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Big Guns (Truth on UNA-UNSO)
UNA-UNSO ^ | ???

Posted on 12/25/2004 7:02:10 PM PST by jb6

 


Big Guns


There's a post-Soviet phrase hailing the inventor of the ak-47: "God merely created man; equality was made possible thanks to General Kalashnikov." I recalled this as I was sitting in the office of deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Nationalist Assembly (UNA). As he spoke, he absentmindedly drew machine guns on a piece of paper. He also sketched some bows and arrows and gave me copies of his organization's publications, which contained manual-like descriptions of various guns and tips on how to clean them. Electoral posters in his office were not unlike Hitlerjugend propaganda. One read: "power, order and prosperity." Below the slogan was a photograph of an idealized Ukrainian family--a hard-eyed father in black uniform, a mother in after- work-commissar hairdo. And below the photo was more text, reminding voters that "our people are used to living in a great state. We will make Ukraine great again, so people won't have to change their habits."

I first became acquainted with UNA and its sister organization, the Ukrainian Nationalist Self-Defense Organization (UNSO), a few days before the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in March. I was having a leisurely vodka with some friends in Kiev when a strange campaign ad came on TV It was for UNA-UNSO, and it showed a lot of war scenes, shooting, tanks, burning houses, people brandishing crucifixes, Nazi- style salutes. The ad was so simplistic and brutal that I thought it must be propaganda against something. But against what? War? Fascism? Before I could make up my mind, a vaguely military song welled up: "Let the beastly fights rage, because it is better to die as a wolf than to live as a dog. I won't be let into paradise, but I know that in hell there is UNA-UNSO." Suddenly, I understood the spot. It wasn't against anything. It was for this stuff. This is what the group's supporters liked.

Three UNA-UNSO candidates were elected to the Ukrainian parliament in March. The group, which claims to have 10, 000 members, rallied votes by marching through Lviv and other towns in western Ukraine wearing military fatigues and black berets.

The UNA-UNSO headquarters occupy four small rooms in the cellar of a house just off the main square in Kiev. When I went to meet their leader, I was led to a small office by a young man with crew cut, military jacket, jeans and sneakers. Crammed into the room was a huge portrait of Stepan Bandera, the legendary founder of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization, which fought Stalin's and Hitler's armies in the woods of western Ukraine. There was also a computer, a map of Georgia and a portrait of Fidel Castro; on the shelves were a few pairs of black military boots and several topographical maps. In the bathroom--which I inspected before I left--the one piece of graffiti read: "Where Muscovites Belong." It was accompanied with an arrow pointing to the hole-in-the-floor toilet.

Leader of organisation, thirty-and-something years old, handsome, was in civilian clothes. Another man who accompanied him, but refused to identify himself, wore a camouflage uniform and a red-and-black armband with a stylized cross and the letters UNSO. Leader railed against a lot of things, but he complained most vociferously about the article in the Criminal Code of Ukraine (inherited from the USSR) that forbids participation in paramilitary groups. Members of UNA-UNSO cannot bear arms, at least within the borders of Ukraine.

And yet here he was, sitting in his Kiev office and telling me about his clearly paramilitary organization, about the volunteers UNA-UNSO trains in defiance of a government ban and about the group's various missions: to Abkhazia to fight on the Georgian side against the Russian-inspired separatists; to Moldova to fight against the pro-Romanian majority; to Yugoslavia to fight for the Serbs against the Bosnians.

Recently, the group sent volunteers to Crimea. "Not to fight--no, not yet," a visibly influential UNA-UNSO member, explained to me. "Just to gather information. You know, intelligence work." Dubbed "active recreation" groups, the volunteers "propagate the ideas of Ukrainian statehood and nationalism in the peninsula." These "active holiday-makers" are motivated out of the simple desire "to protect the interests of the Ukrainians residing in the Crimea."

The goals of UNA-UNSO, according to its leaders, are to overthrow the current Ukrainian government, because it is anti-national; to fight the mafia, because it is criminal; to fight homosexuals, because they are an aberration of nature; to fight the Jews, because they own all the banks and media. They want revolutionary masses to take power in Ukraine. Only the "force factor" can save the nation. He is sure that there will be war in Kiev soon, patriots on one side, "the sell-out power structure" on the other. If Russia attacks any part of Ukraine, UNA- UNSO's leaders assured me, there will be terrorist acts in Moscow. The IRA, the Kurdish resistance movement, the Afghan Mujahedin, the Cuban revolutionaries are all role models.

