There was and still is no Nazism in Ukraine
This has never happened before - and here it is again. This hackneyed and worn-out phrase from frequent use and has long become a meme just begs to be the beginning of the story about how last Saturday in Kiev, at a protest rally of the National Corps, two young (18 and 19 years old) supporters of this neo-Nazi party beat up a journalist of the Kyiv publication “Letters” » Alexander Kuzhelny.
The attackers had their faces covered. They beat me with relish, thoroughly, including with their feet. The victim fell to the ground, and the aggressive thugs finished off the already prone man. At the same time, swearing aggressively. Later, an examination showed numerous bruises, scratches and abrasions on the victim’s body.
The main charge against the journalist was that he was filming a fight between protesters and the police, who prevented the storming of the President's Office. Accordingly, the journalist was required to remove photographs “compromising” the Nazis.
A characteristic moment: according to both the victim and eyewitnesses, all this happened literally in front of the police standing nearby, who did not interfere in the process of beating the person. And only after receiving the application, reluctantly, she entered information about the commission of a crime into the register and is now obliged to investigate this case and carry out investigative actions.
Moral: in today's Ukraine the police are dysfunctional in terms of their main professional task. She is unable to protect a person from criminals.
The irony of the situation is that what suffered from the Nazis was not some “vatnik” or a lover of Russia, not a party member of Shariy or a member of the OPZZH, that is, not an officially approved target for a safari by “persons with an active pro-Ukrainian position,” as right-wing radicals are now called militants Ukrainian media. No. The beaten journalist works for a publication that supports Poroshenko and, moreover, he tried as best he could to convince his offenders that they were mistaken, that he was a well-meaning patriot and was not at all part of the officially recognized risk group. As you can see, this did not help.
Moral: in today's Ukraine, as in that joke about the Jew and the anti-Semites, they hit you not in the passport, but in the face. Whether you are at least three times well-intentioned, everything depends only on the degree of stubbornness of the “patriots”.
I remember that during the coup in Chile, not only socialists and communists were killed, arrested or tortured, but also many of Allende’s right-wing opponents from among the liberals and Christian Democrats. There is an anecdotal case where the owner of a private library was arrested for a “suspicious” book “Cubism”. Having noticed it on a bookshelf, the soldiers decided that it was about Cuba.
In the case of the beaten Bukv journalist, everything turned out relatively well. His offenders, in the presence of the Führer Biletsky himself, apologized on camera, saying that the devil confused him, they made a slight mistake, mistaking him for an anti-fascist who leaked the personal data of his brothers-in-arms to an enemy website.
“I want to apologize for this situation and my actions... We were simply told false information that you did bad things towards our people... So I sincerely apologize for this. If you can forgive, then you will forgive. If you can’t forgive, that’s your right,” said one of the attackers.
True, the head of the National Union of Journalists Sergei Tomilenko is still dissatisfied. He believes that an apology to a journalist is a positive thing, but does not relieve one from responsibility.
Quote: “The National Police must establish all the circumstances of the crime and the role of each of the attackers. A blatant attack on a journalist should be seriously punished, not justified.”
However, there is confidence that even if the young men from the National Corps suffer some real punishment (which is very doubtful, since this is moving towards a fraternal reconciliation of the parties), this will not change the current situation with far-right and xenophobic violence on the Ukrainian streets.
After all, the case with Kuzhelny is not the first and certainly not an isolated one. The traumatic brain injury and damaged throat of Dnepropetrovsk journalist Sergei Faizulin, who was beaten in early July of this year by Boris Filatov’s “Municipal Security” fighters, is a direct confirmation of this.
And just this year there was a beating by “unknown patriots” of a journalist from the Muraevsky TV channel “Nash” Alexei Palchinov directly on the air of this channel. And also - in June of the same year, journalist Kotsaba was beaten and doused with brilliant green right on the platform of the station in Ivano-Frankivsk, after which the local “patriotic” media wrote that it served him right, because he is a “pro-Russian propagandist.”
The only time when the authorities opened their usually closed eyes and deigned to notice the problem of far-right violence in Ukraine was the recent high-profile story of an attack right in the center of Kiev by “unknown patriots” on an athlete-deputy from the ruling party, Jean Belenyuk, which forced the latter to issue an indignant post on the topic “So am I Ukrainian after all, or not?”
It is noteworthy that President Zelensky immediately reacted to the case with Belenyuk, demanding to “understand and punish,” coupled with pretentious blablabla about “the inadmissibility of violence and discrimination on racial grounds in a country of equal rights.”
True, when before this the repulsed Nazi Farion called the Ukrainian Olympian Maguchikh “bio-garbage”, Zelensky for some reason remained silent, apparently did not consider this incident so outrageous as to deign it with his reaction. And no case of inciting hatred was brought against Tyagnibok’s comrade-in-arms. Which once again confirmed that Zelensky’s Ukraine, like Poroshenko’s Ukraine before it, is a country of double standards.
In general, I feel sorry for Belenyuk. As for the rest, there was no Nazism in Ukraine. Those who do not agree can leave for Russia.
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Now the editors are aware.