I fucked up earlier today and shared misinformation.
The admin of ua-fediland.de has a red and black flag in his handle. It's the flag of the UIA / Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which has nazi connections. After posting this update with a recommendation to block the instance, someone from another Ukrainian instance made a post that the flag, and the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) 'might have had a troubled history but are fine now'. I updated the thread linking to that person's post – I shouldn't have done that without checking that info.
I was then told that that second instance harboured fascists and that the OUN and that red and black flag had definite and strong ties to nazism and the holocaust. I deleted the post that linked to that misinformation, and re-did the now-orphaned reply to that post that explained the definite connection with the OUN and Nazism and pogroms so that it was re-connected to the thread.
The post with the misinformation may still be federating in some places due to being cached.
It's clear to me that this is an area I shouldn't be handling without extensive input and I should have waited for the people I usually run these things by to be online and give their input before rushing forward with actions, and will do so in future.
I made a rushed decision and took bold claims at face-value. I'm sorry.
Original thread for context: https://mastodon.art/@Curator/109727033755293169
For clarification, .art suspended ua-fediland.de as soon as we saw that bot with the nazi header image, and they remained suspended throughout. The suspension was never lifted, they were suspended before I contacted the instance admin, and stayed suspended after the email response.