Strengthen international solidarity against all forms of fascism

Resolution of the International Anti-Fascist Forum
Donetsk, May 10th  2019

In February 2014, a coup d’état took place in Ukraine. Nationalist forces came to power, for whom fascism became their state ideology.

The residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine did not recognize the new government and its ideology.

On April 7, 2014, a congress of representatives of territorial communities, political parties and public organizations of the Donetsk region proclaimed the Act on the Establishment of the Donetsk People’s Republic and adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty.

On April 14, 2014, the illegitimate Kiev regime launched a full-scale war against the people of Donbass, who had chosen the path of self-determination. The war led to thousands of civilian casualties in the region and large-scale destruction of production facilities and infrastructure.

The people’s republics of Donbass have been living in incessant hostilities for more than five years. Systematic violations of the truce by the Ukrainian side indicate that Kiev and the Western imperialists behind it are not interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

With the aggravation of the general crisis of world capitalism, the bourgeoisie applies the most stringent measures in the struggle against the working people, up to and including the use of fascist methods. Denying the masses even the minimum legal guarantees of protest against capitalist exploitation, the workers’ right to fight for their economic and political interests, the bourgeoisie proceeds to openly suppress the protest movement by armed force.

It is necessary to resist all attempts to rehabilitate fascism. It is also necessary to prevent its political and ideological revenge in the modern world!

Only together will we, the working people of the whole world, be able to counter the fascist threat.

The participants in the International Anti-Fascist Forum call upon the workers of all countries:

— to strengthen international solidarity in the fight against all forms of fascism;
— for all progressive forces of the world to cooperate in support of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics;
—  for the recognition of the will of the people of Donbass to create peaceful people’s republics;
— for the creation of an international tribunal to bring to justice the military and political criminals of Ukraine.

We, the participants in the International Anti-Fascist Forum, demand:

— from the Ukrainian authorities – to stop the war in Donbass, to begin negotiations with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics on the establishment of peaceful relations;
— from the European Union and the United States – to stop funding the military spending of the Ukrainian government and supplying arms to it;
— from the governments and parliaments of all states – to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as sovereign states, being guided by the UN Charter, the basic principles of international law, the right of peoples to self-determination, respecting the will of the people of Donbass confirmed in a national referendum; to establish a peaceful, friendly and mutually beneficial relationship with them.

No to the war in Donbass! Yes to the self-determination of the DPR and the LPR!

Long live international anti-fascist solidarity!

Signers:

1. Communist Party of the Donetsk People's Republic (KPDPR)
2. Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE)
3. New Communist Party of Britain (NCPB)
4. Socialist Labour Party of Croatia
5. French Communist Party (City Committee of the PCP Riez, City Committee of the PCF Venissieux, Regional Committee of PCF Pas de Calais)
6. Tatyana Desyatova, Coordinator of the Interbrigade of the Moscow Communist Party City Committee
7. Renate Koppé, member of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party (DKP)
8. Okay Desprem, Turkish journalist and writer, representative of the Labor Party (EMEP)
9. Solidarity with Novorossia and Anti-fascists of Ukraine (USA)
10. Struggle for Socialism - La Lucha por el Socialismo (USA)
11. Anti-fascist organization "Save Donbass" (Greece)
12. "Anti-Nazi Donbass" Committee (Rome, Italy)
13. "Anti-Fascist Ukraine" Committee (Bologna, Italy)
14. Donbass Association (Sweden)

Fascism will fall in Ukraine

By Theo Russell

Solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance in London

Five years after a coup planned and executed by the USA at a cost of $5 billion with enthusiastic support from European Union (EU) leaders, the illegitimate president Petro Poroshenko’s fascist-infested regime is in deep crisis and has nowhere to turn.

He is so unpopular that many expect him to lose elections in June; Ukraine’s economy is a basket case and worse off than any other ex-Soviet republic. He is powerless to end the war in the Donbas without permission from his masters in Washington.

