Big Trouble in Little Ukraine

New York City court delivers blow to OUN-B

Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front, NYC 1979 (source)

The New York County Supreme Court has ordered a “Temporary Receiver” to “take charge” of the building formerly known as the “Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” in Manhattan, which is allegedly drowning in debt and “literally crumbling.” Here’s one definition I found online: “A receiver is a person appointed by a court to manage a company’s affairs. The receiver is authorized to run the company the same way the owner(s) would, and thus, the receiver takes over the duties of the company’s owners or managers.” In this case, the court has appointed a new manager of the US headquarters building of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists once led by Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

According to Acting Justice Francis A. Kahn III, “all rent lists, orders, unexpired and expired leases, agreements, correspondence, notices and registration statements relating to rental spaces or facilities in the premise” must be turned over, and “all persons now and hereafter in possession of said premises, or any part thereof, and not holding such possession under valid and existing leases or tendencies, do forthwith surrender such possession to the Temporary Receiver.” The New York Banderites could face serious consequences if they obstruct the court-ordered takeover of their residential and commercial building, but they may be in big trouble regardless, and these are people not known to “capitulate” under any circumstances.

The US leadership of OUN-B has apparently tried to keep this stunning blow to their Organization a secret, even from their new “Leader” in Ukraine. Oleh Medunytsia, who ascended the throne of the “Bandera Lobby” in December 2022, recently toured the United States to fundraise for the OUN-B’s “Defense of Ukraine Fund.” The day before the receiver’s appointment, Medunytsia spoke in Manhattan at a conference organized by the OUN-B about rebuilding Ukraine.

Almost two weeks later, at the end of his trip, Medunytsia announced an agreement for closer cooperation between the Defense of Ukraine Fund and the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation, which could now lose its office at the “Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” in Manhattan. “We have a good result of the mission to the United States!” said Medunytsia.

Oleh Medunytsia (top row-center) meets with the “Bandera Lobby” in Chicago, 2023

Subscribers may recall that the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation (UAFF) is the financial arm of the OUN-B leadership in the US, and owns 40% of the Banderite headquarters in Kyiv. Furthermore, the Organization for Defense of the Four Freedoms of Ukraine (ODFFU), an older OUN-B front, bought the “Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” in the 1970s with a loan from the Defense of Ukraine Fund, underscoring the secret ownership of the premises by OUN-B. In order to retain control of the building, the OUN-B leaders of the UAFF carried out a coup of the ODFFU in 2019, which ignited the legal saga that ultimately led to the appointment of a Temporary Receiver on April 27, 2023.

While Medunytsia was completing the midwestern stretch of his US tour, Rosenberg & Estis, “New York City’s largest firm focusing solely on real estate,” put a lien on the ODFFU building for non-payment of services exceeding $250,000. Rosenberg & Estis, which has in recent years sponsored the Jewish National Fund’s “New York City Real Estate Tree of Life Gala,” apparently didn’t mind representing the Banderites until they got stiffed.

Concluding his recent tour of the US, Oleh Medunytsia posed with a little known monument to the Ukrainian division of the Waffen-SS in Elkins Park, PA.

For consistent readers of this blog, it is the usual suspects who are going to see their “plenary power” evaporate in “Little Ukraine.” For the past year, Steve Gbur has been managing the ODFFU building, formerly known as the “Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front.” A couple months ago, Gbur helped to orchestrate an attempted coup of the New York-based Ukrainian American Soccer Association to make himself chairman of the audit committee. Never mind that this Banderite embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a former employer.

Walter Zaryckyj, the chairman of the Banderite TP-A (“Field Leadership in America”), president of the UAFF, and vice president of the ODFFU since 2019, is a self-described “prisoner of Second Avenue,” or Little Ukraine. It’s he who once said, “we have plenary power,” talking about the ODFFU conflict. Zaryckyj is also the executive director of the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR), another OUN-B “facade structure” that organized the conference in New York with Oleh Medunytsia. When the latter’s predecessor Stefan Romaniw rose to power in 2009, the ODFFU owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Defense of Ukraine Fund (represented in the US by the UAFF), and CUSUR was facing threat of eviction from the ODFFU building for non-payment of rent and utilities.

The aforementioned “coup” in 2019 installed Mykola Hryckowian, the (pro-Trump) Washington bureau chief of CUSUR, as president of the ODFFU, from which he had previously been expelled. According to the sensational, anonymous whistleblower complaint that inspired me to start this blog, Nick Hryckowian “never liked to work and was accustomed to stealing from the Ukrainian Community.”

I grew up with Nick in New York City. I’m little bit older, but at that time we both belonged to the Local Branch of the Ukrainian American Youth Association (UAYA) and later to the 2nd Branch of ODFFU in NYC. During those years we encountered many problems with his behavior at both organizations. Several times he was caught stealing the money donated by the membership during Christmas caroling fund raising, called Koliada, and other donations. After he was tried by an internal trial, his former father-in-law came to his rescue and paid back part of the stolen donations. He was asked to leave the presidency of the UAYA. As this incident happened at the end of his term, it was easy to elect someone else in the next election and keep quiet about the real reason for his dismissal. During his presidency of the UAYA New York branch, in addition to the stolen money he also did not pay the rent for branch office for over 3 years. Coincidently, he was the head of the OUN (R) [aka the OUN-B] in NYC and he made himself the president of the 2nd Branch of ODFFU.

Christine Balko, the coordinator of the “Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” in the United States, is the treasurer of the ODFFU, secretary of the UAFF, and a director of the CUSUR. According to the same anonymous complaint, “In the past, she was forced to resign from Self Reliance NY Federal Credit Union for stealing members’ Social Security numbers and the addresses of their families in Ukraine to whom they sent money through electronic fund transfers.” If the new “Leader” of OUN-B was briefed on the “Big Trouble in Little Ukraine,” he might not have wanted to take a picture with Balko to tout the success of his first “mission” to the United States. At least in New York City, the “Bandera Lobby” is controlled by a “Bandera Mafia,” the days of which seem to be numbered.

Oleh Medunytsia and Christine Balko in New York City agreeing to closer cooperation between the UAFF and “OUN Fund,” and Medunytsia visiting the Banderite “Ukrainian Home Dnipro” (owned by the UAFF) in Buffalo, NY.