America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has published and promoted an interview with a renowed Neo-Nazi Ukrainian mayor, without disclosing the politician’s allegiances to World War II German leader Adolf Hitler and Ukraine’s own Nazi sympathizer Stepan Bandera.
The interview comes just days after PBS published an article downplaying the links between Neo-Nazi politicians and Ukraine’s current political situation.
On Thursday, March 4th, PBS hosted Mayor Artem Semenikhin of Konotop in the country’s North East.
Semenikhin described the Russian military as “cockroaches” before going on to thank the United States for supplying his people with weapons.
“My weapon is American, and I feel like our occupiers will be pleased that we are killing them with American weapons,” he concluded.
But Semenikhin is scarcely the liberty-minded freedom fighter PBS would have him seem. In 2015 the Jerusalem Post reported:
Two months after local elections were held across Ukraine, residents of the small northern city of Konotop are expressing shock and dismay over the behavior of newly chosen Mayor Artem Semenikhin of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party.
According to reports, Semenikhin drives around in a car bearing the number 14/88, a numerological reference to the phrases “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the picture of President Petro Poroshenko in his office with a portrait of Ukrainian national leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera; and refused to fly the city’s official flag at the opening meeting of the city council because he objected to the star of David emblazoned on it. The flag also features a Muslim crescent and a cross.
In fact, during the PBS interview Semenikhin posed with a Bandera portrait behind him, albeit blurred out by the network in their attempts to obscure their work with Ukrainian Neo-Nazis.
