Saturday, September 30, 2023

Forward - Canada was ashamed to have saluted a Ukrainian who fought for Hitler. But that salute didn’t come from nowhere

 Kanukistan is full of unmolested Nazis and their no-less Nazi issue and seems to be in need of urgent de-Nazificaton.

Also, article fails to mention that the maternal granddaddy of current deputy prime minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, was a major Nazi propagandist in the occupied eastern Europe calling in his newspapers for genocide and mass murders of Poles and Jews.



Canada was ashamed to have saluted a Ukrainian who fought for Hitler. But that salute didn’t come from nowhere

The fact that some Ukrainians collaborated with Nazis is no secret, but it’s been whitewashed and even celebrated in Canada

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward's free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Canadian officials have spent the past week apologizing for accidentally honoring a 98-year-old man who fought in a Nazi division during World War II as a Ukrainian nationalist hero. 

While most Ukrainians battled against Germany during the war, it’s well known that the western region of the country collaborated with the Third Reich — and that thousands of those involved were allowed to resettle in Canada. 

Yet politicians and institutions are professing shock that Yaroslav Hunka — an old man who got a standing ovation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Volodomyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Sept. 22 — was part of a unit armed and trained by Nazis.

That unit, the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as SS Galichina or SS Galizien, was created in 1943, commanded by SS officers, and is believed responsible for war crimes including the 1944 Huta Pieniacka massacre, where hundreds of Polish villagers were burned alive.

In the week since the Forward first reported on Hunka’s problematic past, a university announced plans to return an endowment funded in Hunka’s honor and the parliamentary leader who invited him resigned, under pressure, from his post as speaker. Yet that politician has connections to institutions tied to Hunka’s family, and the University of Alberta has publicized past support from other SS Galichina veterans. In a 2011 news release, the school described another donor as having “joined the Galicia Division, later the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army.”

Here’s some of what we’ve learned about Hunka and his family, how he came to be honored in Parliament, the history of SS Galichina and its veterans, and the spiraling fallout.

Fighting for the Nazis — and against Russia

Those who defend Ukraine’s alliance with Nazis during World War II say men like Hunka were Ukrainian nationalists who joined German forces to defeat a common enemy: the Soviet Union. 

“There are many Ukrainians who say, yes, this was kind of a deal with a devil — the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Jars Balan, director of the University of Alberta’s Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre. “No different than what happened with the Western allies entering into an alliance with Stalin to fight the Germans — when the Western countries knew Stalin was a [Deceitful Western propaganda removed]” (The Kule Centre where Balan works is part of the university’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies. Hours after Balan spoke to the Forward, the university announced it would return an endowment honoring Hunka.)

Indeed, Stalin’s reign [contemptible Western anti-Stalinist propaganda removed]...

When Anthony Rota, speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, introduced Hunka during Zelenskyy’s Sept. 22 visit, he called him a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today.”

And Hunka made the argument himself after Russia invaded his homeland last year. “In the last war, I joined the Ukrainian underground to fight Russia, so I was fighting the same people they’re fighting now,” he told a reporter covering a peace vigil in North Bay, Ontario, in March 2022

“Nothing has changed there. The same enemy. First Stalin was there and now this idiot,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The best years of his life

In a post for the SS Galichina veterans’ blog Combatant News, Hunka wrote that 1941 to 1943 — after Germany invaded Ukraine and before Hunka enlisted — were the happiest years of his life. He also recalled eagerly awaiting “the legendary German knights” to come and attack “the hated Poles,” using a slur for Polish people, in 1939.

Captioned photos from the blog show Hunka during SS artillery training in Munich in December 1943 and in Poland around the time of a visit by Nazi mastermind Heinrich Himmler. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles … I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway,” Himmler said during that visit, according to several historical accounts.

Now, the Polish minister of education is looking into whether Hunka can be extradited and prosecuted for what happened during the war.

On the veterans’ blog, Hunka says he was held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy after the war; he was later allowed to resettle in England, where he met his wife, Margaret Edgerton, who was British. According to Margaret’s 2018 obituary, they moved to Canada in 1954 and had two sons, Martin and Peter, and four grandchildren. 

Hunka made his living in the aircraft industry, working his way up to inspector at DeHavilland Aircraft in Toronto. After retirement, he visited Ukraine nearly every year, according to a profile of him in a University of Alberta newsletter announcing the donation made in his honor by his sons. The profile said he also served as president of the parish council of St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Catholic Church in Thornhill, Ontario.

