THE RECRUITMENT POINT for volunteers in Dmytro Korchynsky’s holy war is located in the basement of a building in central Kiev, on Chapaev Street, in what used to be a billiard club. Anyone can sign up, and the location isn’t secret — its address and phone number is on the Internet.
Inside, lying on the billiard tables, are toy Kalashnikovs, which recruits can use to shoot at targets on the wall. Behind the bar, shelves are lined not with liquor bottles but with Molotov cocktails left over from the violent protests that ousted the government a year ago; the firebombs may be useful in the next stage of Ukraine’s upheavals.
Along with being a recruitment center, the former billiard club also serves as the headquarters of Korchynksy’s political organization, “Bratstvo” (in English, the Brotherhood). I find Korchynsky in a side room furnished with a large billiard table, worn-out leather sofa, armchairs and a piano. Lying on the piano are the notes of Chopin’s funeral march and the lyrics to the German national anthem, whose first verse, beginning “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” harkens back to the Nazi era. It is perhaps an unfortunate choice of song for a political figure that is often described as an extremist, ultranationalist and fascist.
Korchynsky does not pretend to be moderate, but he doesn’t appreciate the worst epithet used against his forces.
“We are not Nazis,” he tells me. “We are patriots and nationalists.”
Korchynsky is nearly a caricature of a Russian-hating Ukrainian nationalist. His silver hair contrasts with his dark, bushy mustache, which is turned down at the edges in the Cossack style. The St. Mary’s Battalion, which is one of more than a dozen private groups fighting alongside the Ukrainian Army against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, is Korchynsky’s creation. It is also one of the more unusual volunteer formations in the ragtag forces taking on the separatists, incorporating an ideology that manages to mix Christian messianism with Islamic jihadism.
The religious thread is not entirely surprising — Korchynsky and his men are devout Orthodox Christians. It was in the 1990s that Korchynsky learned the advantage of mixing religion and politics when he fought in the Caucasus region alongside Muslims, who were battling Russia for independence.
Korchynsky points approvingly to Lebanon. There, Hezbollah participates in government as a political party, while its paramilitary wing wages war independent of the state (and is thus considered, by the United States and the European Union, a terrorist organization). Korchynsky believes that sort of dual structure would be beneficial for Ukraine. He sees himself as the head of an informal “revolutionary community” that can carry out “higher order tasks” that are beyond the formal control of government.
That’s the theory. In practice, Korchynsky wants the war in eastern Ukraine to be a religious war. In his view, you have to take advantage of the situation: Many people in Ukraine are dissatisfied with the new government, its broken institutions and endemic corruption. This can only be solved, he believes, by creating a national elite composed of people determined to wage a sort of Ukrainian jihad against the Russians.
“We need to create something like a Christian Taliban,” he told me. “The Ukrainian state has no chance in a war with Russia, but the Christian Taliban can succeed, just as the Taliban are driving the Americans out of Afghanistan.”
For Korchynsky and the St. Mary’s Battalion, the Great Satan is Russia.
KORCHYNSKY WAS BORN to fight Russia.
He is the descendent of a noble Polish family that, in the late 18th century, fought in the Kosciuszko Uprising, which was a doomed attempt to liberate Poland from the Russian empire. The Poles lost, and Korchynsky’s family moved to what was called the Kresy, or borderlands, in what is today Ukraine. As a Ukrainian, Korchynsky is continuing his family’s war against the Russian empire.
In the early 1990s, he was one of the founders and leaders of a right-wing, nationalist organization known, somewhat awkwardly, as the Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian People’s Self Defense. When an uprising erupted in late 2013 against Ukraine’s corrupt president, Korchynsky immediately joined the fight, which was centered on the main square in Kiev, known as the Maidan.
On Dec. 1, 2013, Korchynsky led his newly formed paramilitary unit, the Jesus Christ Hundred, as it stormed the presidential administration buildings. He was photographed on a bulldozer as demonstrators tried to break through a police cordon on Bankovskaya Street.
Korchynsky, Dec. 1, 2013. (korrespondent.net)
In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, and Korchysnky tired of what he saw as passivity in the new government of Kiev. In September, Korchynsky formed a battalion made up of fighters from the Jesus Christ Hundred. The new battalion would defend Mariupol — the City of Mary — and so he named it St. Mary’s in the city’s honor.
The day I met with Korchynsky at his headquarters in Kiev, recruits were sitting on the high bar stools filling out their paperwork and collecting the necessary documents to register with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. (Technically, the private volunteer battalions fall under the ministry’s control, though they operate independently.) Members of Bratstvo register these recruits, help them fill out their paperwork, and then send them to the base in Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine. There they get a few weeks of military training at most.
The volunteers that come to the billiard hall are eager to get into the fight, and some of them arrive with backpacks, dressed in homemade military uniforms. They are here to fill out enlistment forms for the battalion.
The recruits are young, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25 years old. Only a few have served in the regular army. Many have never held a gun. Some don’t have the medical documents needed for official enlistment in the battalion, but this isn’t a problem, because Korchynsky’s wife is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament — and simultaneously responsible for medical care in War Sector “M” — the area in and around Mariupol.
