Russian-Backed Militants Oppose "Zombie Zionists" and "Jewish Junta" in Ukraine Amid Rise in Russian Anti-Semitism

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime
minister currently running for president,
"completely hides" her Jewish ancestry,
according to a recent Russian TV
documentary that one report says is part
of a new anti-Semitic campaign.

Pro-Russia militants have vowed in a TV program to oppose "zombie Zionists" in Ukraine, according to the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, which called the broadcast anti-Semitic.

The development comes amid reports of an upsurge of anti-Semitism in pro-Kremlin media stories and Russian government support for far-right Russian groups active in Ukraine.

Three unidentified pro-Russia militants promised a "powerful blow" against "zombie Zionists" in an inaugural broadcast Sunday of a new pro-Russia TV channel in Sloviansk, a city in eastern Ukraine under control of pro-Kremlin gunmen, according to this statement Monday from the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.

The congress, an umbrella group of Jewish groups in the ex-Soviet states, said it was one of the first broadcasts on the new station launched after gunmen backed by "Russian military experts" seized a local TV transmission tower and took Ukrainian TV off the air.

The broadcast (seen here on YouTube) features the logo and website of a pro-Russia group called the "People's Liberation Movement."

The group's website home page features this post about a so-called "Jewish junta" it says controls Ukraine.

Another post claims "a bunch of rich Jew-Scientologists" runs Ukraine's government.

After the broadcast, the channel aired a lecture by the late Konstantin Petrov, a retired Russian general who headed an "anti-Semitic Russian nationalist-Stalinist neopagan sect," the Jewish congress said in its statement.

Russian TV "Discloses" Politicians' Jewish Roots

The developments occur amid what the Jewish Daily Forward said in this story Tuesday is a new Kremlin effort to embrace the "dark forces of the Russian ultra-right," including "using anti-Semitism as an ingredient in the anti-Ukrainian campaign."

"The Kremlin is spreading the line that the Ukrainian leaders are Jews."

- David Fishman, director of Jewish studies at Russian State University of the Humanities

"The Kremlin's attempt, back in late February and March, to paint the new Ukrainian regime as Nazi and anti-Semitic has failed. It didn't pick up much traction in world public opinion," the New York-based newspaper's story said.

"So now the Kremlin is spreading the line that the Ukrainian leaders are Jews. Or at the very least, servants and lackeys of Jews. The intended audience is no longer international; it is domestic."

The story's author is David Fishman, director of Jewish studies at Moscow's Russian State University for the Humanities and a Jewish history professor at the New York-based Jewish Theological Seminary.

Fishman cited a Russian TV documentary in late March that portrayed former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is now running for president, as a back-stabbing criminal and embezzler who had secretly ordered assaults and killings.

The documentary culminated with the "disclosure" that Tymoshenko has Jewish ancestry, which she "completely hides. But for many, it is no secret that the father of this woman with a hair-braid -- Viktor Abramovich Kapitelman -- has Jewish roots."

"This is a coup, a coup perpetrated 
by Zionists." 

- speaker at pro-Russia rally in Ukraine

"The implication," Fishman wrote, "was that now, in light of that fact, her pattern of lies, theft and murder all made sense."

The same news program aired a similar documentary a few days later on Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatseniuk. "He is a Jew on his mother's side and is one of the 50 most famous Zionists in Ukraine," the documentary said.

This line was echoed at a recent pro-Russian demonstration in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Fishman said. One speaker spoke about the mass protests that drove pro-Moscow Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from power in February.

"Let's see how many Ukrainians have come to power. Yatseniuk?" the speaker asked. The crowd called out: "He's a Jew!"

The speaker listed other Ukrainian politicians, adding their alleged Jewish names: "What about Klitchko-Ettinson, or Yulia Kapitelman?" Someone yelled, "She's a Jew!" The speaker continued, "This is a coup, a coup perpetrated by Zionists."

The crowd burst into applause.

Return of Czarist-Era Black Hundred

Especially disturbing, Fishman wrote, is the sudden appearance in eastern Ukraine of a virulently anti-Semitic far-right Russian group called the Black Hundred, the reincarnation of a czarist-era group that incited pogroms against Jewish people.