Ties between Hunka’s family and the politician who invited him

After the Forward article about Hunka’s past was picked up by news outlets around the world, Canadian lawmakers and Jewish groups rushed to condemn House Speaker Rota for inviting him. In his mea culpa, Rota made it sound like Hunka was a constituent from his district (called a “riding”) whom he did not know much about. “This initiative was entirely my own,“ Rota said, “the individual in question being from my riding and having been brought to my attention.” 

But Rejean Venne, an independent Canadian journalist, wrote in his Substack newsletter this week that Rota and Hunka family members have had numerous chances to cross paths over the years. Among Venne’s examples:

  • One of Hunka’s sons, Martin, was chief financial officer of Redpath Mining, a multinational corporation headquartered in Rota’s district. Redpath has contributed to Rota’s campaigns and Rota has provided government funding for recreational facilities operated by Redpath. (The company did not respond to inquiries from the Forward made Thursday.)
  • Martin Hunka has also served as chair of the board of trustees for North Bay Hospital, which is located in Rota’s district and which Rota has supported. Hunka’s name can no longer be found on the hospital’s website and social media posts. (The hospital did not respond to a request for comment emailed Thursday.) 
  • North Bay Pride, an LGBTQ+ organization, gave an award to Rota nine months after Yaroslav’s granddaughter Leshya Lecappelain joined its board of directors. In 2022 and 2023, North Bay Pride received more than $100,000 in funding from Rota. (Asked about this, a spokesperson for North Bay Pride said Lecappelain had not been on its board for several years.)

“Rota’s response that this was a last-minute request doesn’t add up,” Venne said in an email interview. “The Hunka family appears well connected in Rota’s district.” 

The Forward could not determine whether Hunka and Rota met before he was honored at Parliament. Rota and others at the House of Commons did not respond to several requests for comment sent Wednesday and Thursday. 

Efforts to reach Yaroslav, Martin and Peter Hunka, Lecappelain and other members of the family for comment were also unsuccessful.

Endowments honoring Hunka and others tied to the SS

On Wednesday, the University of Alberta said it would return the CA$30,000 endowment that Hunka’s sons donated in 2019 in their father’s honor. The money was intended to fund research at the school’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies.

But Per Anders Rudling, a university alumnus and expert on Ukrainian nationalism who teaches at Sweden’s Lund University, said the Hunka fund is just “the top of an iceberg.” 

In an email to the Forward, Rudling said the University of Alberta has “much larger endowments” honoring other figures connected to the Waffen SS unit. The “most problematic,” he said, is the Volodymyr and Daria Kubijovych Memorial Endowment Fund. At CA$450,000 — about $334,000 — it’s 15 times larger than the Hunka fund the university is returning.

Rudling described Kubijovych as Ukraine’s chief collaborator with Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of occupied Poland. Kubijovych played a crucial role in convincing the Third Reich to create SS Galichina. He also lobbied for Ukrainians to seize Jewish property and advocated for ethnic cleansing. 

In comparison to Kubijovych, Rudling said, Hunka is “small fry.” 

In a Facebook post Thursday, Rudling also questioned university endowments named for other Galichina Division veterans, including Roman Kolisnyk, Levko Babij and Edward Brodacky.

Pointing to research he published in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Rudling said, “I have tried to raise this issue in the past, to no avail.” 

Asked about Rudling’s concerns, Michael Brown, a spokesperson for the University of Alberta, reiterated a statement in which interim provost Verna Yiu said the school is “reviewing its general naming policies and procedures, including those for endowments, to ensure alignment with our values.” Yiu also expressed the school’s “commitment to address anti-Semitism in any of its manifestations, including the ways in which the Holocaust continues to resonate in the present.” 

The honors given to SS Galichina fighters extend beyond academia. One of the University of Alberta’s endowments is for its former chancellor Peter Savaryn, another SS Galichina member. In 1987, Savaryn was awarded the Order of Canada, among the nation’s highest honors, bestowed by Canada’s governor general, the representative of the British Crown. Mary Simon, the current governor general, has condemned the Hunka scandal as “a shock and an embarrassment.”

Controversial church leaders 

When the Hunka endowment was announced in 2020, the university said it would fund research on two “leaders of the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church,” Cardinal Josyf Slipyj and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. (A metropolitan is akin to a bishop.)

Slipyi was a deputy in Ukraine’s 1941 self-proclaimed government, which pledged to work closely with Germany under Hitler’s leadership. Slipyi also assigned chaplains to SS Galichina and celebrated the unit’s inaugural Mass. After the war, the Soviets sent him to gulag prison camps.

