#6 Nazis Are Convenient

Is the Ukrainian right-wing hero or opportunist in war?

Andriy Biletsky in 2020 - photo credit spoilt-exile

­This article can be read as a standalone but the topic was begun in the previous essay, ‘From Nazi History to Civil War’.

I’m tugging at Ukraine’s most controversial groups. There’ll be emphasis on the Azov Batallion and The Right Sector. Svoboda and C14 will be discussed too. They’re some of the hands that have tied Ukraine into a knot. It’s a dangerous mess requiring unravelling, especially if Ukraine is to become a true democracy with ‘European values’.

Andriy Biletsky

The first thread to pull is Andriy Biletsky, a white supremacist figure linked to the Azov Battalion and other right-wing groups.

He founded the violent and ultra-nationalistic Patriot of Ukraine which was absorbed by Azov in 2014.

He founded the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA). It carried out xenophobic attacks on minority groups in Ukraine. It’s now, as a paramilitary group, fighting the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk.

In 2010, Biletsky said that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”.

Members of Biletsky’s Patriot of Ukraine formed the Right Sector which was described by the BBC as “the most radical wing of Ukraine's Maidan protest movement that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych.” Biletsky became one of its party leaders.

Biletsky co-founded the Azov Battalion and became its first commander in Mariupol. Azov was initially made up of SNA and Patriot of Ukraine members. The Dnipro and Donbas units were, in the beginning, comprised of those involved in the Euromaidan protests.

As founder and leader of the National Corps party, Biletsky’s was a mostly absent politician in Ukraine’s parliament. In 2019, he failed re-election.

The National Corps’ leaders are mostly ex-Azov. They have engaged in violence, particularly targeting the For Life party which sought peace in the Donbas. For Life’s leader, Viktor Medvedchuk, was a friend of Putin and had criticised the Maidan revolution. Medvedchuk, like most Ukrainian politicians, especially the rich ones, is a murky and controversial figure. His alleged crimes are muddier, either true or an attempt by the Ukrainian government to destroy him.

In 2020, Nationalists fired rubber bullets at a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party. 4 people were wounded. Azov and the National Corps were accused of the attacked but denied involvement though Biletsky made a statement in support of it and the Corps led a campaign to have the detainees freed. The Reporting Radicalism website states that the detainees were later linked to the Corps. Despite the arrests, there's no mention of punishment online.

Zelensky's government closed Medvedchuk's businesses, sanctioned him with support from the U.S.A. and put him under house arrest for an illegal length of time before trading him and others to Russia for Azov prisoners.

Biletsky still has ties to Azov but Vyacheslav Likhachov, a political scientist from Russia, claims there’s no substance, and that its done more for the purpose of public image.

The Right Sector & the Burning of Odessa

"Pro-Maidan" meant support for the new Ukrainian government. "Anti-Maidan" viewed the incident as an illegal overthrow of the government and sought federalisation. These groups clashed in Odessa on 2 May 2014 - 48 died and many were injured. There has never been justice.

The fighting began in the city centre, escalating from fists and stones to bullets and Molotov cocktails - 6 people died. Both sides appeared at fault but not more than the police who made little attempt to restore order and were later accused of assisting the pro-Maidan group which was allegedly led by the Right Sector.

The House of Trade Unions, in which the anti-Maidan group had barricaded themselves, was set alight. Consequently, Government bias was emphasised - the fire services, which would’ve been on alert, took 38 minutes to arrive despite being 5 minutes away. The police failed to respond for 2 hours. Many escaping the fire were beaten by the mob and/or arrested.

At a 2022 commemoration to Odessa's dead, a survivor related how his friend, Andrey Brezevsky, was beaten to death by "neo-Nazi thugs". Rather than earning sympathy, families of the victims were trolled and persecuted. Brezevsky's mother lost her university job as a result of the pressure.

No one, from either camp, has been held accountable, and no investigation into the police and the emergency services has been completed. The lack of political will, or the obstruction by politics, is in direct contravention of global treaties that Ukraine has signed.

The results of an investigation by the Council of Europe were released on 4 November 2015. It said that there was:

"...a comparable lack of confidence in the adequacy of the investigations and in the ability of the authorities to bring to justice those responsible for causing or contributing to the many deaths and injuries on that day. In particular, despite the lapse of some eighteen months after the events in question, not a single charge has been brought in respect of the deaths resulting from the fire in the Trade Union Building... The Panel has drawn attention to serious deficiencies, both structural and operational, in the independence and effectiveness of the investigations which have been so far carried out and which the Panel has found not to comply with the requirements of the European Convention or the case-law of the European Court."

The United Nations stated, in 2021, that:

"The court itself found that the investigation in the case of 19 ‘pro-federalism’ supporters was biased. The authorities only investigated the misconduct of the ‘pro-federalists’ during the clashes and not the misconduct of ‘pro-unity’ supporters. We have also observed a lack of security and safety for judges and other legal professionals threatened and attacked by ‘pro-unity’ supporters, attempting to influence their decisions..."

The European Court of Human Rights found against the Ukraine Government for abuses during Maidan, involving several cities but mostly Kiev, stating:

"The applicants had all had encounters with the police or non-State agents under police control. They alleged, among other things, police brutality... The Court found in particular that the authorities had used ill-treatment deliberately, and that the State had been responsible for the murder of one protester. It noted that many of the detention orders had been arbitrary. It considered that the authorities had deliberately tried to disrupt initially peaceful protests, using excessive violence and unlawful detention to achieve that.

Overall, it noted that the abuses found appeared to have been a strategy on the part of the authorities.

