Are Ukrainians Nazis?

I think not:

For me the most striking feature of the current struggle in Ukraine is that Ukraine has finally demonstrated that it is a unique and sovereign nation that can stand on its own feet. For centuries, going back to the days of the Tsars, Russia has sought to dominate Ukraine and repress Ukrainian nationalism. When they failed to accomplish this end, they twice turned to destroying the entire Ukrainian nation. Never forget Stalin’s effort to starve the population during the Holodomor. Stalin’s repression included Russifying the country by banning the Ukrainian language, rewriting its history, destroying its culture and replacing dead Ukrainians with Russian colonists. (The real Nazis did the same thing when they invaded in 1941.)

Much like Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the current war was unprovoked. Putin, like Mussolini and Hitler before him, wants to restore the former grandeur of his failed state. Most Russian-speakers in Ukraine are appalled by what he is doing. Though it may be true that the Azov Battalion has extreme right-wing roots, it appears to have morphed into a cadre of Ukrainian Nationalist Freedom Fighters. The Russians probably killed about 20,000 of the Mariupol residents they claimed they were trying to save from these Ukrainian “Nazis”. They made it almost impossible for the beleaguered citizenry to escape. Perhaps a million Ukrainian refugees under Russian control have been forcibly relocated to Russia. Some to re-education camps, some to the Gulags and a lucky few to places where they were able to escape to the West. The stories of Russian atrocities and ill-treatment invoke images of the Russia’s extermination of the Polish elite at places like the Katyn Forest in WWII.

I believe that it is the ultimate of hypocrisy for Putin to call anyone else a Nazi. This former Communist KGB operative, has embraced a new form of totalitarianism. He is kept in power by a handful of elite Russian oligarchs in a classic host/Parasite arrangement. They have made him the richest man in Russia. They night as well be the Krupps of the Nazi Era. Like the Nazis, Putin has a history of invading and intimidating his neighbors on the pretext of protecting Russian nationals. This makes him a Right-wing nationalist, just like Hitler. He uses tactics straight out of Hitler’s playbook. He fakes incidents to make it look like his victims were the aggressors. Hitler annexed the Sudetenland under the pretext that ethnic Germans were being mistreated by the Czechoslovakians. Likewise, Putin claimed all Ukrainians were really Russians being dominated by a handful of extremists. When the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians proved him wrong, he resorted to terror and destruction.  In Ukraine, Syria and Chechnya he brutalized local populations whom he deemed unfriendly. Those who he can’t control are imprisoned or executed. Above all he believes in the racial supremacy of Russians at the expense of all other racial and ethnic minorities he encounters.

          Watching Ukraine regain its identity, in spite of Putin’s unproved aggression is something we all should celebrate. Ukraine has become far more unified than was the United States on the Eve of the American Revolution. So long as Ukraine stands, other Eastern European nations can, like the Baltic countries, Finland, Moldova and Poland, are safe from further Russian aggression.

Slava Ukrani!

LDT May 28, ‘22