Logo of the Black Hundred (Chernaya Sotnya).
The virulently anti-Semitic far-right Russian
group is reportedly supported by the Kremlin
and active in pro-Russia protests in Ukraine.

In March, Ukrainian security detained a Black Hundred member, Anton Raevskii, after he set up a camp in Ukraine to train pro-Russia militants in hand-to-hand combat and called on trainees to attack the Ukrainian military and Jewish people, Fishman wrote.

Raevskii, whose arms are tattooed with Nazi symbols, was deported to Russia.

"Putin has decided to wage his war on Ukraine with the help of paid volunteers from the Black Hundreds," Fishman wrote.

Fishman doesn't provide sources for his claims that the Kremlin orchestrated the anti-Semitic media reports or pays Black Hundred members, but other accounts have said Russian media, increasingly under the Kremlin's tight grip, has cranked up jingoistic and anti-Semitic rhetoric in its Ukraine coverage.

This BBC story in March said Russian state TV host Dmitry Kiselov, who is known to be close to the Kremlin, and other pro-Kremlin Russian journalists have lately run several reports highlighting the purported Jewish roots of government critics or making otherwise anti-Semitic comments.

The trend reflects a "shift in Russian public national politics towards openly anti-Semitic rhetoric," the story quoted the website Jewish.ru saying.

Israel's Cursor Info news site said in this item Friday that the "Nazi" Black Hundred "acts openly in modern Russia and is supported by Russian authorities." The group is now active in pro-Russia protests in eastern Ukraine, the story said.

The news comes amid reports of violent attacks on Roma (Gypsy) people in Sloviansk, the rebel-held city where the anti-Semitic broadcast occurred, and mounting evidence that the Kremlin supports far-right groups in Ukraine and elsewhere.

See also
7 signs of Russia's far-right turn
4 myths about the Ukraine crisis, Crimea and NATO

Ukraine Crisis: Attacks on Minorities Reported in Areas Held by Pro-Russia Gunmen

The flag of Other Russia, an ultranationalist anti-
migrant Russian group, flew this week in front of a
barricaded building seized by pro-Russia gunmen
in Ukraine, according to this photo in Ukrainska 
Pravda. The flag features a hand grenade on a
red background. Far-right Russian militants are
reportedly active in pro-Russian protests
in eastern Ukraine.

Roma people (also known as Gypsies) are reportedly being attacked in their homes, beaten and robbed in Sloviansk, a city in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia gunmen, says this item today in the Russian-language News of Donbass.

The news follows a report on Espreso.tv Friday that pro-Russia militia leader Vyacheslav Ponomaryov had asked Sloviansk residents to report suspicious people, "particularly those who speak Ukrainian."

Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk Friday condemned the attacks on the Roma and an anti-Semitic leaflet handed out in Donetsk calling on Jewish residents to register with pro-Russia militants and pay a $50 fee or be deported and have their property confiscated.

"The ideology and practice of pogroms, which is being exported from one of our neighbouring countries, will not succeed in Ukraine," he said.

Ukraine's SBU security agency has opened an investigation.

Far-Right Russian Activists

Pro-Russia militants of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic denied issuing the leaflet, but The Daily Beast reports some in the local Jewish community are still concerned.

Donetsk chief rabbi Pinhas Vyshedski said the spokesman of the pro-Russia gunmen, Aleksander Kriakov, is "the most famous anti-Semite in the region."

Vyshedski questioned how a group purporting to oppose "fascists" in Ukraine's new government could pick Kriakov as its spokesman.

"Until today, there were all sorts of thugs and confused men in this building."

- Dmitry Sinegorsky, pro-Russia gunman

Dmitry Sinegorsky, a "security supervisor" with the pro-Russia gunmen, said the leaflet may have been an attempt to discredit his group or a "pure provocation."

"See, until today, there were all sorts of thugs and confused men in this building," he told The Daily Beast. "But as from today we begin a self-cleansing process."

The developments follow growing evidence that Russian president Vladimir Putin has aligned himself with far-right and neo-Nazi groups at home and abroad to pursue his policies, including in Ukraine.