We now know that the ‘sniper’s massacre’ the day before the 22^nd February 2014 coup was organised by the USA to frame president Viktor Yanukovych. In an interview last February, a group of snipers brought in from Georgia, a close ally of the USA, admitted that they were ordered by leaders of the ‘Euro-Maidan’ protests to fire on both police officers and protesters.

At the time, Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton in a leaked phone call that he had heard the shootings were carried out by “provocateurs”.

That coup ushered in a reign of fascist dictatorship and war. There is not enough space here to list all the fascist outrages against communists, trade unionists, gay people, Jewish memorials and Roma communities, nor the intimidation of courts and judges by armed fascist gangs.

Mention must be made, however, of the Odessa Trade Union House Fire massacre on 2^nd May 2014, in which over 50 anti-Maidan protestors were killed by a fascist mob whilst the police stood by. A Ukrainian government investigation into the murders has so far produced nothing.

Last year Poroshenko repeatedly announced new “all out offensives” in the war in the east. But the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) and the strutting loud mouths of the fascist battalions are not capable of defeating the anti-fascist People's Militias of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

The UAF learned a hard lesson in 2015, when two Ukraine army battalions were surrounded at Debaltseve by a much smaller Donbas force, with hundreds killed and thousands captured. Another major war could lead its total collapse.

The hearts and minds of the UAF’s conscript troops are not behind the war, and hundreds have defected to the Donbas side. Many have to buy their own food and essential equipment due to the venal corruption of their commanders.

Poroshenko has no control over the fascist militias that were incorporated into a US-trained and equipped Ukraine National Guard in 2014. Two years ago the Azov, Donbas and Right Sector fascist battalions moved to the front line without his permission.

The powerful Azov Battalion, sponsored by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, has threatened to remove Poroshenko if fails to implement their demands. But on the battlefield it is no match for the Donbas fighters.

There is no love lost between the fascists and Kiev’s army. Last June members of the Right Sector (avid Hitler fans) fought with Ukrainian troops near the front line and similar clashes have occurred elsewhere.

High morale of anti-fascists

In contrast, the morale of the Donbas militias is as high as ever, despite Kiev’s blockade and sanctions, and their fighters are committed to the anti-fascist struggle.

The republics emerged from the ‘anti-Maidan’ uprisings in 2014, which also took place in the neighbouring province of Kharkov, in Odessa and Crimea. The populations of the mainly Russian-speaking areas of the east and south had no desire to see heavily armed, Nazi-admiring thugs marching into their towns and villages.

Claims of thousands of Russian tanks invading Ukraine in 2014–15 were a fairy tale created by NATO, but a number of Russian volunteers with valuable military experience and skills have joined the Donbas rebels, as have anti-fascist fighters from many other countries, particularly Italy and Spain.

In an interview in 2017, the Italian commander of the InterUnit battalion of international volunteers, Commander Nemo, explained where the Donbas forces’ weapons came from: privately owned weapons, weapons from police stations, secret stockpiles of Soviet weapons, and restored artillery from parks and museums.

He added: “The Ukrainian army has lost five million light weapons, of which one million were taken by the People's Republics.” Many more have been bought from corrupt Ukrainian army officers.

Without doubt Russia’s support for the Donbas has been of vital importance, with regular humanitarian aid convoys still being sent and breaks in Russian holiday camps for thousands of children from the Donbas.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and Russian Communist Workers Party have also sent aid convoys, including cultural and educational materials.

The Donbas republics are governed by bourgeois social democratic movements – the ‘Donetsk Republic’ and ‘Peace for Lugansk Region’ parties – which have nationalised most of the factories and mines that were owned by Ukrainian oligarchs. The communist parties of the republics also have a strong base however, especially amongst the People's Militias.

The Lugansk and Donetsk communist parties emerged from the provincial branches of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), led by Petro Symonenko. Unfortunately the CPU’s lack of fighting spirit was exposed as soon as it was tested in struggle.

When President Viktor Yanukovych was removed by the unconstitutional vote of the Ukraine parliament on 22nd February 2014, which fell far short of the required three-quarters, the CPU’s delegates backed the move, effectively endorsing the coup. When Borotba (Struggle), an alliance of communist and left forces, emerged as the main anti-fascist resistance movement in Ukraine and led the rebellion in Kharkov province, the CPU refused its support.

