The T-90 Pro Proryv-3: Interestingly, its turret and hull, including from the side projections, are tightly covered in a special protective “stealth cape”, making it almost invisible to the most advanced enemy surveillance devices. The Nakidka camouflage system reduces the infrared, thermal, and radar band signatures. At its core, it’s a camouflage made of an undisclosed radio-absorbing and IR-dampening material, intended to make large vehicles such as tanks easy to conceal on the battlefield, even from radars and thermal imagers.
TASS reports about the combat use of T-90Ms Proryv in SMO, and quotes tank commanders about the machine (in Russian), They love it. Here are some opinions on several months-long combat use.
Он усовершенствован - экипаж надежно защищен, командир танка, то есть я, сижу уже внутри, мне необязательно вылезать на улицу, перезаряжать [пулемет] "Корд" и вести стрельбу - я все это делаю изнутри. Усовершенствованы приборы наблюдения, у меня есть панорама, я могу смотреть на 360 градусов и не надо крутить головой, я все могу на компьютере увидеть. Также могу общаться с соседними танками, не выходя на связь, просто пишу им координаты, подъезжаем туда и мы вместе работаем. У нас Т-90 подорвался на противотанковой мине, гусеницу не повредило, оторвало лишь каток и он своим ходом выбыл из зоны боевых действий, весь экипаж цел", - рассказал командир еще одного танка Т-90М "Прорыв" Руслан.
Translation: It has been improved - the crew is reliably protected, the tank commander, that is, I am already sitting inside, I don’t have to get out into the street, reload the Kord [machine gun] and fire - I do all this from the inside. Surveillance devices have been improved, I have a panorama, I can look at 360 degrees and do not need to turn my head, I can see everything on the computer.I can also communicate with neighboring tanks without getting in touch, I just write the coordinates to them, we drive up there and we work together.Our T-90 was blown up by an anti-tank mine, the track was not damaged, only the roller was torn off and it left the combat zone under its own power, the entire crew was intact," said the commander of another T-90M "Proryv" tank Ruslan.
The T-90 Proryv has been deployed to Ukraine.
I highlighted what is crucial. This is netcentricity and this is the thing that in terms of firepower creates a synergy effect because it increases many fold the effect of tactical surprise and flexibility. All this underscores the futility of the West's attempts to "supply" 404 with whatever obsolete armor it tries to send there. Such as this risible British attempt:
Britain will announce the donation of ten Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, The Guardian reported on Friday, citing Ukrainian sources. In doing so, the UK would become the first NATO member to send Western-designed tanks to Kiev, as pressure mounts on Germany to follow suit. A formal announcement is expected on Monday, the newspaper’s sources said. These same sources said that while ten Challengers will likely have no impact on the tide of battle, they hope the decision will push Germany into allowing its European allies to export their stocks of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, which Berlin has thus far not authorized.
Considering the military incompetence of the Western political and military top brass, it all comes down to, and you guessed it already, PR and the desire to show that "something is being done". I expand on the issue of West's miscalculations in my latest:
Plus, a good friend of mine, Colonel Trukhan (thanks, Larch), a former operations officer from the Central Apparatus of Russian MoD gave a good interview to (initially) Ukraina.Ru, precisely on the issues concerning a real war, not BS created by all kinds of media-personalities both in the West and Russia who wouldn't be able to command a platoon, let alone brigade or division. Here is a quote:
- Делайте что хотите. Хотите наслаждаться победой – наслаждайтесь. Хотите комментировать не восторженно – комментируйте. Кто кому доктор, каждый сам на свое кладбище выползет. Нужно понимать, что ВС РФ работают планомерно и целенаправленно. А публика может реагировать как хочет. Там мощные укрепрайоны, которые строились восемь лет. Почему мы дали их построить? А кто бы им их не дал построить? Мы не одни на этом земном шаре. Мы строили свои вооруженные силы, Украина строила свои вооруженные силы. У кого их получилось лучше построить? Посмотрим.
В 2014 году на тех украинских операционных направлениях мы почти ничего не имели. Это я вам достоверно говорю. Об этом никто сейчас не помнит, но при Сердюкове даже 20-ую армию сократили, был переход к бригадным системам. И когда начался этот замес, когда наш "северный ветер" остановил этот начинавшийся геноцид, мы начали строить свои вооруженные силы абсолютно правильно. Мы их начали строить со стратегической ядерной триады. Путин "мультики" показал – продажи памперсов возросли. И сейчас эти "мультики" получили материальное оформление.
Translation:- Do what you want.If you want to enjoy victory, enjoy.If you want to comment not enthusiastically - comment.Who is a doctor to whom, everyone will crawl out to his own cemetery.You need to understand that the RF Armed Forces are working systematically and purposefully.The public can react however they want.There are powerful fortified areas that were built for eight years.Why did we let them build?And who wouldn't let them build them?We are not alone on this globe.We built our armed forces, Ukraine built its armed forces.Who was the best at building them?We will see.In 2014, we had almost nothing in those Ukrainian operational areas.This I tell you for sure.Nobody remembers this now, but under Serdyukov even the 20th army was reduced, there was a transition to brigade systems.And when this batch began, when our "northern wind" stopped this genocide that was beginning, we began to build our armed forces absolutely correctly.We started building them from the strategic nuclear triad.Putin "cartoons" showed - sales of diapers have increased.And now these "cartoons" have received material design.
