Recent developments around Russia’s special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine have dotted the I’s in terms of showing the true political face of the current leaders of many countries and their attitude towards neo-Nazism and the revival of an atmosphere of fascist intimidation of people.
While it has been clear to everyone what the politicians in the Baltic states are, including their longing for their “Forest Brothers” and Hitler’s collaborators, the politicians of several countries, who had previously declared their rejection of neo-Nazism, have shown their real character. In particular, Japan, which, as the Russian embassy in Tokyo stated in its Telegram channel, “has managed to support a Nazi regime twice in less than a century”: the first time it was Hitler’s regime and now it is the Ukrainian government.
It is certainly surprising and upsetting to see the current Israeli politicians who have decided to support the neo-Nazi authorities in Kiev in recent days, despite the violence they have inflicted in Odessa, for example.
But today’s German political establishment has also shown its true face, deciding to stand up for Kiev’s neo-Nazis more actively every day.
Just a year ago, German ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen criticized a march in Kiev which was held to honor the anniversary of the SS Galicia division. “Waffen SS units participated in grave war crimes and the Holocaust during World War II. No volunteer organizations fighting and working for Ukraine today should be associated with them,” Feldhusen wrote on her Twitter feed in May 2021.
On January 5 this year, commenting on the now traditional annual march in honor of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, which took place in Kiev on January 1, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Christopher Burger said that Germany condemns the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists, including those led by Stepan Bandera, during World War II. During the briefing, he noted that Berlin “condemns and opposes any form of anti-Semitism and the glorification of Nazi crimes.”
And haven’t these Nazi-glorifying criminals been murdering Jews in the same Odessa in the last eight years? Or their own fellows Ukrainians in the Donbas, where the number of civilians killed at their hands over these eight years exceeds, at the most approximate estimate, 13,000!
And today, the German government has allowed German citizens to take part in combat operations in Ukraine. This was reported by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, citing the country’s Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry.
For a while, Germany refused to supply arms to the Ukrainian army. The statements about not sending weapons to Ukraine were the result of a coalition agreement between the three parliamentary parties in the Bundestag – the CDU/CSU, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens – which, under pressure from the latter, stipulated that Germany would not send arms to countries in conflict. However, Olaf Scholz made a governmental statement at an emergency meeting of the Bundestag on February 27, officially authorizing Germany to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.
In doing so, Germany, through the decisions of its current authorities, is not just reviving the specter of a cold war, but of a very hot one. This was stated in a commentary circulated by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on February 28. “Too many sad associations are raised by the prospect of further “military” pumping of Kiev by Berlin, which, moreover, does not seem to be aware that in the current situation the arms supplied could easily fall prey to neo-Nazis, terrorists and looters on Ukrainian territory,” the diplomat stressed. “Nothing is new under the moon. Once again, as many times in history, the weapons coming from German soil will be directed against Russian soldiers,” the diplomat added.
Against this background, she said, Olaf Scholz’s assurances about the importance of a process of historical reconciliation between the peoples of Germany and Russia sounded particularly cynical. “In this context, the devaluing remarks of Scholz, who during the Munich Security Conference on February 18, 2022 called “ridiculous” the revealed facts of genocide of civilians in the Donbas by the Ukrainian military, become now, alas, understandable,” stressed the Russian Foreign Ministry official.
Furthermore, M. Zakharova pointed out that “the supply of arms to the ideological heirs of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera makes one willy-nilly ask the rhetorical question – how comprehensive and complete the denazification process in Germany itself was after the defeat in World War II?”
Unlike the United States, Germany or Japan, Russia cannot watch idly as torchbearers march under fascist, neo-Nazi banners in modern Europe.
Information about international ties between German neo-Nazis and radical right groups in Ukraine was provided by the former German government a year ago in response to a parliamentary enquiry by the Left Party faction in the Bundestag. The preamble to the response stresses that the right-wing radical regiment Azov (banned in Russia) has long attracted right-wing extremists from Europe and the US – as do affiliated units like the Misanthropic Division or the political movement Tradition and Order, both banned in Russia.
Germany’s steps to support the neo-Nazi Bandera regime in Kiev will definitely have a bad impact on future relations with Russia after the successful completion of the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. As will Berlin’s accession to Washington’s numerous anti-Russian sanctions, airspace closures, disconnection of Russia from the SWIFT banking system and so on…
Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
