Visions of Greater Ukraine*
'Our victory is the victory of our ideas.' Escalating the memory war 'to support the enslaved peoples.' The 'Bandera Lobby' and a 'dangerously dumb delusion.'
This installment of the Bandera Lobby Blog (“too long for email,” according to Substack) is a follow-up to my August 2024 post on the OUN-B’s efforts to promote a “dangerously dumb delusion” about Russia’s collapse and revive the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN, 1946-96), “the largest and most important umbrella for former Nazi collaborators in the world.”
Three days before a meltdown in the Oval Office led Donald Trump to declare that Volodymyr Zelensky is “not ready for Peace,” Ukraine’s national postal service released “Make Russia Small Again” stamps for the third anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion, because “the time for decolonization of the Russian empire has come.” Last year Zelensky promoted this maximalist, Trump-inspired slogan from the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) and Anti-Corruption Action Center, which are some of the preeminent “Ukrainian voices” from “civil society,” at least in Western capitals. ICUV co-founder Hanna Hopko, a hardline politician and friend of the “Bandera Lobby,” gave Zelensky a “Make Russia Small Again” shirt that he wore once. This has also become a wartime motto of the Banderites, who previously threatened to overthrow Zelensky if he compromised with Russia.
“Time for a new ABN!” declared OUN-B leader Stefan Romaniw in November 2020. Last summer, Romaniw died in Poland on his way home to Australia after attending the “First World Congress of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations” in Lithuania. At this meeting, Romaniw officially became a vice-president of the “new ABN” as a representative of the Ukrainian World Congress. Other vice-presidents include Aida Abdrakhmanova, “from the government of Independent Tatarstan in exile,” Yuriy Syrotiuk, the political education chief of the far-right “Svoboda” party, and Syres Bolyaen, a co-founder of the “Free Idel-Ural movement,” which is joined at the hips of the OUN-B and the “Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum.”
Yuriy Syrotiuk, subscribers may recall, is the main organizer of the annual “Bandera Readings,” and allegedly named the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity.” At the start of 2024, the Stepan Bandera National Revival Center in Kyiv (in other words, the OUN-B headquarters building) hosted a meeting between the Banderite leaders of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations and the Svoboda-affiliated directors of the “Ukrainian Studies of Strategic Research” while the latter, chaired by Syrotiuk, organized the next Bandera Readings.
The newly partnered organizations soon held a joint press conference at the USAID-funded Ukraine Crisis Media Center about protests in the Republic of Bashkortostan leading to the collapse of Russia. “Separatism isn’t the real threat facing Putin,” however, said an article published by the Atlantic Council’s “UkraineAlert” blog. “The political response from the Russian government has been to paint this appeal for better local governance as a radical separatist movement.”
Around that time, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center hosted a discussion about the 95th anniversary of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists with a pair of Banderite leaders (nationalist historian Mykola Posivnych and OUN-B newspaper editor Viktor Roh), and OUN-M chief Bohdan Chervak, who has been the first deputy chairman of Ukraine’s State Committee of Television and Radio for years. They posed with an OUN flag from the 1930s, which survived the 20th century in London.
A couple weeks later the Stepan Bandera National Revival Center held a meeting to discuss the reunification of the OUN-M and OUN-B after more than 80 years. This gathering appeared to confirm my strong suspicions about some of those present being OUN-B members: Yuriy Syrotiuk, Leontiy Shipilov, and Viktor Yahun, former deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine (2014-15). The OUN-M leader awarded Syrotiuk with a Melnykite medal: the “Combat Cross of the OUN.” While even hardcore neo-Nazis have warmed up to a ceasefire, Banderites like Syrotiuk still insist, “Worse than war with Moscow, can only be peace with Moscow.”
‘With Bandera into the future’
“The Banderite faction in the Kyiv parliament wants to enforce its policy of maximum escalation of the Ukraine war,” said a November 2024 headline in the German newspaper junge Welt, which touched on a subject that I have been meaning to write about. During the summer of 2023, the Ukrainian parliament created a “Temporary Special Commission on Development of Basic Principles of State Policy for Cooperation with National Movements of Small and Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation,” chaired by Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the “anti-corruption activist” turned “liberal nationalist” politician that I only recently introduced on this blog. According to Yurchyshyn, “Make Russia Small Again” is the unofficial motto of his parliamentary group.
