NOURNEWS- On Friday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was received as a hero in Ottawa, where he addressed the Canadian parliament. Following Zelensky’s speech, Anthony Rota, the speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, paid tribute to another man from Ukraine.
“We have here in the chamber today … a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians, and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of 98,” Rota said to raucous hoots and a standing ovation. Rota added that he was “very proud” that the man, Yaroslav Hunka, lived in his own Ontario electoral district. “He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” the speaker added to more boisterous applause.
In fact, Hunka is a veteran of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS – part of Hitler’s notorious Schutzstaffel, the elite troops who perpetrated some of the worst genocidal crimes of World War II. Formed in 1943 from recruits in Western Ukraine, the Galician Waffen-SS unit was “armed and trained by the Nazis and commanded by German officers. In 1944, the division was visited by SS head Heinrich Himmler, who spoke of the soldiers’ willingness to slaughter Poles.” After the war, thousands of Waffen-SS Galicia veterans were allowed to resettle in the West, with several thousand going to Canada.
Whitewashing Nazis in the name of progress
In a sense, Friday’s horrifying spectacle in the Canadian parliament is the culmination of decades of whitewashing of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS unit by members of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora and other Nazi apologists. It’s likely many of those clapping had no idea or didn’t care, but there’s little to no reason to believe that Canadian leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, did not know. And there’s no reason to think they would care either. It is well known that one of Trudeau’s top allies, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, is the proud granddaughter, of one of Hitler’s top Ukrainian propagandists, Michael Chomiak.
Instead of embracing historical truth about her grandfather’s role in recruiting for the SS and spreading anti-Semitic propaganda on behalf of the Hitler regime, Freeland has tried to whitewash his role. And in 2018, when there was a public outcry about monuments in Canada honoring the Ukrainian Nazis, Trudeau’s office went to work to deflect attention from the matter.
But above all else, it is really hard to believe that the members of Canada’s Parliament, its spokesperson, Canada’s PM and Zelensky who has always used history to slander Russia and furthermore to accuse Russia for genocide or any other of his attempts to show Russia as the great evil and Ukraine as the victim in it's war, must have known that when Rota said:” a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” he must have meant someone who was fighting for Nazi Germany, because everyone who cares about history knows that Russia (Soviet Union) was part of the Allied forces during WW1 and WW2 and fought against Hitler's Germany. Accordingly, none of the abovementioned high officials have no excuse to say that they didn’t know that they were giving a standing ovation to a Nazi. Canada’s PM and Zelensky must be ashamed of themselves, but one must have dignity to feel ashamed and we know.
While many Ukrainian nationalists always kept a flame burning for the Waffen-SS Galicia unit, its rehabilitation really took off following the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine that brought the current clique of ultranationalists and Azov brigade to power. As recently as 2021, Ukrainians held the first parade honoring the Waffen-SS Galicia division in the capital Kyiv, but when Vladimir Putin announced "denazification" of Ukraine as one of his reasons for starting a special military operation in Ukraine, he was slammed by every renowned media outlet of the world. Sadly, Western media have turned into a tool for the western empire of lies, and they have strayed away from the duty of a media, which is to show the truth of the world without following the political trend or agendas of any government.
Now much of the Western media and establishment, including Israel and its lobby groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, have been willing to whitewash Ukrainian nationalists who helped Hitler exterminate Jews and Poles, because that suits the politics of the West’s current proxy war – using Ukrainians as cannon fodder – against Russia. It is common to hear apologists for Hitler’s Ukrainian volunteers claiming that the men of the Waffen-SS Galicia division are remembered positively today despite their association with the Nazis, because their true motivation was fighting for Ukrainian independence, against the Soviet Union.
Western hypocrisy
On Sunday evening, Anthony Rota, the speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, issued a statement apologizing for his warm praise for Nazi SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka whom he had invited to attend Friday’s session at which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke. That’s definitely convenient for Canada’s political class, who can now all pretend they had no idea how deeply entrenched veneration of the Waffen-SS Galicia division is among many in Canada’s politically influential Ukrainian diaspora. All of these apologies will do little to alleviate concerns about Canada and Western countries’ longstanding support for Nazis in Ukraine, not just with praise and applause, but with training and weapons going back years.
Now let’s get into Ukraine’s internal support of Neo-Nazism and the ongoing and expanding reign of Azov regime and their movements in this country. Azov is a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit whose members – estimated at 900 – are ultra-nationalists and are known for harboring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology. The unit was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.
Who founded Azov?
The unit was led by Andriy Biletsky, who served as the leader of both the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005) and the SNA (founded in 2008). The SNA is known to have carried out attacks on minority groups in Ukraine. In 2010, Biletsky said Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”. Biletsky was elected to parliament in 2014. He left Azov as elected officials cannot be in the military or police force. He remained an MP until 2019.
These forces were privately funded by oligarchs – the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region. The same oligarch who is detained on suspicion of fraud, money laundry and massive corruptions. It’s worth to mention that Kolomoisky is one of the close allies of Volodymyr Zelensky and his government.
Neo-Nazi ideology
In 2015, Andriy Diachenko, the spokesperson for the regiment at the time, said that 10 to 20 percent of Azov’s recruits were Nazis. Individual members have professed to being neo-Nazis, and hardcore far-right ultra-nationalism is pervasive among members. In January 2018, Azov rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to “restore” order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community. “Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” a correspondent for the US-based magazine, the Nation, wrote in 2019.
Human rights violations and war crimes
A 2016 report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHA) has accused the Azov regiment of violating international humanitarian law. The report detailed incidents over a period from November 2015-February 2016 where Azov had embedded their weapons and forces in used civilian buildings, and displaced residents after looting civilian properties. The report also accused the battalion of raping and torturing detainees in the Donbas region.
What has been the international response to Azov?
In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced that their own forces will not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. But now, with the start of Ukraine war since the February 2022, in a disgraceful attempt to show Russia as a great evil and Ukraine as the victim of Russia’s invasion, the west has deliberately forgotten all the detailed crimes and Neo-Nazi origin of Azov and slammed Putin’s claims about deep-rooted Nazism ideology in Ukraine and called all the reports regarding Ukraine’s support of Nazism as a pro-Russia propaganda.
Ukraine's war is NATO and Western countries proxy war against Russia, but, the west in its unending support of Ukraine and ever-expanding hatred towards Russia and any other independent country has exposed Western countries true colors which is black-white-red with a Swastika located in the center of it. The west and their democrat-liberal governments are showing their wavering values. They are fast to accuse others of violating human rights or freedom or any other right, but when push comes to shove, the West and their governments support Nazism and a corrupt government just to justify their proxy war against Russia or any other of their strategies which has always led to bloodshed for third parties and numerous prizes for the west.
With the rising outcry regarding past week’s developments, public opinion of the world is becoming more focused for finding the truth about Zelensky, Ukraine and Russia war, and they no longer will be persuaded by the West’s empire of lies. Glory to Ukraine, glory to the Nazis, the west has chosen to support a Nazi government just for justifying its fear and hatred toward countries such as Russia, but more importantly, Zelensky and its government are showing their true nature, and they are raising a lot of unanswered questions regarding the legitimacy of their democratic and moral values with their questionable actions. Ukraine’s government has never punished Azov brigade or their movement but rather, with the help of biased media, they have regarded this Neo-Nazism groups as heroes of Ukraine and free world.
BY: Homayoun Barkhor
NOURNEWS