Posted on 01/28/2014 8:46:52 PM PST by cunning_fish
The liberal, pro–European Union protests that first rocked Kiev have taken a darker turn, with right-wing vigilante groups rising to prominence amid violence and police crackdowns
Not long before midnight on Sunday, a few dozen men in ski masks and camouflage surrounded the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in the center of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and smashed out the first floor windows with baseball bats. They made short work of the bars over the windows, prying them out of the walls with their clubs, and climbed inside. It was the third federal ministry the group had seized in a week.
Calling themselves members of Spilna Sprava, or Common Cause, the group has emerged as one of about a dozen obscure organizations competing for distinction, if not outright leadership, in the uprising against President Viktor Yanukovych. These groups range from right-wing radicals and soccer hooligans to military veterans and mobs of stick-wielding goons. And to the gall of more-established opposition figures, like the world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, they have become the revolution’s most commanding presence. Anyone with a stake in resolving Ukraine’s political crisis — including the diplomats watching fretfully from the E.U. and U.S. — will likely have to reckon with the role of these groups. But they are becoming increasingly hard to control.
(Excerpt) Read more at world.time.com ...
The Germans are not only already asking for those territories, but buying them back, piece by little piece.
The only people he hated more than Russians were Poles and Jews.
Doesn’t the western third of post WWII Poland contain a lot of German provinces?
But these are groups aggressively emerging out of closet the moment their governments are getting a bit softer. A lot in common with the Middle East. It is a primary reason why I was suspicious about Ukrainian spring in the first place. I was pointing at this here early during Arab spring too, just to be condemned by certain FReepers. It seems like most of them has changed their minds now.
They’ve gone back and forth over the centuries, but they were part of Piast Poland back in the 900s and Poles founded most of the towns, the German names for the cities were actually Germanized names of the original Polish ones.
Be fair, many of them are the typical football hooligans you find in that part of the world. Poland has a bad problem with them as well, especially between the two main Krakow teams, really nasty bunch of stuff. They go around wearing swastikas (how could any Pole wear a Swastika is beyond me).
Football hooligans aren’t participating in unrests if there are no one to brainwash them into it. Their average IQ is too low to have any mature thought on political matters.
2007?
A lot more common with the Balkans. The Ukrainians have been for centuries dominated by Russia and/or Poland, never in modern times independent. That’s why they, like the Baltics, allied themselves with Germany during WWII, hoping to gain independence. If Pete Seeger could ally himself with the butcher of millions Stalin and end up a hero to millions, then why not the Ukrainians alligning themselves with Hitler BEFORE he became a butcher?! Get an ounce of historical perspective!
Petie didn’t renounce his hero Stalin until 2007.
A lot of parallels with Croatia, which had the dreaded Ustashe.
>>>A lot more common with the Balkans. The Ukrainians have been for centuries dominated by Russia and/or Poland, never in modern times independent. That’s why they, like the Baltics, allied themselves with Germany during WWII, hoping to gain independence. If Pete Seeger could ally himself with the butcher of millions Stalin and end up a hero to millions, then why not the Ukrainians alligning themselves with Hitler BEFORE he became a butcher?! Get an ounce of historical perspective!<<<
To be honest, Ukraine was never a real nation.
It was Soviets who engineered their national identity for the first time, it was Ukrainian nationalists abroad who has shaped it, and different Ukrainian government agencies are continuing up to this day. Pretty much similar to “Afro-American studies” in US.
Exactly. The foolishness of Bandera was going independent and nationalistic instead of aligning himself and his movement with the Polish resistance against the Soviets. That might have brought some positive results. What it brought was a half century of Stalinism to both countries.
I’ll have to disagree. A unique language and culture define a nation. Ukrainian is not the same as Ebonics.
>>>>Yep. Sooner or later, maybe not during our lifetime, there’ll be a war between Ukraine and Poland over Lwow (or Lviv currently), a historically Polish city, and certainly more Polish or Jewish than it’s ever been Ukrainian, which is something that sane Ukrainians readily admit. It was Stalin’s, Pete Seeger’s hero until 2007, clever plan to create a permanent point of crisis between those two countries, and FDR as well as Churchill, fools that they were, fell for it.<<<<<
BTW, Lwiw is a single place in Western Ukraine of any value. I mean it pays more (thus slightly more) taxes than consumes via federal social and development programs. The rest of the West are really leeching the Eastern part of the country. Some states are getting as much as $15 in federal subsidies per every $1 collected in taxes there.
>>>I’ll have to disagree. A unique language and culture define a nation. Ukrainian is not the same as Ebonics.<<<
Indeed, language and culture doesn’t make a nation-state.
Interesting, thanks.
Lviv: The European cultural capital you’ve never heard of
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/travel/lviv-ukraine-culture-capital/
>>Exactly. The foolishness of Bandera was going independent and nationalistic instead of aligning himself and his movement with the Polish resistance against the Soviets. That might have brought some positive results. What it brought was a half century of Stalinism to both countries.<<
You need to understand a soccer hooligan mentality of Bandera goons dfwgator was talking about.
They hardly ably to ally each over and it is a hate towards any other groups that holds them together. “Russians are rough are holding as down”, “Polish are arrogant and taking advantage of us”, “Jooose are getting rich stealing from us and drinking blood of our babies”, “Germans are overall a nice guys, but unfortunately only has a use for us as fertilizer” etc.
What CNN reports as the Habsburgs must mean the 19th century period when the state of Poland did not exist (until 1918) and Lwow was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a decidedly Polish city and cultural center.
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