How dangerous is all that? Not very dangerous yet, but it could be. In June, a UNA-UNSO member of Parliament, Oleh Vitovych, called on Ukraine to halt the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the country. The motion was backed by 141 of the body's 450 deputies. Interestingly, the recently elected president, Leonid Kuchma, has similar views; perhaps it is because his last job outside politics was as director of Yuzhmash, the biggest missile factory in the former Soviet Union.

Kuchma was elected with 54 percent of the nation's overall vote, but his opponent, Leonid Kravchuk, who claimed he was the true guardian of Ukraine's independence, got 94 percent of the ballots in Lviv; eleven other western regions strongly supported him, too. Voters in those areas who find themselves with a president whom they do not back may consider UNA-UNSO as a repository of their resentment. Meanwhile, in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, where Kuchma got between 80 percent and 90 percent of the votes, there are strong pro-Russian sentiments. In the coal-mining Donbass region, voters pronounced themselves in favor of closer links with Russia by a margin of ten to one.

Divisions like those are the stuff nationalist dreams are made of.

Magazine: New Republic



© ÓÍÀ-ÓÍÑÎ. Ïåðåäðóê ìàòåðiàëiâ ìîæëèâèé ëèøå ç ïîñèëàííÿì íà http://www.una-unso.org!



TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: facists; nazi; putin; ukraine; unso; yuschenko
Freed UNA-UNSO Member Andry Kosenko Has Plans to Fight for Liberation of His Comrades


Andry Kosenko with Yulia Tymoshenko When UNA-UNSO radical nationalist party member Andry Kosenko, indicted for allegedly causing mass public disorder on March 9, 2001, was released from police custody he vowed to do everything to liberate his comrades who are still kept in prison.

Andry Kosenko is the first from a group of protesters jailed after March 9, 2001 clashes with police to be freed from prison with a ban on travelling. In December 2002, a court sentenced the group of 14 UNA-UNSO members to terms in prison ranging from 2 to 5 years. Kosenko got 2 years, of which a larger part he spent in jail awaiting trial.

Kosenko, 23, says he has far-reaching plans. His first priority is to help free his comrades from prison. Says Kosenko: "If more protests come, I will eagerly join them, because my buddies are imprisoned, and I must do everything to free them. I will personally take part in protests, but I am not going to fall for provocations set up by the regime to compromise protesters."

Incidentally, prosecution submitted 18 video tapes as evidence at the trial of UNA-UNSO members, saying they record public order violations by the radicals during which 71 policemen were supposedly physically assaulted.

Soon, other radicals are to be released. Three more UNA-UNSO members must be freed late May, their defense lawyer Yevhen Nykolenko says, with one to be released early June. However, their release hinges on how the court interprets the law under which the court sentence, once appealed against, is considered invalid. Since the case is tried by an appellate court, for this reason the protesters can remain in custody, says Yevhen Nykolenko. "The case can be covered by a number of legislative acts, and, if interpreted the way we want it, the boys must be released because the appellate court cannot sentence them to longer than the original terms. On the other hand, however, the sentence has been appealed against and, prior to its consideration by an appellate court, the sentence is considered invalid. You have also take into account that the boys have already spent part of their terms in jail during the investigation. The situation is pretty knotty and unregulated directly by the Ukrainian law. But, based on logic, a person should not spend more time in confinement than the term passed by a court."

Meanwhile, Andry Kosenko is greatly worried by the increasingly deteriorating health of his comrades still in custody.

1 posted on 12/25/2004 7:02:12 PM PST by jb6
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To: Destro; A. Pole; MarMema; GarySpFc; FairOpinion; eluminate; OldCorps; YoungCorps; FormerLib; ...
Here's another one of their jewels.

 

Our place in the crusade of Europe


What is symbol of Europe - warrior in church, monk on horseback?
European state is love to way and iron, aversion to soft and pink.

Harmony is aim of the East. Sense of Europe is spiritual breakthrough. Its method is demolition of the order of things, disturbance of existing harmony, permanent revolution. Its state is war. Being European means being in state of sacred war.

Crusade for cross or cross for crusade? If you choose, than you aren’t European.

Interaction of cultures is conducted through war of worlds. Values of hostile worlds should be taken as spoils. We’ll paint icons ourselves.

Culturological event gets true, when it becomes tradition and method, when it gets defeated or reconquered.

