Civil rights in the Donbas and “progressive European precedent”

Today Iryna Geraschenko, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on European integration and President Poroshenko’s special envoy for peaceful regulation in the Donbas, made a deeply revealing comment on Facebook.

She responded with pleasure to a recent press release by the Venice Commission. That body approved changes to the French Constitution that allow for stripping terrorists of their citizenship. The ruling notes that this should be an “additional punishment,” that is, before it can be carried out the person in question must first be convicted by a court of law.

Geraschenko wrote:

This is good news, in the context of studying progressive European experience and adapting our laws to European standards. I think that our colleagues in the Normandy format won’t object if we say that this experience [precedent] is important for Ukraine. Maybe this is the end of dancing around the terrorists and paying pensions to those ‘poor people’ while trying to get them to listen to Kyiv, don’t you think?):

I apologize if the translation is not perfect, particularly in the end when Geraschenko switches to a joking, informal tone. But several things are clear. She believes Ukraine should follow France’s lead (taken after the horrific Paris attacks) and strip terrorists of their citizenship. But the first people that come to her mind are not those who actually murdered innocent civilians (and they certainly are present) but rather the much-loathed “pension tourists.” That is, people who reside in the separatist-controlled “Peoples Republics” but periodically cross over to government-controlled territories to collect their pensions.

Ukraine’s chief parliamentarian on Eurointegration and peaceful resolution of the war in the Donbas appears to look with pleasure on the chance to eject from Ukrainian society those who, in her view, are loyal to the separatists and who take money from a Ukraine they despise. Take that!

And she seems to believe this reflects “progressive European precedent.”

There is just so much wrong with this, so much to cause alarm for anyone really interested in reconciliation and re-integration of the Donbas. I’ll try to identify the main problems:

• The morality of targeting “pension tourism” is very debatable. One can jutify the Ukrainian government’s efforts to prevent residents of separatist territories from temporarily crossing over to register as internally displaced persons (IDPs) and receive special welfare benefits. These payments are meant for those who have actually fled their homes. But trying to root out those who cross over to collect pensions they have been paying for all their lives is quite another thing. Especially when you are making the constant argument that these people are all Ukrainian citizens (which they are!) who are simply living under illegal occupation. Many Ukrainian commentators have noted the alienating effect of calling such people “tourists” and treating them as criminals. Geraschenko takes it to a new level by coyly looking forward to the time they could be stripped of their citizenship.
• Not all of these people “dance around the terrorists.” Geraschenko specifically says they “dance a khorovod” a type of dance associated with Russia. Translation: they love the pro-Russian terrorists over there but want us to keep paying their pensions. In truth the residents of the “Peoples Republics” are arrayed across a spectrum from open hatred of Ukraine to concealed longing for her. Many who have lived through this brutal war are deeply alienated from Kyiv, but have lingering ties borne of familiarity and life experience. Everything must be done to assure them that they are still part of Ukrainian society, most of all by those tasked with the “peaceful resolution” of the conflict. Geraschenko seems to be doing just the opposite.

This is well demonstrated by commentary to Geraschenko’s Facebook post by Donetsk journalist Veronika Medvedeva. She is an agonized pro-unity Donetsk Ukrainian, who both rejects the separatists and is horrified by Kyiv policy towards her city and region. In other words, exactly the kind of person who could be lost to Ukraine by the kind of attitude that Geraschenko exhibits. Medvedeva writes:

…What connections is there between the pensions of Ukrainian citizens living on “occupied” territories and the stripping of French citizenship for terrorism, what’s more in the context of “progressive precedent?”

The inferences of the president’s special envoy for peaceful resolution of the conflict in the East really cause one to wonder, does today’s Ukraine really want that peaceful resolution?

It’s one thing to pump up your ratings at the expense of the weak… but when that is done by a woman with such a position, you really get the feeling that she isn’t in the right job and really can only enable the deepening of this conflict.

It is hard to disagree. And it is long overdue for friends of Ukraine, particularly those in the west to whom parliamentarians are purportedly looking for advice, to speak out against the crude, hard-hearted, tone-deaf dehumanization of Donbas civilians. No matter what the ideological preferences of those civilians may be.

Did Kyiv silence Ukraine’s biggest opposition newspaper? Part 2

In our last post we described how its critical, conservative view of the Euromaidan revolution, the new government’s reaction to the so-called Russian Spring and the conduct of the Donbas War earned it the Ukrainian newspaper Vesti the deep distrust of the authorities and the moniker “Mouthpiece of the Kremlin” among many Ukrainians.  Here we will describe how the paper came under pressure from both the government and “activists” (re: radicals) over the past year and a half.

According to former editor-in-chief Igor Guzhva, in April 2014 the holding was approached by figures within the new government who proposed that Vesti hand over part of its shares, free of charge, as means to avoid conflict. This was refused, and in May began a series of investigations, searches and official denunciations of Vesti by high ranking officials.

First the paper’s offices were raided and trashed by uniformed men claiming to be tax authorities, although they did not present any identification. They seized the paper’s servers. The next day a press conference was held by the Cabinet of Ministers, where the allegedly shady financial scheme of the newspaper was presented to assembled reporters. However, Vesti journalists were denied access to the press conference, supposedly because they did not have “accreditation”.

Ukrainian tax police conducting a search inside the sealed office of Vesti. Photo: facebook.com/anatoliy.boyko.96

The government then alleged that Vesti laundered 93.6 million hryvnia ($4.2 million) through a complex shell game of companies in Crimea supposedly linked to the exiled Kharkiv oligarch Sergey Kurchenko. On the basis of these findings the accounts of both the newspaper and Guzhva were temporarily frozen, but after several weeks the case appeared to be shelved.

