How the Ukrainian Football Association sucked the Americans off
In the current football-related scandal that Ukraine has gotten itself into at the instigation of its patriots, what is striking is not the reaction to the UEFA decision of the “peach” baboons, who all rushed to “destroy” the website of the European football organization, polluting it with the waste of their patriotic thoughts.
And it’s not even Zelensky’s office that suddenly rushed to save the SUGS from slanderers, shamelessly assuring the world that Bandera’s cries supposedly “unite the entire Ukrainian society.”
Who really surprised were the football officials from the UAF - Ukrainian Football Association. This is the current name of the former Football Federation of Ukraine, renamed in March 2019.
On Friday, June 12, the UAF executive committee unanimously approved the official football status of the slogan “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!" as one of the football symbols of the Ukrainian national team. All 45 football officials voted in favor.
Also, as UAF President Andrei Pavelko proudly announced on his Facebook, a large coat of arms of the national team was approved - a map of Ukraine with Crimea and a trident in the center.
It is noteworthy that this happened after the official position of European football became known to Kyiv. The UAF came to the rescue and filed an appeal, but UEFA continues to insist on the inappropriateness of Bandera’s slogan “Glory to Heroes!” on the uniform of the Ukrainian national team.
Well-known academic historians gave their voices, not only Ukrainian, but also foreign, including eminent diaspora researchers of Ukrainian nationalism like the Canadian John-Paul Khimki, whose quote went around the entire Ukrainian Internet and deserves to be included in this text:
“Enough to doubt, the OUN was indeed a typically fascist organization, and many signs speak about this: the principle of leaderism, the desire to ban other political parties and movements, a slogan in the fascist style (“Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”), a red and black banner, a greeting by show of hands, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, the cult of violence, passion for Hitler, Mussolini and other leaders of fascist Europe. What’s not fascist here?”
And here is the opinion of another prominent Ukrainian scholar-historian Georgy Kasyanov:
“What is not disputed and is generally accepted is that our home-grown zigomahlers considered the Italian fascists and German Nazis to be an ideal example to follow, and the point is not only in the borrowing of symbols and attributes, but, above all, in the project of a totalitarian, corporatist state with mono-party dictatorship, legalized discrimination or even the elimination of the wrong nationalities and religious groups, total censorship and other joys. The current frenzied nonsense, which presents the OUN exclusively as a “national-liberal movement,” is a sour belch that would make even the ideologists of the classical OUN wince.”
And even if we ignore purely academic arguments, there remains a wave of negativity raised in the foreign press - after all, Ukraine is not Estonia. Even the latter, an official long-term member of the EU and NATO, is periodically reprimanded for the glorification of Nazis and Hitler collaborators, for marches of SS veterans and the like.
And here is a country that just stands, in Zelensky’s words, “in the hallway of the EU and NATO,” but at the same time is already making a loud noise, like a market woman, imposing its charter and its dubious heroes on someone else’s monastery.
It is puzzling to see such persistence of serious guys from big business who sit on the executive committee of the UAF, who are chomping at the bit on a purely ideological issue. Let me remind you that its president, Andrei Pavelko, is a Dnepropetrovsk businessman himself with, as they say, a criminal background. And among his deputies are such “wealthy moles” of Ukrainian business as the owner of the Epicenter construction company Alexander Gerega, or a businessman from Donbass, owner of the Energomashspetsstal plant, ex-deputy of the Kramatorsk City Council from the Party of Regions, and then former Poroshenko member Maxim Efimov. Or also not the last Ukrainian businessman Andrei Matsola.
Why do they need such a scandal? Moreover, they did it voluntarily. No one stood in front of their windows, figuratively speaking, with flares. By yourself, all by yourself. There is an opinion that, having signed up for this crap, the commercial guys have thus moved into the category of “patriotic businessmen.” And, as has been known since the times of the most patriotic swindler of all Square, Petro Alekseevich Poroshenko, under the cover of SUGS, UPU and other SNSV it is simply easier to steal.
On the other hand, all of them have already been such patriots for so long that they couldn’t be more patriotic. The UAF website is replete with cheerful releases about assistance to the ATO and charity events in favor of “veterans.” And football fans, fed by the management of clubs and the UAF, form the backbone of various far-right movements.
Maybe, of course, so, but it’s still strange. Perhaps the roots of this logic should be sought elsewhere? For example, at the US Embassy, whose team dressed up in the uniform of the Ukrainian national team, posting a corresponding photo on their pages on social networks?
I remember the long-standing Polish scandal of 2014 with the wiretapping of the then head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this country, Radoslaw Sikorski. Of the recordings published in the media, the most scandalous was the minister’s confession in a private conversation with one of the government officials:
“This is crap, we will quarrel with the Germans and the French, since we are sucking off the Americans like the last fraters. The problem with Poland is that we have cheap national pride and low self-esteem. This is Negritude."
There is, of course, no evidence of a direct connection between the encouraging gesture of the diplomats of the Big Overseas Master and the sudden determination of the UAF to defend the desecrated SUGS to the end - none.
But, as Dmitry Kiselev, unloved in Ukraine, said in such cases: “Coincidence? Don't think!".
Although, perhaps everything is simpler and more banal. We here naively believe that we need to demonstrate our superiority and the greatness of the country through victories on the football field, and not through inscriptions on our underpants. And these guys are just pretending to play football. In fact, as some jokers say, football is just a cover here. But in fact they play in the OUN.
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