When the OUN-B’s far-right Youth Nationalist Congress commemorated its 20th anniversary in February 2021, Yurchyshyn recalled being one its founding members, “after which I served for some time as the head of the Lviv branch.” Then after studying political science at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, he worked for the US government-funded National Democratic Institute as a “trainer in questions of lobbying and traditional and new media.” The NDI is more or less a Democratic party-affiliated wing of the National Endowment for Democracy, which the Reagan administration established in 1983 to do openly what “was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” as a president of the NED infamously said in 1991.
In 2014, Yurchyshyn became an advocacy manager for the influential Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition in Ukraine, and he advised the far-right politician Andriy Parubiy, the new secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Then Yurchyshyn led Transparency International Ukraine as its executive director (2016-18) and the chairman of its board of directors (2018-19). Melinda Haring, the deputy director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, included Yurchyshyn in her 2019 list of “nine names to watch in Ukraine’s next parliament,” describing him as someone with a “gentle exterior” and “conservative Catholic background.” He joined parliament with the “Holos” (Voice) party.
To welcome the new year of 2021, Yurchyshyn shared somebody’s drawing of a muscular, tattooed Bandera in a polo shirt on Facebook, which he posted with the hashtag “#happybirthdaystepanbandera.” A couple months later, after a nationalist mob attacked the presidential office building, Yurchyshyn offered to bail out Oleksiy Bilkovsky, a hardcore neo-Nazi from the Azov splinter group “Honor,” which apparently spearheaded the insurrection.
Not long before Stefan Romaniw of Melbourne, Australia stepped aside as the OUN-B leader in 2022, he wished a happy birthday to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn. It was morning in Australia, but just after midnight in Ukraine. “You are traditionally the first,” commented Yurchyshyn, who thanked the “Providnyk,” referring to Romaniw by his fascistic Banderite title. As the year came to an end, Yurchyshyn read “The Division of Russia” by Yuriy Lypa, a “founder of Ukrainian racial theory,” which was reprinted by the OUN-B’s “Ukrainian Publishing House” in Kyiv.
Another Banderite deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, Volodymyr Viatrovych from the “European Solidarity” party, became the deputy chairman of the Temporary Special Commission, and the head of its working group on public relations.
As many readers of this blog already know, Viatrovych is an important OUN-B “memory warrior” who directed the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (2014-19). As Ukraine’s “memory czar” in that period, he was the main architect of its “decommunization.” Yurchyshyn explained in 2016, this controversial process was “not just about renaming the streets, it is about changing the consciousness of society.” Viatrovych might be long gone from that position, but his deputy director from 2014 is still in place — a board member of Yuriy Syrotiuk’s group which organizes the Bandera Readings.
Once upon a time on the Bandera Lobby Blog, I mentioned a nationalist summer camp, “With Bandera into the future,” that took place in 1999 Ukraine, but I missed Yaroslav Yurchyshyn in the photo that I shared, on the ground next to Viatrovych and his future wife. “That’s how it all started,” Yurchyshyn commented in 2010.
Yurchyshyn circled in blue. Circled in red, left to right at this 1999 summer camp: Volodymyr Viatrovych and his future wife Yaryna Yasynevych, Ukrainian Insurgent Army commanders Vasyl Halasa and Vasyl Kuk, Andriy Kohut, Taras Rondzistyj (now an OUN-B leader in Ukraine), and Yuriy Yuzych. Yurchyshyn, Yasynevych, Kohut, and Yuzych all got involved with the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition (est. 2014), the “largest and most visible reform network” in Ukraine.‘Captive Nations’
Over a month before Yaroslav Yurchyshyn’s Temporary Special Commission was established, he attended a meeting at the OUN-B headquarters in Ukraine to celebrate “Captive Nations Week,” an official observance in the United States and mostly forgotten relic of the Cold War. It used to be that the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, headquartered at the Banderite “Home of the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” in Manhattan, took charge of Captive Nations Week events. OUN-B leader Oleh Medunitsya, a former deputy in Ukrainian parliament (2014-19), chaired the 2023 Captive Nations Week meeting, which the Banderites dedicated to their “new ABN” project.
