How “Ukrainian-American” journalist Golinkin destroys Ukraine’s reputation in the West and promotes Russian propaganda

Ukrainian journalist, author of documentaries and the Faces of Independence YouTube channel, Darka Hirna, in a Twitter thread, drew attention to the activities of Lev Golinkin, a native of Kharkiv and an American immigrant who has been building the image of Ukraine as a neo-Nazi state in the world’s reputable media for years.

Hirna notes that Golinkin, who is obviously a Russian proxy, “works with great skill.”

“The concept of the narrative is known: war is bad, Crimea was annexed by Russia, but “not everything is so clear” and “both sides are to blame for the crimes in Donbas,” the journalist says about Golinkin’s messages.

She cites publications in the Western media with Golinkin’s comments from April 2022, after Bucha was liberated from the Russian occupiers. In his interviews, the “Ukrainian-American” journalist promotes the Russian propaganda thesis about “war crimes in Donbas committed by both sides.”

The description of the interview is as follows: “We speak to Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, who details the years-long attacks on the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas and how the people of Donbas are being targeted by both Russia and the US-backed government in Kyiv. He also explains the origins of the Azov battalion, the neo-Nazi wing of the Ukrainian armed forces, which has received funding and training from the US government and is now supported by prominent US news organizations.”

Golinkin’s primitive propaganda thesis about “8 years of bombing Donbas”. Illustration from the Twitter page of Darka Hirna

“To see the extent of his obsession with the ‘far-right nation’ in Ukraine, you can look at this publication. And by clicking on the author’s tag, you can read his other “works” about Ukraine and not only.

He is very generous in labeling Azov and Redis as neo-Nazis. These are his comments after the defense of Azovstal. When asked “what about Nazism in Russia?” he says “yes, it is there, but the United States does not arm them.” Despite the fact that it is precisely because of parasites like him that Western weapons do not reach Azov,” Hirna notes.

And here is his last ‘shot’ at us all. In 2022, a book about the UPA by Canadian professor Lubomyr Luciuk and historian (now MP) Volodymyr Viatrovych, Enemy Archives, was published in English. This is a very important set of NKVD documents with commentary.

This is an archive that our diaspora managed to get from Russia in the 1990s with great difficulty, and then digitized by historians. These are documents about the NKVD’s cleansing of the Ukrainian resistance movement of the 40s and 60s, including the methods they used to compromise the movement.

And then Golinkin immediately appeared with an article in the American edition of The Nation, “Why is the American Library Association Whitewashing the History of the Ukrainian Nazis?” It was not a photo of the UPA, but of the SS Division Galicia (which the UPA opposed). The Russian embassy was very happy.

After that, the “historical materials committee” of the Association of American Libraries removed the book from the list of the best books of the past year. And apologized. “In other words, they actually played along with this scoundrel and agreed that archives and documents on the topic with the context of events are ‘whitewashing,’” writes Hirna.

One of the book’s editors, MP and historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, believes that Golinkin’s article is defamatory and repeats Russian propaganda narratives. He said that the author of the article did not consider it necessary to familiarize himself with the content of the book and did not cite a single quote from it to support his theses.

The content is also nothing new: as an illustration, there is a photo of Himmler and Waffen SS soldiers of the Galicia Division, about which the book only says that the UPA command opposed its creation. Then there is the fact that the author of the book is Viatrovych, who pushed through the Ukrainian parliament a law that, thanks to me, became state policy in Ukraine. And, of course, the reference to the main fighter against anti-Semitism in Ukraine, Eduard Dolinsky, who is fondly quoted by the Russians. That is, everything that has been repeated dozens of times by Russian propagandists with different names and in different languages in various publications since 2014, — Viatrovych wrote.

Vyatrovich also said that the author of this article, Lev Golinkin, is “not a newcomer to this dirty business.” “He has already written about fascists on the Maidan, Nazis in Azov and “not everything is so clear” with Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian cities in Donbas,” Vyatrovych said.

Original article (in Ukrainian)