IT HAS LONG BEEN AN UNCHALLENGEDASSUMPTION that the Ukrainian radical right-wingSvoboda party, which formed the first far-rightparliamentary faction in Ukraine after the 2012elections, is a member of the Alliance of EuropeanNational Movements (AENM). After all, Svobodasleaders always said that their party was a member of theAENM, while the British National Party (BNP), which isone of the oldest members of the Alliance, explicitlymentioned Svoboda, in 2010, as an AENM member,along with the French National Front, Hungarian Jobbik,Italian Tricolour Flame, the BNP itself, the SpanishRepublican Social Movement, Belgian National Front,Portuguese National Renovator Party and SwedishNational Democrats.

Never trust the fascists.Developments earlier this year revealed a different

picture. The first doubts about Svobodas membershipwere raised after Polish politician Mateusz Piskorskiclaimed, early in 2013, that Svoboda had been excludedfrom the AENM because of its overtly racist stances asthe Russian sarcastic saying goes, they were expelledfrom the Gestapo for brutality. The AENM is, in fact,much more extreme than yet another pan-Europeanright-wing group, the European Alliance for Freedom,which unites representatives from the Austrian Freedomparty, French National Front, Belgian Flemish Interest,Sweden Democrats and some others.

Yet Piskorski is himself a former member of the now-defunct Polish far-right Self-Defence party, and we knowthat these people cannot really be trusted. Moreover,Piskorski has been associated with the Russian fascistInternational Eurasian Movement led by AleksandrDugin who is notorious for his imperialist and, inparticular, anti-Ukrainian positions. Taunting theantagonistic Ukrainian ultranationalists, by claiming thatthey had been rejected by their European brothers-in-arms, could have been routine fascist harassment.

Svoboda promptly denied these allegations, with areference to Bruno Gollnisch, the AENMs president,

who allegedly confirmed Svobodas membership in theAlliance. But the reference to Gollnisch, a FrenchNational Front MEP, was questionable. Already inOctober 2012, he posted a message on his blog sayingthat the AENM consisted of only four parties: Jobbik,BNP, Tricolour Flame and the miniscule BulgarianNational Democratic Party. Not only did this confirm thatSvobodas leaders were making false boasts about theirpartys membership in the AENM, but Gollnischsmessage revealed the incompetence of the BNP whichissued the incorrect statement.

The information provided by Gollnisch and furtherinquiries into the AENM produced the following list oftop ranking officers of the Alliance: Gollnisch (President),Nick Griffin (Vice President), Bla Kovcs (Treasurer) andValerio Cignetti (Secretary General). Associate membersinclude Jean-Marie Le Pen (French National Front),Andrew Brons (independent, formerly BNP), MaurizioLupi (Italian People of Freedom), Christian Verougstraete(Flemish Interest), Bartosz Jzef Kownacki (Polish Lawand Justice), and Dailis Alfonsas Barakauskas (LithuanianOrder and Justice).

Svobodas status in the AENM was clarified this spring:the party has never been a fully-fledged member of theAlliance but enjoyed only observer status, as the AENMis an EU-based group and Ukraine is not a EU memberstate.

Svobodas image was damaged even further on 22March, when Kovcs wrote an official letter to OlehTyahnybok, leader of Svoboda. In it he expressed in thestrongest terms his indignation over the fact thatSvobodas members organised rallies against ethnicHungarians in Ukrainian Carpathian Ruthenia, part ofwhich once belonged to Hungary. Kovcs, a HungarianJobbik MEP, ended by informing Tyahnybok thatSvobodas observer status in the AENM had beenterminated. This information has been confirmed to mein an email from Jobbiks Attila Bcsi: Svoboda is nolonger a member of the AENM because of its anti-Hungarian statements.

The old and new Europeanfriends of Ukraines far-rightSvoboda party

August-September 2013 | Searchlight | 5

By Anton Shekhovtsov

Investigation

August-September 2013:August-September 2013 18/8/13 22:15 Page 5

A spicy bit of scandal is that Jobbik at the same timeentered into cooperation with Dugins InternationalEurasian Movement. On 16 May, Jobbiks leader GborVona and Kovcs visited Moscow, and Vona delivered alecture titled Russia and Europe at Dugins Centre forConservative Studies based at the Moscow StateUniversity where Dugin is now a professor. In his speech,Vona called the European Union a treacherousorganisation that took away our markets, ourfactories, and filled the shelves of our shops withwestern garbage. Russia, at the same time, managed topreserve its traditions and, unlike the EU or the US,did not worship money and mass culture. Accordingto Vona, the role of Russia today is to offset theAmericanisation of Europe.

Jobbiks leader even went so far as to declare that itwould be better for Hungary to join the Russia-dominated Eurasian Union should occasion arise. GivenJobbiks current leanings toward Russia as a potentialcentre of power in Europe, it may well be the case thatthe argument between Jobbik and Svoboda was asmuch about the Ukrainian ultranationalists anti-Hungarian statements and their pronounced anti-Russian sentiments.

