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# The Western Left Must Come To Terms With Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Problem
- URL: https://aontachtmedia.ie/the-western-left-must-come-to-terms-with-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem/
- Published: 2026-09-10T10:58:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-10T14:39:36.000Z
- Description: Far from a reaction to Russian intervention in Ukraine, the rise of the far right has been the opposite: the West's use of ethnonationalists as its vanguard in the 2013-14 Maidan coup caused the civil war in the East, and only then drew in Russia.
- Author: Ilya Ulyanov
- Tags: Critical Analysis

## **Introduction** 

*Ilya Ulyanov is a member of PBP based in Dublin. He is originally from eastern Ukraine. He is a communist, an anti-colonial Ukrainian nationalist, a borders-realist, an ethical Kantian and a defender of the Ukrainian people from the Western warmongering liberals. "The article reflects a personal position, unfortunately ..., " he says. Read the second part of this article* [*here*](https://aontachtmedia.ie/the-western-left-must-stop-backing-zelenskys-conscription-machine)*.*

The Ukrainian far-right is qualitatively different from what is considered far-right in the West. It is different, in the worst way possible. . 

The systemic normalization of the far-right carried out in Ukraine over the last 12 years since the Maidan coup of 2014, with State and Western support, has created a situation in which what would be considered far-right in the West will be seen using Ukrainian measures as highly civilized liberals. 

The Western far-right appeals to the decreasing standards of living of Western citizens in circumstances of international economic crisis. 

In Ukraine today, standards of living are extremely low for the majority (minimal wage – 168 euros/month or 2017 euros/year \[1\]), the State budget is maintained by foreign loans and being a Ukrainian citizen is one of the biggest burdens that you can imagine: Ukrainian citizens are denied the basic rights that are taken for granted in the most of the world. Accordingly, our far-right is doomed to be different as well. 

Instead of being connected to standards of living, the Ukrainian far-right is rather connected to standards of dying. Ukraine occupies in the European division of labor the position of the “European Shield”, forcibly sacrificing its own citizens for “European Security” from the so-called “Russian Threat”, that is psychologically threatening the European middle class with the prospect of loss of their living standards. 

According to Ursula Von Der Leyen’s 2022 Twitter post, Ukrainians are ready to die for Europe \[2\]. The reality however, is that almost no one is ready to die for Europe in present-day Ukraine. 

Despite this, people are forced to die, living almost five years under closed borders for all “military age” males and some categories of women, State-controlled media, State repression of critics of the current direction of the country, and 24/7 conscriptions based on income - with draft officers attempting to kidnap anyone who looks like a working- class man directly from the streets (*bussification*). 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/draft.officer.dead.jpeg)

**August 2026.* The body of a draft officer who was reportedly killed during an attempted “bussification” by local residents in Lviv, the capital of Western Ukraine, a city often described as particularly Russophobic and hostile toward Donbas. Recent statements by Ukraine’s Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, have acknowledged widespread corruption in the conscription system. He has estimated that bribes can reach approximately $10,000 to secure release from a draft vehicle after being forcibly taken there, $15,000 to secure release from a draft office, and $50,000–$70,000 for direct assistance in crossing the border illegally, arranged by draft officers. Ukraine’s minimum monthly wage is approximately €168.*

Ukrainians, who are not ready to die, are forcibly sent off to be murdered, by the State violence machine, paid for by Europeans, in which the far-right is integrated and employed by the Ukrainian State and the EU. 

The regime of President-expired Zelensky is unable to rely on the exhausted majority, that is against the idea of the military restoration of Crimea and Donbass to Kiev control - territories in which the people are hostile to Kiev and that were lost as a result of the 2014 Maidan and the following civil war. 

This is especially true if military restoration of Donbass and Crimea to Ukraine control comes to being done at the cost of the extermination of the majority, in a confrontation with a nuclear State with considerably more human resources. Thus, the regime is forced to rely on the privileged and weaponized far-right minority, that polices the rightless majority in exchange for funding, recognition and social advantage. 

## **Far-Right In Ukraine As Shown By Numbers** 

The number of far-right military forces in Ukraine already exceeds the number of the whole British Army. Moreover, two formations with strong far-right ideological components and leadership alone exceed the number of the British Army: the 3rd Army Corps and the 1st Azov Corps of the National Guard. The 1st Corps is under command of Azov brigade leader General Denys Prokopenko and the 3rd Corps is under command of Head of the Azov political and militant movement, General Andriy Biletskiy - formerly known as ‘Andriy the White Leader ’in his Social-Nationalist Assembly organization. A quote from Biletskiy reveals his politics: 

*“The historic mission of our nation in this turning point of the century is to lead the White peoples of the world in a final crusade for their existence, a crusade against Semite-led subhumanity”. \[3\]*

The Army Corps strength in Ukraine is from 40.000 to 80.000 people \[4\]. Thus, two Army Corps for a crusade against subhumanity will be from 80.000 to 160.000 military personnel, depending on staffing (the exact numbers are classified data). The whole British Army is only 75.000 people. 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/levy.azov.jpg)

*2024 Post on X of liberal Zionist warmonger Bernard Henry Levy indicates linear interconnection between anti-human ideologies of liberalism and fascism:*

  
*"With Denys Prokopenko, chief of #Azov, in one of his camps. We first met in #Mariupol in 2020\. He is one of the commanders who, if given the weapons needed, can bring victory to #Ukraine. This was the message I delivered to the US #Congress in Jan’ 24\. @D\_Redis #SlavaUkraini"*

## **Types Of Far-Right: Western Ukrainian Nationalism** 

There are two main streams of Ukrainian far-right. 

The first is **Western Ukrainian chauvinism**. It is connected to Western Ukrainian regional identity. Western Ukraine has a completely different historical experience from all other Ukraine, having been part of Poland and the Austrian empire for centuries and integrated into Ukraine by Stalin as a result of World War 2\. 

The ideology of Western Ukrainian chauvinism is focused mostly on language issues and the glorification of their own World War 22 nazi collaborators, fighting in alliance with Hitler against the majority of Soviet Ukrainians. The de-facto half of the Ukrainian population speaking Russian, their values and their version of history influenced by Soviet internationalism was seen as the main threat to State building since 1991\. 