Instead of supporting the anti-fascist Donbas people's republics, the CPU declared its support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” and expelled its “separatist” members. The CPU members in the Donbas still loyal to Symonenko abandoned the anti-fascist fight and crossed into Kiev-controlled Ukraine.

Last September Symonenko announced that the party would participate in elections, legitimising the illegitimate regime yet again. (Although communist or Soviet symbols and propaganda were banned in 2016, the party itself has not been outlawed.)

In 2014 the remaining members of the CPU’s provincial branches organised the new Communist Parties of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which were recognised by the CPRF in 2016, a major defeat for the CPU.

The myth of ‘fascist-controlled Donbas’

It is very unfortunate that by far the most dangerous manifestation of fascism anywhere in the world since 1945 has been ignored by anti-fascist organisations and almost all the left parties in Britain.

This is partly because they have fallen into the trap of anti-Russian, anti-Putin hysteria and fake news, but also due to a widespread belief that the Donbas republics are dominated by fascists and right-wing religious nationalists.

It is true that right wing, or rather “red-brown” Russian nationalists such as Aleksandr Dugin’s National Bolshevik Party have promoted the idea of a Russian orthodox “Novorussia”, but the National Bolsheviks have been banned in Russia.

It is also true that a handful of local and European fascists have fought in the Donbas, and that at one point when Igor Plotnitsky was the leader of the LPR, "red-brown” populists controlled the official press agency.

Plotnitsky, however, was overthrown in a coup last November for doing large coal and petrol deals with Ukrainian oligarchs, and for considering returning Lugansk to Kiev’s control. Under the new LPR leader Leonid Pasechnik ties with the sister DPR have been greatly strengthened.

In his 2017 interview Commander Nemo explained that attempts to establish fascist battalions in the Donbas “were immediately dismantled because they were totally incompatible with the antifascist nature of the Donbas people. There are absolutely no fascist military formations that fight for the People's Republics, this is an invention.

“As for the fascists, there were two who actually fought, whilst there were about 10 who were at the front for short periods. It must be considered that there are six fascists who say they are combatants whilst they have always been in the second line.”

According to Nemo, local Ukrainian Russian and the European fascists made up 0.9 per cent of the Donbas fighters, and together with nationalists and religious fundamentalists (ultra-Orthodox and neopagans), only two per cent.

Rampant fascism in Kiev-controlled Ukraine

In contrast, there is too much evidence of the fascist nature of the western-backed regime in Kiev to cover in this article. It is now abundantly clear that fascist, openly Nazi allegiance goes right to the very top and Poroshenko himself.

Soon after taking office in 2014, Poroshenko publicly identified himself as a ‘Banderite’, a follower of Stepan Bandera, whose faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists collaborated with Nazi Germany in the massacres of 1.5 million Jews and 70,000 Poles during the Second World War.

Last July an adviser to Poroshenko and his defence minister, Yuri Biryukov, wrote a Facebook post using the neo-Nazi symbol ‘1488’, an internationally shared Nazi code that combines a white supremacist message and ‘Heil Hitler’.

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, closely tied to the Azov Battalion (the most powerful of about 80 fascist militias), belongs to Poroshenko’s own party, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

The Azov makes no attempt to hide its fascism – its symbol is based on the war-time Nazi SS ‘Wolfsangel’. Ex-Azov member Vadym Troyan is now Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Interior and chief of police for the Kiev Region.

The Azov has established a ‘street patrol unit’ funded by the government, the National Druzhina, that aims to “restore Ukrainian order”. In 2018 it carried out lethal pogroms against Roma communities, stormed city council meetings and vandalised the offices of insufficiently pliant politicians. Yet nothing is reported in the western media.

In April 2018 Mariana Batiuk, a city deputy in Lviv, posted a Facebook message congratulating Adolf Hitler on his birthday; and in December, 1st January, Stepan Bandera’s birthday, was designated a national holiday.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s fascists are actively exporting their brand of fascism to the rest of the world.

