Vladimir Putinâs February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has already resulted in millions of losersâchief among them the civilians whoâve been tortured, murdered, forced to become refugees, or forced to spend their days worrying about loved ones fighting Russia.
But there are also winners: the neofascists whom Putinâs war has turned into heroes.
For seven years, Western institutions have warned about Ukraineâs Azov Movement, which began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in 2014 and became notorious for its worldwide recruitment of extremists.
Then came Russiaâs invasion. Within months, Azov fighters were being feted in Congress and at Stanford University. MSNBC swooned over a Ukrainian soldier whose Twitter account overflowed with neo-Nazi images. Facebook made the stunning decision to allow posts praising the Azov Battalion, even though the company admitted that it was a hate group.
This overnight normalization of white supremacy was possible because Western institutions, driven by a zeal to ignore anything negative about our Ukrainian allies, decided that a neo-Nazi military formation in a war-torn nation had suddenly and miraculously stopped being neo-Nazi.
But the truth is that this is an easily debunked fantasy spun out by a handful of propagandists. Yet Western media has repeated their falsehoods with a neglect for the basic tenets of journalism that stretches beyond the fog of war into the realm of intentional blindness.
Our whitewashing of Azov takes place amid a deadly surge of white supremacy that stretches from New Zealand to Buffalo, N.Y. That makes this a story about more than Ukraine. Itâs about the deepest, nothing-matters cynicism that screams about 300 neo-Nazis in polo shirts yet embraces a brigade of battle-hardened extremists. Itâs about warning that white supremacyâespecially after being mainstreamed by Donald Trump and Fox Newsâis an existential threat to our society, while making it clear that some exclusions apply.
Itâs about âgood people on both sides.â
FROM STREET GANG TO A HUB OF WHITE SUPREMACY
Azov was born shortly after the 2014 uprising that ousted Ukraineâs pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Those events triggered a counter-revolt by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraineâs eastern regions who supported Yanukovych.
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It quickly became apparent that the Ukrainian Army had been severely degraded by decades of corruption, leaving the new government struggling to combat the rebels. Into that void stepped far-right groups that formed volunteer battalions to fight for Kyiv. One of these groups, created out of the Patriot of Ukraine neo-Nazi gang, gained fame by helping restore Ukrainian government control over the city of Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov. It became known as the Azov Battalion.
Azovâs tactics and ideology were exactly what youâd expect from a paramilitary element formed by neo-Nazis. Its insignia features popular neo-Nazi symbols: the Wolfsangel (a runic double hook) and the Sonnenrad (sun wheel). Since then, the unit has become infamous for torture and for its aggressive recruitment of white supremacists from around the globe.
In November 2014, Kyiv sought to gain control of the Azov Battalion by absorbing it into the government. Azov became a regiment in Ukraineâs National Guard, which made it a potential direct recipient of American aid. The prospect of organized white fanatics being aided by the US quickly came to the attention of Congress, where lawmakers attempted to ban the Pentagon from working with Azov, though they were ultimately unsuccessful. Later, in 2018, a ban on providing US military aid to the Azov Regiment did pass.
The media also ramped up scrutiny. âVolunteer Ukrainian Unit Includes Nazis,â USA Today reported in March 2015. The Daily Beast followed with a piece titled âHow Many Neo-Nazis Is the U.S. Backing in Ukraine?â
Patriot of Ukraineâthe gang whose members formed the original core of the Azov Battalionâalways had geopolitical ambitions. Its leader, Andriy Biletsky, who was Azovâs first commander, capitalized on its notoriety to develop political and street-muscle wings for the Azov brand. The regiment soon became just one part of a far larger entity: the Azov Movement.
In 2016, Biletsky, who by then had left the regiment, established the far-right National Corps Party, headed by Azov veterans. Ukraine, despite Putinâs lies, is not teeming with fascists, which is why the National Corps has performed abysmally in elections. Where it did find success was in global networking with extremists.
Azov began sponsoring neo-Nazi concerts and sporting tournaments that attracted radicals: In 2018, the FBI arrested California white supremacists who had met with a member of the Azov Movement.
By 2021, the Azov Movementâs position as a premier hub of transnational white supremacy was firmly established. It was tracked by researchers; its fighters were banned from receiving military aid by Congress; and it was kicked off Facebook. The State Department declared its political wing a ânationalist hate group.â Journalists exposed its enlistment of fighters from Sweden to Australia.
Then came Russiaâs invasion. Within months, many of these same institutions had plunged into an Orwellian stampede to persuade the West that Ukraineâs neo-Nazi regiment was suddenly not a problem.
