Ukraine: Official Washington's Nazi Problem
Roman Zozulya’s playing career on Spain’s Rayo Vallecano soccer team was short-lived. Zozulya arrived in 2017, but never set foot on the pitch. The hometown fans turned on the Ukrainian-born Zozulya the moment he arrived. Rayo Vallecano, playing in Spain’s second-tier Segunda División just below top-tier La Liga, plays its home matches in Madrid’s working class barrio of Vallecas.
Zozulya was reviled by soccer fans in Vallecas that had been a resistance stronghold during the reign of Nazi-aligned Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Memories of the Franco oppression still lingered among neighborhood families and they were inflamed by the arrival of Zozulya whom they labelled a neo-Nazi. Homemade stadium signs and social media declared Rayo Vallecano was “not a place for Nazis.” Fans claimed Zozulya regularly displayed far-right symbols, posted a photo of himself pointing to a 14-88 score, and likened himself to Stepan Bandera.
Both numbers in the 14-88 score carry significance with extremists. The number 14 is shorthand for a 14-word white supremacist phrase “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The 8th letter of the alphabet is “H.” Neo-Nazis use “88” as code for “Heil Hitler.”
Zozulya’s likening himself to Bandera was perhaps the most troubling. Bandera led Ukraine organization that sided with the Nazis during World War II and were responsible for the deaths of as many as 130,000 Poles, 50,000 Jews, and aided the Germans in shipping as many as 800,000 to the Belzec death camp. Before he arrived in what is now present-day Ukraine, Bandera was serving a life sentence in Poland for the assassination of a government minister. Bandera was freed during the chaos when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Finding himself unwelcome in Rayo Vallecano, Zozulya signed with the Albacete Balompié club. When Albacete traveled to Rayo for a match in 2019, the hometown fan reaction to Zozulya’s presence was so ferocious the game was canceled at half-time.
Fortunately for Zozulya, he had in his corner perhaps the biggest supporter he could imagine: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On his Facebook page, Zelenskyy posted “You are supported not only by your team, you are supported by the whole Ukraine! Not only are you a great football player, you are a true patriot who loves his country and helps our military. We are with you! I'm shaking my hand!”
The Zozulya-Nazi kerfuffle was not a one-off episode. Nazis are not uncommon and wield considerable influence in the military, law enforcement, and throughout national and local government offices in the Ukraine. While there has been a Nazi presence in the Ukraine for decades, it grew dramatically in influence after the US-backed riots that toppled the democratically-elected government in 2014.
The 2014 fall of the government began years earlier. Ironically, some of the successes of Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010) led to his own downfall. Yushchenko ushered in a period of free speech. While freedom rights supporters applauded Yushchenko’s actions, they allowed the Svoboda Party and other extremists across the political spectrum to flourish. Svoboda wanted to cleanse the Ukraine of Russian influence, join NATO, and have the nation armed with nuclear weapons.
Yushchenko’s successor as president, Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014), was viewed by extremists as backsliding on modernization efforts. Yanukovych’s decision to forego an association deal with the European Union and instead sign a trade agreement with Russia led to protests in Kyiv. The US openly supported anti-government demonstrations.
Chris Murphy, John McCain and Oleh Tyahnybok encouraging protesters in Kyiv
Before Yanukovych’s government fell in 2014, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) joined Oleh Tyahnybok in Kyiv in December 2013. Tyahnybok was the leader of the Svoboda Party. McCain and Murphy were encouraging protestors to rise-up against the Yanukovych government. Before it adopted the name Svoboda Party, it was called the Social-National Party. This was a nod to Hitler’s National-Socialist party.
Members of the Azov Battalion
The Social-National Party was formed in 1991 right after the collapse of the USSR. It was the go-to party for Ukraine’s Nazi population. It used the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its party badge. This was the same insignia used by Germany’s notorious SS-units and other units of the Third Reich.
About the same time McCain and Murphy were meeting with Tyahnybok, a telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine was leaked. Nuland discussed working with Tyahnybok among others to install a new Ukraine leader after the democratically-elected government was toppled.
Tyahnybok’s Nazi and antisemitic reputation was well-established before Nuland, McCain and Murphy went all-in with him. In 2004, Tyahnybok declared Ukraine was controlled by a “Jewish-Russian mafia.” The following year he urged the president to “put an end to the criminal activities of Ukrainian Jewry.” Such antisemitic behavior led to his expulsion from his previous political party.
In late 2014 after the government fell, many of the most violent activists involved in the anti-government protests joined the newly-formed Azov, an openly neo-Nazi paramilitary unit comprised of skinheads, Nazis and other anti-government agitators.
