A viral video on Facebook manipulatively presents claims about the “Nazis” in Ukraine and the role of the American CIA. The video was taken from the Infowars website, known for spreading various conspiracy theories.
On March 5, 2022, the Facebook page of the Russian state media Sputnik published a four-minute video along with the following description:
A short adaptation of Oliver Stone: Ukraine of fire
Sputnik publishes a short review of the documentary film “Ukraine of Fire” from 2016, whose producer is Stone.
The video blames the United States and the CIA for the Ukrainian war, and makes many inaccurate claims about the protests and the removal of the government in that country in 2014. It is stated that extremist Ukrainian groups were created by the CIA with the help of the US State Department.
It is also claimed that the “Maidan revolution”, which took place in Ukraine in 2014, was “set up” by NGOs associated with George Soros and the CIA because then-President Viktor Yanukovych said “no” to the IMF. It is alleged that the violence against peaceful protesters in 2014 was deliberately provoked, and that the “coup” was orchestrated by the US State Department with the support of Joe Biden. The new government reportedly had a “neo-Nazi element” and was responsible for killing Russian-speaking citizens in Donbas.
The video published on the Sputnik Facebook page has been viewed 66,000 times. It was originally published on the Facebook profile of Sasa Jankovic on March 4, and since then, it has been shared by dozens of other Facebook users.
“Conspiracy” sources to help Russian propaganda
The video on the Sputnik Facebook page was originally published on March 2, 2022, on the Banned videos platform, where the footage is published by various “conspiracy” influencers such as Alex Jones and David Icke. The author of the video is Greg Rees, who reports for the Infowars platform. It is an American radical right-wing website that has been promoting various conspiracy theories for years and is owned by renowned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. He promoted various absurd claims, such as that Barack Obama is a demon, that Hillary Clinton runs a human trafficking chain from a pizzeria, and that frogs become gay because of chemicals in the water.
According to Sputnik’s website, the video made by Greg Rees is a short “adaptation” of the 2016 documentary “Ukraine of Fire” by American director Oliver Stone.
Stone is a renowned American director, producer and screenwriter. Apart from successful films, Stone is also known for his sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 2017, he released the documentary series The Putin Interviews, which critics described as “a love letter to Putin”. Stone also asked Putin to be the godfather of his daughter.
The documentary “Ukraine of Fire” has been characterized as Russian propaganda on several occasions (1, 2). In 2019, Stone worked on another documentary, “Revealing Ukraine,” also described as pro-Putin propaganda.
Nazism in Ukraine
The “adaptation” of Stone’s film is subtitled in our language, and the subtitles state:
During World War II, western Ukraine sided with the Nazis. After the war, the CIA helped the Ukrainian Nazis avoid the Nuremberg trials and began cooperating with them in Ukraine. After decades of CIA infiltration, the Ukrainian People’s Movement emerged in 1989 and spawned the extremist groups Svoboda, Trozubac and Desni Sektor. Neo-Nazi groups which are advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Ukraine. Extremist groups were created by the CIA with the support of the US State Department and used by the IMF to bring Ukraine to hell.
It is true that in World War II, there were groups in western Ukraine that collaborated with the Nazis.
Namely, as stated in the article of the Smithsonian magazine from March 4, 2022. Ukraine first gained its modern independence in 1917 with the formation of the People’s Republic of Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, quickly regained control of Ukraine, integrating it into the Soviet Union in 1922. This period of Ukrainian history was marked by repression and genocide. Under the control of the Soviet Union, the so-called The Great Famine, which took the lives of 3.9 million people, or about 13% of the Ukrainian population. This was a direct consequence of the Soviet policy aimed at punishing Ukrainian farmers who fought against Soviet orders to collectivize, it is explained.
According to an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the German invasion of the Soviet Union began in June 1941, and initially, part of the Ukrainian population saw the invasion as an opportunity for liberation from the Soviet Union. However, the illusion of Germans as liberators of Ukraine from the Soviet regime was soon shattered, according to Britannica. The Nazis administratively annexed parts of Ukraine to Poland and placed others under Romanian control. The remaining territory was organized as the Commissariat of the Third Reich, under German control:
In the fall of 1941, mass killings of Jews began and continued until 1944. It is estimated that about 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews died, and over 800,000 were displaced to the east; in Baby Yar (Ukrainian: Babyn Yar), in Kyiv, nearly 34,000 were killed in just the first two days of the massacre in the city. The Nazis were occasionally assisted by auxiliary forces recruited from the local population.