But Sheptytsky’s legacy is layered. He helped “dozens of Jews find refuge in his monasteries and even in his own home,” according to Yad Vashem, while also supporting “the German army as the savior of the Ukrainians from the Soviets.” 

Harvard University also houses a Ukrainian Research Institute. Asked, after Alberta’s announcement, whether that institute’s funding would be scrutinized for Nazi ties, the university said in a statement that the institute had never received money from the Hunkas, nor had it received donations designated for research related to SS Galichina. 

Harvard did, however, in 1974 establish a fellowship and faculty position in European studies with money from a foundation named for Alfred Krupp, who was convicted of war crimes for using slave laborers from Auschwitz to build and work in a factory.

Investigations into war crimes 

The Nuremberg Trials declared the Waffen-SS overall to be a criminal organization responsible for mass atrocities. But Canada let Hunka and 2,000 other veterans of the SS Galichina into the country anyway. 

Others from the unit settled in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. The Forward reported in August that Ukrainian veterans groups had erected monuments to their World War II service in a cemetery in suburban Philadelphia and outside Detroit, prompting outrage from Jewish organizations.

In Canada, questions about the Ukrainian immigrants’ past dogged them for decades, and in 1985, the country launched a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, known as the Deschênes Commission

Investigators were mostly limited to considering evidence gathered in Canada, and ultimately they came to the controversial conclusion that the Galichina Division “should not be indicted as a group” and that “mere membership” in the division was insufficient to justify prosecution or revoke citizenship.

This week, as Trudeau apologized for the Hunka salute, B’nai Brith Canada called for the full release of the commission’s report, which had been heavily redacted, along with other Holocaust-era records, in order to “restore public trust in our institutions.”

“Canadians deserve to know the full extent to which Nazi war criminals were permitted to settle in this country after the war,” the group said Tuesday.

Arrogance or naiveté? 

Why would Hunka’s family risk his humiliation, at age 98, by putting him under a spotlight? Did they not realize how his military record would be perceived and portrayed? 

“It’s arrogance. It’s not naiveté,” said Jack Porter, a research associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and himself a Jewish child survivor of the Holocaust, born in Ukraine. 

They know what their father did,” he said. “It’s hubris, it’s chutzpah. They rationalize that these men were fighting communism. If a few Jews were killed, they also were communists.”

Porter emphasized that Ukraine’s World War II history is complicated. More than 2.5 million Ukrainians died fighting against Germany. “There were many good Ukrainians; they should not all be stigmatized,” he said. 

But he said veterans who fought under the Nazis like Hunka and his compatriots have been emboldened by the whitewashing of their history, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. 

“They’ve been hiding in plain sight,” he said. “They’ve been there for 60 years and nobody has touched them, so of course they feel OK.”

This article was originally published on the Forward.

Stryker Strycken

Here is another stricken Stryker vehicle basically designated as an M1132 ESV, where the latter stands for “Engineering support vehicle” destroyed per following photographic evidence.








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A reminder of the previous entries in the destroyed Stryker  category. More pictures of the M1132 Stryker vehicle already recorded on blog as destroyed, It was hit, engulfed by flames and here are the charred remains.














The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Stryker:  Some Strykers are still left...even if as burned out junk.





The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Stryker: More pictures of the M1132 Stryker vehicle already recorded on blog as destroyed, It was hit, engulfed by flames and here are the charred re...

Friday, September 29, 2023

Strv 122 Tank Poked With Drones

As mentioned earlier here is some footage... here is the footage of a Strv 122 Swedish skit oh shit tank being poked with drones caring RPG seven Rockets




zzz

BDA: Tank is totally destroyed after the second hit including a cook-off of Ordnance inside the tank 

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 Here is some Swedish skit, otherwise known as a Strv 122 (Leopard A5) tank poked with a cheap DIY drone with an explosive attached, does the job.


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 Here are 2 Strv 122 Swedish tanks also known as, and a version of, Leopard 2A4 knocked out and then finished off with drones. 




And it’s another first on blog for STRV 122 so as the saying goes Make-A-Wish or buy a lottery ticket To harness the powers of meaningful coincidence and make them work for you.

Crops for osint id freaks



Of course as you can see destroyed Leopard tanks, or Swedish skit derivatives, as the case may be and is, is nothing new, they burned before but it is the Abrams tank that has been destroyed in greatest numbers across the entire Middle East and in the Arab world, with dozens US military admitted losses of Abrams tanks which likely means hundreds destroyed in actuality.