Then in September an entirely new accusation was raised by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), when it alleged that four articles published by Vesti threatened Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability. The SBU conducted another raid of the paper’s offices and prevented any employees from leaving or making phone calls. Servers, laptops and personal notebooks were seized.

Officers of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) confiscating servers, laptops and personal notebooks of reporters during a raid on the offices of Vesti newspaper in September, 2014. The paper was accused of threatening Ukrainian sovereignty. Source: vesti-ukr.com

The content of the four articles reveals that the SBU’s definition of treasonous content is exceedingly wide. In our first post we described the tone and content of three of the articles, published in the longf-form journal Vesti.Reporter. They bluntly display the alienation and rage that swelled in the Donbas after in March and April of 2014, and which Russia would soon tap into with its separatist project. But by no means is the reader encouraged to agree with them, or, for that matter, to disagree with them. Just to listen.

The fourth article, published in the daily, details accusations by soldiers and volunteer activists about the sale of military supplies and the withholding of pay and discharge papers. The piece presents the point of view of the soldiers, notes that the army refused to comment and puts forward a partially dissenting view by army veterans.

The raid and court case earned the condemnation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which called on Kyiv not to pressure critical journalists. This investigation too was shelved when the government’s key witness, a forensic linguist, confirmed the lack of an inflammatory content in the four articles.

Not long after this, Radio Vesti won an appeal against a decision by the National Commission on Radio and Television not to permit the holding to broadcast in 26 cities where it had purchased radio stations. The Commission had not offered any reason for its refusal, and many observers saw it as another “front” in the growing confrontation between the government and the critical media empire.

The court of public opinion

Meanwhile pro-government activists targeted the paper, peacefully and otherwise. The Civil Sector of the Euromaidan movement held frequent anti-Vesti demonstrations in the capital. As one protest organizer shouted through a megaphone:

“This mouthpiece of the Kremlin is mean to destroy the consciousness of Ukrainians, deceiving them about the events going on in the east and inciting civil war in our country. We believe that the articles in this newspaper kill no less than bullets.”

Regular pickets were organized near the points outside of metro stops in Kyiv where Vesti is handed out for free every morning. Young people would hold signs calling on passerby not to take in the paper’s “Kremlin propaganda.” Frequently they would dress as zombies, insinuating that Vesti zombifies its readers with misinformation.

“Zombies” thank Vesti for supporting Russian propaganda outside the headquarters of the Ukrainian Security Agency. An anti-Vesti rally calling on the Agency to shut down the paper. Photo: Reuters/Scanpix

These protests soon escalated. In June a crowd of masked youths jeered and threatened participants in a Constitution Day celebration organized at the paper’s offices. Their leader, radical parliamentarian Igor Lutsenko warned  “This is our last peaceful demonstration about Vesti. We won’t have any more patience if they don’t change their editorial policy.” Only the intervention of Maidan Self-Defense activists who had maintained good relations with the paper prevented the youths from physically assaulting the event participants or lighting up the flares that Vesti reporters claimed they had brought in backpacks.

Ukrainian parliamentarian Igor Lutsenko (center) grins as masked youths attempt to break up a Constitution Day celebration held outside of Vesti’s offices. Photo from website of the newspaper.

A week later a larger mob of balaclava-clad youths smashed the windows of Vesti’s offices, threw in flares and badly beat a security guard. The video shot by the paper’s security camera shows the abandon and vicious glee that of a mob convinced of its total license.

Oles Vakhnii, the leader of the notorious nationalist and skinhead organization Chestnoe Slovo (“Honest Word”) took responsibility for the attacks. When Vesti approached him about this he said “Accepted moral norms don’t need to be applied to you. It’s acceptable to beat you on the head with clubs, poison you with gas.” Vakhnii earlier spent five years in jail for organizing an attack on the offices of the League of Ukrainian Voters (allegedly for its US funding), then two years in jail for racist incitement. He is yet to be arrested for the Vesti attacks despite the fact that he posted a filmed confession on Youtube, although now he is under house arrest for allegedly beating a Kyiv city prosecutor who had opened a different case against him.
In spring of 2015 Vesti activists of the notorious Right Sector organization blocked Vesti delivery trucks at two Kyiv metro stations and seized 45000 copies of the paper, which they sold for scrap to buy patriotic school textbooks. They claimed “We are fighting an internal enemy, the propaganda newspaper Vesti… which stands for everything that our brothers are dying for in the East.”  Later the organization’s press secretary commented that “The main thing is that we are not for censorship, but for journalistic standards and objectivity.”

Praviy Sektor “activists” steal thousands of copies of Vesti to demonstrably sell them for scrap paer. Image from dusia.telekritika.ua

The video includes a fascinating altercation between the “Pravoseki” and a group of senior citizens who had come to get their free morning paper. The elderly Ukrainians begin haranguing the head activist:

-Who decided that these papers should be confiscated?

-The courts.

-What court? When and where?

-The People’s court.

-What, you’re “the People’s court” now?

-Yes, I’m the People.

-Huh! Just one! And the rest of us, we’re not the People?

-You are too.

-Well we want to read that paper!

-Go read something other than pro-Russian papers that support separatism! And why don’t you speak Ukrainian?

The pensioners continue to argue with him (many of them switching to Ukrainian) and angrily crying out “lawlessness!”

