Danann posted:

NAFO was rejoicing over the story of some Russian tourist getting eaten by a shark and made memes and consumption choices to celebrate it yeah.

galagazombie posted:

I no more believe this threads claims for the past year that Ukraine will lose in just two more weeks than I do the other threads claims for the past year that Russia will lose in just two more weeks. At this point we’re pretty clearly in a stalemate and in a sane world someone would be implementing a ceasefire between the two instead of wanting the war to continue.

crepeface posted:

quote the posts

OhFunny posted:

https://t.me/rybar/49507


The Russian Army has shifted from attacking the eastern end of Novoselivske to advancing on it from the south. They're trying to capture the hill that overlooks the town.

https://t.me/rybar/49509


Russian troops are also continuing to advance westward from Kreminna.

mawarannahr posted:

that reminds me I ran across this book made by the national archives the other day. it's got some interesting bits about postwar gladio-adjacent poo poo and a chapter on OUN specifically. bandera is discussed extensively.
HITLER'S SHADOW Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War - Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda

I found this operation quite interesting:

Danann posted:

NAFO was rejoicing over the story of some Russian tourist getting eaten by a shark and made memes and consumption choices to celebrate it yeah.

mawarannahr posted:

extinction rebellion & just stop oil are pretty good too

Regarde Aduck posted:

i'd love to see the posts where people said mines were good

Dixon Chisholm posted:

mines and cluster bombs are good, but only when russia uses them and thats a fact, jack

CODChimera posted:

extinction rebellion wouldve been a cool name if they did anything at all that wasnt cringe

Regarde Aduck posted:

i'd love to see the posts where people said mines were good

Megamissen posted:

fail convention couldnt even get a blåhaj

CODChimera posted:

i think mlmp said it at least once

Cuttlefush posted:

quote:

Who cares loser, your spinning propeller cap cannot lead me astray from Vladimir Putin Thought. I live eternal in the 98th Guards Airborne Division while you, an SBU brain floating in a jar, are set to be replaced in two weeks

Comrade Koba posted:

icantfindaname posted:

Gonna be cool in 6 months when McFaul and Samantha Power are arguing that Ukraine's use of tactical nuclear weapons is righteous and justified

Comrade Koba posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

a number of years ago, I got into an online argument about the use of land mines by communist insurgents in the Philippines. It's been routinely decried by the government and the armed forces as being a criminal, treacherous act, etc., and in violation of the Ottawa Treaty / Land Mine Ban.

I pointed out that ...

1. the Communist Party of the Philippines could not, by definition, be a party to the Ottawa Treaty, since insurgencies are non-state actors.

2. nevertheless, the CPP does maintain that it abides by the Ottawa Treaty regardless...

3. ... but the land mine ban is not a blanket ban on land mines, rather a ban of specific types of land mines, in particular those that are motion-activated (and therefore indiscriminate). There are carve-outs in the treaty allowing for the use of "command-detonated" mines, or ones that need to be proactively and deliberately triggered by a human operator. And those are the types of mines that the CPP has only ever (claimed to have) sown.

The government engages in no nuance in this framing, particularly towards the third point, and repeatedly engages in propaganda accusing the CPP of violating a prohibition on the land mines, despite the fact that such a prohibition would not apply to the particular methods used by the rebels, even if they could be considered subject to treaties that cannot legally sign.

I still think about that conversation occasionally. But especially as of this week.

HiroProtagonist posted:

liberals are psychopaths

gradenko_2000 posted:

good post, thanks for sharing

quote:

Mikola Lebed is one of the better-known cases of a former collaborator living in the United States. Newly released FBI records, together with Lebed’s CIC file, CIA Name File, and INS dossier, make it possible to reveal his history with greater detail. Before and during World War II, Lebed was a leading member of the younger, more radical wing of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization (OUN) under Stephan Bandera (OUN-B) and its military/terrorist arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Based in Galicia, a region of Ukraine that was located in Poland from 1919 to 1939, the OUN had long called for an independent greater Ukraine. OUN counted among its enemies those that had denied Ukrainian independence (Poles, Soviets) and those in the Ukraine who had failed to assimilate (Jews). During the Polish government’s repression of the OUN in Galicia, Lebed helped plan the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in Warsaw. In 1936 he was jailed by the Polish government for his role. Following the German attack on Poland in September 1939, he escaped from a column of prisoners.