Christianity won over antiquity and antiquity will stay for us truth in tradition forever. Nitzsche won over Christianity, but thousandth generation after us will visit church every Sunday. Enemies’ scalps are the best treasures of the winners. There is no “The Antichrist” without Bible. The Scriptures are true in the European tradition. Spiritual breakthrough is essence of Europe. It can be conducted either through struggle with affirmed order of things or through struggle with order, covetous to be affirmed, that’s either through being of spirit in state of war or through war in general.

So, final of current war is reason and premise for the next one.

Ongoing war between spirit and belly concerns all facets of existence, is total and never ends. As in the life of nations, as in the life of person.

Poverty and fear disturb masses, poverty and fear subdue them to leadership.

Prosperity and security spoil lofty ideas, prosperity and security enable to get beyond the struggle with poverty and fear.

We have too much soft and pink now. Experience of Europe proves, that nevertheless too good is a little bit worse, than too bad. True happiness is always hard and cold and resembles sword.

It’s double-sharpened and is breakthrough like slash of whip and being in it is also short and harsh.

Wars for faith now are supposed to be barbarism, not feat. Europe already doesn’t understand hatred and love, as intensive as hatred. Europe stops sensing contradictions. Europe adjusts non-defeated worlds.

The point isn’t in genesis of particular idea. The point lies in manner of being. Associative world and associative range, created and won by Europe during its three thousand years is under the threat. It’s replaced now by something very short and very one-dimensional. If the East won culturologically, if the World went through associative well of the East, we would be pushed back to situation having existed millennia ago. Because this movement and progress will be authentic in the Eastern tradition. The East can achieve subtlety and top in this progress, but we will be culturological province.

There are hostile worlds, anyway. The Earth is too small in order not to be disturbed by collisions between them. Those not wishing to charge will wear yoke. And it’s true - only those, ready to risk, to make hyper-efforts and sacrifice, are able to rule. Islamic East is ready for it, Far East likes it, Moscow East is able to it.

Three Easts in front of us and meanness in rear.

Soon threat will arise from Latin America and Africa. They were westernized so intensively.

Europe is getting into the severest sin - second-rateness. It was caused by decline of the old European elite, substitute of which - new national elites - were born in the World War I and perished in the World War II.

Are the rest of nations ready to new crusade in order to reconquer world leadership for Europe? Vanguard nation should be found. There is country on the border of the Continent, that doesn’t possess developed culture or economics, doesn’t have statehood and only is shaping as nation. It has only millennial tradition of opposition against the East, tradition of war against internal and external world in conditions of hopelessness, tradition of breakthrough and intensive nostalgia.

This is Ukraine - nation of great possibilities, none of which were realized. Nation of precursors. We had so many of them that it’s quite possible to wait for the Savior soon.

Christianity must deny leanness and boredom, accepted for the last two centuries. We need struggling church. We need Rome able to bless gonfalons for crusade.

There is church in Europe, which right now left catacombs, that’s according to logic of development reachs the state, when it’s necessary to go to crusade. This is Ukrainian church.

Ukrainian nationalism should realize own mission. Ukraine must fulfill it.

© ÓÍÀ-ÓÍÑÎ. Ïåðåäðóê ìàòåðiàëiâ ìîæëèâèé ëèøå ç ïîñèëàííÿì íà http://www.una-unso.org!

2 posted on 12/25/2004 7:09:10 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6
So they not only copied the German's ideas they copied Mr. Colt's phrase.

There's a post-Soviet phrase hailing the inventor of the ak-47: "God merely created man; equality was made possible thanks to General Kalashnikov."

3 posted on 12/25/2004 7:09:31 PM PST by Bogey78O ("Kill The Tartars on the night of the 15th of the 8th moon")
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To: jb6
United Press International Bottom of the article

Ukraine's extreme right-wing nationalist political group, the National Ukrainian Assembly-Ukrainian People for Unity, or UNA-UNSO, and its newspaper Za Vilny Ykrainy have become notorious for their anti-Russian and anti-Semitic views since the movement's founding in 1991 following the merger of various nationalist groups. UNA-UNSO leaders, who describe their party as "fascist," maintain that Ukraine has "no time for such foolish things as democracy" and admire the Irish Republican Army. UNA-UNSO has now issued "An appeal to Ukrainian troops in Iraq." The appeal reads, "Based upon 400-years experience of the national liberation movement of Ukrainian people, we appeal to the Ukrainian military contingent in Iraq to turn your bayonets against U.S. troops and join the rebels. Ukraine and progressive mankind will be proud of you!"