Just as was the case with the earlier sacking of the Vesti offices, the government could not make a case even with a filmed commission of the crime.

Guzhva alleged that the SBU recruits radicals to attack government critics in exchange for staying out of jail themselves. In a detailed piece in Vesti one of his journalists quoted a representative of Chestnoe Slovo, the radical organization which took responsibility for the July attack on his paper: “Together with the SBU we work against separatism and the opposition, who wish to undermine national security and discredit the government.” In the organization’s offices there is a citation of appreciation from SBU head Valentin Nalivaichenko for “significant contributions to the maintenance and strengthening of national security.”

The article’s accusations proved particularly ominous when the controversial anti-Maidan journalist and commentator Oles Buzina was murdered a few days later, allegedly by extreme nationalists serving in one of the volunteer brigades in the east. In response to public shock at Buzina’s death a well-known battalion leader wrote on Facebook that he was surprised people would doubt that the journalist was killed by “patriots”:

I find these people interesting who just a little while ago shouted ‘Oy, boys come back from the front and put things in order here!’ [but now are shocked by Buzina’s death]. What else did they have in mind by ‘putting things in order?’ At the front they don’t teach you to waste your time sitting in court hearings or writing complaints.

Guzhva claimed that a smear campaign had been ongoing against Buzina for the past year, led by “a pack of hysterical, intolerant media instigators who call for reprisals against anyone who, in their opinion, has an incorrect point of view. Because of them the offices of Vesti were trashed and our distributors attacked. And possibly Buzina was killed because of them.”

End game

On Journalism Day (June 5) at a press conference about freedom of the press President Poroshenko claimed that it is not his job to order that some media outlet or another be shut down. But he then added “… If the tax authorities prove the non-transparency of Vesti’s financing, there should be no doubt that the country will defend itself…”

Three days later the Tax Authorities called in 242 current and former employees of the paper for questioning, essentially anyone who received their salary electronically. Some employees claimed that the authorities aggressively badgered them, threatened them and their relatives while convincing them to come down to the station.

This was soon followed by yet another raid on the paper’s offices by uniformed men offering no i.d. They claimed to have a court order to search the premises of “Vesti Mass-Media LLC” even thought that company isn’t located in Vesti’s newspaper offices. They did not allow journalists or newspaper’s lawyers onto the premises, gave the offices another thorough trashing and once again, confiscated the servers. Around 500 people gathered outside of the Verkhovna Rada and Tax Authority to protest the raid.

The culmination of the 15 month standoff was at hand. Guzhva left the country on vacation, and from abroad suddenly came the news that he had had sold his shares in the media holding to his partners and stepped down as editor-in-chief.  Ukrainian media watchers quickly circulated the version that Vesti’s majority owner, exiled oligarch Aleksander Klimenko, had bargained his way back into Ukraine by forcing the overly critical Guzhva out of the paper. Anonymous sources within the paper’s staff claimed that overseers from the presidential administration would be installed to filter out any improper materials. The new spokesman for the paper, Klimenko’s common law wife, announced a new focus on “affirmative topics.”
Guzvha returned from abroad and was immediately summoned to court on charges of tax evasion, which purportedly were based on evidence from the latest raid. The judge denied the prosecutor’s request for a massive 17 million hryvnia ($727,000) bail, imposing a more standard 1 million ($45,000). He also forbade Guzhva to leave Kyiv without explicit permission from the court.

Igor Guzhva in court in Kyiv. Image from Facebook

At the present time the former editor is preparing his defense. He claims that the Tax Agency, lacking the basis for a real case after a year of investigation and raids, manipulated the facts in order to create the illusion of a crime. In his complicated explanation, the paper took returnable financial assistance from a firm in Sumy in 2013, but was unable to return the sum in time because the firm’s accounts were frozen during the initial investigation of Vesti in May of 2014. According to Ukrainian law, the paper must now wait for the expiration of the statute of limitations (three years), and then include this sum in its gross income and pay income tax on it. “But the tax authorities decided on direct forgery. They chose to regard the financial assistance we received as irrevocable and demand that we should have included it in our gross income and paid income taxes on it in 2014. And since we didn’t do that, they have a formal occasion to present to us the charges of tax evasion.”

The “new” Vesti

The holding cut ties with all Russian writers and journalists, who made up a significant contingent on Radio Vesti and in Reporter (including Marina Akhmedova, author of some of the journal’s most powerful war journalism from Donetsk). The editor-in-chief of Vesti.Reporter, Gleb Prostakov, described the changes thus: “we will try to look at broader trends and not run around after the latest newsmakers…. More reporting form the regions, more emphasis on urbanism. But we won’t shy away from strong opinions, we’ve kept our teeth.”

But it soon became clear that Guzhva’s exit posited real changes in Vesti’s tone and editorial stance. An already printed issue of Vesti.Reporter was held back from distribution, which sources within the paper attribute to an article about the intricacies of Poroshenko’s inner circle and competition with the “Georgian court” of exiled reformers led by Mikhail Saakashvili.  Several copies made their way into the hands of media commentators, who published scanned versions online. The journal itself was soon reprinted and distributed without the touchy article.

Next in line was sensational reporting by reporter Svetlana Kriukova on the early elections in the northern city of Chernihiv. Gennady Korban, a corporate raider and ally of the country’s most prominent oligarch (Igor Kolomoisky) balloted against President Poroshenko’s handpicked candidate. From the first days of the campaign it became clear that this would be an extraordinarily ugly election. “I was made aware that this piece would never get published in Reporter while I was still on assignment,” Kryukova told the editors of Ukraine Comment. “I was traveling with [candidate] Korban and at one point I turned to him and said ‘I hope this story will be good, because I’m gonna lose my job for it’.”