Once they’ve enlisted, the recruits are sent almost 500 miles from Kiev, to the battalion’s base in Mariupol, which lies on the coast of the Azov Sea. The battalion’s base there is set in a series Soviet-era buildings and hangars. Above the base flies a flag with the image of Christ. In the main hall, once used by a local yacht club, the battalion’s volunteers have created a chapel. On the wall are crosses and icons — the most important icon is one depicting the Virgin Mary, painted by the wife of a fallen volunteer. The brothers, as the fighters call themselves, recite the Lord’s Prayer even during military briefings. As they pray, the commander joins the ranks of the soldiers to signify that no one stands between them and God.
Copies of the Catechism of Brotherhood, which for the battalion is a sort of ideological and religious guidebook, are lying everywhere at the base — in the offices, in the rooms where the fighters sleep, and in the dining room. It’s the cover that’s most striking. It depicts a young woman in a military uniform, her face obscured like a jihadi fighter. In one hand she holds a Kalashnikov. Her other hand is raised, index finger pointing to the sky, a gesture common to Islamic fighters.Above her is the emblem of the Brotherhood, which is also pinned to the uniforms of fighters in the battalion. The emblem includes an early Christian Orthodox symbol of Jesus. Underneath is the Latin inscription: “In hoc signo vinces,” which means, “In this sign you will conquer.”
Just as Islamic extremists selectively highlight Quranic passages that endorse violence, the St. Mary’s Catechism opens with the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” The Catechism then adds its own interpretation: “Christianity should be treated like a sword, and not as a pillow.”
And like the jihadi emphasis on the glories of martyrdom and life in the afterworld, the Catechism explains that only those who follow the path prescribed by the Brotherhood shall receive the highest reward in heaven: “The end of the world is joyous, the destruction of the solar system will be a great celebration, and the second coming of Jesus to earth will be unexpected, and the terrible Final Judgment will become joyful. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
Korchynsky has grafted onto the fighters the idea that their mission is about more than just defending Ukraine — they are involved in a civilizational struggle against a force of evil. The battalion’s iconography even shares imagery associated with the Islamic State. On the door to one of the rooms where the militants live is a picture of a fighter wearing a cap with a drawing of the Ukrainian national symbol, the tryzub (trident). In one hand he is holding the decapitated head of a man with the Russian flag coming out of his mouth. The text of the poster says, in Ukrainian, “Don’t regret.”(An anonymous blogger who writes on Facebook under the pseudonym Bulba Bulba, created it, I later learned). It’s just a joke, a blue-eyed fighter wearing a balaclava and holding a gun tells me.A chaplain known as Father Volodymyr attends to the spiritual needs of the battalion. Tall, slender, and quiet, he’s not much more than 30 years old. He comes from Mariupol, and he persuaded some of his parishioners to join the battalion. He used to be a monk in the Russian Orthodox Church, but when the war broke out he joined the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He could not have done otherwise, he says.
When the fighting first started, he saw supporters of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic bullying young girls on Ukrainian Independence Day simply because they wore traditional Ukrainian embroidery. One time, he says, the separatists brutally punished a woman for wearing the embroidery. They drove nails into her feet and forced her to walk through the street. It was pure evil, he explains, and is why it’s now necessary to fight. Father Volodymyr invoked the words of St. Paul, who said, “if you do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil.”
Today the sword is the Kalashnikov, the weapon of choice for the fighters of St. Mary.
THE CHRISTIAN TALIBAN of Ukraine are not fighting for heaven on earth, but for Mariupol, perhaps the most dismal place under the sun. Mariupol is an impoverished city, painted in shades of gray and dominated by Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks and small, dilapidated houses. A few hundred yards from the sea, industrial garbage and plastic is washed up by the waves in big heaps. The residents of Mariupol gather this garbage to burn in their furnaces.
Yet this port city of half a million people is now a key piece of territory in the war in eastern Ukraine, and is largely expected to be the target of the next major Russian offensive. The residents of Mariupol suffer from the bad luck of being in a strategic location.
I arrived at the St. Mary’s base in February, which was marked by a series of deaths for the battalion. The first man to die was “German.” He was killed Feb. 10 when Ukrainians attacked the separatists’ positions near Mariupol, hoping to relieve desperate Ukrainian troops who had been encircled near Debaltseve. German led the battalion’s assault on Pavlopol, a key spot for defense, just outside of Mariupol. German was shot; the bullets pierced his vest, and he died before paramedics could reach him.
German’s real name was Kiril Geinc. The origin of his nickname is simple. He came from a family of ethnic Germans living in Russia. He was a citizen of Russia and had no Ukrainian passport, but fought on the side of Ukraine out of personal conviction. He was buried with honors in Kiev.
The members of the battalion all use nicknames. The Chief of Staff is “Partisan.” His deputy is “Syndicate.” Then there’s “Professor,” “Virus,” “Psych,” “Alligator,” “Shepherd,” “Horse,” “Sun,” and so on. Partisan explains that the nicknames are just a convenient way to communicate. But there is another reason: The battalion includes volunteers from areas occupied by the separatists, and they prefer not to disclose their real names for fear of endangering their families.
A few days after German was shot, “Quiet” and “Amen” died in a car accident. On the day of his death, Quiet was only 22 years old. He came from Transcarpathia, in western Ukraine, and had only recently joined the battalion, but he was a top student and had learned to shoot well.
