Olena Semenyaka, the Russian Trojan horse
Alexander Dugin's biggest fan in Ukraine is another tool of Russia's asymmetric warfare
The premise of this article is to examine the Russian far-right influence in undermining Ukrainian security and the role of Russian state actors in promoting Anti-West far-right movements domestically followed by exporting them to its enemies in geo-political chess moves.
Russia has a Nazi problem, a big one, and instead of dealing with it, it did what it always does. Instead of fixing its problems or improving itself, it exported it to its enemies to kill two birds with one stone; think of a rogue imperialist quasi-state burying its radioactive waste into its neighbor’s land.
Oh well, they did that too…….
First of all, some background:
It isn't straightforward, to put it mildly. It is more complex than the internal politics of the American far right that champions both racist, anti-federalist, fundamentalist, American Nationalist, and isolationist views while simultaneously supporting and being backed by Russia and having some communists undertones and rejecting capitalism as a tool of what they refer to as Jewish domination, with circles upon circles that intersect and diverge on fundamental issues that unite and divide them. Each of these groups has different beliefs, goals, and tactics that may clash with others, but generally, what unites them is hatred toward particular views and white supremacy.
It was impossible to label them even among themselves to the point that the leader of that American Neo-Nazi movement, Richard Spencer, decided to call it the Alt-Right.
That is not a new phenomenon; if anything classifying Nazi Germany ran into the same problem that the Modern Neo-Nazis are falling into again.
Russian Nazism:
While many countries, including the United States and Germany, have similar problems, the scale and extent of the Russian one are different; Russia championed what it brands as traditionalist religious values to counter what they considered the decedent west (Maybe we should ask Putin with his three mistresses and in house strip pole in his mansion if he believes in any of this).
Regardless the far right in Russia was tolerated for a long time and even flourished with mega “militant rock” concerts they used for recruiting. Putin did not see it as threatening him since they both championed the same ideas to varying degrees until they started getting political.
Please think of the Taliban and ISIS; the Taliban wouldn’t care what ISIS does as long as they stay in their lane attacking a common enemy while having no political ambitions. However, this is a ridiculous presumption, they sure did have political purposes, and it is most likely that Putin knew all along but had a plan for them.
The Plan to invade Ukraine:
Putin wanted to invade Ukraine for at least 30 years, and he made it no secret; he told us; we didn’t listen or chose not to. He had to manufacture a reason to justify it; even if it doesn’t make sense, the whole point is to vilify Ukrainians. Even if the invasion is illegal, many wouldn’t care. After all, they think they are fighting satanic daemons anyway.
Fundamentally the will and intent to invade Ukraine came first, and then the justification for doing so came later, as we will see.
After giving Nazis breathing Room in Russia for more than two decades, first due to post soviet chaos and later by tolerance and even encouragement of the Putin regime, suddenly, in 2014, Putin decided its time to use the Nazis he farmed after they started to cause all kinds of problems inside Russia.
He had a plan with three strategies:
1-Send Russian Nazis to fight in the Donbas along pro-Russian forces
2-Imprison and prosecute Nazis within Russia
3-Finance and encourage and even create local Nazi movements in Ukraine
As for number one, what Putin achieved by sending Nazis to fight in Ukraine was two things, much like what is happening to convicts in Bakhmut now; if those Nazis die, Putin has not lost anything; if they do run away though no effort to stop them is made and now it’s not his problem. Basically, they were not discouraged and thus encouraged to defect or run away; no effort was made to stop them, similar to the actions against defecting currently present in 2022-2023.
As for the second strategy of prosecuting Nazis briefly inside Russia, just like the Germans hoped that by smuggling Lenin back to Russia, he might take control and end his country's part in the war and cause a revolution that breaks Russia apart and gets it busy with civil war ( he did exactly that but it wasn’t the best idea long term) Putin decided to show the Nazis he always knew existed that they are not welcomed anymore and made sure to cause enough chaos in Ukraine that makes it the easiest choice for them to make given that they share an enormous border, they could move there after they are released, or they are chased away on purpose, Russia became the number one exporter of Nazis to Ukraine, all part of an elaborate plan of a soulless imperialist playing the long game which he thinks a democratic west with constant change in leadership cannot compete in it with him.
