TO MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN

 

IVAN NIKITCHUK

 TO MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN

I am Ukrainian, born in Western Ukraine, in the village of Triskino in the Rovno area. I grew up near the Hero City of Odessa. Because I was born in Western Ukraine where my ancestors lived, I have first-hand knowledge of what Bandera stood for. Our family experienced first-hand the Bandera thugs’ visceral hatred of Soviet power, and of everyone who supported that power. My uncle, a war veteran and chairman of the village Soviet, Nikitchuk Roman Ivanovich, and his wife were shot dead treacherously through the window. The thugs came to our home too, threatening my father because he had buried his murdered brother. In the house next door occupied by a Russian-language teacher, the Bandera thugs killed the whole family, not sparing a baby whom they hacked to death with an axe.

And today when I talk to my Ukrainian friends and acquaintances who have been duped by Bandera propaganda I often hear hysterical whining about Russian soldiers having come to Ukraine to kill them, and Russia wanting to seize Ukraine, put it on its knees and force it to capitulate.

Now I would like to say that Russia is not making war on the people of Ukraine and is not planning to colonize Ukraine or humiliate its people. Russia is fighting Nazi Bandera nationalists who pose a danger not only to the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, but to the whole world, being a deadly weapon in the hands of the Trans-Atlantic masters. I appeal to my fellow-Ukrainians, above all to those who dread the word “capitulation.” Calm yourselves, for, though I hate to have to say it, you have already capitulated long ago. You capitulated in 2014 to the Nazis by supporting the witches’ Sabbath on Maidan Square. You kept silent when people were burned alive at the Trade Union House in Odessa. You were silent when they killed Oles Buzina. You were silent when the Nazis pulled down the monuments to Zhukov, Suvorov and other commanders and war heroes, and earlier the monuments to Lenin who had created the state of Ukraine. You were silent when the Glory Monument in Lvov was pulled down.

You were silent when Nazis came to Ukraine’s schools with the sole purpose of teaching you and your children to hate Russians. You sent your children to Azov Bandera nationalists’ camps where you taught them to kill Russians. Moreover, for eight years you were sending your children, brothers, and husbands – yes, even women took part in it – to the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone to earn money, knowing full well that there, in Donbass, they are killing for money Russian people like you, children and old folks. You were silent when in your presence citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk were insulted, called second-raters and sub-humans.

You were silent when Russians were excluded from the list of indigenous peoples of Ukraine, when the Russian language, Soviet symbols and the Communist Party of Ukraine were banned.

You were silent when your master, Avakov, officially published plans for concentration camps, disfranchising dissenters and those who think in Russian. You were silent when the collaboration index for Crimean citizens was published.

You knew about the bombardment of Donetsk and Lugansk. You knew that people there were forced to hide in basements, that people were being killed solely because they refused to accept Bandera-speak. Of course you knew but you did nothing to stop the carnage. You were happily drinking coffee or tea, or vzvar, or maybe even moonshine in the cities of Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, Chernigov, Lvov and so on, and you could not care less.

You had learned to live with Nazism. You calmly watched on television your president decorating an out-and-out fascist as a Hero of Ukraine. You thought this was normal. You lost your human dignity staging torch marches, with people chanting “Hang Moscovites on a branch”;”Bandera will come to establish order” and singing the Polish jingle “Ukraine isn’t dead yet.”

Look at the map of Ukraine. Eighty years ago Red Army soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian, Tatar and Uzbek, Armenian and Kazakh, representatives of all the USSR nationalities heroically liberated Ukraine and Ukrainian people from the German brown plague. Ukrainian soil is soaked in their blood. Here Kovpak’s partisans fought bravely, and Young Guards, young communists, died as martyrs. This has always been in our memory, this has been bequeathed to us by our fathers and grandfathers, this is what we had in mind when we said: “No one has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten.” Everything that all of us were taught from childhood.

To forget these sacred words means to betray yourselves, your ancestors and their behests. This is what you should have prevented from happening. You should have laid down your lives to prevent it.

Alas, this was not to be. Today people who have been shitting in their pants before the Nazis are receiving weapons and talking about defending their country. What country and against whom are you going to defend it? You are cowards. It pains one to admit it, but your work is being done for you by young Russian guys who grew up at the same time as you. But they proved to be more staunch, they remember their heroic ancestors and know where and why they are coming.

You talk a lot about freedom. But do you enjoy freedom if you have been driven into basements by your government which is not rescuing you, is not evacuating you from cities, is not bringing you bread and other stuff and is using you as human shields. Meanwhile Avakov is gleeful, having taken Kharkov’s people as hostages and turning the city into ruins.

Today you say that the Russian people has become your enemy. Is it not high time you thought what you have become yourselves? You say that Russians are no longer your brothers. But can one become a brother of those who have succumbed to Nazism? Who has joined their ranks? Who has been silent all this time? And those who fought are in the grave. Those who fought have been jailed and they are in jail today.

Fellow countrymen! Come to your senses. Russians are not your enemies. Russians and Ukrainians are one people who united in the distant 17th century at Pereyaslavskaya Rada and for centuries jointly upheld their freedom against enemies. Together we overcame Nazism at the cost of incredible sacrifice and heroism. Remember your history, look into the depth of centuries and you shall see that misfortune always befell the Ukrainian people when they lost ties with their brother, the great Russian people. We are brothers by blood and it does not behoove us to shoot each other. Tell your sons to stop shooting at Russian boys, let them lay down their arms and return to their families to build a new democratic Ukraine in unity with Russia.