McCarthyism, Eh?
'Loss of Ukraine' blame game starts in Canada, with journalist in the crosshairs of Kyiv and Canadian politician who vowed a huge victory over Russia
On Thursday, the Canadian House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security heard from a right-wing diplomat-turned-politician and two “disinformation experts” that Ottawa needs to get “more serious” about exposing alleged Russian information operations in Canada. The politician, Chris Alexander, a former Conservative MP and minister in Stephen Harper’s government, stole the show by claiming that the KGB recruited award-winning Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese at the end of the Cold War.
So far, Alexander’s “bombshell,” ostensibly based on a small collection of Ukrainian KGB documents, hasn’t made the splash that he hoped for. As Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University, explained to Canada’s Global News, “Nothing in these documents clearly says that this individual was even approached, or certainly says that approach was successful. All they do is say this is something worth exploring.” Chris Alexander, however, presented the documents as proof that the KGB recruited Pugliese decades ago, with the implication that he’s been a Moscow-backed traitor to Canada ever since.
Alexander has apparently been trying to take down Pugliese for over a year, but this parliamentary witness, with immunity to say whatever he wanted in that setting, also had bigger fish to fry. He not only suggested that Pugliese is a high-level Russian agent, responsible for helping to prevent Canada from making the military commitments necessary for Ukraine to win the war, but that this veteran journalist is just the tip of an iceberg of “Russian information assets,” who apparently form the vanguard of Moscow’s fifth column in Canada. With these “revelations,” Alexander called for a rapid Canadian government mobilization to win the information war, and “end the impunity with which Russia has operated in Canada.” As he said, “Russian active measures” are an important reason why “we’ve still not committed fully to defeating this aggressor or to Ukraine’s victory.”
This hatchet job seems to have been at least partially motivated by revenge for Pugliese’s articles about Mriya Report, a pro-Ukraine charity founded by a Canadian military officer. In a recent podcast interview, David Pugliese shared that in the last year or two, several journalists from the Globe & Mail, in addition to himself, were all accused of being “paid Russian agents” by a board member of this charity.
Former Navy SEAL officer Chuck Pfarrer, a host of the Mriya Report’s online broadcasts, and as of this year, a special correspondent for the expat Kyiv Post, recently declared this about Pugliese: “He was successful in bringing down aid organizations, and carrying out AGITPROP against the Canadian military, and certain Canadian officers. Now, it’s HIS turn.” Pfarrer was tipped off about the parliamentary hearing, and before it started, primed his NAFO audience for a big surprise: “A prominent Canadian journalist has been revealed as a Russian agent, working for Directorate ’S’ (the elite illegals) of the FSB’s First Directorate. Stand by for details....” Pfarrer went even further than Alexander, who hid behind parliamentary immunity: “This individual was assigned to attack the @MriyaReport — and did so for money paid by the Russian FSB’s 1st Directorate.”
Whatever credibility the Kyiv Post used to have was flushed down the toilet by 2022, when it became a shameless war propaganda outlet, which I wrote about here. Last year, Jason Jay Smart, another special correspondent for the Kyiv Post, wrote a hit-job quoting anonymous officials in Canada and Ukraine who conveyed that David Pugliese was branded an “undesirable person” in Kyiv. Again, Pfarrer took things even further, and repeatedly made the absurd claim that Pugliese “finds time to play on the Russian Embassy hockey team in Ottawa.”
In retrospect, it seems obvious that Chris Alexander was the “former senior Canadian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, [who] echoed this view, telling the Kyiv Post that in his many years ‘of having watched how Pugliese works — Pugliese has all the marks of a ‘grey zone’ media operator.” In last week’s parliamentary hearing, Alexander used the phrases “all the marks of Russian influence” and “grey zone media.”
Smart also quoted an anonymous Ukrainian official who said that Pugliese is an “activist” known in Kyiv for “his public anti-Ukrainian rhetoric,” which “coincides with Russian propagandist narratives.” This individual reportedly said that “Ukraine would consider him to be, writing in all capital letters,” an “UNDESIRABLE PERSON.” My guess is that this official came from the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, which a few months later accused Pugliese of promoting “anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and narratives aimed at demonizing the Ukrainian military,” not least of all with social media posts in which the Ottawa Citizen journalist “repeatedly spoke about the so-called problem of nazism in Ukraine, particularly related to the supposed nazi regiment ‘Azov’. Such rhetoric about the ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ clearly echoes the Russian narrative, which Putin used as an excuse for his invasion of Ukraine.”
