Why Is the West Arming Neo-Nazis?

There’s no doubt that the humanitarian cost of the war in Ukraine is appalling. There’s also no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin must bear the immediate blame for pulling the trigger of war. But the simplistic, dominant narrative that plucky little Ukraine is defending liberal democracy against the ravening Russian bogeyman ignores a host of inconvenient facts.

Facts that make the incessant beating of the war drums, demanding more and more Western intervention, all the more hypocritical and indefensible.

When Putin announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at dawn on February 24, he justified the ‘special military operation’ as having the goal to ‘denazify’ Ukraine, claiming that neo-Nazis were on the rise. This was dismissed immediately as being without truth or justification. Putin was guilty of peddling ‘debunked claims about why the war started’. The fact-checkers were also quick to say Putin’s claims were baseless, a propaganda narrative without any basis.

Except that it’s quite true. Perhaps Putin exaggerated Ukraine’s Nazi problem — but not by much. Even the Guardian has admitted that “it would be a mistake to simply dismiss it” — before doing just that, by comparing the widespread presence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine to the United States.

But the last I looked, the US did not have entire battalions of Nazis officially incorporated into its armed forces. And, while the Grauniad is trying to downplay Ukraine’s Nazi problem now, in 2014 the paper called neo-Nazis the country’s greatest threat.

Formed in May 2014, the Azov battalion originally consisted of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA). Both groups are xenophobic and adhere to neo-Nazi ideals. Its members wear the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol, a black swastika. Since the Ukrainian revolution in 2013 they have been fighting Russian separatists in the East.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which monitors global anti-Semitism, has described the Azov battalion as a neo-Nazi movement and a danger to Jews.

Azov is virulently racist too. During a football game at Kiev stadium in 2016, its activists beat up black Chelsea fans who had travelled to Ukraine to watch their team play.

Nor are these neo-Nazis overly fond of Muslims […] The terrorist attack at a New Zealand mosque in 2019 was cheered on by Azov members.

In fact, the Christchurch shooter claims to have been just one of thousands of foreign extremists who travelled to Ukraine to train with Azov.

Azov also has representatives in Ukraine’s parliament.

Cheerleaders for the Ukrainian regime love to point out that President Zelensky is part-Jewish. But that doesn’t mean his government, which happily bans opposition parties and jails their leaders, isn’t also happy to accommodate neo-Nazis in their ranks.

Of course, Zelensky wasn’t elected until 2019, following the controversial toppling of the previous government. But by the eve of the war, Zelensky was in dire political straits. His support had plummeted.

And he certainly hasn’t shown any inclination to get rid of the neo-Nazis.

Azov was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and, as a battalion, the group has been fighting ever since on the front lines against pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, the eastern region of Ukraine where it has been accused of inflicting inhumane treatment on civilians, using them as human shields, and torturing prisoners in the Donbas region.

The Ukrainian government has both welcomed this neo-Nazi movement and ignored its violent attacks.

The US Democrat party also has its own dirty hands, when it comes to Ukraine’s Nazi problem.

In 2016, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, the US Congress inexplicitly repealed its ban on funding Azov. This meant that the battalion could now legally receive American aid […]

According to the Daily Beast, the US went one step further and started training parts of Azov, giving them $19million in 2017. It is ironic that Biden administration, once professing horror at the very idea of white supremacists, is now in effect supporting the neo-Nazis of Ukraine and silencing any objectors by labelling them ‘Putin sympathisers’.

The Conservative Woman

It should go without question that the war in Ukraine should be condemned.

But it should also go without question that any country that recruits literal neo-Nazis in its defence forces is not a bastion of liberal democracy, and deserves our support no more than its invader.

A plague on both their houses — and keep us well out of it.