Far-right Russian activists have appeared at pro-Russia protests in eastern Ukraine, including from the ultranationalist anti-migrant group Other Russia, this Kyiv Post item said.

The group's flag, featuring a hand grenade on a red background, flew this week in front of a barricaded building seized by pro-Russia militants, according to a photo in this Ukrainska Pravda story yesterday.

Over 200 Ukrainian Jewish community leaders signed an open letter to Putin in March dismissing his claims that Ukraine's new government is anti-Semitic and saying anti-Semitism is worse in Russia than in Ukraine.

The letter said Russian neo-Nazis "are encouraged by your security services."

See also
4 myths about the Ukraine crisis, Crimea and NATO
7 reasons why the Crimea referendum results aren't credible

4 Myths About the Ukraine Crisis, Crimea and NATO (Updated)

Truth is one of the first victims of war. The Russian "hybrid war" on Ukraine is no different.

Here are four common myths about the crisis in Ukraine propagated by the Kremlin and its backers in the West.

Myth #1
Russia's invasion of Crimea was a logical reaction to a U.S. and European plot to expand NATO. Part of the plot was overthrowing Ukraine's pro-Moscow president and installing a new pro-NATO government.

This commonly made claim may make sense if Ukraine's new government actually wanted to join NATO.

In fact, the new government isn't interested in NATO, Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia told Vienna daily Die Presse Saturday.

"The Finnish model (of non-alignment) is an option for Ukraine: neighbour of Russia, member of the EU but not a member of NATO," he said.

U.S. president Barack Obama, for his part, also said today NATO isn't planning to admit Ukraine as a member, a situation he said won't change any time soon, reports state broadcaster Russia Today.

NATO previously rejected Ukraine for membership in 2008.

Meanwhile, in Russia, many don't agree that intervention in Ukraine was the logical reaction to events there.

In a survey in February, only 15 percent of Russians agreed Moscow should intervene in Ukraine to help pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych stay in power, according to the Kremlin's own pollster.

Seventy-three percent disagreed with intervention in what they believed was an internal matter for Ukrainians.

In mid-March, tens of thousands of Russians marched in Moscow to protest the Crimea invasion.

UPDATE (Nov. 30, 2014): Despite months of covert Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, a majority of Ukrainians shifted to supporting NATO accession only in August after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 -- by all evidence, with a Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missile operated by Moscow-backed militants -- and then a full-scale invasion by units of Russia's regular army involving thousands of troops.

A new Ukrainian Parliament elected in October has as a result pledged to put Ukraine on the road to joining NATO. Pro-NATO sentiment in Ukraine thus followed Russia's actions. It didn't predate them.

Myth #2
"Washington spent $5 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars engineering a coup in Ukraine."

This claim, made in the progressive publication Counterpunch in February, has also showed up in this item from state broadcaster Russia Today and on conspiracy sites.

The claim is based on a distortion of Dec. 2013 comments by U.S. diplomat Victoria Nuland.

What Nuland actually said was that the U.S. had given Ukraine $5 billion in aid since Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The money in question was spent over more than 20 years," said this article debunking the claim in the Tamba Bay Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact column.

"Yanukovych was elected in 2010. So any connection between the protests and the $5 billion is inaccurate."

The mass protests in Ukraine that swept Yanukovych out of power in February started only last November.

As well, the bulk of the aid appears to have gone to the Ukrainian government for such things as border security and nuclear non-proliferation -- not NGOs.

In fact, given the astonishing corruption of Yanukovych's regime, a good part of the U.S. aid since 2010 likely wound up in his pockets or those of his cronies.

Fun fact: The U.S. has also given Russia $17.8 billion in economic and military aid since 1991 -- more than triple what Ukraine got -- according to data from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

As for the mass protests that overthrew Yanukovych, even Russian president Vladimir Putin has said Yanukovych's corruption was the key motivation for the protests.

"Generally, people wanted change," he said in a press conference after he invaded Crimea in late February. He didn't mention NATO once.