Ironically, Jason Jay Smart once wrote a PhD dissertation about “character assassination as found in bilateral relations between the US and Russia.” On a more serious note, he co-founded a Ukrainian NGO with Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a nationalist former director of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU, Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrainy)—the successor of the KGB in Ukraine. If Chris Alexander’s documents are authentic, they probably originated in the SBU archives, which might be where the “Bandera Lobby” comes into the picture.
As subscribers know, this blog is about the international OUN-B network, which actually provides some context to what happened at last week’s parliamentary hearing in Ottawa, since Alexander has been a friend to the Canadian Banderites, and the director of the SBU archives (Andriy Kohut) belongs to an OUN-B front group. The next part of this post will deal with Alexander, because he’s a handful. The final section will cover the parliamentary hearing itself.
The 1950s U.S. Red Scare started with the “Loss of China” blame game in Washington. In Canada, the same might be said of the 1945 “Gouzenko Affair.” Alexander said the latter “resulted in a Royal commission that turned Canada into one of the Cold War’s most reliable Allies,” and suggested that Canada needs a new Cold War commission (inspired by David Pugliese). His attempt to destroy Pugliese offers a preview of the sensational witch hunts that could follow a Ukrainian military defeat or stalemate, led by vociferous Ukraine supporters, with a helping hand from their “backstabbed” allies in Kyiv. Western politicians from both sides of the aisle can point their fingers across the room, but “Russian information assets” might be the only scapegoats that everyone who “stands with Ukraine” can agree on.
Chris Alexander’s support for Ukraine goes back to his days as the right-wing Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (2013-15), when a nationalist revolution started a new chapter in Ukrainian history. Before that, when Alexander joined parliament in 2011, he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence. As he became obsessed with Ukraine, Alexander pushed an Islamophobic agenda on the home front. He championed the 2014 “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” and the Conservatives’ 2015 election pledge to create a snitch hotline for Canadians to report “barbaric cultural practices.”
In early 2014, Chris Alexander “committed to work with” the nationalist Ukrainian Canadian Congress “to take immediate and concrete action condemning Russia’s continued economic and political coercion of Ukraine.” That summer, he had an awkward moment at the annual Ukrainian festival in Toronto. A neo-Nazi from “Right Sector Canada” set up a table to raise money for “anything.” When the CBC interviewed Chris Alexander at the festival, and asked him what he thought about this, the Minister fumbled as Right Sector flags waved in the background. “You’re telling me something second-hand that is a rumor that I have no ability to comment on in a responsible way,” Alexander said, standing in front of a booth for the largest Ukrainian-Canadian financial institution, which is also an OUN-B front, and has supported the Banderites’ book publishing operation in Ukraine.
For the first anniversary of the February 2014 coup d’etat in Kyiv, an important far-right Ukrainian politician, Andriy Parubiy, took a trip to Canada. Parubiy, a former neo-Nazi paramilitary leader, commanded the “Maidan Self Defense Force” that provided the muscle for the “Euromaidan” protests that started in late 2013. A few months later, he was secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and by 2015 served as the first deputy chairman of Ukrainian parliament. In this capacity, Parubiy took several meetings in Ottawa, and addressed the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) in Toronto.
“I thank the Ukrainian community,” said Parubiy, “which to a large degree displays the [pro-western, nationalist] position of Ukraine, and obviously the [Canadian] government orientates itself on the position of the community.” At the UCC event, he appeared alongside Chris Alexander, who donned a handkerchief from the far-right-led Maidan Self Defense, and made a warmongering speech to Toronto’s nationalistic Ukrainian community.
