of political terror

The first act of political terror by the Azov neo-Nazis against the PSPU was the events of 17 March 2016, when young thugs from the Civil Corps unsuccessfully attempted to break up a Left Opposition rally outside the National Museum of Ukrainian History in Kiev, where there is a memorial stone with the inscription "The land of Rus came from this place"; the occasion was the 25th anniversary of the All-Union and All-Ukraine Referendums of 17 March 1991 on the preservation of the USSR.

During the attack the fascist hoodlums used tear-gas against the participants in the peaceful action, beat up elderly people, threw stones at the leader of the Progressive Socialists, and then went off to report on their "peremoga" [Ukr., "victory"]: on 112 Ukraina TV, Azov leader Nazar Kravchenko announced the "dispersal of the rally" and even fantasised on the theme that PSPU leader N. Vitrenko had "fled" the scene, whereas in reality she had not only stood firm in the face of the onrushing attackers, but had continued the rally after the neo-Nazis disgracefully fled when rally participants fought back.

The second act of political terror was the events of 28 October 2016, when Azov fighters, led by a certain deputy commander of a reconnaissance and subversion group in the "Anti-Terror Operation" [ATO, the Kiev government’s war on the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which refused to accept the February 2014 coup d’état –Editor]-Nikita Shatilin, raided and seized offices belonging to Siver Ukraina LLC, which had been rented on a fully legal basis since 2003 by the PSPU and the public organisations Gift of Life, Eurasian People’s Union, and Assembly of Orthodox Women of Ukraine.

The Nazi raiders, in the best tradition of Banderite stool pigeons, then slapped together a report to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), demanding that the illegally seized premises be searched, after which special services operatives, looking for "separatist materials", carted off two minibus-loads of office equipment, documents, and archives from these offices, without informing the owner or the renters; thus the newly minted social-nationalists had the opportunity to plant whatever they pleased, up to and including weapons and explosives, brought in from the ATO zone by the self-proclaimed "patriots".

All of these events are evidence that the ruling clique, which seized power with the assistance of neo-Nazi guerrillas in the February 2014 coup, is persistently persecuting the PSPU-a legal political force, which conducts its activity strictly in accordance with the law-for its consistent position that it is impermissible to make heroes of "Ukrainian-German nationalists", and which has repeatedly warned that such a policy will inevitably lead to the disintegration of Ukraine, as indeed has happened under the Maidan regime.

 Therefore if there is somebody in our country who should be prosecuted for actually "anti-state activity", it is the representatives of the ruling regime and their neoNazi puppets, who have jointly destroyed the Ukrainian state under fascist Banderite slogans. One can wish them only one thing: if you want to find separatists, look in the mirror-and then don’t blame the mirror for your own ugliness.