The passage of the Ukrainian Freedom Support Act passed overwhelmingly by Congress late last year has little US popular support; opinion polls show that more than two thirds of the US public opposes either sending lethal military assistance to the Ukrainian government or even intensifying sanctions against Moscow. As usual, the US congress and US public hold diametrically opposed views on matters of foreign policy. The US public has no desire to see an escalation of tensions between Moscow and Washington possibly leading to US "boots on the ground" in Eastern Europe whether through NATO or unilaterally. A renewal of the cold war is also not in anyone's best interest. But most importantly, the Act which is supposed to secure Ukrainian freedom and democracy does neither!
The Ukrainian government is filled with fascists and outright Neo-Nazis! True, the leading fascist party Svoboda, formed in 1991, in the 2014 elections lost most of the support it enjoyed in the parliamentary elections in 2012 (they now hold less than ten percent of the parliamentary seats) but it has members hold about one third of the cabinet posts. Furthermore, much of the military is sympathetic to the far right and the militias in the eastern Ukraine are mostly comprised of fighters who are openly pro-fascist and neo-Nazi. In addition, though Svoboda's overall popularity is low, its level of support in the western Ukraine is quite high; though the 2012 parliamentary elections gave Svoboda only ten percent of the vote their support in the overall western Ukraine was much higher. According to one report;
The party’s breakthrough came in the 2012 parliamentary elections, when Ukrainian voters granted it 10.4 percent of the popular national vote, ceding its representatives 36 of the 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. This tenth of the national vote included 17 percent of voters in the capital of Kiev and even more in the west, where the level of support topped out at over 34 percent in Ternopil oblast.
It is very clear that support for Svoboda is regional. This extreme nationalism is stoked by the fact that the vast majority of those in the eastern Ukraine and in the Crimea are not nationalists, didn't support the impeachment of Victor Yanukovick in violation of the Ukrainian constitution (insufficient votes for impeachment) and didn't support the coup which deposed and exiled him after winning a democratic election in 2010 and after agreeing to holding early elections in February 2014. Ukrainian nationalism isn't about freedom and independence; it is historically murderous and racist. The nature of the current civil war, in which non-Ukrainians in the east want protection from neo-Nazi militias attempting to cleanse them from the region, is proof of the nature of Ukrainian nationalism's murderous and intolerant history.
Svoboda bases its nationalism on the traditional Ukrainian support on the most bigoted and murderous elements. Svoboda sees itself as the modern incarnation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) led by Stephen Bandara during WWII. During the war Bandara formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which from 1943-44 fought alongside the Nazis in the vein hope that a German victory would result in an independent Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men serving in the Ukrainian National Army against the Soviet forces willingly joined the 14th Waffen SS Division formed in April 1943 in Galicia, southeast Poland. The division operated for over a year until being decimated in the battle of Brody by the Soviet Army in July 1944. Though its formation was actually opposed by Bandara for purely tactical reasons, there was no doubt that he sympathized with the political and military objectives of the SS Division.
During its year in operation it committed unspeakable war crimes in eastern Poland and the Ukraine killing thousands of Poles and Jews in an effort to ethnically cleanse the eastern Galicia in Poland and Volhynia in the northeastern Ukraine, areas where estimates of up to 100,000 Poles were massacred. According to some estimates over 800,000 Jews alone were murdered in the Ukraine during the Nazi occupation mostly by Ukrainian nationalists belonging to the Waffen SS 14th division and other such militias. Svoboda supporters celebrated the formation of the 14th SS Division in a march in Lviv on April 28, 2013. Lviv was heavily populated by Poles and Jews under the Austrians and later the Russians until the ethnic cleansing drive of the Nazis and their Ukrainian allies. The February 1944 massacre that took place in Huta Pieniacka took between 500 and 1000 lives of Polish residents there and the memorial erected to the victims has been strongly contested by Svoboda leaders. In 2007, a new monument to the victims was unveiled in the presence of the Polish consul in Lviv. regarding which Svoboda’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, sent a note of protest. The March by Svoboda supporters on the 70th anniversary of the creation of the 14th waffen ss division is an especially egregious celebration of genocide.
