A History of US and Russia Intervention in Ukraine

1929

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is created with a flag of Black and Red, for blood and land. Their goal was to create an ethnically pure independent Ukraine, and terrorism was an accepted means of achievement.

1941

Stepan Bandera takes over the rule of Ukraine. He was anti-Semitic and anti-communist. This combat unit exterminated between 150,000 and 200,000 jews

June

22 Germany breaks treaty with USSR, launching Operation Barberossa, aiming for St Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev. Many of the people in the western part of Ukraine welcomed the German soldiers and joined their fight against Russia.

September

29-30 A message is distributed to the people of Kiev reading, “All kikes of the city of Kiev or its vicinity must appear on Monday, September 29th...any kikes who do not follow these orders will be shot.” 33,771 Jews were killed over the next 2 days.

1943

Mykola Lebed led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to kill as many as 100,000 pols in an ethnic cleansing operation

1946

CIA documents show a strategic alliance with Ukrainian Nationalists. Documents reveal that Bandera and other nationalists were allowed to flee to Europe and were hidden.

Nuremberg Trials exposed Nazi war crimes, but Ukrainians were spared and hidden by the CIA in operation paperclip.

1949

Mykola Lebed was moved to the United States, never to be investigated or charged with war crimes. Instead, his entire family was given asylum, he became a citizen in 1957 and was the head of a CIA operation known as Project AERODYNAMIC where he spent the next few decades in control of an agency funded non-profit publishing company, the Prolog Research and Publishing Association. The purpose of the publications was to spread propaganda. The operation was transferred to Germany in 1967.

1951

CIA excused the illegal activities of the OUN and developed a long term relationship with the groups.

1953

Mykola Lebed appointed President of Prolog propaganda publishing for CIA Project AERODYNAMIC.

1954

Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the USSR, expands Ukraine by giving them Crimea

1959

Leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is killed in Germany, where he was hiding under a different name.

1967

Project AERODYNAMIC is ended and moved to Germany.

Ramparts magazine releases an article reporting that the National Student Association, a confederation of student governments at colleges, was receiving funding from the CIA

1975

Church Committee Congressional Investigations revealed CIA connections with journalists and civic groups. The Committees report uncovered a list of fifty journalists who were working with the CIA to spread propaganda.

1977

Rolling Stone reported that over 400 press members were working with the CIA, and included publications of the New York Times and Time Magazine to name a few.

1981

Ronald Reagan issues Executive Order 12333, which regulated how intelligence agencies can influence entities within the US. The order states that “no one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization. … No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members [with a few exceptions].”

1983

The National Endowment for Democracy is created to circumvent new restrictions that the Reagan administration put on the CIA. It went to countries around the world and trained activists, supported certain political groups, deal with journalists, business groups while trying to advance US foreign policy interests

1989

A people's movement emerged in Ukraine in 1989, advocating for the independence of Ukraine from the USSR. This was a large incubator of Neo-Nazism

1991

August

24 Ukraine becomes an independent country from USSR

USSR breaks up

Oleh Tyahnybok founded Svoboda in Ukraine, an openly nationalist radical party, with the principles of Bondera.

1994

Budapest Memorandum – The United States, Russia and Britain committed to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the country.

Ukraine gives up the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world.

Dmitri Yarosh founded an extreme political organization called Trident or Trizub.

2003

November

The Revolution of the Roses erupts in Georgia, where Mikheil Saakashvili helps to overthrow democratically elected president Eduard Shevarnadze, temporarily ending Russian leadership in the country.

2004

November

Start of the Orange Revolution in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election in Ukraine, which was said to be marred by corruption, fraud and voter intimidation. Viktor Yanukovych beat Victor Yushchenko, but after protests erupted, a re-vote was taken, and Yushchenko was declared the winner. His wife, Kateryna Yushchenko is a former US State Department official and worked in the White House.