I am on record, remember? US and NATO cannot do strategy, they never could after WW II. It is a cold hard fact of life. Sure, they love to use the term "strategy" but very few in the military-political top in the US have a grasp of what it is. So, what can I say--I already get flack for my pointing out that John Mearsheimer has no clue about strategy, Russia, and balance of power--he doesn't have a toolset, as wouldn't any political "scientist", to grasp it. His early 1970s background from USMA at West Point and a few years in the USAF are radically not enough, especially lacking serious military engineering background, for understanding modern operations. Bernhard makes today a note of it, when speaking about Emmanuel Todd:
He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer: "Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America. Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power' of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.
Remarkably, highlighted in yellow shows a complete ignorance of Todd himself of strategic planning and how Russia approaches war and economy. But then again, he is an anthropologist, what do you expect. He, certainly, didn't read this blog in 2014--early 2015 when I had to pass a diagnosis on the fate of the combined West, but what do I know, I am not an anthropologist. So, here is your primer for Saturday.
Note: The Western media continues to make a lot of noise about the US and its NATO allies sending more (and supposedly more formidable) weapons to Ukraine, but this is not so. Consider for example this German entry, the Marder IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle).
Look at this carefully. Does it look like it can outgun Russian armour, drones, or basic artillery in the field?
P.S. About VSU plans for "offensive" to reach Mariupol--Good God, only NYT and WSJ would buy this BS. Yes, with 50 Bradleys and 20 NATO tanks.
Russia’s T-90M Proryv: Will Putin Send His New Tank to Fight in Ukraine?
This clickbait BS was spread by the 1945.com portal which specializes in a palliative therapy for some America's military exceptionalists and basement military porn masturbators from the Top Gun: Maverick community, who have been shown how adults fight real wars, and now they experience a serious butt-hurt. As most from US media, those people have a serious case of amnesia, because, in accordance to these very same US media, glorious VSU already captured this very T-90M last year:
Don’t Tell Putin: Ukraine Captured Russia’s Elite T-90M Tank
This kinda negates the question of if Putin will send these tanks to 404, doesn't it, because evidently, they are already there. But then again, these are Western "military analysis" resources and they need money too, so, they sell BS, and it sells. But, in the end, why such attention to this tank.
Well, T-90M IS a deep modification of a venerable, still good, though, T-90A and it even looks differently, carrying even some elements of a dynamic armor Afghanit which is also used by T-14 Armata.
Or from the above:
As you can see--it is a classic Russian tank, low profile, sleek and lighter than any modern Western counterpart. Whilst all kinds of military porn fanboys discuss this tank's newest multipurpose sight and other things of this nature, apart from purely physical improvements, it is the Combat Management System "Kalina" which is most important in it.
Being Combat Management System, "Kalina" unifies all operations of this tank, including latest ballistic computer and target acquisition and firing solution contour (laser-range finder, FLIR, on-board sensors, including detection of the "incoming", etc.), it is this feature which really matters--taken from Russian sources:
блок боевой информационно-управляющей системы тактического звена,
программно-технический комплекс тактического взаимодействия танкового/мотострелкового батальона
Translation:Block of the Combat Informational Control System of the Tactical Level and Software-Hardware Complex of Tactical Interaction of the Tank/Motor-rifle Battalion.
A-ha, that's warmer. In other words--T-90M is a fully netcentric warfare tank and each of these tanks in battalion mode can run this whole battalion's combat tasks, which is 31 tanks in tank battalion, or a truck load of APCs in a motor-rifle one. That is why so much attention to this rather routine news (Russian military factories work 24/7/365) from Western punditry, who, by the virtue of spewing BS on this news, betray own case of being sore losers, because, in accordance to their "sources", Russians are backward people who cannibalize washing machines for microchips and do not know what indoor plumbing is--yes, this is what the majority of the population of 404 thinks, and so do people from all other Western propaganda outhouses.
In conclusion. Although in Russian, do take a look at what Russia produces today, among very many other things, courtesy of this teeny-weeny corporation called Rosatom.
Extremely advanced methods in nuclear medicine. I guess many washing machines have been cannibalized, right?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Andrei Martyanov is a Russian military expert. He has written three books analysing the decline in America's military power
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First, I found out that BitChute also blocks videos showing combat operations in videos made my Russians. Rumble did not, at least so far, so in the future, I will stick with Rumble to post “politically incorrect” or otherwise “offensive” videos. Still, the only viable solution here is to have a video hosting service in a sovereign country.
At the time of the NATO war against the Serbian nation, I was working for the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, a kind of UN think tank for the Conference of Disarmament. While this institute was not part of UNPROFOR, we had access to internal UNPROFOR documents. Furthermore, at that time I also had access to classified documents from the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. Finally, and unbeknownst to my various bosses, I also had personal friends who were Serbs and Russians with access to all sorts of interesting info. In other words, at the time I *knew* for a fact that the media was lying about this war and I can now personally confirm the following (though I cannot offer any proof):
The bombings of the Markale market in Sarajevo were false flag operations and the UNPROFOR specialists in the field saw through the propaganda and reported that up the chain of command which, of course, classified and ignored these reports.