Amen had served in the battalion since the early autumn of 2014. He spent the winter in forward positions, rarely returning to the base. He was the most experienced fighter in the battalion and participated in numerous raids behind enemy lines. “He survived so many bombings and battles with the enemy, and yet he died in a car accident,” Syndicate said. “Fate is fickle.”
The third victim of the car accident wasn’t from the battalion, but he was a loss for the cause. Leonid Suchocki was a legendary Ukrainian Army tank driver. Separatists feared him like the plague, and his old Soviet T-64 tank, from 1967, was called “black death.”
The battalion’s military equipment is almost exclusively made up of Soviet relics produced in The fighters have one BRDM-2 armored vehicle, essentially a museum piece, and several Ural military trucks that have been heavily used. The BRDM has weak armor, so volunteers have welded a metal cage around it, hoping to provide additional protection from enemy attack.
The pride of the battalion is a new Toyota Tundra pickup painted in camouflage. Most of the other volunteer battalions can only dream of such a vehicle. Syndicate would nonetheless prefer something that runs on diesel, because the Tundra burns too much gasoline, which is always in short supply.
The battalion has set up checkpoints along the road to Novoazovsk, a strategically located port town near the border with Russia. If pro-Russian forces take the city, and the port, it would bring them a step closer to creating a land link between Crimea and Russia.
The main checkpoint, about 10 miles from the base, is surrounded on two sides by concrete slabs and is built of anything and everything that can be used for fortification, giving it the look and feel of a scene from the “Mad Max” films. This checkpoint is the last one before the front lines with the Russian separatists.
Inside, the checkpoint is a mess. It’s filled with field blankets, boxes of ammunition, and jars and bowls of food, mainly sauerkraut, potatoes and bread. Religious icons and children’s drawings decorate the walls. The fighters are rarely inside. Usually they are standing at the checkpoint — often in rain, sleet and snow — wearing balaclavas, with white rosaries pinned to their uniforms. They check passing cars and the occasional buses that travel between the front lines. Driving in this area is not safe. On Jan. 13, on the road from Mariupol to Donetsk, rockets fired by Russian separatists hit a bus carrying civilians. Twelve people were killed.
The St. Mary’s checkpoint is often under fire. Russian soldiers and rebels of the Donetsk People’s Republic are about three miles away, in villages and the forest. When the shooting starts, the St. Mary’s fighters retreat to their bunker, which consists of metal containers buried in the earth and lined on the inside with wood planks. The outside is covered with concrete slabs and camouflaged with earth.
Partisan, the battalion’s chief of staff, is deeply frustrated. He’s been fighting for nine months now. He fought in Donetsk and Ilovaisk, where in August of last year the Ukrainian Army suffered a severe defeat. Several hundred soldiers, cut off from arms, ammunition and supplies, surrendered to the Russians. “Many times we’ve agreed to a suspension of hostilities, but we’re the only ones who observe it,” he says. “And if we don’t shoot at them, they shoot at us, and we can’t shoot back.”
To the northeast are the separatists. To the southwest, it’s still Ukraine, but the residents living in in the small villages on the way to Mariupol are strongly pro-Russian. So the fighters are in essence surrounded on all sides, and expect attacks from every direction. In Mariupol itself, the residents speak Russian, not Ukrainian, and many support the separatists, preferring to live in Russia, where the state at least pays salaries and pensions.
When the fighting for Mariupol starts, it’s expected that many of the city’s residents will pull out weapons hidden in their homes and fire on the Ukrainians who are defending the city. It’s a seemingly doomed situation, so the St. Mary’s fighters rely on religion to guide them.
“Everything with us is based on faith in Jesus Christ,” says Partisan. “We believe that only a religious community can win in today’s world, and in a society where all our values ??have declined in importance, and only faith survives. War makes this evident. There is no place for atheists when there are mortars and rockets firing.”
FOR ALL HIS talk of religion, Korchynsky is in many ways the ultimate pragmatist. His alliances have always been more practical than ideological. In the 1990s, he fought in the Caucasus because he hated Russia, not because he loved the Muslim fighters there. “We understand that if we do not want the front line to be in Crimea, we should keep the front line in the Caucasus,” he told me. “And that is why we should help the resistance movement in the Caucasus.”
He still has contacts with fighters in Chechnya, as well as with Muslims from the Caucasus now in Ukraine.
“I don’t want to divide people based on religions,” he says, “Because what we have in front of us is a much worse enemy — the Russian Federation. We should strike Russia together with our allies.”
I asked Korchynsky how a man like him — contesting the political order in Ukraine — gets along with his wife, a member of the parliament. He replied that his wife understands that the country’s key problems can’t be solved in parliament. The most important thing is to continue the revolution, but it’s useful to have friends in the government. “Sometimes it helps get something done, like gets someone out of jail, or gets the authorities to give us extra weapons,” he says.
Even his religious rhetoric is practical. Korchynsky would prefer to speak about Crusaders and the Crusades, but that would require a detailed and long explanation. He says he uses the terms Taliban, Hezbollah and al Qaeda because he wants to speak a language understood by the world.
I asked what distinguishes his organization from Islamic jihadists. The radical Islamists in Afghanistan and the Middle East are, according to Korchynsky, interested in destroying the world order. Not so with the St. Mary’s Battalion.