We know, as you know, that Vladimir Putin is only going to face his comeuppance and his whole mad nightmare is only going to come apart at the seams, when the whole world is standing against him, with every option on the table … This is the biggest issue facing the world today, in my view … What is happening in eastern Ukraine has roots that go as far back as … the Second World War, but it really has to do with the incomplete process of ending the existence of the Soviet Union for good — ending the oppression and the Faustian bargain that had been made in the Second World War with Stalin’s Soviet Union, for good. … We must speak out against this dangerous ideology [of Russian revanchism] which is present in our own city of Toronto, which is present across Canada, which comes to use through state-sponsored Russian channels that are preaching absolute poison! For Vladimir Putin’s media handlers to be calling the government of Ukraine, calling us Ukraine supporters, [and] to be calling the whole western world “Nazis” is nothing less than reprehensible, and we must be taking the lead, not only in fighting, and supporting those who are fighting, not only in making sure that Ukraine gets all the support that it needs, but in denouncing one of the greatest perversions of history that I have seen in my lifetime … Ladies and gentlemen, let’s join that fight as well. There are ideas as stake here, there is ideology at stake here, there is history at stake here, and all of our democracies! All of our democracies depend on the outcome of this struggle. It is going to be a great struggle. We are just at the beginning of this struggle, and I think when I see groups like this assembled, when I see determination on the level that is plain from all of your faces, I know that the future of Ukraine is still bright. I know the ties that bind Canada to Ukraine have never been stronger, and I know that Canada’s leadership in the world on this issue, as on others, has never been more important. … Slava Ukraini!
Before moving on, let’s take a moment to digest Alexander’s comments about the “perversions of history.” It almost goes without saying that according to him, “Hitler was an ally of Stalin, Putin’s idol,” and “Putin has resurrected this red-brown alliance.” This politician and former diplomat helped to initiate the project to establish an extremely problematic “Victims of Communism” monument in Ottawa. As David Pugliese recently reported, “The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.” His numerous stories about this controversial project are another reason for Alexander to have an axe to grind with the award-winning journalist. Pugliese, who specializes in writing about military issues, apparently also embarrassed Alexander back when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence.
In the spring of 2022, Chris Alexander told his ~130,000 Twitter followers that Russia is “committing the same war crimes as Nazi invaders.” A couple months later, he said, “There is no substantive difference between the threat to world peace represented by revanchist Nazi Germany in 1939 & that of genocidal, irredentist & fascist Russia in 2022.” Last year, Alexander shared an article about the “Jewish Question” from the U.S. Holocaust Museum, just to compare “Hitler’s determination to ‘remove the Jews’” with “Putin’s obsession with ‘removing Ukraine.’” Even before Putin launched his so-called “special military operation,” Alexander said that “Germans should understand” they don’t deserve all the blame for “the horrors of the Second World War,” which the Kremlin started. “Germany has overcome its Nazi past. It now needs to face down, with equal vigour, Russia’s dark Stalinist legacy.”
Chris Alexander lost his seat in Canadian parliament in 2015, several months after he welcomed Andriy Parubiy to Toronto. A couple years later, he threw his hat in the ring to be the next leader of the Conservative Party. Alexander touted the endorsement of one former MP. This was Yuriy Shymko, the Canadian president of the “International Council in Support of Ukraine,” also known as the “World Council of Ukrainian Statehood Organizations,” which is the international coordinating body of OUN-B front groups, then headquartered in Toronto. Shymko endorsed Alexander at a Banderite cultural center in the Toronto area, under the watchful eye of Stepan Bandera and other OUN portraits. Making his pitch to local Banderites, Chris Alexander vowed, “If you help me become Conservative leader and prime minister of Canada, we will be driving this agenda forward together every day.”
Alexander placed 10th in the leadership race, hardly breaking 1% of votes cast. After that, he seems to have retreated to his milieu of “double genocide” revisionists. In 2019, he spoke at a “Black Ribbon Day” conference dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, at which Alexander said “we were united in our call for tougher sanctions against today’s aggressors in the Kremlin.” In early 2022, a few weeks before the Russian invasion, Chris Alexander joined the right-wing Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) as a “Distinguished Fellow.”
This teamed up Alexander with some of the most influential right-wing think tankers in Ottawa, in particular “disinformation expert” Marcus Kolga, another champion of the “Victims of Communism,” who drafted the “Black Ribbon Day” legislation in 2018. The whole point of this annual commemoration is to remember Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as twin evils of the 20th century, which conflates the perpetrators of the Holocaust with the liberators of the death camps, and more subtly lets Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe off the hook as victims forced to choose between two totalitarian and genocidal regimes.