The “Srebrenica genocide” never happened, but scores of Muslims did get killed, most while retreating through the woody hills towards Gorazde and in some cases there were executions of POW, the latter were ordered by CIA plants in the Milosevic administration. It was a carefully prepared PSYOP to give the West a reason to attack for “humanitarian reasons”, the same role MH17 fulfilled years later.
The (in)famous Racak massacre never happened. The EU monitors quickly realized that and they did report this up their own chain of command which, of course, classified and ignored these reports. Except that some of these folks were friends of mine and told me the truth 🙂 What actually happened was a gun battle between KLA terrorists and Serbian units.
Just like in the Ukraine today, the West pumped a lot of money, weapons and “volunteers” into Bosnia, in direct violation of plenty of UNSC Resolutions. The entire UN was hijacked, which was made especially easy with clowns like Eltsin or Kozyrev sitting in the Kremlin.
When NATO and the Croats attacked the UNPAs in Croation the UNPROFOR forces were ordered by their respective national commands to step aside and not interfere. The Serbs had agreed to give over their heavy weapons and be placed under the “protection” of the UN. We all know what happened after that.
NATO provided aircraft to bring in hundreds of flights al-Qaeda terrorists into Bosnia, working hand in hand with Turkey and, alas, Iran (Iran’s stance on Bosnia is, in my opinion, the worst mistake ever made by the Islamic Republic who did not have the courage to resist the hysterics in the Muslim world triggered by US PSYOPs).
EU “observers” were mostly officers of western intelligence agencies. The same goes for a lot of personnel in the so-called “humanitarian” organizations, especially MSF. And, of course, this is also true for many “journalists”. Still, while some of them *did* very honestly report what they saw, many were simply collecting intelligence and even participating in covert support for the Wahabis in Bosnia (and Chechnia, by the way).
War criminal Bill Clinton’s statue in Pristina (Kosovo). The city also honors devious Hillary in various ways.
Why is this important today? Because we have many of the same actors operating in the Ukraine and elsewhere. A perfect example would be the EU or IAEA “observers”. Here is the deal: those “monitors” and “observers” who do an honest job of reporting what they see will have their reports tossed down the memory hole and they will be silenced because they cannot reveal state secrets or make classified info public (Snowden anybody?). As for the rest of them, I am referring to intelligence officers collecting info or, worse, aiding the terrorists, their actions are, by definition, harmful.
For these reasons I think that Russia should kick out any and all western (Zone A) “observers” and not collaborate with any AngloZionist controlled agencies such as the IAEA, the OPCW, any and all EU bodies/organizations, any western “aid” organizations, etc., etc.
Furthermore, I also think that Russia, China and Iran should create a multi-national observer battalion ready to be deployed in combat areas which involve Russian, Chinese or Iranian interests. Further down the road, these three countries could invite other countries, but only if their national leaders have true sovereignty and are not comprador administrators for their colonial masters.
We should also understand the role of the likes of Izetbegovic, Guaido, Tikhanovskaia or, for that matter, “Ze”: their function is NOT to seek the best for their people, but it is to justify an endless war.
The truth about the AngloZionist war on the Serbian nation will, eventually, trickle out. In fact, even during the war, some observers (I think of Michel Collon here, but there are others) did write very good and truthful accounts of what was taking place, they were just simply ignored by the official state propaganda (aka the “free press”). However, just as with the case of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, JFK, 9/11 and so many other false flags, that truth will come way too late to remedy anything. Folks in the West are so used to lies, that they accept them as some kind of inevitable side effect of politics. We do, indeed, live in a post-truth society, at least those of us in Zone A.
—Andrei
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Andrei Raevsky, The Saker, is the founding editor of an eponymous blog, and head of a network of international sites dedicated to geostrategic analyses, focusing on the clash between the US hegemon and the Eurasian multipolarist nations led
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Update on the ongoing conflict in and around Ukraine for January 8, 2022: The US announced a major military aid package for Ukraine including 50 Bradley fighting vehicles, 18 M109 self-propelled 155mm howitzers, additional MRAP and Humvees as well as additional ammunition for various systems.
Despite the relatively large size of the package compared with the last several months of aid, the weapons and ammunition fall far short of replacing even Ukraine’s losses let alone granting Ukraine the ability to match or over power Russian forces. Ukraine will likely use many of these systems to patch up elite units within its deteriorating brigades. Germany and France are also sending armored vehicles, the Mauder infantry fighting vehicle and the AMX-10 RC respectively. This is likely paving the way to send additional heavy weapons like main battle tanks.
These systems collectively are less-than-ideal for Ukraine, logistics, sustainment, and maintenance issues will hinder their effective use in combat, they also will not be arriving in the numbers necessary to replace Ukrainian losses or outmatch Russian forces.
