Following the arrest of a Ukrainian police officer after he threw to the ground a C14 neo-Nazi activist while shouting “On the ground, Banderite!”, several Ukrainian officials made public statements to show that they are also Banderites (fans of Stepan Bandera, collaborator of the Nazis during the WWII) and that they are proud of it !

When I saw that RadioFreeEurope – RadioLiberty made an article about that, I though “Wow, finally they denounce the fact that there are many neo-Nazis amongst officials in Ukraine after they turned a blind eye on this problem since the Maidan”. But my optimism did not last long.

After the two first paragraphs which are factual, the third one is a pure rewriting of History. Let’s have a look at it.

“From the top on down, cops and their bosses are lining up to air their admiration for Stepan Bandera, a hero to many Ukrainians whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), fought both Soviet and Nazi forces during World War II but is also accused of carrying out murderous campaigns against Poles and Jews.*”

I will come back after on the lies written in this paragraph. After my surprise while reading such nonsense, my attention was attracted by this *. So I looked at the end of the article to discover the meaning of it.

“*This sentence has been amended to clarify the description of Stepan Bandera and the UPA », says Christopher Miller.

OK, so the article was rewritten. And we can see on the top of it that it was modified last time on the 13th of February 2019 (click on the image to see it in full size).

Let’s try to find the old version. Thanks to Google and its cache, I found the original version, published on 11 February 2019 (click on the image to see it in full size):

And if we look at this paragraph about Bandera, we discover a completely different story:

“From the top on down, cops and their bosses are lining up to air their admiration for Stepan Bandera, a hero of far-right extremists whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), fought both Soviet and Nazi forces during World War II but also carried out murderous campaigns against Poles and Jews.”

The difference is huge. It’s not a clarification, it’s a complete change of meaning. If the first version of the paragraph was factual (even if it forgot murders against other ethnicities), the modified version is a full lie!

It’s not because Ukrainian government post-Maidan has decreed that Bandera is “hero of Ukraine” that “many Ukrainians” consider him like this. Most people in Donbass consider him for what he was: a Nazi collaborator, anti-Semitic leader, whose organisations killed dozens of thousands of people.

And this opinion is shared by many people in the South-East of Ukraine and even elsewhere in the country. The first version of this sentence was right, this guy is a hero of far-right extremists in Ukraine. But many Ukrainians are NOT far-right extremists.

By changing this sentence, Christopher Miller tried to minimise the fact that Bandera is a hero only for neo-Nazi people. If he is the hero of “many Ukrainians” then it looks better than writing that he is the hero of far-right extremists. It means that his ideology is less “Nazi”, less “far-right”. And thus that she is more “acceptable”.

But the worst rewriting is at the end of this paragraph, when he transformed what is a proved historical fact (that OUN and UPA massively murdered Poles and Jews), into a simple accusation!

Bandera and his henchmen are not accused of having murdered, they have murdered dozens of thousands of Poles and Jews!

The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia are not a historical hypothesis, it is a fact! Proved and documented! UPA militants killed Polish civilians, who did nothing against Ukrainians. They marched from village to village to massacre civilians, even women and children! Their methods were so horrific, that even the German Nazi SS were disgusted and wanted to vomit.

Here is how the historian Norman Davies describes the killings: “Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away.”

This is what Banderites did during these massacres (warning, these images are highly shocking):

Depending on various estimations, UPA massacred between 70,000 and 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia!

And despite attempts from pro-Kiev people to rewrite History concerning OUN/UPA and the Jews (like in this Wikipedia article), it is a historical proved fact, that Banderites massacred Jews in Ukraine! They actively participated in the massacre of Babi Yar.

During the first two days of massacre, 33,771 Jews were killed! Just on this site, just in two days! More than 100, 000 people were killed on this site during the war. Ukrainian collaborators also actively helped Germans to liquidate 200,000 Jews in Volhynia, and so on.

The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police often mentioned concerning these facts was just an emanation from the OUN militia! Most of the members of this “police” ruled by Germans were former members of the OUN militia. And the head of OUN was Stepan Bandera!

So considering Bandera as a “hero”, means that you are a neo-Nazi! That you like the ideology of this man, whose henchmen massacred Poles, Jews, and others!

Even before the war his ideology was criminal! OUN carried several terrorist acts and assassinations against Poles.

Transforming these facts into a simple “accusation” is purely revisionism! A huge rewriting of History, aimed at minimising the crimes and the ideology of Bandera. That’s how you transform Nazi collaborators into simple Ukrainian patriots, and how you transform current Ukrainian neo-Nazis into simple nationalists!

It is the same thing concerning this sentence about the fact that OUN and UPA “fought both Soviet and Nazi forces during World War II”. Sorry but OUN and UPA fought Nazis only when Bandera and his henchmen understood that Nazis screwed them, and that they will not give them the independent Ukraine they dreamed about!

Before that, they welcomed them like liberators in 1941, as you can see below!

OUN and UPA turned their vests against Germany only because Nazis fooled them! They fought more the Soviet forces than the Nazis ones. And they fought Nazis forces only because they did not give them what they asked (because even if their ideology is almost the same, for German Nazis the Ukrainians were “Untermensch”, inferior people).

When the Soviet forces did a counter-offensive, Nazis called back Bandera from his jail, and his men fought FOR Nazis AGAINST the Soviet army. So in reality UPA fought much more Soviet forces than Nazis forces, and it hugely collaborated with Nazis!

These attempts to whitewash Bandera, OUN and UPA are done by Ukrainian historians who thus try to give a better reputation to the ideology of the post-Maidan Ukraine, which transformed Bandera into a hero, and made the slogan of his henchmen the official greeting in Ukrainian army! To understand how shocking it is, just imagine the current German army using again the “Deutschland über alles”!

And this revisionism is widely used by Western journalists to hide under the carpet the fact that the post-Maidan Ukraine, is a “ruled by neo-Nazis” Ukraine! Why? Because the Western countries supported and funded the Maidan and the putsch. If they now admit that they let neo-Nazis access to the power, it would be a huge scandal, which would show in which kind of “democracy” we live!

For each Ukrainian or Russian whose father, grand father, mother or grand-mother died while fighting the Nazis and their collaborators, this glorification of Bandera, OUN and UPA is a terrible shame.

Instead of shouting about revisionism and Nazism about everything and nothing in Europe to discredit people who don’t think like them, Western journalists should begin by stopping rewriting History like Christopher Miller did in his article.

Because what he did cannot be called but than whitewashing of Bandera and his collaborators, thus whitewashing people who support today his ideology in Ukraine! C14 activists are not just far-right or ultra-nationalists activists, they are neo-Nazis! People who celebrate the birthday of Bandera are not “nationalists” they are neo-Nazis!

Call a spade a spade, holy crap! If you are not able to stick to facts, then please don’t pretend to be a journalist, and say openly that you are a propagandist whose interest is to defend this fairy tale of “democratic post-Maidan Ukraine”!

Christopher Miller, I don’t know why you decided to change this paragraph, if you received pressures, threats, or if you decided this on your own, but whatever the reason is, what you did is a shame, and it discredits you as a journalist.

That’s because of people like you who rewrite History, that most mainstream media journalists today are discredited in the eyes of the public.

Rewriting History is the first step to dictatorship, and your participation to this revisionism is a shame for the whole profession.

Christelle Néant

Tags: media, neo-Nazism, Ukraine