Gordon M. Hahn — Saving Maidan Ukraine From Itself: Mukachevo’s Implications

On Saturday, Ukraine’s neofascist Right Sector (Praviy Sektor or PS) militia movement attacked police in the western, Transcarpathian village of Mukachevo. Taking place far from the Donbass front, this was another case of the PS marauding across Ukraine’s countryside trying to raise money in order to boost its hopes of building a totalitarian, xenophobic, and exclusivist greater Ukraine; one ‘superior to Europe’ and antagonistic towards Russia. In particular, PS was involved in a settling of scores between two Transcarpatian criminal ‘authorities’ – an effort surely undertaken in order to help finance its recruiting, propaganda, political, and military efforts. In the battle that ensued – with PS using machine guns and a grenade launcher – several police and several civilians were killed and wounded, with up to 14 casualties, according to some reports. Security forces flooded in but instead of attacking and arresting the PS fighters, negotiations ensued; some of them involving directly or indirectly Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko himself and his Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, who implemented the policy of forming volunteer battalions to include a large component of neofascists, given their ‘patriotic enthusiasm.’ The PS continues to refuse to disarm and convened demonstrations in Kiev at the presidential administration and some ten provincial capitols, and other neofascist groups and their battalions are backing PS.

Even the recently fired head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, the Security Service of Ukraine or SBU, Valentin Nalyvaichenko, backed PS against the Porosehnko-led factions of the Maidan regime (http://anons.uz.ua/news/politics/21855-valentin-nalivaychenko-podderzhal-rebyat-iz-pravogo-sektora-zakarpatya.html). For in post-Orange Revolution Ukraine, ‘patriotism,’ which often morphs into ultra-natioalism and neo-fascism, trumps everything – from criminality to rule of law to democratic procedure.

It is now clear that the Maidan regime’s policy of allowing PS and like-minded elements to enter the corridors of power, the halls of parliament, and staffs of the army and National Guard and arming tens of neofascist-dominated battalions to the teeth in order to avoid negotiating with the Donbass rebels has been proved a catastrophic failure.
Ukraine is now faced with even greater political instability than before.…

Playing with fire, or running with scissors?

And another Nuland smackdown.

I would also suggest to those focused exclusively on expanding American power, especially when it comes at Russia’s expense – to people like Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland – that they resign and repent before the ‘mothers, children, and grandmothers’ of ‘the Maidan’ – where, like in the rest of Ukraine, in her incompetent view, neo-fascists have never been.

Russian and Eurasian Politics
Saving Maidan Ukraine From Itself: Mukachevo’s Implications
Gordon M. Hahn | Analyst and Advisory Board Member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation (Chicago), Adjunct Professor, Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey (California), coordinator of Russian Archives Research Projects at the Hoover Institution, and Analyst and Consultant for Russia – Other Points of View