With Canada's federal election on Monday, here is a better late than never thread about the 🇨🇦Conservative Party's ties to the present-day int'l Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN-B) network/lobby/cult that arose in the early years of the Cold War under the leadership of Stepan Bandera. 
First some necessary background info, the basics of which I'll cover below but you can read about more in-depth here: medium.com/@mossrobeson/t… Also this thread may be of interest regarding the OUN-B's foothold in Ukraine today:
.@ICSUkraine, HQ'd today in 🇨🇦, is the🌎coord.comm. of OUN-B affiliated NGOs, including the int'l Ukr. Youth Assoc. (SUM), 'Center for Study of the Liberation Mvmt' (TsDVR) & 'Free People' in 🇺🇦, ODFFU in 🇺🇸, Assoc. of Ukr. in 🇬🇧, the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), & more.
The LUC was founded in Toronto in 1949 as the Canadian League for the Liberation of Ukraine—the 🇨🇦 branch of the OUN-B's int'l "Ukrainian Liberation Front" (@ICSUkraine), both of which took on new names after 🇺🇦 independence. The mission of both remains to rehabilitate the OUN-B.
.@ICSUkraine seems to share its 🇺🇦 HQ in Kyiv with the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) & Youth Nationalist Congress (MNK), both created by OUN-B. The above-mentioned TsDVR's HQ is in Lviv on the 3rd floor of the Lonsky St. Prison Museum, "where Jewish memory is erased."
After the Euromaidan, the 🇺🇦 Institute for National Remembrance was largely taken over by @viatrovych's OUN/UPA-glorifying TsDVR, an "OUN-B facade organization" according to Per Anders Rudling, who in 2012 became the 1st (I think) to call out @ICSUkraine: defendinghistory.com/ukrainian-holo…
In 2010 the former TsDVR turned Lonsky Museum director Ruslan Zabily gave the Conservative PM of 🇨🇦 Stephen Harper a tour of the "Prison at Lonsky." Two years later, Harper praised Zabily during HIS tour of Canada organized by @ICSUkraine, which meanwhile smeared PA Rudling.
So about the Canadian @ICSUkraine leadership. Until recently Orest Steciw was the longtime president of the LUC & before that chaired the Canadian branch of the OUN-B's fascist international Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN, led for life by Bandera's deputy Yaroslav Stetsko)
Yuri Shymko, a former 🇨🇦 politician, became chairman of @ICSUkraine in Nov. 2013. He was Sec-Gen. & later president of the Ukrainian World Congress from '73-78 and '88-93. He hosted ABN events as a member of Ontario's Parliament ('81-87)—pictured below with Slava Stetsko in '87.
I'm saving a thread about Borys Potapenko, who succeeded Shymko as chairman/prez of @ICSUkraine in 2016-17, for another day. Too much to say about him. But here's something: 40 years ago he led "a major campaign in protest against the showing of the [1978] TV movie 'Holocaust'".
📷 below: Yuri Shymko's daughter, today an "associated board member" of @ICSUkraine, at an ABN dinner in Toronto with Steciw & Stetsko. In 1994, @LisaShymko became a project director for the 🇨🇦 Int'l Aid Agency & founded the 🇨🇦-🇺🇦 Parliamentary Resource Center. Since then...(1/2)
.@LisaShymko has also been the prez of "Ukraine Support Fund" and LUC Women, director of "BCU Financial Group," and executive director of the Canadian Friends of Ukraine. She was "part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's delegation on three official visits to Ukraine." (2/2)
The OUN-B linked "Free People," as members, enjoy the support of @ICSUkraine orgs, particularly in 🇨🇦. FP, LUC, & ICSU reps discussed their "Stop Revanche" campaign with Conservative 🇨🇦 pols & the chair of the 🇨🇦-🇺🇦 Parliamentary Friendship Group in 2018.
The LUC & its Friends of Ukraine Defense Forces Fund are particularly close to Free People. @ICSUkraine prez Potapenko wrote this Ukr. Weekly article about an FP leader's 2015 tour of Canada with Steciw—note @TedOpitz, former 🇨🇦-🇺🇦 Parliamentary Friendship Group chair, in the 📷:
According to Anton Sestritsyn (@asestritsyn)'s Twitter bio, he manages community relations for the 🇨🇦 Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer. According to his LinkedIn, from January 2016-April 2017, Sestritsyn served as the exec-director of @ICSUkraine & exec-coordinator of LUC.
@asestritsyn @ICSUkraine In 2012, Canadian PM Stephen Harper sent his "warmest greetings" & thanks to the Canadian coordinating body of NGOs affiliated with the Stepan Bandera wing of the OUN for organizing a fundraiser with @tributetolibert to establish a Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Canada.