Oleh Dunda, another member of parliament, also attended this meeting at the OUN-B headquarters, although he is from Volodymyr Zelensky’s party. In 2022, Dunda established a small inter-factional parliamentary association, “For Decolonization and Dismantling of the Russian Empire,” including members of Holos and Zelensky’s “Servant of the People.” Before the latter dominated the 2019 parliamentary election, Holos was said to be a potential coalition partner. In 2023, Zelensky appointed Holos deputy Rustem Umerov as the new Minister of Defense.
It was on Ukrainian independence day that Yurchyshyn announced parliamentary support for his initiative. “The [new] ABN is ready for effective cooperation!” commented its executive director Oleh Vitvitsky, who also runs the OUN-B’s “Ukrainian Information Service” in Kyiv. Yurchyshyn responded with the Banderite slogan of the historic ABN: “Freedom for Nations! Freedom for the Individual!” Soon this Banderite Holos politician wrote an op-ed for The Hill: “Ukraine’s best defense is to decolonize the Russian Federation from within.” (Are we sure about that?)
Yurchyshyn and Viatrovych’s commission approved a list of “experts” to work with, in particular OUN-B leader (and ABN president) Oleh Medunitsya, ICUV co-founder Hanna Hopko, and Taras Byk, the government relations director of Wooden Horse Strategies, which is a Kyiv-based consulting firm, led by a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, that specializes in “USAID and EU project development.” The Ukrainian World Congress, led by Bandera Lobbyists such as Stefan Romaniw, celebrated the news that “Ukraine strengthens ties with Russia’s enslaved peoples.”
In early October 2023, Yurchyshyn and Viatrovych spoke at a conference organized by the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which was established in 2021 by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and “has become one of the leading channels of government communication about the war,” according to Wikipedia. “Decolonization of Russia: shaping our policy,” Yurchyshyn updated his Facebook followers. (In the coming months, the President of Ukraine signed a decree “On the Russian territories historically inhabited by Ukrainians,” and the Foreign Minister described Russia as a “prison of nations.”)
The following day, Jamestown Foundation analyst James Bugajski declared, “Moscow is clearly shaking over this conference as we are planning to divide Russia.” This was said in response to me putting him on notice that the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR) is an OUN-B front group. In the next 24 hours, Bugajski went ahead and spoke about “Finding Ways to End the Kremlin’s Memory Wars with Ukraine” at a CUSUR conference in Washington.
Less than a week later, Bugajski gave the same speech at a Ukrainian center in London affiliated with the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB), which the OUN-B has dominated since the early years of the Cold War. Hennadiy Ivanushchenko, the OUN-B member in charge of the “ABN Correspondence” website, is from Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, but he was a “consulting archivist” to the London office of the OUN-B’s Ukrainian Information Service, which appears to play an important role in the new ABN.
In December 2023, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn became the new head of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on free speech, which eventually led him to step down as chairman of his Temporary Special Commission (TSC) to “Make Russia Small Again.” The ninth “Post-Russia Forum” convened in Berlin and Rome, meeting in the Italian Senate. And the Banderite “OUN Fund,” also known as the OUN-B’s “Defense of Ukraine Fund,” announced a fundraiser for the new “Siberian Battalion” in the Nazi-infested International Legion of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. Vladislav Amosov, the commander of the Siberian battalion, is a former Russian military intelligence officer, and apparently a friend of the ABN.
As 2023 came to an end, the “Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations” published Christmas greetings from the OUN-B leadership in Ukraine, and the “Channel 5” TV station (owned by former president Petro Poroshenko) highlighted the OUN-B’s revival of the ABN. At the start of 2024, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn joined the supervisory board of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the president of which is OUN-B member Serhiy Kvit. In the coming weeks, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy hosted a panel discussion about the progress of Yurchyshyn’s commission with its trusted Banderite experts, such as Yuriy Syrotiuk, Oleh Vitvitsky, and Leontiy Shipilov.
