On March 20th, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr ‘the Great’ Zelensky addressed Israel’s Knesset or Parliament. He stated, “The Ukrainian and Jewish communities have always been and, I am sure, will be very intertwined, very close. They will always live side by side. And they will feel both joy and pain together.
That is why I want to remind you of the words of a great woman from Kyiv, whom you know very well. The words of Golda Meir. They are very famous, everyone has heard of them. Apparently, every Jew. Many, many Ukrainians as well. And certainly no less Russians.
‘We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not
a question that leaves much room for compromise.’
Golda Meir
I don’t need to convince you how intertwined our stories are. Stories of Ukrainians and Jews. In the past, and now, in this terrible time. We are in different countries and in completely different conditions. But the threat is the same: for both us and you – the total destruction of the people, state, culture. And even of the names: Ukraine, Israel.
I want you to feel it all. I want you to think about this date. About February 24. About the beginning of this invasion. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. February 24 – this day has twice gone down in history. And both times – as a tragedy. A tragedy for Ukrainians, for Jews, for Europe, for the world. […]
This Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a military operation, as Moscow claims. This is a large-scale and treacherous war aimed at destroying our people. Destroying our children, our families. Our state. Our cities. Our communities. Our culture. And everything that makes Ukrainians Ukrainians. Everything that Russian troops are now destroying. Deliberately. In front of the whole world.”
What President Zelensky is referring to when he compares Ukrainian and Jewish tragedies were the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932-33 perpetrated by the Soviet Union and the Jewish Holocaust of 1939-45 perpetrated by the German Nazi Party during World War II. Both were massive genocidal crimes against humanity that took about six million lives each, executed by totalitarian regimes of which one was punished and the other, yet to be charged with. Most people are familiar with the Holocaust, but few are with the Holodomor, because the Soviet Union and now Russia have managed to keep the crime fairly securely under wraps for almost a century. The Soviet Union sold all the wheat and grains produced by the Ukraine in 1932, leaving the Ukrainians with absolutely no food to survive on over winter and six million Ukrainian people starved to death in 1932-33. The Holodomor, a compound word created from the Ukrainian words holod for hunger and mor for death, was a policy created by Russian President Josef Stalin in a paranoid attack upon Ukrainian existence. While people were dying by the millions, the Soviet secret police and KGB were targeting Ukrainian politicians and leaders for execution.
The Soviet government suppressed news of the crime against humanity by silencing their own bureaucrats and officials and pressuring western journalists. One freelance journalist, Gareth Jones, did manage to evade secret police and enter the isolated Holodomor Zone and he published reports of the famine, but it was covered up with the explicit assistance of Walter Duranty of The New York Times who dismissed reports of the famine as exaggeration. Gareth Jones was later enticed back into Soviet territory and was murdered under suspicious circumstances in 1935 in Japanese-occupied Mongolia. Stalin later went to great lengths to supress the results of the 1937 census, even arresting and murdering the administrators, because the figures showed the extensive decimation of Ukrainian population. While some claim the tragedy was the result of poor crops and poor planning, this fantasy does not explain the secret police pillaging of food from non-collectivized areas for redistribution in favoured urban centers. The genocide was planned, perpetrated and executed by Josef Stalin and his cronies.
Encyclopedia Britannica reports that by early 2019, 16 countries as well as the Vatican had recognized the Holodomor as a genocide, and both houses of the United States Congress had passed resolutions declaring that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.” It is disturbing that only sixteen countries have recognized this crime against humanity. It makes me wonder what the other countries are hiding. My own Canada has admitted to cultural genocide of our indigenous people, yet we are still digging up the bodies of children from unmarked graves around residential school sites, which is well beyond cultural and leaning more to Soviet style genocide.
I sincerely hope that the Knesset will help President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people and support the call for a no-fly zone over the Ukraine. President Biden’s reckless statements that a no-fly zone would be the start of World War Three are not really factual. Defending Ukraine skies does not constitute an attack on Russia. It is merely the humanitarian stopping of war crimes being committed with the residential bombing of the Ukrainian civilian population. Finally, after military fiascos in North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and, most recently, in Afghanistan, the Americans are offered a military task that is winnable and they are sitting on their hands.