For Svoboda, European connections have been asignificant issue since the end of the 1990s when it wasstill called Social-National Party of Ukraine. Then it was a member of the Euronat, a far-right organisationformed by the French National Front. The SNPU and,later, Svoboda seemed to maintain good relations Le Pen and the French National Front in general, and presumably it was the French ultranationalists who advocated granting Svoboda observer status in the AENM. However, since the Alliance was largelyJobbiks creation (it was founded in Budapest at

Jobbiks 6th party congress in 2009), the Frenchultranationalists had limited opportunities to overruleKovcss decision.

In its home country, Svoboda used its Europeanconnections for public relations, image and propagandapurposes. It was the French National Front thatconsulted Svobodas leaders on how to make the partymore respectable in the beginning of the 2000s, andnaturally relations with major European ultranationalistsalso boosted the partys standing among other far-rightorganisations in Ukraine. Therefore, after it had beendeprived of observer status in the AENM, Svobodastarted looking for new connections in Europe. Its newfriends turned out to be even more extreme than theAENM.

On 23-24 March 2013, Taras Osaulenko, head ofSvobodas international relations, took part in theVision Europa conference organised by the Party ofthe Swedes in Stockholm. The Party of the Swedes iswidely described as a neo-Nazi group; it was establishedin 2008 by members of the now dissolved NationalSocialist Front and is led by Stefan Jacobsson. The mainspeaker at the conference appeared to be Udo Pastrs,deputy leader of the most significant neo-Nazi party toemerge since 1945, the National Democratic Party ofGermany (NPD), two members of which are now on trialin Germany for their support of the terrorist NationalSocialist Underground.

Another speaker at the conference was Roberto Fiore,leader of the Italian fascist New Force. European guestspresent included: Jonathan Le Clercq of the Land andPeople association (France); Daniel Carlsen, leader of theDanish Party (Denmark); and Gonzalo Martn Garcia,head of international relations of the NationalDemocracy Party (Spain).

The links between Svoboda and Fiore were establishedas early as 2009 when Tyahnybok visited Strasbourg to

6 | Searchlight | August-September 2013

Left to right: Taras Osaulenko, Gonzalo Martn Garcia, Roberto Fiore, Jonathan Le

Clercq, Udo Pastrs, Daniel Carlsen

Aleksandr Dugin (International Eurasian Movement) and Gbor Vona (Jobbik) atMoscow State University

Investigation

August-September 2013:August-September 2013 18/8/13 22:15 Page 6

meet MEPs from such radical right-wing parties as theFreedom Party of Austria, Bulgarian National UnionAttack, Flemish Interest and others. These links werefurther cemented in May and June this year. On 23-24May, Osaulenko and Andriy Illenko visited Rome atFiores invitation, where the leadership of New Force andrepresentatives of Svoboda discussed collaborationbetween the two parties. Svoboda representatives alsovisited New Forces youth camp, and Illenko gave a talkabout Svobodas history and ideology, as well as sharing

his thoughts on how the two parties could join forces intheir fight against the liberal forces of multiculturalismand destruction of the national traditions of Europeancivilisation.

On 19-21 June, representatives of New Force,including Fiore, returned the visit. In Ukraine, the Italianand Ukrainian ultranationalists discussed the creation ofa new group of European nationalist movements inorder to develop a new dynamic and strategic co-operation aimed at creating a new European politicalclass. Supposedly, the new group may be formed onthe basis of the organisations that took part in the VisionEuropa conference in Stockholm.

Between the two Ukrainian-Italian visits, on 29 May2013, Mykhaylo Holovko, a member of the UkrainianParliament and Svoboda, visited the Landtag of Saxonyto speak to the NPD. In particular, Holovko conveyedgreetings from Tyahnybok and Serhiy Nadal, Svobodasmayor of the Ukrainian city of Ternopil. In a ritualmanner, Svoboda and the NPD agreed to strengthenbilateral relations between the parties and parliamentarygroups.

It remains to be seen whether Svobodas visits to itsEuropean counterparts are part of the creation processof a new pan-European ultranationalist movement.None of the parties represented at the Vision Europaconference is a member of the AENM, while Fiores NewForce is unlikely to cooperate with the Alliance memberTricolour Flame, from which it split in 1997. Fioresprevious ecumenical fascist project, the EuropeanNational Front, which united representatives from NewForce, the NPD, the Romanian New Right, GoldenDawn in Greece and the Spanish Falange, seems to havefailed. Therefore, Svobodas new European friends mayindeed need a new umbrella organisation that wouldunite political parties and movements that are giventhe profiles of Fiore, Pastrs, Jacobsson and others indeed more extreme than the AENM.

August-September 2013 | Searchlight | 7

A flyer advertising the meeting of Svoboda and the New Force

Taras Osaulenko speaking at the Vision Europa conference

Holger Apfel, leader of the NPD, and Mykhaylo Holovko

August-September 2013:August-September 2013 18/8/13 22:15 Page 7