In her piece Korban was shown to be a crude populist, earning the humorous internet nickname “Marshal Buckwheat” after sewing support by giving out free buckwheat kasha to the poor and elderly. Many voters were shown to be in such desperate economic straits that their vote was virtually the only saleable resource at their disposal.
More damningly, the president’s candidate Berezenko liberally used various schemes to purchase those votes outright. At one point in the piece Korban’s campaign team surrounds a locked car in which they have been told Berezenko’s vote buyers are located. The two men inside are observed tearing up sheets of paper and eating them. After a multi-hour standoff they are hustled away by the police but a search of the trunk reveals 500 envelopes stuffed with 400 hryvnia each ($18) and an entire arsenal of firearms. Later one of the apartments is described where city residents can come to collect their $18 after they show a picture of Berezenko and promise to vote for him.

Firearms confiscated by Chernihiv police from the trunk of “campaign workers” for the parliamentary candidate from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. Image from Svetlana Kryukova’s article on the early elections in Chernihiv. From pravda.com.ua 

When it became clear that the piece would never see publication in the “new” Vesti, Kryukova resigned and took her work to the competing paper Ukrainska Pravda. It proved to be one of the most hotly discussed pieces of political journalism in post-Maidan Ukraine.

Several newsroom veterans followed Guzhva and Kryukova out of the paper, including one writer who claimed that the new management forced the news staff to remove even the smallest mention of Igor Guzvha’s court case from the paper. Vesti.Reporter’s chief war correspondent Inna Zolotukhyna quit, claiming “The concept of Reporter was changed. Now they don’t write about the ATO [anti-terrorism operation] there. And I continue to think that in a country where there’s a war on, that should be topic number one.” And in October Zolotukhyna was followed out by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Gleb Prostakov.

Muzzled

The extraordinary pressure exerted on the Vesti media holding over the last fifteen months should raise serious questions about whether the exit of its editor-in-chief was more than the result of mere newsroom and boardroom politics.

It appears that Kyiv jettisoned its cruder strategy to silence the paper – the accusations of separatist support and associated raid – after it earned the condemnation of the OSCE. But removing Guzhva while leaving the paper largely intact to continue publication is a low-risk neutralization strategy. It has not caught the attention of Kyiv’s western backers, who claim they will hold Ukraine to high standards of democratization. As US ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers stated in June, “Ukraine should zealously protect freedom of the press, including for its most outspoken and biased critics – indeed, especially for its most outspoken and biased critics – even as the so-called separatists expel journalists from the territory they control, and even as Russia shutters Tatar media outlets in occupied Crimea.”

Gennady Korban, well-experienced in corporate raiding and Ukrainian politics, described what had occurred thus: “I have a simple, inexpensive and effective method for privatizing freedom of speech. You need to do just two things – get the support of the presidential administration, and then slap any newspaper you want with fines for financial violations. After that they’ll put out a warrant for the editor and you’ve got freedom of speech in your pocket… This recipe was first cooked up in Russia after Vladimir Putin came to power. By this method he had his way with freedom of speech in his homeland.”

The question now is if Vesti’s various media outlets begin to blunt their criticism of the president, avoid contentious issue and “focus on the affirmative,” will international organizations and the western press recognize that Ukraine’s biggest opposition paper was muzzled?

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In our next post in this series we will discuss in more detail what Vesti’s fate means for freedom of the press in today’s Ukraine.

Did Kyiv silence Ukraine’s biggest opposition newspaper? Part 1

The specter of a crackdown on free speech in Ukraine was raised this spring by the murder of opposition journalist and intellectual Oles Buzina and the arrest of Ukrainian journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was charged with undermining the draft. Yet a showdown between the government, radical activists and Vesti, the country’s largest opposition paper, has largely slipped by unnoticed by western commentators.

It came to a head in July of this year with the resignation of its editor-in-chief Igor Guzhva, who was likely forced out by the paper’s owner, former Yanukovich ally and oligarch-on-the-lam Aleksandr Klimenko. Strict oversight was imposed on the paper, politically sensitive material withdrawn and a focus on “affirmative topics” announced.

In a series of posts we will argue that this was the commencement of a 15 month campaign by Kyiv to intimidate one of its harshest critics into silence, and not, as opponents of the paper insist, a much-belated defensive strike against a channel of Russian propaganda and separatism.

Vesti editor-in-chief Igor Guzhva speaks to reporters after the paper’s offices were attacked by masked radicals in July, 2014.

Background

The Vesti media holding, which includes Ukraine’s most popular daily newspaper (“Vesti”), the most popular talk radio station (Radio Vesti), the magazine Vesti.Reporter and the television channel UBR burst onto the scene in 2013 under the leadership of media veteran Igor Guzhva. With the help of anonymous financial support he poached his staff from other major papers, including “Sevodnya,” from which he had been fired a year before for refusing to pull pictures of President Yanukovich’s absurdly luxurious estate Mezhgorye.

Guzhva’s strategy to distribute the paper for free in large cities seems to have succeeded – by the time of the Maidan revolution Vesti was the country’s most popular daily. But opponents have pointed to the free distribution as proof of a darker agenda – without oligarchic or Kremlin backing, who could possibly afford to hand out hundreds of thousands of free papers every day?

