General Discussion

Fiery Chaos in Odessa: 42 Perish After Ukrainians Launch Waco-Like Assault

AlterNet / By Nicolas J.S. Davies

The group behind the clashes is Right Sector, the strike force of the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew Ukraine's government.

May 5, 2014

The death toll in Odessa stands at 42 people killed, most of them burned to death or suffocated by smoke inhalation in the inferno at the Trade Unions House. There is no dispute over who were the victims and who were their killers. The victims were pro-Russian protesters who had occupied the building. The attackers who set fire to it with petrol bombs were members of Right Sector, the ultra-Nationalist strike force of the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in February.

Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh told Newsweek on March 19th that the Western-backed coup regime in Kiev has organized Right Sector militia members into new paramilitary forces for a "war" to "cleanse the country" of pro-Russian protesters. So it is not clear whether the militiamen responsible for the mass murder in Odessa were in fact newly recruited Ukrainian "National Guard" troops or just "civilian" Right Sector thugs, nor whether they were locals from Odessa or forces sent in from Kiev, Lviv or elsewhere in Western Ukraine.

For Americans, a more serious question hangs over Ukraine's Waco in Odessa and indeed over the entire U.S. role in the crisis in Ukraine. The earliest media reports of Right Sector's existence date only from January 2014 as it took charge of the protests in Kiev, and the earliest article on Right Sector's web site dates from November 25th 2013. Right Sector was created less than six months ago, as the U.S. State Department and the CIA was already laying the groundwork for the coup in Ukraine. So what role has the U.S. played in the recruiting, training and direction of this group that now has so much blood on its hands?

Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector's leader, joined the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Tryzub (Trident)paramilitary organization in 1994. He became the head of the militia in 2005. Like the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, one of three parties in the coup government, Tryzub drew inspiration from the World War II-era Ukrainian leader Stepan Bandera and his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who massacred tens of thousands of Poles and Jews during World War II and supported German campaigns that killed many more....

As much as the coup regime in Ukraine and its supporters want to project an image of Western moderation, there is a “Dr. Strangelove” element that can’t stop the Nazism from popping up from time to time, like when the Peter Sellers character in the classic movie can’t keep his right arm from making a “Heil Hitler” salute.

This brutal Nazism surfaced again on Friday when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.

“Burn, Colorado, burn” went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading “Galician SS,” a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front...