In its work to destabilize the Polish state, the OUN’s ties with Germany extended back to 1921. These ties intensified under the Nazi regime as war with Poland drew near. Galicia was allotted to the Soviets under the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the Germans welcomed anti-Polish Ukrainian activists into the German-occupied General Government. In 1940 and 1941, in preparation for what would become the eastern campaign, the Germans began to recruit Ukrainians, particularly from Bandera’s wing, as saboteurs, interpreters, and police, and trained them at a camp at Zakopane near Cracow. In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht also developed two Ukrainian battalions with the approval of the Banderists, one code named “Nightingale” (Nachtigall) and the other code named “Roland.”

Germans and Ukrainian units reached Lvov four days after the eastern campaign began, and on June 30, 1941, OUN-B officials proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state under a government of OUN members who hoped the Germans would accept the fait accompli. But though the Germans hoped to use the Ukrainians against the Poles, Soviets, and Ukrainian Jews, they had no intention of allowing even a semi-independent Ukraine. The Germans arrested Bandera and other OUN-B leaders and moved them to Sachsenhausen. On July 16, the Germans absorbed Galicia into the General Government.

When the Germans arrested the OUN-B leadership, Lebed slipped through the German police net and became the de facto leader of the OUN-B. In October 1941, the German Security Police issued a wanted poster with Lebed’s photograph. The following year he would form the underground terror wing, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), which would initially fight German imperialism in the Ukraine but which also settled scores with rival Ukrainian leaders, Poles, Communists, and Jews. Indeed, the Banderists sent a manifesto to the Gestapo in Lvov that Hitler had deceived them but which also proclaimed, “Long Live greater independent Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans: Poles behind the San [River], Germans to Berlin, Jews to the gallows.” There are numerous survivor testimonies concerning the Banderist murder of Jews who had escaped to the forests in Galicia in 1941 and 1942.

From the fall of 1941, German police officials in the western Ukraine had nagging problems with Banderist sabotage and anti-German Ukrainian nationalist propaganda issued by the OUN-B. Certain German police reports even mention Banderist aid to Jews in the form of false papers, most likely for Jewish doctors or skilled workers who could help the movement. Only in 1943—the year in which German police units carried out a major campaign against the UPA—did OUN-B leaflets suggest that for the moment participation in anti-Jewish actions would make the OUN-B “a blind tool in foreign hands.” In the long run, the OUN-B’s chief enemies remained the Soviets, who were more likely to regain control of Galicia with the German retreat from the Ukraine in 1943 and 1944. Red Army POWs told their German captors in 1944 that the UPA, led by Lebed and made up of “fanatic” Banderists, was a “terror” for Red Army units in the Ukraine to the point where the Soviets viewed them as German agents. A war of extreme atrocities thus raged between the Red Army and the UPA, with former Ukrainian Nazi collaborators backing the UPA but eventually suffering Red Army counter-insurgency methods. With the advance of the Red Army, Jews serving the UPA were murdered either by the UPA or by the Germans, and by September 1944 German Army officers in northern Ukraine told their superiors in Foreign Armies East that the UPA was a “natural ally of Germany” and “a valuable aid for the German High Command.” Himmler himself authorized intensified contacts with the UPA. Though UPA propaganda emphasized that organization’s independence from the Germans, the UPA also ordered some young Ukrainians to volunteer for the Ukrainian SS Division “Galicia,” and the rest to fight by guerrilla methods. Lebed still hoped for recognition from the Germans. In July 1944 he helped form the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council (UHVR), which would claim to represent the Ukrainian nation while soon serving as a theoretical government-in-exile. The leadership positions in the UHVR tended to be held by OUN-B members, since more moderate Ukrainian nationalists had drifted away earlier in the year.