Last October Olena Semanyaka, international secretary of the National Corps, the Azov’s political wing, boasted at a ‘Paneuropa’ Conference in Kiev: “For the first time since the Second World War, nationalist formations have managed to create their own military wings.”

Last November the US website ‘The Grayzone Project’ revealed that the FBI had indicted four members of the Rise Above Movement (RAM) for going to Ukraine to train with the Azov Battalion, and said Azov was “believed to have participated in training and radicalising United States-based white supremacy organizations.”

The RAM, which emerged after Donald Trump’s election, participated in violent riots in California and in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has held burnings of ‘Cultural Marxist’ books.

Grayzone also revealed that the USA has directly armed the Azov Battalion with anti-tank rockets and that a team of US Army officers met with Azov commanders in 2017.

A democratic, fascist-free Ukraine

Ukraine has fallen out of the news since 2015, with a ‘frozen’ conflict in the Donbas and total silence from the western media on the fascist destruction of all democratic rights.

Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Russian support for the Donbas republics will continue and said last June: “It is impossible to intimidate the Donbas people. We see how they endure all these hardships, we send them help and we will continue doing this.”

When Alexander Zakharchenko, president of the DPR, was assassinated last September, Putin declared "Russia will always stand by you".

There has been widespread speculation that the Donbas republics might be integrated into the Russian Federation. The Donetsk republics, supported by the CPRF and other Russian communist parties, have asked for this since 2014.

The republics held elections in November that were a signal to Kiev from both the Donbas and Russia that they cannot wait forever for Kiev to implement the separate status for the republics promised in the 2015 Minsk peace agreement.

In February 2017 Russia announced that it would temporarily recognise passports issued by the Donbas republics, which many saw as a step towards recognition.

In December however, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov repeated that Moscow had no plans to recognise the Donbas republics, let alone bring them into the Russian Federation.

He pointed out instead that Ukraine’s problems were "much broader and deeper", and that recognising the republics would mean leaving the rest of Ukraine in the hands of the Nazi regime: "You want to recognize the LPR and DPR? And what’s next? To lose the rest of Ukraine and abandon it to the Nazis?"

This shows that Russia’s concern is not just with the future of the Donbas but includes achieving a future Ukraine free of fascism where basic democratic rights are restored.

The fact is that Washington’s puppet government in Ukraine has failed and like Poroshenko the USA has few options available.

Although thousands of anti-fascists have gone into exile and hundreds languish in Ukraine’s prisons, with Russia’s support the resistance in the Donbas cannot be defeated. The junta in Kiev is under constant threat of military defeat in a new war, the collapse of its army, or a popular anti-fascist revolt.

It is only a matter of time before the illegitimate dictatorship is swept away and peace and freedom are restored, not only in the Donbas but in all of Ukraine. Our work in Britain is to mobilise the widest possible support for anti-fascists in Ukraine, where they are currently waging the most difficult struggle against fascism in the world.

Novorossiya: Thousands killed by fascists since Minsk

by Theo Russell

ACCORDING to figures recently obtained from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) authorities, since the February 2015 Minsk II agreement over 3,600 civilians have died in the republic because of shelling, sniper and other attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The DPR, along with the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), broke away from Ukraine in May 2014 following “status referendums” and the two republics declared a confederation, Novorossiya.

They grew out of the “Anti-Maidan” movement in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, Odessa and Crimea regions that sought to prevent the far-right groups which hijacked the “Euromaidan” protests entering their towns and cities after the February 2014 fascist coup in Kiev.

It was hoped that Minsk II, which followed the September 2014 Minsk Protocol and was signed by Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, François Holland and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, would end the war in eastern Ukraine and pave the way for elections and separate status for the “people’s republics”.

But the fighting has never really ended and there are reports of civilian casualties caused by Ukrainian strikes on the rebel republics on an almost daily basis. On 28th August, according to residents of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk city, a Ukrainian sniper shot two women dead “just for fun”.

According to data obtained recently from the DPR authorities, 3,609 civilians died in strikes by Ukrainian forces between 13 February 2015 and 26 August 2016, of which 3,133 were men, 476 women, 65 children and 352 “unknown”.