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn stepped down as the TSC chairman as it completed drafting a law “On the basic principles of the state policy of Ukraine regarding interaction with the national movements of the enslaved indigenous nations of the Russian Federation.” According to Volodymyr Viatrovych, this legislation “continues the 80-year tradition of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to support the rights of the enslaved indigenous nations of the empire.” Yurchyshyn supported Maria Mezentseva, a deputy from Zelensky’s party, taking the reins of the TSC. She leads the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
On the eve of the second anniversary of the Russian invasion, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn made a short speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to be “a voice of the invisible people not represented here — the enslaved indigenous peoples and minorities in Russia.” Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament recognized the 80th anniversary of the Soviet deportation of Chechen and Ingush people from the North Caucasus, and the right of Ingush people to create an independent state. Sharing this news online, Yurchyshyn recalled a meeting that his commission held with leaders of the Ingush Independence Committee at the Stepan Bandera National Revival Center.
In early March 2024, there was a long shootout between Russian security forces and half a dozen Ingush militants, all of whom died. At least some of them were reportedly affiliated with ISIS (Islamic State - Caucasus Province). The ABN, however, claimed that these fighters belonged to the Ingush Liberation Army (ILA), the armed wing of the Ingush Independence Committee that visited OUN-B headquarters.
After the deadly clash, the ILA made this statement: “In this unequal battle, the Ingush Mujahideen warriors showed fortitude, courage and heroism in the face of a much superior enemy. A group of several warriors conducted a firefight in unprepared positions for 24 hours. We will continue our jihad against the Evil Empire.”
“Russian Federation is Already Standing on the Threshold of Chaos and Civil War. The Only Thing That Can Prevent it From Happening is Full-Scale and Controlled Decolonization of Russia,” declared the Post-Russia Forum, which apparently cheered on ISIS-linked militants during the shootout in Ingushetia. Later that month, several ISIS militants affiliated with the ISKP (Islamic State - Khorasan Province) killed and wounded hundreds of people at a music venue in the Moscow metropolitan area. “Relevant murders are 99.99% likely to be work of the #FSB and to be used by #Putin for further escalation,” cautioned the Post-Russia Forum.
White Power vs. Sprechenfuehrers?
Last summer, a notorious Ukrainian nationalist politician from the Svoboda party, Iryna Farion, was assassinated in Lviv. The Russian neo-Nazi group “National Socialism / White Power” (NS/WP) subsequently published a manifesto from a “Ukrainian autonomous revolutionary racist” who allegedly killed Farion with a dream of turning the Russian-Ukrainian war into a revolutionary race war.
A group led by Mikhail Oreshnikov, a Russian-Ukrainian neo-Nazi, soon highlighted NS/WP for its militant resistance against the Russian war effort. Oreshnikov and his “Coalition” are loosely connected to the Post-Russia Forum. Although the Banderites refused to cooperate with Russians during the Cold War, now they might find themselves playing second-fiddle to Russian neo-Nazis, who have prominent roles in the Azov movement and the Ukraine-backed “Russian resistance.”
Before he went to Ukraine, Oreshnikov belonged to a group led by Russia’s most infamous neo-Nazi (Maxim “Tesak” Martsinkevich). Later Oreshnikov participated in the “Revolution of Dignity,” joined the Azov Battalion, and became a citizen of Ukraine. Oleh Dunda, the member of parliament from Zelensky’s party, met with Oreshnikov in the spring of 2023, just days before this Russian neo-Nazi co-founded the “Alliance of Indigenous Peoples,” which ostensibly united more than a dozen groups to destroy the “Evil Empire” from within. The Alliance also formed a Military Council, at least on paper, that included a couple units from Ukraine’s military intelligence service: the far-right “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood) and Chechen “Sheikh Mansur” battalions.
Since 2023, Oreshnikov has led a “Chuvash-Volga-Bulgarian Diplomatic Council,” which supposedly represents the indigenous people in Russia’s Chuvash Republic. Almost a year later, he merged his Alliance of Indigenous Peoples with a few other groups to form the Coalition. Although this organization does not openly work with the new ABN, it is reminiscent of the historic ABN, which claimed to be coordinating potent resistance movements in the communist Evil Empire—but in this case Russian neo-Nazis have replaced the Banderites.
