{"id":35422,"date":"2014-05-27T19:03:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uacrisis.org\/?p=25391"},"modified":"2015-05-26T19:07:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T16:07:52","slug":"25391-ukraine-a-far-cry-from-europe-s-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/25391-ukraine-a-far-cry-from-europe-s-far-right","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine: A Far Cry From Europe\u2019s Far Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, 27 May, 2014.<\/strong><\/em> An early presidential election took place in Ukraine on May 25. Despite ongoing instability and violence in the east of the country, a record-breaking turnout of voters \u2013 more than 61% came out to vote nationwide. According to preliminary results, the vast majority of Ukrainians \u2013 nearly 60% \u2013 have voted for Petro Poroshenko, an active participant in the Euromaidan protests and a multi-millionaire businessman. The two far-right nationalist parties, Svoboda and Right Sector, received less than 2 percent of the votes between them. These results debunk the Kremlin-sponsored myth about neo-Nazis coming to power in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The May 25 presidential elections ended a transitional period in Ukrainian politics: since former president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country in late February, Ukraine has been governed by an Acting Head of State, an Acting Prime Minister and an Acting Government. Under these circumstances, with only the Parliament being without the prefix \u201cActing\u201d, some have raised questions about the legitimacy of Ukraine\u2019s institutions of power.<\/p>\n

Others, primarily Russian propagandists and their apologists in the West, have gone even further, stating that Ukraine\u2019s new government was not only illegitimate, but nationalist and fascist. To justify their blatant propagandistic rhetoric, the Kremlin\u2019s advocates pointed to an alleged dominance of ultra-right political forces in the government, allegedly formed at gun-point by the “radical” leaders of the Euromaidan protests.<\/p>\n

The prime targets of the \u201coutbreak of fascism in Ukraine\u201d line of argument were the Ukrainian nationalist party Svoboda and the radical revolutionary movement Right Sector. Over the last six months both have been vilified and demonized \u2013 largely unjustly \u2013 by Putin\u2019s propaganda and its western stooges.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the myth about Neo-nazis roaming and ravaging the streets of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities was the main weapon of a mass-media campaign intended to delude the local population, and used by Putin in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, as well as in Russia’s military subversion aimed at destabilizing the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donbass and Luhansk. All of Putin\u2019s recent public statements about Ukraine, without exception, were peppered with insulting \u2013 and inaccurate \u2013 references to fascists and blood-thirsty Gestapo torturers in the illegitimate Ukrainian government, who torment and kill peaceful Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The outcome of the early presidential elections, however, has blown Russian propagandists out of the water: the core, as Kremlin would have the world believe, of Ukraine\u2019s new fascists \u2013 Svoboda and Right Sector \u2013 received a mere 1,9 percent of the votes nationwide.<\/p>\n

At the same time, far-right nationalist parties in other European countries are on the unprecedented rise. In the most recent European Parliament elections, which took place on the same day as Ukraine\u2019s Presidential vote, right-wing forces have caused what some commentators have described as a \u201cpolitical earthquake\u201d or a \u201ctsunami\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nationalist parties claimed astonishingly high results in such countries as France (25 percent), Denmark (23 percent), Austria (20 percent) and Belgium (30-32 percent). These are results Ukrainian \u201cfascists\u201d could only dream of.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s Presidential elections, therefore, pose an awkward challenge for Putin\u2019s propagandists: how to explain, at least to their domestic audience, the absence of fascists in Ukraine, the crusade against whom was used by Putin as a justification for most of his recent internationally-recognized crimes against the Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, 27 May, 2014. An early presidential election took place in Ukraine on May 25. Despite ongoing instability and violence in the east of the country, a record-breaking turnout of voters \u2013 more than 61% came out to vote nationwide. According to preliminary results, the vast majority of Ukrainians \u2013 nearly 60% \u2013 have voted […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[705],"tags":[],"section":[648],"form":[800],"yoast_head":"\nUkraine: A Far Cry From Europe\u2019s Far Right | UACRISIS.ORG<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kyiv, 27 May, 2014. An early presidential election took place in Ukraine on May 25. 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