In February 2022 Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine. In actuallity the war had really begun in 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea and an attack on the Eastern part of Ukraine commonly called Donbas. Yet in reality Russia's designs on Ukraine began much earlier. These “hot wars” (cite) followed almost 20 years of Russia attacking Ukraine by trying to weaken the state, seed corruption, and sow chaos through what Russia calls Active Measures (cite) and a show of soft power(cite).

Active Measures (define and cite) around defining Ukraine as a nazi state aligning with the West have played in Russian narratives for 80 years. By examining, one specific element of Russian disinformation, Stepan Bandera, we can examine how Russia attempted to undermine support for Ukraine in Poland and the US, cast Ukraine as far right stae that needed “denazification,” and vilified Ukrainians as a “lessor people” in a stae where Russia gave them “sovereignty.”

Through an historical analysis of watching how the myth of the Banderite came to be we can better understand Russian disinformation campaigns.

(super brief history of Bandera, OUN-A, OUN-B, Polish Massacre, UPA fight for freedom)

The vilification of Stepan Bandera and the UPA, followed by his reactionary growth as a National Hero, emerged out of 20 year of active measures by the Government of Russia to paint Ukrainian Nationalists as Nazis and justify Russia's eventual invasion of Ukraine. Russia's efforts in the information space then created the Ukrainian response in developing Bandera as a hero and National symbol in Ukraine.Russia in turn used this growth as evidence of far-right Banderites spreading in Ukraine.

This pattern follows common Russian disinformation techniques of having friendly or compromised academics write a flurry of research, Then Russian backed media outlets in the West would cite the Academic work and encourage sprad in Western media. This begins by writing opinion pieces which then unwitting Western journalists use in reporting.

In order to examine truth unfolding and emerging from Russia, a place where “nothing is true but everything is possible” (Pomerantsev,2022) we apply Deleuze and Guattari concepts of rhizomatic analysis by examining Bandera and the OUN-B not to understand how things are but how the stories come to be. We apply the idea of lines of flight to understand the creative mutations shaping (D&G 1987) how Stepan Bandera and the OUN-B got deployed by State agencies in the act of developing and destroying national identities.

Deleuze and Guattari define topography and rhizomes as any point that “can be connected to anything other, and must be…. A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, social sciences, and social struggles (1987, p. 7).”

Deleuze and Guattari carve reality more as a topography or landscape more than a set reality. We wish to establish that Russia utilized Bandera as a semiotic chain linking to a paranoia of Ukrainan nationalism that goes back centuries. As an organization of power Russia utilized false narratives to try and create a landscape they envisioned. Yes truth gets influenced by one's path in a particular point of the landscape but line of flight can not be forced.

A ‘line of flight“ in this topography is a new path created through the mutation caused be a new actualization of connections. These connections existed before, only implicitly. A line of flight emerges when someone with agency begins to act and respond to these new connections and thus changes their path on the landscape. Russia attempted to seed both implicit and actaualized connections to create a landscape of truth around Nazis in Ukraine that never existed.

Specifically we rely on Deleuze's interpretation of Lebinz' monad in “The Fold.” Deleuze redefined Leibniz's monad as folds of space, movement and time.Based on Deleuze interpretation the world emerges as a body of infinite folds that weave through compressed time and space. Yet what happens to folds when the lines of flight get forced into convergent paths through active measures in preparation of war?

Deleuze and Guattari warn that forcing lines of flight lead to regressive transformations. This can cause highly rigid segments (D&G 1987: 205) such as Russian narratives about the need to denazify Ukraine. These efforts to force a narrative through disinformation become a line of destruction (D&G 1987: 229) that history will eventually unfold. We argue Russia's modern interpretation of needing to destroy modernity to restore a world of traditionalism relies on the application of post-modern intepretations. This paradox leads to regressive transformations such as the rise of far-right extremisism or the invasion of Ukraine.