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In part 1 of this series Fact Checking the Fact Checkers, the question was posed “why does Ukraine seem to have so many Nazis nowadays?” In that paper we were led to the further question “is the United States and possibly NATO involved in the funding, training and political support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and if so, for what purpose?” It was concluded that in order to answer such questions fully, we would have to look at the historical root of Ukrainian nationalism and its relationship with U.S. Intelligence and NATO post-WWII. It is here that we will resume.
The Historical Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism
The birth of Ukrainian Nationalism as it is celebrated today has its origins in the 20th century. However, there are a few important historical highlights that should be known beforehand.
Kievan Rus’ was a federation in Eastern-Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century and was made up of a variety of peoples including East Slavic, Baltic and Finnic, and was ruled by the Rurik dynasty.
Above image: The principalities of the later Kievan Rus’ (after the death of Yaroslav I in 1054). Source Wikipedia.
Today’s Belarus, Russia and Ukraine all recognize the people of Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestors.
Kievan Rus’ would fall during the Mongol invasion of the 1240s, however, different branches of the Rurik dynasty would continue to rule parts of Rus’ under the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia (modern-day Ukraine and Belarus), the Novgorod Republic (overlapping with modern-day Finland and Russia) and Vladimir-Suzdal (regarded as the cradle of the Great Russian language and nationality which evolved into the Grand Duchy of Moscow).
The Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was under the vassalage of the Golden Horde during the 14th century, which was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate originating as the northwestern section of the Mongol Empire.
After the poisoning of Yuri II Boleslav, King of Galicia-Volhynia in 1340, civil war ensued along with a power struggle for control over the region between Lithuania, Poland and its ally Hungary. Several wars would be fought from 1340-1392 known as the Galicia-Volhynia wars.
In 1349, the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was conquered and incorporated into Poland.
In 1569 the Union of Lublin took place, joining the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which ruled as a large and major power for over 200 years.
From 1648-1657 the Khmelnytsky Uprising, also known as the Cossack-Polish War took place in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the creation of a Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine.
Under the command of Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, allied with the Crimean Tatars and local Ukrainian peasantry, fought against Polish domination and against the Commonwealth forces; which was followed by the massacre of Polish-Lithuanian townsfolk, the Roman Catholic clergy and the Jews.
Khmelnytsky to this day is a major heroic figure in the Ukrainian nationalist history.
By 1772, the once-powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had too far declined to further govern itself and went through three partitions, conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire.
From the first partition of Poland in 1772, the name “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” was granted to the Habsburg Monarchy (Austrian Empire, which later became the Austria-Hungarian Empire in 1867). Most of Volhynia would go to the Russian Empire in 1795.
Above image: Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (often referred to just as Poland) in 1772, 1793 and 1795.
By 1914, Europe would be dragged into WWI. In March 1918, after two months of negotiations with the Central Powers (the German, Austria-Hungary, Bulgarian, and Ottoman Empire), the new Bolshevik government of Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceding claims on Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as the condition for peace (Note: the Bolshevik Revolution began in March 1917). WWI would officially end on November 11th, 1918.
As a result of the treaty, eleven nations became “independent” in eastern Europe and western Asia, Ukraine was among these nations. In reality, what this meant was that they were to become vassal states to Germany with political and economic dependencies. However, when Germany lost the war, the treaty was annulled.
With Germany out of the picture and the dissolution of both the Austria-Hungary and Russian Empire; Poland and Ukraine found themselves in a position to establish their independence.
During the Habsburg’s rule, due to their leniency toward national minorities, both Polish and Ukrainian nationalist movements developed, and both were interested in claiming the territory of Galicia for their own. Western Galicia at that point, with the ancient capital of Kraków had a majority Polish population, whereas eastern Galicia made up the heartland of the ancient Galicia-Volhynia and had a majority Ukrainian population.
The Polish-Ukrainian war was fought from November 1918 to July 1919 between the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian forces (consisting of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian People’s Republic). Poland won and re-occupied Galicia.
The Polish-Soviet war would be fought between February 1919 and March 1921. This coincided with a series of conflicts known as the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917-1921) which fought to form a Ukrainian republic.
By 1922, Ukraine was divided between the Bolshevik Ukrainian SSR, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The Second Polish Republic reclaimed Lviv, along with Galicia and most of Volhynia, the rest of Volhynia became part of the Ukrainian SSR.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was founded in 1929 in East Galicia (located in Poland at the time) and called for an independent and ethnically homogenous Ukraine.
From the beginning, the OUN had tensions between the young radical Galician students and the older military veteran leadership (who grew up in the more lenient Austria-Hungary Empire). The younger generation had only known oppression under the new Polish rule and underground warfare. As a result, the younger faction tended to be more impulsive, violent and ruthless.
During this period, Polish persecution of Ukrainians increased and many Ukrainians, especially the youth (who felt they had no future) lost faith in traditional legal approaches, in their elders and in western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine.
The OUN assassinated Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Among those tried and convicted in 1936 for Pieracki’s murder, were OUN’s Stefan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Both escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Support for the OUN increased as Polish persecution of Ukrainians continued. By the beginning of WWII, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and many times that number in sympathizers in Galicia.
In 1940 the OUN would split into the OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk, and OUN-B headed by Stefan Bandera which made up most of the membership in Galicia and consisted mainly of youth.
