Captive Nations Summit 2022: Is the Atlantic Council the New WACL?

 Co-author and principal researcher: Moss Robeson

Otherworldly. Surreall. Strange. Fortean even --all these phrases seem apt for the Captive Nations Summit 2022. I had of course attended the 2021 event and there was no shortage of weird for that outing. But the 2022 version was another level entirely. 

This is hardly surprising. The summit and the broader Captive Nations Week for which this event is centered around is sponsored by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The VOC came into being in 1993 via amendments slipped into the FRIENDSHIP Act of 1993. Bill Clinton formally signed it into existence on December 17, 1993. 12/17 happens to be my birthday. I turned eleven the day the VOC became a thing, one of many strange synchronicities I've experienced with this thing. 

The VOC was officially brought into being to create and maintain a national memorial in DC for those who had suffered under communist regimes. Not much seems to have happened with the project until 2007, during the final years of the Bush II administration. It was at this point the memorial was finally completed and the VOC itself began to take on a more public role. While officially an independent, nonpartisan body, the group has traditionally been dominated by the right of the Republican Party. 

The key figure behind the VOC was longtime Ukrainian Republican operative Lev Dobriansky, whom much more will be said of in a moment. Another was longtime Democratic geopolitical powerbroker Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foriegn policy wobs in the American Empire's history. And last but not least was Lee Edwards, a leading far right figure in the Republican Party for decades. 

He was a co-founder of Young American for Freedom during the early 1960s before latching his cart to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) network by decades' end. Simply put, WACL was the visible personification of the Fascist International for much of the second half of the Cold War. It brought together an eleaborate international network of current and former military/intelligence officers; unreconstructed Nazis war criminals and budding neo-fascists; international drug and arms traffickers; and the inevitable terrorists into a united front. By the 1980s, it supported wars on three continents with the aim of destroying the Soviet Union. Much more on WACL and its dark legacy can be found here. Keep WACL in mind, as much more will be said of it. 

Lee Edwards at the 2021 Captive Nations Summit

Outside of Brzezinski, many of the other figures connected to the VOC have traditionally been of the Republican Party's right. At the forefront is the organization's current chairman, Edwin Feulner, a co-founder and longtime president of the Heritage Foundation, which, along with the Council for National Policy. (CNP), has guided the Republican far right for decades now. Other members have included the recently deceased General John K. Singlaub, head of the American WACL branch during the height of its death squad activities during the 1980s. As such, its politics has involved attacking Obama's 2010 visit to Cuba and backing accounts of Uyghur and Falun Gong practitioners in China. Keep this in mind when we get into the VOC of 2022.

Captive Nations Week and the UCCA

But before getting to that, I need to explain Captive Nations Week, which is the actual reason for the existence of the VOC. And in order to understand Captive Nations Week, one must understand the "visionary" behind it, the above-mentioned Lev Dobriansky. Easily the most influential Ukrainian foreign policy guru in the US during the Cold War, Lev also maintained decades spanning support for a charming group known as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Banderite (OUN-B). Totally unknown to the general public at large, and only occasionally mentioned in conspiracy circles prior to the 2010s, the OUN-B has since enjoyed a much deserved resurgence in infamy. They were one of the most influential fascist organizations of the Cold War era and laid the genesis for much of the modern far right in Ukraine. However, that entire Nazi cesspool cannot be laid their feet in the 2022 --Ukraine has produced plenty of homegrown Nazis in recent years who probably view the expat descendants of the OUN-B as more American or Anglo than Ukrainian. 

OUN-B logo

But, we'll get to that in a moment. What you need to understand for now is that the OUN-B was crucial in setting up WACL. There were two primary branches, an Asian section and a European section. For much of its existence, the European section was dominated by an outfit called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). The ABN litterally had its origins in Nazi Germany and was largely comprised of Eastern European Quisling regimes that fled their homeland after WWII. The driving force and dominant group behind the ABN was the OUN-B, however. And their relationship with the Nazis has always been a little more complex than as has been often depicted. 

