Euromaidan: The Dark Shadows Of The Far-Right In Ukraine Protests. The most controversial element of the anti-government alliance is Svoboda (Freedom), an extreme right-wing political party that not only has representation in parliament, but has been dubbed by its critics as a neo-Nazi organization. Britain’s Channel 4 News reported that Svoboda has assumed a “leading role” in the street protests in Kiev, with affiliated paramilitary groups prominently involved in the disturbances. Svoboda flags and banners have been featured in the demonstrations at Kiev’s Independence Square. During the continuing street riots, one Svoboda MP, Igor Myroshnychenko, created an iconic moment of sorts when he allegedly helped to topple the statue of Vladimir Lenin outside a government building, followed by its occupation by protesters. However, despite its extremist rhetoric, Svoboda cannot be called a "fringe" party – indeed, it currently occupies 36 seats in the 450-member Ukrainian parliament, granting it status as the fourth-largest party in the country.
Ukraine's Neo-Fascist Right Sector Leader Dmytro Yarosh to Run for President. Dmytro Yarosh (L), a leader of the Right Sector movement, addresses during a rally in central Independence Square in KievReuters Ukraine's leader of the far-right Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) paramilitary movement Dmytro Yarosh has announced his presidential bid in elections planned for 25 May. The ultra-nationalist movement's chairman Andriy Tarasenko said that Right Sector will also become a political party. "Dmytro Yarosh will run for president," he said. "We are preparing for a congress, at which the party will be renamed, and we will participate in the elections in Kyiv, the elections in all local councils, towns and villages.
" "We remain the leaders of this revolution. A leading figure in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Yarosh advocated a "national revolution" during the protests and dismissed ousted Viktor Yanukovich's administration as an "internal occupational regime". Tarasenko distanced the movement from the pro-EU government led by interim president Oleksandr Turchinov.
News - Profile: Ukraine's 'Right Sector' movement. 21 January 2014Last updated at 07:47 ET Protesters have been involved in violent clashes with police in central Kiev Since late November, huge crowds have been camped out in central Kiev, opposing the government's partnership with Russia and calling for early elections. But a small number of protesters are thought to have a more violent agenda.
The BBC Ukrainian Service looks at this little-known far-right group, the Right Sector. In the early days of the protests in Kiev, the most radical activists on Independence Square created the Right Sector movement, which took an active part in the clashes with police on 19 January. This group consists mostly of young men with right-wing views. They come from different regions of Ukraine, and there are both Ukrainian and Russian-speaking people among them. They have no permanent place of deployment in the protest camp on Independence Square.
For some time, they were based in the City Hall building which was captured by the protesters in December. Ukraine: Secretive Neo-Nazi Military Organization Involved in Euromaidan Sniper Shootings. This article –which recounts the events of the November Euromaidan 2013 Sniper Shootings was first published in March 2014 The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition. His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices.
Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe. But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. The diplomatic compromise lasted less than twelve hours. IMAGE: Members of UNA-UNSO marching in Lviv. Writer F. Youth Unemployment and the Rise of Neo-Nazism in Europe. Is there a direct link between youth unemployment and the rise of the far-right in Europe? In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of neo-Nazi demonstrations and groups in Europe. Many commentators suggest this rise is related to the number of unemployed people and the economic crisis in the European Union (EU).
But how true is this? "White Power" According to the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Neo-Nazism emerged after World War II and, as the name suggests, has its roots in "traditional" Nazism, consisting primarily of extreme nationalism, racism and xenophobia. However, although very similar in ideology to Nazism, the neo-Nazi movement differs slightly, focusing hatred more toward foreigners and immigrants and less on anti-Semitism.
Germany has one of the largest neo-Nazi parties, National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), created in 1964. So far, three attempts have been made. But other reasons also played a role. Direct Link? The Fascist Danger in Ukraine. Resurgence of Neo-Nazism Denied by Western Media. A politically sinister propaganda offensive is underway in the media to either deny the involvement of fascists in the US-backed coup in Ukraine or present their role as a marginal and insignificant detail. The New York Times, for example, asserted, “Putin’s claim of an immediate threat to Ukrainian Russians is empty,” while Britain’s Guardian dismissed as a “fancy” claims that events in Crimea were an attempt to “prevent attacks by bands of revolutionary fascists,” adding that “the world’s media has [not] yet seen or heard from” such forces. This is an obscene cover-up.
The reality is that, for the first time since 1945, an avowedly anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi party controls key levers of state power in a European capital, courtesy of US and European imperialism. The unelected Ukrainian government, headed by US appointee Arseniy Yatsenyuk, includes no fewer than six ministers from the fascist Svoboda party. Less than a year ago, the World Jewish Congress called for Svoboda to be banned. The Rise of Extremism in a Disunited Europe. CREDIT: Leena Saarinen (CC) Across Europe, the dawn of 2014 was clouded by economic, political, and social unrest. An unrelenting economic stagnation keeps the continent in its thrall: as Martin Wolf observed in the Financial Times (FT): "The economic difficulties of crisis-hit economies are evident: huge recessions, extraordinarily high unemployment, mass emigration, and heavy debt overhangs.
" Yet, as Wolf adds, the crisis is not just one of failing economies: it involves a sense of disengagement from the very idea of One Europe that the European Union (EU) and—fanciful even to imagine now-- the Eurozone were supposed to foster. By what Wolf describes as a "trio of unelected bureaucracies"—the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund," the people of countries throttled by the Eurozone crisis, far from any sense of allegiance, instead feel victimized.
There are, however, at least two causes of short-term concern. News - Ukraine's revolution and the far right. 6 March 2014Last updated at 20:31 ET Far right flags carried by activists outside Parliament in Kiev Russia has labelled as fascists the new leaders in Ukraine and the protesters and opposition who toppled Viktor Yanukovych from power. BBC Kiev correspondent David Stern considers the importance of Ukraine's far right. Amid the ocean of candles and flowers, at one of the dozens of shrines to dead anti-government protesters, shot during Kiev's horrific violence, there was a small plastic Israeli flag. It was for Alexander Scherbatyuk, a Jewish-Ukrainian Afghan war veteran. A shrine to victims who died in Independence Square Inside the columned central hall of Kiev's city council, an activist base of operations, hung a giant banner with a Celtic cross, a symbol of "white power," and an American confederate flag.
Over the doorway was an immense portrait of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist partisan leader during World War Two, who at one point was allied with the Nazis.