Cold War Battle for Ukraine Timeline and Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora
Excerpts from David Livingstones “New Great Game”
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn24
1922, followed the end of WWI (1918) when what is now western Ukraine was apportioned to Poland. Ethnic Ukrainians were caught between Poland in the West and the Bolsheviks in the east. The relevant Ukrainian nationalist political organization for present purposes is the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), which became active in Western Ukraine, which was then Poland, in the late 1920s. The goal of the OUN was the formation of an autonomous Ukrainian state under the control of ethnic Ukrainians.
1939-The League of Nations had publicly condemned the OUN as a terrorist syndicate and Polish courts had handed down death sentences to OUN leaders Mykola Lebed (1909 – 1998) and Stepan Bandera (1909 – 1959) for their roles in the 1934 murder of Polish Interior Minister General Bronislav Pieracki, among others. Once released in 1939, after his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Bandera organized OUN sympathizers into armed squadrons under an Abwehr program code-named Nachtigall, or Nightingale.
1940-The OUN split into two organizations: the less militant OUN-M, and the more extremist group of Stepan Bandera, known as OUN-B, a clandestine group financed in part by German intelligence. After the start of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in 1940, the OUN-B in the person of Yaroslav Stetsko (1912 – 1986) declared a short-lived Ukrainian Government under the control of Nazi Germany, and pledged to fight as an ally for Hitler’s “New Order.”
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn24
1941, Bandera and his deputy Stetsko were held by the Germans in Berlin, where they submitted dozens of proposals for cooperation to different Nazi institutions (OKW, RSHA etc.) and freely communicated with their followers.
The temporary capital of the Ukraine during the German invasion in 1941 was the city of Lviv. The city had been annexed to the Soviet Union in 1939. In the initial stage of Operation Barbarossa on June 30, 1941, Lviv was taken by the Germans. The evacuating Soviets killed most of the prison population, with arriving Wehrmacht forces easily discovering evidence of the Soviet mass murders in the city committed by the NKVD and NKGB.
Ukrainian nationalists, organized as a militia, and the civilian population were allowed to take revenge on the “Jews and the Bolsheviks.” . At the time of the German attack, about 160,000 Jews lived in the city, fortified by tens of thousands due to the arrival of Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland.
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn26
Supported by the Nazis, the OUN-B formed Ukrainian death-squads which carried out pogroms and massacres. The most deadly of them was perpetrated in the city of Lviv by the Ukrainian People’s Militia with direct participation of civilians, at the moment of the German’s arrival in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland. Stetsko wrote to Bandera that OUN had “formed a Militsiya to remove the Jews.”
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn27
There were two separate pogroms in Lviv. The first pogrom took the lives of at least 4,000 Jews. It was followed by the killing of 2,500 to 3,000 Jews by the Einsatzgruppe C, the SS death squads, and the “Petlura Days” massacre of more than 2,000 Polish Jews by the Ukrainian militants. During the pogrom, on June 30, 1941 Bandera declared a sovereign Ukrainian state in Lviv, and a few days later was arrested by the Germans who opposed it.
The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP ) was created by Heinrich Himmler in mid-August 1941 and put under the control of German Ordnungspolizei in General Government territory. According to Professor Alexander Statiev of the Canadian University of Waterloo, the UAP were the major perpetrator of the Holocaust on Soviet territories based on native origins, and those police units participated in the extermination of 150,000 Jews in the area of Volhynia alone.
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn29
1944-In July 1941, OUN leader Bandera was arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Germany, which he left only in 1944. In April 1944, Bandera and Stetsko were approached by Otto Skorzeny to discuss plans for diversions and sabotage against the Soviet Army. During the Cold War western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, covertly supported the OUN.
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game#_edn32
What united the Americans with the former Nazi leadership was hatred of the Soviets. Toward this end, the CIA recruited former Nazi senior intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen to head-up the Berlin office of the CIA. Gehlen recruited at least one-hundred former Nazi officers to work for him in Berlin. The CIA also worked with Klaus Barbie, ‘the butcher of Lyon,’ to murder key ally of Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara.
Stepan Bandera and OUN-B were natural allies of Western intelligence agencies in post-WWII, anti-Soviet, warfare.
Following WWII, Bandera joined with MI6, the British intelligence service, to reconstitute the Banderite branch of the OUN (OUN-B). Concurrently (1946), Five Eyes, the formal cooperative relationship between the intelligence services of the Anglosphere that included the CIA and MI6, was formed. As these events were transpiring, an agent for the CIC, the U.S.
Counterintelligence Corps, brought information to the CIA that the Banderites had been full partners with the German Nazis, including ‘as agents of the Gestapo and SS.’
Separately, members of the OUN emigrated to New York and began working for the CIA through Project Aerodynamic(and here). The CIA operation in New York worked to exploit Ukrainian nationalist sympathies by building an anti-Soviet publishing and distribution network funded and managed by the CIA. Prolog was the front corporation used.
1959- Stepan Bandera was killed by the KGB in Munich but the CIA and MI6 continued working with OUN-B long after the war had ended.