It also found that the investigations into the events had in many instances been ineffective."

In December 2021, Zelensky gave the Hero of Ukraine award to Dmytro Kotsyubaylo, a leader of the Right Sector.

In February 2021, Serhiy Sternenko, another Right Sector member, was found guilty of kidnapping, robbery and possession of an illegal weapon. The kidnapping was dropped as the statute of limitations had passed (or was allowed to pass). His 7-year sentence led to the Right Sector protesting outside Zelensky's office, spray-painting walls and breaking windows. 3 months later, Sternenko was acquitted of robbery, put on probation for the gun, and freed. He stated that his persecution was a political attack, associated with pro-Russia forces.

In an interview, Sternenko claimed to have turned down Zelensky offering him the position as head of the Odessa SBU. Sternenko’s popularity has increased since Russia invaded, his Youtube subscribers passing 1.3 million. Ukrainian media now refer to him as an “activist”.

The Right Sector’s paramilitary group is the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (UVC). Unlike most nationalist military groups, the UVC remains independent. Despite its name, most refer to them as the Right Sector. They accept foreigners, which includes anti-Russian Muslim Chechens and anti-Lukashenko Belarusians.

This notable lessening of xenophobia was indirectly remarked on by an embedded journalist in 2022:

"Right Sector suffered from an internal split when Biletskiy broke away to found the more radical Azov movement in spring 2014... Part of the rift between them was Right Sector’s clampdown on far-Right symbolism, an aesthetic Azov leant heavily into until its recent rebranding.

In a recent statement aimed at an English-language audience, the party’s leader Andriy Tarasenko insisted that Right Sector ‘is a nationalist formation; we unequivocally stand against all the fascist or Nazi things that Putin attributes to us.'"

These conflicting stories make it difficult to define the Right Sector but it’s simple for the Russian Defence Ministry which stated, on 17 July 2022, that:

“High-precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces have neutralized temporary deployment point of the Right Sector Nazi militia in Kamyshevakha. Up to 200 militants have been killed.”

My opinion is more ambiguous except for the belief that any face of the Right Sector seems inappropriate in a country being labelled as a democracy.

The Azov Battalion (now known as The Azov Regiment)

“Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment?” asks Al Jazeera News.

"Mariupol is home to a Ukrainian militia unit called the Azov Brigade, named after the Sea of Azov which links Mariupol to the rest of the Black Sea. The Azov Regiment contains far-right extremists, historically including neo-Nazis. Although they form only the tiniest fraction of Ukraine's fighting forces, this has been a useful propaganda tool for Moscow, giving it a pretext for telling Russia's population that the young men it has sent to fight in Ukraine are there to rid their neighbour of neo-Nazis. "

On 20 June 2015, John McCain, one of the most famous senators in the U.S.A., visited a Dnipro unit which has been associated with Azov.

A 2016 report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHA) has accused the Azov regiment of violating international humanitarian law.

The report detailed incidents over a period from November 2015-February 2016 where Azov had embedded their weapons and forces in civilian buildings, and displaced residents after looting their properties. The report also accused the battalion of raping and torturing detainees in the Donbas region.

The Dnipro units have been criticised for staging itself near civilians, thus endangering them.

The U.S.A. helped train Azov which gains extremist recruits from around the world. Congress rejected requests by some its members demanding that Azov be designated as a terrorist organisation. It ensured that the Azov could receive funding.

A correspondent for the US-based magazine, The Nation, wrote, in 2019, that:

“Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces.”

Swastika and SS regalia are rife on the uniforms and bodies of Azov members. For example, the uniform carries the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol, which resembles a black swastika on a yellow background. The group said it is merely an amalgam of the letters “N” and “I” which represent “national idea”.

Linked to Azov is the Hitler saluting, SS-supporting Military Order of Centuria. They received training from NATO in Canada in 2021. After that was exposed, the Canadian military gave an unconvincing denial, claiming Russian propaganda instead of addressing the facts. Ironically, Canada’s training program is called Operation Unifier and has been moved to the UK.

Journalist Lindsey Snell provides a look into Ukraine’s contentious troops on the front line. She’s one of those rare journalists who risk their lives truth-seeking. Unsurprisingly, her reporting on the Ukraine war has been ignored by mainstream media. However, Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper's podcast channel, Useful Idiots, introduced me. I then read Snell's co-written article, "I Have A Chance to Kill some Russians", which is based on interviews with foreign soldier volunteers.

"When I was around Kiev, we trained a far-right Azov group. And there we saw lots of Swastikas and Nazi symbols. I remember walking the formation and saying, ‘Was that a fucking SS logo?’ I had the translator tell the Azov guys they had to take the Nazi stuff off, but they wouldn’t. So, I told the higher command, ‘We’ll have people coming and giving us aid, and the second they see those fucking symbols, they’ll be done. We won't get anything else from them.'"

Azov, like other organisations, has learnt to rebrand itself in 2022. Late that year, Azov met members of Congress, a mixture of Republicans and Democrats. It was the start of a marketing tour for weapons, donations and Public sympathy. It worked.

The Greyzone webzine pointed out that the New York Times had switched from labelling Azov as “openly neo-Nazi” to “celebrated”.

Mos Robeson’s article, ‘Now, All of You Are Azov’, details the tour. At a church auction, three Azov Regiment patches, featuring their wolfsangel, a Nazi runic symbol, were explained as an “N” and an “I” atop each other, representing “National Identity”.

