A granddaughter of WWII Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, Chrystia Freeland, is reportedly Washington’s “prime” pick for the job
The “prime candidate” favored by Washington to replace outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is Chrystia Freeland, currently Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The bloc reportedly aims to install a woman at its helm for the first time, with other likely contenders being Estonian premier Kaja Kallas, Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, former president of Croatia, who was also that country’s ambassador to Washington. The “strong contenders” list provided by the NYT corresponds with earlier media reports this year.
The selection of a new NATO Secretary General, however, is still months away and “the names that surface first” may not survive the bargaining among the bloc’s members, unnamed NATO officials told the NYT. Incumbent head of the bloc Stoltenberg was set to leave his post on September 30, but his term was prolonged to late 2023 amid the conflict in Ukraine. The NATO boss might ultimately end up having his tenure extended for another year, one of the officials reportedly suggested.
Still, Freeland is believed to be the “prime candidate” for the post of NATO chief, favored by the US itself.
“Where any of the candidates come down on support for Ukraine in the war against Russia will be a critical factor,” the paper writes.
Freeland, whose mother was from the Ukraine, is known to have a strong pro-Ukrainian stance. She is the granddaughter of Michael Chomiak, described by the NYT as a “grateful immigrant to Canada” who was during World War Two a “involved with a Ukrainian Nazi movement.”
The paper didn’t mention, however, that Chomiak was a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and the editor-in-chief of a Ukrainian-language propaganda daily Krakivs’ki Visti. The outlet, published between 1940 and 1945, was funded directly by Nazi Germany and described by Canadian historian – and Chomiak’s son-in-law – John-Paul Himka as a “vehemently anti-Semitic” publication.
Freeland has been extremely ambiguous on her ancestry, not only refusing to condemn her maternal grandparents but somewhat endorsing them instead.
Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper, according to the Globe and Mail
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War.
Ms. Freeland’s family history has become a target for Russian forces seeking to discredit one of Canada’s highly placed defenders of Ukraine.
Ms. Freeland, who has paid tribute to her maternal grandparents in articles and books, helped edit a scholarly article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies in 1996 that revealed her grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi propagandist for Krakivski Visti (Krakow News).
The selection of Freeland, grand-daughter of the Ukrainian World War Two Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak would raise eyebrows, not least in Russia. The politician has paid tribute to Chomiak’s legacy, despite knowing that he “was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War,” according to the Globe and Mail newspaper.
She reportedly speaks the Russian and the “Ukrainian” at home and is a former Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times. Freeland has been banned from Russia for a number of a years, apparently due to her strong support for the post-Maidan regime in Kiev.
Descendant Of Ukrainian Nazi Collaborator Mooted For NATO Top Job