Josef Stalin and the KGB orchestrated a genocide against Ukraine while the Russian people just stood by and watched. But after six million deaths, Stalin then turned his paranoid attention upon his own Russian people and began a regime of terror that probably claimed just as many Russian lives in executions and confinements in the Gulags of Siberia. I am only reminding the Russian people of this because it seems that President Vladimir Putin is turning out to be just another KGB Josef Stalin wanna be. If you think your lots in life will be better if Putin gets away with war crimes in Crimea and Ukraine, just review your own recent Russian history and start uncovering all the hidden Russian deaths that Stalin caused. I know that you will all say we know, we know how many he killed, but there are always more when dealing with a sadistic tyrant like Josef. So, I also sincerely hope that the good people of Russia will begin to help President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people by withholding support at Vladimir’s “Trump-like” rallies, for their own good as well as their neighbours’.
To help the Russian people remember their past history, I shall soon be posting ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’ by H.H. Munro on my SeiberTeck.com website. Soon to follow will be ‘The Russian Primary Chronicle’ by Nestor, translated by Cross/Sherbowitz-Wetzor for the legendary Ukrainian Rus’ and Russian histories and also Book Ten of the Sixteen Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, starting with his chapter on Canute ‘the Great’. Then hopefully I can start adding some chapters to my Book Five of The Varangians series in which I show how Prince Valdamar (Vladimir) ‘the Great’ Sveinson (not to be confused with President Volodymyr ‘the Great’ Zelensky) of Kiev transforms himself into King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson of England. Quite an amazing accomplishment for the Danish-Slavic Knytling Kings of Ukrainian Rus’. The Varangians series doesn’t extend further into the histories of the Muscovite Russian princes but perhaps I could be persuaded to rewrite that history as well.
It breaks my heart that the great Ukrainian people and the fine Russian people are at war and I beg, once more, for President Vladimir Putin to Cease and Desist. Serious peace talks are required here, and the sooner, the better. I don’t know if I can discover a Russian Prince in a series perhaps called ‘The Russians’ that ends up conquering England, as I am proving with a Rus’ Prince in ‘The Varangians’ series, but who knows. I certainly didn’t expect to uncover Danish Knytling Kings in the Ukraine when I first started tracing the ‘Origins of Hamlet’ forty odd years ago so, who knows what I might turn up in Ancient Moscow? One thing I can guarantee is that the Russian Prince will not be called Vladimir Putin. Fifteen thousand dead Russian soldiers in less than a month? You’re already a third of the way to the total American deaths in ten years of fighting in Vietnam. The Ukrainians don’t post their own losses, but I suspect it’s about the same. Time to sit down for some serious talks.
“The VARANGIANS” Series:
‘The Varangians’ series of five books is about the Danish Varangian Princes of early Rus’ (Russia), based on The Nine Books of Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and the Russian Primary Chronicle of Nestor. The Russian monk Nestor asserts that Rus’ was founded by three brothers, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, but the Danish names in Book 5 of Saxo’s work are Erik, Sigfrodi (King Frodi) and Roller, three brothers from Denmark and Norway.
Book One of the five book Varangians Series places the Saga of King Frodi the Peaceful from Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) into its proper chronological location in history. In 1984, when I first started the book, I had placed the main character, Erik’s (Hraerik’s) birth at circa 800 CE, but have since revised it to 810 to better fit with the timelines of the following books in the series. Saxo had originally placed the saga at the time of Christ’s birth and later experts have placed the story at about 400 CE to correspond with the arrival of the Huns on the European scene but when Attila was driven back to Asia, the Huns didn’t just disappear, they joined the Khazar Empire north of the Caspian Sea and helped the Khazars control the western end of the famous Silk Road trade route.
When King Frodi’s Danes started their ninth century ‘Southern Way’ incursions into the rivers of present day Russia, they ran into the Khazar Khaganate that was controlling Silk Road trade there and cooperation looked promising when he married King Hun’s daughter, Princess Hanund. But she cheated on him and he sent her back to Khazaria in disgrace and things got ugly, fast. Two Norwegian princes, Hraerik and Hraelauger Hraegunarson, sons of the famous Hraegunar Lothbrok, visited Frodi’s court in Liere with a dangerous plan to protect their own Nor’Way trade route to Khazaria, but that plan changed when Prince Hraerik fell in love with and married Princess Gunwar, King Frodi’s sister.
When news arrived in Liere that the Huns planned to attack Denmark, Prince Hraerik convinced King Frodi to assemble a Varangian Army of the North and lead a pre-emptive strike against the Khazar Empire. Following the capture of Kiev, the three brothers, Frodi, Hraerik and Hraelauger established the Hraes’ (Rus’) Trading Company and built an empire that exists in many forms to this very day, including Russia, Normandy, Great Britain and L’Anse Aux Meadows in America. The wealth of the Hraes’ Trading Empire they created powered the prolific Viking expansion in Medieval Europe that still fascinates us today.