With all that being said, let's get into Dobriansky for a moment since none of what I witnessed would have happened were it not for him. For this and virtually the Ukrainian research, I am in debt to my friend, Moss Robeson, and his groundbreaking investigative work into the survival of the OUN-B in the post Cold War era. Thanks to Moss' Herculean efforts on the Bandera Lobby Blog and other places, the full story has finally begun to emerge. So, I'll turn the floor over to Moss and let him fill you in on Lev:

"As the longtime president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and National Captive Nations Committee (NCNC), not to mention on-and-off again chairman of the “Ethnic Division” of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the far-right Dobriansky was probably the OUN-B’s most influential supporter in the United States. He colluded with various radical anti-communist political interests in the U.S. and around the world, as a result of which Captive Nations Week observances during the Cold War were often led by exponents of the OUN-B. The likewise extremely right-wing and highly secretive John Birch Society was also a big advocate of the Week. The Society’s founder infamously declared President Eisenhower, among other top U.S. officials, to be a 'conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.' ”

As for Captive Nations Week, Moss goes on to note:

"Lev Dobriansky met the World War 2-era Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera in Munich in 1952, and thereafter became an ardent supporter of the OUN-B and its Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), chaired for life by Bandera’s deputy and indirect successor, Yaroslav Stetsko. The ABN was a coordinating center of far-right, no less anti-Russian than anti-Soviet “national liberation movements,” many if not most of them led by former Nazi collaborators and war criminals, that agitated for the violent breakup of the Soviet Union and considered World War 3 to be 'inevitable'—necessary, even. 

"Dobriansky claimed to disagree with the ABN on the question of WW3, but nevertheless denounced 'the Communist conception of peaceful co-existence,' which fellow travelers declared a 'Trojan horse' for Soviet world domination. The ABN’s Idel-Ural and Cossackia committees indeed originated in Nazi Germany’s conquest of the Soviet Union. Vasili Glaskov, a longtime leader of the 'Cossack Liberation Movement' who appeared at a 1950 ABN conference in Scotland, was a Nazi puppet during World War 2. In those days he proclaimed 'Cossackia' to be 'in the hands of the Great World Reformer,' Adolf Hitler, who 'categorically decided to end the Jewish-Bolshevik plague.' 

"When Dobriansky met Bandera, the Ukrainian fascist leader ultimately rejected by Hitler, the Central Intelligence Agency still hoped to unite the post-WW2 Ukrainian emigration behind the Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (zpUHVR), the leadership-in-exile of a CIA-sponsored breakaway faction of the OUN-B that denounced Bandera after the war and renounced fascism in favor of a pragmatic pluralism. In 1967, the year of the founding of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians and the World Anti-Communist League, Dobriansky accused the zpUHVR, composed of allegedly reformed ex-Nazi collaborators, of being “soft on communism” and 'CIA tools.'

"Almost a decade before feuding with the CIA and zpUHVR, Lev Dobriansky got Yaroslav Stetsko, an unrepentant fascist war criminal and leading ideologist of the OUN-B, his first visa to the United States with the help of friends in Congress. Dobriansky did so in 1958 contrary to the wishes of the CIA and State Department, which for years remained at odds with the OUN-B and a burgeoning “Captive Nations Movement” despite having played a role in fanning its flames. For one thing, a CIA front called the Assembly of Captive European Nations cheered on the adoption of Public Law 86-90 and observed Captive Nations Week." 

However, Captive Nations Week was never signed into law. And be assured, there have been numerous attempts to manage this over the past six decades. But no US president has been willing to make it a formal holiday and some even hesitated to endorse it (most notably Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, both one-term presidents....). As for recent developments with the VOC goes, Moss described it to me thusly in an email:

"Dobriansky, Edwards, and Brzezinski co-founded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 1994; Edwards joined the NCNC by 1993. Allegedly, they were all members.In 1993, Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, apparently watered down the Captive Nations resolution, so Edwards wrote a letter to the Ukrainian Weekly about it on behalf of NCNC. By 2001, UCCA president Michael Sawkiw was the NCNC executive secretary, and that year for CNW, the NCNC held a luncheon featuring Lev Dobriansky at the Heritage Foundation to honor Peter Goble, a nutjob at RFE/RL(4), who in later years advocated bringing back the ABN. From what I recall, in the 2000s, a CNW event at the Heritage Foundation co-sponsored by UCCA and VOCMF was the norm."

Easily the most powerful of the varied remaining OUN-B front groups is an outfit known as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), mentioned above. In fact, until recently, the UCCA was probably the most powerful Ukrainian lobby of them all. While you hear a lot about things like a Jewish lobby or a Saudi lobby, you almost never hear about the Ukrainian one. And that's a pity, because they have a lot of juice, especially in the US. The UCCA was a founding member of the Ukrainian World Congress, which claims to represent over 20 million Ukrainians in the worldwide diaspora. And the overwhelming majority of them are either in the US, UK or other members of the Commonwealth (Australia and Canada have a strong Ukrainian presence, for instance). So, if you're wondering about the preoccupation with Ukraine among various Anglo-American powerbrokers, this is a big factor behind it. While little acknowledged, the Ukrainian lobby has been working their magic in the US even prior to the nation entering the Second World War (seriously). They have numbers and no shortage of expertise in these matters. 