October 2023 press conference: “Permanent Genocide as a State Policy of Russia.” Seated left to right: Servant of the People MP Oleh Dunda, “Cardinal” from the neo-Nazi Russian Volunteer Corps, and Mikhail Oreshnikov. “Cardinal” even argued that "the Kremlin authorities are carrying out a genocide of the Russian people," by transforming them into "a multinational people, an exact copy of the Soviet man." A year later, the Russian newspaper Izvestia revealed that this alleged ideologist of the Russian Volunteer Corps is the son of Zelensky’s friend who directed his former TV show, “Servant of the People.”The Alliance of Indigenous Peoples co-founded the Coalition in the spring of 2024 with the “Assembly of National Resistance,” the Georgian-Ukrainian “Caucasian Union” military committee, and the Pan-Finnish “Suur-Suomen Sotilaat” (SSS, Soldiers of Greater Finland). According to the SSS, it “cooperates with right-wing radical movements in Finland and Estonia.” For example, a white nationalist “Active Club” in Oulu, Sweden reported in October 2023 that SSS members participated in one of their martial arts training sessions. A year earlier, SSS representative Artur Ankkalainen told the third Post-Russia Forum in Gdansk, Poland, “The question that our organization raises is the question of the relevance of blood and our blood family.”
Dmitry Kuznetsov, the head of “Stop the Occupation of Karelia,” also spoke at the third Post-Russia Forum, which produced the “Gdansk Manifesto: a Plan for the Reconstruction of Post-Russia States.” This document called on EU and NATO states “to refuse support and any form of assistance to the imperial ‘Russian opposition’” and instead liberate various Russian cities and territories — for example, the Republic of Karelia, which borders Finland, although there are relatively few ethnic Karelians left (~25,000 or ~5.5% of the population).
Less than two years later, Kuznetsov broke with the “Karelian National Movement” affiliated with the neo-Nazi “Karelian National Battalion (‘Nord’)” which joined the Coalition and fights alongside the Azovite “Russian Volunteer Corps” for Ukraine’s military intelligence service. The “movement,” which is closely linked to the SSS—in fact, they appear to have merged—says that it “unites ethnoactivists fighting for Karelia’s independence,” against “neo-Bolshevism.”
“I’m tired of the fake accusations of the Russian Nazis who collaborated with the Russian special services and called themselves the KND [Karelian National Movement],” Kuznetsov said in January 2024, who decided to speak out “so that every nationalist representative of indigenous peoples from other republics could learn how Russian Nazis replaced nationalism in Karelia.”
As for Mikhail Oreshnikov’s Chuvash resistance movement, that includes “Nukhrat Palkhar” (Silver Bulgaria), named for a medieval state in present-day Chuvashia and Tatarstan, which also joined the Coalition. Nukhrat Palkhar has shared neo-Nazi content on its Telegram channel, and last year announced its cooperation with “Shanyrak,” a neo-Nazi youth group in Kazakhstan that recently dissolved.
The Coalition formed a “National Security Council” in October 2024. Members include Nukhrat Palkhar, the Karelian “Nord” unit, a Russian partisan group “Skrepach” (Violinist) that posted antisemitic fliers in the city of Krasnodar, and the Russian Cossack group “Ezikovy Ertaul” (“Ѣзиковъй Ѣртаул”). The last group spearheaded a small “Free Cossack” detachment in Ukraine’s openly neo-Nazi “Russian Volunteer Corps.” Paul Goble, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation (who raised the idea of a new ABN years ago), has said that Ezikovy Ertaul “presents perhaps the most cogent argument yet on why Cossackia must gain independence and why the West should support that goal.”
In the past year, the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations produced a mobile exhibit, “Putin’s Real Prisoners: Political Prisoners of the Enslaved Nations,” reminiscent of the traveling exhibits that Banderite memory warriors made over a decade ago to promote their historical narratives about the 1940s Ukrainian Insurgent Army and 1930s “Holodomor.” In January, Artur Ankkalainen from the SSS made it to one such ABN exhibit on behalf of the “Karelian National Movement” (KND), which the ABN has promoted over the past year.