In addition, figures from the DPR Ministry of Utilities and Housing Construction state that up 20 July 2016, 4, 359 “multi-family housing” were damaged, of which 54 are irreparable, and 6,307 private houses damaged, of which 1,853 are irreparable.

As the neighbouring Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) has also experienced similar military strikes and civilian casualties, a very rough estimate would suggest that at least 6,000 civilians have died in strikes by Ukrainian forces on the Donbass republics since Minsk II.

Obtaining accurate figures for casualties in the war in eastern Ukraine is extremely difficult because of the unstable and insecure situation on the ground, and the fact that the conflict is highly politicised and controversial.

On 3rd August the UN assistant secretary-general for political affairs Tayé-Brook Zerihoun reported to the UN Security Council that the total number of conflict-related casualties since the Ukrainian government launched its “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in April 2014 was 30,729, including 9,333 killed and 21,396 injured.

no breakdown

But the report provides no breakdown of where the casualties have occurred other than “in the conflict area” and there is no indication of which side was responsible.

According to the latest figures from the UN Human Rights Office (UNHRO) and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 261 civilians were killed in the conflict on both sides from February 2015 to June 2016 — far fewer than the DPR’s figures would suggest.

But the UNHRO says that its figures are a “conservative estimate of the OHCHR [Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights] based on available data” that are “incomplete due to gaps in coverage of certain geographic areas and time periods, and due to overall under-reporting.”

In February 2015 press reports quoted claims from the German BND intelligence service that 50,000 civilians and servicemen had died in the Ukraine conflict, almost 10 times greater than figures given by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshkenko only days before, which said 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers and 5,400 civilians had died.

The Ukraine government does not appear to have any accurate figures for civilian casualties in the conflict. A report in May quoting Mykhailo Koval, First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said “Russia-backed militants have killed 10,000 Ukrainians and injured more than 20,000 over the past two years” — a strangely precise number, with no breakdown of civilian and military casualties or locations.

The only other body providing detailed information on casualties in the conflict is the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine, which has over 570 unarmed civilian monitors in the conflict region. But apart from daily updates the SMM has provided no total figures for casualties, although it has issued reports on the displacement of civilians, access to water and “Gender Dimensions of SMM’s Monitoring”.

Relations between the DPR and LPR governments and the OSCE mission have been deteriorating for months, with the people’s republics claiming it is biased towards the Ukrainian side.

On 29th August the DPR’s Defence Ministry claimed OSCE observers had refused to register damage caused by Ukrainian shelling of Yasinivataya, just north of Donetsk city, “explaining this by the absence of security in this area.”

Last April the Donbas International News Agency reported that the OSCE mission failed to report heavy shelling of Zaitsevo, a village close to the front-line, by Ukrainian forces. At the time Zaitsevo was a flashpoint stoking fears of a return to all-out war, with over a thousand people without electricity, gas or humanitarian aid for several months.

It was also claimed in April that the OSCE failed report the shelling of a hospital in Yelenovka, despite reporting another shelling only 880 metres away. According to reports from the DPR side, 6 civilians were killed and 10 wounded in the two strikes.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine’s mandate says that its mission is “to reduce tensions and to help foster peace, stability and security” by engaging “with authorities at all levels, as well as civil society, ethnic and religious groups and local communities to facilitate dialogue on the ground.”

In May the leaders of the DPR reacted strongly to claims by Poroshenko’s press office that the other leaders of the “Normandy four” contact group (Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine) had approved the deployment of an armed OSCE police force to the region. Poroshenko said it would be “well-armed with heavy weapons.”

The leaders of the DPR government, Denis Pushilin and Alexander Zakharchenko, declared this plan a “foreign intervention”. Zakharchenko called on Kiev to make a real effort for a peaceful settlement “rather than trying to arm the OSCE to seize the Donbas.”

accusations

Accusations that the OSCE serves Western interests date back to the 2004—2005 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. In 2007 Vladimir Putin said that Western States were “trying to transform the OSCE into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries,” using “so-called non-governmental organisations tailored for this task” that “are formally independent but are purposefully financed and therefore under control.”