4 posted on 12/25/2004 7:14:00 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: Bogey78O

Read my next post from them. It's a doozy. Now remember, they won 3 seats in the Rada (Parliment) riding on Yushchenko's Our Ukraine's tail. They are also bosom buddies with Yulia Tomoschenko, who is Yushchenko's second and future VP. Lovely bunch.


5 posted on 12/25/2004 7:15:34 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6
Radio Free Europe

UKRAINIAN RADICAL NATIONALISTS SEE ATTACKS ON U.S. AS 'MORAL SATISFACTION.' While most Ukrainian parties and politicians condemned the 11 September terrorist attacks on the U.S., the radical nationalist Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO) said these attack are a source of "moral satisfaction" for "millions." According to the UNA-UNSO, the attacks can be seen as revenge for the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan and air raids on Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Yugoslavia. "The boomerang of history has begun to come back," Interfax quoted from a UNA-UNSO statement. The UNA-UNSO noted that any global destabilization in the wake of the attacks will add to Ukraine's power in the future. JM

6 posted on 12/25/2004 7:23:03 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6; Cicero
And here it is from their own website.

UNA-UNSO appeal to Ukrainian troops in Iraq

Basing upon 400-years experience of national liberation movement of Ukrainian people we appeal to Ukrainian military contingent in Iraq to turn your bayonets against USA troops and join the rebels. Ukraine and progessive mankind will be proud of you!"

7 posted on 12/25/2004 7:25:06 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6

They should remember what happened the last time a bunch of f**king Nazis turned their bayonets against American soldiers!


8 posted on 12/25/2004 8:07:46 PM PST by Frank_2001
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To: jb6

Where are the usual Russian haters?


9 posted on 12/25/2004 8:22:04 PM PST by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber)
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To: jb6; FreeReign; FairOpinion; cicero's_son; ukie
we appeal to Ukrainian military contingent in Iraq to turn your bayonets against USA troops and join the rebels. Ukraine and progessive mankind will be proud of you!"

Ah yes the voices of conservatism. Not.

And where are those pesky russophobes when threads like this are posted, anyway?

10 posted on 12/25/2004 8:39:02 PM PST by MarMema
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To: GarySpFc

crickets chirping.....


11 posted on 12/25/2004 8:39:25 PM PST by MarMema
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To: jb6

This is, of course, exactly what we have known all along.
May the truth come to rest where it is most needed, PING!


12 posted on 12/25/2004 8:40:14 PM PST by MarMema
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To: MarMema
Darn well said. When the light of day shines the creatures of the night and "progressiveness" scurry for cover.

You shall know them by the fruits they bare.

13 posted on 12/25/2004 9:34:17 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: Frank_2001

Not only exactly, but you notice the typical "progressive" BS, where they call on someone else to die for their cause while they sit happily at home and risk nothing. If they are so strong in their beliefs, why aren't they shooting at US troops and dieing?


14 posted on 12/25/2004 9:39:03 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6
UNA-UNSO To Initiate Creation of Ukraine-Chechnya Friendship Society

Ukraine’s radical nationalist organization, UNA-UNSO, will propose creating a Ukraine-Chechnya friendship society to foster links with the rebellious republic, leader of the UNA-UNSO and Verkhovna Rada deputy Andry Shkil announced. "Chechnya will soon become an independent state, and Ukraine must develop cooperation with it," he said. He said that the society’s main objective is to strengthen friendship between the Ukrainian and Chechen peoples. UNA-UNSO has also began work on setting up a Ukrainian-Chechen information center. The center will include a Ukrainian version of the kavkaz.org website, Shkil reiterated. Another Ukrainian site will host positive information on Chechnya. "The war in Chechnya is receiving too much ink. We are out to show the positives," he stressed.

15 posted on 12/25/2004 9:50:57 PM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6

hmm most of it is radical aspirations to guide attention to themselves. If you read history about cossacks you will notice this sort of thing going in a cycle and tendencies that repeat themselves. Ergo cossacks on the eastern side were much less hostile to russia and toward the later years stoped looking at it as an enemy and an ideological schism split ukraine along the dniepr.


16 posted on 12/25/2004 11:38:39 PM PST by eluminate
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To: jb6
Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting Germany, has agreed on the participation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union in settling the Chechen conflict.

After talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the city of Hamburg, Putin said Moscow had carefully analyzed Germany’s proposals on its participation in settling the conflict. “We accept these proposals,” he said. - Russia Journal

17 posted on 12/26/2004 2:51:20 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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