Robeson pointed out that Borys Potapenko, a member of the Azov delegation, is the international coordinator of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). As explained in the previous essay, Bandera is Ukraine’s far-right icon and the OUN collaborated with the Nazi’s, killing many Jews.

Jimmy Dore, a famous American podcaster, was critical in an episode called ‘Ukraine Military Officially Adopts Nazi Slogan’. He points out that the Ukrainian armed forces have adopted "Slava Ukraini!", translated as "Glory to Ukraine”. Trite sounding until you learn that it was popularized during World War II by Nazi-affiliated nationalist militia.

Stanford University has an ongoing report on the Azov Battalion. Matching the about-turn of the West, Standford was criticised by Putin for hosting the tour group.

Bellingcat may face criticism for its alleged links to the CIA but that makes their article on Azov more compelling:

Azov has made attempts to attract “American extremists” to its war. In 2016 it contacted Andrew Oneschuk, an ‘imminent member” of the violent American neo-Nazi organization, Atomwaffen Division. Linked to several murders, Oneschuk was murdered, and explosives found in his home.

In 2018, "the political wing of Azov, the National Corps, supported an effort by Joachim Furholm, a Norwegian citizen and self-described 'national socialist revolutionary', to bring American right-wingers to Ukraine to fight against Russian aggression."

Members of the American Nazi group, Rise Above Movement (RAM), met Azov leaders in Ukraine. “RAM were charged in the U.S. in connection with violence at political rallies, including in Charlottesville.”

In January 2018, Azov illegally rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to supposedly restore order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community.

Ukraine’s national guard tweeted a 2022 video showing Azov fighters coating their bullets in pig fat, allegedly to be used against Muslim Chechens supporting the Russian invasion.

Azov, like most right-wing groups in Ukraine, is homophobic.

As example of Azov’s ties to the Ukrainian government, there’s Vadym Troyan. He was formerly a colonel and the deputy commander of the Azov Battalion. He was chief of police for the Kyiv Region from 2014 to 2021, and Deputy Head of the National Police of Ukraine until 2021.

The bigger ties are Jewish billionaires whose actions confuse the antisemitism issue. I’ll address them furtheron.

Svoboda

Svoboda, which translates as “Freedom”, is an ultranationalist political party that has used Nazi symbolism such as the Waffen SS insignia and the number 88 (which represents the 8th letter of the alphabet, thus HH meaning "Heil Hitler").

Svoboda has repeatedly celebrated Stepan Bandera as a hero. Bandera, as mentioned earlier, was a Nazi WW2 collaborator to the extermination of Jews, Poles and Gypsies. He’s a hero to Ukrainian Nazis.

John McCain, the U.S. Republic senator who visited Dnipro, made an earlier appearance in the Ukraine. He was one of the politicians who addressed the Euromaidan crowd in 2014, assisting in the toppling of Yanukovich who was seen to be a pro-Russian president. In fact, Yanukovich he was more in the middle, but that wasn’t enough for the U.S.A.

Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Svoboda Party, joined McCain on stage. They were later photographed shaking hands. McCain told the crowd, “We are here to support your just cause”.

Only 2 years earlier, the European Parliament had warned its members against associating with the “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic” Svoboda. When the EU did an about-turn after Euromaidan, former German MP Dieter Spöri criticised them.

“The EU has simply accepted Svoboda as a player in Ukraine’s provisional government. But in light of the EU’s value system, this move is not only embarrassing but scandalous… [It] diametrically opposes our understanding of democracy… This move is shameful, scandalous and politically dangerous.”

Salon magazine's description of Euromaidan included:

"White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev’s occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin. After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established autonomous zones in and around Kiev. An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square."

With the Ukrainian government overthrown, Svoboda gained several ministerial posts, even acting as Minister of Defence and General Prosecutor, and the civil war in the Donbas began.

The Minsk 2 agreement of 2015, which was meant to end the war, required a constitutional amendment to allow Donetsk and Luhansk limited self-rule. However, it was considered to have no chance of being passed in Parliament. But it was an opportunity for vicious grandstanding. Gordon Hahn described what happened:

"The Svoboda Party, led by their anti-Semitic and Russophobe chairman Oleh Tyahnibok, attempted to storm the hall of Ukraine’s parliament, the Supreme Rada…

Video and photos show Tyahnibok [Tyahnybok] and his deputy Yurii Sirotyuk acting aggressively towards riot police and then Sirotyuk beating a path to the building using a rubber truncheon on police. Tyahnibok’s [so-called] ‘freedom’ fighters then tossed a grenade and shot firearms at police... The grenade explosion caused one policeman to lose part of his foot, and fifteen police were reported wounded and injured as a result of the battle…

Right Sector apparently played a separate game on this day, setting up a road block on a Kiev street leading to parliament in a failed attempt to prevent deputies from getting to the Rada to vote. Since the violence, Right Sector and its leader have come out in full support for Tyahnibok and Svoboda.”

Since then, Svoboda's national support has dwindled but the 2020 local elections won them 19 mayors.

Svoboda's paramilitary group for the Donbas, The Sich Battalion, was accepted and placed under the command of the Ukrainian Government, designated as a "Special Tasks Patrol Police". When laws were altered, disallowing political parties to enlist troops, official ties were cut but the battalion remained.

Respected analyst Aaron Maté wrote that:

"The fascists have blocked peace in the Donbas at every turn. When the Ukrainian government voted on a special law advancing the Minsk accords in August 2015, the Svoboda party and other far-right groups led violent clashes that killed three Ukrainian soldiers and left dozens wounded. Then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had signed Minsk at a time when President Obama was resisting heavy bipartisan pressure to arm Ukraine, got the message and refused to uphold Ukraine's end of the bargain.”

