(NOTE–Photo on main page of AZOV courtesy of XR Vision).
When Vladimir Putin announced the twin goals of the Special Military Operation in February–i.e., demilitarization and denazification–it sounded strangely familiar. Well there is a reason for that. At the end of World War II, the UK, the US and Russia reached an agreement at Potsdam. Not surprisingly, it was called the Potsdam Agreement.
[D]uring the Potsdam Conference, on 30 July 1945, the Allied Control Council was constituted in Berlin to execute the Allied resolutions (the “Four Ds“):[11][12]
- Denazification of the German society to eradicate Nazi influence
- Demilitarization of the former Wehrmacht forces and the German arms industry; however, the circumstances of the Cold War soon led to Germany’s Wiederbewaffnung including the re-establishment of both the Bundeswehr and the National People’s Army
- Democratization, including the formation of political parties and trade unions, freedom of speech, of the press and religion
- Decentralization resulting in German federalism, along with disassemblement as part of the industrial plans for Germany. Dismantling was stopped in West Germany in 1951 according to the Truman Doctrine, whereafter East Germany had to cope with the impact alone.
Putin’s reiteration of the Denazification and Demilitarization principles established from the 1945 Potsdam Conference is not just some quaint tip of the hat to history. He was laying down a marker to the United States and United Kingdom that the agreement reached at Potsdam in 1945 is still relevant and valid.
The Russians have good reason to be angry that the West failed to carry through on denazifying Germany. Very few of the Nazi men and women involved in carrying out the war against the Soviet Union and implementing the extermination of the Jews of Poland, Ukraine and Russia were tried and convicted of war crimes. In fact, prominent Nazis remained in power in the “new” Germany:
For a more than 20 years fter World War II, nearly 100 former members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party held high-ranking positions in the West German Justice Ministry, according to a German government report.
From 1949 to 1973, 90 of the 170 leading lawyers and judges in the then-West German Justice Ministry had been members of the Nazi Party.
Of those 90 officials, 34 had been members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Nazi Party paramilitaries who aided Hitler’s rise and took part in Kristallnacht, a night of violence that is believed to have left 91 Jewish people dead. . . .
In 1957, 77% of the ministry’s senior officials were former Nazis, which, according to the study, was a higher proportion that during Hitler’s Third Reich government, which existed from 1933 to 1945.
U.S. intelligence scooped up and protected a number of Gestapo murderers in the name of fighting communism. The most prominent of these was Klaus Barbie:
‘KLAUS BARBIE: The American Connection” looks at the postwar involvement of United States intelligence officials with the man who was called the ”Butcher of Lyons.” That there was such an involvement is certain; that Klaus Barbie committed monstrous crimes is certain, too. The question is whether the American agents were morally culpable in dealing with, even protecting, the former Gestapo officer. ”Klaus Barbie,” a ”Frontline” documentary, suggests they were. . . .
[Barbie] from 1942 through 1944 he was the head of the Gestapo in Lyons, France. After the war he was a paid informant for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps. When the French attempted to arrest him for war crimes, American agents thwarted them, and in 1951 they smuggled Mr. Barbie out of Europe. Last February, he was extradited from Bolivia to France. He will be tried there for ”crimes against humanity.”
Putin’s suspicion about the United States and the United Kingdom being enablers and protectors of Nazis is not paranoia, rather it is a reasonable belief based on past and current events. Just because Americans display gross ignorance of their past ties to Nazis and are willfully blind in dealing with the legion of Bandera supporters firmly embedded in the current Ukrainian government, does not mean the present day Nazi threat is illusory. It is real.
The Nazis of World War II killed between 8,668,400–10,000,000 Russian soldiers. Almost twice as many Russian civilians died as a consequence of Nazi attacks–“In 2020 Mikhail Meltyukhov, who works with the Russian Federal archival project, stated that 15.9-17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by the Nazis during the war.”
The failure of the Untied States to understand the depth of Russian outrage and opposition to all things Nazis is rooted in American ignorance of the staggering losses and horrific pain the Russian people endured. These deaths were not because of Stalin’s brutality. They all came at the hands of Germans and the Russians have not forgotten. The men waging war to wipe out the Nazis in Ukraine are the grandsons of men and women who paid in blood fighting the first Nazi wave unleased in 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. They have not forgotten. America is making a potentially fatal mistake if it dismisses this fact as something peripheral and meaningless.