It must be stated, again, that there is nothing wrong with western tanks. 

Some self-styled military experts, even the better ones and more credible amongst them, continue to claim , rather in the face of available evidence, that there is nothing wrong with with Western tanks; that maybe so but then again as our guest expert General Sokolowski (Retd) says there is nothing particularly right with them either. 

On balance, they are obviously inferior to the old Soviet era Russian tanks and especially to newer Russian designs.

General Sokolowski says he could elaborate on that last statement of his but doing so will serve to make someone wiser and making people wiser for free is one thing General Sokolowski is trying to avoid in his daily life and especially in his professional career as an expert on military matters.

For as they say...

How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise


Also, our expert general Sokolowski says would like to point out that one should remember that old Soviet- and current Russian antitank weaponry has been designed specifically to target, and to be most effective against, NATO armor assets, including American British and German and now Swedish tanks and that’s what it’s now doing and that’s what it does best.

And as you have been seeing it is pretty effective. Where a t-64 tank might take three hits to kill, only one is enough to kill, for example, the giant British rust bucket that is the Challenger 2, with the Challenger being harder to miss too. 


The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Two Swedish Skit Strv 122 Knocked Out:  Here are 2 Strv 122 Swedish tanks also known as, and a version of, Leopard 2A4 knocked out and then finished off with drones.  And it’s ano...


*****
The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Strv 122 Tank Catches Commercial Drone Delivery:  Here is some Swedish skit, otherwise known as a Strv 122 (Leopard A5) tank poked with a cheap DIY drone with an explosive attached, does th...

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Strv 122 Tank Catches Commercial Drone Delivery

 Here is some Swedish skit, otherwise known as a Strv 122 (Leopard A5) tank poked with a cheap DIY drone with an explosive attached, does the job.


*********


 Here are 2 Strv 122 Swedish tanks also known as, and a version of, Leopard 2A4 knocked out and then finished off with drones. 




And it’s another first on blog for STRV 122 so as the saying goes Make-A-Wish or buy a lottery ticket To harness the powers of meaningful coincidence and make them work for you.

Crops for osint id freaks



Of course as you can see destroyed Leopard tanks, or Swedish skit derivatives, as the case may be and is, is nothing new, they burned before but it is the Abrams tank that has been destroyed in greatest numbers across the entire Middle East and in the Arab world, with dozens US military admitted losses of Abrams tanks which likely means hundreds destroyed in actuality.

It must be stated, again, that there is nothing wrong with western tanks. 

Some self-styled military experts, even the better ones and more credible amongst them, continue to claim , rather in the face of available evidence, that there is nothing wrong with with Western tanks; that maybe so but then again as our guest expert General Sokolowski (Retd) says there is nothing particularly right with them either. 

On balance, they are obviously inferior to the old Soviet era Russian tanks and especially to newer Russian designs.

General Sokolowski says he could elaborate on that last statement of his but doing so will serve to make someone wiser and making people wiser for free is one thing General Sokolowski is trying to avoid in his daily life and especially in his professional career as an expert on military matters.

For as they say...

How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise


Also, our expert general Sokolowski says would like to point out that one should remember that old Soviet- and current Russian antitank weaponry has been designed specifically to target, and to be most effective against, NATO armor assets, including American British and German and now Swedish tanks and that’s what it’s now doing and that’s what it does best.

And as you have been seeing it is pretty effective. Where a t-64 tank might take three hits to kill, only one is enough to kill, for example, the giant British rust bucket that is the Challenger 2, with the Challenger being harder to miss too. 


The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Two Swedish Skit Strv 122 Knocked Out:  Here are 2 Strv 122 Swedish tanks also known as, and a version of, Leopard 2A4 knocked out and then finished off with drones.  And it’s ano...

MAN HX Tractor Destroyed

 Here is what appears to be a MANHX series tractor trailer about to be taken out with a Lancet drone.


Either MAN HX77 or MAN HX81

Either MAN HX77 or MAN HX81 





Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Mass M113 Destruction: YPR-765 Variants

Here is more of our favorites destroyed - a rather large bunch of M113 variant YPR-765 Dutch supplied vehicles destroyed in recent days
Looks like a Mass cull. 

At least seven assets liquidated





















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Here’s your daily favourite, another M113 destroyed and likes to keel over, as they are wont to do on the slightest of provocations and has been so noted before.





$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Russia disagrees with yet another M113.