Azov’s first commander was Andriy Biletsky. He previously headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine (PUK). Many PUK members left that group and joined Biletsky in forming Azov. In 2016, Biletsky said he would lead Azov in battle “against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”
Biletsky wanted to grow the influence of Azov. Not long after its launch, Azov began offering military combat training for children. It also launched the Reconquista Club, a nightclub catering to Nazis and other violent extremists, including those from abroad. The club sells White Rex clothing favored by violent extremists from a company that launched on August 14, 2008, or 14/8/8 in the traditional European dateline convention. Again, the neo-Nazi-affiliated numbers 14 and 88 appear. According to an FBI criminal complaint, Azov began providing military training to extremist groups visiting from the US.
In 2015, Ukraine enacted a law declaring Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), led by Stepan Bandera, and its paramilitary arm the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to be national heroes and making it a criminal offense to deny them of that recognition. The history of the two groups is gruesome. In 1941 under the leadership of Bandera, OUN pledged its cooperation with the Third Reich and participated in the Holocaust.
Roman Shukhevych was the UPA commander who aligned his forces with German troops during WWII. Years earlier, Shukhevych was charged as an accomplice of Bandera in the assassination of the Polish government minister. He was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Shukhevych’s UPA slaughtered as many as 100,000 Jews and Poles during the war.
Ukraine’s Nazis have become emboldened with each passing year. On New Year’s Day 2017, thousands of Ukrainians gathered in Kyiv chanting “Jews out!” Then a festival was held honoring UPA commander Shukhevych.
In late 2018, about 15,000 Ukrainians marched through the center of Kyiv to honor the UPA. Ukraine government has whitewashed the past by banning about a dozen historical books that reported on Ukrainian complicity in the Holocaust. About a quarter of all Holocaust victims came from present-day Ukraine.
In 2018, Ukraine designated Stepan Bandera’s birthday a national holiday, an act criticized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The center also denounced the decision to erect a monument honoring the OUN at a cemetery in Sambir in western Ukraine. The remains of more than 1,200 Jews killed by the UPA are buried in that cemetery. A Jewish leader observed, “It’s like putting a monument to killers on the top of the graves of their victims.”
Nazi symbology may not be commonplace throughout Ukraine, but it’s not uncommon on Ukraine military uniforms, especially Azov. For several years, provisions to ban US tax dollars going to Azov were ultimately stripped from foreign aid measures to Ukraine, allowing money to flow to the neo-Nazi group. But in early 2018 Congressional lawmakers successfully retained the provision in that year’s spending bill.
The same year, the Azov battalion spun-off another paramilitary group, the National Militia. They are part-time military, part-time street thugs. Often masked and armed, the self-styled vigilantes take it upon themselves to enforce laws and maintain civil order.
Nazi-related activity increased during the run-up to the 2019 presidential election. Ukraine’s Jewish and Roma communities have faced much of the growing violence. One video shows members of C14 destroying Roma camps and hurling rocks at fleeing Roma men, women and children, and spraying them with tear gas. C14 is a neo-Nazi group closely affiliated with the Svoboda Party. Again, the number 14 appears. The C14 leader was welcomed at the US-funded America House in Kyiv.
By 2019, targets of violence began to include Orthodox churches when Nazi symbols were spray-painted on churches in southeastern Ukraine. Then a public outcry arose when it was reported the Nazi swastika appeared on a Kyiv shopping mall display. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, the nearby street was renamed Bandera Avenue in 2016, after the same WWII Nazi collaborator footballer Zozulya likened himself to.
Ukraine’s national law enforcement leaders have stepped-up authoritarian and antisemitic behavior. Some senior leaders expressed admiration of Bandera. National Police Chief Serhiy Knyazev declared in a Facebook post he was a “Banderite.” Knyazev’s boss was Vadim Troyan, the deputy Interior minister and a former member of Azov and the Patriot of Ukraine.
In 2020 in the southern city of Kilomyya, the police demanded the names, personal details and contact information for Jewish community leaders. One Jewish leader posted on social media the last time this occurred in Ukraine was in the days leading to the Holocaust. The US began heavily funding the Ukraine National Police in late 2014.
Western media, such as the Washington Post and New York Times, have tried to downplay the Nazi presence in Ukraine as virtually insignificant despite the abundance of evidence proving otherwise.
Support of key Ukraine officials with past and current Nazi affiliations by official Washington has put the US in a very difficult position. The question is how will the US navigate this delicate situation when the Ukraine-Russia war is over?
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, Post, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).