Gareth Jones Society responds to Britain’s Ukrainian neofascists

Gareth’s evidence clearly backs up the view of the leading independent scholars on the matter, Robert Davies, Stephen Wheatcroft, Lynne Viola, Michel Ellman and Mark Tauger, that the ‘Holodomor’ was not an ethno-genocide. Even the pioneer of research into the famine, Robert Conquest said, “It wasn’t a Russian exercise, the attack on the Ukrainian people… there are guilty people, but they aren’t the Russian nation or anybody else.”

However, Far Right Ukrainian nationalists are trying to change Gareth’s story to fit their ‘Holodomor’ narrative and to whitewash their own dark history. The only thing they will ever own about Gareth Jones though is the myth they have created. Attempts to ‘privatise’ him as just being a ‘hero of Ukraine’ are as bizarre and mistaken as they are unwelcome, especially when we look at the Holocaust links of some of those other ‘heroes of Ukraine’, not least Stepan Bandera. More than anything Gareth was a Welsh hero, and an inspiring, brave and honest journalist who belongs to the world.

The use of his good name, as a man of integrity, to honour historical distortionists and anti-Semites by the Far Right in Ukraine is disgraceful. The notorious Levko Lukyanenko is just one example. A white nationalist and admirer of David Duke, Lukyanenko was someone who once claimed that the ‘Holodomor’ was carried out by a “satanical” government controlled by Jews.

Yet, last year at the National Library in Kiev he was awarded the so-called Gareth Jones Medal of Truth and Honour. It goes without question that my late mother and brother, not to mention Gareth himself, would be horrified by this association. We all are.

Gareth was a pacifist and an internationalist who worked to avoid war and warned about the disaster that the “follies of nationalism” would bring to the nations of those on whose behalf it is practised. Given all of the above, it is clearly the height of hypocrisy for Mr Kurlak to be throwing around accusations of racism.

Ukrainian refugees, and indeed all refugees fleeing war and persecution, should always be welcome in this country. What I have said in no way relates to them. My points are factual and fair. This conflation of the historical facts with people fleeing war today is a transparent attempt to whip up moral panic and distract from the truth. I don’t believe the Far Right racist politics of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the honouring of those involved in the Holocaust deserve to be associated with Great Britain.

I also think the AUGB has questions to answer regarding its own past, and present, associations. Disgraceful smears will not deter me. The Gareth Jones Society is determined to defend Gareth Jones’ good name and set the historical record straight. It will not be intimidated or submit to threats by those trying to hide the truth.