A December survey of participants in the protests found that their three main motivations were police brutality, Yanukovych's refusal to sign an agreement on association with the European Union and a "desire to change life in Ukraine."

Their main demands were new elections and release of arrested protesters. Again, no mention of NATO.

Ninety-two percent said they didn't belong to any party or civic organization.

Myth #3
Ukraine's new leaders are anti-Semitic Nazis.

Putin and other Russian officials frequently accuse Ukraine's new government of being anti-Semitic Russophobes to justify the invasion of Crimea.

Some commentators in the West have parroted these claims, calling Kyiv's new authorities "Nazis."

While some far-right elements were indeed present among the hundreds of thousands whose protests swept Yanukovych out of power, Ukrainian Jewish leaders have dismissed the anti-Semitism claims.

In an open letter to Putin in March, over 200 prominent Ukrainian Jewish figures denounced his invasion of Crimea and said anti-Semitism is more of a problem in Russia than Ukraine.

They said Ukraine's new cabinet includes several minority members, including a Jewish deputy prime minister, two ethnic Russians and an Armenian.

"We do not wish to be 'defended' by sundering Ukraine and annexing its territory," they said. "We decisively call for you not to intervene in internal Ukrainian affairs, to return Russian armed forces to their normal fixed peacetime location and to stop encouraging pro-Russian separatism.

"Our very few nationalists (in Ukraine) are well controlled by civil society and the new Ukrainian government -- which is more than can be said for the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security services."

A series of articles on the website of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine -- the country's largest Jewish umbrella group -- says anti-Semitism wasn't a problem in the anti-Yanukovych protests and that Jewish activists played prominent roles on the barricades.

See more Jewish perspectives on the protests here and more analysis debunking Putin's claims here and here from Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's committee on conscience.

As for Russophobia, 26 percent of participants in the anti-Yanukovych protests said in a survey they spoke Russian at home. Another 19 percent spoke both Russian and Ukrainian.

Meanwhile, Putin himself came under fire last year for making anti-Semitic remarks at Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.

Putin has also increasingly aligned himself with Russia's own far right (see also here), which has strongly backed his Crimea invasion and other policies, such as his anti-gay legislation.

UPDATE (Nov. 30, 2014): Ukraine's pro-democracy movement has been inaccurately depicted as "fascist" by the Kremlin and its supporters in the West, writes Anton Shekhovtsov, a University College London researcher specializing in Europe's far right who edits the "Explorations of the Far Right" book series.

Ironically, the propaganda masks the Kremlin's own links with European fascist groups, he says. "The large network consisting of pro-Russian authors and institutions is a hard/extreme right breeding-ground of all kinds of conspiracy theories, Euroscepticism, racism and anti-democratic theories."

Since Russia began its covert war in Ukraine last spring, Russian state media and Kremlin-backed militants in Ukraine have stepped up anti-Semitic rhetoric and xenophobia, while Moscow has forged closer ties with Europe's far right. 

In late November, a Kremlin-linked Russian bank loaned France's far-right National Front 9 million euros amid more revelations about Moscow's links with far-right political parties across Europe that support Putin's foreign policy in Ukraine and anti-gay stance at home.

Myth #4
Crimea is historically Russian and shouldn't be part of Ukraine anyway.

Crimea is historically the homeland of the Crimean Tatar people, not Russians.

Tatars and their Mongol allies controlled Crimea for more than five centuries from the 1230s until Russia invaded in 1783.

Prior to the 1230s, much of it had belonged to Kyivan Rus' (the predecessor of modern-day Ukraine) for over 200 years.

After the Russian invasion in 1783, Tatars became a minority due to a policy of Russification and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's mass deportation of the entire Tatar population to Siberia and the Far East after World War II. Half of Tatars died in the deportation.

Today, many Tatars have returned to their land, and they now make up 12 percent of Crimea's population.

Their leaders strongly back staying in Ukraine and say 99 percent of their people boycotted the fraud-riddled March 16 Crimean referendum on accession to Russia, which they considered illegitimate.

Alarm has increased since Tatar rights activist Reshat Ametov, a father of three, was found dead in mid-March with signs of torture after he was kidnapped by men in military uniforms.