Russia remains an active OSCE member however, because the organisation would play a major part in any implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Incredibly, the OSCE has declared every election in Ukraine since the February 2014 fascist coup legitimate, despite the fact that the coup was carried out by armed Nazi-supporting groups (Svoboda and the Right Sector), and the removal of Viktor Yanukovych was in breach of the Ukrainian constitution on several counts.

According to the OSCE, the May 2014 presidential election was “a genuine election largely in line with international commitments and with a respect for fundamental freedoms in the vast majority of the country,” and the parliamentary election in October 2014 had “offered voters real choice, and a general respect for fundamental freedoms.”

So the OSCE clearly saw no problems with the fact that many violent Nazis, including militia leaders guilty of serious crimes, were elected to parliament, or that 84 neo-Nazi battalions continue to run amok in Ukraine, attacking, murdering and kidnapping any opponents of the regime, desecrating Jewish holocaust memorials, and threatening and intimidating judges and the police.

According to Donbas sources, a ceasefire announced on 1st September by the Trilateral Contact Group (Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE), and renewed twice since then, seems to have had little effect. Both the Donbas International News Agency and the OSCE have reported hundreds of violations in the past week.

The truth is that there are no internationally accepted figures for civilian deaths in the Ukraine war — but as in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Libya and Syria many thousands have died as a result of wars launched by US—NATO imperialism.

And all the while the people of Ukraine are languishing under an effective dictatorship, under which no democratic rights exist, and no opposition to ultra-nationalism or outright fascism is tolerated.

Ukraine in 2016: echoes of 1930s Germany

By Theo Russell

On paper, the current Ukrainian government under prime minister Volodymyr Groysman has cleaned up its image, with two far-right, anti-semitic parties, Svoboda and the Radical Party, no longer in the coalition.

But the far right and neo-Nazi militias have been given official recognition. In 2015 84 of these battalions became part of the National Guard, the Patrol Service of Police, or under Ministry of Defence control. The interior minister, Arsen Avakov, has close ties with the Azov, Aidar and Tornado battalions.

These militias continue to run amok across Ukraine, mounting racist, anti-semitic, anti-communist and homophobic attacks, threatening and intimidating judges, and frequently kidnapping defendants when they are released by the courts.

Persecution of journalists

In May, the anonymous Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) website published 4,000 names and contact details of journalists including the New York Times, Reuters and BBC, who covered the shooting down of MH17 in July 2014. They were labelled “accomplices in terrorism” for receiving press accreditation from the Donetsk People’s Republic.

‘Peacemaker’ received support at the highest levels in Kiev for this action. One of Avakov’s top advisers, Anton Gerashchenko, said the list was published as part of the “information war” with Russia, and anyone who questioned it was a ‘separatist’, now a crime in Ukraine.

An advisor to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) then announced the journalists were being investigated as potential spies.

In March, the British government funded a ‘Peace-building school’ run by the Maidan Monitoring Information Centre, linked to the same “Peacemaker” website. The event, “Stepan Bandera: Myths and Reality”, sought to sanitise the image of the World War 2 Nazi collaborator.

A speaker from Ukraine’s Committee of State Ideology told the school “we should do our part to refute the myths - Soviet myths - about the fighters for the independence of Ukraine”.

Bandera was a follower of  Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, who called for a Ukraine “free of Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians, and Jews”, and Dmytro Dontsov, who translated the writings of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.

He led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which in 1939 called the German army “the army of allies”, and 1941 set up a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, the Nachtigall Battalion. The OUN played a leading part in anti-Jewish pogroms, patrolled Jewish ghettoes, and assisted in deporting two million people to Germany.

In 1943 the OUN(B) killed 100,000 Ukrainian Poles. Between 5 and 7 million Ukrainians, including 1.5 million Jews, died under the Nazi occupation. Under the April 2015 law on ‘honouring the memory of fighters for Ukraine's independence’, it is now a crime to denigrate Bandera, the OUN or OUN(B).

UN and International Red Cross barred

Last May, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) cancelled a visit to Ukraine after being refused access to sites where the secret police (SSU) is believed to run secret prisons. The SPT’s chair Sir Malcolm Evans spoke of " numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained, and torture or ill-treatment may have occurred" at these sites.

