Ukraine: Neo-fascist calls on radicals to fight in east
When even the Guardian can smell a rat you know something is up. According to the Guardian the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council (the one shaking hands with the British Foreign Minister below) has 'an extremely dubious past', Mein Führer.
Kiev's "anti-terrorism operation" in the east of the country involves units of the army, the police, special forces and the national guard, which is partly made up of volunteers drawn from those who participated in the Maidan protests in Kiev.
Andriy Parubiy, head of Ukraine's national security and defence council, told the Guardian that these were all coordinated from a single anti-terrorism command centre, but numerous sources on the ground attest to the fact that coordination is poor, and there are major concerns over how ready the volunteer brigades are for combat.
In addition to the difficulties of coordinating such a diverse range of paramilitary groups, there has also been concern at the extreme nationalist element among those fighting. The frequent Russian claim that the Ukrainian government itself is fascist is untrue, but there are certainly far-right elements involved in the fight in the east.
Parubiy himself has an extremely dubious past, having set up the neo-fascist Social National party of Ukraine together with the current leader of far-right Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok, in the early 1990s. While there has been little evidence that the militias have been motivated by any kind of far-right ideology when fighting in east Ukraine, there is no doubt that radicals have been the people most willing to fight, and this has led to a number of situations which appear to be well beyond the bounds of normal military behaviour. Link
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