Te faltó enumerar los oficiales nazis de la OTAN , que hubo y muchos!
Why i am not surprised , Look at the puppet south korean govt after the war , they just disgusting evil men pretending to be the beacon of democracy in korea..
it is SOP by United States to use the most evil group available to control a nation , just like ukraine after 2014 , Indonesia after fall of Soekarno , and many many more example of using facist / Right Wing extremist people,l
the reason are clear , these facist / rightwing people will do any cruel taks from their masters in washington to their own countrymen
Fascism is a leftist ideology,not rightwing.
“Fascism is not merely a radical appreciation of individualism, capitalism, and freedom (values universally cherished by the right); it relies instead on a totalitarian implementation of socialism with radical nationalist tendencies. True fascism— Gentile’s fascism— stands diametrically opposed to the foundational principles of conservatism and the mainstream political right. To pretend that fascism is a right-wing ideology, and worse, to attribute those characteristics to members of mainstream political thought, is to ignore the words of its founding philosopher and the dark history of its inception.”
https://loneconservative.com/2018/09/14/is-facism-right-wing/
No it isn’t. Fasicm is right wing, but, it is collectivist.
The right believes in hierarchy. The left egalitarianism (but they really don’t they just say this to dupe the masses into supporting them by feeding them utopian dreams)
Here is Paul Gottfried explaining
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sshvHgcOnVg
it is nice to see another weak minded person who tried to push facism toward left , just because some moron on american “right” so afraid they are going to be labelled as facists..
it is so obvious the facism developed from right wing ideology. This “right wing” is not the same as conservative or liberalism commonly known to american people. But the fanatics from both left and right in america hijacked the conservative and liberalism concept and ruined them.
True blue american patriot know the difference between “being conservative” and falling to the deep end of “facism”. The Facist people will use whatever vehicle to rise to the top , wheter riding the wave of popular left or right
The Denazification and Demilitarization of Ukraine will not be sufficient. This malignant evil emanates from Britain and America and the obsequious governments of the EU. if Ukraine was cleansed tomorrow, this amoral, festering evil would still exist. This time, these septic, putrid governments must be cleansed forever, their leaders brought before Nuremberg 11, ( not like the sham that happened before) , prosecuted by bona fide international judges and the sentences carried out as under the Geneva conventon for war crimes. No ifs, no buts.
it is evil and will be worse in the coming decades , the combination of evil + perversuon + arrogance + ignorance along with the belief they are exceptional will be a potent mix for the nations of the world.
Russia and China have their hand full preventing the Beast from invading and robbing their land, They just need to hold off the Beast until it is sick and die from internal injury caused by decades of neglect of its own body.
i foresee the next 25 years as an increasingly strong russia and china dominating the world economy due to their incredible amount of commodity , fuel , energy , tech and incredible industrial capability. Non western nations will flock to both russia and china block for survival. Even Europe will be broken by member’s desire to join the sino russo alliance for survival of their own nation.
the Beast and it’s mother (City of London) will be more and more aggresive in rhetoric but do not dare to attack openly. The Beast will covertly unleash bio weapons on both china and russia ..
Dark days.
The West, US, UK, France have idolised good yet practiced evil. The result is schizophrenic countries.
The population, until recently confused by woke mind fk, believed in fairness and good.
Yet their money went to do evils they would recoil at.
He who pays the Piper calls the tune.
Can people in the West get off the happy we are good pills and summon the will and strength to address the enemy within that they don’t fully understand but they see it’s back now. And soon all the blood they paid for will stain their hands and they will ask where did this blood come from. How did this happen.
Jordan pushing for US led Arab NATO.
No one seems to learn anything
I do have some hope though that part of the solution will be the American people when they actually understand what is happening. It takes 7% to create a revolution or change the social order of the day
Does America have 7% who understand what’s happening. Probably not yet
Mr. Johnson….. that the many losses in WW II were not caused by Stalin…… that’s another half-truth.
The fact is, under Stalin, the warfare was extremely ruthless towards their own troops.
Of the millions, a different command of the troops would probably have saved 30% of the losses.
Stalin was a lousy criminal, even during the war.
Then, as a renewal of the non-aggression pact of 1939, it was negotiated again in November 1940, or it was wanted to extend it. Hitler, Goering, Rippentrop and Molotov were there.