C14

C14 was a youth project of Svoboda. After Euromaidan, it became independent. They have been involved in the civil war in the Donbas and numerous skirmishes inland.

C14 is named after 14 words spoken by David Lane, a famous American Nazi:

"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

The Reporting Radicalism website states that:

“On December 8, 2012, members of Svoboda/C14 attacked an LGBT+ rights rally in Kyiv… C14/Svoboda members also took credit for attacks on the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv, as well as its chairman, Vasyl Cherepanyn…

In 2013, they organized a Youth Football Cup in Kyiv, under the tagline “for white children only” (it was later changed to ‘against modern football’).

In 2013, [its leader] Yevhen Karas spoke at a neo-Nazi march in Lviv...

On February 17, 2014, during the Maidan protests, members of C14 attacked left-wing activist Illia Vlasyuk, who was the assistant to a foreign journalist at the time, near the Kyiv City State Administration Building…

Two C14 members, Andrii Medvedko and Denys Polishchuk, were charged for the murder of Oles Buzyna, a writer and journalist with pro-Russian views. He was killed near the Kyiv Prosecutor's Office on April 16, 2015. The trial was still ongoing at Kyiv’s Shevchenkivksyi District Court at the end of 2019.

On November 6, 2016, members of C14 (along with members of the right-wing radical groups Right Sector and the Azov Civil Corps), attempted an attack on the Citadel social center in Lviv – which belongs to the left-wing nationalist group Autonomous Resistance.17

On November 16, 2017, C14 members attacked former member Dmytro Riznychenko. Previously, he had publicly accused C14 of collaborating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)…”

In 2018, Roma were attacked 6 times. Not all involved C14 but sparked by their attack on a Roma settlement in Kyiv, on 20 April 2018 (Adolf Hitler’s birthday). The Grayzone reported that C14, supported by the Kiev police, led a raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station.

A C14 leader was seen as part of an anti-Roma mob in Irpin in 2021. The police never stopped them. The Mayor wouldn't condemn them.

In March 2022, 4 Roma women had their faces painted green and were tied to the same pole in the city of L'viv. A photo showed what appears to be members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

C14 appears protected by the police, army and courts. Its child youth camps received sponsorship from the Ukrainian government.

Hannah Rosenthal, the USA State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, accused the New York Times of whitewashing C14 and criticised "the lax standards with which Western media has treated the disturbing reality in [Ukraine]."

More Nationalist Forces

I may have highlighted them, but Azov, Right Sector, Svoboda and C14 are not alone. Tolerance by the government can be interpreted as collaboration. A lack of citizen resistance may mean silent support from some and fear by others. Those aren’t practical qualities towards the majority-espoused aspiration for democracy.

The Associated Press posted an article entitled, 'Ukrainian embassy draws U.S. citizens seeking to fight in war'.

“The official and independent security experts say some of the potential foreign fighters may be white supremacists, who are believed to be fighting on both sides of the conflict. They could become more radicalized and gain military training in Ukraine, thereby posing an increased danger when they return home.

‘These are men who want adventure, a sense of significance and are harking back to World War II rhetoric,’ said Anne Speckhard, who has extensively studied foreigners who fought in Syria and elsewhere as director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.”

'Out of Control, Ukraine's Rogue Militias' is an unfortunate title for an even-handed and valuable documentary that you can watch on Youtube. Reporter Ben Makuch seeks out the militias who fight the war whilst distrusting their own government.

There’s an anachronistic moment, exampling the bizarreness of the civil war, when a soldier on leave, visiting a museum, says:

"Just a few hours from the front, is Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. It's a bit strange being back here. It feels like life goes on as normal. At Ukraine’s National War Museum, it's business as usual... It's weird being in a museum with an exhibition on a war you were just in. And advertising the exact location where you definitely saw actual fighting. It's almost like celebrating it as if it is over, but it's not."

Time Magazine’s ‘Inside A White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine’ is another worthwhile Youtube video. It gave me the feeling that the right-wing militia are more cultural than benign.

That’s further evident in football racism that has been reported on many times - for example, by The Guardian (2012), Associated Press (2015) and Hromadske (2019).

Amnesty International warned, in 2018, that:

“Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.”

The same year, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Front Line Defenders jointly stated that extremist groups were acting under “a veneer of patriotism” and “traditional values”, and that the government allowed them to operate under an “atmosphere of near total impunity that cannot but embolden these groups to commit more attacks.”

In 2019, “Zelensky’s former prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, attended a neo-Nazi-organized rock concert and gave a speech while positioned in front of a swastika flag."

Guy Mettan, a Swiss politician and journalist, was highly critical of Zelensky and Ukrainian extremism:

“[Zelensky] appointed Oleksander Poklad, nicknamed ‘the strangler’ because of his taste for torture, as head of the SBU’s counter-intelligence unit. In December, two months before the war, it was the turn of another Pravy Sektor leader, Commander Dmytro Kotsuybaylo, to be rewarded with the title of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ while, a week after the start of hostilities, Zelensky had the regional governor of Odessa replaced by Maksym Marchenko, commander of the ultranationalist Aïdar battalion.

Mettan pointed out that the consequences of radicalism being in charge is the suspension of the law.

"Anton Gerashenko, announced on his Telegram account the murder of Volodymyr Strok, mayor and former deputy of the small town of Kremnina. Suspected of having collaborated with the Russians, he was kidnapped and tortured before being executed. On 7 March, the mayor of Gostomel was killed because he had tried to negotiate a humanitarian corridor with the Russian military. On 24 March, the mayor of Kupyansk asked Zelensky to release his daughter, who had been kidnapped by SBU agents. At the same time, one of the Ukrainian negotiators was found dead after being accused of treason by the nationalist media. No less than eleven mayors have been reported missing to date, including in regions never occupied by the Russians...