Case in point, the UCCA's official history notes that it was established in the US during 1940 to advocate the interests of the Ukraine in America. Even back then, they received considerable support from US Congressional members. Naturally, any hint of an OUN-B connection has been carefully glossed over. But it has been known since the late 1980s thanks to the efforts of the legendary parapolitical researcher Russ Bellant. In the classic Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ writes:

"... positions of influence under discussion were Reagan Administration Appointments. All of the OUN-B's key administration contacts were through an organization called the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), headquartered in New York City.

"The UCCA is described as heavily influenced but not totally controlled by the OUN-B. Supposedly an umbrella organization of Ukrainian-American groups, there are groups within UCCA that are complete OUN-B fronts.

"The White House had looked favorably on the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, appointing its chairman, Lev Dobriansky, ambassador to the Bahamas in 1983. Dobriansky is a longtime ASC official. His daughter Paula was put on the National Security Council. George Nesterczuk, former director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS), which is the Washington, D.C. affiliate of the UCCA, was appointed deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management. In 1984, he became Deputy Director of the U.S. Information Agency.

"In 1984, Bohdan Futey, head of the Cleveland branch of the UCCA... was appointed head of the U.S. Foreign Claims Commission...."

(p. 69)

The Reagan years marked the first time the OUN-B-led Ukrainian lobby enjoyed a real presence in a US administration. And it came through the more "respectable" looking UCCA. But even then, the UCCA was entrenched in far right organizations. The ASC in the above quote is the American Security Council, for decades the heart, if not the soul, of the military-industrial complex. It brought together an elaborate network of former military and intelligence officers, out and out fascists and criminals, and other such fellow travelers, in a network that was equal parts lobby group and private intelligence. It has been deeply implicated in drug and arm trafficking, terrorism, and other such operations. Much more on the ASC can be found here and here. 

Russ Bellant places the UCCA firmly in this milieu during the 1980s:

"The UCCA is also a member of the ASC's Coalition for Peace Through Strength. Like so many elements of the Coalition and the American Security Council, it is networked into the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The masthead of the UCCA's Ukrainian Quarterly lists several representatives from Taiwan and Korea, both major funders of WACL.

"Wherever the OUN-B has political involvement, the UCCA seems to be its representative. In the U.S. Council for World Freedom, chaired by General John Singlaub, the OUN-B is represented by Secretary-General Walter Chopiwskyj... The only public indication of the OUN-B presence in the UCCA is in the U.S. Council for World Freedom's political arm, the Coalition for World Freedom, of which the UCCA is a member. The Council is the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League..."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, 70)

This is important to emphasize, because the 2022 incarnation of the UCCA has come a long way. While previously a minor affiliate in organizations of dubious nature on the far right of the Republican Party hierarchy, the twenty-first century witnesses the UCCA as a key ally of neo-liberal powerhouse the Atlantic Council and welding considerable influence on the foreign policy of the Biden administration. How did this striking transformation come about? 

Of it, Moss notes:

"... Paula Dobriansky—like Wolfowitz, an original signatory of the Project for a New American Century, Dick Cheney’s infamous, neoconservative think tank—soon to be appointed Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs by George W. Bush. Her father, Lev Dobriansky, longtime president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), was the OUN-B’s most important Ukrainian American ally in the United States during the Cold War. With his go-ahead, on the eve of the 1980 U.S. presidential election, the OUN-B’s 'Liberation Front' staged a 'coup' in the UCCA, which has consistently been a go-to CUSUR sponsor. 

"Askold Lozynskyj, president of the UCCA and the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) in 2000, and a participant in the 1980 'coup,' admitted in 1989, 'The Ukrainian Liberation Front (ULF) is the major underpinning of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America… [but] such has been the case for the last 40 years.' He did so in response to a letter to the editor published in Jersey City’s Ukrainian Weekly that was about the OUN-B but didn’t name the Organization explicitly:

In fact, it seems to me that the political and ideological orientation of only a small group of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, namely the Liberation Front (which, for all intents and purposes, controls the UCCA) lies at the base of many of the divisions that so deeply and vindictively sever the Ukrainian community in the West. It is precisely this naive and outdated ideology which must be squarely confronted and exposed for what it is in order to bring about healthy debate and progress among Ukrainians. The essence of the thinking behind the Liberation Front ideology is monopolistic rule … [and] the possession of totalitarian power. 

"Even the online Encyclopedia of Ukraine acknowledges, 'In 1980 the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was taken over by the OUN-B and thus ceased to represent the Ukrainian community as a whole.' 

