Andy

Political repression in Ukraine rolls on: a blogger who criticized coercive mobilization has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison. A human-rights activist and journalist in Drohobych, Lviv region, criticized “busification” — the practice of forcibly shoving draft-age men into vans — and abuses of people’s rights during coercive mobilization on social media. In other words, he talked about the same things the Ombudsman, members of parliament, and millions of Ukrainians have complained about. He called draft officers “ghouls” and “crooks” who could “go fuck themselves.” “All these pathetic disabled nobodies who are now stuffing people into vans and driving them off to God knows where — every last one of them will be held accountable. And that miserable karma is waiting for all of them; sooner or later, it will deliver the bill for everything they’ve done,” he said on his blog. A Ukrainian court apparently found this not merely rude, vulgar, or inflammatory, but a threat to national security. The blogger was accused of “insulting the honor and dignity of servicemen” and “justifying Russian aggression.” The result: five and a half years behind bars. Had he belonged to the Mindich circle, perhaps he’d be warming his ass by the sea and shopping for yachts instead. Because, apparently, in the authorities’ hierarchy of mortal dangers, people accused of looting Western aid are considerably less terrifying than people who publicly criticize the state’s draft-by-van terror.

I’m reading the 🇺🇦court verdict against socialist Bohdan Syrotiuk, who was sentenced to 15 years for high treason. Among the accusations against him is the “dissemination of content used by Russian propaganda,” including material about Nazism in Ukraine. That includes criticism of the glorification of the OUN and UPA, the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, and the use of Nazi and far-right imagery in the military, including Azov and other units. So here is the wonderfully contorted logic: it is apparently not the glorification of Nazi collaborators, or the tolerance of symbols such as the Wolfsangel, SS bolts and the Black Sun, that provides ammunition for Russian propaganda. No — openly criticizing any of this is what becomes treason. Welcome to the intellectual gymnastics of the post-Maidan establishment: the problem is not what is being glorified or displayed; the problem is the person rude enough to point at it. And for that, a young man gets a 15-year treason sentence (!) So, if I ever cross the Ukrainian border, feel free to look for me in an SBU basement. I, too, suffer from the unfortunate tendency to criticize the apologetics of Nazism in Ukraine. An occupational hazard among Jewish Holocaust researchers, apparently.