The logic of Western chauvinists can be summarized as: 

*“We are the true Ukrainians and we must be prioritized on the national level on any issue”.* 

Politically represented by the Svoboda Party, the chauvinists were always unpunishable and loud in the public sphere: 

*“We have about 14% of people who believe that their native language is Russian. This speaks of terrible mutation of their consciousness. This is 5 million Ukrainian degenerates. And they need to be saved... Those who do not speak Ukrainian will definitely be imprisoned” \[5\]* 

This was said in 2010 by one of the Svoboda core members, Lviv resident Irina Farion, later elected as MP. 

She was killed in 2024 by an 18 year old eastern Ukrainian neo-nazi who accused her of being a “*race traitor, spreading the language hate among the Pan White people that are going extinct”*. 

This murder that reflects the level of perversion of socio-political discourse in today’s Ukraine, happened after Iryna Farion’s language conflict with Azov, her public calls to beat kids of eastern Ukrainian refugees in kindergartens of the safe Western Ukraine for using the Russian language, and expressing happiness with the suffering of the Russian-speaking population in the East as a result of the 2022 war - calling the destruction of entire cities “karma”. 

Note that in the last 2001 census, 17,3% of the population (more than 8,3 million) self- identified as Russians. Note that Soviet behavioural models of “following the party line” by incorrect self-reporting to the authorities of their own ethnicity and language (especially in case of the “native language” concept, seen by many as a political loyalty test) has led to a big underestimation of the numbers of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians in all official statistics. 

Due to a different cultural identity in other parts of Ukraine, the imposition of a chauvinist agenda on the national level was always seen in the East as a direct recipe to civil war. 

As a result of the governmental change by Euromaidan in 2014, Western Ukrainian nationalist ideology became the official agenda for the whole of Ukraine, imposed by State measures. 

The Russian language was banned from workplace use and education even in Russian speaking regions (that are located from the Western Ukraine border about the same distance away as Belgium); any Soviet monuments in the whole of Ukraine up to the graves of Soviet World War 2 soldiers (that are ancestors of most Ukrainians) are being demolished; and recognition of Nazi collaborators as national heroes on the State level is already achieved. Evidence of this can be seen in the ongoing 2026 Ukrainian-Polish Andry Melnyk scandal. 

## **Types Of Far-Right: Azov** 

The second stream, rapidly rising since 2014 with State support as a hybrid military and political organization, is the Azov movement of Biletsky. It was originally a marginal ideology from the Ukrainian East and does not have a regional target. It has a social one. 

It initially absorbed subcultures of urban youth, such as neo-nazi Skinheads and football ultras fans, and then targeted youth generally after the post-Maidan far-right expansion into radical street politics. Instead of being focused on language, this stream is directly influenced by political discourses imported from the West and focused on Race and European Civilization, believing Ukraine to be the last stronghold after the fall of the West into decay and weakness after 1945\. 

If Western Ukrainian chauvinists worship Hitler indirectly, through Ukrainian collaborators, these people worship Hitler directly. 

They have their own interpretation of the Hitler Racial Doctrine, in which they disagree with the assertion that Slavs were to be considered as subhumans. In some ways this appeal to race helps them to defend themselves within far-right discourse from Western Ukrainian chauvinism, which literally dehumanizes all Russian- speaking Eastern Ukrainians. 

Biletskiy wrote in his pre-Maidan book, polemizing with language chauvinists: 

*“The example of ancient Iran, an Aryan State that was one of the centres of world civilization, which having retained their language (Farsi) did not preserve their racial type under Arab invasion, and turned into a secondary Muslim country, should be a formidable warning to us.* 

*A reverse example is the story of American Negroes, who having completely lost their language, culture, religion and tradition, having switched to English and tried to adopt the lifestyle of the masters, for some reason did not turn into Englishmen, but instead, with their own animal lifestyle, reproduce their racial nature...* 

*There are no assimilative abilities of the Language, there are only assimilative abilities of the Race. The Ukrainian language is important for us as the best expression of the spirit of the Ukrainian Race. In the Russian-speaking East of Ukraine, in the Ukrainian territories within Russia, we must first of all awaken their racial consciousness, and then they will become language nationalists automatically”. \[6\]* 

Since any other race in Ukraine is almost absent, the White Supremacism of Azov does not have an anti-immigrant focus. The concept of race is linked to personal maximalism and a sense of belonging to something great among the daily experiences of social humiliation in the extremely atomized and economically struggling society that Ukraine became after the 2014 deindustrialization and loss of economic sovereignty to the West. 

It often has an inter-generational component among the working-class kids in the East, with nihilist ideology directed against the failed life prospects of their own “passive Soviet cattle” parents; and the personal ambitions of a new generation in a corrupted country, where work is considered as shame and the State offers no future. 

Aside from Hitlerism, the ideological influences of Azov include the reactionary Italian philosopher Evola who criticized fascism for not being right enough - possessing egalitarian elements of modernity - and was advocating a return into the caste society of the “natural order”. 

Now Azovites frequently use the names of Indian castes to describe present day Ukraine social realities in relation to conscription. They call the working-class sabotaging conscription as slaves and serfs; and they call themselves the aristocracy and military nobility. 

Since 2014 Azov has been targeting youth, focusing on aesthetics and attractive media content. They have built networks of their own social structures from their own publishers and music bands to their own boxing and MMA clubs, which provide radicalized youth with a sense of community neoliberal realities of impoverished Ukraine. Their final goal is to recruit these people into military structures. 

## **Common Features Between Western Ukrainian Far-Right And Azov Far-Right** 

The distinctive feature of both streams of Ukrainian nationalism is a highly exclusionary position, directed against historical experience, identity and the political expectations of most of the Ukrainian population. 

The Ukrainian far-right knows that it has no chance of succeeding without a crisis; therefore, it has deliberately sought to create crises that can elevate it socially, moving it from the margins into the mainstream. Thus, one of the main characteristics of the Ukrainian far right is an accelerationist worldview and a nihilistic political morality—the willingness to sacrifice ordinary, “unconscious” Ukrainians for its own ideological goals. 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/francis-fukuyama-arrived-at-stanford-expressing-gratitude-v0-zlr5xdznse9b1.webp)

Liberal ideologist Fukuyama praises Azov at Standford University in 2023

They believe that the majority is wrong; and that it will be good to get rid of the wrong population, which has eventually happened as Ukraine decreased from 51,6 million in 1991 to approximately 22- 25 million living on Kiev-controlled territories in 2026 (Ukrainian Social Policy Minister estimation) \[7\]. The UN predicts further reduction to 15 million by 2100 \[8\]. 

