By Greg Butterfield
April 20 – In just four days in mid-April, three well-known critics of the U.S.-backed Ukrainian junta were murdered in the capital, Kiev. The deaths followed a spate of more than a dozen other suspicious deaths and suicides of regime opponents.
Those killed were former parliamentary deputy Oleg Kalashnikov and journalists Sergei Sukhobok and Oles Buzina.
Immediately after Buzina’s death near his home in Kiev April 16, Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor and parliamentary deputy Anton Gerashchenko posted on his Facebook page: “Everyone who was involved in the organization and financing of Antimaidan or other unlawful acts against Maidan and feels a threat to their life, please contact the law enforcement agencies, so as not to follow the path of Kalashnikov and Buzina.” (MK.ru)
In other words: Turn yourself in or be killed.
Maidan was the pro-imperialist, anti-communist movement that carried out an illegal coup against the elected government of Ukraine in February 2014. Antimaidan was the name given to the anti-fascist resistance that arose throughout the country after the coup. In the primarily Russian-speaking southeastern region, Antimaidan gave birth to a struggle for independence.
The murders occurred shortly after a Ukrainian website called “Mirotvorets” (The Peacekeeper) published extensive personal information on the targets. The website, which calls itself a “resource for Ukrainian law enforcement,” maintains an extensive hit-list of figures considered enemies by the junta.
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| Screenshot of Oles Buzina info on the Ukrainian hit-list site Mirotvorets. |
An analysis of the website found that it was registered in the U.S., in Texas, under a bogus name, and is connected to NATO’s main web domain. The full report, with relevant screenshots, is available in English at the website Slavyangrad.org.
Meanwhile, an April 17 report in the Kyiv Post, an English-language mouthpiece of the far-right government, said a group taking its name from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army had claimed responsibility for the assassinations of Kalashnikov and Buzina, along with several others over the past month.
Repression mounts
The assassination campaign takes place in the context of three key political developments: the April 10 ban on communist propaganda, symbols and “glorification of Soviet history” by the Verkhovna Rada, or parliament; a law passed the same day enshrining ultra-right Ukrainian nationalist groups that collaborated with Nazi German occupation during World War II and the U.S. CIA during the Cold War as “freedom fighters”; and the arrival of U.S. troops on Ukrainian soil.
Some 290 commandos of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Division arrived in Lvov, western Ukraine, April 17, following what Russian media called a hundreds-of-kilometers-long military parade from Italy through Eastern Europe.
Along with British, Canadian and Polish commandos, these U.S. troops are to provide training to the Ukrainian National Guard, a body created after the Maidan coup to incorporate fascist gangs into the state apparatus.
U.S. forces are to drill with some of the worst of the worst – the Azov Battalion, dominated by the neo-Nazi Right Sector movement, and accused of numerous human-rights violations in the junta’s brutal war against the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the Donbass mining region.
Denis Pushilin, chief negotiator for Donetsk, said of the U.S. troops’ arrival: “This is a conscious policy. In combination with the moving up of military equipment [Kiev’s buildup of heavy weapons in violation of the Minsk II ceasefire], this is meant to escalate the conflict.” (Novorossia Today, April 17)
And the fascists have embraced their new official relationship with Washington. The website Korrespondent.net published photos on April 16, obtained from the Associated Press, of Azov forces near the occupied city of Mariupol in the Donetsk People’s Republic. They are shown flying the U.S. flag alongside those of Ukraine and the Right Sector.
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| Ukrainian occupation forces flying U.S. flag in Shirokino, near Mariupol. |
Again, when Right Sector forces destroyed a monument of Soviet leader V.I. Lenin in occupied Kramatorsk on April 17, amateur video showed the fascists flying the U.S. flag.
Right Sector and other Nazi groups marched through the center of Odessa, a multinational port city in southeastern Ukraine, on April 17, chanting, ‘Great Ukraine is for the white man,” “One race, one nation” and “Hang the communists,” according to Odessa’s Dumskaya.net. The march was escorted by the police.
The same day, at a protest against utility rate hikes and pension cuts, 53 opposition activists were arrested and detained by police, aided by Right Sector and Maidan Self-Defense goons. (Rusvena.su, April 17)
One year ago, on May 2, 2014, neo-Nazis, including members of the Azov battalion, massacred at least 48 antifascists at the House of Trade Unions.
Communists declare: ‘It’s time to act’
The revolutionary communist organization Union Borotba (Struggle), in an April 19 statement on the assassinations, said, “We appeal to everyone to stop burying our heads in the sand and realize that fascism has come to our house.
“The ruling elite, which unleashed a fratricidal war, which pushed the people into poverty, misery and injustice, cannot rely on the support of the majority of people. To preserve their political power, the ruling group has to rely on terror. Any attempt at dissent is suppressed in the most brutal manner.
“The collapse of the economy, mass impoverishment and widespread injustice necessarily lead to social upheaval. And the junta has decided to take preventive measures, knowing that a wave of popular protests could sweep it away,” Borotba declared.
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| Mass arrest of anti-austerity protesters in Odessa. |
“… we can say with certainty that these killings signal the beginning of a new phase of the civil war in Ukraine. If the earlier confrontation followed the line of junta + supporters against the people of the southeast, now the representatives of yesterday’s elite have been unwittingly drawn in.
“The ‘suicides” of Peklushenko and [Mykhailo] Chechetov, and the killing of Kalashnikov — deputies of the previous Verkhovna Rada convocation — show that agreeing to go along with this regime will not work. Everyone who tried to sit quietly, who agreed to remain silent in exchange for the preservation of their capital, is now in the crosshairs of the right-wing paramilitary gangs. …
“The cruelty of the authorities will only increase. And anyone who is not satisfied with what is happening in the country must understand that it is impossible to remain silent. It’s time to act.
“We encourage everyone to prepare for the fight. We will have no freedom from the Nazis unless we free ourselves,” Borotba concluded.
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