Last month, Dmitry Kuznetsov’s nemesis, KND leader Vladislav Oleynik, received a remote speaking slot at an ABN-themed “Bandera Readings” in Kyiv. Mikhail Oreshnikov made an in-person speech and upset some people at this Banderite event, because he started to speak in Ukrainian, but switched to Russian.
One year ago, a couple months before establishing the Coalition, Oreshnikov’s Alliance of Indigenous Peoples announced the start of negotiations to unify more organizations, including the “Free Nations League,” which is connected to the Post-Russia Forum and the Banderites’ ABN. According to the Alliance, the Post-Russia Forum and ABN agreed to join the negotiations as “potential partners,” but it seems that nothing came of this.
So far, and rather unsurprisingly, Oreshnikov has failed to unite these other groups linked to the Banderites. That brings us back to the assassination of Iryna Farion, because her death, and the ABN’s potential competition with Oreshnikov, makes me wonder if the Banderites could be on a collision course with Russian neo-Nazis, and perhaps the Russian-speaking Azov movement, which appears to be increasingly supportive of a ceasefire.
Many Ukrainian nationalists around the world mourned Iryna Farion as if she was their patron saint of language politics, and the Banderites were no exception. But it was another story for the neo-Nazi Azovites. As the New York Times put it, Farion was “known for controversial campaigns to discredit Russian-speaking Ukrainians.” In November 2023, she dared to say that Russian-speaking Azov fighters are not real Ukrainians. “Luckily there won’t be any more vomit coming out of her filthy mouth,” declared Aleksey Kozhemyakin, or “Kolovrat,” a Russian neo-Nazi from Azov’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. Farion’s young assassin reportedly wanted to join that “elite” unit in the Ukrainian army.
A few months later, Ukraine’s “Language Ombudsman” Taras Kremin announced, “I see nothing else but offensive Ukrainization,” or strict enforcement of the divisive 2019 language law “in all spheres of public life,” to replace the Zelensky government’s “gentle Ukrainization.” Kremin, known to some as the “Sprechenfuehrer,” said in the same interview that bilingualism causes “linguistic schizophrenia” which destabilizes the citizenry’s “behavior and attitude towards national interests.” Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Taras Kremin is another friend of the “Bandera Lobby.”
Kremin might give a pass to the Azovites, and apparently so do the Banderites, but they are more wedded to his brand of toxic language politics. The Azov movement might not have been behind the Farion assassination, but it seems significant that the most prominent Ukrainian nationalist to play the language card against them got killed in a matter of months. Even from the Banderites, there has been little to no scrutiny of the neo-Nazis who wanted Farion dead. As a result, a Russian speaker at this year’s Bandera Readings might even be connected to the group that published her killer’s manifesto.
‘This is the guy!’
Days before the shootout in Ingushetia, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn announced to his Facebook friends and followers that “Hamas terrorist lover Moss Robeson” called him a “Banderite.” Apparently it was a special moment for Yurchyshyn, because to his knowledge, nobody had ever used the English word for Banderivets (Ukrainian) or Banderovtsy (Russian) to describe this former leader of Transparency International Ukraine. I had simply observed that Jamestown Foundation analyst Janusz Bugajski met Yurchyshyn at the OUN-B headquarters in Kyiv, a couple weeks after Bugajski remotely participated in the 2024 Bandera Readings. “To accuse anyone of Banderism or Nazism or Communism you need evidence that they propagate these ideologies,” Bugajski once said about meeting OUN-B members in Washington and London.
According to the Jamestown Foundation, Janusz Bugajski taught at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and “served as consultant for the US Department of Defense and US Agency for International Development (USAID).” In 2022, he wrote a book, Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. For the maximalists from the ABN and Post-Russia Forum, having “credible” voices like Bugajski in their corner helps to maintain their delusions about Russia’s collapse. “Yup, a Pole is the new commander of the Banderites,” this British-American think-tanker mocked me about his visit to the OUN-B headquarters. Yurchyshyn took the joke a step further and produced a picture of himself with the word “Banderite” on it that accompanied his Facebook post, which the ABN published as an article on its website.
