Ritter: There Are Few Good Ukrainians Left in Ukraine

Recently, I have been criticized for my harsh criticism of the Ukrainian people, especially their collective responsibility for the tragedy that has befallen Ukraine through Russia’s ongoing Special Military Operation, or SMO, writes Scott Ritter.

I’ve been condemned in comments on podcasts I’ve participated in and on my own Telegram channel. The most recent disagreement with my point of view comes from Kevin Michelizzi, an information security specialist, in an article on my Substack page, who took offense to a comment I made to Jeff Norman on a recent Ask the Inspector podcast. Jeff accused me of “taunting the nice people of Ukraine,” to which I replied, “There is nothing nice about the people of Ukraine.”

“Scott has generalized the people of Ukraine like this more than once,” Kevin writes. “His argument stems from their inaction when their government honored [Stepan] Bandera and the OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera) as heroes…”

Kevin excuses the inaction of the Ukrainian people in the face of their government’s appalling behavior as simply the people of Ukraine doing “what they have to do to survive.”

“I don’t know what Scott expected from the Ukrainian people,” Kevin complains.

How about behaving like a people capable of discerning right from wrong?

Kevin Michelizzi’s excuse for the passivity of the Ukrainian people in the face of the unspeakable inhumanity perpetrated in their name by those they have chosen to represent them in government is reminiscent of Catrine Clay’s arguments in her bestseller The Good Germans. Clay argued that two-thirds of Germans did not vote for Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he was elected chancellor of Germany, and that many of these “good Germans” were actively involved in resistance to the abuses and excesses of the Nazis.

When one considers the total mobilization in support of the Nazi regime that occurred in Germany during World War II, the absolute lack of validity of Clay’s thesis becomes crystal clear.

Most Germans took an active part in the mechanisms used by the Nazi regime to sow terror on a continent.

The others were passive observers at best.

But there were very few active opponents – the so-called “good German” was so rare that it was virtually extinct.

Yes, 2/3 of the German population did not vote for Adolf Hitler in 1933. But they supported or tolerated his rise to power, and embraced the excesses that accompanied it. And they were silent about his crimes, especially against Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies, in short, against anyone who was considered “subhuman” according to Hitler’s definition of Aryan racial purity.

Daniel Goldhagen, the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, argues that the reason for this national character flaw lay in the extent to which something Goldhagen called “eliminationist anti-Semitism” permeated the collective psyche of the German people—simply put, they had been socially behavior pre-programmed not only to blame Jews and other sub-human races for all their societal ills, but also to embrace the physical extermination of these unwanted human parasites as the preferred solution.

Understanding Goldhagen is essential to understanding the current behavior of the Ukrainian people.

To begin with, Ukraine as a nation is an artificial construct. Anyone who looks at the cobbled-up Ukraine that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union realizes this. Western Ukraine (the cradle of modern Ukrainian nationalism) and Eastern Ukraine (dominated by ethnic Russians whose loyalties and sympathies lie in Moscow rather than Kiev) are inherently incompatible entities. The Kiev rump state that separates these two extremes serves more as a source of national dysfunction than of national unity, a reality reflected in the degree of corruption that permeates the body of this so-called Ukrainian “nation”.

Modern Ukraine is literally and figuratively the sick man of Europe, a nation whose industry and agriculture generate a national income that fills the pockets and bank accounts of the corrupt oligarch class and their elected politicians who dominate Ukraine, while the Ukrainian people flounders in eternal third-rate status, watching the national infrastructure crumble before its very eyes.

Ukraine is a major source of illegal human and arms trafficking, international money laundering and other under-the-counter economic activities typical of societies that have no basis in the normative influence of a nation governed by concepts based on the notion of the rule of law. Insofar as one can say that the European and international community finds Ukraine or the Ukrainian people “sympathetic”, one must first adapt the definition of “sympathetic” to the relationship one might have with a cheap prostitute or a drug dealer on the corner.