In January 2019, the MLI published a report by Kolga, “Stemming the VIRUS: Understanding and responding to the threat of Russian disinformation.” It cited several articles by David Pugliese as examples of bad journalism that “have essentially parroted the Kremlin’s tailored narratives about those nations [Ukraine and Latvia] being neo-fascists.” These included, “Why Deny the Ukrainian Nazi Connection?” and “Chrystia Freeland’s Granddad Was Indeed a Nazi Collaborator – So Much for Russian Disinformation.” (Later that year, another MLI report heavily cited Pugliese as a valuable source of information about “Canada’s Fighter Replacement Fiasco.”) Pugliese responded to the Kolga report in a piece which explained, “What is going on in Latvia and the Ukrainian and other east European nations is a Nazi whitewash designed to rehabilitate those from these countries who took part in some of the most heinous crimes in history.” Marcus Kolga then co-authored an article, “How the Kremlin distorts the past to divide us,” which took issue with Pugliese’s “attempts to characterize [Kolga’s work] as a kind of Holocaust denial.”
At the end of his first year with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Chris Alexander delivered the keynote speech at the 2022 Awards Gala of the Peterson Literary Fund. This is a project of the BCU Foundation, an arm of the Buduchnist Credit Union Financial Group, the aforementioned Ukrainian-Canadian financial institution that is dominated by Banderites. Its longtime CEO, a former treasurer of the OUN-B’s “International Council in Support of Ukraine” (ICSU), retired this year. Lisa Shymko, the daughter of the ICSU president that endorsed Alexander in 2017, has led the Peterson Literary Fund since its establishment in 2021.
Every year, Lisa Shymko chairs a jury that selects the winners of a book prize. Among the finalists honored at the 2022 awards gala was Alik Gomelsky, the token Jewish “memory activist” of the Canadian Banderites, which I already wrote about. Earlier that year, Gomelsky reassured a Ukrainian Canadian podcast, “Bandera had nothing against Jews … so propaganda just brainwashed this people and they don’t understand what they’re talking [about].”
Chris Alexander started his keynote speech by asking the audience to give themselves a “mighty round of applause … to honor all of you, the tiny platoons (as I was saying to Diane Francis) who keep civil society strong, in support of Ukraine, in support of democracy, in support of this great nation of Canada.” Then he asked for a “huge round of applause” for the “Shymko family, my longstanding friends.” Likely aware by now that he was addressing members of the international OUN-B network, Alexander said, “it is fantastic to see so many [Ukrainian Canadian] leaders in this room tonight, who are connected to leaders across Canada, across North America, around the world, and above all, back home, in Kyiv, back home on the front that is never absent from our thoughts for more than a few seconds.” Several minutes later, Alexander turned to a topic which must have grown more urgent for him in the coming two years: “we have to confront this specter, which still undermines our ability to support Ukraine.”
It’s asymmetric hybrid warfare. It’s strategic subversion. It’s the grey zone [media operators], whose people infuriate us when we see them on cable television, or on Youtube, mouthing Kremlin talking points. … Brexit would not have happened without these shadow games, without these actives measures. Trump would not have happened without this political warfare, this hybrid warfare. Canada’s truckers’ blockade, which began in late 2021, and was timed to culminate in late February 2022, would not have happened without this hybrid warfare. This asymmetrical campaign, this interference by Moscow, it must stop. … And we have to call out those, in all of our democracies, who are naive enough to make themselves tools of these very dangerous games.
In the coming months, before Ukraine’s unsuccessful counter-offensive, Chris Alexander insisted, “The war will only end with fascist Russia’s defeat, as the Second World War ended with Nazi Germany’s defeat.” That spring of 2023, when a group of Republican lawmakers wrote to Joe Biden, “Unrestrained U.S. aid for Ukraine must come to an end,” Alexander called them “Russia-directed assets” who “should be treated as such, just as Nazi supporters were treated.” A couple weeks later, on the anniversary of the 2014 massacre of “pro-Russian” activists in Odessa, the Russian embassy in Ottawa reminded its followers, “Ukrainian Nazis burned dozens of people alive in Odessa’s Trade Union House. Justice still not served.” Alexander declared, “The material below is fascist propaganda” and “those responsible should be … expelled from Canada.”