The crappy chariot is first knocked out and then finished off with a drone drop through an open hatch.

Luckily the Ukrainian crew had just enough time to escape the vehicle and to surrender .










Another M113 knocked out usually happens every day. 








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US badly made M113 armoured personnel carriers continue to be destroyed in Russia in some numbers as the Ukrainian Western planned and commanded counteroffensive loses steam, if it ever had any, and so here is another one.




As per usual the innards are incinerated on this one





Frankly we have lost count of how many M113 APCs Have been destroyed to date But it is surely in the hundreds already.   


As global competition for resources is heating up, And the US is progressively denied access to the world’s raw materials and other assets, and is more and more confined to its own gutted and depleted continent, can the United States really afford to Lose so much resources on the Ukrainian war gaining nothing but future threats to its very existence, for Russians will never now forget or forgive its shocking behaviour and the US elites’ astonishing hate propaganda, the likes of which has not been seen since dr. Goebbels? Wasting dwindling and unreplenishable supplies and resources in the process?

With their behaviour in Ukraine the collective West and North led into perdition by the United States are signing their own death warrant, either suspended or delayed for execution but a death warrant nonetheless, And that is a huge concern for Yankophiles sand Anglophiles like ourselves



****

Another M112..as in -1 M113.

Here is just one destroyed M113 APC but in many pictures showing near total destruction of said vehicle. 
















Pictures are relatively new but the vehicle itself is from about a year ago

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In the excitement of the past weeks in the months of June, July, August and now September of 2023, of seeing new nomenclatures of NATO supplied armor destroyed for the first time and immediately in industrial quantities and in numbers never heretofore seen anywhere, such as Leopards and Bradley, it is good to know that the destruction of the bad olde M113 APC and variants is still also continuing bringing peace ever closer with each destroyed NATO and Western asset, of which here is a proof: one more M113 asset can be put down in your OSINT copybooks and preserved for posterity as destroyed.

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Starting as far back as in the early 1960s, the US M113 APC used to be the mainstay of US Army armored cavalry formations in many wars (though all eventually lost by the US military) starting from Vietnam and up to Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century but is now an embarrassment and a huge stain on the reputation of the US capitalist run military-industrial complex (what's left of it) and the American made weaponry in general, with hundreds of US M113 APC and derivatives spectacularly destroyed in Ukraine already and more taken out almost every single day.



Hundreds of destroyed US M113 APC, and derivatives such as Dutch Bastard YPR-765 and Danish M113G4DK, also German versions, have been recorded on blog already.


 

 

The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M "Likes To Keel Over" 113:  Here is another M113, likes to keel over, taking a leeeetle dirt nap somewhere in Russia ('s new territories) following failed occupati...

The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M113 Flambe: Spectacular destruction of an M113 apc caught on footage.    tlgr footage ....     **** In the excitement of the past weeks in the  month...

 

 

The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M113 Catches Up With ATGM: Another instance of the US made M113 APC catches up with an ATGM...or the other way around.    Tlgr footage ******* *** Starting as far ba...

 

The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: YPR-765 Photo Op: Here is another knocked out YPR-765, they have been getting real scarce, but still do pop up occasionally together with other destroyed West..

 

&


The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M113 Spectacular:  Spectacular destruction of an M113, as spectacular as it is complete.  Sauce  ***** In the excitement of the past weeks in the months of ...

The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: - x1 M113: Minus one (-1) M113, M112, I guess? Though he personally took no part in it (or so he modestly claims )) our expert, General Sokolowski (Ret... The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: - x1 M113: Another M112..as in -1 M113. It’s upside down, jumped up on a mine. **** In the excitement of the past weeks in the months of June, July, Au...


The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: - x1 M113, Many Pictures: Another M112..as in -1 M113. Here is just one destroyed M113 APC but in many pictures showing near total destruction of said vehicle.  Pictu...








The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M113 Keep Quitting in Russia: US badly made M113 armoured personnel carriers continued to be destroyed in Russia in some numbers as the Ukrainian Western planned and comm...




The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Another Day, Another M113, Keep Quitting in Russia: Another M113 knocked out usually happens every day.  ******* US badly made M113 armoured personnel carriers continue to be destroyed in Russ...



The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: More M113 Destruction: Russia disagrees with yet another M113. The crappy chariot is first knocked out and then finished off with a drone drop through an open hatc...



The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: M “Likes To Keel Over” 113: Here’s your daily favourite, another M113 destroyed and likes to keel over, as they are wont to do on the slightest of provocations and has ...