## **The History of Ukrainian Borders In The 20th Century**

The Official Ukrainian borders are the result of the Soviet era. Being the second-largest country of Europe, Ukraine historically has had many ethnic groups and Russian and Ukrainian speaking parts. 

Ukrainian modern Statehood and State-building started in the 1920s , and was linked to the broader global egalitarian project. 

The new country was united at that time into its second Statehood - since it had a very short independence from Poland in the 17th century - by the Bolsheviks after the bloody period of Civil War in Ukraine. At that time every village used to have its own warlord and wars of everyone against everyone else - and ethnic pogroms were the daily norm. This was also when Ukraine was given its first official borders. 

Over the period of the 1917-1921 Revolution and civil war, different parts of modern Ukraine indicated different political preferences. Mostly rural central Ukraine was more sympathetic to the short-lived petty-bourgeois nationalist governments and peasant warlords, appealing to the traditional way of life. While in the industrial East and South, communists and anarcho-communists were dominating, having created their own revolutionary republics. 

Vladimir Lenin insisted on including the territory of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic into Ukraine, for the sake of strengthening the then rural country with a developed industrial region. Despite the initial opposition of the leadership of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, which saw themselves as part of Soviet Russia due to the predominantly Russian cultural identity of the region, they obeyed the utilitarian Lenin vision. 

The contemporary Western border of Ukraine is the result of World War 2\. The land of Western Ukraine, which has a completely different history and identity from all other Ukraine, having been part of Poland and Austria for centuries, was joined into Ukraine by Stalin. 

## **German Occupation And Collaborators In The 1930s and 1940s**

Western Ukraine is the homeland of Ukrainian Nationalism; and the only place of its historical success prior to 2014 was during World War 2\. 

Collaborating with German intelligence during the 1930s as a subversive force in interwar Poland, units of Ukrainian Nationalists entered Soviet Ukraine in 1941 as part of the German Army and Police. In the historical memory of Soviet Ukrainians, the very word Nationalism was strongly associated with the crimes of nazi servants against the Ukrainian population. This included burning villages which were alleged to be accommodating soviet partisans; and giving assistance in raids by the German authorities, kidnapping the Ukrainian population for slave labor in Germany.

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/shukhevich.webp)

*Deputy commander of the Ukrainian auxiliary police battalion Roman Shukhevych wearing Nazi uniform. In 2007, by decree of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko (who came to power via Maidan), Roman Shukhevych was posthumously awarded the honorary title of "Hero of Ukraine". In 2017,* 
*Vatutin Avenue, named after the Soviet general who liberated Kiev and was killed by nationalists, was renamed in Kiev in honor of Shukhevych. Shukhevych Avenue runs from the Northern Bridge to Ronald Reagan Street (sic!), former Theodore Dreiser Street, illustraiting cultural misery of the* 
*current colonial period.*

During the World War 2 German occupation, Ukraine was divided between the Reichkommissariat Ukraine, composed of Soviet Ukraine; and the District Galizia, the Western Ukrainian composed of former parts of the Austrian Empire. The difference in the administrative division was the result of a different approach to its population according to perception based on Hitler\`s Racial Doctrine. 

The treatment of the population in the Reichkommissariat was ultra-dehumanizing, connected with the belief in the racial inferiority of Soviet Ukrainians due to “Asian-Russian” and “Judeo-Bolshevik” influence. 

In Western Ukraine the Germans acknowledged the“ civilizational impact” of former Austrian rule that contributed to the relative superiority of Western Ukrainians among the other Slavs, which resulted in a much less dehumanizing approach by the occupiers. 

It eventually helped the Western Ukrainian Nationalists to create their own units in elite Waffen-SS troops (SS Galicia). These were responsible, after defeat in their first battle near Lviv, for the genocide of Poles, suppression of the Slovak national uprising and the anti-partisan war in Yugoslavia. 

As a result of the the World War 2 Holocaust carried out by Hitler in collaboration with Western Ukrainian nationalists, the genocide of Poles by Nationalists and the subsequent deportation of the remaining Poles by Stalin, Western Ukraine became an ethnically homogeneous region, having gotten rid of the Jewish and Polish roughly half of pre-war population. 

Due to privileged treatment, the Nazi period is not seen as a time to be ashamed of in the regional memory of Western Ukrainians. Moreover, for some it is seen as a part of the national Renaissance, interrupted by the Soviets. 

In 1954 Khrushev, the former leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party, gifted more than 70% ethnically Russian Crimea from Russia to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic for logistical and administrative reasons to do with the centrally planned economy of the USSR. This was the last contribution to the 1991 official borders. 

To avoid tensions in the artificially created entity of the extremely multiethnic Soviet Ukraine, the unifying internationalist concept of “Soviet people” was promoted, encouraging the people to look towards a bright future, not into the dark past. 

Contemporary Ukrainian independence is intrinsically linked to the failure of the global project and the imposition of the political and economic models of its rivals – capitalism and the bourgeois State. But even after 1991 a lot of people, especially in the South and East, have identified themselves as “Soviet People”. 

In contrast with Yugoslavia, Ukraine was a more culturally unified urban country that seemed to be successfully overcoming divisive ethnic categories by 1991\. The exception was Western Ukraine, where the unifying processes were more recent and the historical memory was different. 

Overall, it was a hard and long job for internal and external actors to divide Ukraine again; but they eventually succeeded, having big resources and motivation. 

## **Early Independence In 1991**

It is hard to deny the bald fact that Ukraine received its independence in 1991 not as a result of a national-liberative war or mass protest movement. It was proclaimed centrally by the top officials of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic with moderate indifference by the population. 

Motivation for it was simple - it was in fact a class motivation. Approaching the privatization of the fully State-owned economy, the bureaucracies of the Soviet republics were going to be transformed into national bourgeoisies. So, they were looking for independence to run privatization on their own.

Moscow bureaucrats were seen as a threat to the project of independent privatization. People in Moscow understood this and were happy to get rid of Ukraine and other republics to run their privatization in Russia in peace. 

The population of Ukraine voted “yes” in both referendums held in 1991\. The referendum about saving the USSR in 1991 got 84% turnout: 71% voted “yes” for saving the USSR. 