“We really like civilization,” he explained. “We want to have hot water in the bath and a functional sewage system, but we also want to be able to fight for our ideals.”
Korchynsky wants to move the war to Russian territory, and he says his people have already formed underground structures there. Like the Islamic State, one day his “brothers” will receive orders and begin their work.
“We will fight until Moscow burns,” he says.
Photo: Tomasz Glowacki
* Read Part One and Part Two on Ukraine’s Private Battalions.
Glory To Ukraine and to those that fight for Her!!!!!!!
Funny a “brotherhood” has a sexy sister on the cover of their guide… bunch of nuts…
Many people are confused or misled when it comes to the true teachings of Christianity. Most profess that they Christian, but are not. i.e. Catholicism-which actually means universal, essentially a ‘catch-all’ religion. If you look it up, or know, Catholicism based religions incorporate the cross and Christmas(neither are Christian) along with MANY more false doctrines. They are the wolves in sheep clothing, misleading and controlling the masses, while attempting to make themselves gods. That is why they put their noses and fingers into EVERYTHING, to control it.
Catholicism is a ‘blended’ religion incorporating other religions’ rites and teachings(all the way to Babylonic). Quick version: This goes waaay back to the 1st century A.D…Alexandrian council; and the warning Paul gave concerning Alexander being an apostate to Christian teachings, perhaps? I guess they(Alexandrian’s) didn’t like the real rules Jesus reinforced; i.e. ‘Love thy neighbor’. They couldn’t wait to get their hands on the apostle’s scrolls to alter them to suit their perverse hedonistic tastes, for starters. THAT is the reason you can find contradictions in the scriptures. That council(later called Vatican)took control of ALL future translations and amendments to the translations. Why are so many original scrolls mising? Who was behind the 3rd century persecution and massacre of early Christians, the Crusades, and persecution/murder of.. anyone who THOUGHT or attempted to translate the real apostle’s scrolls without the Council’s/Vatican blessing? Same wolves.
Yes, Orthodoxy varies a little from Roman catholicism but they originate from same group of guys loving oppression and hierarchy. They also ALWAYS contained/controlled a military branch within. Wonder why.
This guy’s group is no different from all other previous ‘religious’ claimants. Upgraded weapons inventory nowdays include guns, but.. STILL somehow with the penchant for burning, guaranteed. It doesn’t suprise me that they use the same ideology/fundamentals/ gestures as the Islamic terrorists.
Didn’t the Pope just condone going to war against ISIS, while continuously denying contraception to millions of Catholic females? I’d think murder would be the bigger no-no, wouldn’t you?
Remember, true Christians do not condone or participate in murder (including wars); they advocate peace, and they abstain from idolatry(clearly present in Catholicism)and adultery in all its various forms with no gender exclusions. They continuously work at bettering themselves(not in financial gain terms) and they seek truths in all areas. They don’t fall for the the trinity tripe which confuses many as it’s meant to. I guess they weren’t good at math, so they made it a doctrine of one = three? Actually…it’s roots for that theory …Triumvirate.
Ultimately, one shouldn’t call themselves a Christian, if they can’t even bother with the basics of ‘loving thy neighbor’ and live by the simple basic rules, which include tolerance. Loving others does not equal killing, or engaging in war(mass murder of anyone; regardless of sex, race or individuality); something which the Vatican Order has ALWAYS supported throughout history. Sadly notice how all religious labelled ‘brotherhoods’ suppress free thinking, knowledge, individuality and free speech to the masses; though they themselves always take advantage of it, to establish their own highly oppressive dark ages hierarchys? These killer clowns make people doubt and blame God, because of the absolute Master-Slave hierarchys they love to establish.
Nothing new here, folks..and nothing at all to do with God. Just the future wheel, spinning backwards to..ancient history.
Interestingly almost a mirror of some recent Russian orthodox christian nationalists attitudes. I guess we are seeing extremist views in extreme circumstances. Article shows well how all religions are used and abused by extremists and how they seem to resemble each other. Gott mit Uns or ?? ???? ????, its a way people can feel OK about themselves and their terrible atrocities. Also well done for saying the obvious about Russia, their leader has a lot of blood on his hands, it has to be stated plainly, publicly and often until he stops.
These persons are not Orthodox, they are pseudo-orthodox sect. I had Ukraine relatives and friends, very talanted (gifted” and honest persons, They considered themselves a part of Russian nation, never opposed themselves to Russian culture. If they were still alive they would be terrified and offenced by such “heroes” and “savers”.
Clinton Foundation’s Deep Financial Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch Revealed:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-21/clinton-foundation%E2%80%99s-deep-financial-ties-ukrainian-oligarch-who-pushed-closer-ties-e
Glenn/Laura,
Don’t you guys have the guts to tell Omidyar to open another website for his Ukraine stooges? It gets very irritating to tolerate this nut of a reporter here.
These are not Orthodox Christians but Uniates aka eastern rite Catholics.
I just call ’em crazy 4uckers
I guess sending a crate of “What Would Jesus Do” tshirts won’t be necessary!? :(
Kristians Killng for Krist? no, no, no… the USA already has that covered!
He will need funds – lots of it. Talibans got theirs till the ISIS replaced them as the favored destination of taxpayer money and looted dinars, because of which the Talibans have now faded away.
