John Wight: Ukraine is an artificial state, Zelensky its product

As Trump and Putin meet in Anchorage, Alaska, in what by any metric is a critical point in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine that has seen an entire generation of young and not so young men hurled into the maw of attritional combat, it is necessary to understand why we are where we are and how.

Ukraine is the very acme of an artificial state and has been from the moment it declared its ‘independence’ from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Its entire mode of existence since then has and continues to be predicated on Russophobia, rooted in an entirely false rendering of history. In many respects, the modern state of Ukraine — post Maidan coup of 2014 — is Russia’s US Confederacy, with the current conflict tantamount to a civil war.

The conflict in Ukraine, let us be clear, did not begin on February 24, 2022 with the start of Putin’s so-called ‘special military operation’, as Western ideologues would have us believe. It is a conflict that began in 2014 with the Maidan coup against the country’s then democratically-elected government in Kiev, leading inexorably to an uprising against the pro-West regime installed in its place by Russian speaking Ukrainians in the south and east of the country.

Since then Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis have been key in ensuring that the government in Kiev, under both Poroshenko and his successor Zelensky, could not implement any of the conditions set out in the Minsk I and II Agreements, legislating for a ceasefire in the Donbass followed by regional elections being held in recognition of the Donbas enjoying not independence but devolved autonomy within a wider Ukraine framework.

This leads us to the astonishing encounter that took place between a freshly-elected Volodymer Zelensky and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists/neo-Nazis in the Donbas in 2019. Zelensky had arrived on a visit to the town of Zolote, close to the then frontline between Ukrainian forces deployed there and their pro-Russian adversaries.

The men Zelensky encountered were members of the Azov, and they made clear that they would defy any instructions to lay down their arms in accordance with Minsk or the peace plan upon which the new president had just been elected by a thumping majority. The leader of the Azov, Andriy Beletsky, went even further, threatening to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky refused to back down.

Covered in depth by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal for The Grayzone, said encounter confirmed the chilling extent to which neo-Nazis managed to box in the country’s president and force him to dance to their tune, rather than the other way round.

It is simply the case that no other state in Europe has uniformed and armed regiments and battalions of neo-Nazis incorporated into their armed forces, replete with Nazi insignia and symbols adorning their uniforms. And it’s not just the Azov Regiment. The Aidar Battalion, Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2, Kiev 1, Ukraina, Centuria, Right Sector — in total around 30 such volunteer neo-Nazi/ultra-nationalist groups fighting on the Ukrainian side.

Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real is the title of a 2020 NBC News piece. In it, amid the usual anti-Putin tropes, author Allan Ripp delivers the inarguable truth that “it would be a dangerous oversight to deny Ukraine’s antisemitic history and collaboration with Hitler’s Nazis, as well as the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.”

The hard truth is that Nazi ideology has deeply entrenched cultural roots in western Ukraine, a part of the world with a baneful legacy of collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. The veneration in which the infamous Ukrainian fascist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera is a case in point and constitutes an indictment Kiev’s political establishment’s failure to address this legacy and condemn it.

“Today, after three years of conflict, Ukrainian statehood is analogous with a dog on leash. That leash is NATO.”

Never forgotten should be the fact that specially formed Ukrainian auxiliary police units and an SS division (Galicia) were responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities carried out against Ukrainian Jews, Russian speakers, Roma and other minorities during Hitler’s occupation.

Their neo-Nazi progeny in Ukraine today has likewise been responsible for attacks against minorities. A 2018 report by the Helsinki Commission revealed that ‘Over the course of 2018, attacks on Roma in Ukraine have escalated dramatically. Several of the mob attacks have been filmed and broadcast in an attempt to intimidate Roma communities. The attacks have destroyed property, injured many, and killed at least one.’

In providing unconditional military aid to Ukraine in its conflict against Russia, while conveniently overlooking the uncomfortable truth about the normalization of fascist and Nazi ideology that has taken place within Ukrainian society, the West is merely sowing dragon’s teeth in what amounts to a quite astonishing and shameful refusal to learn from history.

Today, after three years of conflict, Ukrainian statehood is analogous with a dog on leash. That leash is NATO, of which Ukraine is now a protectorate, reliant on the largesse of Washington and Europe to enable to continue to engage in a conflict it will never win and could never hope to win with Moscow. Gangsterism and corruption reign within its state institutions and economy, with no end in sight.

Zelensky is the patsy’s patsy. In Kiev he is in office but not in power. His Jewish heritage has been used to deny the reality of Ukrainian nationhood as being underpinned by Hitlerism in a Western-friendly mask. Not since the dying days of Rome have human affairs turned on the whims of crank in human form. The result is that a cocaine-addled former comedian is now the single most obdurate impediment to peace in our time.

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That the collective West has funneled billions into Kiev’s coffers over the course of the current and ongoing conflict merely illustrates the extent of the catastrophic response to the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Western ideologues in positions of high influence and of low intelligence have crashed the ship of hegemony onto the rocks of reality that is Putin’s Russia. It will go down in history, this period, as one of the most crisis-prone in human affairs.

It didn’t have to be this way.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. John Wight is a freelance writer and journalist whose work straddles politics, culture and sport. He has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Scottish Daily Record, the Huffington Post and RT among other publications. You can follow him on x: @JohnWight1 

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