In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing Poland. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were reunified with Ukraine, under the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded western Ukraine, there were many western Ukrainians who welcomed the invading Nazis as their “liberators.” It should be noted here that this was not a sentiment predominantly shared by the rest of Ukraine, who fought in or alongside the Russian Red Army against the invading Nazis.
Both the OUN-M and OUN-B would spend much of the war collaborating closely with the Germans. They had no issues with the Nazi ideology for they too believed that a solution was found in returning to a “pure race.” In the case of Ukraine, this pure race consisted of a somewhat romanticised concept of “ethnic Ukrainian,” based on the golden age of Kievan Rus’.
The OUN believed that the “pure ethnic Ukrainian race” were the only true descendants of the royal bloodline of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus’. And rather than looking at Belarusians and the Russians as their brothers and sisters who shared the same ancestry, the OUN viewed them more so as “ethnic impostors” so to speak of this pure bloodline.
This can be seen today with Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups attacking Ukrainian ethnic Russians for the past 8 years in Ukraine. An issue that is almost entirely ignored in the West. See part 1 of this series.
It was believed that if the purity of the bloodline were returned, greatness would once again be bestowed on Ukraine (which had never really existed as a fully independent region).
It was for this reason that the OUN and the SS Galician division believed that exterminating tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and any other non-ethnic Ukrainian was justified. The SS Galician division (which had an overlapping membership with the OUN) were notorious for their extreme cruelty, including acts of torture and mutilation on par with Japan’s Unit 731.
To give an idea of the level of support in western Ukraine at the time for a “pure Ukrainian race,” the SS Galician division recruited 80,000 Galician volunteers in one and a half months.
The trident symbol, known also as tryzub, is an important symbol for Ukrainians, since it comes from the days of Kievan Rus’ and its earliest use was during the rule of Vladimir/Volodmyr the Great, about 1,000 years ago.
However, it is also most unfortunately why the OUN chose the tryzub for both their emblems and flag, to signify their desire to return to those glory days, which was thought could only be achieved through ethnic cleansing.
The above OUN-B flag (also used by their paramilitary unit UPA) is known as the “Blood and Soil” flag. The “Blood and Soil” nationalist slogan originated in Nazi Germany to express its ideal of a racially defined national body (blood) united with a settlement area (soil).
It is also why Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups that formed from 1991 onward (after Ukraine’s independence from the USSR), more often than not, also use the tryzub.
Image above shows flags of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine today. In the Azov flag shown above, there is a combination of the Wolfsangel and Black Sun, two symbols associated with the Wehrmacht and SS.
In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what becamethe largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.
A research group was put together to compile and organise key elements of this massive newly declassified database, the result was the publication of “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” in 2005, and “Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War” in 2011, both published by the National Archives, and which will be used as a key reference for the rest of this paper.
Richard Breitman writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (1):
“What must be the earliest history (or mini-history) of the extermination of the Jews in Lvov [Lviv] was prepared on June 5, 1945. The ten-page document pointed out that, as soon as German troops took Lvov, Ukrainians in the city denounced Jews who had cooperated with Soviet authorities during the period of Soviet occupation, 1939-1941. Those Jews were arrested, gathered near the municipal building, and beaten by the Germans and local inhabitants. Later, local inhabitants, especially from the villages nearby, ravaged the Jewish quarter and beat Jews who stood in the way of their robbery. Starting on July 1, a pogrom was organized; German police, soldiers, and local Ukrainians all took part. Many of those arrested were tortured and killed… More than twelve thousand Jews were killed in the first weeks of the German occupation of Lvov.” [emphasis added]
Norman J.W. Goda writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (2):
“In its work to destabilize the Polish state, the OUN’s ties with Germany extended back to 1921. These ties intensified under the Nazi regime as war with Poland drew near. Galicia was allotted to the Soviets under the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the Germans welcomed anti-Polish Ukrainian activists into the German-occupied General Government. In 1940 and 1941, in preparation for what would become the eastern campaign, the Germans began to recruit Ukrainians, particularly from Bandera’s wing, as saboteurs, interpreters, and police, and trained them at a camp at Zakopane near Cracow [Kraków]. In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht also developed two Ukrainian battalions with the approval of the Banderists, one code-named ‘Nightingale’ (Nachtigall) and the other code-named ‘Roland’.”
What showcases the youth, and unfortunately ignorance, of the OUN-B, is that the “blood and soil” slogan originating with the Nazis, which they chose for their own OUN-B flag, was also tied to the belief that the German people were to expand into Eastern Europe, conquering and enslaving the native Slavic and Baltic population via Generalplan Ost. Thus, these Ukrainian nationalists were never considered worthy of sharing in this vision of Nazi Germany but had been regarded as the ultimate slaves for the new German empire from the very beginning.
The OUN-B would learn this lesson the hard way. Eight days after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, on June 30th, 1941, OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State in the name of Bandera in Lviv and pledged loyalty to Hitler. In response, the OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned or killed outright by the Gestapo (approx. 1500 persons). The Germans had no intention of even allowing a semi-independent Ukraine to form. Stefan Bandera and his closest deputy Jaroslav Stetsko were initially kept under house arrest and then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (a comparatively comfortable confinement to the other concentration camps).