Strategy number three, which will be the main focus of this article, is to finance, foster and provide followers for what would appear as a grassroots far-right movement from within Ukraine, of coarse it is naïve to think there were no local collaborators that believed in such ideology, it is in every single country on planet earth, what is not natural however is how those movements were encouraged, promoted and financed by Putin.
The Russian fascist in chief- Alexander Dugin:
Although his influence is blown out of proportion, Putin knew the man for the job from the third strategy: obscure Ethno-Fasc, Alexander Dugin.
He was widely popular in the Russian and Slavic Nazi movements for his call for a Pan Slavic Ethno state under Russia that stretches across the former soviet borders (an Idea Olena Semenyaka loved); he was the perfect man for the job. He called for a “Eurasian” empire defying Western decadence under his Novoroseya concept.
Kill, Kill, Kill -The Dugin Way
Later in 2014, frustrated by Ukrainian resistance to the NovoRoseya idea, he said, “I think to kill, kill and kill. No more talk anymore. It is my opinion as a professor,”. The United States sanctioned Dugin as “complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
“Kill, Kill, Kill professor” had a friend in Ukraine; it was a friend from strategy number three above; most of those reading this article are aware there is a picture that unites Dugin and Olena together, and it is primarily brushed off as “Ya big deal, Biden has a picture with Putin” but upon further investigation, the nature of the relationship turned out to be much more than a photo bomb.
Through their shared ideology, which I will soon get into, Olena Semenyaka and Alexander Dugin met, coauthored, and even promoted each other's work; Dugin published Olena’s work on his website while she coauthored a part of his book.
https://helenasemenyaka-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2017/10/19/пугало-дугинизма-бродит-интернетом/
Let me quote an article by https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Nonjon-Olena-Semenyaka-The-First-Lady-of-Ukrainian-Nationalism.pdf.
“Semenyaka rose to popularity in the Duguinian Traditionalist movement thanks to her article, “Conservative Revolution as Mythological Modernism," 7 published in volume 4 of Aleksandr Dugin’s anthology, In Search of the Dark Logos. She was invited to speak at the international conference Against the Post-Modern World, organized at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) in 2011 by the Tradition Center chaired by Dugin.8 Distancing himself from Ukrainian issues and being critical of the autonomist discourse of the Ukrainian branch of the Eurasian Youth Union based in Sebastopol, Crimea, Dugin hoped to open up new forms of cooperation.”
Before we continue, here is some background on the Ukrainian far right:
The Far right in Ukraine has been serially disappointed with winning little to no seats in any meaningful election, whether parliamentary or presidential, which led to a general resentment of democracy as a way to rise to power which Olena has voiced frustration about on many occasions,that comprised referring to the political situation in Ukraine as a shame and a show and using president Zelenskyy previous role as a comedian to discredit the whole process as a joke according to her.
The chaos Russia caused in the east of Ukraine in 2014 was seen by many primarily Russian and international neo-nazis as a golden opportunity, being rejected by mainstream Ukrainians and, recently, Russia( on purpose, as we mentioned before). They thought that this was a chance to fight their way into acceptance and perhaps use the opportunity for the end game of the state they always dreamed of (spoiler alert, not an independent Ukraine as we will see soon) and try to win the hearts of Ukrainians by fighting a common enemy while having very different goals, it leads to the paradoxical infiltration of volunteer groups within Ukraine who are fighting Russia the majority of which being Ukrainian patriots with a small minority of extremists who are either planted or just taking advantage of the opportunity.