Covering Maidan

Vesti’s coverage of the revolution was restrained, but showed growing alarm at the violent radicalization of the protest and the increasing brutality of the government forces. The paper’s coverage of the unfolding chaos earned it the ire of many Maidan supporters. Later a frontpage image of a balaclava-clad, club wielding protestor with the headline “Day of mayhem” would be cited as proof of Vesti’s bias and its role as “mouthpiece of the Kremlin”.

But others respected its reporters’ willingness to report from the thick of the conflict. One of these reporters, Vyacheslav Veremii, was murdered in the last days of the revolution when he attempted to photograph a band of armed thugs who were preparing to attack the protestors. For this reason the paper maintained the loyalty of some portion of the protestors, including Maidan Self-Defense activists who would come to the aid of Vesti reporters months later when they were being intimidated by a surly mob led by radical Maidan activist (and victim of a brutal kidnapping and torture by tituskhi thugs) Igor Lutsenko.

Maidan protestors and Berkut riot police clash. From Vesti.Reporter

Vesti gave extensive coverage to the protestors and their demands but also to their opponents (including, strikingly, the notorious Berkut riot police). They followed with alarm the violent radicalization of the protest and the increasing brutality of the government forces. In the 2015 Vesti book “Revolution Diary,” a collection of Vesti’s articles about Maidan, the balance and spread of the reporting is striking. The paper published the points of view of barricade activists next to Berkut commanders, and opposition party leaders next to the pro-Russian MP Oleg Tsarev, who would later flee to Russia and become a leader of the unsuccessful “Novorossiya” movement.

Covering the “Russian Spring”

In the aftermath of the revolution Vesti began extensive coverage of the Crimea annexation and the growing crisis in the Donbas region. Its journalists, including Russian writers, reported directly from the eastern cities seized by the separatists. They wrote of the dangerous levels of alienation towards the new Ukrainian government:

Many people truly hold these convictions, and it’s not worth simplifying everything by saying that what’s happening in the Donbas is exclusively the work of the Russian security agencies. Their influence is likely there, but it’s not Russian citizens protesting on the main squares and joining the self-defense forces. It’s much more serious than that.  (Vesti.Reporter April 18, 2014)

Three articles published in Vesti.Reporter in this period would later be the basis for a criminal investigation into the media outlet by the Ukrainian Security Agency (SBU) on charges of “undermining Ukrainian sovereignty.” These articles contain extensive quotes by pro-Russian activists and separatist supporters, which demonstrate both the sincere, comprehensible anger of the easterners and the dubious causes they had seized hold of to vent it: “protecting the Russian language,” Orthodox militarism, revival of the Soviet past. The tone of the articles is not sympathetic towards either the pro-
Russian or pro-Kyiv side, but rather they convey a reserved agony at their mutual incomprehension and mythmaking.

Barricades ouеside the separatist-held Luhanska Oblast administration building. From Vesti.Reporter

Tragically, no means was found to offer a political outlet for this eastern discontent, to peel off those who wanted Kyiv listen to the east from the active core of the separatist movement. Although many Ukrainians would disagree with such an opinion, we believe that a genuinely inclusive political process initiated before the violence erupted could have diverted many future supporters of the “Peoples Republics” from this radical path, and at least weakened the strength of the separatist cause. It is a signal tragedy of the Ukrainian crisis that Vesti’s calls were not heeded and no such attempt was even made.

Covering the war

And so Vesti’s reporters began covering the war in the Donbas. In this period the long-form articles of Vesti.Reporter particularly stand out of their agonized, clear-eyed assessment of events. Russian writer Marina Akhmedova described the journal’s mission as “journalistic diplomacy:” We simply show all the horrors of this war from both sides, with one goal – to drive it out of our hearts. Only once that happens will “fragile ceasefires” become concrete.

In this blog we will publish a series of our translations of Vesti.Reporter’s best frontline reporting. But for readers of Russian we offer direct links here:

Легкость войны     Мы мира хотим любой ценой      Завод и город на границе двух миров    Линии жизни Донецка   Дневник протоиерея Георгия Гуляева   Две истории одной войны

Several of these pieces played a crucial role for the editors of Ukraine Comment in forming our understanding of the war in the Donbas. The personal experience we then accumulated in the region only served to reinforce the sense of mutual tragedy communicated by Vesti.Reporter’s writers.

The daily Vesti also extensively covered the war, reporting on high civilian casualties from the very beginning of the “anti-terrorism operation.” This editorial stance soon won Vesti many opponents. Together with headline we cited above about mayhem on Maidan, a stark frontpage with the words “Massive civilian deaths in the east” and an iconic photo of residents of Stanitsa Luhanska fleeing their burning home would later be cites as proof of the paper’s bias and “distortion of facts”.

 

Stanitsa Luhanksa after aerial bombardment by the Ukrainian army. Photo: РИА Новости

The frankly critical reporting of Vesti from Maidan and the frontlines of the Donbas War earned it enemies from both the new government in Kyiv and from the street. In the next post in this series we will describe the showdown between the media holding, the Ukrainian Security Agency and radical activists that would last more than a year and a half.

How serious a threat is the far right in Ukraine? Views from Kyiv

The danger of extreme nationalists in Ukraine has gradually been getting more serious attention in the western press, with words like “extreme right,” “neo-Nazi” and “skinhead” belatedly replacing euphemistic labels for the most radical political and paramilitary organizations. But it took the brutal killing of three unquestionably patriotic Ukrainian National Guardsmen during protests outside of the Verkhovna Rada to create some kind of consensus about the scale of their threat.

