OPERATION UKRAINE
FUNERAL FOR DARYA DUGINA MOSCOW, AUGUST 23, 2022
[VO] The people of Donbass were heartbroken
to learn of the awful act of terror
by the Ukrainian Nazi regime, that took Darya's life
[Aleksandr Dugin] She lived in the name of victory,
and died in the name of victory, our Russian victory
[VO] Every morning, Natalya Melentyeva mother of journalist Darya Dugina who was killed in a terrorist
attack, begins with the same ritual. She rearranges Dasha's photographs on her bookshelf.
[VO] It’s the only way she can relate to her daughter now
MINUTES AFTER DARYA DUGINA'S CAR EXPLODED MOSCOW REGION, BOLSHIE VYAZYOMY, AUGUST 20, 2022
[VO] On August 20, 2022, a bomb planted in Dasha's car,
exploded around 10 pm near the village of Bolshie Vyazyomy.
[Natalya Melentyeva] A diabolical and precise strike. Diabolical
[VO] The assassins knew the journalist, who reported daily on the conflict in
Ukraine for Russian and European publications, would be behind the wheel of her car.
[Darya Dugina] That's a light amphibious vehicle
[VO] Now, instead of Dasha's articles, her father, the philosopher Aleksandr Dugin,
posts a picture of her on social media every day, in which she’s still a happy and lively
girl. To half of the world, she has become a symbol of the independence of Russian
journalism and an example of the murderous nature of those who ordered her assassination.
[Aleksandr] I've received 100s of poems
ALEKSANDR DUGIN PHILOSOPHER, DOCTOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCES
from Turkish poets, from Latin American poets,
and for some, she's a symbol
[Aleksandr] A symbol of freedom,
a symbol of courage and heroism, and for others,
it has become a...
a reason to gloat
[Aleksandr] And they try to kill her over and over again
with their attitude and their actions
OPERATION UKRAINE TERROR ON DEMAND
TERRORIST ATTACK ON CRIMEAN BRIDGE RUSSIA, OCTOBER 8, 2022
[Witness] Look, the Crimean Bridge is on fire
[Witness] It exploded two minutes ago
[VO] Such brutal and targeted attacks occur with frightening regularity.
[VO] On October 8, 2022, a truck bomb detonated on the Crimean bridge, an act of
terrorism that killed three people and collapsed 250 metres of the bridge.
[VO] Attacks like this occur almost daily these days.
[VO] According to official figures, the security services have foiled dozens of subversive acts.
FSB FOOTAGE MOSCOW, NOVEMBER 24, 2022
[VO] Ukrainian sabotage groups were usually behind the attacks. Their m.o. and methods are instantly recognisable.
[Official] You planned a terrorist attack? [Man] Yes
[Official] Where? [Man] The Prosecutor's and Army office
[Official] What was meant to happen after that?
[Man] I was meant to get out of there
[DENIS AKHREMENKO CHAIRMAN, 'HISTORIC CONSCIOUSNESS' PUBLIC ORGANISATION] The methods...
used now by the Ukrainian Security Service
are indeed similar to those used by Ukrainian nationalists
in the 1930s and 40s
[VO] The current Security Service of Ukraine uses not only the sadistic methods but also the
ideology of the nationalists. The roots of all this can be traced back to the United States.
[VO] US politician Michael Springmann can corroborate this. For years
he worked in President Ronald Reagan's administration, and became
acquainted with the classified 'Operation Aerodynamic', launched by
US secret services in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the late 1940s.
DECLASSIFIED CIA DOCUMENTS
[Michael Springmann] It was a major effort to try and split Ukraine off from the Soviet Union.
[Michael] And if they couldn’t do that, they would create such dissention and distrust between
the Ukraine and the Motherland that they would have free opportunity
to do whatever they wanted. And the idea was to roll back
the Soviet Union and push it back into its confines, and eliminate its influence anywhere else in the world.
[VO] Operation Aerodynamic began shortly after World War II and lasted almost three decades. Few
people know, but among its key figures were the most notorious Ukrainian nationalist leaders.
[Michael] Well, at the end of the Second World War, the US Army Counterintelligence Corps
began to have contacts with Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed,
and their organisation, the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, working against
what was then the Soviet Union.
