Freeland caught holding pro-Nazi banner at Ukraine protest
Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland was photographed on Sunday with a scarf promoting a far-right Ukrainian Nationalist movement linked to Neo-Nazis and extremism.
Remarkably, Freeland (or more likely, a member of her staff) posted the photo to her own official social media accounts, apparently ignorant of the radical far-right movement the scarf represents.
Freeland posted the photo, which also shows Toronto Mayor John Tory, to her Twitter and Instagram accounts on Monday morning. These posts were deleted, without any comment or acknowledgement of why they were taken down.
She reposted the same message on Twitter by mid-morning on Monday, but with a new photo where the scarf had been removed.
The red and black flag has historically represented the Bandera movement in Ukraine. Stepan Bandera was a Nationalist Ukrainian politician during the Second World War who is accused of war crimes and leading atrocities against Jewish and Polish people.
He is an incredibly polarizing political figure in Ukraine, as some view him a national hero who fought for Ukrainian independence.
Bandera helped create the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UPA), an organization that legacy media reports have described as being “far-right” and “extremist” and who have been characterized as “Neo-Nazis.”
In April 2021, Euro News described Bandera and the UPA as Nazi-collaborators and war criminals.
“Bandera, Shukhevych, and the UPA are controversial for several reasons. Critics point to the mass killings of up to 100,000 Jews and Poles and the fact that UPA cooperated with Nazi Germany at the beginning of WW2 until it became clear that Nazi Germany wouldn’t recognize Ukrainian independence.”
Chrystia Freeland describes herself as a Ukrainian-Canadian and has recently begun speaking and sharing posts in Ukrainian. She presents herself as a politically savvy international player who is incredibly well-versed in Ukrainian politics and culture.
It begs the question of why she would be willing to be in a photo, and then personally post it, with a flag representing a militant insurgency group and the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi-linked far-right.
Read more:
https://tnc.news/2022/02/28/freeland-caught-holding-pro-nazi-banner-at-ukraine-protest/.