Activists from the radical nationalist party Svoboda clash with police and National Guardsmen outside the Verkhovna Rada on August 31. In the center, in black embroidered shirt and sunglasses is party leader Oleg Tyagnibok. From censor.net.ua

Many news outlets have doubtless been reluctant to give any credence to one of Moscow’s key justifications for launching its separatist project in eastern Ukraine. The presence of extreme Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis in the revolutionary vanguard of Maidan was cited by Putin as reason to annex Crimea (“Sevastopol will never be Banderovsky”), and tacitly for arming and reinforcing the Donbas rebels as well.

For too long too many western observers have played a logic game: if we can find demonstrable exaggeration by the Russian press of the fascist threat in Ukraine, then everything the Russians (or anybody else) says about that threat must be false.

This works very well, because the Russian press is prone to fakes, spin and hysteria. And so the fact that are not actually bands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis hunting down Russian speakers on the street has allowed many observers to disregard the unconcealed role of radical nationalists in politics and national security.

And so it is especially important to hear Ukrainian perspectives about the far right, especially from pro-unity, anti-separatist commentators. Such sources have no interest in exaggerating the role of the radicals, and much motivation to downplay it. So reading their honest, alarming words was a wakeup call for us.

Several mainstream Ukrainian media deserve credit for reporting on the radicals from the very start,  especially the popular daily Vesti. For this the paper became a target of masked “activists” who trashed its offices and publicly destroyed large quantities of the paper. But Vesti’s (mostly unfair) reputation among many Ukrainians as “mouthpiece of the Kremlin” meant that its warnings often fell on deaf ears. But today more and more Ukrainian media are covering this topic, especially the hip news website Bukvy.com, which has impeccable anti-separatist credentials.

In this post we present excerpts from two Bukvy articles. The first is a searing critique of the site’s own liberal readership for having legitimized the radical political party Svoboda during the Maidan protests. The second lays out in detail how Russian neo-Nazis have found a place in Ukrainian volunteer battalions and even national politics by positioning themselves as uncompromising enemies of Putin’s regime.

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Hostages of Svoboda

Lelik Krakowsky

Original: http://bykvu.com/home/mysli/7531.html

Today it’s easy to talk about the political death of Oleg Tyagnibok [head of the radical nationalist party Svoboda, accused of inciting the killings of National Guardsmen outside the parliament on August 31], but somehow forget that not all that long ago Svoboda had 40 seats in parliament. That’s just slightly more than the most radical of today’s radicals, Lyashko [head of the Radical Party], holds right now.

Police and National Guardsmen wounded after a grenade was thrown during protests outside the Verkhovna Rada on August 31, 2015. From vesti-ua.net

The fact that Svoboda is composed of Nazi activists or those who are ready to work in solidarity with them, sponsor them and position them in municipal politics was known by absolutely everyone. Nonetheless, Svoboda’s electorate was wider than those who hold these far-right views. Amongst its voters were office plankton [Russian term for cubicle dwellers] who had little understanding of politics but who gobbled up the memes put out by our media.

It was understood that the Svobodovtsi were neo-Nazis, but society handed them responsibility for the struggle for our civil rights. Even though, a priori, neo-Nazis have no concept of civil rights. But that didn’t worry anyone.

This all shows that our society isn’t capable of thinking adequately, and reacts only to media propaganda. And the media, in turn, can tell the electorate anything: “Yanukovich is a thief,” “Yuschenko is the president,” “Putin is a crab,” “Everbody to Maidan!” And it works.

It is popularly thought that Maidan was a people’s protest. The people came to the Veche [popular assembly] and threw Yanukovich out. But in truth Yanukovich wasn’t overthrown by the people, but by the corpses of dozens of dead activists.

The participants of those violent days think that society supports them. But imagine what would have happened if the media had oriented itself on journalistic standards and the Criminal Code when it reported on the bloody events of Maidan, which assumes punishment for both sides of the conflict, the Berkut [riot police] and titushki [anti-Maidan hired thugs] along with the activists. Then Yanukovich wouldn’t have had to flee.

We understand that these deaths were profitable and played into the hands of the opposition, including “Svoboda”. Maidan without press propaganda would have ended exactly as the demonstrations ended by Svoboda and Lyashko’s Radicals outside the Verkhovna Rada on August 31 [arrest and opprobrium for the radical perpetrators].

Let me say something that won’t be popular. Despite my loathing for the far right I never really wanted to see any of them get seriously punished, let alone get sent to jail…The guilt for the tragedy outside the Rada is with propaganda and the attempts by some media and political consultants to justify criminality.

Igor Gumeniuk, volunteer in the Sich battalion and Svoboda activist accused of throwing the deadly grenade outside the Verkhovna Rada. From bykvu.com

People like Gumeniuk [the Svoboda protestor who allegedly threw the grenade], don‘t understand that…those representatives of the media who established the positive image of Maidan are today in power, and they aren’t inclined to share it with anyone: if Gumeniuk had been a hero on Maidan, today in the eyes of Ukrainska Pravda or Gromadske TV [media outlets popular amongst Maidan protestors] he’s a criminal.

Neither Tyaginbok, Lyashko nor Mosiychuk [a notorious radical MP and battalion leader] will face criminal charges for the grenade thrown outside the Verkhovna Rada. They didn’t even organize it’s throwing. [According to the authorities] the grenade was Gumeniuk’s personal initiative. He returned from the warzone where, possibly, he lost friends and possibly he was plagued by a comprehensible sense of the injustice of it. Maidan was not finished for him.

