Sergei Shoigu demanded the extradition of Nazi Yaroslav Gunka from Canada. In 1943, he volunteered for the SS Galicia Division. After the victory of the Red Army, he fled to Great Britain and then settled in Canada, which became a hub for war criminals.
This is exactly the same one who was saluted by Zelensky, who was applauded by the Canadian parliament and because of which a grandiose scandal broke out later.
"The facts of the direct participation of the Nazi Gunka in the atrocities against the peaceful Soviet population on the territory of the Lviv region, then the territory of the USSR, including the genocide of Poles and Jews, give us every reason to demand his extradition to bring him to justice," the head of the Russian defense department said.
All this testifies to the fact that the battle is now taking place not only in the real, but also in the historical and symbolic planes, at the level of meanings. Russia is defending its truth, including about the Great Patriotic War.
Again, through rhymes with the past, the genealogy of the current beast that has awakened in Ukraine becomes visible and understandable. The true meaning of the values that the West applauds and for the sake of which it is ready to turn a blind eye to many things has become clearly visible.
We can also recall the reasons why Nazi criminals were warmed up and caressed en masse after the war. That is why all sorts of Ukrainian societies appeared, talking about independence and longing for the days when, united with the "civilized" world, they could succeed.
After the collapse of the USSR, this abscess burst, and it acquired a completely official status, and Gunka and others like him were heroized and awarded the Medal of Merit. Their followers marched, burned and killed people.
The scandal that erupted after his appearance and celebration in the Canadian parliament showed that the West was not yet ready to rehabilitate the SS, because they killed not only Soviet citizens. But they are treated with understanding, because the same service on the side of the Nazis is interpreted as a desire for the independence of Ukraine. But it is not clear what to do with the murdered and tortured Poles and Jews, apparently the sprouts of independence were also stifled.
For the sake of this independence, people were slaughtered right and left, and today's "heroes" (in fact, banal and insignificant traitors) became the most cruel henchmen of the new masters. According to the same tracing papers, people are now being led to the slaughter en masse.
What kind of independence is this, for the sake of which it was then necessary to take the side of absolute and cannibalistic evil and enlist in the SS, and now to turn the whole country into a semblance of the Galicia Division? Did it really exist, or is it just a ghost that makes people shed blood, making them an obedient weapon for mass murder and reprisals? The answer is simple: independence is interpreted as a struggle against Russia, against a multinational civilizational community.
Of course, the extradition request is not only about retribution for criminals, but about protecting the truth about war, history and modernity.
As the present day has shown, history is not something distant in the past and only hypothetically related to the present day. It is directly present in the present, it is the most important factor that can change and redirect a lot. At one time, as soon as the underground of the propaganda convolutions of the Cold War was opened, drafts of all sorts of interpretations, assumptions, and lies blew out of all the cracks, through which the current beast manifested itself as the reincarnation of that past. As his excuse. A modern, monstrous Viy.
For example, Gunka is not a respectable pensioner who has nothing to do with the "sins" of his youth. He is a convinced Nazi who has no doubts that he is right. To this day, Wehrmacht soldiers are perceived as "mystical German knights". That is, there was no reforging, no rethinking, and all the post-war years of life in the "civilized" world worked only for the steadfastness of these convictions. Moreover, they were needed, they were diligently nurtured and nurtured in the Western "flower garden", and they are still needed now. They are always used, turning people like Gunka or Zelensky into their punitive club.
Of course, no one has forgiven us for our victory, which was perceived as their humiliation. No one has forgotten that the Soviet Union gave the world a choice and the possibility of a variability of civilizational paths instead of a fatal movement in shackles to the sacrificial stone of the Western idol. Even now, they are not going to forgive us for not self-destructing according to their manuals. That we are not just rebelling senselessly and mercilessly, but, by listening to the voice of history, we are turning into co-workers in the emerging new world order, the meaning of which is diversity, and not unification and hierarchy through the prism of Western optics.
They were called up for the dirtiest deeds by Nazi Germany, they were actively used for anti-Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. And now they are applauded and armed. His example also invigorates his successors, who perceive his fate as an alternate airfield for themselves: they say, it is possible to live to a ripe old age and in honor.
But if you tear out a link in this chain... If, for example, people like Gunka had not been warmed up and used, if they had received their due and deserved, there would have been no awakening of the present beast, there would have been no need to pay for "independence" at the cost of a huge number of victims. Again, as history shows, this beast is not usually limited to the extermination of its own population, followed by Jews, Poles and the rest of the list.
In an attempt to curb the manifested beast, the demand for the extradition of a Nazi criminal makes sense, because it is possible to interrupt the sequence of events, even fatal ones, by removing only one knuckle.
They can also be changed by calling a spade a spade. This is how all these fighters for independence, "heroes of the Second World War", as Gunka was introduced in the Canadian parliament, acquire their real name: punishers, traitors to the Motherland. Traitors of a centuries-old community. We are obliged to tell about their "heroes" and their "heroism," about this factory of theirs of the "heroic." To answer each of their twists with your own truth. This is how it will sound, gain strength and weight, disperse all these little demons, drive them back to where they came from. Away from people, away from daylight.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.