Orthodoxy Sunday Liturgy; THIRD ANTIPHON:
In Thy Kingdom remember us, O Lord,
When Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the PEACEMAKERS; for they shall be called
the sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you,
and shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in Heaven.
*******
NOWHERE does Jesus say that you will be rewarded for becoming the Taliban.
NOWHERE.
If the author is so sure about it is Russia (Russian soldiers) Ukraine is fighting with it would be worth writing article with facts documenting it (I presume his conviction is based on facts)
These nutz don’t make a distinction between who is “ethically Russian” v. Citizens of Russia. To them they are all Russians.
Almost all the citizens in Eastern Ukraine are of Russian Ethnicity.
Yes, Western Ukraine is trying to wipe out anyone who is ethnically Russian in their country. What is being done here, is done with the full backing of the Prada. What I find interesting here, is there is no mention as to WHY Western Ukraine is waging war ( and they did fire the first shot, and hence started the war) on Eastern Ukraine. TO THIS DAY, Poroshenko has never talked to any of the Civil Rights leaders in either Donetsk or Lugansk. That weekend, when it was reported, the “russian backed rebels flew to Belarus and annouced there would be no peace talks” It’s because No One from Kiev showed up who was authorized to negotiate for Kiev. Of course our elitist media didn’t mention that part, only the fact that the eastern Ukrainian’s flew in and stated no meetings, and flew out. This is exactly how the mass media’s 1/2 truths project the exact opposite of what is happening in Ukraine.
Back to this topic, while the starvation of those living in Ukraine was played up by poroshenko recently, what he neglected to mention is that his relatives where on the other side, and not much affected, it was again the ethnic Russians, as the farmers who were hit the hardest by Stalin’s paranoid delusions. Starving those in Russia as grain rotted in the silo’s. But most of it started during WWII and I’ve a great video that shows a person exactly what type of man the ‘hero’ of Ukraine is. Exactly what he did in Poland during this time frame. He worked for the Nazi’s, but must have had an inferiority complex, because what he did in the way of horrific acts, pure evil, and pure sadistic
acts’ outweighs anyone act by any of the SS.
As small example, and I mean very minute part of it and one of their least horrific acts, one of the reason ‘wreaths’ are so popular in that part of the world artistically, is to remember the children, affixed by barbed wire and more around the trunk of a tree. This created a ‘wreath’ around the tree of dead children. They lined many roads this way. ( many children on many trees )
That is what the “hero” of Ukraine did. These are HISTORICAL facts. Part of the Holocaust which for some reason our younger generation would like to forget ever happened. Of course, with the war on Wikipedia now, as well as other areas, that history will probably be changed too.
And that’s why, practicing Catholic and nationalist, that I am I will not donate a penny to Catholic relief for Ukraine. The people in the gun sights are Christians too and their war, especially a religious war, is just plain wrong. While their churches sport the pagan trident beside the Cross they don’t deserve a dime of our money. Jesus didn’t use a trident – or kill anyone for that matter.
Not to pick nits – or disagree vis ‘Catholic relief’ (I do not, in general – most ‘faith based’ donations are highly suspicious to me and too often have terrible cultural impacts) but a quick clarification seemed in order: most (Christian) Ukrainians are Orthodox not Catholic.
(unrelated but related to your post…. Catholics sure did kill people in the middle of the previous millenia a lot… and Jesus (historically and mythically
oops … was Jewish).
Smells fishy, or should I say putrefied mockingbird to me.
Swing low, sweet Inter-cept, comin’ for to wash up your brain!
More terrible coverage of Ukraine. And Omidyar has “no” influence over your editorial line? What a load of hogwash.
I love how the author so definitively talks of “Russian soldiers,” a “Russian offensive,” and refers to the rebels simply as “Russians.” If “Russian soldiers” are so common in the Donbass how about some satellite pictures of their battalions and tank columns? Surely thousands of troops and armor could be spotted from the air.
Oh, you don’t have any? Just some blurry pics on twitter and photos from Georgia circa 2008?
Well, there are Russians volunteering with the DPR and LPR, so that means they’re all Russians, right? If that’s correct then all the Ukrainian “volunteer” battalions are also Russian, because as the author points out with the case of “German”, they also have among their ranks citizens of Russia. So really, its Russia vs. Russia!
The overlooked (or edited out) reality is that the vast majority of the forces of DPR and LPR are UKRAINIAN. This isn’t Russia invaded Ukraine; the Ukraine has always been a defacto bi-national state of self-described Ukrainians and Russians living under the same political roof. Now those sides are engaged in a civil war. You can pick whatever side you want, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But you’re not entitled to make up your own facts, like saying “Russian offensive” when referring to the DPR or denying that this is civil war.
While we’re on the topic, when the citizens of the east voted in a referendum (a democratic action branded “terrorism” by Kiev) did they opt for secession, i.e. so one can legitimately call them “separatists”? No, actually what they voted for was a FEDERATION, ie still being part of Ukraine but with the ability to elect their own representatives and the right to speak the language of their parents and grandparents. So in reality, they are federalists, not “separatists”.