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The adventures of Russian neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Boris Gonta

Original: http://bykvu.com/home/mysli/8311/priklyucheniya-rossijskikh-natsistov-v-ukraine.html

The reason Russian nationalists came to Ukraine

It’s not a secret that the Nazi movement in Ukraine is less radical than that of Russia. The level of xenophobic crimes didn’t even approach that of our eastern neighbor. Although that didn’t stop Ukrainian neo-Nazis from concealing their Russian compatriots who were fleeing arrest. The Ukrainian security services chose to ignore the problem and did nothing to neutralize the situation. In general, feeling themselves more comfortable in Ukraine these Russian neo-Nazis connected their political future with her.

Despite the propaganda of Ukrainian patriotism, bordering on banal Russophobia and radical Ukrainian nationalism, for a long time there was no particular contradiction between the Nazi movements in Ukraine and Russia. They are all united by racism, Nazism and the fashionable radical subculture. In the political arena, Russian nationalists have long been trying to enter via legal nationalist organizations – the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, “Slavic Union” et al., However, the radicalism of their rank and file activists, participating in numerous murders and attacks on foreigners, made such a scenario impossible.

The Russian authorities have opened real criminal cases against some radicals, which were interpreted by nationalists as political persecution, hindering them from establishing “Russian order on Russian soil…”

The possibility of realizing their political ambitions came to fruition on Maidan when, due in no small part thanks to the Ukrainian authorities and intelligence agencies an image was created of the patriot ready to do anything to fight the “dictatorship Yanukovych.” The fact that the views of the neo-Nazis taking an active part in Maidan had nothing to do with its declared values of liberalism, freedom and democracy, was generally not acknowledged. By the time of Maidan almost all of the neo-Nazi movement had settled in “Praviy Sektor.”

Praviy Sektor activists on Maidan. The amorphous movement attracted radicals of many stripes who saw force as the only means to achieve the revolution’s victory. From 112.ua

There is a stereotype that Russian neo-Nazis supported Putin’s “Novorossiya” project and are enthusiastically fighting in the Donbass against the Ukrainian armed forces. However, this is not entirely true. Russia nationalists supported Maidan from the very start and propagandized it within Russia.

Many Russian nationalists saw in Maidan what they couldn’t find in Russia: the opposition was open to dialogue with neo-Nazis, and in society a sympathy towards representatives of the far right took root. In the eyes of ordinary inhabitants, sympathizing with democratic Maidan, no one but the radical nationalists was prepared to face down “Berkut” and really fight with the “Yanukovich regime.”

In Maidan Russian nationalists saw not the striving of Ukraine to membership in the European Union or to norms of liberal governance, but the chaos of revolution, opening opportunities for radical right forces. In the opinion of Russian nationalists, Maidan should have spread to Russia and accomplished the overthrow of Putin.

The nationalists saw how much these goals would be advanced by global communications, weapons and military experience – all of which they receive in the Anti-Terror Operation [Ukraine’s military campaign], fighting on a par with Ukrainian nationalists against the separatists and regular troops of the Russian Federation.

In December 2014 the creation of the so-called “Russian Insurgent Army” (RPA) was announced. In fact the project was late, because the neo-Nazis had already found the opportunity to fight in the ranks of the Donbass “Azov” and “Right Sector” battalions. The creation of the RPA is symbolic in that it included members of the organization “Black Committee”, which is accused of organizing and implementing the terrorist attack by the Verkhovna Rada of August 31.

Still from the Youtube video announcing the founding of the “Russian Insurgent Army,” (RPA) under the aegis of the Chorniy Komitet (“Black Committee”). Both organizations are associated with the neo-Nazi movement. From atoua.com

In Ukraine, the Russian nationalists received full support and solidarity, since they were perceived as fighters against the Putin regime. In turn, they viewed Ukraine as a fertile ground for the spread of their influence. In particular, in January 2014 the odious representative of “intellectual Russian nationalist” Egor Prosvirnin arrived in Ukraine and tried to establish working relations with his Ukrainian “colleagues”.

After the annexation of Crimea Prosvirnin defended the policy of the Kremlin and officially severed ties with Ukrainian right forces. However, the network of Russian nationalists associated with him continues to be involved in political and public life in Ukraine.

The “provocation” beneath the walls of the Russian Embassy and its members

On July 25 beneath the walls of the Russian embassy in Kiev a rally was organized in support of so-called Russian “political prisoners”. Despite the fact that the organizers and active participants of the demonstrations were Russian nationalists from the “Azov” battalion, the Ukrainian media did not report that amongst the protestors were followers of far right movements. The demonstration gained prominence only because of a supposed “provocation”: unknown persons tried to compromise the organizers, hinting that they were Nazi sympathizers. However, it later became clear that their participation in the rally was directly connected to the fact the “political prisoners” in question were members of the neo-Nazi movement in Russia.

Among the organizers of the protest was a well known figure, Russian nationalist Roman Zheleznov, known by the nickname of “Zyukhel”.

Roman “Zyukhel” Zheleznov at a demonstration in support of “Russian political prisoners” in Kyiv. From bykvu.com

According to some Ukrainian journalists Zyukhel is a political refugee. Officially he fled Russia because he supported Praviy Sektor from the start of Maidan. Namely in connection to his sympathy for PS he was excluded from the Russian organization “Restruct” which carries out pro-Kremlin social projects connected with fighting illegal immigration, pedophilia and narcotics.