Tatar leaders announced yesterday they are considering holding their own referendum on whether to be part of Ukraine or Russia.

"Nobody asked us, the Crimean Tatars... in what conditions we want to live," Tatar official Renat Chubarov said.

UPDATE (Nov. 30, 2014): The Russian president's own human rights council has rejected the results of the Crimean referendum on joining Russia in March.

The body said in a report in May that only 50 to 60 percent of Crimea residents supported accession to Russia (not 97 percent as claimed officially) and that turnout was only 30 to 50 percent (not 83 percent as claimed officially). 

In other words, only 15 to 30 percent of eligible voters backed joining Russia -- even less than in recent surveys, which generally showed 40 to 45-percent support for the idea.

In another survey in September by an institute close to local Moscow-backed authorities, only 27 percent of residents of Simferopol, Crimea's administrative centre, said they consider themselves as Russian citizens.

Since the Russian takeover, the human rights situation for Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea has deteriorated gravely, the United Nations and human rights groups have reported.

UPDATE (Jan. 25, 2015): Former militant commander Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, who says he was a colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence agency, acknowledges on Russian TV that Moscow-backed militants in Ukraine's Crimea peninsula forcibly gathered regional deputies to stage a fraud-riddled referendum on joining Russia last March.

"I did not see any support from (Crimea) state authorities in Simferopol (the regional capital)," he says. "It was the militants who gathered the deputies so they would accept this (the referendum)." (See an English account of Girkin's remarks here.)

Ukraine Crisis: Jewish Views on Maidan Contradict Putin's Anti-Semitism Claims

Did Vladimir Putin really invade Ukraine to save Jewish Ukrainians from mounting anti-Semitism?

It seems a little dubious if you know much about Russia's president. Putin is the man who claimed last year that 80 to 85 percent of the first Soviet government was Jewish. He made the claim during a visit to Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.

Of course, the claim is ridiculous. The first Soviet government -- the Council of People's Commissars -- had just one Jewish member out of 16 commissars, as this item in The Jewish Press noted, calling Putin's claim anti-Semitic.

Jewish Ukrainian Leaders Denounce Invasion

What about Putin's claim of invading Ukraine in part to save Ukraine's Jewish people from anti-Semitic attacks?

Of course, anti-Semitism is a critical issue in a country with Ukraine's history of anti-Jewish pogroms.

Yet, Jewish perspectives on this question contrast sharply with the claims of Putin and his officials. Here's a reading list:

- "Ukraine Jews appeal to Russia to 'stop aggression,'" Times of Israel, March 3, 2014.

- "Ukraine Chief Rabbi Accuses Russia of Anti-Semitic 'Provocations' in Crimea: Yaakov Dov Bleich Compares Behavior to Nazi Anschluss," Forward, March 3, 2014.

- "Who's Really Behind Ukraine's Synagogue Attacks," The Daily Beast, March 3, 2014.

- "Ukraine's Unfinished Revolution Sparks Hope for Jews -- Not Fear," Forward, Feb. 27, 2014.

- "It was worth living in this country to experience Maidan," Hadashot, Feb. 2014 (translated and posted on the website of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine; original article in Russian here).

- "Kyiv's Maidan is a Liberationist and Not Extremist Mass Action of Civic Disobedience," Andreas Umland et al., Feb. 2014 (also posted on the website of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine here).

- "An Open Letter on the Ukrainian Revolution in the Russian Language," Ukraina Syehodnya, March 3, 2014 (translated and posted on the website of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine; original article in Russian here).

- "If we don't win, Ukraine will leave the civilization's realm altogether," Ukrainska Pravda, Feb. 14, 2014 (translated and posted on the website of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine; original article in Russian here).

- "The new dilemma for Jews in Ukraine: Anti-Semitism, though a real threat, is being used by the Kremlin as a political football," Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz, Feb. 25, 2014.

- "NCSJ strongly condemns the most recent violent attacks against protestors in Kyiv, Ukraine," National Conference Supporting Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia (NCSJ), Feb. 19, 2014.

- "Ukraine Update #9," NCSJ, Feb. 26, 2014.