Ukrainian media and representatives of the country’s political elite have been deeply shaken by the assassination of leading neo-Nazi figure Andriy Parubiy in the streets of the city of Lvov in western Ukraine on August 30.

Parubiy and the neo-Nazi formations he led were key fomenters of the violent, paramilitary coup in Kiev in February 2014. They headed the extremist wing of the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, which came to prominence in 2013, seeking a rupture of close economic relations with Russia, to be replaced by a subordinate status within the European Union.

Considering his neo-Nazi ideology, Parubiy held an astonishing number of leading government positions in post-coup Ukraine, and for long durations. He was first elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine legislature) in 2007 and served there until his untimely demise nearly two decades later. He held top roles in the Rada from 2014 to 2019. He became no less than secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine for a brief time in 2014, shortly after the coup. That ended when Western governments and media realized this particular posting might get in the way of selling to their uninformed and gullible populations the story of the coup as being a ‘democratic revolt’.

Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in a street close to his home in Lvov. He was shot eight times. His killer was arrested two days later and then quickly claimed responsibility for the killing at his court arraignment on September 2.

Mikhail Stselnikov (Scelnikov) is a resident of western Ukraine. He was able to tell his story and briefly speak to reporters for all of Ukraine to hear and read at his arraignment on September 2. He explained that his act was one of personal revenge against the Ukrainian government for the death of his son in combat in 2023 in the US/NATO proxy war being waged in Ukraine since the 2014 coup. The ‘low intensity’ war in the Donbass region, begun by the coup regime in 2014, was escalated in 2021, provoking Russia into an all-out invasion of the majority-Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine, including Donbass, in February 2022.

Stselnikov’s son died in 2023 in the grim, nearly one-year-long battle for control of the city of Artyomovsk (called ‘Bakhmut’ in Ukraine, pre-war population of 80,000). The city lies in the Donetsk Republic in the historically Russian region of Donbass and was all but destroyed in the fighting. The coup regime used its betrayal of the February 2015 ‘Minsk 2’ peace agreement to fortify and heavily entrench its paramilitaries and regular armed forces in the cities of Donbass, such as Artyomovsk. This explains why the proxy war that escalated in 2022 is lasting so long and proving so difficult for Russia to conclude.

Ukrainian authorities initially tried to blame the Russian government for the killing, but that story didn’t survive for 48 hours. Stselnikov’s court appearance and admissions on September 2 have shocked the country with his honesty and boldness. Of particular note is that the father does not blame the Russian government or armed forces for his son's death. He blames the leaders of the 'Euromaidan' coup.

Stselnikov told reporters that he did not hold a specific grudge against Paruiby. “Yes, I killed Paruiby. He lived close by. If I lived in Vinnytsia, it would have been Petya," he said, 'Petya’ being the nickname of Petro Poroshenko, one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine. He was elected ‘president’ in May 2014 for a five-year term in an election where opponents of the coup were effectively banned. Poroshenko’s home city Vinnytsia is located some 350 km east of Lvov, about halfway to Kiev.

Ukrainian politicians view the killing of Parubiy as a direct threat to themselves. It is particularly unsettling because they are so used to writing off any bad news coming their way as ‘pro-Russia propaganda’. This was a Ukrainian father with a son who served in the military and whose fate ended in tragedy. The news has overshadowed even the torrent of bad war news washing over Ukraine, which sees steady advances by the Russian military across the entire frontline, while news of possible negotiations to end the fighting hardly serves the narrative of the Kiev regime that is only Ukraine can hold out a little longer, fresh waves of money and weapons will soon pour in from the West.

Stselnikov’s son was an IT specialist from Lvov, a hotbed of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. The son was born in 1994 and was inevitably exposed and heavily influenced there by ultra-nationalist propaganda. He quarreled with his father and, in 2022, volunteered to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the start of the special Military Operation by Russia. He took the call sign ‘Lemberg’, the name of Lvov during its occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941-1944.

The father’s personal drama has sparked a wave of sympathy for him among ordinary Ukrainians, many of whom have also lost their sons to the war project of Euromaidan leaders and those Western governments and NGO representatives supporting the ‘fight for freedom’ in Ukraine.