Yurchyshyn also seized the opportunity to announce his upcoming participation in the 10th Post-Russia Forum, to be hosted by the Jamestown Foundation in Washington that spring. As it turned out, he didn’t make it, allegedly because he failed to get a visa, but I managed to attend the conference without incident, at least until the lunch break. While Oleh Dunda and Janusz Bugajski were having an informal panel discussion with a mouthpiece of Ukrainian military intelligence (Russian-Ukrainian politician Ilya Ponomarev), a prominent Banderite assaulted me in the next room and strangled me in the hallway, yelling “This is the guy! This is the guy!”
It turned out that an entourage of Banderites accompanied OUN-B leader Oleh Medunitsya to this event. When I arrived that morning, a few of them were standing outside the building where the conference took place. Walter Zaryckyj and Christine Balko, leaders of a few OUN-B front groups in the United States (the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations, the Organization for Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation), hurried inside just ahead of me with someone I didn’t expect to see—Marko Suprun, who attacked me later. The sensational, anonymous screed from 2019 that inspired me to start this blog described Suprun as a formerly “very active [OUN-B] member in USA, born and trained in Canada, today running assignments for [OUN-B] in Ukraine.” (The author[s] referred to the OUN-B as OUN-R, as some Banderites do.)
At some point I asked Marko Suprun, “Can I interest you in some OUN documents?” He ignored me, but his wife, Ulana Suprun, the former acting Healthcare Minister of Ukraine, accepted them. I also gave her and OUN-B leader Oleh Medunistya some documents about the Banderites’ corrupt Manhattan building manager (“Florida Man”). Other OUN-B members at the conference were fuming, but unable to convince the organizers to have me removed. During a coffee break, I introduced myself to Bugajski, “I heard you’re the new commander of the Banderites.” He denied that the OUN-B still exists, despite visiting their headquarters in Ukraine, and made a suggestion: “Did you talk to Marko?” Later, when he heard that something happened, Bugajski asked, “Did he get punched out?”
In fact, I tried to take a selfie with Marko Suprun in the lunch room. Something I did not yet know about Suprun is that he has a legendary temper. He extended his arm to block the shot. When that didn’t work, he lunged for my phone, but missed again. Then Marko went ballistic. He grabbed me with both hands around my neck and marched me into the hallway. I was carrying a plate of food which went flying. Pushing me to the ground, Suprun broke my glasses and started kicking me. “This is the guy! Get the police!” he yelled. Perhaps because the US Secret Service owned the building, by the time I was escorted outside, the cops were already coming in. Marko Suprun admitted assaulting me, so they booked him and let me go, but the prosecutor assigned to our case refused to press charges.
About six months later, the 13th Post-Russia Forum met in the Canadian parliament. The main organizer of this conference was Anton Sestritsyn, a former executive director of the international coordinating body of OUN-B front groups, or the “World Council of Ukrainian Statehood Organizations,” better known as the “International Council in Support of Ukraine” and the “World Ukrainian Liberation Front.” More recently he worked in the Canadian parliament for over three years (2018-2021), in the Opposition Leader’s office, mostly as the Manager of Community Relations under Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole.
(For the better part of a year in 2022-23, Sestritsyn was the Vice President of Business Development at Roshel Smart Armored Vehicles, a Canadian military manufacturer that has sent over 1,000 of its vehicles to Ukraine. Roshel, “the leading North American producer of smart armored solutions,” is suing Sestritsyn for defamation after he accused its leadership of bribing a Ukrainian official.)
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), a prominent right-wing think tank based in Ottawa, and the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), an important OUN-B front headquartered in the Toronto area, co-sponsored the 13th Post-Russia Forum, which at least one LUC leader referred to as an ABN conference. The Banderites brought the ABN exhibit on “Putin’s Real Prisoners.”
This blog already touched on the relationship between the MLI and Canadian Banderites, after MLI fellow Chris Alexander smeared one of their least favorite journalists as a Kremlin agent. Alexander made his accusations before a parliamentary committee that included Conservative MP James Bezan, the Shadow Minister for National Defense. Bezan, a friend of the Banderites, spoke at the 13th Post-Russia Forum and booked the room for this conference in an office building occupied by the House of Commons. Justin Ling, a journalist who testified at the same hearing that Alexander turned into a McCarthyite spectacle, also attended this event, and wrote that “there’s a lot of value in the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum.”