On the Ukraine 24 channel, it was the head of the army’s medical service who said he had given the order ‘to castrate all Russian men because they are subhuman and worse than cockroaches’.”

Thanks to the USA, the Nazis of Ukraine are now well-armed. These patriots may prove to be Ukraine's next big problem.

Fahruddin Sharafmal, a TV presenter, expressed severe Russophobia on Ukraine’s Channel 24:

"Since you call me a Nazi, I’ll adhere to the doctrine of Adolf Eichmann and will do everything in my power to ensure that your children never live on this earth... It’s not about peace. We need victory. And if we have to slaughter all your families to do it, I’ll be the first to do it. Glory to the nation! And let’s hope there will [not] be such a nation as Russia and the Russians on this earth again.”

This has been explained away as a reaction to a friend dying in the war. Does it? Or does it suggest that some cover their true feelings with a veneer of civility.

Did something similar happen in 2021 when Ukraine and the U.S.A were the only countries to vote against the UN General Assembly’s draft resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

To the Media, Ukraine’s Nazi groups have softened their tone, generally using descriptions such as “patriotism” and “protecting family values”. But their history makes it easy to be cynical. It’s as if sugar-coating their images goes hand-in-hand with receiving weapons from the candy democracies of the West.

They’re embraced by Ukrainian politicians because hate buys votes. For the oligarchs, Nazis are convenient for the destabilisation of government, and the pursuit (and protection) of wealth.

The Oligarchs

Serhiy Taruta was the governor of Donetsk and the founder of one of the country’s biggest companies, the Industrial Union of Donbas. Igor Kolomoisky was the governor of Dnipropetrovsk.

Both had business interests in Crimea, Donbas and Dnipropetrovsk which may be a reason why they funded the Azov, Dnipro and Donbas paramilitary units before they were incorporated into the Ukrainian army.

Putin labelled Kolomoisky as a crook whom the public never wanted as governor. The U.S. later proved Putin right.

Kolomoisky is alleged to have financially backed Zelensky’s 2019 campaign for the presidency. Kolomoisky’s television network ran the comedy show that made Zelensky famous and gave name to his party, ‘Servant of the People’. Zelensky is also infamously involved with Kolomoisky through offshore companies exposed in the Panama Papers. I’ll return to that topic in a later episode.

Putin was ironically vindicated by the U.S. when it sanctioned Kolomoisky for corruption in 2021. However, the U.S.’s move seemed to be virtue signalling, barring Kolomoisky from entering their country but not penalising him financially. Zelensky, the ‘anti-corruption President’, hypocritically welcomed the news but took no action.

Members of the European Council of Jewish Communities protested Kolomosisky after he was alleged to buy its presidency.  In response, he and Vadim Rabinovich, another Jewish oligarch, set up a rival organisation.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, the director of the American Jewish Committee, said, “Most of the established Jewish community leadership organizations stand in a kind of formal opposition to this newly formed group.”

Notably, Rabinovich had previously been imprisoned in Russia for embezzlement of State funds. He ran for the Presidency of Ukraine, stating that he was a unifying candidate that would prove that Ukraine was not antisemitic. He only received 2% of the vote. He tried to impeach Zelensky for closing three television stations in 2021 which was responded to with him being placed on a government list of traitors for Russia.

Kolomoisky, Rabinovich and Zelensky disprove the Jewish conspiracy trope. Ukraine, as it has always been, is at the mercy of the winds of money and power. Nazis are convenient.

Alexey Navalny

The irony is that there are white nationalists, outside Ukraine, who admire Putin. And there's that feeling that some online misogynists find him to be a father figure. Putin’s not a Nazi but he is an autocrat.

Consequently, I'm an admirer of Navalny's courage and anti-corruption fight as much as I'm horrified by his imprisonment in Russai. I appreciated Daniel Roher’s documentary about him. The fact that I applauded Navalny, physically clapped my hands while watching alone, is tempered by thought after emotion.

I cannot accept his nationalist leanings which his supporters don't address. They don't because Navalny, to the Western governments and associated NGOs, is, like Ukraine, another tool in the box meant to topple Putin.

I believe that the reduction in Navalny’s hate speech doesn't diminish the past he has refused to denounce. The documentary barely touched the issue and easily accepted Navalny’s evasiveness. That’s a case for propaganda. And Bellingcat, which features prominently, is another hero needing questioning.

In 2021, Al Jazeera asked, “Has Alexey Navalny moved on from his nationalist past?” It's article included:

"In a 2007 pro-gun rights video, Navalny presents himself as a 'certified nationalist' who wants to exterminate 'flies and cockroaches' – while bearded Muslim men appear in [the video's] cutaways."

Adults rarely change. The logical conclusion is that Navalny remains a nationalistic xenophobe.

However, my world view becomes more nuanced the older I get. I’m not condemning Navalny. Churchill was an alcoholic. Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob. And China represses its ‘dissidents’ whilst dragging hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Similarly, being Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian-speaking doesn’t define Zelensky.

We cannot afford to become like the American left and right which only sees topics as black or white, support or cancel, no matter the damage done to their social fabric. Our world is a complicated place because us humans are complicated. But we should be alert.

Navalny’s fight against crime deserves applause and awards, but I cannot hold him in the same high regard as the less ambiguous Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who suffer from a double-talking U.S.A.