[VO] The US has recently declassified 250,000 pages of documents detailing Operation Aerodynamic.
[VO] Among them was a curious financial report on items needed for
former death squad members who were to infiltrate the Soviet Union.
[VO] It included trivial things such as a burlap sack costing $3.12.
[VO] And a few Soviet shaving kits, which cost $15.
HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION
[VO] Paratroopers dressed in Soviet civilian clothes delivered explosives, machine guns, and ammunition to
the underground members. All deliveries were made by air, so the operation was dubbed 'Aerodynamic.'
[VO] From classified documents, Michael Springmann learned of the brutal retaliatory operations carried
out by associates of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader, and German intelligence agent.
[Michael] They used everything from major army units, such as
the 14th Grenadier Waffen-SS Division, which was made up mostly of
Galicians, which were people in Western Ukraine and Southern Poland.
[Michael] They also recruited about 250,000 Ukrainians through Stepan Bandera and
his second-in-command, his chief of intelligence, Mykola Lebed,
to engage in something like 250,000 people spread out through
the Nightingale Battalion and other Ukrainian nationalist, such as police force and things like this,
that would be engaged in controlling Ukraine once the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union had begun.
[VO] Declassified documents on murderous operations carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army, UPA for short, contain evidence of savage atrocities committed by Bandera’s followers.
[Stanislav Simonov] The brutality of the Banderist nationalists
was absolutely unbridled
[Stanislav] It was...
astounding
[Stanislav] They'd easily kill or dismember a baby
or willingly decapitate a man
or grab an infant by the legs and bang its head into a corner
[VO] When the Soviet army liberated Ukraine, the armed
nationalists went underground and continued to train fighters.
[VO] Former state security officer Georgy Sannikov saw the secret bases where UPA fighters were trained.
[VO] He was among those who helped eliminate the nationalist underground in western Ukraine.
[Georgy Sannikov] They set up military schools
in the Carpathians, where it was easier to hide,
harder for troops to search
It was an assembly line: they were trained, taught, prepared and so on
[VO] Western intelligence had been betting on this underground network in their fight against
the Soviet Union. At that time, they began engaging with the most influential UPA leaders.
[VO] British intelligence recruited Stepan Bandera, while the Americans backed his closest associate, Nikolay Lebed.
[Michael] He participated with Bandera in the murder of the Polish interior minister.
[Michael] Lebed was seen by the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps
as someone who is extremely dangerous, extremely unstable…
[VO] The Americans knew that in 1939 Lebed was the commandant of the Gestapo intelligence
school in the Polish city of Zakopane. There, he tortured prisoners with cruel and
sophisticated methods, for which he earned the nickname 'Sadist'. In the summer of 1940,
Lebed became the head of the security service of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists.
[Denis] It was the OUN's security service
that invented about 135 ways
to retrieve intelligence...
and eliminate enemies
[Denis] Among them, for example, one of the cruellest was
to drive a nail
with a large head,
and therefore a big shaft, into the skull
[Denis] All of these methods were developed by that man,
Nikolay Lebed
[VO] In this photo, Lebed is standing next to a CIA officer. Active training of saboteurs is underway.
[VO] American intelligence, together with Hitler's executioners,
trained hundreds of saboteurs to be deployed in the Soviet Union.
[VO] The operation’s idea was to plunge Ukraine, especially its Western part, into a bloody reign of terror.
[Michael] And this, of course, was done — simply to show terror. And the idea of terrorism
is to terrorise. And also, to demonstrate that the Soviet Union could not
maintain order in its own country, and that Ukrainians were pretty much on
their own because they had no recourse and no protection from the Soviet Union.
[VO] The CIA-controlled UPA death squads killed anyone they considered an enemy of Ukraine:
from Soviet school teachers to shopworkers. They were ruthless, and used the most sophisticated methods.
OPERATION UKRAINE TERROR ON DEMAND
[VO] Georgy Sannikov, a veteran of KGB foreign intelligence, believes the events of the mid-20th
century, in their violence and brutality, are very similar to what is happening in Ukraine today.
[VO] All this is the work of the descendants of Ukrainian nationalists who fled to the US and Canada after
World War II. It was they, who, at the instigation of the CIA, became the heads of various organisations.
