Canada-Ukraine Foundation’s COO trained Ukrainian Nazis, gives equipment to medical battalion of Nazi's army
Canada-Ukraine Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer, Oksana Kuzyshin, sitting on the right side of the table. Image credit: Canada-Ukraine Foundation
Written by: Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba & Aidan Jonah
The Canada Files has found that Oksana Kuzyshin, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer, trained the Nazi Azov Battalion in 2016.
The training lasted for two months, with the retired Canadian Armed Forces’ Major, Kuzyshin, serving in “a training capacity”, “all in the interests of interoperability with NATO forces”.
Kuzyshin’s training efforts were promoted by the Ukrainian and Canadian Professionals and Business Association of Calgary (UCPBA), which even held a dinner on March 31, 2016, to discuss the ‘experience’.
The Azov Battalion, a Nazi militia now fully integrated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and formed initially by Andriy Biletsky, has been committing heinous war crimes up until now. It is the embodiment of the original Nazi collaborationist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the now-dominant Bandera faction, as is much of the political environment of western Ukraine. The open and shameless glorification of this enablement of fascist war crimes in Eastern Ukraine by a government-funded organisation showcases the tacit, and even sometimes open, approval of the criminal ideologies of National Socialism and fascism in Canada.
Yet Kuzyshyn’s engagement with Nazis didn’t end in 2016. This August, the Kuzyshin-led CUF (which was founded by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress) approved a grant application worth $302 924 CAD “in the form of tactical medicine and pharmaceuticals” coming to Hospitallers Paramedics. Hospitallers Paramedics is the medical section of Ukrainian Nazi Dmytro Yarosh’s ‘Ukrainian Volunteer Army’ (UDA), The medical volunteer battalion expressed their “sincere gratitude to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) for the systematic support of the Hospitallers”.
An October 22, 2023, Facebook post by Hospitallers Paramedics then announced they’d received 1200 tourniquets “given to hospitalers as part of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation grant program”.
Hospitallers Paramedics’ close ties with fascism go further than being within Yarosh’s army. They were founded in 2014 by Yana Zinkeyvch as a medical volunteer battalion. Before Yarosh left Right Sector in December 2015 to found the UDA, Hospitallers Paramedics was “part of the DUC (Volunteer Ukrainian Corps) – a fighting unit created by the Right Sector organization.” The medical volunteer battalion immediately left the DUC to join Yarosh’s army, and has remained there to this day.
Neither the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, their COO Oksana Kuzyshyn or the Hospitallers Paramedics responded to The Canada Files’ requests for comment.
The Azov Battalion, The Nazi Battalion that Oksana Kuzyshin Trained
After the Russian victory at Mariupol in August 2022, Azov Battalion members were made to stand trial by the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR) for war crimes. The US controlled UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch all protested the trials. The UN called prosecuting war criminals from the Azov Battalion a ‘possible war crime’. Amnesty International called them ‘sham trials’, as did Human Rights Watch. And that would be natural. Better that the ignorant public doesn’t look into the details of the crimes being committed by the Azov Battalion, both leading up to Russia’s special military operation, and afterwards.
The crimes, incidentally, were largely committed between 2014 and 2016. Near the end of this period, Oksana Kuzyshin was training them. The war crimes included:
The bombing of residential areas with cluster munitions, that the Biden administration ‘officially’ approved in July 2023, but was really supplying to the fascist government of Ukraine since the Maidan coup.
The use of white phosphorus, just like Israel.
Running many concentration camps along the contact line between Western Ukraine and the DPR and LPR to torture civilians, of which the most infamous was called “the Library”. The crimes that happened at “the Library” included:
Waterboarding
Breaking fingers using hardwood or the buttstock of a rifle
Sticking needles under the fingernails
Using a saw to chop off limbs
Disembowelment of men and women, and throwing the bodies into a pit, along with live captives
Electrocution
Allowing Ukrainian parliamentarians and physicians to participate in the torture of said civilians, such as Andrey Teteruk and Vsevolod Stebliuk, respectively:
Vsevolod Stebliuk, in particular, tried to inject drugs into a prisoner and coerce him into raping the Minister of Social Affairs of the DPR at the time, Alla Belousova, after her husband was killed right in front of her.
If these criminal acts sound like the work of Nazis, it’s because the Azov Battalion is in fact a Nazi division. The founder of the Azov Battalion, and co-founder of the Social National (National Socialist, aka Nazi) Assembly, Andriy Biletsky is known for his infamous white supremacist and anti-Slav quote in a written commentary:
Earlier, in 2009, he described the “enemy” in a speech for his political party Patriot of Ukraine, which in his own words, has the ideology of “Ukrainian racial social-nationalism” (Ukrainian Racism, page 6):
"How then can we describe our enemy? The general regime in power are oligarchs. Is there anything they have in common? Yes, one thing in common – they are Jews, or their true bosses – Jews – are behind them. Out of one hundred published richest people in Ukraine 92 are Jews, and some others of Tatar origin" (Ukrainian Racism, page 7)
Andriy Biletsky is now the commander of the Azov Tactical Group of the 3rd Special Assault Brigade, after the previous Azov Divisions in Mariupol were destroyed. The 3rd Special Assault Brigade is stationed near Andriivka. Those shedding tears for these divisions’ ”destruction” at the hands of Russian ”aggression” should remember the crimes committed by Andriy Biletsky’s units in Mariupol, and ask themselves if their conscience can remain clear while condemning Russia at this point.
