The Enemy Within
As America moves to bring an end to a conflict in Ukraine we helped precipitate, it needs to guard against opponents of this new policy trajectory who will seek to disrupt its new role as peacemaker and/or extract vengeance on the United States for betraying their cause. Perhaps the greatest threat to the United States in this regard is the enemy within—the Ukrainian-American diaspora whose loyalty to the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera transcends everything—including the land which they currently call home.
In May 1940, 805 delegates from 168 different Ukrainian-American communities met in Washington, DC to form the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, or UKKA. Three of these organizations—the Ukrainian National Association, the Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics in America, and the Ukrainian National Aid Association in America—had previously come together in 1922 to form the United Ukrainian Organizations in America (Obiednannia Ukrainskykh Orhanizatsii v Amerytsi, or OUO). Over the years, the OUO had been very active, raising around $250,000 dollars to help Ukrainian organizations in Western Europe and in Western Ukraine, and to protest the Polish “Pacification in Eastern Galicia" that took place from September-November 1932, and the famine in Soviet Ukraine which occurred in1932–3.
The OUO represented the initial wave of Ukrainian-Americans who had come to this country in the 19th century. At the end of the First World War, however, a second wave of Ukrainian immigrants began to arrive, survivors of Ukraine’s violent efforts at independence. This second wave of immigrants included many who were loyal to the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), a resistance organization formed from veterans of Ukraine’s abortive bid for nationhood. Later, in 1929, the UVO was reorganized as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, co-founded by Andriy Melnyk, Yevhen Konovalets, and Stepan Bandera. The OUN was the largest Ukrainian nationalist organization, known for its extreme far-right ideology.
The UKKA advocated on behalf of Ukrainian nationalist interests during the difficult war years, a task complicated by the fact that the OUN was investigated by the FBI in the late 1930’s because of its affiliation with Nazi Germany. But the German invasion and occupation of Ukraine allowed the UKKA to alter the narrative regarding Ukrainians from collaborator to victim, and in 1944 the UKK established the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee (ZUADK) to aid Ukrainians displaced by the war. Between 1947 and 1957, ZUADK facilitated the resettlement of some 60,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States.
Most of these refugees came from the displaced persons (DP) camps established by the western allies in occupied Germany. At the end of the Second World War, there were some two million Ukrainian refuges on German soil. By the end of 1945, approximately 1.8 million of these refugees had been returned to their homeland. Some left willingly, others were compelled to go against their will. By early 1946, some 200,000 Ukrainians remained, around 40% of whom represented Ukrainians who had fled their country along with the retreating German Army, and the others former slave laborers brought to work in German factories. While these refugees identified as Ukrainians, the western allies were loath to grant them citizenship to a nation the Soviet Union, a wartime ally, said did not exist. As such, these refugees were labeled as “stateless persons” or, more popular, “displaced persons,” or DP’s.
While the ideological composition of the more than 1,000 DP camps that had been established by the western powers was as diverse as Ukraine itself, the populations quickly fell under the control of the OUN, and more specifically, that part of the OUN loyal to Stepan Bandera (OUN-B.) Using the typical tools of coercion, including extreme violence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of noncompliant DPs, the OUN-B began shaping how the DP population defined Ukrainian nationalism. By the time the decision was made to disband the camps and resettle the DP’s abroad, the OUN-B had brought around 70% of the DP population into its ideological fold.
The infusion of 40,000 hard core Banderists into the overall population of Ukrainian-Americans had a telling impact on the political orientation of organizations such as the UKKA; gradually, just as had occurred in the DP camps of western-occupied Germany, the discipline and organizational skill of the OUN-B resulted in their seizing political control over most of the organizations that comprised the UKKA. Soon the Banderist faction set their sights on the next generation of Ukrainian-American nationalists, forming the Ukrainian Youth Association (SUM), established in 1949. In 1962, at their flagship location in Ellenville, New York, SUM erected a monument to those they called the “heroes” of Ukraine—Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Symon Petliura and Yevhen Konovalets. Every summer since, SUM runs a series of summer camps for kids of all ages, thoroughly indoctrinating them into the Banderist ideology, centered as it is around the notion of Ukrainian exceptionalism and unquestioned loyalty to the movement.
