One correction Ian. Strenuous efforts were exerted by the British to first extricate the SS Galicia Division and then exonerate it of war crimes. It is not strictly correct to say the Division was found guilty of war crimes. Quite exceptionally this SS Division was not found guilty of war crimes as an institution. While that did not preclude charges against specific individuals, it meant that mere membership of the Division did not constitute a finding of war crimes against that individual. In turn this made it much easier legally to move these individuals en masse to the UK and Canada, and naturalise them.
Why this particular group of SS got such special treatment courtesy of His Majesty’s Government… hmm.
So not unsurprising that these professional Russophobes, intelligence-adjacent and foreign policy adjacent, became embedded as a permanent Russophobe faction within the West.
The EU governments are suppressing political opinions of "nazis" in their own countries, while funding and arming nazis in Ukraine.
It's highly reminiscent of the Pentagon-funded terrorists in Syria fighting against the CIA-funded terrorists in Syria, but somehow it's worse because we tend to expect less outright evil cynicism from the Europeans.
C Freeland who held many ministerial roles in Canada belong to the Ukrainian diaspora deeply rooted in Nazism ideology. Canada was the first country to openly support Ukraine and it's easy to see why. Banderists left Ukraine after WW2 and re-emerged in Canada. There seems to have been a deliberate effort to limit trials of Nazi criminals after WW2. Through the help of the Vatican channels, many escaped to South America and even more so to North America. Yet North America kept a lid on the numbers that stuffed the NASA programs and a wealthy diaspora developed and feared nothing from anyone except the like of Serge Karlfeldt who relentlessly pursued as many as he could for war crimes and relied on private donations for his work. Shame the same mistakes are being repeated today and what's happening in Ukraine is being minimised as the killing of Jews and other deemed undesirable by the Nazis. I am waiting with great interest for the time when Russia after winning this sadistic war will establish martial courts that will prosecute the Ukrainians and mercenaries involved in the atrocious crimes during the last 3 years against ethnic Russians.
For anyone interested in this issue of Ukrainian Nazis being ushered out of the country, mostly to Canada, but also to the UK and other Anglo Commonwealth countries (but not the US, rather ironically) the You Tube video by the excellent Mark Felton is worth a watch.
As Felton says in the piece, a British TV channel prepared an expose report on this in the late 1980s, showing that there were Ukrainian Nazis alive and well and living in the UK, and it was blocked from broadcast at the last minute by the authorities – that tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?
From personal experience I KNOW there were Ukrainians with very dark backgrounds living in the UK, my Grandfather was from eastern Poland (near Brest) and many of his family were killed by the Ukrainian Nazis in the Volhynia massacres while he was away during WWII.
Almost unbelievably, when he eventually moved to a sleepy southern London suburb, guess who his next door neighbour is? It’s a Ukrainian guy, Joe, who lived there with his family.
We were under the strictest instructions from my Grandfather to never talk to Joe, his wife Lyudmila (known as Lydia), or even their two teenage daughters, you could cut the tension over that backyard fence with a knife, and my Grandfather was the most gentle, non-violent, Christian man you would ever meet.
My Grandfather very rarely talked about his experience during the war, but he told us all about what happened to his family in Volhynia and also about how badly and cruelly the Ukrainian camp guards treated the Poles in the POW camps, "The Ukrainians were far worse than the Germans," he would say.
It was hard for us to understand him really because in the UK we are taught one simple angle from the war, that being that the Germans were evil and that was it, so when he would explain to us that the Ukrainians (and we barely knew who they were) were WORSE and MORE barbaric than the Germans, it was hard for us to process, but recent events have made that much clearer.
When WW2 ended and the Cold War began, anti-communists from Ukraine and Baltics were welcome in the West and their Nazi activities were often swept under the rug. But many of them - and many in the establishment - were not so much anti-communists as anti-Russian. The Cold War never really ended because of that; some might cynically say it was too profitable.
