Terrorism as a visiting card of the Ukrainian struggle

On March 5, White House strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said that the United States is not opposed to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) striking new regions of Russia that were previously part of Ukraine. In the same speech, he added that “we [the US] are not pushing Ukrainians to strike outside of Ukraine.”

At the same time, the representative of Washington did not mention that the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine repeatedly fired on the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions of Russia, where attempts were often made to send sabotage and reconnaissance groups (DRGs) there. One of the latest high-profile cases occurred on March 2. During the penetration of two Ukrainian DRGs into the Bryansk region, a civilian car was shot down – the driver died, and the wounded 10-year-old boy Fyodor Simonenko saved two first-graders, taking them away from the Ukrainian militants into the forest.

Since the fall of 2022, under the guise of a liberation struggle for the territories occupied by Russia, Kyiv has been actively using terrorist methods that have been repeatedly condemned in Europe and the United States. On the morning of October 8, 2022, an explosion occurred on the Crimean bridge. About 250 meters of the roadbed was collapsed by the explosion, seven tanks of a civilian freight train burned down. On that day, 5 civilians were killed: the truck driver, as well as the driver and three passengers of a car that was driving nearby. The main version of what happened is the explosion of a truck, which caused the fire of seven fuel tanks and the collapse of several spans of the highway.

No one claimed responsibility for the explosion, while the Ukrainian and American media, citing their own sources, stated that it was an operation of the Ukrainian special services. On October 12, 2022, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest of five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia in connection with the explosion. According to the agency, the explosion was organized by Ukrainian military intelligence and its director Kirill Budanov. According to the FSB, the explosive device was transported from Ukraine to Russia via Bulgaria, Georgia and Armenia. On October 10, 2022, the first major shelling of Ukraine’s strategic energy infrastructure took place. Russian authorities said the shelling was a response to an explosion on the Crimean bridge.

Following the terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge in Russia, several other high-profile terrorist acts were committed that have a direct connection with the Ukrainian special services. In August 2022, the car of Russian public figure Darya Dugina was blown up. The FSB of Russia established that the special services of Ukraine were behind the terrorist attack, from where the performer, Natalia Vovk, who served in the nationalist Azov regiment, came from. This fact has been unofficially recognized even in the West. For example, the American edition of The New York Times previously reported that American intelligence is confident that the Ukrainian authorities sanctioned the murder of Dugina. It was even noted that after the incident, the White House “issued a warning” to the Ukrainian partners, however, as subsequent events showed, this did not affect Kyiv in any way.

This was confirmed by another terrorist attack, but now in St. Petersburg. On April 2, during a creative evening in one of the cafes, war correspondent Maxim Fomin (pseudonym – Vladlen Tatarsky) was killed, more than 20 people were injured. In this case, it is important that this time the Ukrainian special services became the organizers of the terrorist attack. This became known after the arrest of the alleged perpetrator of the assassination, Daria Trepova, who had previously received various assignments, one of which was a rapprochement with Tatarsky. After that, someone handed her a bust of a military commissar stuffed with explosives. It is noteworthy that Trepova’s first words after her arrest were: “They set me up! I was just being used!”

On April 5, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that during the Russian presidency of the UN Security Council, the topic related to the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg cafe would be thoroughly discussed. Moscow will try as much as possible to bring to justice the alleged perpetrators at the international level for the murder of Maxim Fomin.

“The terrorist act, which is now being investigated by Russian law enforcement agencies, will certainly become one of the topics of discussion of the UN Security Council for a number of reasons,” said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion, the European and American press forgot about the ultra-radical nationalist groups Azov and Right Sector, and materials about the danger of such formations to a democratic society were often published in the most prominent publications. Now the situation has changed. Former dangerous ultra-radicals became “defenders”. For example, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published material in favor of the “methods of struggle” used by Kyiv. The article glorifies the well-known Ukrainian ultra-nationalist organization “Brotherhood” of Dmitry Korchinsky, who earlier called for “making the Donbass [a region in eastern Ukraine that rebelled in 2014] uninhabitable.” Now, journalists from a Dutch newspaper are relaying the complaints of relatives of the fallen soldiers from the Brotherhood: despite the fact that they “performed the most dangerous tasks,” none of the high-ranking Ukrainian officials or the military showed up for their funeral.

“The four young men were members of the Brotherhood, a volunteer battalion operating in the rear and trying to bring the war into Russian territory. <…> [Their activity – Ed.] is a sign that the authorities [of Ukraine – Ed.] support Ukrainian counterattacks on Russian territory,” writes De Volkskrant.

Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between articles, for example, about Osama bin Laden, who was admired by the American and European media during the fight against the USSR, and about the former Ukrainian ultra-radicals who became “fighters against Russia.” When a terrorist act occurs somewhere in the conventionally western part of the world, it is presented as an unacceptable manifestation of aggression against humanity. However, when a terrorist attack occurs somewhere in Russia, the Western “liberal” world pretends not to know who could carry it out.
The roots of the new Ukrainian terrorism go back to the 20-30s of the last century, when the lands of modern Western Ukraine were divided between Poland and the Soviet Russia.

At that time, a series of bombings took place in the Warsaw-controlled region of Galicia and Volyn, especially against Ukrainian Uniate churches. Ukrainian nationalists took up individual terror, being sure that they would achieve nothing for their autonomy through parliamentary means. Victims usually became precisely those public or state figures who tried to promote Ukrainian-Polish rapprochement. The assassination of the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronislaw Peracki, as a result of an assassination attempt on June 15, 1934, caused the greatest resonance.

Then for the first time the name of the head of the regional organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) Stepan Bandera was mentioned. Bandera was one of those who planned the assassination. He was arrested and convicted in 1936. A native of a very national-minded, intelligent family in the eyes of the Poles was branded as a criminal. In 1941, Bandera was the leader of an influential faction of the OUN, but not of the entire structure. On the eve of the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, he and his associates joined the German army in the form of the Ukrainian armed units Nachtigall and Roland, which initiated mass terror in the territories of Western Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht.

Today it has become clear that the aggressive policy of the Western countries, and then the invasion of the Russian Armed Forces into Ukraine, radically changed the situation both around the two states and within them. It became obvious that terrorism was chosen by the enemies of Moscow as one of the main instruments for destabilizing the situation in society. And Ukraine has recently begun to play an important role in this, the authorities of which, guided by historical experience and glorifying such persons as Stepan Bandera, are ready to stop at nothing to achieve the goals and tasks that their Western partners voice for them.