[Update: Navalny died on 16 February 2024].

Wanted: Jews

Racism is abhorrent, a shit-stain on humankind. Not addressing important issues for the fear of being labelled racist or anti-Semitic is cowardice favouring falsehood. Our lesser qualities must be addressed in order for us to become greater.

Israel embraces the role of eternal victim and politically capitalises on it better than other groups. It’s lobbying in the U.S.A. is well-known but its European endeavours less so.

It’s unsurprising that Israel hasn’t objected to American and Ukrainian Jews supporting neo-Nazi groups such as the Right Sector. For example, Victoria Nuland, was introduced in ‘Is It NATO's Fault’. Undoubtedly a devil to Ukraine, she previously participated in the 2014 overthrow of its government. It was also on her recommendation, in 2021, that Zelensky appointed the Nazi, Dmitro Yarosh, as advisor to the army chief.

When Zelensky ran for the Presidency, in 2019, he stated that: "Stepan Bandera is a hero for some percentage of Ukrainians, and that's normal, that's cool."

With the article 'Israel stunned by Ukrainian neo-Nazis', Thierry Meyssan takes a deep dive into the Jewish relationship between Ukraine, Israel and the U.S. It's a must-read of deceit such as Zelensky trying to gain favour by lying that Russia had bombed the Babi Yar Memorial to the Jews, Poles and Roma that had ironically been slaughtered in WW2 by Nazis with the assistance of Ukrainians. Meyssan describes the aftermath with:

“Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Preskov, invited the Yad Vashem Memorial [of Israel] to send a delegation to Ukraine to see for themselves, under the protection of the Russian army, what President Putin was talking about… A great silence followed…”

Politics isn’t about morals or religion, only personal gain.

It was reported that "Israel is keen on bringing in Ukrainian Jewish refugees for the purpose of maintaining Jewish demographic supremacy over the Palestinian population.”

That may sound like propaganda, but the policy has been long known. The Israelis have made little attempt to hide it, and don’t have to because Western media, which counts the most, doesn’t report on it in meaningful fashion.

The facts are simple. The Jewish population is decreasing whilst the Arab population increases. In order to suppress the minority, the majority must ensure majority.

Up to 250,000 Ukrainians have the right to access the Law of Return which includes free plane tickets, mortgage discount and monthly cash payments.

Europe's Jewish exodus started long before the war. Russian Jews have been welcomed too but recently Putin moved to ban the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency which assists emigration to Israel. This has led to a war of words wherein Israel accuses Russia of war crimes in Ukraine whilst Russia points out that Israel is bombing Palestinians.

Nazis are Everywhere

Then there’s reverse Nazi marketing.

‘Zelensky seeks support of U.S. Jews in face of Russia's “Nazi behavior”', was The Washington Examiner’s provocative title.

“During a Zoom call with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Zelensky, who is Jewish, likened the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the terrible actions of Nazi Germany and warned ‘all of these millions of [Ukrainians] are going to be exterminated.’

‘All of this happened during Nazi times,’ Zelensky said. He decried what he said was ‘Nazi behavior’ by Russia, adding, ‘I can't even qualify this in any different manner. The survival of the Ukrainian nation — the question will be the same as antisemitism.’"

The Best Countries Survey of 78 countries ranked Israel, Ukraine and the USA in its top 10 for racial inequality. Xenophobia and the rise of the right is a feature of Europe. I’m not casting the first stone because my country of South Africa may be worse. Relevant to this episode is that reality is a noose around what we’re led to believe is democracy, and the consequent fake war cry for it.

Nationalism isn’t all bad, a necessary component to steadying a country’s economy and protecting its borders. But the negative aspect of racism exists in all countries, especially in those whose democracies which are younger or nearer to conflicts. It’s not the fault of migrants seeking a better life, but of governments seeking power abroad. Their foreign policies don’t match their claimed liberal ideologies at home.

The West’s military, economic and political interference in weaker countries of brown and black people has been good for corporate profits but bad for the citizens of the aggressors. Additionally, there are climate change refugees and the usual flight from corrupt dictators and corrupt governments. Illegal migration is a global disaster, and a nightmare for wealthier countries.

Whilst the US, Germany, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine sell weapons to those who should not have them, Europe got flooded with migrants. The countries suffering the most from this are along the transport routes to the preferred destinations. This includes the nations of the Mediterranean and the Western coast of the Black Sea. It’s easy for frustration to become hate.

That hate is also evident at destination, in those better-off countries. Migrants don’t integrate, but instead set up their own communities whilst receiving the same state benefits.

Julia Ioffe is a Putin critic and is readily quoted or interviewed by the Media. She has a sharp mind, is rich in historic knowledge, and articulates beautifully. She makes good argument for the West but addresses some pitfalls. In the Frontline documentary, ‘Putin’s Road to War’, she raised:

“What does that mean for Europe? A million people fled in a week... to some of the most xenophobic countries in Europe, who right now are greeting them with open arms because they're their neighbours and they're white and Christian and look like them, but how long does that last? How many more refugees can the West absorb? We saw with the refugee flows from Syria, they gave us Brexit; they gave us the rise and the empowerment of the far right in Germany and Hungary, in the Czech Republic and France. Is this going to keep emboldening the far right?”

I agree with her. After only a few months, there’s already less tolerance, what people are calling compassion fatigue. There’s going to be a backlash. In some places, like France and Poland, it will exaggerate the problems that are already there. And for every Ukrainian that remains befriended, surely that will mean one more black or brown migrant turned away.