As readers know, last year the Canadian parliament gave standing ovations to Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka. Just over a week later, the OUN-B’s League of Ukrainian Canadians hosted a “community panel discussion” with the MLI’s Marcus Kolga about “Defending Against Russian Influence Operations.” David Pugliese has written numerous articles related to the Hunka scandal, including three last month. The only leader of the Ukrainian Canadian community who dared to publicly defend Hunka in 2023 was Jurij Klufas, president of the Ukrainian National Federation, which was one of the first OUN front groups in Canada. During the Cold War, the UNF was affiliated with the Melnykites, or OUN-M, but it’s unclear what their relationship is today.
In 2014, Minister Alexander presented Jurij Klufas with the “Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.” Ten years later, Alexander and Klufas were likely reunited at this past summer’s protests of the Toronto International Film Festival for screening “Russians at War.” For many Ukrainian Canadian protesters, their main objection was that the film humanizes Putin’s army of genocidal “Orcs.” As one protest sign said, “ORCS ARE NON-HUMAN.” As the OUN-B leader in Ukraine explained, “The idea of shared responsibility for this war is a red thread running through the film. It is as if it was not unleashed by maniacs from the Kremlin, but by ghostly politicians on both sides who do not understand the suffering of people.”
To start the parliamentary hearing on October 24, Chris Alexander rushed through his opening statement, in which he shared his frustration with the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that “we’ve still not committed fully to defeating this aggressor or to Ukraine’s victory. Now why is that? Part of the answer is Russian disinformation, Russian active measures, Russian interference.”
Far from being marginal players, Russian information assets and active measures are often kingmakers in our elections. In other words, to prevent Ukraine’s victory, Russia is investing heavily in propaganda, political and cognitive warfare to make sure we never make the military commitments needed to win.
Going further, Alexander claimed that Moscow was behind “the truckers’ blockade, the yellow vest movement, the PPC [People's Party of Canada], Wexit [Western Canadian separatists], the anti-vax movement, pro-Hamas protests, and many extreme elements that play into [Canadian] elections.” Then he moved on to “the second issue.” For now, he did not name David Pugliese. “Seven documents tabled before you originate in the pre-1991 archives of the Ukrainian KGB.” He gave the impression that these documents were verified by the world’s top experts to show that the KGB recruited a Canadian journalist to work for them. Alexander also said there is “every reason to believe” this individual “continued as an agent after 1990.” And why is that?
His recent subjects are instructive. Countless stories about Ukraine’s Nazi links, or Nazis in Canada. Defamatory pieces about the family of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Provocative takes on procurement, and other issues at the department of national defense and in the Canadian forces. In short, these are themes that Moscow would be delighted to promote. They also aim to weaken Canadian support for Ukraine. Previous efforts to expose this journalist’s long-running covert ties to Moscow have resulted in attempts to intimidate current and former Canadian parliamentarians, including my former colleague James Bezan, as well as Canadian army officers. Canadians need and deserve quality independent journalism now more than ever.
Apparently when David Pugliese does “quality independent journalism,” his articles are actually “attempts to intimidate” Canadian politicians and army officers with “Russian active measures.” That is why intelligence agencies need to be empowered to separate the “journalists” from the “malign actors,” or that seems to have been the suggestion of all three witnesses on Thursday’s parliamentary hearing.
“An actual regime of declassification for intelligence that connects to foreign influence operations is critically important,” explained the next witness, Justin Ling, because its absence “leaves us shadowboxing, making allegations and suppositions for which we don’t have evidence.” Lest this sound like a warning not to rush to judgement about a fellow journalist, Ling made a point of “fully” agreeing with Chris Alexander at the outset, “someone I have sparred with in the past.” For his part, Ling told a story about getting to know Kirill Kalinin, the former press secretary at the Russian embassy, who tried to pitch him stories with a common theme.
Kalinin, for example, touted the existence of a very interesting archive at the embassy filled with information about Nazi war criminals hiding amongst us here in Canada. … It could prove, Kalinin claimed, a “big connection” to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. This would be a trend through a lot of our conversations going forward.
Perhaps the name of UCC donor Yaroslav Hunka would have come up? Or Justin Ling might have learned that the OUN-B still exists in Canada?
On one occasion, he asked me if I was interested in a story. Did I know, he asked me, that Chrystia Freeland had a Nazi grandfather? … When he first pitched this to me, there was no publicly available sources, research, news articles, or anything of the like making this allegation in the public record. In a follow up message, he pointed me to a box of records at the Alberta Archives, all about Mykhailo Chomiak, Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandfather.