During the 1960’s and 70’s, the OUN-B faction solidified its control over the various organizations that made up the UKKA under the banner of what they called the “Liberation Front.” The “Liberation Front” was the American arm of what was known as the “World Ukrainian Liberation Front” (SUVF), a coalition of Ukrainian diaspora organizations loyal to the OUN-B. The SUVF first assembled in 1973, and by the end of the 1970’s had positioned itself to take control of the UKKA. During the 1980 UKKA convention, the “Liberty Front” arrived with sufficient delegates to claim total control of the UKKA leadership. Many Ukrainian-American organizations withdrew from the UKKA in protest.
The UKKA describes itself as “a bipartisan American organization that advocates for a strategic partnership between the United States and Ukraine. Our mission is to encourage and persuade the US government to enact specific policies that create ever stronger, more enduring, and mutually beneficial ties with the Ukrainian nation.”
According to their website, the UKKA fundraises “for various different causes in support of Ukraine, and UKKA works closely with other organizations like USAID and the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States to coordinate aid. UKKA further seeks to rally Ukrainian and international communities behind global campaigns to support Ukraine’s resistance.”
The close collaboration between the UKKA and the US Government over the years cannot be overstated. Throughout the 1990’s, Ukrainian “influencers” (radio and television hosts, journalists, and aspiring politicians) were recruited under programs fully funded by USAID that brought these individuals to the United States for “orientation” (i.e., guided visits to the White House, Congress, the State Department, and the Pentagon) where they met and coordinated with US policymakers on issues pertaining to Ukraine. In every instance, those who participated in such visits were assigned an “official” US government representative, and a “Banderist” from the UKKA.
The bottom line is that every aspect of US policy toward Ukraine in the lead-up to President Trump’s second term has been closely coordinated with the most extreme virulent form of Ukrainian nationalism imaginable—that espoused by Stepan Bandera and embraced without question by his loyal followers.
In the aftermath of Trump’s public humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, Ukrainian nationalists throughout Ukraine began burning Trump in effigy. Others affiliated with the Ukrainian military called upon the Ukrainian diaspora to be prepared to undertake acts of violence to hold those accountable who have betrayed the cause of Bandera.
As I listen to these threats and reflect on the fact that the United States today provides a haven for the literal allies of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, I take note of the fact that Ellenville, New York is but 60 miles south of where I live. Here successive generations of Ukrainian-American Banderists have been trained as paramilitary operatives ready to participate in armed resistance against those forces opposed to the odious ideology of their master, Stepan Bandera, and its modern-day manifestation as part of Zelensky’s Ukraine.
It is this legion of ideologically-aligned Ukrainian-American youth—successive generations of them—that the Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine are appealing to.
And as the US works with Russia to bring the conflict in Ukraine to a close in a manner which will be seen as a betrayal by these expatriate Banderists, America needs to be on guard. Because the indoctrination of the Banderists, as carried out in camps such as the ones conducted in Ellenville, place loyalty to the Banderist organization and the cause of Ukrainian nationalism above all else.
Including the United States in which they live and have called home all these years.
I know these people. I went to school with them. They are pretty, to put it in the vernacular, fucked up. But in special and especially dangerous ways. You nailed it Scott. They were, beyond doubt, connected to one or both attempts on Trump's and many other lives.Their CIA-indoctrination from birth has made them psychopaths. When Russia speaks of DE-nazification, the US and the world should take note because these 'Ukrainians' are the Nazis.
It is amazing to me that our history lessons never spoke of the conflicts, not in war but overarching, the real reasons we do not seem able to coexist.