The second referendum was held after the anti-Gorbachev military coup attempt in Moscow and reflected the fear of the population of the possible impact of political unrest in the center that can spread to the peripheries. The referendum about Independence got 84% turnout and received 90% support. 

The late Soviet period was characterized by increasing decentralization of power and the rise of the autonomy of the bureaucracy in the union Republics. Approaching the switch to capitalism and preparing actions in the field of the economic base, Republican branches of the Party and KGB were preparing the cultural-political superstructure to justify actions of market transition with cultural euphoria for the broad population. 

Liberal-nationalist movements targeting Western and Central Ukraine had emerged under prudent observation and patronage of officials of the old system. In Western Ukraine, they started fuelling the resurrection of the ideology of radical Ukrainian Nationalism. 

## **Resurrection Of Nationalism In The 1990s**

The resurrection of Nationalism by internal actors went hand in hand with allowing former Nazi collaborators and their political forces to return from their long exile after independence was proclaimed. That includes funding from the Western Ukrainian diaspora. They were people who had surrendered to Anglo-Americans after the defeat in World War 2, who had been pardoned, and whose immigrant political organizations were maintained over the whole period of the Cold War by the CIA and MI6 as useful anti-Soviet forces. 

Eventually, the wife of one of the big World War 2 collaborators, Stetsko, who at the beginning of the war was calling for the extermination of whole ethnic groups and after the USSR victory worked under Western Intelligences, was able to get into the Ukrainian Parliament back in the 1990s, sitting among the former and current communists. 

Over the 1990s many people in the industrial South and East were not sure what Independent Ukraine meant and what exactly happened in 1991\. As a population mostly working on large State enterprises, they were preoccupied with living through times of criminal privatization - with their personal savings in Soviet currency destroyed and surviving with wages not paid for months. 

Meanwhile in rural Western Ukraine, Nationalist parties were already dominating in regional and city councils. They started the removal of Soviet monuments in the West, replacing them with monuments of Nazi collaborators. They also provided State support and recognition as heroes to the veterans of collaborator forces including SS regiments, who were able to live in peace over the Soviet period in Western Ukraine after Gulag amnesties. They made changes in local educational curriculums to favour their view of Ukraine’s history, and so on. 

Kiev elites, still composed in the 1990s mostly from ex-officials of the Communist Party of Ukraine, switched ideologically to Moderate Nationalism. They began using Radical Nationalism as a trump card in feudalistic disputes with Moscow bureaucrats regarding the division of common Soviet economic, military and resource inheritance, the army, Soviet debt and the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, which is the harbour of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. 

Meanwhile Radical Nationalists under the leadership of the son of one of the main World War 2 collaborators, Shukhevych, who was responsible for Holocaust activities, was able to form the private army UNA UNSO - which was active in radical street politics in Ukraine and post-Soviet wars abroad.

They were active in the Chechen wars with Russia on the side of the Islamist formations of Shamil Basayev. These forces were responsible for purges and the enslavement of the Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population of Chechnya and the worst terrorist attacks in the nearest Caucasian republics of Russia, which included taking hostages in schools and hospitals. 

As a mercenary force, given legal immunity in Ukraine under the patronage of some KGB/SBU branches and generals in Western Ukraine, the UNA-UNSO participated in the civil wars in Georgia on the side of the central government against separatist minorities and in many other wars, gaining essential experience for the upcoming Maidan and Ukrainian civil war in 2014\. 

In the early Independence times of the 1990s**,** observing central tendencies, the elites and groups of the population of the predominantly Russian Autonomous Republic of Crimea made attempts to proclaim independence from Ukraine, which failed through lack of external support. The UNA-UNSO threatened to make Crimea “Ukrainian or uninhabited” and sent its own members into Crimea for intimidation actions. 

## **Economic Stabilization In The 2000s** 

After the economic stabilization of the early 2000s and the formation of the oligarchy, which gradually displaced the Soviet Bureaucracy, the representatives of core regions of the Ukrainian industrial economy of the East and South were gradually gaining power in Kiev. They were trying to reverse the radical tendencies which were suicidal for the prospects of the new political entity, for the sake of a conventional liberal-democratic future and economic growth. 

The Eastern regions were created in their modern form during Soviet Industrialization, on the territory that used to be called Wild Field for most of history. Many people moved there to work as an industrial proletariat from other Soviet republics. Thus, values of ethnic and language tolerance were important for 

 them, which conflict strongly against the nationalist vision of State building. Their biggest political demand was to have the Russian language recognized as the second State language. 

Overall, generalizing demi-feudal complexity of early Ukrainian oligarchy, we can say that after the criminal privatization of the State economy during the 1990s that impoverished the majority of the population, Ukraine got two major oligarchic and political clans which were active in brutal rivalry during the 2000s to the mid-2010s. 

This has polarized the country over the two decades into two halves in terms of votes in any elections, according to competing visions of the country’s future, in terms of language, national heroes and so on. 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/polatization.jpg)

Presidental elections of 2010 as well as previous elections shows common pattern of country polarization.

## **Oligarchic and Political clans In Terms Of Sovereignty And Western Hegemony**

The first clan was the Donbass industrial clan, which privatized heavy industry of the South and East. They were interested in preserving the industrial economy that was built in Soviet times in interconnection with other Soviet republics in terms of production chains and export markets. In terms of the country’s future, they were more sovereigntists with a focus on trade with eastern partners and standing for Ukraine’s neutrality. 

They relied on the votes of the Russian speaking South and East. In their cultural agendas, they were standing against the imposition of nationalist ideology on the State level. Manipulating the demands for the second State language, they never fulfilled their promises, gaining power in the Centre, and dedicating themselves to competition with other clans for control of corruption streams. 

The second clan was the financial clan, controlling assets in the spheres of banking, resource transition and media and relying on the votes of the West and Center. They were promoting joining the EU and NATO, hoping to become middle-people, as a comprador elite in the process of this transition.

They promised instant improvement of standards of living after association to the EU, an agricultural, and touristic future. As far as their view on cultural issues, they were playing with nationalism, mobilizing Western voters against the population and elites of the East by presenting them as a threat to State-building. 