The concept of the "Ukrainian nation" presented to the Western audience is false. Ukraine in the Soviet Union (so-called Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) was an artificial entity combining Catholic West around Lviv (largely Galicians who hated Russians, Poles, and Jews) with the Russian-ethnic East. The goal was to "Russify" the western part. Soviets were pretty successful at that as the language and the culture were predominantly Russian. But after Ukraine became independent, the West - especially Ukrainians in Canada - threw their support behind the Russo-phobic side. With the 2014 coup (or revolution, depending on the perspective) they gained power. After that, a civil war and eventual war with Russia became pretty much inevitable.
An excellent summary, but one which has been whitewashed in the western media which seeks to solely blame "Putin" for the whole sorry story, made worse by the fact that so many gullible fools believe it.
Excellent backgrounder. It’s worth pointing out that at least 2/3 of the SS Galicia Division initially settled in the UK rather than Canada. There is even less transparency on what happened to those in the UK. Official secrecy has been invoked to obscure that even more than in Canada. What seems likely is that as native Russian speakers the Galicians were played back against the Soviets as part of MI6 operations or more mundanely attached to the foreign office listening services etc.
And to think that on top of all that you describe, we had programs like US Operation Paperclip after WWII...
Although possibly true that Ukraine as a whole today is not a Nazi society, small factions like Svoboda tend to make up in fanaticism what they lack in sheer numbers. I think Russia will find it extremely difficult to meet its goal of actually rooting them out from the Ukrainian political scene.
Turning a blind eye to uncomfortable realities has never served national interests well. The West’s refusal to confront the legacy of ultranationalism in Ukraine—exposed so embarrassingly by the Hunka debacle—reveals a dangerous pattern of selective morality. In the pursuit of short-term geopolitical goals, we're whitewashing serious issues we would never tolerate at home. Stability and strength come from clear-eyed realism, not from pretending allies are perfect when they are not.
In the US there is also the notorious case of John Djemanjuk (perhaps because he was convicted?) which was very well known in Canada. He was part of this Ukrainian diaspora, born in Kiev
One correction Ian. Strenuous efforts were exerted by the British to first extricate the SS Galicia Division and then exonerate it of war crimes. It is not strictly correct to say the Division was found guilty of war crimes. Quite exceptionally this SS Division was not found guilty of war crimes as an institution. While that did not preclude charges against specific individuals, it meant that mere membership of the Division did not constitute a finding of war crimes against that individual. In turn this made it much easier legally to move these individuals en masse to the UK and Canada, and naturalise them.
Why this particular group of SS got such special treatment courtesy of His Majesty’s Government… hmm.
I am pretty sure you know the answer to your final question!
So not unsurprising that these professional Russophobes, intelligence-adjacent and foreign policy adjacent, became embedded as a permanent Russophobe faction within the West.
The EU governments are suppressing political opinions of "nazis" in their own countries, while funding and arming nazis in Ukraine.
It's highly reminiscent of the Pentagon-funded terrorists in Syria fighting against the CIA-funded terrorists in Syria, but somehow it's worse because we tend to expect less outright evil cynicism from the Europeans.
Not any more, I guess.
C Freeland who held many ministerial roles in Canada belong to the Ukrainian diaspora deeply rooted in Nazism ideology. Canada was the first country to openly support Ukraine and it's easy to see why. Banderists left Ukraine after WW2 and re-emerged in Canada. There seems to have been a deliberate effort to limit trials of Nazi criminals after WW2. Through the help of the Vatican channels, many escaped to South America and even more so to North America. Yet North America kept a lid on the numbers that stuffed the NASA programs and a wealthy diaspora developed and feared nothing from anyone except the like of Serge Karlfeldt who relentlessly pursued as many as he could for war crimes and relied on private donations for his work. Shame the same mistakes are being repeated today and what's happening in Ukraine is being minimised as the killing of Jews and other deemed undesirable by the Nazis. I am waiting with great interest for the time when Russia after winning this sadistic war will establish martial courts that will prosecute the Ukrainians and mercenaries involved in the atrocious crimes during the last 3 years against ethnic Russians.
For anyone interested in this issue of Ukrainian Nazis being ushered out of the country, mostly to Canada, but also to the UK and other Anglo Commonwealth countries (but not the US, rather ironically) the You Tube video by the excellent Mark Felton is worth a watch.
https://youtu.be/UB_Gs-0dhOo?si=A-dbYIf3hpzZDDzv
As Felton says in the piece, a British TV channel prepared an expose report on this in the late 1980s, showing that there were Ukrainian Nazis alive and well and living in the UK, and it was blocked from broadcast at the last minute by the authorities – that tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?