The entire Ukrainian political establishment gathered for the funeral of the slain ‘Maidan’ organizer in Lvov on September 2. They arrived under heavy security because they are well aware of the angry mood in society. “The entire elite is at Paruiby's funeral. Many of them haven't been seen in a long time. They wouldn't want to part with their friend, would they?” wrote Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy in a one-line comment on Telegram on September 2, accompanied by several photos.

The online news publication Strana believes that one of the motives for Parubiy's murder was to demoralize the Ukrainian elite by showing that none of them should feel safe and none of them will escape public rage and retribution.

Many Ukrainian nationalists still shudder as they recall the extrajudicial executions of Nazi collaborators that swept across Ukraine in 1944, following its liberation by the Soviet Red Army and as the Red Army was defeating the Nazis across Germany and Poland. Thousands of Ukrainian nationalist collaborators, many of whom served as police, prison guards, and executioners, were unable to flee with the retreating Hitlerite troops and suffered a fate they had well earned.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel Resident writes that there is now a certain amount of panic among the political elite, as everyone understands that only the Ukrainian special services could have eliminated such a prominent politician, and they have found a suspect to take the blame and who may soon die in his cell.

Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik believes that Parubiy's killing could complicate negotiations for a settlement of the war. “We are talking about Paruiby's killing at a time when negotiations on a settlement of the war are underway. This killing will complicate the negotiations because it will intensify negative reactions by the patriotic [ultra-nationalist] part of society. The killing has divided society and has caused a situation in which no public figure feels safe,” he writes.

Related News

The Ukrainian neo-Nazi who knew too much?

Did British intelligence create a Neo-Nazi militia?

Authorities have taken to glorifying Parubiy, calling him a paragon of democracy and a “symbol of European aspirations.” Parubiy himself once called Adolf Hitler’s rule a “model of democracy”. He acknowledged that he had admired Hitler since his youth. “I myself am a huge supporter of direct democracy. By the way, I will tell you that the greatest person who practiced direct democracy was Adolf Hitler in the 1930s,” he once told live television. This, of course, underlines that the need for a ‘denazification’ in Ukraine is not some fabrication dreamed up by the leaders of the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainian analytical Telegram channel Rubicon has explained that when a person speaks enthusiastically about, say, Vladimir Lenin and shares his political positions taken in his lifetime, then, in principle, he can be called a ‘Leninist’. Parubiy, Rubicon writes, can thus be regarded as a 100% Hitlerite, a fact which Parubiy himself never hid. Nevertheless, as commander of Euromaidan, head of the National Security and Defense Council, and speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Parubiy was quite acceptable to Western leaders, despite protests from anti-fascists.

In the early 1990s, Andriy Parubiy was the organizer of the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine, which was modeled after the name of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). He was the “commandant of the Maidan” in 2013-2014, leading a wing of nationalist militants who carried out the coup, aided in part by students affiliated with Western NGOs. At the time, Western media would only film young men and women carrying posters about “democracy” and “freedom”, leaving the core, armed neo-Nazi militants out of the frame.

Artem Dmitruk, a former legislator from Zelensky's party who has fled to London, comments on the killing of Parubiy and recalls the ‘forgotten footage’ from the Maidan riots of 2014. His message posted on Telegram on September 1 shows the paramilitaries carrying weapons in bags to Maidan Square in central Kiev, preparing to shoot at police seeking to stem violence and killings. “Here, Parubiy is seen together with the militants carrying the bags of weapons as they prepare for more terrorist acts. There are many such photos and videos. Naturally, these are shown less and less often these days, with attempts made to hide them by any means possible because they destroy the beautiful legend of an ‘honest struggle against dictatorship and Russian influence’,” recalls the former ally of Zelensky.

Parubiy is considered one of the organizers of the arson attack and massacre in the city of Odessa on May 2, 2014, against anti-coup protesters. Ultranationalists set fire to the large and historic Trade Union House in the center of the city, constructed of stone, where protesters had taken refuge from violent attacks against them. The ultra-nationalists, aided by like-minded paramilitaries, killed 48 of those inside, some of whom were beaten to death after jumping from windows.

Nationalist Vitaly Portnikov (from Petro Poroshenko's political circle) indignantly told the Espresso TV channel on August 31 that people are rejoicing at Parubiy's killing in Odessa, as well as in the cities of Kiev, Kharkov, and Dnipropetrovsk. Based on surveying responses on social media, he concludes that many residents of Odessa remain carriers of the ‘Russian mentality’.