[Georgy Sannikov] It's the group, you see
[Georgy] The same relatives, nephews and others,
who came here to Maidan in Kiev and so on
[Georgy] The same people!
EUROMAIDAN KIEV, 2014
[Aleksandr Dugin] We are dealing with a zombified Ukrainian people,
who now, after eight years of extraordinary brainwashing
have turned into some sort of mad, raging neo-Nazi mass
[Operator] Welcome to f***ing Ukraine! [Man] Welcome to Ukraine
[Operator] Say, 'Glory to Ukraine!' [Man] Glory to Russia and Ukraine!
[VO] French journalist, Laurent Briard recognises how similar events in Ukraine are with Operation Aerodynamic.
[VO] Like 80 years ago, nationalists terrorise pro-Russian Ukrainian residents.
[Soldier] Going where? [Woman] Wait…
[Soldier] Come out [Woman] We're coming
[Man] There's a woman inside [Woman] My mum! My mum's inside
[Soldier] OK, OK
[Soldier] Hold it!
SBU CLEANSING OF RUSSIAN SUPPORTERS KHARKOV, MAY 2022
[VO] Laurent is covering what's happening in Donbass for Western audiences.
[Laurent Briard] It was very hard
because, how can I put it? They killed so many
[Laurent] I sensed evil like never before
[Laurent Briard] It was, for me, a very hard moment
and I'll remember it all my life
[VO] The journalist is shocked by the stories of people who went through the SBU’s secret prisons. The
protagonist of one of his recent reports was another victim of the Ukrainian military. A woman named Larisa.
[Larisa Gurina] First, they took my son [Man] Why?
[Larisa] Well, later I was told that they'd taken my son as leverage against me
[Larisa] He was very brutally beaten
[Larisa] They beat him for a few hours straight
[Larisa] He passed out
[Larisa] It was hard to tell he was a human
[Larisa] He was beaten so hard that he was...
[Larisa] His face was completely black, both his arms broken
[Larisa] It later turned out that he had several broken ribs
[Larisa] They beat him...
endlessly
[Larisa] Poured water on him and beat him again. He'd pass out,
they beat him again, revive him, give him a break, then beat him again
[VO] Then, they arrested Larisa. Simply because she had brought humanitarian aid to Donbass.
[Larisa] They came to my flat
[Larisa] Broke in
[Larisa] 14 riflemen
[Larisa] They kicked the door down
[Larisa] I heard them and yelled, 'Wait, I'll open it!'
[Larisa] But they kicked it down anyway
[Larisa] Overall, there were about 20 of them, maybe more
[Larisa] I was told that I was charged with treason
[VO] Today, the reason for arrest and murder can simply be that
you subscribe to Russian news, or chat with family members on
the other side of the front line. The awful thing is that after
interrogation and torture, many prisoners disappear forever.
[Laurent] Here! They dumped the bodies here
[Laurent] Not far from here is Granitnoe
NIZHNYAYA KRYNKA SEPTEMBER 27, 2014
[Laurent] Granitnoe... it's a mine
[Laurent] He explained that they'd dumped many bodies in there
[Operator] What do we have here?
[Operator] Two women, hands tied behind their backs, shot in the head
[VO] There's a similar burial site near the former Mariupol Airport. Before the
Russian military liberated the city, the airport housed a secret SBU prison.
EXHUMATION OF DEAD SOLDIERS DPR, MAY 22, 2015
[Vasily Prozorov] We're in Berdyanskoe
[Vasily] A Ukrainian Army MT-LB
[Vasily] You can see a registration number, typical for Ukrainian military gear
[VO] Vasily Prozorov, a former Ukrainian intelligence officer sided with Russia in 2014
because he couldn’t accept the new Ukrainian government’s ideology and methods.
[VO] After the liberation of Mariupol by Russian military in May 2022, Prozorov returned to the secret prison.
[Vasily] Now, it's a warehouse just for food
FORMER SBU SECRET PRISON MARIUPOL, MARCH 2022
[Vasily] It was metal-lined
[Vasily] These metal doors...
[Vasily] They...
kept people in these rooms
[VO] Here, Prozorov witnessed Ukrainian security forces torturing
Donbass people who they suspected of having ties with Russia.