In February, the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine gave evidence of the prisons to the International Red Cross which also requested access, but it too was refused by the SSU.

Silencing of the opposition

Under the May 2015 ‘de-communisation law’ the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) has been banned. The main annual holiday now marks the foundation of the OUN(B), and in 2014 the SSU was re-organised on the lines of Bandera’s fascist movement. It cannot be denied that fascist ideology is now firmly embedded in the Ukrainian state.

There are now 4,000 people charged with "separatism", a criminal offence. Many supported referendums and protests in 2014 calling for separate status for cities in the east and south such, or have simply criticised the "Anti-Terrorist Operation" in the east in which 9,000 people have died.

In May, when a court in Odessa released taxi driver Evgeni Mefedov, accused of joining a protest, it was stormed by Right Sector fascists who searched cars, (including police cars) leaving the court. The judges were terrorised into making a new charge - threatening to kill one of the fascists - and Mefedov was thrown back into prison.

In April, the senior editor of a TV station near Odessa, Elena Glishchinskaya-Romanova, was raided at 5:30am and arrested by the SSU’s "Alfa" anti-terrorist unit searching for “agitation and propaganda material”. She and her children were held at gunpoint.

Using ‘evidence’ such as materials from the Party of Regions (led by the overthrown President Victor Yanukovych) and history books, she was accused “threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine” and jailed for two months, since then extended several times, but eventually released after an international campaign.

Assassinations, kidnappings and disappearances

In April 2015 the well-known journalist Oles Buzina was murdered, but when two neo-Nazi suspects were arrested, a huge far-right rally demanded their release. At the main suspect’s trial, the judge was threatened, her office torched, and he was freed.

In April, Andrei Sokolov, a member of the socialist Borotba (Struggle) movement , was seized by four unidentified men and driven away after being released by a court. Since then he has disappeared.

After visiting the Donbas in 2014, he drove into an AFU checkpoint and was charged with "aiding a terrorist organization". After ‘proof’ of his guilt was obtained under duress, he agreed a deal to in exchange for pleading guilty, only to be kidnapped on his release.

On July 13 Mikhail Kononovich, a parliamentary candidate the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), was attacked by neo-Nazis armed with pipes and chains.

In June, Alla Alexandrovska, 67 year-old head of the Kharkov CPU and member of the national parliament four times, was arrested and charged with separatism, 'posing a threat to a state security' and 'terrorism'. She worked with Sloboda, an organization with very moderate demands within Ukraine’s current laws. After falling ill in detention, she attended court connected to an IV tube.

As the "separatist" movement has faded away, Alexandrovska’s arrest marks a new crackdown on the ‘legal’ opposition, including the left of the Opposition Bloc, the Union of Left Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party.

UK, EU and NATO cosy up to Ukraine

The UK, European Union and NATO are forging ahead with developing ties with Ukraine, on the basis that it is “defending its territorial integrity”. A 100-strong UK military team has trained 2,000 Ukrainian troops; some may have members of the far right battalions now part of the Ukrainian army.

In March an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was signed, and in June the EU Commission said Ukraine had met “all benchmark requirements” for a visa-free regime with the EU.

NATO has offered “Association Partnership” status to Georgia and Ukraine, already members of its ‘Partnership for Peace’ programme, at its Warsaw summit, and 1,800 NATO troops took part in the Rapid Trident military exercise in Ukraine in June.

The next stage of dictatorship

Artyom Buzila, a journalist for legal media outlets now in exile after being 11 months’ detention for ‘separatism’, recently outlined the next stage of dictatorship in Ukraine. 

“The regime is tottering: millions of people are suffering from the economic situation and price hikes, and many are tired of the police state. However, the valiant SBU keeps locking up freethinking citizens in its dungeons.

“Ending the legal opposition has become the next task of the SBU (and the Kiev regime as a whole) after finishing with the radical ‘separatists’ and while the remains of the Russian Spring were forced underground.

“Arrests, harassment – anything is possible. And meanwhile, the repression continues with no end in sight. Who will be next?”