This American Life, an award-winning podcast, featured the Ukrainian war experience in 'The Other Front Lines'. In its second segment, ‘Munachi and the War’, a Nigerian medical student shares the racism he experienced. He was stopped from boarding a train that had empty seats. He walked to the border where he told to go to the back of the line. Ukrainians wouldn't allow him in their car to cross the border. At first, he wasn't allowed a hotel room. He finally got to Germany where Ukrainians get temporary residence, but he and other foreign students did not.

Korrine Sky, another student doctor, was born in Zimbabwe but her family lives in the UK. She told Elle magazine about her experience of racism at the Ukrainian border. After escaping a city that had been bombed, she chose a route away from Poland, after hearing many stories on Twitter about Africans experiencing problems there. She spent days waiting at the Ukrainian/Romanian border, without food and tampons (whilst she was having her period). Despite minus temperatures, she and fellow students were made to leave their car and join a long queue that only had Africans and Arabs in it.

Conversely, fair-skinned Ukrainians had a radically better experience. As related in Time Magazine:

"Very few of them speak Polish. There are other buses to take them to Warsaw, which is about a four-hour drive. Some of the refugees were meeting family and friends in Warsaw. I met a young mother and her son who said they were going to Austria. Another family says they are going to Germany. They all have a three-month window where they can travel anywhere in the E.U. without needing a visa or to apply for asylum. Dariusz pointed out a young mother and her three children who were going to Ireland, where a family offered them a place to stay."

Comparably, Ukrainians are admitted into the U.S.A. whilst Haitians are flown back to their horror country, and South Americans are left to the whims of Mexican cartels.

What the Ukrainian university failed to teach foreign students is that when fleeing a European war, it's best to be European white.

Utopia is Fantasy

My desire to live on an island with worldly, music-digging, podcast-loving, bikini-clad women is an absurdist fantasy. Truth is a kaleidoscope of mixed cultures and sexualities, and powerful religion countered by spiritual indifference. Consequently, it’s logical to embrace the entertainment and education of diversity whilst avoiding the worst of it.

That isn’t enough for a minority who use hate to gain lop-sided power. If every human were white, spoke the same language and were farmers, they would seek uncommon ground. Those well-spoken would wage class war with the less pronounced. Pig farmers would hate sheep farmers whilst vegans would battle carnivores. It could even be that taller people fought shorties, bald heads butted the hairy, green eyes glared at brown eyes, and big breasts swung at little breasts. And woe to bushy women when the Brazilian wax fashionistas encounter them.

When I look at Ukraine and Russia, and further afield to Georgia and Armenia, my metaphor lives whilst my heart dies. I’m depressed at people who have so much in common finding fault in each other. It’s tragic and ridiculous.

I, the outsider, long to meet and appreciate them all. I’m a fool in face of the fact that we’re animals, evolved to covet and steal, lie and kill, in the hope of being alpha.

Similarly, war is a layered with perspectives. Rarely is one side all good and the other all bad. There are fabulous Russians and Ukrainians whilst racists walk among them.

But I’ve no mixed opinion of journalists who fail to report the facts. Misreporting has stoked this war.

One of the greatest repeated lies is that Ukrainians were defeating an incompetent Russia. Ukraine, through destruction, has already lost. It would long ago have declared itself loser if the U.S.A. wasn’t using it for its proxy war. Just as the Media changed its tune about Nazis, so it’ll change its tune about this war.

Facebook designated Azov as dangerous, placing it in banned company such as the Ku Klux Klan. However, it deviously lifted the ban the day Russia began its invasion.

The message is akin to those black students who battled to escape a white man’s war - only good Nazis fight on the side of the U.S.A.

Is Zelensky Strong or Weak?

I admired Zelensky for rising to the challenge. He seemed brave and visible, and used words to clever effect. I now know him to be another liar.

He rose to power, gaining an incredible 73% of the vote, because he promised to fight corruption and offered peace in Donbas. In his winning speech, he said:

“[I’m] not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings [and] prepared to give up my own position, as long as peace arrives.”

He didn’t, eventually burdening that contradiction with louder appeals for Ukraine to join NATO.

Harmoniously, if he’d sued for peace early on, it would have cost him his position, maybe sent him into exile. Maybe the West would’ve been less reluctant to support Ukraine if it had blatantly ejected him. Maybe many more of his fellow countrymen would be alive, students studying instead of carrying guns, their homes of brick not rubble.

That rubble must include the lives of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine. It’s a human rights issue that they have been ignored for almost a decade. It’s criminal that so little media has shown us their wretched lives in a way that we remember the Fukushima tsunami or New Orleans flooding. And those that did suddenly stopped doing so when the narrative change to democracy versus totalitarianism which, in our propaganda world, means the good U.S.A. versus bad Putin.

But you can recognise their pain by watching the award winning 2017 documentary, ‘The Distant Barking of Dogs’. It gives valuable perspective on what it was like to be a child in Eastern Ukraine during the civil war. When the invasion began, the creators assisted the evacuation of their protagonists.

The simply titled ‘Donbass’ is a 2016 documentary by Anne-Laure Bonnet (not to be confused with the fictionalized 2018 movie with the same name). You’ll be convinced that Ukraine was killing its own people before Russia invaded.

PBS’s 10-minute ‘Desire to Break Free from Ukraine Keeps Devastated Donetsk Fighting​’ is available on YouTube.

I’m not in Zelensky’s shoes so I cannot only criticise but also recognise the possibility of him being in an almost impossible position.

