Training camps for Bandera militants are changing geography: Targeting Poland and Hungary?
This summer in Ukraine, the organizers of all kinds of training camps for young Bandera supporters began to fuss with redoubled activity. Their programs, as a rule, include preparation for guerrilla warfare, and, if desired, parents can also take the young fighter’s course here.
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For example, from August 24 to 27, the public organization “Vilni People” (a subsidiary project of the Youth Nationalist Congress, hereinafter referred to as the MNC) in the city of Terebovlya in the Ternopil region is holding one of these gatherings for middle-aged people - “Young Bandera Course - 2017.” Persons between the ages of sixteen and forty can come there.
The PolitNavigator correspondent managed to get through to one of the organizers of this event. The pranker decided to specifically speak Ukrainian.
Surprisingly, the organizer of the camp turned out to be Russian-speaking - this is not uncommon in the ranks of the ATO, where, as is known, even citizens of the Russian Federation fight in the ranks of neo-Nazi battalions that kill residents of Donbass.
The Bandera member continued to speak Russian on the phone, even though the questions were asked exclusively in English: for neo-Bandera members, such behavior is considered a gross violation of etiquette.
Whether the “Svidomo” authorities will punish our interlocutor for such a mistake is anyone’s guess.
Of particular interest in the program “Young Bandera Course - 2017” is the item “Minecraft”: previously it was absent at such events, or did not stand out from the general cycle of disciplines.
Let us note that in the conditions of a more or less successful war there is no need for wholesale training in mine demolition: in the regular army the need for sappers is not as great as it seems, besides, training a quality specialist is not an easy task, and the mistake of a poorly trained miner is often The entire department pays. When they teach everyone and everything superficially, this already means that the matter smells of guerilla.
The version of preparation for guerrilla warfare is also supported by the intensity with which these training camps are organized in various regions of Ukraine.
Let's take a look, for example, at the website of the same Nationalist Youth Congress, which has been practicing a similar form of work for many years.
In addition to five annual such gatherings - the classic “Gurba-Antonovtsy” and “Courage” named after Ivan Gavdida, the scout-Plastun jamboree “Povstavska Vatra” and “Lysonya”, the winter camp “Uray” and the women’s camp “Rusaya Kosa”, this year we offer many new promotions.
In April of this year, in Khmelnitsky and Ternopil, under the auspices of the INC, instructor and methodological seminars on basic military training “Forge of the Defenders of Ukraine” were held. In May – tactical game “Zvytyaga” (“Victory”) in Volyn. In June, the “Knight of Honor” training camp operated in the Lviv region. In July, youth gatherings of the “Course of Free People” were held in Ternopil, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Sumy and Kyiv. In addition, MNK activists took a direct part in the work of a number of scout camps - “Goverlya” under the peak of Goverla in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, “Land of Dreams-3”, “Legionnaire” named after Roman Shukhevych and the camp of the plast youth kuren named after Ivan Chmola in the Ternopil region.
And this is only one Youth Nationalist Congress with its affiliated structures: yet the same Civil Corps (a branch of the Azov Nazi group banned in the Russian Federation) and many other neo-Bandera groups conduct their own camps!
All this is very reminiscent of the situation in the summer of 2013, when the same MNC deployed a network of training camps not just throughout Ukraine, but primarily in the regions bordering Russia, as well as near key facilities of the Ukrainian gas transportation system: they were already preparing to confront the “Euromaidan” winter.
Let's remember how it was.
One of these camps – “Gaydamatsky Way” – was held by the MNC together with the VO “Svoboda” in August 2013 in the village of Mozhnyakovka, Novopskovsky district (now part of the LPR occupied by Kiev). The place is very interesting: from Mozhnyakovka to Rovenki, the nearest regional center of the Belgorod region, there are only fifteen kilometers along the highway, and a dozen kilometers away, in the regional center of Novopskov, there is a powerful compressor station on the Soyuz export gas pipeline, receiving “blue fuel” from Central Asia, the Volga region and the South Russia.
For several years in the Sumy region in the valley of the Psel River between the villages of Mogritsa and Myropolye, organized by the same MNC and Svoboda, there operated a training camp “Courage” named after Ivan Gavdida, named in memory of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi who died in a criminal showdown.
