Some topics are like pulling on a thread; you may initially want to remove the individual thread, but end up untying an entire pullover instead. You gradually realise that you have unraveled more than initially expected. That is the case of Anglo-American provision of sanctuary, and secretive cooperation with, ex-Nazis after the end of World War 2.

At first glance, you may be wondering what an obscure episode of modern history has to do with today’s political configurations. The policies of secret wheeling and dealing with escaping Nazis and ultranationalist foot soldiers finds a direct continuation with current US and British foreign policies with regard to Ukraine and Kyiv’s conflict with Russia.

Let’s begin with the first thread – in the late 1980s and 90s, while I was at university, I followed with interest the case of Klaus Barbie. The latter was a Nazi Gestapo officer, Waffen SS member and war criminal, known as the Butcher of Lyon. Advising Vichy France, the Nazi controlled state in France, Barbie was responsible for the torture, deportation and murder of thousands of Jews.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Barbie fled Europe, and found secret sanctuary in Bolivia. His case was made public in the 1970s and 80s, after French investigators identified him. Barbie had been using the pseudonym of Klaus Altmann.

How did a former Gestapo officer find refuge for decades in Bolivia? This is where pulling at the thread begins to unravel the entire fabric.

Barbie’s career as an intelligence officer did not end in 1945. Recruited by the United States army’s Counterintelligence Corps. Barbie, like many ex-Nazis, were viewed as intelligence assets in the context of the emerging Cold War against the Soviet Union. Barbie had a new assignment; helping to instigate an anticommunist uprising in the Eastern bloc. His record of war crimes was quietly expunged, and he became a useful asset for his new American paymasters.

Barbie went on to provide the Bolivian military and intelligence services with expert advice on the capture, torture and imprisonment of dissidents. While there, he provided support for CIA-organised military coups, participated in narcotics trafficking and arms smuggling, and even provided a then unknown drug runner called Pablo Escobar with a start in the business.

Escaping justice in Europe, the US CIC helped him flee to South America. However, it is not only South American nations where ex-Nazis found sanctuary.

The main nations in the Americas that provided fleeing Nazis with a fresh start were the US and Canada.

As for Barbie, he was finally extradited to France in 1983, and while on trial, died of cancer in 1991.

Canada became a favoured destination of escaping Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and ultranationalists from the 1950s onwards. The fighters of the Galician Waffen SS division, composed mostly of Ukrainians, were given sanctuary in Canada as part of Ottawa’s commitment to the Cold War.

Implanting and cultivating the Ukrainian ultranationalist community has been a longstanding practice of Ottawa’s authorities. This is not my own invention, by no means. The late David Cesarani, expert on Jewish history, Europe and the Holocaust, documented the extensive relations between the British intelligence establishment and Ukrainian ultranationalist Nazi collaborators from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

Obtaining sanctuary in Britain and then Canada, these militants for white supremacy has a long track record of killing Jews, massacring Poles, Russians and anti-Nazi Ukrainians. These killers of Jews were rebranded as patriotic freedom fighters by Ottawa and London, with help from the CIA.

Not only did the veterans of the OUN and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) find refuge in Canada, they were allowed to build up their own communities, publish their own newspapers, organise sporting clubs and social associations, start scouting groups featuring symbols of the Galician Waffen SS as mementos, acquire academic posts at universities, and built statues honouring Nazi collaborators.

They airbrushed from history the long history of the Ukrainian socialist Left in Canada, because they were foot-soldiers of anticommunist ultranationalism.

Stepan Bandera, the main leader of the wartime OUN and Nazi collaborator, was targeted for recruitment by British intelligence after the end of the Second World War. The thuggish leaders and foot-soldiers of Ukrainian ultranationalism found renewed purpose as anticommunist militants in the Cold War. Today, Bandera and his fellow ultranationalist commanders are hailed as heroes in Zelensky’s Ukraine.

Britain wanted Ukrainians with on-the-ground knowledge of Eastern Europe, hoping to instigate an anticommunist uprising in Ukraine. Detaching Ukraine from the USSR would have been an enormous success for Anglo-American foreign policy. Bandera’s agents were dropped behind enemy lines throughout the late 1940s and 50s.

A problem crept up in this budding insurgency – Britain and the US were backing rival Ukrainian ultranationalist groups. Bandera refused to cooperate with those he regarded as rivals, after all, he could not stomach the fact that there was more than one pony in the stable.

Let’s be clear about this; the ashes of the war had barely settled, and Jewish victims were buried, when the imperialist powers made clandestine measures to recruit antisemitic murderers. This sinister handshake across the needs to be exposed for what it is – a mockery of Holocaust memory, and an insult to the victims of Judeocide.

It is one thing to support the right of Ukrainians to self-determination; it is quite another to use ultranationalist Ukrainians as proxies forces in a long term attempt to weaken Russia.

The New York Times, the main newspaper of record in the United States, published an extensive expose of the intricate and essential interconnections between the US/British military forces on the one hand, and the Ukrainian military. The latter would not be able to continue fighting without the crucial logistical, intelligence and armaments support of the United States.

The intimate partnership between the US and its client regime in Kyiv makes a mockery of claims by the former Biden administration that it is not engaged in a proxy war against Russia. Not only is the US (and Britain) directly engaged in fighting Russian forces, it has turned Kyiv into a modern day Saigon South Vietnam client state

Of course US President Donald Trump shouted at Zelensky when the latter was in Washington; the organ-grinder always yells orders at the monkey.

The US and Britain have been using ultranationalist Ukrainians as proxies for decades; the Kyiv authorities are following the same decades-old configuration implemented by its American and British managers.