Here is an excellent 69-page paper that details the cooperation between the Russian state and not state entities and the Ukrainian far right and how they promoted and financed and, in some cases, made it up from scratch to undermine Ukrainian security with elements of the FSB, https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ILLSP-Working-Paper-no.-8-September-2021-Tarasiuk-Umland-1.pdf
Like any Movement with a goal, it adapts to the environment. After the Ukrainian Government cracked down on Neo-Nazi bad actors who were either created or financed by Russia or just taking advantage of the chaos that Russia also created, the radical far-right sector chose Olena to be their spokesperson.
Olena is a Philosophy scholar who talks in very complicated philosophical terms that a passerby would not detect the idea behind it with a limited attention span in the modern day and age.
For example, Olena uses the same alias in all her social media platform accounts and refers to herself as GLAUKOPIS; I will quote what she means by that in her own words.
“she's the very opposite of Christ: she was motherless, he was fatherless; she is a patron of military strategy, he is a preacher of love and forgiveness; she is the goddess of wisdom and philosophy; he's the god of blessed ignorance and holy fools; she embodies political (earthly) knowledge and handicrafts, he teaches Kingdom of Heaven and faith; the birds that symbolize them are a hunting owl and a “self-sacrificial” pelican, respectively.”
In the paragraph above, she described herself as the Anti-Christ, and you didn’t even detect it, and that’s the common theme in all her work.
Since you can't go around saying I consider myself an analog and a fan of the Anti-Christ and get far, I will instead say I am Glaukopis. No one will care except those who recognize what she is talking about, either people with knowledge of the matter due to academic specialization or Neo-Nazis familiar with all kinds of symbols, ancient pagan gods, and other occultist terminology.
How about having this picture in her VK profile (banned in Ukraine since 2017, yet she is still active)? Some will tell you this is not a swastika but an ancient Baltic thunder cross symbol. It means the "little sun," an Early Slavic pagan symbol. Of course, for Neo-Nazis, it's just a symbol for them to communicate a Swastika without sharing a Nazi one
About her political ideology, here is an example of how she operates in a convention called Intermarium
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxmNV_uudLd_Su3ZdNV980alVp_GmnKgNK
Here Olena takes about the new age of caesar as opposed to liberal democracy, which will lead to the manifestation of higher values creation and the birth of something greater. “Our task is to start this opportunity now to transform this impulse into the Alternative world order”; she then explains that the modern caesar like Putin or trump is nothing but a shadow of the former caesar’s glory. She then elaborates on how we should create them; she then mentions military and political leaders of the Roman type and gives her leader Andriy Biletsky as an example.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxJm40pjWijmJVIOqH0tSCvHMPXuzAUjmg
here she talks about Ceaserism and its difference from neoliberalism and how Neo Liberasim elevates the right of the individual above the organic whole or the common identity as a people or a nation as opposed to an authoritarian Ceaserism that summons the masses to support the Ceasar ( she thinks the latter is a good thing) she then states that if they are lucky enough they will have a Ceaser of the higher roman type not week ones like the current white supremacists like Orban and trump and Putin, she then makes it clear that their job is to grow those Ceasers
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWDfU6HgoJc0rdk1xEfj1xn9Dt2skxYe3
she then talks about leaders who will face the challenges of the west today and goes on to explain that there will be a war between what she called roman caesars and traitor censors; traitor ceases being the ones who support the revolution of the people of color against the civilization of the west and that there will be a struggle between leaders who protect the values and identity of the west and traitor leaders who will use the support of the people of color to maintain their power and thus represent them
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxAuCxW4URb1aCEX0vyaot836Ev8Dk2oUS
she then goes on again to talk about the third way, which includes pan Europism ( so much for nationalism), which includes not only the imperative of a united Europe of nations as a geopolitical third way included both rejections of both American and Russian influence. She later explains how her movement has so many Russian nationalists and showed disgust about Russia in her mind being multicultural like everywhere else and thus not good.
Since she kept mentioning the third way, a little background; while there are many third-way movements, her name, and her party appeared in one in particular, and I quote Wikipedia (sources are all listed in it )
The III. Path or The Third Path (German: Der III. Weg, Der Dritte Weg) is a far-right and neo-Nazi political party in Germany.