But some want to join Russia, they MUST be separatists! Yes, after being deemed “terrorists” for voting for federalization, bombed, shelled, and blockaded, some indeed want to leave. But the political leadership, ie those who actually matter in talk of separatism, took part in the Minsk I, Minsk II talks and agreed to stay in the Ukraine but with more autonomy. Maybe the author or editors missed this little fact, but if the leaders of DPR and LPR less than a month ago agreed on framework which would see them remain in Ukraine, calling them “separatists” is an out-and-out falsehood.
That was what was mentioned in the article. Now let’s name a couple of items that were foregone. The day after Minks II was inked, the leader of the Azov battalion, the largest volunteer grouping in Mariupol, flatly rejected the truce and explicitly vowed to fight on. They crossed into the no-man’s land separating the two sides and went on the offensive, undoubtedly joined by other volunteer groups (like the “Christian Taliban” of the article). How isn’t this contextual information crucial to the part of the article about the ongoing battles near Mariupol? Better leave it out and chalk it up to the impending “Russian offensive” to get a “land bridge to Crimea”! So even if Azov EXPLICITLY states it will ignore the truce and attempts to rest villages everyone agrees were held by DPR away from them, The Intercept says “Russia did it!”
Swing low, sweet Inter-cept, comin’ for to wash up your brain!
Most of your “facts” are propaganda, comrade. No one who has kept up with this buys it anymore.
Comrade, is anything left in your head? Or are you brainwashed totally? Comrade?
It doesn’t matter who is doing the fighting for Ukraine…they just want Russia to get out of Ukraine and if that means US UK involvement then that’s the way it should be.
Actually, both DPR and LPR requested to join Russia at the same time Crimea did, but they were turned down, specifically, imho, because of the belief of the way NATO would react to it.
Maybe Ukraine becomes ‘a Christian taliban” but for sure – will become a Jew PARADISE and therefore George Soros so “heavily” fights. CUI BONO or “follow money”.
This article should contain a disclosure that the publisher of the Intercept funded the coup in Ukraine.
‘Nuff said
Who Has Been Shelling East Ukraine Civilians?
http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/26/2755
It is the Ukraine military that has been shelling civilians persistently for the last ten months, not the insurgents.
war is war and crap happens that’s not so important. What’s important here is Putin’s propaganda machine and the stupid people in the West that believe his lies.
The Chechen & Ukraine Wars: Made in Britain and Saudi Arabia
http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=articles&id=2014_12_16_factsheet-chechens.html
More of thus oddball stuff being romantically cpvered as journalism thus granting it a false veneer of legitimacy and probably aiding recruitment of the very types they want. No such thing as bad publicity eh?
‘- The material for this story is part of a documentary film being developed for Germany’s WDR, “Die Story.”’
Shocker. No disrespect to Germany but is this really in the spirit of those post ww2 anti-hate laws?
“Everything with us is based on faith in Jesus Christ,” says Partisan. “
Doesn’t sound like the Jesus Christ I love and worship.
I guess you don’t pay attention to where your taxes go to pay for the wars you don’t pay attention. Dear Christian, wake up and look at the blood your tax money spills on a daily basis
This is truly sick. This is what the separatists have been yelling to the entire international community for over a year now, but no EU leaders have dared decent from what nuland, mccain and the rest of those n?tsacks have being pumping. Wake-The-Hell-Up Americans!!!! I know you’re out there and I know underneath it all, collectively we’re a fair minded bunch. Please see what your national leaders are going along with, in your name, simply because nuland wants to punish Russia and make sure her hubby makes another fortune on his investment in ukraine and mccain just wants to prove to Putin that he’s the bigger little man. Again, this is just siiiiiiiiiiick!!!!!
I’m with you, Waky. It would be much better for the ppl of the USA and for the rest of the world if the US govt stopped wasting billions of tax dollars on creating puppet regimes and instead spending the money on its crumbling bridges, roads, health care, education, etc. The trouble in Ukraine’s Maydan was instigated by the CIA. The demonstrators shot by snipers was a typical example of the modus operandi practiced by that infamous ourganisation, which has been causing havoc throughout the world ever since WW2, deposing elected representatives (e.g.,Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, etc.) and replacing them with tyrants willing to do its dirty work. The CIA does this to destabilise the country of interest so as to instal its stooge and make it ripe for NATO expansion. Destabilisation of countries by the military-industrial-prison complex has always been the USA’s first step in the process of imposing its sick system on other nations.
Marcin Mamon!!! Dude!!!! You really need to get this article ran in some of the MSM’s papers, internet sites, as well as TV news. Fox news, MSNBC, CNN, they all need to be running your article and you’d think Obama would read this and go “WHAT”? Send weapons to these fascist, racist sickos? Not a chance. But even though he has to know about this, he’s disturbingly silent on the matter. If the Donbas people are reckless enough to allow poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and their NATO/EU/US backers to sucker them into a return to being governed by folks like this, all I can say is wow!!! DPR/LPR people, if you’re listening out there, you’d better scrap this cease fire and take your independence from those fascist lunatics in ukraine, otherwise kiss your @ssis goodby.
“The pride of the battalion is a new Toyota Tundra pickup painted in camouflage.”
