A POTENTIAL UKRAINIAN OPRICHNINA?
Now let us consider Semenyaka as a woman at one point deeply influenced by Dugin. Dugin talks tough, but Semenyaka has an army - a potential oprichnina - at her disposal. 2016, when Semenyaka became the leading theorist of the Azov movement, coincided with the departure of the previous leading theorist, Oleh Odnorozhenko, who had served for two years, since the beginnings of the movement, as the 'deputy commander for political affairs'. The overall commander was Andrei Biletsky. Odnorozhenko claims that 'during a conversation at that time [2015]. [Biletsky] dismissed [nationalism as] "rightism", and described himself as a national-level politician who should unite the whole community regardless of ideology.' (Reporting Radicalism dossier on the National Corps)
Andreas Umland, in an article on 'The Prehistory and Emergence of the “Azov” Battalion in 2014 quotes Odnorozhenko as having said:
'Limitation and control will be implemented on all foreign ethno-racial groups and followed by deportation to their historical homelands. Based on the fact that we social nationalists regard the so-called “human races” as separate biological species, and the intelligent human being (Homo Sapiens), in the biological sense, only the White European Race (not including the notion of so-called “southern Europeanides,” i.e. the Mediterranean, Caucasian, Pamir-Fergana or other races who are biologically different from our biological kind) and consider our main duty to prevent any kind of inter-racial contacts (between species) that leads to inter-racial mixing (between species) and ultimately to the death of the White Race.' (33)
(33) Andreas Umland (2019): 'Irregular Militias and Radical Nationalism in Post-Euromaydan Ukraine: The Prehistory and Emergence of the “Azov” Battalion in 2014', Terrorisand Political Violence, 31:1, pp.115-6, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2018.1555974. Umland is an academic who has taught in Oxford, Stanford and Kyiv. Oddly enough he is a member of the Valdai Discussion Club, which has the support of Vladimir Putin - https://valdaiclub.com/about/experts/496/
He gives (p.112) a number of similar quotes from Biletsky himself, including one that is quoted very often: 'The historic mission of our Nation in this crucial century is to lead the White Peoples of the world in the last crusade of their existence. A crusade against the sub-humanity led by the semites.' Biletsky in an interview given in Summer 2015 claims that these quotations are fabrications of Russian propaganda. Without going into Biletsky's colourful career prior to 2014 it seems clear that a change, or re-orientation, of his thinking occurred some time around 2015. I'm not suggesting that he ceased to be a 'white nationalist' (though I do have my suspicions that the sentence about subhumans led by semites might have been fabricated). We have already seen Semenyaka criticise the Russian Federation on the grounds that it accepts in principle the desirability of immigrants, and all her international activities are directed towards the anti-immigrant right. And in particular her enthusiasm for Black Metal music - she has been closely involved with the annual “Asgardsrei” Black Metal festival in Kyiv and organised a number of Black Metal reunions under the quite jüngerian title 'Pact of Steel' - brings her into contact with "National Socialist Black Metal', in particular the Russian Group M8L8TH. 'Molot' in Russian (as in 'Molotov') means 'hammer'. 88 is Neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler. The leader of the group - Alexey Levkin - has another group called Adolfkvlt and runs a 'mini-university for supporters of right-wing ideology' under the name 'Wotanjugend.' (34)
(34) Michael Colborne: 'The “Hardcore” Russian Neo-Nazi Group That Calls Ukraine Home', 4 Sept, 2019, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/09/04/the-hardcore-russian-neo-nazi-group-that-calls-ukraine-home/ Nonjon (First Lady) refers in a footnote to an article Semenyaka has written - 'On my connections to Alexei Levkin' - but unfortunately I haven't been able to access it.
M8L8T in action
Nonetheless, Odnorozhenko's dissatisfaction indicates that some sort of change of priorities was taking place. We might also note that the National Corps did not adopt the well-known Azov insignia. - the 'wolfsangel' (reversed so as to spell the letters NI - National Idea) superimposed on a 'black sun' - the 'sunwheel' which could be described as a sort of speeded up swastika. Instead they use a variant of the standard Ukrainian symbol of the trident.
According to Nonjon ("First Lady" of Ukrainian Nationalism) it was in October 2015 that Semenyaka unveiled her 'Reconquista' project. Nonjon doesn't give a source for this but rather suggests that that was when a corresponding blog was established on Tumblir. This is a pan-European project - the 'reconquest' of Europe, not militarily but morally, winning it from economic and cultural liberalism, from the domination of the United Sates, and from what she sees as the fake pan-Europeanism of the EU. The starting point, however, was the 'Intermarium' - the territory between the Baltic and the Black Sea, chiefly Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States.