Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

Foreign Policy recent piece on 10 possible crises includes Ukraine at the number 2 spot in the list. Not especially convincing argument doesn't include the upcoming elections and the election politics that will come from these two major events. 

Eurasia Daily Monitor is already reporting about the rise of radicalism in Ukraine, linking it to the election. This  increase in nationalism as a tool for mobilizing voters may lead to violent situations among the competing party factions. How much will the Rada and presidential election stabilize or destabilize Ukraine?

On April 17 in Odessa a youth from a radical leftist group calling themselves Antifa (from anti-fascists) stabbed to death Maksym Chayka, a 20-year-old Ukrainian nationalist. While the incident is now the subject of a police investigation, Antifa claims this was done in self-defense. But nationalists and their opponents have already delivered their own verdicts, judging by the far from neutral newspaper headlines reporting on "a patriot stabbed" or "a neo-Nazi stabbed" depending on the ideological sympathies of individual journalists.

The Russian media hurried to portray Ukrainian nationalists as "blood-thirsty neo-Nazis," similar to their handling of the story of Hitler dolls found on sale in a small Kyiv shop last year, which made the headlines across the world after it had whipped up interest. Reports about the alleged links between Antifa and the pro-Russian Motherland group -denied by Antifa- prompted Yushchenko to take sides (www.samozahist.org.ua, April 20). He instructed the law-enforcement agencies to find links between the Antifa "extremists" and pro-Russian groups (www.president.gov.ua, April 22). Human rights activist Volodymyr Chemerys, expressed his doubts over the investigation's impartiality because of presidential interference. He openly accused Yushchenko of sympathizing with neo-Nazis (www.samozahist.org.ua, April 24).

People's deputy Oleksandr Feldman, who chairs the Association of Ukrainian Ethno-Cultural Associations and the Kharkiv Jewish community, warned Yushchenko in an open letter on April 27 about the "fascistization" of Ukrainian society. He mentioned the tragic incident in Odessa and reports about anti-Semitic leaflets distributed in the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy, and recalled that the "neo-Nazis" from the Freedom party won a recent election in Ternopil (EDM, March 24). Feldman drew analogies with Germany in the 1920's and 1930's, where a crisis that he compared in scale to the current Ukrainian situation, had brought Hitler to power (Delo, April 27).

Feldman's exaggeration was probably due to the fact that he is a leading member of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party, which was unexpectedly defeated in the Ternopil election by both Freedom and Yushchenko's United Center. Tymoshenko views both Yushchenko and Freedom leader Oleg Tyahnybok as her rivals in the upcoming presidential election. All three regard as their stronghold, the nationally minded western Ukraine including Lviv where advertising on matchboxes praise the SS Galichina World War II division -noted by the Russian media and pro-Russian news outlets in Ukraine in early April.

--Ukraine Witnessing Rise of Radicalism V.6, 84