"More than thirty years later, some things haven’t changed much. Today, Lozynskyj, a conniving attorney, is perhaps the most powerful OUN-B member in the United States, and is perceived by some as a “puppet master” in the organized Ukrainian American community. From 2010 to 2013, he chaired the World Council of Ukrainian State Organizations, a coordinating body of OUN-B affiliated NGOs also known as the International Council in Support of Ukraine. In the 1990s and early 2000s it was called the Organizations of the Ukrainian State Front, and during the Cold War, the Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front."

On the whole, the OUN-B has been getting a lot of attention of late. Many alternative researchers lay the entire fiasco in the Ukraine at their feet. But the reality is a little more complex. For one, there have been several competing OUNs for decades. Aside from the OUN-B, the other noteworthy one is OUN-M. The break between these two factions in the OUN occurred back in the 1940s and is still playing out. In between then and now, a host of front groups and further inter-factional rivalries have emerged, further muddying the waters. So, will the real OUN-B please stand up?

Moss makes a highly compelling case that the heart of the modern-day OUN-B movement is centered around an obscure body known as the World Council of Ukrainian State Organizations (Rady Ukrayinsʹkykh Derzhavnytsʹkykh Orhanizatsiy Svitu, RUDOS), otherwise known in English as the “International Council in Support of Ukraine” (ICSU). This is seperate body from the more respectable Ukrainian World Congress. The key link point is the above-mentioned UCCA. People like UCCA's Askold Lozynskyj, Pavlo Bandriwsky, and Oles Striltschuk were all highly active in the RUDOS/ICSU. An old website reveals that the UCCA was a member of the RUDOS/ICSU coalition as recently as 2016. Interestingly, that was the year Donald Trump was elected US president. The UCCA has also maintained ties with Ukraine's Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), the Ukrainian successor to the KGB, since at least 2012. 

SSU emblem --starting to see a pattern in some of these logos?

But what about Svoboda and the Azoz Regiment they are so often linked with? The relationship here is far more vague. A driving force behind Svoboda and possibly Azoz is Andriy Parubiy, who eventually rose to become Ukraine's version of Secretary of Defense circa 2014, shortly after the 2013-2014 "Euromaiden" uprising. He was an apt choice as Parubiy effectively led the "volunteer" security forces during Euromaiden, so why not put him in command of the actual army? Well, the Russian Annexation of Crimea did occur during this time...

From there, Parubiy returned to far right activism, heading the Verkhovna Rada, for a time. More recently, Parubiy and many of the more militant Maiden veterans were backing Petro Poroshenko's European Solidarity in opposition to Zelensky. RUDOS also had a presence in the Euromaiden militias, while various affiliates joined Parubiy in support of the European Solidarity movement. And Parubiy has certainly rubbed elbows with the RUDOS network a time or two in his day. But he has never been closely connected to it, and seems to have an agenda of his own. The same could be said about many of the militant groups based out of Ukraine proper. I suspect the real reason for RUDOS' support of European Solidarity was to pressure Zelensky into taking a harder line against Putin. It's often forgotten now, but Zelensky was widely suspected of appeasing Putin during his early administration. 

Parubiy

Further, the OUN-B seems less concerned with terrorism and street fighting as the years go on. I suspect their links to Parubiy are more to influence domestic developments in Ukraine rather than actual support. While RUDOS may have fringe groups working with the likes of Parubiy in the trenches, it's through respectable organizations like the UCCA that their real power resides. It was through this outfit they were able to cultivate ties to US foreign policy gods like Zbigniew Brzezinski and carefully grooming figures like arch neo-con Paula Dobriansky (the above-mentioned daughter of the UCCA's founder) that the OUN-B has reached a point where it can push the United States into a war that may topple the American Empire. 

At this point, the OUN-B arguably has far greater influence in the governments of the US and UK than the Ukraine itself. The relationship between the OUN-B and the British goes even further back than the American one. It was cultivated by General J.F.C. "Boney" Fuller, one of the architects of modern armored warfare and an occultist devoted to Aleister Crowley at one point. Seriously. Much more on that strange relationship can be found in my book A Special Relationship.

Basically, the OUN-B and elements of the Anglo-American Establishment have been in bed together for decades. And for much of the second half of the twentieth century onward, this strange relationship has unfolded in the US and Commonwealth. And that's the real problem, as we shall explore. Peope like Parubiy, the true Ukrainian Nazis, are just props for what are effectively the neo-liberal/Anglo-American descendants of the OUN-B. Again, I urge the reader to consult Moss' stellar research on these networks to fully grok this. 

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