Ukrainian combatants didn't just help the Nazis to ethnically cleanse eastern Poland and much of the western Ukraine of Jews and Poles; the actively fought along side the Nazis in 1944 in the pacification of Warsaw after its failed national uprising against the German occupation as well as in other parts of Poland far removed from any Ukrainian population. According to many historical accounts, Ukrainian nationalist militias fought everywhere with the Germans in crushing the resistance of the Polish Home Army and other anti-Nazi partisans. Neo-Nazi militias like the Azov brigades fighting in the eastern Ukraine are behaving with similar indiscriminant violence and a commitment to ethnic cleansing.
Many European leaders, such as Andrea Merkel of Germany, oppose sending arms to the Ukrainian government. It is feared that more violence and an escalation of tension between Russia and the West can not lead to a just and lasting solution to the issues which prompted the current civil conflict. The issue is not only about Putin's aggression and territorial ambition; the Russian leader is seen as having understandable objections ot a potentially hostile, fascist and anti-Russian racist and anti-Semitic state on its borders. In addition, an escalation of the conflict will only worsen the violence and the economic position of the Ukraine which is seen as the most important issue to resolve.
Merkel's position is that military aid won't solve Ukraine's most pressing problems. She has been quoted as saying that, “The problem is that I cannot envisage any situation in which an improved equipment of the Ukrainian army leads to a situation where President Putin is so impressed that he will lose militarily..." Unlike US Republican leaders like John McCain and others, Merkel understands that there is no military solution to this problem. This is especially the case because such assistance will only strengthen the most murderous and fascist elements in Ukrainian society which the current president Petro Poroshenko is intent on using in his military campaign in the eastern Ukraine.
Most sources put the number of casualties from the Civil War in the Donbas region at between five and six thousand. But some German security sources, according to the online Frankfurter Allegmeine, put the number of casualties among both combatants and non-combatants as high as 50,000! Though Putin is clearly supporting the rebel effort (as NATO and the US has supported the new Kiev regime from the start) non-Ukrainians in the Donbas region have many legitimate grievances and good reason not to want to be ruled by ultra-right wing, Ukrainian nationalists whose disproportionate representation and influence in the Kiev government and military is the product of deep crisis of the Ukrainian political system and society. Ukrainian nationalism has always been quite intolerant and violent throughout its nearly four century long history beginning with the mid-17th century Cossack uprisings in the western Ukraine which murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews. Since that point, ethnic cleansing and genocide has been the calling card of Ukrainian nationalism. It is understandable that the coup against Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014 and the rise of neo-fascist militia and parties which celebrate Stephen Bandara and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) caused many in the Donbas to join the rebels. According to one report by The Socialist Worker, which unequivocally condemns the partisan meddling by both Washington and Moscow, the grievances of the Donbas rebels are legitimate;
People in the east rightly fear the nationalism of the new regime that came to power after Yanukovych--including far-right parties, openly connected to European fascists. That nationalism is symbolized, for example, by efforts to revoke official status for languages other than Ukrainian--something obviously aimed at, among others, the Russian-speaking minority concentrated in the east. Plus, the already ailing industrial economy of the area would be decimated if Ukraine signs on with the European Union, with its requirements for strict austerity. And, of course, the government's months-long offensive in the east--described by Kiev, taking a page from the U.S. government, as an "anti-terrorist" operation--has been every bit as destructive and repressive as any occupying force.
There is no military solution; the US and NATO should not arm the Ukrainian militias or the Kiev standard army which can only escalate the conflict and lead to greater extremism and atrocities. As many EU elected officials have proposed, negotiations should be encouraged by the international community. Most of the rebels that no control Luhansk and Donetsk would settle for automony over the areas they now control and the ability to retain strong political, cultural and economic ties with Moscow irrespective of the deals made by the Kiev government on behalf of the rest of the Ukraine's residents. Such an arrangement would mean a de facto division of the Ukraine which already exists and has for centuries. There has already been sufficient destruction, death and displacement in the eastern Ukraine; it is time to negotiate a just and lasting solution to this conflict and to put the breaks on an intolerant, extremist nationalist tendency that has the potential to lead to the kind of ethnic cleansing and genocide witnessed elsewhere in recent times.