Apparently, people in Germany were so surprised by certain statements by Molotov that the Barbarossa case was dismissed.
Unfortunately, the minutes of the negotiations are usually only partially reproduced…… almost always 3-4 pages are missing. But if you can read it in its entirety, you will come to the conclusion that Stalin definitely had the conquest of western Europe in mind and was planning it.
If you just look at how many tanks the Soviet Union produced before the war, you can hardly speak of mere defense anymore.
So,
Churchill was also a criminal, but he was simply more sophisticated, more refined, cultivated the high school of manipulation, and he had no dictatorial powers. Stalin was a power-loving criminal, you should know that.
I’ve read Churchil’s memoirs….. 10 volumes….. sure, the dark things aren’t in there. E.g. the Sikhorsky affair.
I have to agree with Craig Roberts… Only through war can Russia earn the respect it deserves.
So I’m all for what Russia is doing now.
We have so many idiots that you can only bring them up like that.
Yes, if I were Putin, I would even take the Baltics, who educate the Poles, and the Finns at the same time.
You have to kick these poisonous, clapping street dogs once.
Nevertheless, facts are facts….. and it took 2 or 3 for the great war…… including Churchill and Stalin.
I’ve been saying for many years that mankind unfortunately needs a new war, because that’s the only way sanity and efficiency will come to the fore again. The heads poisoned with gender, LBTIQ and Woke will be cleaned in the process.
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I agree with some of your comments, also those in your in second post which concern the practically impossible task of routing out of the FRG state bureaucracy of each and every NASDAP-member after 1949. Ancien régime people use to remain in their positions or return after some time. That is true, I believe, after every regime change, except for the one in Iraq 2003 … and look at the results!
I do not agree, however, that Stalin‘s conduct of the war was »criminal«. You have to take into account the given situation of the USSR in the thirties, the military doctrine they had, the industrial capabilities they had, their intentional isolation by the British and the French who would have liked seeing them crushed by Germany. Stalin and his Politbureau knew perfectly well after their non-aggression pact with Germany in August 1939 what would be coming to them, and they prepared as fast as they could: changing the military doctrine, firing up the defense industry, introducing new weapons, avail themselves of German technology in return for Russian resources. They tried the impossible until June 21st 1941, they had no choice. The German cold-war propaganda, of course, depicts this policy as naïve at best and delusional at worst — ›Stalin believed in Hitler‹, they say. That is not true at all, I believe.
Of course, the destruction of the Soviet officer corps in 1938/39 with Tukhachevsky as its greatest target, was a mistake of epic proportions, a tragedy, which resulted from the social engineering efforts of an ideologically founded regime. But then came Zhukov and Rokossovsky …
I agree with some of your comments, also those in your second post which concern the practically impossible task of routing out of the FRG state bureaucracy of each and every NASDAP-member after 1949. Ancien régime people use to remain in their positions or return after some time. That is true, I believe, after every regime change, except for the one in Iraq 2003 … and look at the results!
I do not agree, however, that Stalin‘s conduct of the war was »criminal«. You have to take into account the given situation of the USSR in the thirties, the military doctrine they had, the industrial capabilities they had, their intentional isolation by the British and the French who would have liked seeing them crushed by Germany. Stalin and his Politbureau knew perfectly well after their non-aggression pact with Germany in August 1939 what would be coming to them, and they prepared as fast as they could: changing the military doctrine, firing up the defense industry, introducing new weapons, avail themselves of German technology in return for Russian resources. They tried the impossible until June 21st 1941, they had no choice. The German cold-war propaganda, of course, depicts this policy as naïve at best and delusional at worst — ›Stalin believed in Hitler‹, they say. That is not true at all, I believe.
Of course, the destruction of the Soviet officer corps in 1938/39 with Tukhachevsky as its greatest target, was a mistake of epic proportions, a tragedy, which resulted from the social engineering efforts of an ideologically founded regime. But then came Zhukov and Rokossovsky …
It’s easy to criticize Stalins decision during the war from 80 years and an ocean away … and there has been a lot of shall we say “mythology” around how the Soviet government ran their war. I’ve heard many people criticize Stalin but when asked what they would have done if they were in Stalins situation no one comes up with better ideas than Stalins.
