Meet Andriy Parubiy, the Former Neo-Nazi Leader Turned Speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament

by Jon Hellevig, via Russia Insider

An outspoken neo-Nazi takes the reins of Ukraine’s parliament, as the US and its European vassals remain silent.
When Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk got the boot and was replaced by the speaker of parliament Volodymyr Groysman, Mr. Andriy Parubiy was appointed in his stead.  This extraordinary event speaks volumes about not only the Ukraine but also the present state of affairs in the West and its media, which increasingly adapts its reporting to fit the current geopolitical interests of the masters of the Western universe.  Mr. Parubiy has a biography littered with overt activity as one of the leading figures at the nexus of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and outright neo-Nazi movements.  Yet there has not been so much as a squeak from any leading Western politician or the media about the appalling fact that this same Parubiy has now ascended to the respectable position of speaker of parliament of a country with which the EU has signed an agreement about economic and political association.  The self-proclaimed guardian of our values, as the EU wants us to regard it, has signed a treaty of political association with a country, where the second highest political position is held by a person who has earned his stripes as a neo-Nazi commander.  However, the EU has not always in the past been so indifferent to Parubiy’s activities, as we shall see further down.

Andriy Parubiy founded in 1991 the Social-National Party of Ukraine, together with Oleh Tyahnybok, another coup leader and the present leader of the Svoboda party.  The name Social-National Party was chosen as a fully intentional allusion to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party called National Socialist Party.  This interpretation has been confirmed by Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading weekly news magazine. 
True to its historical inspiration, the Social-National Party (SNUP) did not conceal its radical nationalism and its neo-Nazi features.  In a research paper from 2009, Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov characterized the SNUP in these words: “… of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neo-fascist affiliations.  Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel), used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the Dutch SS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a number of European neo-fascist organizations after 1945.  As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf’s Hook became the “idea of the nation.” Moreover, the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearly referred back to “national socialism”—the official name of the ideology of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and of the Hitlerite regime. The SNPU’s political platform distinguished itself by its openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violent takeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia for all of Ukraine’s ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively large party to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans.”

From 1998 to 2004, Parubiy led the Patriot of Ukraine, a paramilitary organization of the Social-National Party.  The Patriot of Ukraine also admitted to its overt racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs and its specialization in promoting political violence as a means to an end (alas, the end, which has been achieved).  It constituted a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and other radical violent groups affiliated with the Svoboda party.
In his role as the commandant of Euromaidan from December 2013 to February 2014, Parubiy was the leader of the military wing of the coup that brought down the democratically elected President Yanukovich and subjected the parliament to a reign of terror.  In this capacity, he brought into the Maidan all the neo-Nazi storm battalions that he had fostered under the S.N.A. umbrella. Independent evidence strongly points to the fact that it was precisely Parubiy, who was directly in charge of the Maidan snipers. 
The case is compellingly put forward in an article in the Global Research. Another convincing write-up on this is provided by Gordon Hahn in The Real “Snipers’ Massacre”, Ukraine, February 2014.

After the regime took office in the wake of the coup, Parubiy was appointed to the influential position of head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.  In this role, he was tasked with the brutal repression that swept the country after the Maidan coup.  He organized and coordinated the National Guard and other ultra-right, neofascist and neo-Nazi storm battalions like the Azov Battalion, which unleashed the terror in Eastern Ukraine.  This would also imply that he condoned the Odessa and Mariupol massacres
With Parubiy and Tyahnybok well established as the leaders of the insurgent fascist movement they abruptly performed in 2004 a rebranding of their various organizations by dropping the most overt allusions to Nazism.  A well-informed source, who wishes to remain anonymous, revealed that it is believed that the rebranding was a strategy that their handlers at the CIA had prescribed in order to make the leaders and their organizations more politically acceptable on the Western propaganda front.  The Social-National Party changed its name to Svoboda with Tyahnybok at the helm.  Simultaneously they abandoned the Wolfsangel logo, but this was done only in regards to the formally adopted logo, in essence, the party continued wielding the Wolfsangel in its gatherings.

Did the EU not know all this?  Or, is this a case of a severe form of institutional amnesia?  Let’s see.  Turns out that on 13 December 2012 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the situation in Ukraine (2012/2889).  According to this resolution the EU was then “concerned about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada; recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.”
Yes, in 2012, the EU called for a boycott of the Svoboda Party because of its extremist views, which went against the famous “EU fundamental values”.  But today, they have no problem with cheering on Mr. Parubiy, who was the progenitor of Svododa (and much worse things), as he sweeps to power in the EU’s very own political association partner.
What was the Faustian bargain that brought about this change of heart?  This is not a rhetoric question, so I will answer it. It is the expediency to enlist the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and other extremists in their geopolitical shenanigans against Russia.

Jon Hellevig is a Finnish lawyer and businessman who has worked in Russia since the early 1990s.   He is the managing partner of the Moscow–based law company Hellevig, Klein & Usov Llc.   Hellevig has written books about Russian legislation and society and writes columns for Russian media.

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