From personal experience I KNOW there were Ukrainians with very dark backgrounds living in the UK, my Grandfather was from eastern Poland (near Brest) and many of his family were killed by the Ukrainian Nazis in the Volhynia massacres while he was away during WWII.
Almost unbelievably, when he eventually moved to a sleepy southern London suburb, guess who his next door neighbour is? It’s a Ukrainian guy, Joe, who lived there with his family.
We were under the strictest instructions from my Grandfather to never talk to Joe, his wife Lyudmila (known as Lydia), or even their two teenage daughters, you could cut the tension over that backyard fence with a knife, and my Grandfather was the most gentle, non-violent, Christian man you would ever meet.
My Grandfather very rarely talked about his experience during the war, but he told us all about what happened to his family in Volhynia and also about how badly and cruelly the Ukrainian camp guards treated the Poles in the POW camps, "The Ukrainians were far worse than the Germans," he would say.
It was hard for us to understand him really because in the UK we are taught one simple angle from the war, that being that the Germans were evil and that was it, so when he would explain to us that the Ukrainians (and we barely knew who they were) were WORSE and MORE barbaric than the Germans, it was hard for us to process, but recent events have made that much clearer.
When WW2 ended and the Cold War began, anti-communists from Ukraine and Baltics were welcome in the West and their Nazi activities were often swept under the rug. But many of them - and many in the establishment - were not so much anti-communists as anti-Russian. The Cold War never really ended because of that; some might cynically say it was too profitable.
The concept of the "Ukrainian nation" presented to the Western audience is false. Ukraine in the Soviet Union (so-called Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) was an artificial entity combining Catholic West around Lviv (largely Galicians who hated Russians, Poles, and Jews) with the Russian-ethnic East. The goal was to "Russify" the western part. Soviets were pretty successful at that as the language and the culture were predominantly Russian. But after Ukraine became independent, the West - especially Ukrainians in Canada - threw their support behind the Russo-phobic side. With the 2014 coup (or revolution, depending on the perspective) they gained power. After that, a civil war and eventual war with Russia became pretty much inevitable.
An excellent summary, but one which has been whitewashed in the western media which seeks to solely blame "Putin" for the whole sorry story, made worse by the fact that so many gullible fools believe it.
Excellent backgrounder. It’s worth pointing out that at least 2/3 of the SS Galicia Division initially settled in the UK rather than Canada. There is even less transparency on what happened to those in the UK. Official secrecy has been invoked to obscure that even more than in Canada. What seems likely is that as native Russian speakers the Galicians were played back against the Soviets as part of MI6 operations or more mundanely attached to the foreign office listening services etc.
Would the Galicians have been native Russian speakers, though? Wouldn't they have spoken Ukrainian, or at least a Ukrainian dialect?
Yes not so many native speakers but many who spoke it fluently from an early age as a second language.
And to think that on top of all that you describe, we had programs like US Operation Paperclip after WWII...
Although possibly true that Ukraine as a whole today is not a Nazi society, small factions like Svoboda tend to make up in fanaticism what they lack in sheer numbers. I think Russia will find it extremely difficult to meet its goal of actually rooting them out from the Ukrainian political scene.
Ian are you aware of the declassified CIA document regarding the 1953 Operation Aerodynamic?
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/AERODYNAMIC%20%20%20VOL.%201_0118.pdf
Turning a blind eye to uncomfortable realities has never served national interests well. The West’s refusal to confront the legacy of ultranationalism in Ukraine—exposed so embarrassingly by the Hunka debacle—reveals a dangerous pattern of selective morality. In the pursuit of short-term geopolitical goals, we're whitewashing serious issues we would never tolerate at home. Stability and strength come from clear-eyed realism, not from pretending allies are perfect when they are not.
In the US there is also the notorious case of John Djemanjuk (perhaps because he was convicted?) which was very well known in Canada. He was part of this Ukrainian diaspora, born in Kiev