Aaron Maté, made argument for the U.S. having screwed Zelensky early in his Presidency. His article, 'Siding with Ukraine's far-right, US sabotaged Zelensky's mandate for peace', sums it up well. The U.S. had no intention of supporting the peace process but was determined to deliver more weapons and thus bait Russia. Maté points out that in 2019, Stephen F. Cohen, an American expert on Russian, begged Washington to back Zelensky's peace mandate, warning that:

"His life is being threatened by a quasi-fascist movement. He can’t go forward with full peace negotiations unless America has his back."

As stated earlier, the Right Sector was formed by Andriy Biletsky and Dmitro Yarosh. The latter, with regards a peace attempt, said:

“[Zelensky] would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the revolution and the war."

The Azov Battalion defied Zelensky’s call to lay down their arms. If Zelensky had continued, another right-wing coup was possible. Zelensky backed down.

Adam Schiff, the chair of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed the USA’s self-serving agenda with:

"The United States aids Ukraine and her people, so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here."

In a tweet, Maté, responded with:

"If you don't want Russia to fight Ukraine over there, don’t use Ukraine to fight Russia from here."

Moreover, Zelensky is but one man. He was elected as a non-political figure, accused of being funded by an oligarch, never had the support of his people when he needed it, made alliance with nationalists, and was soon regarded as becoming part of the status quo. He was deeply unpopular before the war began and would never have won the next election. Half the world may cheer for him, millions of women want to have sex with him, but this war is likely to only be a momentary Presidential booster. If he doesn’t get killed by the Russians or his own people, and if the U.S. doesn’t blame him for losing the war, I’m distrustfully assured that he’ll make a fortune on the Western speech circuit for the 1%. If not, he’ll become the hero of the decade.

Convenience versus Inconvenience

Radicals care more for their countries than the majority who do their best to avoid conflict, and thus hang themselves helplessly on the political pendulum. The result is that many untrained citizens are now forced to fight and be killed.

Weak countries will be used by stronger ones. Weak countries will make internal comprises so that their identity is unsure except in press releases. Consequently, Ukraine is an ideological and literal mess. The West and Russia are taking advantage of that.

For the former, Nazis are inconvenient, thus whitewashed. Their journalists no longer addresses the radicalism they once condemned.

Europe may be following the will of the U.S.A. but is blinkered, not blinded.

Zelensky's request for assistance, to the Greek parliament on 8 April 2022, was mired in controversy after he shared a video message from Mikhail, a soldier in the Azov Battalion. The backlash was immediate and the Greek government was forced to apologise to the Public.

Yanis Varoufakis, founder of the MeRA25, said that:

"Our parliament did not invite a Nazi. It invited the President of Ukraine. It was the President of Ukraine who brought along the Nazi. And, yes, it was our Parliament’s Speaker who, by failing to intervene, failed to defend our Parliament."

In a frightening article, posted in November 2022, The Grayzone reported that:

“Italian police announced a series of raids against the neo-Nazi Order of Hagal organization. Accused of stockpiling weapons and planning terror attacks, the group has established operational ties to the Ukrainian Azov Battalion… The [5 arrested] Hagal members are accused of plotting terrorist attacks on civilian and police targets. A sixth member of the Hagal group, now considered a fugitive, is in Ukraine and embedded with the Azov Battalion…”

The Order of Hagal was also in contact with the Military Order of Centuria, previously mentioned for their Canadian NATO training.

Conclusion

Worse than Nazism and other forms of extremism never dying is its current growth. No politically correct social media website site in love with banning truthseekers can magic that fact away. Ukraine is the tip of a dangerous spear that can only be blunted if the problem is named. That the spear is held by hands in many countries means that it’s our problem too.

The Belgian city of Ypres cancelled an August 2022 music festival after realising that it was to be a meeting point for right-wingers from afar as Finland, Germany and Italy. Belgian intelligence considered the performers to be linked to Nazism and fascism.

In 2022, the UK’s Institute for Race Relations published: ‘Policing: A Growing Culture of Extremism?’. Germany’s Government is well aware of the problem with its Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) scandal. It’s being accused of covering up the Nazi organisation’s crimes which include murder, bombings and bank robberies. Vice reported that far-right groups are infiltrating the U.S.A’s military.

For Putin, the existence of modern Nazis is convenient excuse towards strengthening Russia’s border. It’s convenient for Putin to ignore Russian white nationalists that support him whilst praising Azov’s damaging defeat in Mariupol, its home base. Nevertheless, he’s outplaying the West in the moral propaganda game.

Russia’s Supreme Court listed the Azov Regiment as a terrorist organization on 2 August 2022.

In December 2022, Russia put forward the annual resolution to the United Nations (UN) to combat Nazism. 105 voted for it, including India and South Africa. 52 were against, essentially Western nations and their allies which included the U.S.A., Ukraine, Germany and Italy.

The American argument that Putin was using the topic to justify his actions in Ukraine cannot overcome the moral need to fight extremism. Real liberalism would’ve voted for it, or at least committed to submitting their own version. The saddening weakening of global democracy is tied to democratic citizens not believing the morals their representatives claim to represent.

The Ukrainian Government gets the last word. On 2 January 2023, they tweeted:

"The complete and supreme victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be when the Russian Empire ceases to exist."

They were quoting Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera.

This was essay #6 in the series ‘Putin Isn't the Only Monster in Ukraine’. See essay #7, ‘Bloody Bakhmut is Falling… into Zelensky’s Shame’.

These episodes on Nazism owe a lot of thanks to the journalists and human rights activists who’ve bravely investigated and challenged this topic. I encourage you to follow the links I’ve provided.