Consider however the situation Stalin found himself in in June 1941.
The Red Army’s officer corp was purged of their best field commanders who understood mechanized warfare.
They were in the middle or reorganizing and re-equipping their forces. Mechanized divisions had tanks but no trucks or maintenance crews. More tanks were lost to mechanical breakdowns or running out of fuel than were destroyed by the Germans during the early stages of Barbarossa.
Their entire war industry had to be moved from the Donbass and Leningrad areas east to the Urals while they were fighting … this was a monumental task with a single factory taking as many as a thousand rail cars and it was done under fire. The Soviets had virtually no arms production from June 1941 to mid 1942 … all they had were the planes, tanks, artillery and ammunition that was on hand in June 1941 and that had to last until the fall of 1942. Lend lease didn’t start reaching Soviet shores until well into 1942.
What the Soviets did have that the Germans didn’t was a vast reserve of 14 million trained reservists.
So given the situation where your under real existential threat, your cities are either captured or under siege, you don’t have the ability to make arms or ammunition and your rail service and a large proportion of your industrial capacity is put to work building new factories and the only asset you have to protect yourself are 14 million soldiers what do you do differently than Stalin did?
Now I agree some Soviet generals were wasteful … Zhukov in the battles around Moscow in ’42 in particular however consider that until the mid 1990’s all we knew about the war in Russia was what the Germans told us. They were fighting waves of “asiatic hoards” in every battle and every loss was due to the meddling of the “Austrian corporal”.
Well for starters Stalin could have refrained from killing millions of his own citizens and stopped trying to export his vile political ideology. In case you are unaware, both fascism and nazism are reactionary ideologies to communism.
First my comment was on Stalins performance as commander in chief during WW2 but I’ll bite.
The Russian revolution was a revolution against a line of tyranical monarchs … do you believe that the Tsar should have stayed in power given his abysmal leadership during WW1 and the condition his people were in in 1917?
I believe that like the French and the Americans before them the Russians had the right to revolt against the monarch. At the time the western powers fought against the revolution and financed a horrendous civil war in Russia … by proxy of course … which killed 4 million and devastated the Russian economy.
That was followed by severe sanctions isolating the country to the point where they were selling off art work to raise foreign currency to trade with. The gulag system was already in place before the Russian revolution but Stalin et al turned it into a business to raise money to modernize the countries industrial base.
So yes communism begat fascism but it was the wests reaction to the Russian revolution and communism that created the conditions for a strong man like Stalin to rule Russia.
We’re seeing the same thing happen today. The west doesn’t listen to Russian concerns. The west can only punish and scold Russia. The west seems to think that economic pain will cause Russian to revolt agains Putin when in fact it’s only galvanizes Russians and strengthening Putins hold on power.
Stalin happened … that’s water under the bridge … but why the fuck does the west (USA & GB mainly) keep stepping on the same rake over and over. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many years the Russians have been free from economic warfare since 1917 and I missing a finger.
it is funny watching westerner trip over themselves trying to potray non west leaders as evil or crimimal or mass murderer , while on the same time they whitewashed and glorified western leaders who did far worse behind the cover of democracy.
this is exactly what on display during the russian SMO as US and EU trip over themselves trying to potray russian as evil criminal oecs while ukrop nazi described as heroes fighting for their holy land.
i especially held my nose on people who should know better , like veterans or ex intel people who claimed they will fight alongside heroic ukraine fighters if they were younger. I know there are morons in US veteran community but hearing such nonsense from the senile Col Lang and his owner / minder the lithuanian TTG give me the creeps.l
Just to show how many people in US who pretend to be anti neocon suddenly become neocon booltlicker and joined in the russophobia propagand recently
Walter, I too agree with almost everything you say. But I hope mankind can get its shit together and not need wars and other human generated catastrophes before doing the right thing.
Well, when I was a child, there lived in the house next to us an older woman…….. older, she was 40 years old and very beautiful.
Why has she never married? Well, she had family money and didn’t have to work.
In any case, she often took in subtenants. And a man …. he was always very pleasant to me, he was such an old-age, settled man who liked to talk to us children……… until one day he showed me his soldier photos.
I was very shocked because he had been an SS man.
Hauptsturmfuhrer in the Waffen SS to be exact. But that meant little to me at the time. My parents raised me here in Switzerland in such a way that …. SS was a crime.