Book One, “The Saga of Hraerik ‘Bragi’ Hraegunarson,” recreates Book Five of Saxo’s work to illuminate the origins of the name Rus’ and how it evolved from Hraes’ in ninth century Russia and how the name Varangians originally meant Va Rangers or Way Wanderers of the Nor’Way. The book examines the death of Princess Gunwar (Hervor) at the hands of the Hunnish Prince Hlod and how it drives Prince Hraerik ‘Bragi the Old’ Hraegunarson to write a famous poem of praise that both saves his head and rallies the northern kingdoms to fight the infamous Battle of the Goths and the Huns on the Don Plain of Gardariki (Gnita Heath of Tmutorokan).
Book Two, “The Saga of Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Hraerikson,” recreates Arrow Odd’s Saga of c. 1200 to illustrate how Arrow Odd was Prince Helgi (Oleg in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev, by showing that their identical deaths from the bite of a snake was more than just coincidence. The book investigates the true death of Hraegunar Lothbrok by poisoned blood-snakes and how his curse of ‘calling his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ sets up a death spiral between swine (Sveinald) and snakes (Gorm ‘the Old’) that lasts for generations. It then goes on to depict the famous Battle of the Berserks on Samso, where Arrow Odd and Hjalmar the Brave slay the twelve berserk grandsons of King Frodi on the Danish Island of Samso, setting up a death struggle that takes the Great Pagan Army of the Danes from the ravaged coast of Norway to England and on to Helluland in Saint Brendan’s Newfoundland.
Book Three, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson,” reveals how Ivar the Boneless Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur (Igor in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev and then King Harde Knute of Denmark. By comparing a twenty year lacuna in the reign of Prince Igor in the Russian Chronicles with a coinciding twenty year appearance of a King Harde Knute I (Hard Knot) of Denmark in European Chronicles, Prince Igor’s death by sprung trees, which reportedly tore his legs off, may have rather just left him a boneless and very angry young king. Loyal Danes claimed, “It was a hard knot indeed that sprung those trees,” but his conquered English subjects, not being quite as polite, called him, “Ivar the Boneless”.
Book Four, “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson,” demonstrates how Prince Sviatoslav ‘the Brave’ of Kiev was really Prince Svein Eyfurson of Kiev, who later moved to Norway and fought to become King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark and England. But before being forced out of Russia, the Swine Prince sated his battle lust by crushing the Khazars and attacking the great great grandfather of Vlad the Impaler in a bloody campaign into the Heart of Darkness of Wallachia that seemed to herald the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with the 666 Salute of the Army of the Impalers. The campaign was so mortifying that the fifteen thousand pounds of gold that the Emperor of Constantinople paid him to attack the Army of the Impalers seemed not nearly enough, so Prince Svein attacked the Eastern Roman Empire itself. He came so close to defeating the greatest empire in the world, that later Danish Christian Kings would call his saga, and the sagas of his kin, “The Lying Sagas of Denmark” and would set out to destroy them, claiming that, “true Christians will never read this saga”.
Book Five, “The Saga of Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson”, establishes how Grand Prince Vladimir ‘the Great’ of Kiev was also known as Prince Valdamar Sveinson of Gardar, who supported his father, Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’, in attacks upon England and later became King Canute ‘the Great’ of England and also King Knute ‘the Great’ of Denmark and Norway. Unlike his father, he came to the aid of a Roman Emperor, leading six thousand picked Varangian cataphracts against Anatolian rebels, and was rewarded with the hand of Princess Anna Porphyrogennetos, a true Roman Princess born of the purple blood who could trace her bloodline back to Julius and Augustus Caesar. She was called Czarina, and after her, all Rus’ Grand Princes were called Czars and their offspring were sought matrimonially by European royalty.
Conclusion:
By recreating the lives of four generations of Rus’ Princes and exhibiting how each generation, in succession, ascended to their inherited thrones in Denmark, the author proves the parallels of the dual rules of Rus’ Princes and Danish Kings to be cumulatively more than just coincidence. And the author proves that the Danish Kings Harde Knute I, Gorm ‘the Old’ and Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson/Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ were not Stranger Kings, but were Danes of the Old Jelling Skioldung Fridlief/Frodi line of kings who only began their princely careers in Ukrainian Rus’ and returned to their kingly duties in Denmark with a lot of Byzantine Roman ideas and heavy cavalry and cataphracts.
SeiberTeck: 'The Varangians Series' 