The Ukrainians are not “more or less like us” (an argument used by Catrine Clay for the German people at the time of Adolf Hitler). Nor does their sensitivity approach “ours” (another intellectual softening of societal pathology that Clay uses to deny the role and responsibility of the German people for the crimes of Nazi Germany).

“I don’t know what Scott expected the people of Ukraine to do,” Kevin Michelizzi laments in his article, responding to my criticism of the Ukrainian people’s criminal passivity to the crimes committed by and on behalf of their leaders.

With all due respect to Kevin, what matters is not what I expect from the people of Ukraine, but the standard set by the people of Ukraine themselves, which is the crux of this discussion. We know that a significant part of the Ukrainian people has violently resisted the illegal coup d’état that overthrew the constitutionally elected government of former President Victor Yanukovych and replaced it with individuals chosen by the United States government who introduced Stepan Bandera‘s ideology into the mainstream of Ukrainian social and political reality.

The people of eastern Ukraine said “no” to this unconstitutional usurpation of political power. The people of eastern Ukraine took up arms to fight back against the hateful ideology of the Banderas who dominated the illegitimate government of Ukraine after Yanukovych.

The issue is not what Scott Ritter, or anyone else, wants the people of Ukraine to do, but what the sane people of Ukraine have already done – risking their lives and livelihoods to defend their freedom against a foreign-backed gang of white supremacist neo-Nazis who have perverted the notion of “Ukrainian” with their odious ideology.

One of the problems in trying to characterize the “Ukrainian people” is that this concept is not a singularity, but rather an amalgam of three collectives, each with its own inherent characteristics.

There is the Ukraine as defined by Stepan Bandera and his followers, which is concentrated in the west of the country. The ideology underlying Bandera’s vision of Ukrainian nationalism is best described in his own words, spoken at his trial for murder in 1934 in Lvov (then part of Poland). “Our idea,” said Bandera, “is so great in our eyes that when we talk about its realization, not one individual, nor hundreds, but millions of victims must be sacrificed to realize it.”

Millions of victims.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Bandera’s movement was partly funded by Nazi Germany. She easily adopted the principles and symbols of fascism that defined Hitler’s cult of personality. In April 1941, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, meeting in Cracow, fully endorsed the principle of “one nation, one party, one leader” and adopted the black-and-red flag (representing earth and blood) as a symbol of their movement.

The raised-arm fascist salute, accompanied by the phrase “Slava Ukraina” (Honor to Ukraine), became the salute and later war cry of the Banderist thugs who, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, followed their Nazi masters into Soviet Ukraine. There, over the next four years, the Banderists committed the most heinous crimes against humanity in the service of their perverted vision of Ukrainian nationalism, massacring tens of thousands of Jews and hundreds of thousands of Poles and Russians. Their trademark was to surround a village, force the populace into a church or barn at gunpoint, then set fire to the building, cheering as the residents screamed in agony before perishing.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear a US Speaker of the House or a Canadian Deputy Prime Minister shout “Slava Ukraina” in their respective legislative buildings.

The Bandera movement is alive and thriving today in Ukraine, where it has become established in Ukrainian society and politics since the 2014 Maidan coup. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, Excuses Bandera as a “Ukrainian Nationalist” ; while the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, proudly takes a photo with a portrait of Bandera in the background. The Ukrainian parliament has made Bandera a national hero in Ukraine, streets have been named in Bandera’s honor and statues have been erected in his memory.

 

Ukrainian internal security and armed forces have been taken over by Banderists – once again the villages and fields of Ukraine are tainted by the screams of “Slava Ukraina” as the neo-Nazi thugs populating the Nationalist battalions (Azov, Aidar, Safari, Kraken, and others) and the regular Ukrainian army (a recent class of Ukrainian paratroopers sang songs praising Bandera at their graduation) hunting down and killing Russian civilians and prisoners of war, in utter disregard for the laws of war.

The people of Western Ukraine are beyond saving, their guilt for the promotion, support and implementation of the horrific ideology of Stepan Bandera is beyond question.