Not so different here in rural north Florida. Back in the 80s on the nightly news, reporting on the endless violence in Lebanon, the term Christian Malitia was a vexing concept if one thought about it. It’s hard to imagine the authors of “Onward Christian Soldiers” had them in mind when writing the song, yet throughout Christian history TPTB always found some pretext to incite the faithful to militancy. Heresy hasn’t been relegated to the dustbin of history, it’s alive and thriving right here in the 21st century irrespective of any denomination or particular expression of faith, Judaism, Druze, Christian, Muslim. To the war mongers, a person’s faith is often the key to recruitment. Many conscientious objectors were either inducted as medics or chaplains still serving the same twisted war machine. For someone who was genuinely faithful the internal conflict must have been intense, let alone the actual conflict. As far as this new variant the “Christian Taliban”(just a moniker) joyfully expecting the end of the world, there are plenty of so called Christians right here in the good ol’ US of A who believe they can force God’s timetable in hopes of the same outcome. If all the lowly soldiers would just refuse to fight…….why not? The first world war nearly fell apart for that very reason, but then the USA entered the fray and got ’em fired up again. How we long for peace but for our leaders. Speak up people.
Yes, Jgreen, it would be good to see politically-aware ppl. everywhere joining forces in a movement for “liberty, equality, fraternity” – or democracy for short. But one of the major hurdles are the mass media, which are exclusively in the hands of the moneyed class – interested only in advertisment money, 99% of which comes from such unsavory characters as the Koch brothers and similar moneybags. There can never be a true democracy if the mass media remain in the hands of the 1%.
it is very weird because on pro-Russian side there is also people fighting with banners of Christ for the sake of Orthodoxy etc. there is fascist nationalists and Muslim fighters on both sides. people who are paid and delusional and both. when you look close it looks bizarre and when you look from the distance (geopolitical stakes etc) it looks also bizarre. to die or lose someone in conflict like that or probably any conflict would seem totally absurd. so why something like that happens? nuclear holocaust seems like real possibility in this light. but again even crazy people when stakes are very high become very pragmatic and smart.
A good reference to the religious leanings (often contradictory), of the Donbass separatists and Russian volunteers is the Vice news segment:
https://news.vice.com/video/volunteer-soldiers-fighting-in-ukraine-russian-roulette-dispatch-102
In fact, the St. George emblem is what the separatists wear to distingush them from the Russian military.
In comparison, these Ukrainian religious battalions are tolerant of others beliefs, have no evidence they act or advocate destruction like the Taliban, and use their faith to sustain them, not to advocate a theocracy, or impose fascist domination by forcing their beliefs upon others, and persecuting those that will not succumb to those beliefs.
Their religion is what sustains them in battle, and in this case they have every right to believe the Russians are evil. If only the wingnut Xtians in the USA and Europe were so tolerant…
Nothing could be more incoherent than such slapdash oddjob religion. Emerson aptly wrote, “Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind.” With the changing landscape of just whose weapons, whose religion, whose countries and whose armies of factions really are today’s useful enemies, and tomorrow’s useless allies, it is in the end that all fight on just the same side, that of death and destruction.
Well gee, if they were looking for a person who mysteriously fired those first few shots at the Maiden we do seem to have a candidate in this guy. He does seem to express what I have read of most of the Militia groups in that they are united in the idea of reforming not only the current Western controlled Government but the corrupt Oligarchical system that has plagued the country for decades as well.
No, that would be the US contractors who have had offices in Ukraine for a number of years now.
Ugh, this is ridiculous. The article is clearly Russian propaganda, as are the other comments. The problem in Ukraine has nothing to do with Ukrainian soldiers and everything to do with centuries of Russian corruption, terrorism, and genocides in the region. Please educate yourself and read about the history of Ukraine and Russia and Georgia and Chechnya before listening to people who have an agenda.
All Ukraine wants is a “normal life in a normal country.” Russia has been preventing that for hundreds of years, punishing the Ukrainian language, culture, religion, and society.
explain this to me.
in 2006 Russia turns off the gas taps due to non payment of the bills by Ukraine (guardian article jan 2 2006). The president at the time was Yuschenko , a ex central banker. so then Ukraine steals gas meant for Europe. (2 January 2006 BBC article)
In 2009 another problem with payment, and again in 2013, and again now.
when will Ukraine learn how to pay its bills? and if Russia is truly the aggressor and punishing Ukraine, as you say, why don’t they just find another source of energy?
Currently Ukraine still has deals with Russia for coal, hydro, gas and uranium.
Seems this is a civil war not as you think a Russian led crisis.
All ‘wars’ become international as soon as the US decides it is about natural resources. It shouldn’t have even been a civil war at all. The US trained and funded the overthrow of a democratically elected government. The OP may not know this but I somehow suspect he knows at least some of it, or at least believes reneging on debt means the US can.. oh wait, it was owed to Russia…. yeah so much for debt default :/.
I think that ukraine will learn to pay its gas bills when russia learns to pay its gas transit bills.
Russian propaganda?! Why don’t YOU read about the famine in Ukraine (see, not excusing all RU history) last cdntury, and how the Nazis came through being welcomed by the Western Ukrainians who were recruited to help subjugate the rest of the country and got rewarded by their own super-awesome Nazi batallions to join up to….
You realise that Ukraine threw the Nazis a parade or three thinking “here come our saviours”, because of that famine… and that the East got it way worse than the West on both matters, no? Of course not. Who learns about Ukrainian or Russian history, west of Central Europe?
