Ukraine's "Night of Long Knives"

Dojo Rat, a friend to this humble blog, has done some important research into the infighting that has marked the new fascist regime in Ukraine. Remember: Even though these guys have a rather unsavory background, they are backed by us.

Ukrainian special forces have gunned down ultranationalist Olexander Muzychko, member of Right Sector an active participant in earlier opposition riots in Kiev, who assaulted staff at a state prosecutor’s office in Rovno last month.

Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi, has also been sought by Russia on suspicion of torturing and murdering at least 20 Russian servicemen in Chechnya in the early 2000s.

Looks as though the Ukrainians are now quite embarrassed by the bad press their newly-empowered right-wing thugs have received. Despite all the anti-Russian propaganda pummeling us every time we fire up the internet (or walk into a drug store, as documented in the post below), people around the world understand that the Ukrainian far right represents something worse than Putin.

Solution: A purge. It's a little like Fox News firing Glenn Beck -- except this scenario is being played out at gunpoint.

Although Hitler's original Night of Long Knives was frighteningly rapid (you might say that Roehm was un-built in a day), a purge of this sort usually takes time. In this case, it's quite unclear as to which side will win.

Ukraine is at the initial stage of standoff between «formal» structures and the formations of self-confident stormtroopers. Perhaps Yarosh will succeed in staging a coup, something Röhm failed to do. In its turn, the junta will take advantage of contradictions within the Nazi ranks to cement its positions and bring a new «Führer» to power.

Now we have the newly installed fascist government in Ukraine going to war with it’s own Stormtroopers. If the author is correct, Nationalist Yulia Timoshenko is ready to step in as the new “Fuhrer”.

Yulia Timoshenko is the anti-Russian (and, although I probably shouldn't say this, rather attractive) former Prime Minister of Ukraine who lost to Viktor Yanukovych in 2010. She was soon thereafter convicted of embezzlement. Now that Yanukovich has been tossed out by a coup, Timoshenko is free and plans to run for her old job.

I don't think that it is fair to predict that she will function as any kind of "fuhrer." But if the corruption charges had a basis in reality (a reasonable bet), I'm sure that the west will have nothing but good to say about her.

She has announced plans to retake Crimea, an idea that won't go over very well with the vast majority of Crimeans, who voted to restore their historical status as part of Russia.

(A lot of this has to do with language. Most Crimeans speak Russian; Ukrainian nationalists want them to speak Ukrainian. Yes, I've drastically over-simplified the situation, but that's the gist of it.)

Any move on Crimea might result in a massive war -- perhaps even genocide. Timoshenko is fine with that.

According to the Moscow Times, the recording, apparently made March 8, details a conversation between Tymoshenko and Nestor Shufrych from Ukraine's National Security Council, and has Tymoshenko suggesting that Ukrainians should kill Russians, and, in particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin. The recording, which may have been altered, also apparently features Tymoshenko suggesting that the 8 million Russians living in Ukraine should be killed with "nuclear weapons."

She first denied that the recording was real, and then sent out a tweet more or less admitting that it was real.