Putin Isn’t Lying, Neo-Nazis Are Fighting For Ukraine
Neo-Nazis fighting on the side of the Ukraine in the war against Russia is once again demonstrating that in conflicts, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The uncertainty is whether the war will give credibility, support and ascendancy and solidify and provide wind in the sails of ultra-right wing nationalist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis of Ukraine.
Just think of the Afghan Mujahideen, originally U.S. allies in the battle against the Soviets and later to breed the worst U.S. enemy in the shape of Osama bin Laden. Or the U.S. backing of the Iraqi government under the vile dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War, as a strategic response to the anti-American Iranian Revolution of 1979. Or the World War II alliance between the west and the Soviet Union, which resulted in Soviet domination of all of Eastern Europe. It is an historical strategy, first suggested in the ancient Indian Sanskrit treatise of the 2nd century BCE.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed the Russian invasion is being conducted to eliminate the dangerous resurgence of Nazis in bordering Ukraine. And while Putin is exaggerating the influence of neo-Nazis, they are clearly a reality although their numbers are disputed. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish but he too must consider allies from any quarter.
Anti-Semitism has been a historical issue in Ukraine, with pogroms killing thousands of Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis in World War II and the growth of right wing nationalist and anti-Semitic groups in 1990s.
Putin is placing particular propaganda value in the battle for Mariupol, a steel complex that is being defended by a relatively small number of Ukraine forces that include members of the Azov Battalion, long known to include committed neo-Nazis. A victory at Mariupol by the Russians would bolster Putin’s stated aim to de-Nazify Ukraine. The southern port city of Mariupol has been under siege by Russian forces for weeks, with thousands of people trapped and at least 2,300 civilian deaths.
The Azov Special Operations Detachment also known as the Azov Regiment or Azov Battalion is a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine. Based in Mariupol, the battalion was created in 2014 as a volunteer paramilitary militia to fight pro-Russian forces in the Donbas region. The symbol of the Azov fighters is the z-shaped, Wolfsangel insignia that was used by the Nazi SS divisions and was found painted on the rucksack of the man who carried out the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand massacre, killing at least 49 people and wounding 20 others. In 2010, Andriy Biletsky, a former history student and amateur boxer and founder of the Azov Battalion, told the British newspaper, The Guardian, that the Ukrainian nation’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen,” the Nazi term for non-Aryan “inferior people.”
Since 2014, the U.S. has been involved in re-arming Ukraine, with some of the weaponry and finance indirectly going to the Azov Brigade. The U.S. congress blocked military aid to the Azov Brigade in 2015, due to the group’s white supremacist ideology, but the ban was overturned and then renewed in 2018. Members of the battalion reportedly came from 22 countries and were estimated to total more than 2,500 members in 2017 and most recently, are believed to include 900 members.
The Soufan Center, a global security research organization, reported that an estimated 17,000 foreigners from 50 countries including the U.S. have traveled to Ukraine to fight in the war there since 2014. Many joined the Azov Battalion, the center reported.
The militia founder, Biletsky, is an ultra-nationalist political figure who previously led groups including the openly neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly (SNA), which preached an ideology of racial purity for Ukraine. Biletsky and his minions believe Europe must be re-born into ethno-nationalist homelands, a “Reconquista” movement, named after a period of expansion of Christian kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula in the 13th Century.
In 2014, the battalion was backed by Ukraine’s then-Minister of Interior Affairs Arsen Avakov and was financed by several Ukrainian oligarchs, including wealthy Ukrainians of Jewish descent, who supported Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas. After the Azov Brigade turned back Russian separatists in Mariupol, Biletsky won a seat in the Ukrainian parliament. Biletsky was not re-elected when his term ended five years later.
To understand the Russian invasion you have to know the historical background of Euromaidan or the Maidan Uprising, a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on Nov. 21, 2013 with large protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv. The protests were sparked by the pro-Russian Ukrainian government’s sudden decision not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Protests widened, with calls for the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych and his government because of alleged widespread government corruption, the influence of oligarchs, abuse of power, and violation of human rights in Ukraine. The violent dispersal of protesters on Nov. 30 led to the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014 and the ousting of Yanukovych and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
After Yanukovych resigned, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Igor Valerevich Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian–Israeli–Cypriot billionaire, businessman and politician, as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Two days later, Putin responded to Yanukovych’s ouster by annexing Crimea and Sevastopol and starting a separatist war in the Donbas. In March 2022, Al Jazeera reported that Kolomoyskyi was a source of funding for the Azov Battalion before the group was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
Kolomoisky and two other Ukrainians were charged in the U.S. in August 2020 with creating a $5.5 billion Ponzi scheme involving a Ukraine bank. In April 2021 Kolomoyskyi and his wife and children were banned from entering the U.S. Kolomoyski also owned 70 percent of the 1+1 Media Group whose TV channel 1+1 aired “Servant of the People,” the comedy series in which Volodymyr Zelensky played the fictional role of president of Ukraine. On March 31, 2019, Zelenskyy was elected the real president.
An offshoot of the Azov Battalion was the ultra-nationalist National Militia, comprised of street vigilantes who were hired to officially monitor Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election. Members of the National Militia have been accused of possible war crimes and neo-Nazi sympathies. They reportedly patrolled the streets of the Ukrainian capital in matching urban camouflage, marching in lockstep through Kyiv with torches while attacking minority groups, including Roma and LGBT people. In a show of force on March 3, 2014, nearly 2,000 National Militia members in matching uniforms gathered in Independence Square in the capital.
The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University revealed in a 2021 study that Canada, the U.S., France, the U.K. and other Western countries have helped train far-right extremists in Ukraine. The Jerusalem post reported that one group receiving training is known as Centuria, which describes itself as a military order of “European traditionalist” military officers who aim to “defend” the “cultural and ethnic identity” of European peoples against “Brussels’ politicos and bureaucrats.” The group is led by people with ties to the Azov movement and members have been photographed giving Nazi salutes and have made extremist statements online, the Post reported. Centuria has been recruiting new members through its social network site on Telegram, which has over 1,200 followers.
The Azov Battalion also has been linked with the Rise Above Movement, a U.S.-based street-fighting gang, which sent some of its members to train with Azov in 2018.
In the wake of the March 2019 attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and other acts of domestic terror, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives moved to add three groups to the State Department list of “Foreign Terror Organizations,” including the Azov Battalion; National Action, a neo-Nazi group based in the U.K.; and Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi network from Scandinavia. The letter was signed by 39 Democratic members of Congress and no Republican agreed to it.
The Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, reported in January that “A number of prominent individuals among far-right extremist groups in the United States and Europe have actively sought out relationships with representatives of the far-right in Ukraine, specifically the National Corps and its associated militia, the Azov Regiment.”
The left wing publication, Jacobin, cited that the report noted that “US-based individuals have spoken or written about how the training available in Ukraine might assist them and others in their paramilitary-style activities at home.”