[Vasily Prozorov] A man was tortured to death before my eyes
[Vasily] His heart gave out, he died
[Vasily] They put a bag over his head to suffocate him,
and his heart gave out, he was about 60 years old
[VO] Prozorov says that inciting hatred towards Russians was one of Operation 'Aerodynamic’s' stages. It indoctrinated
members of the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. After the Soviet Union's collapse, rampant Russophobia began.
[Vasily] You must understand,
Ukrainian nationalism is a lever, a knife in the hands,
in the hands of the West, really
[Vasily] I'm sure it's done by Western intelligence agencies who just used it
to turn Ukraine into what we have today
[Vasily] Smooth work with...
nationalist circles that began, I believe, right after WW2
[VO] Today, the connection between the CIA and the Ukrainian nationalists' punitive measures is apparent to many.
STEPAN BANDERA INSTRUCTS AN OUN FIGHTER
[VO] Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende investigates US intelligence links to terrorists around the
world. She believes Aerodynamic was the first CIA operation in which US intelligence agencies
collaborated with Nazi criminals, testing ways of plunging Ukraine into the chaos of terrorism.
[VO] Today, these methods are used globally, in the Middle East, Africa and South America.
[Sonja van den Ende] What they called ISIS, or the other groups, they were all proxies from the US. And so, they
used the same methods, they were trained in several camps by the British, by the Americans.
[Sonja] And also, unfortunately, in these methods. There was a camp in Jordan, so just across the border.
[Sonja] And a lot of them were trained by, actually, the British, but also CIA.
EUROMAIDAN KIEV, 2014
[VO] According to Sonja, Western leaders ignore the brutish nationalism that the Kiev regime no longer conceals.
[Sonja] In the British newspapers or even the Dutch newspapers, they start saying: ‘Oh no, they
abandoned their ideology,’ but, of course, it’s not true because over the years we can see that…
[Sonja] And they became even more radical lately, when the special operation started. We can see that
from the Azov steel factory. So they are really neo-Nazis, there’s no other words for it.
[Aleksandr Dugin] The architects of global domination have said,
'We'll make an exception and give Ukraine what we forbid ourselves
We will open, lift the condemnation of Nazi ideology,
give them an opportunity to quickly transform their society
into an ultra-nationalist, Nazi platform to fight Russia'
[Man] Glory to Ukraine! [Men] Glory to the Heroes!
[VO] This struggle began nearly 80 years ago, when many things aided
the victory of nationalist ideas - even Ukraine’s landscape itself.
[Ivan Skorikov] After the war, Ukrainian nationalists
found real success,
in subversive and terrorist activities,
HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION
and successfully... disguised themselves and hid from the Soviet security services
[Ivan] One must consider the terrain in Western Ukraine, Volhyn is
mainly a forest zone, and the Carpathians are mountainous
[Ivan] It's a place that's conducive to sabotage and insurgent activities
[VO] Soviet intelligence officers made these unique blueprints,
showing the layouts of bandit hideouts.
[VO] The bunkers were built like dugouts. The entrance was often
a stump or boxes of earth in which young trees were planted.
[VO] The path to an underground shelter could even run through an active well.
NKVD TROOPS, UKRAINIAN SSR, CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS
[VO] In the 1950s, Red Army units and Soviet counter-intelligence specialists were
sent to fight the terrorists. They combed the forests of Western Ukraine constantly.
[VO] With two-metre probes and service dogs, they searched for hatches and ventilation holes.
When they discovered a bunker entrance, the soldiers pushed in a hose that emitted sleeping gas.
[Georgy] They did it all deliberately to capture those people
[Georgy] They needed them alive
[VO] The Soviet secret services also used other tricks to take the bandits alive.
[Georgy Sannikov] We intercepted communication channels
and sent out 'surprises'
[Georgy] This was also practised
[Georgy] Surprises. If one exploded when opened in a bunker,
there'd be nothing left
[Georgy] But if it blew up before, while sitting on a stump,
only their knees stuck out. What could we do?
[VO] Many captured UPA agents cooperated with Soviet intelligence.
[VO] They contacted other underground members, who were then arrested and recruited.
[Georgy] It was a multistep operation
[Georgy] There was, or you couldn't capture them,
a notorious underground
into which we introduced our agents,
who, of course, were ex-militants and operatives
[VO] Recruited UPA militants participated in 'radio games' ran by Soviet security officers.