• Russia and Ukraine (brief)

- Three Peoples and Imperialism - Ukrainian Nationalism-Germany and Poland

• Reflexive Control and The Deconstruction of Modernity
• Russian Disinformation

rhizoanalysis provides us with a tool to examine the story of Stepan Bandera ad a narrative performance to understand the Affective intensities (Coleman, 2005) of Russian disinformation campaigns. Russia created a series of Nazi narrative performances, not so much as plan, but a series of folding monads. Self contained lies which in turn had explict connections to other lies to create a new truth that did not exist before. An analysis of how these monads and lines of flight apply help us understand how Russia tries to cast Ukraine as a Nazi state through the narrative of Stepan Bandera. While Russian disinformation tries to establish relationships built through unpredictable texts movements Russia took advantage of places where hate thrives and community is cultivated.

We also look to rhizoanalysis as we find the “space,” rather than the individuals truth ,or even history, more as the variable of interest for our flights of inquiry. We do not seek to answer, “Was Stepan Bandera a Nazi?” but rather to utilize rhizoanalysis as a tool to understand how Russia manipulates the power behind not “what is” but rather “what could be and could have been.” In other words, or research does not seek to understand the truth but more the textual moves Russia made to shape the folds of monads to their own design.

This focus on becoming rather than being is an essential rejection of representational logic (Leander & Rowe, 2006) and also a central reality necessary for studying the unreality that is Modern Russia. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s work on rhizomes allowed us to understand the non linear relationships and how they interact in the creation of false Nazi narratives in Ukraine.

In the establishment of these rhizomes Deleuze and Guattari discuss how the the multiplicity of lines that spread in every direction (Leander & Rowe, 2006). These lines represent connections between people and signs. In rhizomatic analysis it is these lines, these connections and middles that represent areas of inquiry. As these lines break or continue to grow anew (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) asignifying ruptures exist.

These breaks delineate identities from the norm. They are based on two major types of lines that as noted continually spread: lines of segmentarity, which organize social assemblages into stasis and rigid patterns; and lines of flight that are “are leaks, escapes, or departures from the territories drawn by dominant systems of signification.” In rhizoanalysis you often attempt to map these lines your inquiry

(Explain how we trace line of flights be examining scholars, cross referencing their wikipdedia pages, and then tracing how the fake scholarship shows up in disinformation rags)

• Google Scholar results based on time period
• Google Trends Results based on time period
• Wikipedia edit history
• Articles published in known Russian disinformation sources
• 27,000 tweets with the phrase “ukronazi” collected in Month of Feb 2023
• Google News search at three time points 2004-2006, 2013-2026, 2022-2023
• Peer reviewed and retracted articles
• List of Ukrainians mentioned as cult
• Publicly available author bios for journalist who must know they lie.
• Ukrainian Diaspora Journals

More a journal of steps we took for now.

1. Did Google Trends search of Stepan Bandera for 2002-2022 2. Creating a chronological matrix of academic publications, newspaper articles and opinions, wikipedia edits,public opinion polls, state media data, monuments. Needed for rudimentary histriogrphy of narratives

Artifacts and evidence more than sources

Bekeshkina, I., Sydorchuk, O., Burakovskiy, I., Zolkina, M., Haran, O., Chabanna, M., & Kermach, R. (2017). Constructing a Political Nation: Changes in the Attitudes of Ukrainians during the War in the Donbas. Stylos Publishing.

Berkhoff, K. C., & Carynnyk, M. (1999). The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets' ko's 1941 Zhyttiepys. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 23(3/4), 149-184.

Blumenthal, Max. “Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?.” AlterNet February 25 (2014).(Russian Disinfo now the Grayzone)

Himka, J.-P. 2011a. “The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Police, and the Holocaust.” Seventh Annual Danyliw Research Seminar onContemporary. Ukraine, Ottawa, 20–22 Oct.

Himka, J.-P. 2011b. “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, UkrainianNationalists, and the Carnival Crowd.” Canadian Slavonic Papers LIII (2–4):209–243.

Hrytsak, Y. 2004. Strasti za natsionalismom. kyiv: krytyka. Ilyushyn, I. 2009. Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia i Armiia Kraiova: protystoi-annia v Zakhidnii Ukraini (1939–1945 rr). kyiv: kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Likhachev, V. (2015). The “right sector” and others: The behavior and role of radical nationalists in the Ukrainian political crisis of late 2013—Early 2014. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 48(2-3), 257-271.