Additionally, the question of EU integration gained an existential importance among the people of rural regions of Western Ukraine, often working in casual low-paid jobs in the eastern part of the EU as illegal migrants. This was often combined with derogatory treatment by employers (that relates to Polish sentiment towards Western Ukrainians connected to the genocide of Poles in World War 2) and no guarantees to be paid. Thus, for large cohorts of Western Ukrainians the promise of gaining an EU passport at any cost to sovereignty became the biggest life dream. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the crisis of indigenous elites, social structures, epistemological constructions, and collective motivations for the existence of the community was so deep, and the realities of early capitalism so dehumanizing towards the majority, that foreign countries were often seen by the middle class and intelligentsia as a possible source of *Deus ex machina* intervention that might improve society by absorbing it into “superior” structures of external power. The distinctive feature of post-soviet liberalism – skepticism towards self-rule. Additionally, for the middle class, which often gained its position in the new society through criminal and ultra-exploitative means, the West was seen as a guarantor that their position would be secured forever. For Western-oriented intellectuals, global bourgeois democracy was seen as preferable to the anti-intellectual, semi-bandit post-Soviet elites. 

In other words, foreign Western elites were granted greater credibility by the “progressive” social layers of post-Soviet societies than the local elites were — and that is a very bad sign for any society. Some people promoting these beliefs were motivated by money, working for Western grants; others by own “savage naivety,” treating certain advantages of Western societies as a metaphysical good in itself, while forgetting the obvious connection between the relatively strong institutions of Western societies and their position in the neocolonial global division of labour, which provides them with the resources to maintain these institutions. Thus, the post-soviet liberalism and Ukrainian liberalism in particular were often operating via wishful and magic models of thinking. 

To sum up Ukrainian oligarchic division: the advantage of the industrial clan was economic common sense, appealing to the politically passive economically active majority, who used to believe in their ability to act in conventional ways via elections and obeying the law. 

The advantage for the pro-Western clan was strong support among the professional middle class orientated to the West and the aggressive Nationalist minority, which could be used as a trump card in radical street politics targeting institutions of central power, as well as external support of the world's biggest economic and political powers. 

## **Maidan And First NATO Integration In 2004**

The winning strategy was shown during 2004-2005 Orange Maidan, that followed Presidential elections lost by the Western camp representative Yushchenko. 

Massive street mobilization of Western-employed middle class “civil society” institutions, high-ranking political and financial support from the US and EU, appropriate media coverage and the tactic of bringing people from rural Western communities to live on the central square camp in Kiev, was able to reverse the outcome of the Presidential Elections and impose the Western Camp representative by holding an unconstitutional third round of elections. 

Yushchenko got into power via street pressure and the institutional support of the West, while the elected representative of the industrial clan Yanukovich was unable to act productively to challenge Western involvement and surrendered his victory. 

Yushchenko rule was characterized with an unprecedented drift towards NATO membership, despite NATO membership never being among the main electoral demands even of the Western camp supporters. There is no need to emphasize how hostile the population of the South and East was to the very idea of joining NATO. 

The 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration became the landmark NATO document on Ukraine. NATO Stated: 

“*We agreed today that these countries (Ukraine and Georgia) will become members of NATO”. \[9\]* 

It heavily escalated theUkraine’s and the West's tensions with Russia, which was consistently stating from the early 2000s that it regarded the enlargement of NATO to include Ukraine and the location of NATO military bases and missiles in this country as an existential threat to Russian national security. This is evident from the 2008 future CIA director and then ambassador in Russia William Burn’s report “NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA\`S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES” on WikiLeaks. \[10\] Note that Crimea was rented from Ukraine by the Russian Black Sea fleet until 2017 and was an official base of the Russian Army. 

Ukraine, having been the recipient of “benefit gas prices” from Russia, due to worsening relations under Yushchenko was subjected by Putin to the market gas price. The price of gas for Ukraine went from a fixed $50 to the market $200-360 for 1000 cubic meters of gas. Russia also started to build bypass gas pipelines to exclude Ukraine from gas transit into the EU. 

In the cultural sphere the Yushchenko government rewarded Western Ukraine with the first large glorification of Nazi collaborators at State level. They were included into national curricula with positive evaluation. Most notably Yushchenko gave the main Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, the official title Hero of Ukraine. 

## **Yanukovich’s Rule In The 2010s** 

In 2010 the representative of the industrial clan, Yanukovich, was elected as president - this time successfully. He reversed NATO integration and Nazi glorification, depriving Bandera the status of official hero. He passed a law securing the neutral status of Ukraine. He gave the Russian language the status of a regional language in the East and South, allowing it to be used in business, administrative work, education and court hearings. In 2013 he cancelled mandatory military service, establishing a fully contracted army from 2014 (that was reversed after he was deposed). He started big investment projects with China and stopped dependence on IMF loans. 

Despite these achievements, he is guilty of fueling Western Ukrainian Nationalism by money, trying to marginalize the broader Western clan by fueling unattractive chauvinism in politics. It was exposed that the Donbass industrial clan had a strategy of fueling the far-right Svoboda (the former Social Nationalist Party) in Western Ukraine, while prosecuting political leaders of the Western Camp for their crimes of corruption during the previous government. 

Svoboda was able to get an unprecedented more than 10% of the votes in the 2012 Parliament elections. With political demands like criminalization of speaking Russian on the State level (Farion MP), the hope was that voters of Central Ukraine would turn electorally to the industrial clan. Shortly afterwards Svoboda played an important role in Yanukovich being overthrown. 

## **Euromaidan In 2013-2014** 

In Autumn 2013, President Yanukovich refused to sign an EU Association Agreement (which is not membership) due to unprofitable terms, which included free access of EU commodities to the Ukrainian market. This threatened national producers and would have led to shutting the free trade zone with post-Soviet countries, which was essential for the survival of the Ukrainian Industrial economy. In addition, he was worried about the IMF demand for a massive increase in bills for the population. 

In reaction to this decision, the pro-Western camp started a massive mobilization for protests in Kiev which came to be called Maidan. The social base of Maidan includes the EU-optimistic middle class as well as ordinary people of Central and Western Ukraine. They were attracted by the promise of a very big improvement of the standards of living over the very short term, coming from media outlets mostly controlled by the pro-Western financial clan. 

With large high level US/EU support, Maidan shifted its goals from the EU Association Agreement to government change and turned to violence, backed by the Western liberal mainstream as a democratic revolution. 

The far-right played a vanguard role in Maidan, united in the umbrella organization Right Sector, combined with the support of Svoboda. They were active in clashes with police, capturing administrative buildings, police and State security stations and military arsenals. Svoboda and the pro-Western liberal parties secured Maidan support in parliament. 