(…)
In the Reich Commissariat, which Erich Koch ruthlessly ran, Ukrainians were destined for slavery. Collective farms, whose dissolution was the great hope of the peasantry, were left intact, the industry was allowed to decay, and cities were deprived of food because all available means were directed to support German war efforts. Approximately 2.2 million people were taken from Ukraine to Germany as slave workers (Ostarbeiter or “Eastern workers”).
The article further explains how, under the brutal regime of the Germans, Ukrainian political activity increasingly turned to underground organizational work and resistance against the Nazis.
At the beginning of 1942, the formation of nationalist partisan units began, which became known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In addition to waging a guerrilla war with the Germans, the Soviet partisans and the UPA reportedly fought against each other.
Finally, in 1943, the Soviet army launched a counter-offensive against the Germans, and by October 1944, the whole of Ukraine was under Soviet control again.
So, it is true that some Ukrainian groups and organizations cooperated with the Germans during the Second World War, as well as that those groups had the support of a part of the Ukrainian people. However, it is manipulative to say that the whole of western Ukraine supported the Nazis, given that many resisted and fought against them.
It is also true that after the Second World War, the CIA cooperated with Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom were close to Nazi ideology, in order to destabilize the Soviet Union. In 1949, the agency tried to support the Ukrainian uprising against the Soviet Union, which ended in failure.
CIA documents with the secret label revealed that after World War II, the US intelligence really protected Ukrainian fascist Mykola Lebed, who was believed to have collaborated with the Nazis, from the trial. Lebed was stationed in New York on a mission to help fight the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
However, there is no evidence that the CIA created ultranationalist groups such as Desni Sektor, Trozubac or Svoboda.
The Ukrainian People’s Movement (also known as Rukh) was founded in 1989, at a time when the Soviet Union still existed. It was vital in the campaign for Ukrainian independence. The main goals of this movement were, among other things, the full achievement of political, religious and human rights and freedoms, the democratization of Soviet society and the Soviet state, and the political and economic sovereignty of Ukraine.
The groups listed in the video were formed later. Svoboda was formed in 1991, Trozubac in 1993, and Desni Sektor in 2013.
The claims in this video, although partially true, currently serve as a means of Russian war propaganda to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a narrative about the alleged need to “denazify” the attacked country.
However, contrary to the claims of Russian officials and propaganda media, historical facts do not reflect the current situation in Ukraine when it comes to Nazism.
It is true that in Ukraine, as in most European countries, there are several radical right-wing groups that promote Nazi ideology, such as the Azov Battalion, Svoboda and C14. However, these groups have no influence in parliament and are not part of the government.
As stated in the article of the website Vox, published on February 24, 2022, the radical right-wing political coalition won only 2% of the vote in the 2019 elections.
Gustav Gessel, a think tank from Berlin, commented on neo-Nazism in Ukraine for the British Guardian newspaper in March this year:
“There are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but they are not in power, just as there are neo-Nazis in Germany, but they are not in power”, Gessel said.
Anti-Semitism, a notorious feature of Nazi ideology, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, is less prevalent in Ukraine than in other Eastern European countries, including Russia. The survey showed that 5% of Ukrainian citizens would not accept Jews as their fellow citizens. This percentage is significantly lower than the percentages in neighboring countries.
According to an article from February 27, published on the website People, there is no evidence to suggest widespread support in the Ukrainian government, military or electorate for extreme right-wing nationalism.
The accusations coming from Russia, according to which Ukraine is led by the Nazi government, are ironic considering the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew and that his family members were killed in the Holocaust.
The Maidan Revolution of 2014
The analyzed video states:
When Yanukovych defeated Yushchenko, who was backed by NATO in the 2010 elections, his government was pressured to sign an agreement on joining the EU by the IMF making an offer that would financially destroy Ukraine and put the country at the mercy of the World Bank. Yanukovych rejected their offer, and in today’s corrupt world, you are not allowed to say no to the IMF.