[Yury Knutov] The 'radio games' allowed saboteurs to go to Soviet Ukraine,
as well as radio operators and potential...
spies who could even penetrate government bodies
[Yury] They were either recruited,
destroyed, or just arrested to be used later for other purposes
[VO] In this way, they tried convincing Western intelligence that
a powerful nationalist underground was operating in Soviet Ukraine.
[Yury] Similar radio stations were used after WW2,
by Banderists
and Soviet secret services,
to play a 'radio game' with the CIA and British secret services
[Yury] In general, those means of communication made it possible
to mislead the enemy,
lure in valuable criminals
from the Banderists and gather intelligence
[VO] Freshly recruited agents revealed paratroop landing sites used for arms and ammunition drops.
[VO] Thanks to such methods, the armed underground in Soviet Ukraine began to disappear.
[Yury] That 'radio game', by Soviet counter-intelligence actually let them
destroy organised and armed resistance on Ukrainian soil
[VO] In October 1959, the Soviet secret services dealt the nationalists a
decisive blow - they liquidated Stepan Bandera in Munich. But Ukrainian
nationalism would not be defeated. American intelligence continued to
wage war against the Soviet Union, this time - on the information front.
[Michael Springmann] As propaganda operations… and this, of course, was all conceived and run by Frank Wisner.
[Michael] He compared it to this great Wurlitzer organ that was
used in concert halls and theaters, to set the mood and work on the
attitude of people towards the music, and using it to play on their
emotions. And this is what he did with the propaganda machine.
[VO] Following the Soviet Union's collapse, new nationalist organisations began
to appear in Ukraine, aided by the CIA and led by UPA leaders' descendants.
[VO] 1993: the first Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. By an
amazing coincidence, Theodor Oberländer, a former Abwehr officer,
and political head of the SS 'Nachtigall' battalion, took part. And so Bandera's ideology –
with some assistance from the CIA - found new supporters, uniting them with nationalist emigres.
[VO] This photo was taken in 1983, during the so-called 'Enslaved Peoples' Week.'
[VO] The man in the photo is Yaroslav Stetsko, a former Bandera deputy in the Ukrainian nationalist organisation.
[VO] Next to him is Jeane Kirkpatrick, US President Reagan's foreign policy
adviser. She supported any actions damaging to the Soviet Union.
[VO] The other lady in the photo is Kateryna or Catherine Claire Chumachenko,
future wife of the third President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko.
[Michael] Well, the US intelligence services simply did what they always
do: they use their connections, they use their money, and they use their
ability to open doors – or close doors! – to get these people to the right
positions, then… to where they can again carry out American foreign policy.
[VO] After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Americans began actively
indoctrinating the Ukrainian government with Bandera's ideology.
[VO] In 2004, open veneration of Ukrainian nationalist movement leaders began.
[People] Yushchenko!
[VO] In 2010, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Stepan Bandera the title: hero of the country.
[Viktor Yushchenko] I confer the title...
Hero of Ukraine on one who is worthy:
Bandera, Stepan... Andreevich
[Viktor Yushchenko] Glory to Ukraine!
[VO] Officially, the West ignored these events, but in fact
supported them in every possible way, and continues to do so.
US SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN AT EUROMAIDAN KIEV, DECEMBER 15, 2013
[Denis] Now, in our time,
the activities of all radical groups are also sponsored by the West:
both by the USA and Great Britain
[Denis] Those ideas turned out to be very important for the West
[Denis] They turned out to be important, because they contribute...
to the destruction of Russian statehood
[VO] Judging by declassified documents, these goals were set in train 80 years
ago, goals pursued by Western special forces and US intelligence in Ukraine today.
[Michael] Well, Ukraine is entirely dependent upon the United States, its military and economic
support, so that without American support Ukraine would dry up and blow away.
[Michael] They wouldn’t last 2 weeks if the United States stopped sending them major weapon
systems, if the Europeans, like the Germans, and the French, and the British…stopped sending them...
[VO] The West is supplying vast amounts of weapons to Kiev, ignoring the Ukrainian
nationalists’ terrible crimes, and so, Operation Aerodynamic continues.