But the man was quite normal……. EK-1, German cross in gold, close combat clasp in gold, several tank destruction badges, etc.
Well, all of this only became clear to me much later when I read what these medals meant.
For the man, however, it was the “golden years”…… you were young, the pay was very good, the army paid for the dentition, the clothes, the food, and you got around a lot.
After 1945, Germany would not have functioned at all without these people.
Of course they could have been gradually replaced…… but once a man like that has been in service for a few years, he has created his colleagues and networks in which he blends in and no longer attracts attention.
They were hundreds of thousands, if not millions…… what should you have done with them?
And precisely, it was men who often represented the symbol of the fulfillment of duty. They were in great demand in the companies and during construction.
At that time, a distinction was made between the Allgemeine SS and the Waffen SS.
I think the General SS were hardly visible anywhere after the war.
Well, I think of the SS man from back then……. and I look at the photos of the Asov fighters……… none of Asov would have been included in the Waffen SS.
but but what about the beautiful lady ?
seriously no one wants to hear about honorable SS men , as many ppl remarked german soldiers behaved like gentlemen inside geman cities but the same boys become uncontrollable animal among the eastern people of russia.
It is the same stuff one read on german military fanboys , trying to whitewash SS criminals by pretending that SS combat units are honorable people. What a delusional statement
So, there were 3 criminal organizations in WWII, Communists, Nazis, and Allies. So it looks like a merger between the Allies and Nazis in the 21st century. What a strange alliance. An ideological milkshake.
If Russia is no longer communist, what is it? Eurasian? A country divided geographically between cultural Christian and Islamic populations.
I think the human herd is about to be thinned out.
It’s an alliance of convenience. The Western leaders don’t care about Ukrainians except as a tool to get at Putin. But, in a Dimocracy, one needs to sell the policy to the people. And so the conflict is wrapped in cloak of human freedom and liberty as Ukrainians are made to suffer.
Let us not forget things like the Union Bank of NY was instrumental is supplying funding to the fledgling Nazi Party, Prescott Bush of the Bush Crime Family was a strong supporter.
Business interests in the Nazis extended even into the war with American owned factories manufacturing war materiel all throughout the conflict. There was factions in the Roosevelt Administration that favored becoming allies with the Germans to fight the Soviets.
Do you think the Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945? Think again.
Are you saying the Bushies are Nazis? Nay, they’re just cucks.
Cucks who financed Hitler through the Union Bank and Fritz Thiessen.
They invested in a large chemical firm. Just like I invested in some Russian companies. But thanks to the sanctions, I lost most of those investments.
It’s worth noting that of the 9 million Soviet armed forces personnel who died in the Great Patriotic War, 3 million were POWs who were murdered in captivity by the Germans. That raises the total of innocent or helpless victims of the Nazi genocide in Russia to up to 21 million. The Axis forces lost something like 4 million men killed on the battlefield to 6 million on the Soviet side.
The large body count on the Soviet side had more to do with how Stalin handled the war. He had no respect for human life and threw men to their deaths (or shot them if they didn’t hold the line).
Hitler gave sanctuary to thousands of patriotic Russians who hated the Soviet Union. But the evil Churchill and FDR handed them back to Stalin after the war so they could be slaughtered.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after_World_War_II
Thanks for reminding us that we in the West once knew how to deal with collaborators. The French in particular were ruthless towards anyone who trucked with the occupiers.
The figures (three Soviets killed in battle for every two Axis) I gave dispel the myth that Soviet soldiers were used as cannon fodder, or shot for retreating. In fact those court-martialled for cowardice were often sent back to their units (not special penal battalions) for a chance to redeem themselves, and many did.
If the ferocity of warfare on the Eastern Front shocks you, remember that the Soviets were fighting for their very existence as a nation and human beings against a genocidal enemy. Surrender for the Soviets meant death, and for the Germans it meant trial for war crimes.
That was not my intent. Rather I thought it was a bad idea, akin to mass murder. Sounds to me like you’re ok with that.
The collaborationist forces were guilty of mass-murder through various atrocities, especially the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (whose red-and-black flag Christia Freeland has been seen waving) and the Galician SS Division recruited from Ukrainian collaborators. Punishing war criminals is not mass-murder.