Ling betrayed his ignorance and disinterest in these issues that he speaks with authority about. Or maybe he is just lying. After working in the same archives, University of Alberta historian John-Paul Himka wrote an essay about Freeland’s grandfather (and his father-in-law) published in 1998, which is readily available online. Justin Ling, who just had to provide a centrist take on the Yaroslav Hunka scandal last year, also suggested that Venezuela’s Telesur invented “a curious story claiming that it was the Communist Party of Canada that dug up these records” when the Chomiak-Freeland story surfaced. At least one member of the Communist Party of Canada really did make that trip to the archives. Ling had the chance, but “I declined to follow the story,” like any good “journalist” would, because being an obedient stenographer is what it’s really all about. It may be the Devil (Putin), or it may be the Lord (NATO), but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Above all, Justin Ling stressed the “need to get more serious about … publishing the intelligence we have.”
“Researchers studying this phenomenon including me have been baselessly attacked as censors,” said the third witness, Nina Janckowicz, who one member of parliament (Peter Julian, NDP) hailed as “a bit of a folk hero to us in Canada.” Jankowicz, a Ukrainian American “disinformation expert,” and author of How to Lose the Information War, briefly led a “Disinformation Governance Board” within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but it was quickly disbanded after the project and new “disinformation czar” were widely mocked and scrutinized. Jankowicz said that Canada should “simplify the declassification process” for intelligence agencies, and “strengthen and clarify its laws governing influencers and online political content.” Perhaps that is what she had in mind for her job in the Biden administration.
Jankowicz said Canadian law should “stipulate that influencers paid to create political content must disclose the source of their funding,” and she stressed “how important it is to have rapid public communications in the face of disinformation campaigns.” Unless I missed something, nobody explained the definition of an “influencer.” Apparently this includes alternative media organizations? It would only make it harder for independent news outlets to stay afloat if their individual donors have to go on record, especially once they are smeared as “Russian information assets.”
If independent journalists were redefined as suspicious political actors that need to be scrutinized by intelligence agencies, the latter would presumably become the arbiters of who is a “journalist.” As for the “disinformation experts,” their ideal reforms would most likely further entrench a revolving door between the public and private sectors of information warriors. For example, the “experts” might generate unsubstantiated intelligence reports that once declassified, would appear to provide high-level evidence of their own conspiracy theories and knee-jerk convictions, often fueled by professional rivalries and inter-personal drama.
In response to questions from his friend James Bezan, the Conservatives’ Shadow Minister for National Defense, Chris Alexander revealed that he was accusing David Pugliese of being the KGB agent. In what sounded like his way of making a statement, Bezan asked, “That reporter is very familiar to me because he reports also on national defense. Is that why the KGB would have been interested in making use of him, to collect information, to share with the Kremlin, and using his cover as a journalist to do so? Would we have been duping CAF [Canadian Armed Forces] members and the department of national defense… and others?” Bezan, it turns out, is another friend of the “Bandera Lobby,” and professional Pugliese hater from Canada’s milieu of “double genocide” Cold Warriors.
My suspicion is that these hatchet men swung their axes too early, because they are desparate to do something now to mobilize more western support for Ukraine as the situation becomes increasingly dire. However, after this war ends, perhaps with negotiations that are extremely difficult for many Ukrainians (and especially Ukrainian Canadians) to accept, this almost laughable attempt to take down David Pugliese could be replicated with more success in Canada, the United States, and other NATO countries as demand soars to assign blame for the “loss of Ukraine.” If for some reason western intelligence agencies won’t play this game, their Ukrainian counterparts probably will, and maybe they already have in the case of Pugliese. To better understand this and the plausible role of the “Bandera Lobby” in bringing to light the alleged KGB documents about him, it would be helpful for us to revisit a small scandal that hit the American Library Association earlier this year.
TBC. Thanks for reading. If you want to support my work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee.”
Anyone not fully on board with the neocon agenda is a Russian agent, or at best, a "useful idiot".
At least, according to neocon logic.
All the hatchet guys have to do surely is to put new heart into the huge army of deserters (immense armee de deserteurs) roaming the Ukrainian countryside?
That was a quote I saw in Le Monde the other day from Stanislav Asseyev.