Tight on the Right: Germany's NPD Maintains Close Ties to Svoboda
Germany shuns the right-wing extremist party NPD at home. But even though the Ukrainian nationalist party Svoboda maintains tight links to the NPD, it has received indirect support from Berlin.
When Holger Apfel showed up at the Saxony state parliament with a "parliamentary delegation" from Ukraine last May, few had even heard of a party called Svoboda. Apfel, who was head of the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) at the time, proudly showed his guests -- Ukrainian parliamentarian Mikhail Golovko and two municipal politicians from the Ukrainian city of Ternopol -- around the parliament building in Dresden.
Speaking to other NPD parliamentarians, Apfel called the nationalist Svoboda party "one of the most important European right-wing parties."
With a view to approaching elections for the European Parliament Apfel added that an "opposing model to the EU dictatorship of Brussels Eurocrats" must be established and said that EU officials were nothing but "willing helpers to international capital." Svoboda, he exulted following the visit, is part of the "phalanx of patriotic powers" and encouraged the "intensification of cooperation." Apfel's Ukrainian guests agreed, saying that collaboration between the NPD and Svoboda should be expanded.
Given such ties, it is astounding that Germany has approached the Ukrainian right-wing extremists in a manner that would be unthinkable with the NPD. On April 29, 2013, for example, Germany's ambassador in Kiev met with Svoboda's parliamentary floor leader Oleh Tyahnybok. During the meeting, Berlin has insisted, the ambassador exhorted Tyahnybok to respect the inviolability of human dignity and human rights.
But the Ukrainian right wing has also received instruction financed by German taxpayers. Party members appeared at events hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the German political foundation affiliated with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives. Examples include the conference entitled "Lessons from the 2012 Parliamentary Elections," the seminar series called "The Higher School of Politics" and a discussion on the 2012 elections.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/indirect-berlin-support-for-ukrainian-right-wing-extremists-svoboda-a-959073.html