The CUF’s origins, and its actions to this day
The Canadian Ukraine Foundation, which Kuzyshin heads up, was founded in 1994 by a vote from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC). The UCC itself was founded with money and resources illegally seized (looted) by the Canadian government from the left leaning Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), and fascists imported from Ukraine.
Some of the highlights of the CUF’s pro-Nazi initiatives include:
The Nazi propaganda bus tour targeting young Canadian students. It ran via private funding from 2015 to 2017, had both Canadian and Ontario government plus private funding from 2017 to 2020, and had Ontario government support as of 2022. CUF sought thoroughly corrupt arsonist Banderite Stephan Kubiv’s attendance at a “mobile museum” showcase promoting said tour in 2018.
Medical equipment for Hospitallers Paramedics, the medical brigade of Ukrainian Nazi Dymtro Yarosh’s ‘Ukrainian Volunteer Army’ medical brigade
The parent organisation of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, honoured the 14th Waffen SS Division in 2007, 2010, and 2021. The UCC’s pattern of honouring Nazis and supporting them materially, even if technically with a degree of separation, should be recognised at this point.
The Class Nature of the Ukrainian Nazi supporters and Canada as a whole
The lineage of closet Nazis in Canada such as Chrystia Freeland, Oksana Kuzyshin, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, etc., can be explained by what originated in what was Imperial Russia with The Black Hundreds. The families that supported Imperial Russia at the time did not have an issue being part of Russia particularly, but with Bolshevism, as this brand of ‘Ukrainian Independence’ only began after Bolshevism triumphed in 1918. The reason is that they were landowners called kulaks. Some also had noble lineage, like Andriy Biletsky’s mother. This also explains Chrystia Freeland’s corruption with the World Economic Forum.
The Black Hundreds’ explanation of the ‘Jewish conspiracy’, based on their own forged document called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (0:46-2:16) to explain the loss of their lands to brutally oppressed peasants before the October Revolution, culminated in a group inspired by Mussolini and later Hitler called the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, founded in 1929. Ukrainian ‘Nationalism’ was essentially the cover for a reactionary and right-wing mission to reclaim supremacy over lands that were ill gotten and illegally obtained in Soviet Russia.
They also manufactured ‘The Holodomor’ myth to justify the anti-Soviet sentiment and as a pretext to commit the numerous crimes of ethnic cleansing that they committed in Volhynia and throughout Ukraine during the Nazi occupation. They were happy to be subordinate to foreign powers and serve Germany’s colonial aims in Russia. It was never about ‘Ukrainian Independence’ but about reclaiming lost glory as rich exploiters of the masses, which also explains the brutal violence towards them. CUF’s Canadian government funded ‘Holodomor Bus’ may claim otherwise, but this anti-communist propaganda is par for the course for the Banderites leading the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
The OUN-B, to Israeli fascism, to North American settler-colonial genocide
“One of the specialties of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was to take groups of women to accompany men to these villages and they would sing, a choir, sing, to drown out the screams of the Polish people who were being slaughtered in one house so the other Polish families wouldn’t run away.”
- Scott Ritter, Danny Haiphong Podcast (16:07-16:25)
A graphic depiction of the crimes against humanity committed by the “radical” OUN-B, as in the Banderists currently being honoured and commemorated in ‘democratic’ Ukraine and by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, can be seen in the Polish film known as WOLYN. The worst crimes against the Poles were graphically depicted towards the end (1:55:00-2:17:00). Naturally, as Scott Ritter described in the Danny Haiphong podcast shedding light on Politico’s whitewashing of the Nazi incident in Canadian Parliament, women also participated, and facilitated the butchering of Jews, and Slavs such as Poles and Russians.
The crime was about making use of the German occupation, inspired by the colonial Nazi ideology, to ‘make Ukraine pure’, as is the crime of ethnic cleansing and genocide being committed by Israel right now. There’s also a similarity to Banderist crimes with the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 1982, where the Israeli army actually did behead babies (Palestine: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Page 332). In the USA, Indigenous families were skinned alive by settlers, while some Indigenous children in Canada in the concentration camps called ‘residential schools’, were even burned alive. Incidentally, Hitler drew inspiration from the western expansion in the US and from the residential school system in Mein Kampf when describing the plan to ‘colonise Russian Indians’.
There has never been a more cruel, discriminatory, and vicious policy ever construed in human history than colonialism, which is a hallmark of exploitative economic systems like capitalism. Canada’s foreign policy essentially amounts, in one manifestation or another, to defending colonialism, and by extension, defending its own moral legitimacy as a colonial, racist, and capitalist state.
This is why Canada has found common cause with defending Nazi ideology in Ukraine, fostering Nazi ideology at home, and defending Ukraine’s policy of ethnic cleansing against Russians in the Donbass. It is also why Canada is defending the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians at this very moment. The proud tools of Nazi Germany, the Banderites, have found a home where they can be themselves, in Canada.
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Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.
He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass in February 2021. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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