During the 2013-14 Maidan, Western Ukrainian regional authorities claimed de-facto independence from Kiev. The Yanukovich government was gradually losing control over the capital and the West. The monopoly of violence went from the State to the far-right in the West and Centre. 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/democratic-protestor.jpg)

Democratic protester from Right Sector with illegal firearms in the regional council of Western Ukraine, February 2014

People in the South and East were generally hostile to the Maidan agenda, expecting power to be exercised according to law. When the Maidan crowd started chanting “put the Russians on knives!”, the Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian population took it personally. 

The demolition of Lenin statues was also taken personally by those who voted for the Communist party, which was the second most popular party in the East; and so on. 

Eventually, fooled by EU leaders with agreements for the peaceful transfers of power, signed with opposition leaders with mediation by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Poland and France, and threatened with the possible loss of his personal savings in Europe, Yanukovich refused to exercise his legitimate power against the weaponized coup. He was degraded to the point of having negotiations with the leader of the Right Sector, Yaroch. 

On 21 February 2014, the day after the agreements, having lost control to the weaponized far-right, the president fled Ukraine with government members under a threat to his life. 

For more information on the Maidan, see the research of University of Ottawa scholar Ivan Katchanovski on the Maidan false-flag massacre. 

## **2014 Ukrainian Civil War, Crimea And Post-Maidan Policies** 

The pro-Western camp imposed their will regarding the course of the country by violence, ignoring the strong opposition by half the population to their agenda. 

Post-Maidan policies imposed the most radical transformation of Ukraine. That included but was not limited to deindustrialization; dependence on Western loans; devaluation of the national currency more than 3 times; household bills increases of approx.10 times; destruction of public services (a US citizen became healthcare minister); ban of Russian language in education and workplaces under a threat to be fined or fired even in Russian speaking regions; a ban of left-wing parties and communist ideology (under which hundreds of nostalgic impoverished pensioners were jailed for up to 5 years for the crimes of posting or reposting a Lenin picture or a Hammer and Sickle on socials). Finally, writing the strategic course of NATO membership into the Ukrainian constitution (with no referendum and no majority approval according to pools). 

All of this was done by post-Maidan authorities over 2014-2019\. 

In the post-Maidan government, neo-nazi Svoboda got 4 ministerial appointments, including Minister of Defense. They also got the position of General Prosecutor of Ukraine. One of the founders of Svoboda, the social-nationalist Andriy Paurbiy, became secretary of Security and of the Defense Council of Ukraine, and then chairman of the Ukrainian parliament for three years up to 2019**.** The Parliament voted in February 2019 to change the constitution to include a stipulation for the government to implement EU and NATO membership - while Parubiy was the chairman - and just before the change of government after Zelensky was elected in April 2019\. 

## **Crimea And Federalization** 

The delegitimization of democratically elected institutions of central power and the destruction of the very idea of law and constitutional order in highly polarized societies of countries with artificially created borders are not recommended, as they threaten such fragile States with the prospect of collapse and civil war as existential conflict over the State itself between the polarized groups of citizens. On the other hand, taking advantage of pre-existing tribal divisions and deepening such divisions to weaken society from within, thereby making it easier to impose control, is a classic tactic of colonialism and the exact method by which the West came to power in Ukraine: betting on one identity group against another and promising it a privileged position under the new external rule regime. 

Moreover, the destruction of internal balance of power in Ukraine and imposing a radical ethnonationalist and Atlantic-integration course through the destruction of Ukrainian law and legitimacy, while alienating the Ukrainian majority from democratic procedures for deciding the country's strategic course, created the geopolitical objectification of Ukraine, turning it into a battleground between external forces. This made a proportional Russian reaction expectable, since both ethnonationalism in Ukraine and NATO expansion directly concerned Russia, whose KGB elites had, by that time, recovered the country from the decay of the 1990s, restored some degree of sovereignty, and now sought moderate geopolitical revanchism, being able to answer the West's new expansionist attempts. 

Shortly after the Maidan, in March 2014 Putin commanded his troops in the rented Autonomous Republic Crimea, particularly unfriendly to the Maidan, to leave their bases. Together with local Anti Maidan activists, they blocked Ukrainian army bases and the peninsula itself from the expected arrival of new Kiev authorities and the far-right. 

Crimea held a bloodless referendum about leaving Ukraine and joining Russia, the procedures of which were heavily doubted by the international community. 

It is hard however, to doubt that the majority of the Crimea population, which is Russian- speaking and ethnically Russian, was happy to flee the new Ukraine with its ethnonationalist central tendencies and join Russia. It was a natural “chemical” reaction to Maidan nationalism, considering Crimea’s history and ethnic composition. 

It is very natural when the concept of the nation is centrally narrowed to exclude part of its own population, that the territory of the national State will shrink in size. 

A month after Maidan, the federalization movement started in the South and East. They were copying the Maidan methods by capturing administrative buildings in the East, demanding self-rule and a return of the regional language law, cancelled by the parliament vote on 24th of February. 

The new illegitimate government in Kiev declared them terrorists (note that the Maidan movement was portrayed as democratic protestors!) and sent the army / weaponized far-right to suppress the East. 

In the multiethnic southern city Odessa, weaponized far-right militants imported from the Maidan burned 46 federalists alive by Molotov’s cocktails on the 2 May 2014 in the encircled Trade Union Building, including the 17 years old member of Communist Party of Ukraine Vadim Papura. The survivors of the fire were finished off with metal bars. 

Nobody was punished for that by the post-maidan authorities, but honoured as heroes of Ukrainian territorial integrity. 

“*Bravo, Odessa. May the devils burn in hell!”* – Svoboda MP Farion commented about the massacre on FB. Nationalists have openly celebrated the massacre anniversaries over the years as “BBQ day”.

The international community ignored the massacre. Note that NATO started bombardments of Yugoslavia in 1999 using the Racak massacre of 45 people as *casus belli*. 

## **Federalists Became Separatists In 2014-2015**

In April-May 2014 Donbass activists started to seize arms from military arsenals and local police and State security stations, forming their own militarized units to resist imposition of Maidan government power. In Donbass a captured administrative building and neighborhoods were bombed by Kiev, including the use of missiles**.** The illegitimate regime in Kiev started the war, attacking its own population, a war that only within the flawed logic of expansionist Western elites and institutions, can be considered an act of aggression against Kiev. 