Zyuhel was part of the Nazi movement WotanJugend, and also was involved in the movement NSWP. NSWP initiated another neo-Nazi project: Misanthropic Division (MD). Roman “Zyuhel” Zheleznov is a member of MD.

The Misanthrophic Division project is directly related to Maidan and became a reason for the schism within the Russian nationalist movement in February 2014. Russian nationalists divided into those who positively regarded the revolutionary events in Ukraine and those who categorically rejected them, taking off to fight for a Russian Crimea or Donbass. However, all those who that that the ideas of MD could be brought to realization later fought in the ranks of Azov in the Donbass.

But even after the schism Russian radical nationalists did not change their views or swear off Nazism, racism and xenophobia, regardless of which side they were fighting for in the Donbass.

Russian nationalists see opportunities in this war, and their conflicts between themselves focus only on who made the more correct decision in the name of the future of Russia and the Russian people. They don’t discuss Ukraine and its particular civilizational choice, they are supporting Ukraine opportunistically. Those who ended up in Ukraine and supported Maidan saw in it an extension of the struggle with the Putin regime and today cannot express their religious or imperial ambitions. Those who supported the “Novorossiya” project are freed of that necessity to conceal their views.

Ilya Bogdanov, the Misanthropic Division and the Petro Poroshenko Bloc

In Facebook there is a user named Ilya Bogdanov. He is just the sort of Russian nationalist described above, who settled in Ukraine due to this ideological view: total hatred of the “Putin regime” that is destroying the Russian people.

Hatred for Putin inspired him to head off to fight for Ukraine in the ranks of Praviy Sektor. Judging by his page on Facebook, Bogdanov managed to fight in Pesky and the Donetsk Airport, where we received internet fame. Interestingly, he had earlier sought to destroy the Russophobic systems “from within” by joining the FSB, and even took part in the Counterterrorism Operation against Chechen Mujahidin fighting for independence of the Caucasus.

Bogdanov is also a member of the Misanthropic Division. However, despite the fact that all of its members who came to fight for Ukraine are (or were) soldiers in Azov, Bogdanov was not accepted by that batallion. In his words, Azov regarded him with suspicion as a member of the enemy security agency. Thus, Bogdanov was forced to join Praviy Sektor instead.

Despite his active participation in the ATO, Ilya Bogdanov had difficulty receiving Ukrainian citizenship. He frequently wrote about this on his Facebook page. But this spring those problems suddenly ceased. “Unknown persons” helped Bogdanov receive citizenship. At first it was not known who helped this Russian neo-Nazi and FSB veteran, but soon it became clear – Bogdanov announced that he was committed to take part in upcoming municipal elections in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

Facebook post by Russian “political emigrant” and neo-Nazi ideologue Ilya Bogdanov, announcing his candidacy for the district council of Kyivo-Svyatoschinsky district in Kyiv in Petro Poroshenko’s “Solidarnist” bloc. The image at left shows his candidate’s mandate. From bykvu.com

Poroshenko does not hold authority amongst radical nationalist youth, especially amongst those who took active part in the war. Poroshenko is guilty for Ilovaisk, Debaltsevo and other military disasters. Namely he, in the opinion of nationalists, bears the full weight of responsibility for all problems in the ATO. And so the agreement of Bogdanov to participate in elections in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc looks, at the very least, strange.

In the beginning of October, 2015 in Kyiv a convention is planned for the “Russian Center,” an organization of “Russian political emigrants.” It should not surprise that beneath this attractive phrase are hiding typical Nazis, members of various Russian neo-Nazi organizations. We will only add that amongst the organizers we note Ilya Bogdanov, who is running for office in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc… and Roman Zheleznov, former member of Restruct, the Misanthropic Division and WotanJugend.

Russian nationalists in Ukraine are trying to establish structures for their political influence, which should function on the political situation in Russia. Exiled nationalist try to find a place in the volunteer battalions, liberal political parties and NGOs. But in order not to lose their originality and to enhance their influence, maintaining themselves as a monolithic political force, they continue to stick together. Despite their organizational divisions. For instance, despite the obvious political competition between the Azov Battalion and Praviy Sektor, the Russian nationalists fighting for these two groups remain close, because in truth nothing divides them. They have their common interest – the realization of the Russian nationalist project.

Welcome to Ukraine Comment

This blog is intended to broaden the discourse on the current crisis in Ukraine. We have long noticed that an overwhelming amount of the information about this conflict available in English regards external factors, especially Russia’s financing and arming of the Donbas separatists. But this can eclipse the internal policies and social trends within Ukraine that are contributing to this human tragedy, and which receive far less attention than the geopolitics.

Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kyiv. March, 2015

Of particular focus in this blog will be the civic and human rights of civilians in the warzone, social strife in the country’s east and questions of press freedom. We will include both original analyses and essays, and also translations of important works from Ukrainian media and blogosphere.

If this blog has a particular posture or slant, it is that of supporters of Ukrainian unity who believe there are deeply concerning trends in today’s Ukraine that, left unaddressed, will do as much to undermine that unity as foreign-backed separatism.

Some things we will try to avoid in this blog: snark, trolling, conspiracy theorizing and avoiding challenging critiques by calling them conspiracy theorizing. Far too often the internet dialogue about Ukraine has been hijacked by trolls and bots, and we will do our best to keep this a reasoned debate. We ask commentators to adhere to that spirit when contributing.

We look forward to the dialogue.