They are without a doubt “bad Ukrainians”. The worst. Malicious. Despicable.

Bandera’s underlying ideology that thwarts their diseased vision of national identity must be completely eradicated, along with anyone who refuses to renounce this ideology.

But what about the “other” Ukrainians? You know, the “good ones,” to quote Catrine Clay (and by extension, Kevin Michelizzi). Sure, I’m using too broad a brush – not every Ukrainian can be labeled “bad”.

With a few exceptions, yes.

Daniel Goldhagen debunked the idea of ​​a statistically significant population of “good Germans” by systematically conditioning the German people through their culture, religion and upbringing to endorse what he called “eliminationist anti-Semitism.”

The same trend exists in Ukraine with regard to Russia. I call it “eliminationist Russophobia”.

From an early age, Ukrainian nationalism has propagated the idea of ​​the cultural and racial inferiority of the Russian people.

Ukrainians happily refer to the Russians as “Orcs” (a Tolkien reference to a depraved race of intellectually and physically inferior creatures).

They cheer as these “Orcs” are tied to poles with plastic wrap, often with their pants pulled down, to be exposed to the elements and the wrath of a vengeful populace, who openly mock and physically abuse these helpless humans.

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What On Earth Is Happening in Ukraine – Mob Rule? Societal Breakdown?

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They remain silent as the neo-Nazi thugs of the nationalist formations carry out so-called “cleansing operations,” arresting and executing Russians by the thousands.

They remain silent as Ukrainian soldiers shoot Russian prisoners of war on camera in flagrant violation of the laws of war.

The jubilation and silence are a by-product of the same phenomenon: “eliminationist Russophobia”, the hatred of everything related to Russia, such that the systematic murder of the Russian people is seen as a viable means of eradicating the problem.

Ukraine is currently normalizing the cultural genocide of everything Russian: language, culture, religion and history. Once you mainstream the elimination of a culture and ethnic identity, the transition to the physical elimination of a people is not a problem.

Eliminationist Russophobia.

It is real, it is constantly enacted as the official policy of the Ukrainian government, and is made possible by the morbid indifference or active participation of those Ukrainians who do not identify as Western Ukrainian nationalists, who may not openly support the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera. adhere to, but which nevertheless allow the hijacking of the Ukrainian nation by the Banderists.

Just as the “good Germans” did with regard to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ideology.

There are few “good Ukrainians”. The vast majority of Ukrainians are either directly involved in the unspeakable crimes perpetrated on behalf of modern Ukrainian nationalism spearheaded by Stepan Bandera, or they are facilitators who are pathologically indifferent to these crimes.

The participants must suffer the fate of their predecessors who, after being tried for their crimes in Kiev in January 1946, were hanged by the neck until dead in a mass execution before a mass mob of their victims.

The mediators should atone for their sins by providing the forced labor necessary to exhume the victims of the Ukrainian nationalists, and repair the damage Ukraine suffered from a war waged not by Russia, but by the Ukrainian nationalists and their Western allies.

Once there was a large number of “good Ukrainians”. These are the people of eastern Ukraine who stood up and defended themselves vigorously against the murderous onslaught of the Banderists and their cowardly Ukrainian allies.

However, these “good Ukrainians” largely no longer exist.

Thanks to the annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, most of them have become Russian.

And if the war continues on its current path, there may be a chance that the remaining “good Ukrainians” – the ethnic Russians living in Odessa, Nikolayev, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Sumy – will also become Russian.

That would be a salvation for them, because there is nothing connecting them to the toxic regime that now rules Kiev, or to the toxic people of Ukraine.

I repeat my original statement: there is nothing nice about the people of Ukraine.

They are either staunch adherents of Stepan Bandera’s odious ideology, and as such deserve whatever fate befalls them, or morbidly indifferent cowards who have facilitated the Bandera’s heinous crimes.

Most of the “good Ukrainians” have disappeared.

They are now Russian, and as such part of Mother Russia.

And justice will be their portion.

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