It was founded on 28 September 2013 by former NPD officials and activists from the banned Free Network South. They have ties with Assad's Government in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the National Corps, Misanthropic Division, Right Sector and Svoboda in Ukraine, and the Nordic Resistance Movement in the Nordic countries. Their founder and chairman are Klaus Armstroff. The party primarily operates in Thuringia, Bavaria, and Brandenburg.
A group of people bearing Der Dritte Weg flags marched through a town in Saxony on 1 May 2019, the day before the Jewish remembrance of the Holocaust, carrying a banner saying "Social justice instead of criminal foreigners." The Central Council of Jews said that the state government should ban such marches if it were serious about tackling right-wing extremism. The party stood in the 2019 European elections.
Golvkopis
Among that minority of the Neo-Nazi opportunists that later caused problems was Olena Semenyaka. Her ideology does not have Ukrainian independence as the primary goal but rather a Slavic super state of what she called “the young nation of the third way” that is anything but Ukrainian autonomy, in fact at least before 2014, her super state included or was not opposed to such state to contain Russia.
Olena's group of friends is multi-national; she speaks and is invited to every Neo-Nazi conference in Europe. You would be lucky to hear her say Ukraine twice in a one-hour speech. Still, you are guaranteed to listen to some historical reference to, for example, the German youth movement in WW1, the third way mentioned before, or the Intermarium project (an Eastern European Ethno-state). She has a cause, and it is not an independent Ukraine. If anything, an Independent Ukraine that adopts western values would be her worst nightmare given how she labels herself a “traditionalist,” another code word for the far right uses across the globe. Yet, I am to find a connection between traditionalism and her favorite Militant rock; not much conservatism happens in those concerts.
In one of those far-right conferences, Richard spencer was a featured speaker other than her. Richard spencer called Russia “the sole white power in the world,” and he married a Russian national who again dedicated her life to translating the work of Alexander Dugin; spencer lobbied to try to get the US out of nato.
Due to the invitation of such a conference, Ukrainians again started to voice concern and criticize Olena for all her connections; here is what she had to say to them:
“the upcoming international conference in Warsaw on the eve of the traditional Independence March, in which, in addition to me, the leader of the American AltRight, the secret mouthpiece of Donald Trump's "revolution," Richard Spencer and the Swede Daniel Friberg, the head of the Arktos publishing house, known for his pro-Putin position and friendship with the "secret ideologist of the Kremlin" Alexander Dugin. Or about the fact that Spencer's wife, Nina Kupriyanova (it seems), is still on my Facebook friends list - the fact that I "don't consider her an enemy."
She argues and justifies those actions by claiming she is rallying support from those groups. Coincidentally, the above approval she is seeking from white supremacists is precisely what Putin wants to advertise; what could be better than a Neo-Nazi international endorsement for Putin's narrative. Think of Justifying meeting Abo Bakr al Baghdadi because you want to get their blessing, but again it doesn't have to make sense; she wants to meet them for her other agenda consistent with all her body of work but is making up an illogical justification to do so.
The Unholy Alliance:
One of the most Bizarre alliances Olena has is her relationship with the serial Grifter Alona Shevchenko. A quick look at her social media would give you the impression it's a far-left account with anything but traditionalism in anything she says or does, yet somehow she is Olena’s BFF How?
As we mentioned before, Mrs. Shevchenko is an opportunist with no clear agenda or values except for whatever the spirit of the time is or whatever strategy will generate the most fame, clout, and income. We mentioned before her relationship with Russian opposition groups leading the fundraiser for the funds she now uses to pay herself. She used them as a stepping stone like she always does; once they raised the money, having them was no longer necessary.
Ironically, Olena is also opportunistic; she thinks Alona is an excellent connection to have, perhaps for the media exposure she got in the early days of the full-scale invasion. They both did each other a favor, and that alliance of greed will, however, not last long, and it's a matter of time till one of them throws the other under the bus, and perhaps it would be Alona since she has a history of doing precisely that.