With the war lost, Lebed adopted a strategy similar to that of General Reinhard Gehlen—he contacted the Allies after escaping to Rome in 1945 with a trove of names and contacts of anti-Soviets located in the western Ukraine and in displaced persons camps in Germany. The contacts theoretically made him very useful in the postwar intelligence world, and CIC took the bait. Though CIC noted in July 1947 one witness’s claim that “[Lebed] is a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans,” it used him in 1947 and 1948 because he could provide complete information on Ukrainian groups within the U.S. zone of Germany, information on Soviet activity within the U.S. zone, and information on Ukrainian and Soviet activities outside of occupied Germany.
In late 1947, the danger arose that the Soviets, who had recently ordered Lebed’s arrest, would kidnap him from Rome, especially should U.S. occupation forces withdraw from Italy. “Should such an eventuality arise,” said the American authorities, “the interest of the U.S. would suffer an indirect damage in as much as [Lebed] is in possession of vital information regarding the Ukrainian resistance activities . . . in the Ukraine.” In addition, Lebed’s safety would reassure Father Ivan Hrynioch (Hirnyj), a wartime collaborator of Lebed who was now the Chief of the UHVR Political Section and a provider of counterintelligence to American authorities. Hrynioch requested Lebed’s movement to safety. The CIC therefore smuggled Lebed and his family from Rome to Munich in December 1947.

By late 1947, Lebed had thoroughly sanitized his prewar and wartime activities for American consumption. In his own rendition, he had been a victim of the Poles, the Soviets, and the Germans—he would carry the Gestapo “wanted” poster for the rest of his life to prove his anti-Nazi credentials. Though he admitted to U.S. authorities his involvement in the 1934 Pieracki assassination, he blamed Pieracki. Lebed characterized his participation in the proclamation of the Ukrainian State in Lvov in June 1941 as having taken “part in the Ukrainian independence demonstration.” After the June 1941 house arrest of OUN-B leaders, Lebed said, he began to organize resistance against the Germans while becoming the “spiritual father” of the UPA. For this, he said, the Gestapo and NKVD both placed a price on his head, and the Gestapo took his family to Buchenwald and Auschwitz in an attempt to force him to surface. In 1947, he was the official Foreign Minister of the UHVR, and he presented his manufactured credentials via mail to Secretary of State George C. Marshall and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He also published a 126-page booklet on the UPA, which chronicled the heroic struggle of Ukrainians against both Nazis and Bolsheviks, while calling for an independent, greater Ukraine that would represent the human ideals of free speech and free faith. The UPA, according to the booklet, never collaborated with the Nazis, nor is there mention of the slaughter of Galician Jews or Poles in the book. The CIC considered the booklet to be the “complete background on the subject.” The CIC overlooked the fact that under its own watch an OUN Congress held in September 1947 had split, thanks to Lebed’s own criticism of the creeping democratization of the OUN. This was also overlooked by the CIA, which began using Lebed extensively in 1948.

Despite living under an assumed name (Roman Turan) in Munich, Lebed was still in danger of being found by his Stalinist enemies. He hoped to immigrate to the United States, but, unlike most Nazi collaborators, he became familiar enough with U.S. immigration law to be “loath to perjure himself and face deportation after . . . passing false [information].” He managed anyway. In June 1949, after Assistant CIA Director W. G. Wyman notified the INS of the fact that Lebed “has been rendering valuable assistance to this Agency in Europe,” the CIA smuggled him into the United States with his wife and daughter under the legal cover of the Displaced Persons Act.

After his arrival, Lebed reverted to his real name and began speaking to immigrant groups in New York, which triggered Justice Department interest in him. The INS began investigating Lebed the same month he arrived in the United States. It reported to Washington in March 1950 that numerous Ukrainian informants had spoken of Lebed’s involvement in the Pieracki assassination and of his role as “one of the most important Bandera terrorists.” During the war, these informants said, the Banderists were trained and armed by the Gestapo and responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish [sic] . . . In all these actions, Lebed was one of the most important leaders.” At some point during the investigation, the INS learned of the CIA’s interest in Lebed, and in 1951 top INS officials apprised the CIA of its findings along with the comment that Lebed would likely be subject to deportation. The CIA countered on October 3, 1951, that all of the charges were false and that the Gestapo “wanted” poster of Lebed proved that he “fought with equal zeal against the Nazis and Bolsheviks.” Lebed’s deportation, added the CIA, would damage national security.

