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Some Proper Historical Context on the Russo-Ukrainian War

Feb. 1, 2018 - Kiev, Ukraine - National Militia fighters hold flags from the National Corpus nationalistic political party and Azov Movement during a protest. By Konstantin Chernichkin/Special to The Washington Times

I have no dog in the fight between Russia and Ukraine. In fact on a personal level my friendships are with Ukrainians. At this stage in the conflict I believe the primary purpose is to reduce both countries and slaughter Slavic men as part of a proxy war.

My Ukrainian friends tell me the good relations that once existed between Russians and Ukrainians are lost for good. And right now Russia is clearly wrecking Ukraine’s infrastructure.

Honestly it pisses me off to have to write this background, but there is little to nothing in the western media describing the big picture. Most Americans may know the flag but don’t even know Ukraine on a map.

The idea that Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine in it’s opening offensives with 190,000 troops is ludicrous. By comparison it took one and half million soldiers for Germany to overrun and subdue half of Poland (partitioned with the Soviet Union) in 1939.

But it is obvious that the Russian invasion and military performance did not convey it’s intended message- and instead stiffened Ukrainian national resolve and fighting spirit. As we will see later in this post, there is historical precedent for that.

The settlement of this war lies in an plebiscite monitored by neutral parties in the Russian speaking majority areas of Ukraine to determine their future. Even Henry Kissinger is now proposing this.

The post-war Ukraine would have to be a non-aligned country divorced from NATO machinations. That is nearly impossible now. Without that this the war will likely escalate. Now there are rumblings, whether true or not that Russia and Belarus are mobilizing a million troops to knock Ukraine’s military out of the war. If so, the Ukraine’s salvage positions will evaporate.

The ethno-linguistic-political division of the current Ukraine state is highly problematic. Ukraine’s ruling plutocrat class, whether pro-Russian or not, is one of the most corrupt in the world. The second map shows the 2004 election with the pro-Russian aligned candidate Yanukovitch in black and blue. No wonder this a tinder keg. To a thinking person this looks like two separate countries with an arbitrary communist era border drawn around it. Which is exactly what happened.

I see no way short of collapse that Russia will back down from resolving this. A collapse of Russia would be a bad outcome, given the nukes on hand. Is that the western strategy? And Russia completely destroying Ukraine’s military is hardly much better.

Both sides engage in bombastic propaganda that is a throw back to WWII, with the Ukrainians calling the Russians Bolsheviks and the Russians calling the Ukrainians “neo-Nazis”.

Without an examination of the WWII era history and it’s context most westerners and even Russians such as the tweet above have a poor concept of this ad homenium mud slinging.

First starters Ukrainians suffered the underreported Holodomor in the early 1930s, which they attribute the causa proxima to Soviet Bolsheviks.

Portrait of Evil: Walter Duranty, the NYT Moscow Bureau Chief Who Deliberately Hid Soviet-Imposed Famine That Killed Millions in Ukraine

Fast forward just a few years to 1941 when the Germans overran Ukraine in Operation Barbarossa. WWII was very much a Civil War for the Ukraine as many units from the eastern region were key elements fighting for the Soviet Union.

In the western non-Russian area the other poor choice was to fight with Germany. Most of these units who did so were broadly called Galician. This is the fonte of hard core Ukrainian nationalism then and now. It also identifies as European, and fiercely anti-Russian and anti-communist. That is the mythos even today much more so than some ideology of neo- Nazism. The city of Lvov is here, and resembles old Austro-Hungarian cities to the west. Indeed Galicia was formerly a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There is a good sized Polish ethnic population in the Ukraine portion of Galicia.

Lvov, could just as well be in Bohemia

Therefore the history of the WWII involvement of nationalist Ukrainian SS-Waffen units fighting against Soviet communism is in order. It will explain the so called “neo-Nazi” symbolism.

When mustered up in 1943 as the Soviets pushed back into the Ukraine it was stipulated that these divisions would not be used to fight Western Allies, and would be used exclusively to “fight Bolsheviks”.

The other concession was in that its oath of allegiance to Hitler was conditional only to the fight against Bolshevism and in the fact that Christian (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Orthodox) chaplains were integrated into the units and allowed to function. And thirdly there was no Nazi indoctrination.

It also had the support of both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Among its members was a son of Mstyslav Skrypnyk, the Orthodox Bishop of Kiev.

The creation of a Ukrainian SS division was perceived by many in Ukraine as a step towards the attainment of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union and attracted many volunteers.

The Division enjoyed support from multiple political and religious groups within the western Ukrainian community.

The Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists strongly opposed the idea of the division, because it was an organization outside of its control.

The largest unit was the Division SS “Galizien” commanded by German, Austrian and Ukrainian officers who were delegated to the division. 81,999 men enlisted for service in the division.

There was a “mandatory” requirement for large categories of the population to register for service, for example all males born between 18–25 years old, former soldiers born between 1900 and 1925, and all former officers and non-commissioned officers who had served in any army. Many were aggressively recruited and ultimately conscripted.

Ukrainian soldiers of the 14th Waffen-SS

In mid February 1944 the division received an order to form a battle group known as SS Kampfgruppe Beyersdorff for action against Soviet and Polish partisans.

