John McCain Went To Ukraine And Stood On Stage With A Man Accused Of Being An Anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi
If you want a good picture of how complicated the situation in Ukraine is, look no further than Senator John McCain's recent trip to Kyiv.
You see, while the former presidential hopeful's weekend trip was full of pro-Europe sound bites — "Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better,” he told a crowd in Kyiv's central Maiden square on Saturday — and warnings of stern reactions from the U.S. should Ukraine use violence against the protesters, there's another detail to it that might cause McCain fans at home some concern.
As the U.K.'s Channel 4 news points out, McCain was repeatedly photographed with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right wing nationalist party Svoboda.
Nowadays Svoboda (which means freedom in Ukrainian) is one of those reconstructed modern European far right parties — it is aligned with the British National Party and the French National Front, for example — and it has gained some kind of electoral legitimacy, winning 10 percent of the seats in Ukraine's parliament in 2010.
However, the party's past is seriously murky. When it was founded in 1995, the party called itself the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), and it had a swastika-like logo. While it eventually split from its more right wing members, the party remained focused on celebrating Ukrainian ethnic identity in opposition to Russia and Communism.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahnybok-in-ukraine-2013-12
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