Mykola Lebed was able to slip through the German police net and became the de facto leader of the OUN-B leadership, also known as the Banderists.
On July 16th, 1941, the Germans absorbed Galicia into the General Government. In October 1941, the German Security Police issued a wanted poster with Lebed’s photograph.
The Germans transferred administrative and senior auxiliary police positions in western Ukraine to Melnyk’s group, OUN-M. (3) German security police formations were ordered to arrest and kill Bandera loyalists in western Ukraine for fear that they would rise against German rule, though this order was eventually revoked.
The following year Lebed would become the leader of the underground terror wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which continued in function until 1956.
Image to the left: Stefan Bandera. Image to the right: Mykola Lebed
Eastern Ukrainians later claimed that Mykola Lebed as leader of the OUN-B, took over the UPA by assassinating the original Ukrainian leaders. (4)
The OUN counted among its enemies those that had denied Ukrainian independence (including Poles and Soviets), those in the Ukraine who had failed to assimilate (Jews) and at times when it suited them the Germans. They also regarded the Jews as the primary support and “spreaders” of Bolshevism.
Breitman and Goda write (5):
“When the war turned against the Germans in early 1943, leaders of Bandera’s group believed that the Soviets and Germans would exhaust each other, leaving an independent Ukraine as in 1918. Lebed proposed in April to ‘cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918. Ukrainians serving as auxiliary policemen for the Germans now joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)… On a single day, July 11th, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing… 10,000 Poles…The Banderists and UPA also resumed cooperation with the Germans.” [emphasis added]
This was all done under the command of Mykola Lebed.
By 1943, aware that their situation was becoming increasingly insecure, the OUN tried to re-centralise their forces. However, infighting occurred between the OUN-B against the OUN-M and the UPA unit of Taras Bulba-Borovets (of the exiled Ukrainian People’s Republic) who in a letter accused the OUN-B of among other things: banditry, of wanting to establish a one-party state, and of fighting not for the people but in order to rule the people.
In their struggle for dominance in Volhynia, the Banderists (OUN-B) would kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians for any link to the networks of Bulba-Borovets or Melnyk (OUN-M). (6)
By September 1944 German Army officers in northern Ukraine told their superiors in Foreign Armies East that the UPA was a “natural ally of Germany” and “a valuable aid for the German High Command,” and Himmler himself authorized intensified contacts with UPA. (7)
Norman J.W. Goda writes (8):
“Though UPA propaganda emphasized that organization’s independence from the Germans, the UPA also ordered some young Ukrainians to volunteer for the Ukrainian SS Division “Galicia,” and the rest to fight by guerilla methods. Lebed still hoped for recognition from the Germans.” [emphasis added]
The SS Galicia Division existed from April 1943 to April 15th, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7th, 1945.
In September 1944, the Germans released Bandera and Stetsko from Sachsenhausen.
The Ukrainian Nationalist Movement Post-WWII: Bought and Paid for by the CIA and served à la Lebed
“[Lebed] is a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans” (9)
– 1947 Report by The U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC)
In July 1944 Mykola Lebed helped form the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council (UHVR), which would claim to represent the Ukrainian nation and served as an underground government in the Carpathian mountains, in opposition to the Ukrainian SSR. The dominant political party in UHVR was the Bandera group and the UPA, which from that point on served as the army of UHVR and continued to fight the Soviets until 1956.
A feud erupted in 1947 between Bandera and Stetsko on one side for an independent Ukraine under a single party led by Bandera himself vs. Lebed and Father Ivan Hrynioch (chief of the UHVR Political Section) who were against Bandera being head of state.
At an August 1948 Congress of the OUN Foreign Section, Bandera (who still controlled 80% of the UHVR) expelled the Hrynioch-Lebed group. He claimed exclusive authority on the Ukrainian national movement and continued terror tactics against anti-Banderist Ukrainian leaders in Western Europe and maneuvered for control of Ukrainian émigré organizations. (10) However, Lebed who had become close with the Americans at that point was recognized, along with Hrynioch as the official UHVR representation abroad.
With the war lost, Lebed adopted a strategy similar to that of Reinhard Gehlen – he contacted the Allies after escaping Rome in 1945 with a trove of names and contacts of anti-Soviets located in western Ukraine and in displaced persons camps in Germany. This made him attractive to the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) despite their above admission in their 1947 report.
In late 1947, Lebed who it was feared would be assassinated by the Soviets in Rome, was smuggled along with his family by the CIC to Munich, Germany in December 1947 for his safety.