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B) orchestrated a guerrilla war in Ukraine which became the prototype for similar operations by the CIA throughout the world during the Cold War.
The most important UPA liaison officer for the CIA was Mykola Lebed, whom American military intelligence had described in 1946 as a “well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans.”
In 1949, the CIA sponsored his entry into the United States and covered up his war crimes. In emigration, he led the OUN-Z, a split-off from Bandera’s arm of the OUN, which was funded by the United States. He provided the contact between the US and the UPA fighters.
After 1953, Lebed was involved in the management of the émigré publishing house Prolog, financed by the CIA, which disseminated nationalist, anticommunist and historically revisionist literature. From 1945 to 1975, Prolog also published material in Munich depicting the Ukrainian fascists as freedom fighters against communism and either denying or varnishing their participation in war crimes.
Since 1943, the UPA has worked on the myth of the “democratic freedom fighter” to make itself acceptable as an ally of American imperialism. The standard lie runs: the OUN/UPA fought for democracy against both the Nazis and the communists.
1968-Prolog was relocated to Munich after which it remained in the business of stoking anti-Soviet animosity amongst Ukrainian nationalists as a front for the CIA.
Whereas Project Aerodynamic focused on publishing anti-Soviet propaganda, OUN-B in Europe was an operational arm that worked with / through MI6. OUN-B appears to have been set loose in Europe to carry out an anti-Soviet terror campaign.
The existence of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance makes strong distinctions between operations carried out by MI6 and the CIA suspect. British author Stephen Dorril writes extensively about the coordinated intelligence operations between MI6, the CIA, and CIC (U.S. Army intelligence) surrounding the relationship with OUN-B.
Much as the Nazis had used OUN-B to advance the Nazi army through Ukraine, the Five Eyes alliance used OUN-B to exacerbate Ukrainian anti-Soviet tensions and to carry out terror attacks against the Soviets.
The information presented here, all gotten from public sources, has the CIA, MI6, and various related letter agencies, allying with German and Ukrainian Nazis from the end of WWII through the late 1960s.
1977-When Polish-born Zbigniew Brzezinski became President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, the US increased its funding for anti-Soviet Ukrainian propaganda. In addition to literature and radio broadcasts, videocassettes were produced.
Under President Reagan, the strategy of destabilising the Soviet Union by boosting the nationalities question was intensified. The CIA produced material that was addressed to different ethnic groups in the Soviet Union and encouraged separatist-nationalist tendencies.
1983, President Reagan received OUN-B leader Yaroslav Stetsko at the White House, pledging, “Your struggle is our struggle. Your dream is our dream.”
According to the Ukrainian nationalist historian Taras Kuzio, Prolog was able to produce $3.5 million worth of propaganda in the Soviet Ukraine thanks to the financial support of the US. This paid for publications and the use of new technologies, which, according to Kuzio, “had a great impact upon sustaining and increasing anti-regime activities and opposition groups in the late 1980s in the final push towards Ukrainian independence.”
1983-2010 -In Washington, Bandera’s OUN had reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA). “You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence,” one member told Russ Bellant.
By the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was interwoven with UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky.
In his 1988 book Blowback: America‘s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, American journalist Christopher Simpson, who uncovered the network of old Nazis in the service of the CIA, noted:
“Until recently, the US media usually could be counted on to maintain a discreet silence about émigré leaders with Nazi backgrounds accused of working for the CIA. According to declassified records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, several mass media organizations in this country—at times working in direct concert with the CIA—became instrumental in promoting Cold War myths transforming certain exiled Nazi collaborators of World War II into ‘freedom fighters’ and heroes of the renewed struggle against communism.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/10/fasc-j10.html
Dobriansky’s daughter Paula served on the NSC and as an assistant director of the defunct US Information Agency during the George H.W. Bush administration. She was also one of the original Signatories to Statement of Principles of the neoconservative PNAC.
Paula’s friend and colleague was Katherine Chumachenko, an American of Ukrainian descent and wife for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. Chumachenko had been one of Lev Dobriansky’s students. She was a former Reagan administration official and ex-staffer at the Heritage Foundation.
Chumachenko was formerly the director of the UCCA’s Captive Nations Committee and then Deputy Director for Public Liaison at the White House.
During the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election campaign, Chumachenko was accused of exerting the influence on her husband’s decisions, as an agent of the US government or even the CIA.
In 2010, Yushchenko awarded Stephan Bandera the title of “National Hero of Ukraine.”
https://ordoabchao.ca/articles/ukraine-new-great-game
Project Aerodynamic
I suggest you read the link above . Excerpts below.
The [Nazi] collaborators [in the Ukraine] who didn’t want to stand trial in the Soviet Union chose Poland and West Germany. Some of them later went over to the United States and Canada...
The brightest of those adepts of the Nazi ideology was Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader during the war and a die-hard fighter against the Soviet Union.
Yaroslav Stetsko, deputy leader of Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), was less popular but much more important to the West. Bandera and Stetsko settled in West Germany, where they attracted the attention of former Nazis in the employ of the German defence and security agencies in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
You might ask how Nazi criminals came to hold responsible positions in the government agencies of democratic West Germany. But this question is better addressed to Washington, which moulded the new image of the West German government and could find no better partners than, for example, Reinhard Gehlen, a general in Hitler’s army, founder of the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), and a partner of the CIA, after the war.