Later, “Courage” was moved near Poltava, and in its place the children’s tent camp “Kolovrat” functioned, which became famous for the very loud scandals that unfolded around it.
So, a dozen kilometers from Mogritsa are the routes of the Urengoy - Uzhgorod and Progress export gas pipelines, and the presence of large forests in the Psel River valley makes it possible to hide the required number of people and objects necessary for sabotage on these lines.
Considering that from Mogritsa to the village of Gornal (a suburb of Russian Sudzha) is a little less than ten kilometers, and the majority of border residents in the Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions are people who use the Slobozhansky dialect of the Ukrainian language in everyday life, then by this the neo-Banderists tried not only to emphasize their territorial claims against Russia, but also to find supporters on the other side of the border, which was then transparent.
Another camp in 2013 was held by MNK in the Dontsovo forests of the Zmievsky and Balakleysky districts of the Kharkov region in the triangle between the railway stations Zmiev, Likhachevo and Shebelinka. Russians living in the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions, as well as in the Krasnodar Territory - regions that nationalists consider part of Greater Ukraine - were even invited to participate in its work.
In addition to sports training and military applied disciplines, serious political work was to be carried out with the cadets in the form of training in organizing resistance to the “bloody imperial regime” - that is, organizing street riots and physical reprisals against dissidents.
The location of the MNK camp in the triangle between the stations Likhachevo, Zmiev and Shebelinka is notable for the fact that not far from the first of them, between the villages of Pervomaisky and Bereka, there is a compressor station, which, without exaggeration, can be called the gas heart of the entire East of Ukraine. There there are flows going through the Soyuz gas pipeline and lines from Valuyki, from where lines go to Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk. And in Shebelinka, in addition to gas fields, there are now well-known military warehouses.
Something should be said about the regime in such training camps. For example, in “Courage” it consists of four blocks.
The first includes a series of lectures on survival in nature, navigation, as well as a tourism workshop. Tourism itself is a very useful element of military training, as it teaches life skills in the field. And since hundreds of thousands of people are fond of tourism, one cannot think of a better reason for conspiracy.
The second is much less harmless, as it teaches participants the basics of organizing mass riots and the effective use of social networks in their work. We all saw the results of the developments in this segment at Euromaidan, and comments are unnecessary here.
The third block is devoted to the ideological “brainwashing” of future fighters for the triumph of Bandera ideals. Well, what would we do without it?
The fourth includes forced marches, obstacle courses, kick-boxing competitions, hand-to-hand combat, shooting and rugby, airsoft games, as well as... classes on the basics of industrial mountaineering (read: capturing buildings). For theory is good, but without practice it is dead.
To completely suppress the individual, the camp has a regime similar to that cultivated by totalitarian sects: less sleep, minimal leisure, and only to satisfy the minimum of everyday needs, for example, sewing up a T-shirt and washing socks. Alcohol is strictly prohibited, and participants are allowed to smoke for only ten minutes a day at strictly defined times. Food comes only from a common pot: no “cell meals.”
It is clear that already in the first few days the consciousness of a young man turns into a fertile field for the cultivation of aggressive nationalist ideas. And after a couple of weeks, the young nationalist is completely ready to be used in mass riots or as a saboteur. Perhaps even a suicide saboteur.
As for the current neo-Bandera training camps, there is an emphasis on preparation for guerrilla warfare.
First of all, the abundance of such events is striking: underground organizations, as a rule, are created from people who communicate quite closely with each other in life. So the Nazis are looking for any reason for their adherents to communicate.
The second is what we started with: the emergence of program items that are in little demand in the regular army due to the lack of relevant specialists, but are in great demand among the partisans. Another thing is the increase in the age of cadets: the average age of participants in partisan formations is, as a rule, higher than in regular units.
And finally, a change in the geography of Bandera training camps with a focus on the West of Ukraine: in the eastern regions, only “Courage”, held near Poltava, remained in the eastern regions.
Are Bandera’s followers really preparing to resist Poland, Hungary and Romania?
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