UKR-TAZ

Forty of the world’s leading researchers of Ukrainian (and other) far-right and xenophobic groups have signed a statement decrying the reduction of the Euromaidan protests in some mass media to a right-wing led or dominated movement. From the statement:

“We are a group of researchers who comprise specialists in the field of Ukrainian nationalism studies, and most of the world’s few experts on the post-Soviet Ukrainian radical right. [. . .]

“While we are critical of far right activities on the EuroMaidan, we are, nevertheless, disturbed by a dangerous tendency in too many international media reports dealing with the recent events in Ukraine. An increasing number of lay assessments of the Ukrainian protest movement, to one degree or another, misrepresents the role, salience and impact of Ukraine’s far right within the protest movement. [. . .]

“Both the violent and non-violent resistance in Kyiv includes representatives from all political camps […]. Most protesters only turned violent in response to increasing police ferocity and the radicalization of Yanukovych’s regime. The demonstrators include liberals and conservatives, socialists and libertarians, nationalists and cosmopolitans, Christians, non-Christians and atheists. […] the movement as a whole merely reflects the entire Ukrainian population, young and old. The heavy focus on right-wing radicals in international media reports is, therefore, unwarranted and misleading.

“Paradoxically, the production, biases and dissemination of such reports may themselves be driven by an imperial form of ultra-nationalism – in this case, its Russian permutation. By fundamentally discrediting one of the most impressive mass actions of civil disobedience in the history of Europe, such reports help to provide a pretext for Moscow’s political involvement, or, perhaps, even for a Russian military intervention into Ukraine, like in Georgia in 2008.”

Read the complete statement here.