The use of the State apparatus of violence, combined with the selective application of a law that had previously been trampled underfoot against its own citizens, who were replicating Maidan under different slogans, marks the transformation of the very concepts of law and legality in the Ukrainian State captured by the West into arbitrary and anti-people instruments. 

After being shelled, Donbass held referendums and proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People Republics, ideologically appealing to the 1918 experience of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. 

There is nothing inherently wrong in declaring independence from a political entity with a discriminatory turn, especially when the government imposing those turns came to power illegally destroying fragile social contract and the legitimacy of State institutions in highly polarized society and then responding violently to the obvious demands of its own population. 

From 2014-2015 we had a year of civil war in Donbass that was mostly an ideological clash between local Donbass “Soviet Patriotism” and Nationalism that became State ideology. 

Russian-born activists and organizers were active in Donbass events but were mostly linked to the private political structures of the Slavophile Russian oligarch Malofeev, who was concerned with the rights of ethnic Russians abroad. 

There is no doubt that Putin did not consider a scenario of invasion into Ukraine back in 2014, despite such an invasion being guaranteed to be short and successful. He approached Donbass events with a cooler reaction. In Ukrainian State discourse of the time, they were already fighting full-scale war with Russia. 

International volunteers, mostly Russians, were active on both sides of the Ukrainian civil war. They composed nearly 10-20% of the Donbass militia fighting against Kiev. On the Kiev side the far-right, mostly Azov, got a big influx of Russian neo-nazis to fight against Donbass, as Ukraine became an international far-right paradise \[11\]. 

Kiev President Poroshenko, elected by the part of the country remaining under Kiev control, boasted during a public speech in 2014 that kids in Kiev-controlled territory will go to school and kids in Donbass will sit in basements \[12\]. Azov leader Biletsky said that he is dealing with “Soviet people”, that in his estimation composed 30% of the East residents. 

## **Minsk Agreement In 2015** 

After several unsuccessful attempts by Kiev to encircle Donetsk, and military aid by Russia to the Donbass rebellion (in token quantities allowing it to survive but not to advance), the Minsk Agreement was signed in 2015 between Kiev and Donbass with mediation by Russia, Germany and France. 

The 2015 Minsk Agreement reflected the German-Russian vision on the Ukrainian civil war. They both saw it as a big irritator to the significant gas / oil trade that they had - in which German industries were massively benefiting from cheap Russian resources and Russia was benefiting from a stable influx of money.

The essence of the Minsk Agreement can be summarized in this way: push Donbass back into Ukraine, on condition of giving it Special Status in a restored Ukrainian state. 

It included an amnesty for the rebels, the return of language rights, Donbass reconstruction from the Kiev budget, and local self-rule with transformation of the rebel forces into local police. It required Kiev to pass and put into action the appropriate legislation at the national level. 

After the previous failed attempt of Kiev to advance, that ended in Debaltsevo encirclement, the Kiev elites were interested in an immediate ceasefire to not allow the rebels to use the strategic defeat of Kiev to capture more territories (notably, Mariupol). 

## **Minsk: Donbass Side** 

There was a big dissatisfaction on both sides on the outcome of the civil war from the very beginning of Minsk process, among the militant forces of the rebels and the Ukrainian nationalists. It was seen as a vulgar-economically motivated imposition of the will of the external actors (Russia and Germany) that prevented either side from fulfilling their maximalist desires (imposition of Maidan outcome in Donbass for the nationalists; or overthrowing the Maidan Government in South-East for the rebels). 

Moscow and Kiev were accordingly seen as traitors on both active sides of the civil war. The efforts of the civil war were seen as devalued, and the deaths as meaningless. Among the rebels, Putin was frequently called the biggest Ukrainian nationalist. Kiev president Poroshenko was called a capitulator by nationalists. 

The goals of the Donbass rebellion, while being primarily culturally defensive, still included a strong anti oligarchic narrative and included demands for economic redistribution / expropriation, challenging the 1991 privatization. Additionally, it was already hard to reintegrate the shelled-by-Kiev population into the State that had shelled them. 

Thus, the majority of the decentralized rebel commanders, citizens of Ukraine with an ideology of Soviet patriotism, expressed scepticism about Minsk and the subsequent return of oligarchic property rights of the Donbass clan. These were seen in Donbass as traitors after Yanukovich refused to exercise his legitimate power against the pro-Western coup and fled, choosing personal savings and safety over the destiny of the country. 

To impose the Minsk Agreement on Donbass, Putin needed direct control over the rebellion. Thus, after the ceasefire we saw a wave of physical liquidations of Ukrainian rebellion commanders carried out by the Russian Security Service, and back then the small PMC Wagner group. 

After the independent commanders were liquidated, Russia gradually imposed full political control over the People’s Republics by putting local figures with very dubious backgrounds in charge, to be able to give up Donbass to Kiev without resistance. Moscow believed that non-military figures like the current head of DPR Denis Pushilin, with a background in the biggest post-Soviet Ponzi Scheme, would be a perfect fit for the Kiev elites - which were regarded by the Russian KGB elites as petty crooks. 

After such signals from Moscow, the spirit of rebellion was exhausted. The population of the Donbass region became disillusioned in both its own capacity over decision making and Russian help. Facing economic devastation and humanitarian catastrophe, people were ready to accept any destiny - but on conditions that guaranteed them legal amnesty and would protect them from the prospect of being purged by armed Kiev nationalists. 

## **Minsk: Kiev and Far-right Side** 

According to official Kiev polls on Kiev-controlled territories, 56,8% of people in 2015 were in favor of putting Minsk into action, even though the civil war had no direct impact on the majority of the Ukrainian population \[13\] \[14\]. People were unaware that they were living on a volcano of big imperialistic war; and were subject to dehumanizing State propaganda against the Donbass population, often with appeals to genetics.

They were generally indifferent to a Donbass war that was outscored to the armed far- right. People focused instead on dealing with the post-Maidan neoliberal policies imposed by US/IMF external rule in the form of a cost of living crisis, enormous household bills increase, economic deindustrialization and subsequent forced immigration to low-paid jobs in the EU etc. 

There were a lot of external and internal factors why the Minsk reintegration of Donbass was sabotaged by Kiev over the 7 years of ceasefire. The pro-Western camp was fearful of the prospect of the return of 4 million extremely hostile voters to Ukrainian elections. In addition to the general frustration over the Maidan promises, compared with the devastating outcome Maidan created, it became obvious that the pro-Western camp would be defeated in the next elections - even without the Donbass voters. 