I know you are a troll , who cannot hide your lack of historical knowledge on russian war effort during WW2. Because you kept repearinf “stalin evil tactics” , “russian shot their own soldiers” , “noble hitler saves russian lives”
what kind of moron would post all this nonsense except a known troll who kept posting fake facts and FUD all the time here ?
The Potsdam Agreement was nothing more than the Morganthau Plan incognito
“At Yalta in the Crimea, Messrs. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met to decide the fate of Europe and in their joint statement solemnly declared:
“It is not our purpose to destroy the people of Germany.”
Again at Potsdam, the representatives of the Big Three met and in their joint Declaration, signed by Messrs. Stalin, Truman, and Attlee, officially proclaimed:
“It is not the intention of the Allies to destroy or enslave
the German people.”
Despite these and other assurances, the Potsdam decisions, as we at first interpreted them, meant throwing the German people on their own, with outside assistance prohibited, after the necessary means for their survival had been destroyed. This could have but one result: to blot out Germany and the German people.
The life of every nation is supported by three main pillars: land (all natural resources), labor (both brawn and brains), and capital (plants and equipment). Break down any one of these and the nation is plunged into catastrophe.
We have been guilty of pulling down all three in Germany.
The war started the process by destroying the flower of German manpower, shattering cities, factories, railroads, and impoverishing the soil by a five year cessation of fertilizer production. And an equally oppressive war has been waged against the German people since their unconditional surrender. The supporting power of the land has been undermined by vital territorial losses followed by overcrowding caused by the influx of millions of Germans expelled into the shrunken Reich from the lost areas and from Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Industrial capital resources have been further diminished by loss of all production facilities in the territories taken by the conquerors and by a gigantic program of sacking politely known as “deindustrialization” and “reparations in kind.” The working force had been decimated by the enslavement of millions, the throwing of other millions out of posts of responsibility through “denazification,” and weakened by undernourishment which causes workmen to fall at their posts of duty. Even the German race itself has been attacked by a program of mass violation of Germany’s unconditionally surrendered motherhood.
In consequence, Germany lies prostrate and her people famish. After they began to die en masse, it was finally decided that the importation of some food would be necessary – unfortunately barely enough to keep the great masses of people in the twilight zone between life and death. Their agonies and despair have been perpetuated at the maximum of human capacity.
The following pages portray what TIME magazine has aptly called “history’s most terrifying peace”, a peace which fully explains why many Germans are ready to turn to communism, or worse. For, strangely, our modern age which brought us the atom bomb has also given birth to nations which at the expense of their allies are able to derive profit from the production of human misery.”
From “Gruesome Harvest” by Ralph Keeling. 1947
In light of all this talk of the minimum wage universal income for all people makes sense.
Failed economy, no jobs, pay everyone not to riot
Gee Ash, where does the government get the money to pay every citizen? Currently we have $Trillion dollar deficits. As we print money to pay for more unfunded government spending, inflation will increase, hurting those at the bottom the most. UBI is just another free lunch program thought up by people who know nothing about economics.
Perhaps you need to take a break, kick back and enjoy the following
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUsFm0BAu8
This is an important subject that resonates to this day, not only as a matter of historical memory but operationally through succeeding generations in connection with Ukraine. Just as you mention Klaus Barbie it is important to consider another individual whose sordid history was ignored as he was brought to the US and protected by the CIA. Specifically Mykola Lebed, a key Bandera associate established a CIA network that featured propaganda, contact operations and continuing contact with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army while it continued terrorist operations inside the Soviet Union for many years after World War 2. Lebed and his role was first exposed in a January 1986 article in The Village Voice entitled “To Catch a Nazi.” Subsequently covered in the New York Times and featured in Christopher Simpson’s book Blowback Lebed was exposed as a CIA operative throughout the Cold War. He died in Pittsburgh in 1998. More recently he was featured in a short piece by Per Anders Rudling in the book Rethinking Holocaust Justice entitled “Not Quite Klaus Barbie, but in That Category” Mykola Lebed, the CIA, and Airbrushing of the Past. The only criticism I have is that I am not sure about the “Not Quite Klaus Barbie” characterization. Historian and Russia hawk Timothy Snyder has identified the Gestapo trained Lebed as the prime mover in the UPA’s decision to launch an ethnic cleansing campaign that resulted in the massacre of an estimated 100,000 Poles.