‘Our victory is the victory of our ideas’
“Some actors want to do a simple thing: force us to make some compromises,” said Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, on the eve of the one year anniversary of the 2022 invasion. On the contrary, Danilov announced, “The world needs to prepare for the disintegration of Russia, which will happen regardless of their wishes.”
Almost a year later, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree “On the Russian territories historically inhabited by Ukrainians.” According to Ukrainska Pravda, “Zelensky has instructed the government to develop a plan for preserving the national identity of Ukrainians in Russia who live in the ‘historically inhabited lands’ in what are now the Krasnodar Krai, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov oblasts of the Russian Federation.”
This apparently amused the OUN-B, which published a map of Greater Ukraine from the Banderite archive in London. In the coming days, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine described Russia as a “prison of nations,” and the Lviv Palace of Arts hosted a celebration of the 95th anniversary of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. OUN-B member Mykola Posivnych organized this event, “Our victory is the victory of our ideas” — an alleged Bandera quote that has become popular among Ukrainian nationalists. A couple weeks later, shortly before Ukrainian forces retreated from the city of Avdiivka, local authorities “de-communized” several streets, one of which was renamed after a far-right nationalist who died in the war.
“Make Russia small again is not a dream,” Yaroslav Yurchyshyn commented after Zelensky wore a shirt with the “unofficial motto of our TSC” in October 2024. Yurchyshyn claimed, “The disintegration of the Russian Federation is inevitable, we just have to accelerate this process.” According to OUN-B newspaper editor Viktor Roh, “once the process begins, it will be unstoppable.” That being said, after three years of large-scale war, “This will be a big challenge. Right now, I think we are not ready for this. We need to set such tasks and solve them in advance. It is time to start preparing for this.”
In January 2025, Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council, again predicted the “inevitable” collapse of the Russian Federation, although it might take 50 years. Banderite MP Volodymyr Viatrovych said the probability of collapse is “very high,” however, there is “an extremely important prerequisite,” which is “the approval of this by Western political elites and their involvement.” Therefore, Viatrovych writes, Western governments should “try to control and direct these processes, and not restrain them, as they are doing now.”
“Even amid the tensions unleashed by mobilization, the radicalization of politics and the regime, and the unequal allocation of state resources, there is simply no national question on the table, and no talk of regional federalism—and no indication that this will change,” concluded an article that a prominent think tank in Washington, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published almost two years ago (“Why Russia Won’t Disintegrate Along Its Regional Borders”). These days, the more pressing question being asked is if Ukraine will collapse.
The ABN helped to organize this year’s Bandera Readings, dedicated to “the struggle of the peoples enslaved by Russia.” For the third year in a row, the Information Agency of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine sponsored this far-right event. Last autumn, the ABN presented its exhibit on “Putin’s Real Prisoners” in Kyiv with assistance from the Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions, which is a Ukrainian state enterprise.
And now, the national postal service of Ukraine released “Make Russia Small Again” stamps—a small gesture in the grand scheme of things. But earlier this year, even Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, who famously displayed a map of Russia partitioned in his office, reportedly said at a closed-doors meeting in the Ukrainian parliament, “If there are no serious negotiations by summer, then very dangerous processes could begin, threatening Ukraine’s very existence.”
“Everyone exchanged glances and fell silent. Maybe, it’s necessary, for things to work out,” a member of parliament shared his thoughts with Ukrainska Pravda. Oleh Dunda, on the other hand, claimed that Budanov’s comment was “taken out of context.” The Banderites and their allies, not to mention the Ukrainian government, remain steadfast against negotiations: “together to victory!”
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Moss, now that the atmosphere in Washington has changed, you must get these documents to the President's Administration. There is no better time than now!
Thank you, Moss, for your colossal work. It is a horror what they are planning... Indescribable evil. Compared perhaps only with neocons' and Zionists' "reshaping of the Middle East". Most monstrous to see these obviously Russian mugs of those who plan horror for Russia - why do they hate their motherland so much?