by Robert Spencer
Kyiv City Council set to name street after SS official.
There has been considerable concern since before the start of the war in Ukraine about the influence of National Socialists, or Nazis, there, and now it has gotten considerably worse. Rather than apologize for or at very least ignore the nation’s past ties to National Socialism, the city council in the nation’s capital of Kyiv is reportedly considering naming a street after a National Socialist collaborator who actually served in the SS during the Holocaust, Volodymyr Kubiyovych. Apparently the Ukrainian government is so certain that Western aid will continue that it feels no hesitation about flaunting its openness to National Socialism.
The Jerusalem Post reported recently that according to Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, “a street in the Ukrainian capital will be renamed following a motion passed by the city council, and will bear the name of Volodymyr Kubiyovych, who during the Holocaust was heavily involved in the formation of the Waffen-SS Galizien, a Nazi military force made up of Ukrainian volunteers.”
This startling move comes after a “historical expert commission within the council had put forward several options for the renaming of what is currently Przhevalsky Street in Kyiv,” and several names were put to a public vote. “The option to rename the street after Volodymyr Kubiyovych has so far received a majority, with 31% of the vote, with the second and third highest options receiving just 18% and 10% respectively,” although this could change, as the voting remains open until Sunday. Then, “once the public vote is closed, the Kyiv City Council will then vote to approve renaming the street after Kubiyovych.”
This is an astonishingly bad idea for a number of reasons. Before the National Socialist invasion of the USSR, Kubiyovych “requested the creation of an autonomous state within Ukraine in which Poles and Jews would not be allowed to live.” Then, once the National Socialists had occupied much of Ukraine, Kubiyovych “took on a key role in the formation of the Waffen-SS Galizien, publicly announcing his willingness to take up arms and fight for the Nazi cause.”
Is this the hero Zelensky’s Ukraine needs? Is this the hero Zelensky’s Ukraine wants?
None of this comes as any surprise to longtime Ukraine watchers. The independent journalism site Kanekoa News reported as long ago as last June that “on October 16, 2019, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee’s counterterrorism subpanel, Rep. Max Rose (NY), led a letter signed by forty Democrats asking the State Department why they had not placed Ukraine’s Azov Battalion on the U.S. list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ (FTOs).” The irony couldn’t be richer, for in October 2022, the New York Times, that reliable organ of far-Left opinion, refers to “Ukraine’s celebrated Azov Battalion,” and claims that “the group’s defense of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol — the southern port city decimated by Russian forces in the first months of the war — has become a powerful symbol of the suffering inflicted by Russia and the resistance mounted by Ukraine.”
Every last Democrat who condemned the Azov Battalion likely reads and respects the Times, and every last one of them also would likely prefer us all to forget that they once likened the Azov Battalion to the Islamic State (ISIS) and noted that it “openly welcomes neo-Nazis into its ranks.”
The Democrats’ 2019 letter added that “the 115th Congress of the United States stated in its 2018 omnibus spending bill that ‘none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.’” But that was when Volodymyr Zelensky was widely regarded as some kind of ally or tool of the Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein of the day, Donald Trump; after all, the first Stalinist show trial impeaching the America-First president took place over a phone call to Zelensky. So it was in the Democrats’ interest to play up the Nazi element in Ukraine, just as it is in their interests now to pretend that element doesn’t exist.
The Democrats’ letter even declared “Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens for years according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Yet now it seems as if there is no limit to the taxpayer billions that must be funneled to these gallant Ukrainian defenders of freedom. Is anyone exercising any kind of oversight at all? Is Azov still “recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens”? Is our taxpayer money now being used to fund such activities?
One thing is certain: the full extent of the ties between Ukraine and the posturing, self-righteous, desperately corrupt, hypocritical and self-serving U.S. Democrat establishment is not publicly known, and may never be known. But what we do know should have brought that entire establishment crashing down years ago.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/ukraines-nazi-problem-gets-worse/
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