Division operated in the Zamość area together with elements of the 5th Regiment, while elements of the 4th Regiment were sent to Brody. The SS Kampfgruppe performed its duty well enough that it earned the rare praise of German Field Marshal Walter Model.

In July, 1944 as the Soviet offensive Bagration unfolded the division was sent to the area of Brody, where heavy combat was under way, and attached to the 13th Army Corps. Together with six under-strength German infantry divisions, the Galicia Division was responsible for holding a frontage of approximately 80 kilometres. At this point the unit was defending it’s Galician home soil.

On 13 July, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev launched their attack. By the next day, they routed a German division to the north of the 13th Corps and swept back an attempted German counterattack.

On 18 July, the division’s Field Replacement Battalion was destroyed with its remnants fleeing west, whilst the remainder of 13th Corps, consisting of over 30,000 German and Ukrainian soldiers, was surrounded by the Soviets within the Brody pocket.

The Soviets sought to collapse the Brody pocket by focusing their attack of what they perceived to be its weakest point, the relatively inexperienced Galician Division, and on 19 July attacked.

The 29th and 30th regiments of the division, supported by the division’s artillery regiment, put up unexpectedly fierce resistance. Pidhirtsy changed hands several times before the Ukrainian Galicians were finally overwhelmed by the late afternoon.

The Ukrainian 14th SS Fusilier battalion, still intact, came to form the rearguard of what was left of the entire 13th Corps. Holding the town of Bilyi Kamin, it enabled units or stragglers to escape to the south and was able to withstand several Soviet attempts to overwhelm it.

Fighting was fierce and desperate. The German and Ukrainian soldiers surging south were able to overwhelm the Soviet 91st independent tank brigade “Proskurov” and its infantry support, and to escape by the thousands.

Despite the severity of the fighting, the division maintained its discipline and part of its members were ultimately able to break out of the encirclement. Of the approximately 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers deployed at Brody, about 3,000 were able to re-enter the division.

The story of this lost cause campaign and the performance of Ukraine’s fighting men in it is not lost on Ukrainian nationalists fighting this war today. Many of the Ukraine’s best soldiers making the war for Russia a difficult challenge are Galicians.

-modern memorial of 14th Ukrainian Waffen-SS in Lvov

 

 

8 Comments on Some Proper Historical Context on the Russo-Ukrainian War

  1. Thanks Russ, that was very useful. Put the whole awful situation in Ukraine into better context for me. Even though I’ve followed the build up since 2012 or so

    Got to feel terribly sorry for Ukrainians. They are victims of geopolitical shenanigans. Most of which stem from the self labelled “good guys” here in the west it seems. The EU is utterly disgusting in it’s supine acceptance of the instructions from head office. Fight to the last Ukrainian

    Keep up the good work, excellent, informative site

    Pete from UK

  2. I find it strange that the conclusions of the NATO investigation of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage have not been released. If the evidence shows Russia did it, why not release the information? And why is Russia not pushing for the release 24/7 to present a claim to the insurance underwriters? Where are the intrepid journalists of the media pushing for the transparency the so often claim to seek? Is NATO sitting on the information because Russia has a valid claim for damages and NATO does not want any cash flowing to Russia? Are they protecting the underwriters from having to make a payment?

    What was once an incident threatening to ignite a world war has pretty much dropped off the radar screen.

  3. The iron cross on the ukraine tanks is the same the Bundeswehr uses, so no point to use a “third reich” analogy because it is no nationalsozialist symbol but a general one for germany, if you call the iron cross third reich this would make the Bundeswehr the same as every verhicle got the iron cross.

    I know its just a small thing but as german its too much to call the iron cross “third reich” when germany is using it for a century up to now.

    • Hi Ms. Kati, firstly, -not trying to induce an argument here…
      -The Bundeswehr uses a stylized “Iron Cross” that has a curving element to the cross bars, much like the WW2 Iron Cross-Knights Cross medal/award/abzeichen…

      Whats present in the photo of the AFV vehicle above is whats referred to as the: “BalkanKreuz”, which the WW2 German Wehrmacht/S.S used on all tanks/AFV-(Sometimes in a 2 color arrangement, black & white, or black n’ yellow, but upon discovering the RUS/Enemies using it as a hi-viz aiming point-(Duh;)- for all manner of anti tank weapons, in some units it was replaced with a black n’ red combo, or painted/mud’d over all together….

      Be well…

  4. The thing you don’t recognize is the extent to which Nazism was a globalist ideology. Hence why so many were brought into post-war globalist institutions like NATO, NASA, and the State Department. It also explains why Obama, McCain and every other deep state ghoul made such an effort to prop up and nurse the Banderite/Azovite faction in Ukraine against Russia.

    When you see transgender GAE freaks like Sarah Ashton-Cirillo and the Azov fascists paling around together, it seems like a contradiction until you know the long history. Then it makes complete sense.

    You should check out Grover Furr’s work. He does a great job debunking the Holodomor myth.

  5. All wars are jew wars. Instigated by jews, funded by jews, and exclusively to the benefit of jews. Everyone else loses. When you understand this to be true (and it’s not an oversimplification), everything will make sense to you. Just think about it in terms of who benefits, and who pays the price for these horrific humanitarian tragedies.

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