The Americans also recruited Nazi army officer Adolf Heusinger, who became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee after the war.
Here we can also mention Theodor Oberlander, the political adviser to the Ukrainian Nachtigall Battalion controlled by the Abwehr. After the war, he came into close contact with Yaroslav Stetsko. The two helped create the World Anti-Communist League, a legal ultra-right organisation with a mission to fight the USSR.
We can also recall Theodore's namesake, Helmut Oberlander, an executioner responsible for crimes against dozens of residents of Soviet Ukraine during the occupation, who spent the rest of his life peacefully in Canada.
In addition to the Ukrainian nationalist leaders, many ordinary militants also fled to the West. Among them was the anti-Semitic propagandist Mikhailo Khomyak who also moved to Canada, as well as many others.
The children born in such fugitives’ families in the 1950s and 1960s were brought up in an atmosphere of total Russophobia and hostility towards everything Russian.
These new foreign generation “Ukrainians” include Oleg Romanyshyn (Yaroslav Stetsko’s nephew), Roman Zvarych and Irena Chalupa – activists of the World Anti-Communist League; Kateryna Chumachenko, whose parents, after captivity in Nazi Germany, chose to flee to the United States rather than go home, as well as George Harry Jurkiw (the son of the Carpathian militant Ivan Yurkiv).
By that time, the World Anti-Communist League, supported by the United States, Canada and Germany, had become the main centre of attraction for Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
In particular, Irena Khalupa was given a job with Radio Liberty, where she conducted anti-Soviet propaganda.
The nationalists were also supported by the so-called old Western Ukrainians who had moved there during the Civil War – in particular, by American Ukrainian Lev Dobriansky, diplomat under the Ronald Reagan administration, who headed a department at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. His lectures became popular with Ukrainian émigrés.
For example, Kateryna Chumachenko under his influence became one of the agents of the American soft power in the 1980s, and his daughter, Paula Dobriansky, even served as US Under Secretary of State.
Others, such as George Harry Jurkiw, found themselves managing American defence companies, working to increase NATO’s military potential.
With the collapse of the USSR, the West finally got the chance to use the asset they had been storing for decades to establish a pro-Nazi regime in Ukraine, stained with Russophobic ideology and hatred of everything Russian.
Slava Stetsko, the wife of the old anti-Soviet and Nazi propagandist Yaroslav Stetsko, became a Verkhovna Rada deputy where she opened and closed [Ukraines] parliamentary sessions as a “respected elected people's representative.”
Nationalists had new opportunities as Viktor Yushchenko’s pro-Western government came to power. To begin with, he married American Katerina Chumachenko, a student of Lev Dobriansky, and appointed Roman Zvarych, a functionary of the World Anti-Communist League, Minister of Justice.
At the same time, descendants of Ukrainian collaborationists, who fled to the US, were making careers in the West.
Canadian citizen Chrystia Freeland, a granddaughter of Mikhailo Khomyak, had the most successful career. She was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. Indicatively, at one time, George Soros supported her as a potential participant in the global behind-the-scenes struggle against Moscow’s influence.
Alexandra Chalupa who received an appointment in the US presidential administration used her position to consistently work against improving Russian-US relations.
Incidentally, in addition to Kateryna Chumachenko, many descendants of Ukrainian émigrés in America made a name for themselves in soft power. Thus, Chalupa’s sister Andrea Chalupa became a screenwriter promoting an emphatically anti-Russia (and unscientific) approach to Holodomor.
A Canadian of Ukrainian origin, Marco Suprun, a colleague of Radio Liberty correspondent Irena Chalupa, became a producer of anti-Russia political clips. He married Ulana-Nadia Suprun (Jurkiw)
Another person among the Ukrainian diaspora, Adrian Karatnycky, joined the editorial teams of the US expert societies Freedom House and Atlantic Council. He focused on studying the practice of overthrowing regimes (primarily in the former Warsaw treaty member countries and in the post-Soviet space). He could be called a theorist on colour revolutions.
Former Minister of Justice and former US citizen Roman Zvarych became the leader of the civilian corps of the Azov neo-Nazi volunteer battalion while George Harry Jurkiw’s daughter Ulana-Nadia Suprun was appointed Acting Minister of Health.
It was when [Suprun] held this position that the Americans further developed their military bio-programme in both quality and scale and launched projects on studying biological WMDs in Ukraine.
There are reports that the CIA directly coordinated Ms Suprun’s activities via her cousin Taras Voznyak.
It was the “Western” Ukrainians that supported the most rabid nationalists in Ukraine.
Andrea Suprun became an associate of Sviatoslav Yurash, a Ukrainian producer of Fox News. In turn, he headed the press service of Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector.
Thus, they have come full circle. Ukrainian Nazis that fled from fair trial 75 years ago have returned to the place they were expelled from by Soviet soldiers via their children and with direct support from the West.