Norman J.W. Goda writes (11):
“By late 1947, Lebed had thoroughly sanitized his prewar and wartime activities for American consumption. In his own rendition, he had been a victim of the Poles, the Soviets, and the Germans – he would carry the Gestapo “wanted” poster for the rest of his life to prove his anti-Nazi credentials…He also published a 126-page booklet on the UPA, which chronicled the heroic struggle of Ukrainians against both Nazis and Bolsheviks, while calling for an independent, greater Ukraine that would represent the human ideals of free speech and free faith. The UPA, according to the booklet, never collaborated with the Nazis, nor is there any mention of the slaughter of Galician Jews or Poles in the book. The CIC considered the booklet to be the ‘complete background on the subject.’ The CIC overlooked the fact that under its own watch an OUN Congress held in September 1947 had split, thanks to Lebed’s criticism of the creeping democratization of the OUN. This was overlooked by the CIA which began using Lebed extensively in 1948…In June 1949…the CIA smuggled him [Lebed] into the United States with his wife and daughter under the legal cover of the Displaced Persons Act.” [emphasis added]
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began investigating Lebed and in March 1950 reported to Washington that numerous Ukrainian informants spoke of Lebed’s leading role among the “Bandera terrorists” and that during the war the Bandersists were trained and armed by the Gestapo and responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish [sic]…In all these actions, Lebed was one of the most important leaders.” (12)
In 1951, top INS officials informed the CIA of its findings along with the comment that Lebed would likely face deportation. The CIA responded on October 3, 1951, that all of the charges were false and that the Gestapo “wanted” poster of Lebed proved that he “fought with equal zeal against the Nazis and Bolsheviks.” (13)
INS officials as a result suspended the investigation on Lebed.
In February 1952, the CIA pressed the INS to grant Lebed re-entry papers so that he could leave and re-enter the United States at will. Argyle Mackey, Commissioner of the INS, refused to grant this.
On May 5, 1952, Allen Dulles, then Assistant Director of the CIA wrote a letter to Mackey stating (14):
“In connection with future Agency operations of the first importance, it is urgently necessary that subject [Lebed] be able to travel in Western Europe. Before [he] undertakes such travel, however, this Agency must…assure his re-entry into the United States without investigation or incident which would attract undue attention to his activities.”
Above image is the original document of the Dulles letter to Mackey on behalf of Mykola Lebed.
What was in West Germany? General Reinhard Gehlen, former chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence, who had been conveniently allowed to re-enter West Germany to establish his Gehlen Organisation which would later form the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany) in 1956 .
Dulles also wanted Lebed’s legal status changed to that of “permanent resident,” under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949. The INS never investigated further after Dulles’ letter and Lebed became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 1957.
Bandera would also be stationed in West Germany with his family after the war, where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations as well as with British Intelligence. (15) At this point Bandera had become too much of a liability and there were multiple attempts, by both the Americans and British starting in 1953, to get Bandera to step down and for Lebed to represent “the entire Ukrainian liberation movement in the homeland.” Bandera refused and went rogue.
It is said that Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by a KGB agent in Munich, however, one cannot help but note that it was excellent timing and extremely beneficial for the Americans that Bandera was taken out when he was, considering what they had planned for Ukraine’s future…
Among the declassified records are that of Hoover’s FBI, who had a small trove of captured German General Staff documents from 1943 and 1944, which revealed German appreciation of the UPA’s work while mentioning Lebed by name. (16) It appears this was never shared with any agency or institution, other than the CIA, despite requests from the INS during their investigation of Lebed.
Interestingly, Goda writes (17):
“The full extent of his [Lebed’s] activities as ‘Foreign Minister’ [of the UHVR] may never become known, but FBI surveillance of him gives some idea. Partly, Lebed lectured at prestigious universities such as Yale on such topics as biological warfare used by the Soviet government (sic) in the Ukraine.” [emphasis added]
The following is an indication as to what Dulles may have been referring to as the urgent need for Lebed’s re-entry into Western Europe.
Breitman and Goda write (18):
“By 1947 some 250,000 Ukrainians were living…in Germany, Austria, and Italy, many of them OUN activists or sympathizers. After 1947 UPA fighters began crossing into the U.S. zone, having reached the border on foot through Czechoslovakia.”
However, Lebed was not only urgently needed in Europe, but also within the United States. Once in the United States, Lebed was selected as the CIA’s chief contact/advisor for AERODYNAMIC.
Breitman and Goda write (19):
“AERODYNAMIC’s first phase involved infiltration into Ukraine and then exfiltration of CIA-trained Ukrainian agents. By January 1950 the CIA’s arm for the collection of secret intelligence (Office of Special Operations, OSO) and its arm for covert operations (Office of Policy Coordination, OPC) participated [author’s note: the Allen Dulles rogue faction of the CIA]…Washington was especially pleased with the high level of UPA training in the Ukraine and its potential for further guerilla actions, and with ‘the extraordinary news that…active resistance to the Soviet regime was spreading steadily eastward, out of the former Polish, Greek Catholic provinces… [However] By 1954 Lebed’s group lost all contact with UHVR. By that time the Soviets subdued both the UHVR and UPA, and the CIA ended the aggressive phase of AERODYNAMIC.
Beginning in 1953 AERODYNAMIC began to operate through a Ukrainian study group under Lebed’s leadership in New York under CIA auspices, which collected Ukrainian literature and history and produced Ukrainian nationalist newspapers, bulletins, radio programming, and books for distribution in the Ukraine. In 1956 this group was formally incorporated as the non-profit Prolog Research and Publishing Association. It allowed the CIA to funnel funds as ostensible private donations without taxable footprints. To avoid nosey New York State authorities, the CIA turned Prolog into a for-profit enterprise called Prolog Research Corporation, which ostensibly received private contracts. Under Hrinioch [Hrynioch], Prolog maintained a Munich office named the Ukrainische Geseelschaft fur Auslandsstudein, EV. Most publications were created here.
