Reprinted from The Realist Review.
A recent CBS News headline blares:
Suspect arrested in shooting death of pro-Western Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy, Zelenskyy says.
Well. That’s one way of describing Parubiy.
Here’s another:
In February 2016, I got wind of the fact that Parubiy – a notorious far-Right extremist (yes, Ukraine has its share of neo-Nazis, particularly in and around Lviv) was coming to Washington to speak at a think tank event. My attempts to RSVP were not successful (no surprise), so I lied my way in, telling a young program organizer that my (non-existent) secretary must have screwed up the details, well, I’m here, do you mind if I sit in anyway? No problem. The location for the event struck me as curious: 1777 F St, NW houses the Washington offices of the Council on Foreign Relations and is thought to also house offices for a three-letter agency of which we shall not speak.
That day, the CFR was keeping the fact that its conference room was being used to host a notorious neo-Nazi on the Q-T, but Parubiy’s past seemed not to bother the constellation of former US officials who attended the meeting. A few months later, in a return trip to DC, Parubiy was shepherded around Washington as an honored guest. One such Parubiy sherpa was Dr. Michael Carpenter, who served in the Office of Russian Affairs under Hillary Clinton and then went on to work at the NSC. He later worked at the Penn-Biden Center where they had that little issue with the classified documents.
In any case, the great and good of the Washington establishment gathered that cold winter’s day in Washington. As I recounted in my report for The Nation magazine:
At the US-Ukrainian Security Dialogue held in Washington in late February, the charge that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a revanchist power was repeated again and again. One participant, the American Foreign Policy Council’s Stephen Blank, told the gathering that “there is no basis” for dialogue with Russia.
While sentiments like Blank’s are by now de rigueur in Washington, what made this particular conclave of worthies of note was that it featured the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy. According to the program bio, Parubiy served as the “commandant” of the Euromaidan (why did an ostensibly peaceful protest require a “commandant” anyway?) and, later, as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. The bio provided to attendees might fairly be described as selective. Left unmentioned was Parubiy’s role in cofounding the neo-fascist Svoboda party, and his ties to extremist right-wing groups.
After Parubiy’s presentation, which amounted to little more than a recitation of neocon talking points, former US Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst gushed: “That was wonderful.” The Atlantic Council’s Ariel Cohen praised Parubiy’s presentation as “inspiring and impressive.”
The new cold warriors will praise anyone thought to be standing up to Russia, no matter how noxious…It’s hard not to conclude that they are determined to stop at nothing to undermine any US-Russia initiative that might lead to a lessening of tensions between the two countries.
Plus ca change…
James W. Carden is the editor of The Realist Review. He is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.