All of this might seem purely academic except that the CIA has released extensive partially declassified records identifying multiple operatives who acted under Lebed’s supervision through the Prolog Corporation and were associated with his
ZPUHVR political faction that split from Bandera after the war. Coupled with the open source Ukrainian Weekly it is possible to identify family connections with Lebed’s network and get a sense of the profound impact this CIA operation has had to this day.
Alexandra Chalupa’s uncle Vitally Keis hosted a gathering in the 1960’s that included two Ukrainian poets being cultivated by Lebed’s network that appears in the files. Both poets emerged as key leaders of the Rukh independence movement in Ukraine in 1989. The Ukrainian Weekly coverage of that movement reports that also present at the founding meeting of this group was a young Chrystia Freeland and Lebed associate Taras Hunczak who at the time was chief editor of Prolog’s prime publication Suchasnist. Hunczak, who began his CIA association by working under Mykola Lebed’s personal direction at the 1959 Vienna Youth Festival later published his memoirs which revealed a direct connection between Prolog and the inception of the George Soros Renaissance Foundation in the early 90’s. Specifically, around the time the CIA was shutting down its Aerodynamic operation, possibly because the Lebed connection was already an open secret Hunczak relates that he and Roman Kupchinsky, Lebed’s successor as president of Prolog met with Soros in New York and successfully pitched the idea that he open the foundation that became the Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine. The first public spokesman for that foundation who appears in the New York Times is identified as Dora Chomiak, the daughter of two operatives who worked under Lebed’s personal direction, Ross and Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak in the 1960’s.
Perhaps even more relevant is the history of Joe Biden’s connections to Ukrainians associated with Lebed’s operation. In the June 21, 1981 issue the Ukrainian Weekly carries a story about then Senator and Intelligence Committee member Joe Biden meeting with a Ukrainian delegation organized by his former legislative aide Mark Murowany. Among those present were Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak and three Ukrainians, Victor Rud, Myroslaw Smorodsky and Bohdan Wytwycky, all associated with the Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners and acquaintances of Roman Kupchinsky. A 1970’s Aerodynamic record extols the fact that The Committee For the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners had been formed without any apparent connection to the CIA or Lebed’s ZPUHVR political group.
Bohdan Wytwycky and Roman Kupchinsky appear as early officers of this group.
After the dissolution of Prolog in 1990 Kupchinsky took a senior position at RFE/RL. After his death obituaries referred to his being born in Vienna on November 1, 1944. Coincidently enough Roman Kupchinsky was also the name of an editor of Krakivi Visti, the Nazi collaborationist newspaper whose chief editor, Michael Chomiak, was Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather. It turns out that Krakivi Visti had been evacuated from Krakow to Vienna along with its staff in October 1944 just before Roman Kupchinsky was born. Roman Kupchinsky’s father was reportedly killed in the later allied bombing of Vienna. It is noteworthy that in the 1990’s Senator Joe Biden became a prominent advocate of both funding and “imdependence” for RFE/RL when it came under pressure after the end of the cold war and Roman Kupchinsky had been placed there as an influential voice.
Perhaps even more interesting is Bohdan Wytwycky. After meeting with Biden at some point he began using a revised spelling for his last name and is now known as Bohdan Vitvitsky. Bohdan Vitvitsky went on to a career in the Justice Department and in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan uprising the then retired Vitvitsky moved to Ukraine and became a candidate to head the newly formed Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). NABU was formed with early connections to the FBI which maintained an office in NABU headquarters.
Fast forward to the controversial firing of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General at the insistence of then Vice President Biden and his replacement by Lutsenko. It turns out Lutsenko lacked the qualifications necessary for the position and controversial law had to be passed in the Rada with the votes of the natural gas lobby being necessary for him to take office. Luckily for Lutsenko an experienced former Justice Department attorney appeared to take a senior advisory post in the person of Bohdan Vitvitsky. It was while Vitvitsky was serving as advisor/handler of Lutsenko, whose office was no longer feuding with the newly formed competitor NABU, that NABU released the so-called Black Ledger purporting to show payments to Paul Manafort that caused his ouster from the Trump campaign.
Make of this what you want but I am convinced that President Biden’s commitment to his Ukrainian Nationalist friends is unshakeable and potentially dangerous in the current crisis.