Prolog recruited and paid Ukrainian émigré writers who were generally unaware that they worked in a CIA-controlled operation. Only the six top members of the ZP/UHVR were witting agents. Beginning in 1955, leaflets were dropped over Ukraine by air[,] and radio broadcasts titled Nova Ukraina were aired in Athens for Ukrainian consumption. These activities gave way to systematic mailing campaigns to Ukraine through Ukrainian contacts in Poland and émigré contacts in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain, Sweden, and elsewhere. The newspaper Suchasna Ukrainia (Ukraine Today), information bulletins, a Ukrainian language journal for intellectuals called Suchasnist (The Present), and other publications were sent to libraries, cultural institutions, administrative offices and private individuals in Ukraine. These activities encouraged Ukrainian nationalism…” [emphasis added]
The CIA bought and paid for a brand of Ukrainian Nationalism à la Lebed. One of the most horrifying butchers of OUN/UPA was given reign to shape the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people around their nationalist identity, an identity as defined by the OUN. It also shaped historical and cultural interpretation such as to further romanticise the concept of the great Ukrainian race of Volodomyr the Great, encouraging a further sense of superiority and further divide between themselves and Belarussians and Russians.
One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and…there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (20)
Breitman and Goda continue:
“…Prolog [also] influenced [the next] Ukrainian generation…Prolog had become in the words of one senior CIA official, the sole ‘vehicle for CIA’s operations directed at the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and [its] forty million Ukrainian citizens.’
Lebed overtly distanced himself and the Ukrainian nationalist movement from the overt anti-Semitism of his Banderist days…More to protect the name of Ukrainian nationalism, he publicly condemned the ‘provocative libel’ and ‘slanderous statements’ against Jews, adding in a particularly forgetful note that, ‘the Ukrainian people…are opposed to all and any preaching of hatred for other people.’…Former Banderists…now attacked the Soviets for anti-Semitism rather than with it.
Lebed retired in 1975 but remained an adviser and consultant to Prolog and the ZP/UHVR…In the 1980s AERODYNAMIC’s name was changed to QRDYNAMIC and in the 1980s PDDYNAMIC and then QRPLUMB. In 1977 President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski helped to expand the program owing to what he called its ‘impressive dividends’ and the ‘impact on specific audiences in the target area.’ In the 1980s Prolog expanded its operation to reach other Soviet nationalities,and in a supreme irony, these included dissident Soviet Jews. With the USSR teetering on the brink of collapse in 1990, QRPLUMB was terminated with a final payout of $1.75 million. Prolog would continue its activities, but it was on its own financially.
In June 1985 the General Accounting Office mentioned Lebed’s name in a public report on Nazis and collaborators who settled in the United States with help from U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Department of Justice began investigating Lebed that year. The CIA worried that public scrutiny of Lebed would compromise QRPLUMB and that failure to protect Lebed would trigger outrage in the Ukrainian émigré community. It thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed.” [emphasis added]
Mykola Lebed died in 1998 under the protection of the CIA in New Jersey at the age of 89. His papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.
And there you have it, the true story of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement in its form today, bought and paid for by the CIA. Thus, it is no coincidence that the OUN ideology is inextricable from the western Ukrainian nationalist identity today, nor that several neo-Nazi groups have formed since 1991 (since Ukraine’s independence from the USSR) who all view the OUN and Stepan Bandera as the Father of their movement.
[Shortly to follow, Part 3 will discuss NATO and the Gehlen Organization and how this ties into the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and neo-Nazism in Ukraine today.]
(2) Ibid. pg. 249 (3) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 74 (4) Ibid. pg. 74 (5) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 75-76 (6) Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 164 (8) Ibid pg. 250 (9) Ibid pg. 251 (10) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 78 (12) Ibid. pg. 252 (13) Ibid. pg. 252 (14) Ibid. pg. 253 (15) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 81 (17) Ibid. pg 254 (18) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 76 (19) Ibid. pg 87 (20) Ibid. pg. 8
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
After a long period of trying diplomacy to achieve a just peace with the US bloc, the compulsive World Hegemon, which, for no reason except its perennial impulse to dominate any competing sovereign nations like Russia, Moscow has finally accepted the reality that a full-blown war between the USA/NATO and the emerging Eurasian bloc, Russia, China, Iran, etc., is now inevitable. It is therefore making serious preparations for a war that (barring a nuclear exchange) may go on for generations. Contrary to constant Western propaganda, Russia does not wish and has never wished to invade and conquer Western Europe. As the largest country on Earth it scarcely needs to grab more territory. Its needs are defensive and strategic. And wholly justifiable. It is basically the Anglo-Americans that have meddled in Russian affairs and maneuvered for at least a century to destroy Russia as an independent world power. Now they are willing to sacrifice even their European vassals to attain that vile goal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Garland Nixon is a nationally known geopolitical commentator.
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