They did indeed. After Stalin’s NKVD henchmen murdered thirty million Ukrainians between 1934 and 1940, the Ukrainian welcomed Hitler as a liberator. If you lived in a land brutally invaded and colonized by Stalin, if half of your family were in shallow roadside graves or Siberian death-camps, you would too.
Even before the war, Stalin brought in millions of illegal ethnic Russian colonists and gave them land stolen from murdered Ukrainian kulaks. The illegal Russian colonists are still there, only 25 years on, they still don’t appear to have figured out that they can still call up the local KGB office and inform against some local for some real or imagined slight, have them “disappeared” and take their farm for a nice dacha.
If I were Ukrainian, I’d hate Russians too. Centuries of Russian jackboots on the throats of all their neighbors are unlikely to be forgotten overnight, even if the Russians had not been caught red-handed interfering in internal Ukrainian elections, even if Putin had not invaded Ukrainian territory to seize the city of Sevastopol–the sort of thing that nations used to call “casus belli.”
If you are looking for “warmongering ultranationalists and fascists” to blame for the war, look to Putin. If you are looking for the cause of Ukrainian resentment, look to history.
The saddest part of this whole sad farce is that in 1994 the Clinton Administration made many solemn promises to the newly independent Ukraine to sweet-talk them into giving up their arsenal of ex-Soviet nuclear weapons, including verbal promises that US troops would defend Ukrainian soil in the event of Russian invasion, though this last promise was mysteriously left out of the eventual written treaty. We’re “protecting” Ukraine just like we “protected” the Shah of Iran in 1979, just like we “protected” the South Vietnamese in 1975, just like we “protected” Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Nationalists in 1949. The Ukrainians should have told Slick Willie to go pound sand up his ass.
If you decry that the Ukrainians use whatever means and resources they have to defend themselves from the Russian invasion, note also that despite all the empty promises made by the US and NATO twenty years ago, they are standing alone against the Russian juggernaut. Perhaps there would be less legitimacy for fanatics if NATO and the US were drawing a line in the sand instead of competing to see how fast they can run away.
The Nazis were welcomed by the Ukrainians who were desperate to get rid of the Russian Soviet oppression. Millions of people took arms against their oppressors: some fought against the NKVD units who tortured and killed civilians and who fled like cowards from the Nazis, others enlisted in General Vlasov’s Army. The simple, mostly rural Ukrainians had no way to know how bad the Germans were.
The only comment that isn’t propaganda get’s bashed to hell. Good job M. Way to draw out the trolls.
How so? I’m Ukrainian, pro-West, anti-Putin, and am very weary of propaganda, so don’t get me wrong.
First of all, it doesn’t make sense for The Intercept, created by Greenwald and Poitras (and some other guy I don’t know, to be honest), two of the most pro-democracy, pro-west, pro-freedom journalists alive today, to post pro-Russian propaganda.
Second of all, this article isn’t saying that this group represents all of Ukraine. It’s just highlighting one extremist group that exists. But it does exist, there’s no denying it, and to pretend it doesn’t or sweep it under the rug would be dishonest.
More revisionist bullshit. 80% of Ukrainian territory was given to it by Russia, be it the tsars, Lenin, Stalin or Khruschev. All of Ukraine’s industry and technological know how was created by Russians and ethnically Russian Ukrainians. The idea a bunch of syphylitic nationalists of Polish descendants that have done nothing historically except partake in terrorism have a claim to Ukrainian history is the reason the Donbass seceded and the rest of Eastern Ukraine will in the coming year as well.
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/god-our-side
snip
I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side
Through many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side
So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war
Korchynsky is just a political clown and provocateur. He’s always believed in money and nothing else.
Well gee, if they were looking for that person who mysteriously fired those first few shots at the Maiden we do seem to have a candidate in this guy. Seems to me both sides are worried about his loose cannon attitude. Personally, with that James Bond attitude, I think he should be after the Oligarchs instead of being this one man vendetta to revenge the wrongs done to his Polish ancestry which seems to be his main driving force.
The Judeo-Christain faction of organized world religions has been instigating and materializing most of the Wars and conflicts on planet Earth since the earliest known recorded history on Earth dating back to Summeria.
These are actually programs of extinction based on the alleged supremacy of those “priestly” ideologies which profess that one needs to abide by the “rules” established by institutions (both religious and political) in order to communicate with god or gods which will punish them if they do not comply. It is a spiritual tyranny which uses fear to control populations and always seems to demand “monetary” and/or real asset contributions (like human and animal blood sacrifices, land, and/or land assets like precious metals,or oil) to the coffers of the religious institutions.
In truth one does not need the intermediary services of an organized institution to communicate with the creator source because the link to that source is the spirit within. That source does not demand contribution of material assets and those religious institutions that do demand such things are actually opposed to the best interests of humanity and serve only as violations of the spirit.
It is an individual choice to accept or reject that tyranny.
They have no right to claim my spirit or my soul nor will I willingly give it to them.
Well said friend.
This Jihadist Chechen Ukrainian Orthodox crusader alliance is yet more evidence that the US “elite’s” anti Russian policy is fueled by irrational hatred and aspirations of geopolitical acquisitions that can only lead to chaos and WWIII.
Anyone who follows Ukraine will know that Korchynsky is a for-hire pretend “radical” who is known to be associated with Medvechuk, Putin man in Ukraine.