Unlike Moscow and Berlin, Kiev and Washington were never interested in Minsk implementation, seeing the ceasefire as an opportunity to arm. Despite most Ukrainians being pro-Agreements, the Ukraine government and armed far-right were strongly against. 

## **Far-Right Groups Become Private Militias** 

As a result of their very useful role in the civil war for the Western camp, the far-right battalions were rewarded after the ceasefire by employment as private militarized and political armies in inter oligarchic schemes and rivalry. Their active core members decided to leave the frontline to be integrated into the political and economic spheres of the new society. 

Post-Maidan elites started to consider having their own far-right group as an important asset. The Israeli citizen, billionaire Kolomoisky, was behind the Right Sector. Ex-mafiosi and post-Maidan Minister of Internal Affairs Avakov got Azov. The nazi group S14 went under the SBU and Mayor of Kiev, for whose members he established an official municipal guard formation in Kiev, etc. The number 14 in the group name stands for “14 Words”, coined by the American Nazi David Lane \[15\]. 

The most successful was the Azov integration. The Russian-born Azov neo-nazi multimillionaire Korotkikh previously involved in beheading immigrants in Russia recorded on camera, after finding shelter in post-Maidan Ukraine and citizenship granted personally by Poroshenko, start to work under the patronage of Minister Avakov in large drug and smuggling schemes and became the wallet of the Azov political movement - which expanded into 20.000 active members \[16\] \[17\]. 

Battalion Azov expanded to become the most privileged and innovative National Guard regiment, being part of the Avakov Ministry. Some nazis who formally left the political structures were incorporated into key posts of the Security Apparatus, being able to help their own comrades from the positions they took. 

The far-right overall were given de-facto legal immunity. They combined the roles of mafia in demi oligarchic-demi-State structures and of colonial police, intimidating the “wrong population” of Ukraine, crushing the remains of left-wing activities, pro-peace activism and the people’s tradition of celebrating World War 2 Victory Day, including attacks on World War 2 veterans. 

When the Ukrainian Parliament was voting for the Decentralization Law (which is not the Minsk proposed Special Status law) in August 2015, formally imitating the Minsk progress, the far-right groups gathered a rally in front of parliament to pressure it not to vote. As a result of a combat grenade thrown by the far-right at the police defending the parliament, 4 policemen were killed and 131 were injured. 

![](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/09/2015minsk.jpg)

Injured by grenade explosure policemen after August 2015 anti-Minsk rally under the walls of Parliament

Nobody was really punished. The man who personally threw the grenade was the subject of 8 years of deferred court hearings and committed suicide during the hearing in 2023 by blowing up another grenade in the court room. 

There were murders of pro-Minsk Ukrainians, most notably the 2015 murder of Kiev-based journalist Oles Buzina who was not afraid to call the civil war by its name and call for peace.

After his home address details were published online by the open-access database of “State traitors” Myrotvorets, which is linked to the Ministry of Internal affairs, he was shot near his flat by the far-right. Despite his murder being brilliantly investigated, his killers were not punished by the State but rewarded by State appointments in the Ministry of Veterans \[18\]. 

Releases of far-right criminals from police stations and court rooms under pressure of nationalist crowds have become commonplace in Ukraine. What are we to expect from the Ukrainian police at present if the Chief of National Police and Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Vadym Troyan, was the former Deputy Commander of Azov and a member of the Social-Nationalist Assembly? 

## **Zelensky Elections And Failed Minsk Attempts In 2019**

In 2019 Zelensky was elected as a Russian-speaking candidate. His main promise was peace and a change of the State agenda. His rival, previous president Poroshenko was oriented towards radical nationalists, Western Ukraine and “civil society” with electoral mottos: “Army. Language. Faith” and “Either me or Putin”. 

The population of all Kiev-controlled Ukraine except for one Western region elected Zelensky, disillusioned with the devastating economic outcome of Maidan. After making early attempts to implement Minsk, he faced a severe backlash. 

Since nothing was done over 5 years, the very first steps of the Agreements were due: withdrawal of forces. 

The far-right refused to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from the Donbass frontline to create a 2 km demilitarized zone. Azov brought far-right civilians armed with illegal weapons to the frontline to block the Agreements. 

Zelensky himself appeared on the frontline begging Azov to put away the weapons. *I am the president of this country. I am 42 years old. I am not a sucker. Put away the weapons”* said the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian army in the famous footage - confronting literally nobody from the Azov Civil Movement \[19\]. 

The far-right and Western camp gathered “anti-capitulation” rallies in Kiev, threatening Zelensky with a new Maidan and the Yanukovich destiny. Western Ukrainian regional councils were voting for motions condemning the Kiev / Zelensky peace plan. Zelensky was met with “corridors of shame” protests on his visits to Western Ukraine. 

Despite 41% of Ukrainians being against the “No to capitulation” rallies versus 26% in support of “No capitulation” according to official Kiev polls, which excluded the Donbass, the far-right succeeded once again \[20\]. 

Since 2020 Zelensky has totally abandoned his main promise of peace. He realized that the key factor for preserving the stability of his rule is the satisfaction of radical nationalists and the will of the US. He can ignore the democratic demands of the majority, but he cannot go against the red lines of the aggressive minority and external rulers if he does not want to be overthrown. 

For the international public, Zelensky developed a mantra that the implementation of the Minsk Agreements will be started only after the Donbass-Russia border is surrendered to the Ukrainian Army and Border guards. Minsk was effectively buried by Kiev.

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https://countryeconomy.com/national-minimum-wage/ukraine 

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https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1537739940942991360?lang=en 

3\. Biletsky, Andriy. “Ukrainian Racial Social Nationalism.” In *Ukrainian Social Nationalism*, 3–5\. Kharkiv: Patriot Ukrainy, 2007\. 

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12\. Poroshenko: How we'll win the war - their kids will be sitting in basements! – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVIDR9JSPFs 

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Murder.” https://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/news-releases/2021/08/d44804/ 

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18\. Bellingcat. “Ukraine’s Ministry of Veterans Affairs Embraced the Far Right—With Consequences to the U.S. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/europe/2019/11/11/ukraines ministry-of-veterans-affairs-embraced-the-far-right-with-consequences-to-the-u-s/ 

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