Viktor Yanukovych was Ukraine’s president from 2010 to 2014. His decision to refuse to sign the Agreement on Accession to the European Union in November 2013 caused a wave of protests across the country. Namely, according to the magazine Our World, the agreement was supposed to open trade and integrate Ukraine with the European Union, and it was related to a loan of 17 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Instead, Yanukovych opted for a $15 billion Russian aid package and a 33% discount on Russian natural gas.
Ukraine and the European Union began negotiations regarding the signing of the Agreement on EU Accession in March 2012. In 2013, Yanukovych demanded that the parliament adopt laws that would facilitate the signing of this agreement.
An article published on the Center for Eastern Studies website states that, before the signing of the Agreement, Russia was exerting tremendous economic pressure on Ukraine. In August 2013, it even imposed an embargo on Ukrainian products, which blocked most Ukrainian exports to Russia for seven days. The embargo is believed to have been a key moment that prompted the Ukrainian government to revise its existing policy when it comes to signing the Agreement.
In an official statement, the Ukrainian government said that the decision not to sign the Agreement was made due to “national security” and the need to improve trade with Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an economic community led by Russia.
So, there is no evidence that Yanukovych refused to sign the EU Accession Treaty solely because of the IMF.
Given that the video implies that Ukraine had a stable economy and that an IMF loan would destroy it financially, it is important to note that in 2013 it was estimated that Ukraine had a 50% chance of not being able to repay its external debt in the next five years.
Further in the video, it is stated:
Funded by Western NGOs linked to George Soros and the CIA, a highly organized color revolution was immediately deployed against Yanukovych. Organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy trained activists and journalists to use FB along with three brand new TV networks created within weeks to recruit people for the protests. This Western campaign was a huge success. The response was huge.
In 2013, half of the population of Ukraine supported the signing of the Agreement on EU Accession.
After it was announced that Ukraine would not sign the Agreement, protests began in Kyiv in November 2013, in which thousands of people took part.
An article published on Vox in September 2014 stated that the primary reason for the protests was Yanukovych’s decision not to sign the agreement, but that the deeper reason for the protest was that many Ukrainians saw Yanukovych as a corrupt and autocratic leader and a puppet of Russia.
“Euromaidan” protests soon became violent. On the night of November 29-30, police forcibly expelled peaceful protesters from Maidan in Kyiv.
The violence escalated in February 2014. In the riots that took place between February 18 and 20 in Kyiv, government forces opened fire on the protesters, which killed almost a hundred people.
Two days later, on February 22, parliament voted to recall Yanukovych, after which he fled to Russia.
The claim that the “Euromaidan” protests were staged by the CIA is unfounded, and the narrative of the alleged coup has been part of Russian propaganda for years. According to the article published on the EU vs DISINFORMATION website, the Euromaidan protests were a real uprising of the Ukrainian people against Yanukovych, who decided not to sign the agreement he had promised for years. The role of nationalist groups was marginal, as shown by the results of the 2014 Ukrainian elections, in which the presidential candidate of the Desni Sektor won only 0.7% of the vote, and the party only 1.8% of the vote in the parliamentary elections.
In addition to being manipulative, this narrative is also contemptuous of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have taken part in civilly organized protests.
Justifying the invasion by using disinformative narratives
Using the material from the documentary, which was described as Kremlin propaganda in 2016, the aim is to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign state.
Raskrinkavanje has previously written about propaganda narratives aimed to justify the invasion in analyzes that you can read below:
https://raskrinkavanje.ba/analiza/ne-postoji-kontraofanziva-rusije-u-ukrajini
https://raskrinkavanje.ba/analiza/ne-rusija-nije-sprijecila-nato-da-pokrene-treci-svjetski-rat-1
Given all the facts, the claims that the CIA and the State Department created extremist groups in Ukraine, and that the CIA organized protests in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014 because Yanukovych rejected the agreement with the EU and did not want to agree to IMF loan, originally published on the profile of Sasa Jankovic are assessed as fake news and a conspiracy theory. We evaluate the transmission of these claims as the distribution of fake news and conspiracy theory.
(Author: Nerma Šehović, Raskrinkavanje.ba)