INS officials were willing to suspend the investigation but they remained uncomfortable. In the first place, they noted that the CIA note of October 3 “does not . . . dispose of the allegations.” Additionally the INS worried that “this is the sort of case that can be exploited by commentators of the [Walter] Winchell variety,” especially since Ukrainians that knew Lebed could contact the press on their own. “We will [then] be in no position,” said W.W. Wiggins, the Chief of the INS Investigative Section, “to explain our failure to investigate.” INS officials asked the CIA to notify them when their need for Lebed’s services would end so that the INS could “pursue our investigative responsibilities.” The CIA sidestepped the question. Instead, the Agency pressed the INS in February 1952 to grant Lebed reentry papers so that he could leave and reenter the United States at will.

This was too much for Argyle Mackey, the Commissioner of the INS. He contacted Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to ask for guidance. “We have always cooperated whole-heartedly with the Central Intelligence Agency within the permissible limits of the law,” Mackey said, “and have in this case suspended further investigation of what appears to be a clear-cut deportation case.” But should Lebed leave the country and apply once again for readmission, said Mackey, “I do not see how we can give the requested assurance.” Mackey gave the same reply to the Director of the CIA, Walter Bedell Smith. A reentry permit for Lebed, he said, brought “no guarantee of readmissability,” since for non-U.S. citizens each re-entry was legally a new entry under which the subject had to be investigated. In other words, if Lebed left the country on CIA business, he would likely not get back in.

Mackey’s comments are notable in light of the notion that the INS was careless in allowing war criminals into the United States, and his warning that Lebed might not get back into the country showed there were limits beyond which the INS could not comfortably go. His statement that the INS had “always cooperated with the CIA” suggests, moreover, that there might have been similar cases.

Regardless, the CIA would not be denied Lebed’s services. In a decisive letter to Mackey of May 5, 1952, Allen Dulles , then Assistant Director of the CIA, said that Lebed was the “authorized Foreign Minister of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UHVR), an underground organization within the USSR,” and his contacts as such “have been of inestimable value to this Agency and its operations.” Dulles added:

Satan II posted:

In connection with future Agency operations of the first importance, it is urgently necessary that subject be able to travel in Western Europe. Before [he] undertakes such travel, however, this Agency must . . . assure his reentry into the United States without investigation or incident which would attract undue attention to his activities.

Dulles claimed that Lebed’s 1936 trial in Poland could be discounted because it “was largely influenced by political factors and this Agency has no reason to disbelieve subject’s denial of complicity in this assassination.” This statement contradicted all information on Lebed, who had not denied his role in the killing. Dulles also wanted Lebed’s legal status changed to that of “permanent resident,” under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949, since his continued availability, as Dulles said, was “essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission and is in the interest of national security.” Thus Lebed would be able to come and go from the United States as he pleased. Dulles also wanted Lebed’s application for permanent residence status backdated to October 1949, when Lebed had first entered the United States. Since Section 8 of the Act provided legal cover for permanent residence without regard to existing immigration laws, the INS had no choice but to comply even though, as Wiggins later said, Lebed’s “deportability would be established” if the INS should investigate further. They never did—Lebed became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 1957.

The FBI, meanwhile, was very familiar with Lebed. In May 1951, the CIA asked Hoover if the Bureau wished to use Lebed, who, the Agency said, was “active for many years in Ukrainian resistance movements.” Since this seems to be a rare case of the CIA offering to share an agent, the Agency might have been hoping to enlist the FBI’s aid against a snowballing INS investigation. The FBI looked into Lebed’s past as best it could by retrieving information it received in 1943 from British intelligence concerning Ukrainian terrorism and Lebed’s role in the Pieracki assassination. It also examined a small trove of captured German General Staff documents from 1943 and 1944, which revealed German appreciation with the work of the UPA while mentioning Lebed by name. The New York field office also questioned a Ukrainian informant, Peter Jablon, a former member of the OUN security service, who claimed that Lebed was a German collaborator and assassin who would “use American intelligence for his own benefit.”
Still, Hoover gave orders that Lebed, owing to his anti-Communism, should be interviewed with a view toward possibly “developing [him] as a potential source of information concerning Ukrainian groups . . . in the United States.” When questioned, Lebed gave the FBI a sanitized version of his past. When asked about Jablon’s charges, Lebed said that Jablon was a “strange man” who seemed to be pathologically ill.