“They risk death every day from Russian bombs, but they continue to be representatives of Russian political philosophy. For them, Parubiy is still a greater enemy than Putin. They still think that if there were no people like Parubiy, they would live in cordial understanding with Russia,” Portnikov says indignantly.

Ukrainian politician Sergei Dorotich, another one who has been forced to flee the country for his safety, says that Parubiy's murder closes a chapter of the story of the arson massacre in Odessa. “Now there is no one to ask, because corpses don't answer questions. We will never get answers to our questions at this rate,” Dorotich concludes.

Oleg Tsarev, a former member of the Rada who moved to Russia after the Euromaidan coup, wrote in his blog on September 3, “Apparently, Parubiy's killer took revenge for his son. Sooner or later, the people of Ukraine will start killing representatives of the authorities for all the evil they have done to Ukraine and the grief they have brought. Paruiby is just the beginning.”

Legislator Alexander Dubinsky writes that Parubiy's killer, who says he acted out of revenge against the Ukrainian authorities who started the war with Russia in which his son died, is sending a signal to all legislators of Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ party, to Poroshenko, to government cabinet officials, and to Zelensky himself. In his opinion, all of them may not live long enough to appear before investigative tribunals or hang from lampposts.

“I certainly condemn murder and any other forms of violence. But try to ask yourself one terrible question: did the father who lost his son have a legitimate motive and moral justification? The answer will be frightening,” writes the legislator and former ally of Zelensky, who has been accused of treason and has been held in prison since 2023.

Ukrainian army volunteer Andriy Chudovsky, a blogger now living in Germany and fundraising for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, says that the killing has opened a very dangerous Pandora's box, pointing back to the Maidan coup. “And now they are reaping the fruits of this opening the box, first and foremost, it considers those who opened this box and thought that it would not affect them in any way. In other words, the revolution is devouring its children in the literal sense,” Chudovsky believes.

Ukrainian dissident and former political prisoner Ruslan Kotsaba believes that Parubiy's killing will inspire new and similar acts. He writes, “There were more bodyguards than mourners at the funeral [of Paruiby] funeral at St. George's Cathedral. Do you understand where this is all leading? The authorities know this, and they are afraid.”

Another former Ukrainian political prisoner, Dmitry Vasilets, predicts that similar acts of revenge will spread and will not be limited to Ukrainian politicians. “When the man said that his action was taken in revenge against Ukrainian authorities, he was referring primarily to revenge for the fact that his son had been effectively taken from him by NATO war propaganda. This shows us how deep the roots of the current civil war in Ukraine are. There will be more and more such vigilante acts because the truth is coming out, and as a result, more and more men and women are seeing that British, American, German and Polish political and military leaders behind all the bloodshed,” He writes that Western politicians, such as former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who directly sabotaged prospects for an early peace in March/April 2022, also live somewhere and go to restaurants. 

Vasilets himself was imprisoned in Ukraine after the Euromaidan coup. He now lives in Russia, thanks to one of the exchange of prisoners of war between the Kiev regime and the Russian Federation.

Undoubtedly, such acts of individual terrorism as occurred in Lvov on August 31 cannot eliminate or settle the causes of the conflict in Ukraine. In his time, Vladimir Lenin called such actions ineffective. He spoke from personal experience and tragedy: his older brother Aleksandr was executed in 1887 precisely on charges of taking part in an assassination attempt against the Russian emperor, Tsar Alexander III. Such acts, Lenin wrote, are ultimately acts of despair. Neo-Nazis like Parubiy are interchangeable, and there are plenty of young, neo- Nazis in Ukraine, willing to gladly take his place. Western politicians will welcome them in exactly the same way, painting over in their reports and removing from their media the Nazi emblems they wear Hitler salutes they deliver.

The root cause of the conflict in Ukraine can only be resolved by the anti-war and anti-Nazi people of Ukraine taking into our hands our own destiny and that of the country, which will emerge from the approaching defeat of neo-Nazism and the US-NATO proxy war. We have many difficult obstacles to overcome to make that happen. In this, we are greatly aided by the Russian citizens in uniform who are destroying the army of coup Ukraine, led by neo-Nazi ideologues such as Andriy Parubiy. Residents of Western countries have a vital support role to play in this. They should be calling out and condemning their governments’ direct participation in this disastrous war. They should condemn the offensive use of the taxes being imposed upon them to pay for it.