Katchanovski, Ivan, (2006). Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart.(retracted scholar)

Katchanovski, Ivan, 2010. The Politics of Soviet and Nazi genocides in Orange Ukraine. Eur. Asia Stud. 62 (6), 973e997.(retracted scholar)

Katchanovski, Ivan, (2013). The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the Nazi Genocide in Ukraine. Vienna Wiesenthal(retracted scholar)Institute for Holocaust Studies Conference, Vienna, December 5-7.

Katchanovski, Ivan, (2014). The politics of world war II in contemporary Ukraine. J. Slav. Mil. Stud. 27 (2), 210e233.

Katchanovski, Ivan, (RETRACTED). The “Snipers' Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine. Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco,September 3-6.

Katchanovski, I. (2015). Terrorists or national heroes? Politics and perceptions of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 48(2-3), 217-228. (retracted scholar)

Marples, D. R. (2020). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe.(??? needs evaluation)

Melnyk, O. (2019). From the “Russian Spring” to the Armed Insurrection: Russia, Ukraine and Political Communities in the Donbas and Southern Ukraine. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 47(1), 3-38.

Khaldarova, I. (2021). Brother or ‘Other’? Transformation of strategic narratives in Russian television news during the Ukrainian crisis. Media, war & conflict, 14(1), 3-20.

Nikolaev, N. Y., Yurchenko, D. S., Yu Nikolaev, N., & S Yurchenko, D. Media Space As A “Battlefield”: A Historical Narrative Of Modern Ukrainian Media. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 102.

Portnov, A. 2016b. “Clash of Victimhoods: The Volhynian Massacre in Polish and Ukrainian Memory.” Open Democracy, 16 Nov. Retrieved 20 Nov 2016from https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andrii-portnov/clash-of-victimhood-1943-volhynian-massacre-in-polish-and-ukrainian-culture.

Pirie, P. S. (1993). Unraveling the banner: a biographical study of Stepan Bandera.

Rudling, Per Anders, 2006. Theory and practice: historical representation of the wartime accounts of the activities of the OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army). East Eur. Jew. Aff. 36 (2), 163-189. (tankie)

Rudling, P. 2010. “Yushchenkiv fashyst: kult Bandery v Ukraiini i v kanadi.” InStrasti za Banderoiu, eds. T.C. Amar, I. Balyns’kyi and Y. Hrytsak, 237–309.kyiv: Hrani-T. (tankie)

Rudling, P.A. 2011. “Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monuments in Edmonton, Alberta.” Nationalities Papers 39 (5): (tankie)

733–768.Rudling, P.A. 2011b. The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in theManufacturing of Historical Myths. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & EastEuropean Studies, no. 2107, Nov.(tankie)

Rudling, P.A. 2013. The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VOSvoboda. In Analyzing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text, eds.(tankie)

R. Wodak and J.E. Richardson, 228–255. London and New York: Routledge

Rudling, Per Anders, 2011. The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: a Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths.” Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies 2107 (Center for Russian and East European Studies, Pittsburgh University). (tankie)

Sanders, R. Glorifying Ukrainian-Canadian Veterans of OUN/UPA Terrorism. URL: http://coat. ncf. ca/P4C/68/68_40-55. pdf (дата звернення 26.08. 2020).

Struve, K. (2020). The OUN (b), the Germans, and Anti-Jewish Violence in Eastern Galicia during Summer 1941. Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 6, 205-235.

Temirov, B. STEPAN BANDERA’S PERSONALITY IN THE INFORMATION CONFRONTATION. EVROPSKÝ FILOZOFICKÝ, 93.

Tottle, D. (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: The Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard. Progress Books.

Yurchuk, Y. (2017). Reclaiming the past, confronting the past: OUN–UPA memory politics and nation building in Ukraine (1991–2016). War and memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 107-137.

Zaitsev, O. (2015). De-mythologizing Bandera: Towards a scholarly history of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.