There is no evidence that the FBI ever used Lebed, but there is no evidence that it helped the INS much, either. When asked in May 1951, the Bureau told the INS that they had no objection to the latter’s investigation of Lebed, and Jablon’s statements of a year earlier were even provided to the INS. Later, when Dulles requested permanent resident status for Lebed, the INS forwarded the Dulles letter to Hoover and asked Hoover to reply to the INS “with any comments you desire to make.” Since the FBI had already shared the Jablon statements, INS surely expected a measure of support. Hoover, however, replied that “based on the available information [the FBI] has no comments to make.” Hoover could have shared a great deal of information from German staff records and from British intelligence, but these are not in Lebed’s INS file.

In the following months, the FBI continued to collect information on Lebed, including interviews with Jablon in 1953. The FBI also found Army Intelligence reports that confirmed parts of Jablon’s statements, which the FBI sent to the CIA but not to the INS. Lebed, meanwhile, continued to work for the CIA. The full extent of his activities as “Foreign Minister” may never become known, but FBI surveillance of him gives some idea. Partly, Lebed lectured at prestigious universities such as Yale on such topics as biological warfare used by the Soviet government in the Ukraine . From 1956 to the mid-1960s, Lebed was active as the chief of a firm in New York called the Prolog Research and Publishing Association, which apparently directed agents in Eastern Europe and which, according to some, received its funding from the CIA. In any event, Lebed does not seem to have read any manuscripts for the press.
FBI files on Nazi collaborators in the United States are an important source of information about the wartime and postwar activities of these figures, most of whom are not mentioned prominently, if at all, in secondary literature or even in German wartime records. For example, there is more information on the wartime activities of Lebed in FBI records than in the records of the German General Staff itself.
…

Danann posted:

NAFO was rejoicing over the story of some Russian tourist getting eaten by a shark and made memes and consumption choices to celebrate it yeah.

icantfindaname posted:

It is going to be wild if (when?) Biden throws Ukraine under the bus in 8 months, sticking them with a deal barely better than Minsk 2 but with a half million or more casualties and a third of the country either fled or made homeless, all to tie up the issue for his reelection campaign, and American liberals are going to go along with it like nothing unusual happened

sum posted:

Apparently the nerds at LostArmour have been compiling stats on (published) posthumous military awards to members of the AFU. Notably: May and June saw the largest number of posthumous awards, over ten thousand Ukrainians have been given an award posthumously, and the proportion of officers has declined from 25+% to ~5%.
https://twitter.com/Mykorola/status/1678218879774892034/photo/1

sum posted:

Apparently the nerds at LostArmour have been compiling stats on (published) posthumous military awards to members of the AFU. Notably: May and June saw the largest number of posthumous awards, over ten thousand Ukrainians have been given an award posthumously, and the proportion of officers has declined from 25+% to ~5%.
https://twitter.com/Mykorola/status/1678218879774892034/photo/1

KomradeX posted:

That does remind my Ukrainian friend was telling me today, something he heard from his cousin on the front lines about how T-64s have a better survivability rate, especially if hit from the front than the Leopard 1s. So much for the wunderwaffe

Comrade Koba posted:

Cuttlefush posted:

quote:

Who cares loser, your spinning propeller cap cannot lead me astray from Vladimir Putin Thought. I live eternal in the 98th Guards Airborne Division while you, an SBU brain floating in a jar, are set to be replaced in two weeks

icantfindaname posted:

It is going to be wild if (when?) Biden throws Ukraine under the bus in 8 months, sticking them with a deal barely better than Minsk 2 but with a half million or more casualties and a third of the country either fled or made homeless, all to tie up the issue for his reelection campaign, and American liberals are going to go along with it like nothing unusual happened

Endman posted:

My favourite fact about the Leopard 1 is that because it was designed for Northern Europe, it gets extremely hot in the crew compartment in warmer climates. This is extremely funny when you consider that Australia bought a bunch of them.

They ended up having to design a special liquid cooling vest for the crews so they wouldn't pass out on training exercises.

mawarannahr posted:

ultimately, Russia is responsible

CODChimera posted:

i think mlmp said it at least once

BULBASAUR posted:

what became Russia started in Ukraine so ultimately Ukraine is responsible