The leaflet accusing Jews of supporting Bandera doesn't make any sense, because Bandera is condemned by pro-Russians for taking part in the genocide against Jews, I find it massively unlikely that pro-Russians, even anti-semitic Russian ultranationalist groups would make that specific allegation, rather someone who wanted to clear Bandera's name (eg Ukrainian ultranationalists) are more likely to make such an accusation, this reeks of false flag by Ukrainian Ultranationalists

A woman who identified herself as an employee of the group, the security contracting company Greystone, declined comment. She also declined to provide her name.

Greystone, on its website, identifies itself as a “provider of aviation and protective support services and training” formerly part of Xe Services, the security contracting company once known as Blackwater.

A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Americans were wearing the uniforms of Sokol, a Ukrainian police force, and were “of particular concern.”

Numerous media sources reported in mid-August 2013 that Rupert Murdoch's corporation 21st Century Fox had invested US$70 million in Vice Media,

On reflection, I thought the reaction of the Mob was restrained compared to the riots that happened in the US and the UK a copper just killed an innocent man.

Lviv has become the epicenter of neo-fascist activity in Ukraine, with elected Svoboda officials waging a campaign to rename its airport after Bandera and successfully changing the name of Peace Street to the name of the Nachtigall Battalion, an OUN-B wing that participated directly in the Holocaust. “’Peace’ is a holdover from Soviet stereotypes,” a Svoboda deputy explained.

Revered by Ukrainian nationalists as a legendary freedom fighter, Bandera’s real record was ignominious at best. After participating in a campaign to assassinate Ukrainians who supported accommodation with the Polish during the 1930’s, Bandera’s forces set themselves to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943 and 1944. In the process, they killed over 90,000 Poles and many Jews, whom Bandera’s top deputy and acting “Prime Minister,” Yaroslav Stetsko, were determined to exterminate. Bandera held fast to fascist ideology in the years after the war, advocating a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe while his affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out a doomed armed struggle against the Soviet Union. The bloodbath he inspired ended when KGB agents assassinated him in Munich in 1959.

The Right Connections

Many surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the United States – occasionally with CIA help – where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. “You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence,” one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group’s resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, “Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party.”

In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of “complete OUN-B fronts,” according to Bellant. By the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky, serving as ambassador to the Bahamas, and his daughter, Paula, sitting on the National Security Council. Reagan personally welcomed Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.

“Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. “Your dream is our dream.”

When the Justice Department launched a crusade to capture and prosecute Nazi war criminals in 1985, UCCA snapped into action, lobbying Congress to halt the initiative. “The UCCA has also played a leading role in opposing federal investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals since those queries got underway in the late 1970’s,” Bellant wrote. “Some UCCA members have many reasons to worry – reasons which began in the 1930’s.”

Still an active and influential lobbying force in Washington, the UCCA does not appear to have shed its reverence for Banderist nationalism. In 2009, on the 50th anniversary of Bandera’s death, the group proclaimed him “a symbol of strength and righteousness for his followers” who “continue to inspire Ukrainians today.” A year later, the group honored the 60th anniversary of the death of Roman Shukhevych, the OUN-B commander of the Nachtigall Battalion that slaughtered Jews in Lviv and Belarus, calling him a “hero” who “fought for honor, righteousness…”

Back in Ukraine in 2010, then-President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title of “National Hero of Ukraine,” marking the culmination of his efforts to manufacture an anti-Russian national narrative that sanitized the OUN-B’s fascism. (Yuschenko’s wife, Katherine Chumachenko, was a former Reagan administration official and ex-staffer at the right-wing Heritage Foundation). When the European Parliament condemned Yushchenko’s proclamation as an affront to “European values,” the UCCA-affiliated Ukrainian World Congress reacted with outrage, accusing the EU of “another attempt to rewrite Ukrainian history during WWII.” On its website, the UCCA dismissed historical accounts of Bandera’s collaboration with the Nazis as “Soviet propaganda.”

Following the demise of Yanukovich this month, the UCCA helped organize rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests. When several hundred demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago, some waved Ukrainian flags while others proudly flew the red and black banners of the UPA and OUN-B. “USA supports Ukraine!” they chanted.

"We believe that Russia has considerable influence over the actions of those who have been engaged in destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine," she told reporters at a news briefing in Washington.

"If we don't see action commensurate with the commitments that Russia has made yesterday (Thursday) in Geneva... we and our European partners remain ready to impose additional costs on Russia."

The Pentagon said the US was "considering a range of additional measures we could take to bolster air, maritime and ground readiness in Europe" but that "we have nothing specific to announce at this time".

"You can't treat Russia like a guilty schoolboy who has to... show he has done his homework," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.
"That kind of language is unacceptable."

Exclusive: After starting a propaganda stampede – with a lead story about photos of Russian troops purportedly in Ukraine – the New York Times admits the pictures really don’t prove much, and one photo was labeled as snapped in Russia when it was really taken in Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.

First it was concerns over whether Ukraine would 'steal' gas supplies bound for Europe as it passed through pipelines in the country and now, as bills remain unpaid, a Transneft unit is threatening to halt Ukraine oil products supply due to pipeline theft.

*TRANSNEFT COMMENTS ON OIL PRODUCTS PIPELINE IN UKRAINE
*TRANSNEFT MAY STOP WORK OF PRIKARPATZAPADTRANS PIPELINE SYSTEM
*TRANSNEFT: $62.7M IN OIL STOLEN FROM UKRAINE PIPE OVER 5 YRS
As Bloomberg reports,

57.9k tons of oil products have been lost from theft in Ukraine and "Transneft expresses hope that the Ukrainian authorities can evaluate the risks of the current situation and not allow a negative scenario to develop."
More boomerangs?

It seems Russia won't have to wait too long for the billions that Ukraine owes it for energy supplies past, present, and future pre-billings. Bloomberg reports that:

*IMF STAFF SAID TO BACK $17B UKRAINE LOAN
*IMF STAFF SAID TO SEEK APRIL 30 BOARD MEETING ON UKRAINE LOAN
The always-accurate staff at the IMF project a mere 5% contraction in Ukraine's economy (so that means more like 15%).



As Bloomberg reports,

International Monetary Fund staff endorsed a $17 billion loan to Ukraine to help the government pay its bills amid a projected economic contraction of 5 percent this year, according to government officials who have seen the recommendations.

The staff’s report was delivered to members of the IMF’s 24-seat board late yesterday, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal documents. The staff proposed an April 30 board meeting to consider the loan package, they said.

Conny Lotze, a spokeswoman for the IMF, declined to comment.

After weeks of talks with the government in Kiev, IMF staff concluded that Ukraine needs financing from the fund that’s at the higher end of the $14 billion to $18 billion range initially announced. The IMF loan will clear the way for additional aid from the European Union and other donors.
We await the small-print to see just how much is "allowed" to be spent on paying bills to Russia vs paying off interest on bonds due to Western banks...

The hundreds of supporters who have gathered at the Donetsk occupation each day are a small number of the city's nearly one million residents. But if the 100,000-plus employees of coalmining enterprises were to rise en masse, that would change the political picture drastically, in a similar fashion to the Donbass miners' strikes that helped bring about the break-up of the Soviet Union.

“The mining industry employs about 500,000 people throughout the region, provides about 15 percent of the country's GDP and coal alone is 30 percent of Ukraine's energy consumption,”

Over 2,000 coal miners in Lugansk region have been on strike for the second day running, demanding higher wages and refusing to accept a pay cut to fund the restoration of Kiev, which suffered damage during the coup that overthrew the government.