It wasnât pretty. In 2018, The Guardian had published an article titled âNeo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,â in which the Azov Regiment was called âa notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.â Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a âneo-Nazi extremist movement.â
But by February 2023, The Guardian was assuring readers that Azovâs fighters âare now leading the defence of Mariupol, insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.â The campaign believed to have recruited British far-right activists was now a thing of the past.
The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that âsports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.â A 2018 report noted Azovâs âwell-established links to the far right.â
Shortly after Putinâs invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although âto Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,â the Azov Regiment was being âfalsely portrayed as Naziâ by Moscow.
Meanwhile, Germanyâs state-owned Deutsche Welle required only three months after the invasion to pivot from calling Azov âa neo-Nazi volunteer regimentâ to saying it was âaccused of having [a] neo-Nazi pastâ by Russia. By this logic, the BBCâs and Deutsche Welleâs previous Azov coverage had been lies concocted by the Kremlin.
There is a kernel of truth in the allegations that Azov is just a Russian bogeyman. The Kremlin and Ukraineâs neo-Nazis have a symbiotic relationship that reaches to the very heart of this war: Putin needed a pretext to justify his illegal invasion; for that, he turned to Azov. Moscow seized on Azovâs existence to paint all of Ukraine as a cesspool of fascism in need of âdenazification.â Azov is the linchpin in Putinâs narrativeâwithout it, his excuse for the war is gone.
In turn, Azovâs defenders have capitalized on Russiaâs obsession by implying that anyone who criticizes the group is a Putin apologist. Moscow and Azov use each other to defend the indefensible: For Russia, itâs acceptable to invade a sovereign country to fight neo-Nazis; for the West, itâs appropriate to lionize neo-Nazis because theyâre fighting Russia.
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE OLD
The problem with insisting that Azovâs neo-Nazism is just a Russian lie is the abundance of evidence to the contrary. Seven yearsâ worth of Western articles chronicling the groupâs nature was too much to ignore. This left Azovâs whitewashers with the unenviable task of cobbling together a come-to-Jesus story in which Azov began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group but somehow saw the error of its ways before 2022.
The narrative that emerged goes like this: (a) Azovâs deradicalization started after it joined Ukraineâs National Guardâover time, Biletsky and other veterans of the 2014 battalion were filtered out, implying that the new leadership is neo-Nazi free; (b) yes, there are a few leftover neo-Nazis in the National Corps, Azovâs political party; but (c) that doesnât matter, because the Azov Regimentâlater a brigadeâhas long since separated from the National Corps, which is little more than a fringe political sideshow.
These talking points were propagated by Kyiv, Azov, and a handful of experts furnishing quotes from one journalist to the next; the press, in turn, dashed out articles reporting these claims as fact. In reading these pieces, one quickly notes the absence of evidence. The âAzov has been denazifiedâ story is presented as verified truth, often using quotes from the same few experts who also state it without offering proof.
Thereâs a reason for that: The whole thing is composed of easily disprovable falsehoods.
Take the notion that Azov was deradicalized after joining the National Guard in November 2014. This ignores the fact that Western outlets routinely documented Azovâs neo-Nazism over the next seven years, through 2021.
Whatever reformative influence Kyiv had to offer clearly didnât work: Azov continued to recruit white supremacists, and in 2016, it was accused by human rights groups of committing war crimesâthe only difference being that after 2014, it did so as part of a NATO-trained force.
Next is the lie that Azov denazified itself by jettisoning veterans of the original 2014 neo-Nazi battalionâa claim echoed by Reuters, The Financial Times, the AP, The Jerusalem Post, and others around the spring of 2022, when the regiment was commanded by Denys Prokopenko and his deputy, Svyatoslav Palamar.
The problem is that both Prokopenko and Palamar were Azov members going back to 2014. Supposedly led by new blood, the unit was actually commanded by veterans of its far-right beginning.
Palamarâs neo-Nazi roots reach back even furtherâhe belonged to the Patriot of Ukraine gang that formed Azov. Yet the AP and Haaretz both cited Palamar downplaying Azovâs extremism while reporting nothing about his past with Patriot of Ukraine.
Prokopenko, for his part, came out of the White Boys Club, superfans of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer team (far-right groups organized around soccer teams are common across Europe), who celebrated him when he was given an award in October 2022. The groupâs Facebook posts have typically included phrases like â100% Whiteâ and â88â (code for âHeil Hitlerâ), praise for Holocaust perpetrators, and Waffen-SS insignia.
During his time in Azov, Prokopenkoâs platoon was unofficially called the Borodach Division. Its insignia was the Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones design used by the SS, which has become a popular neo-Nazi symbol. (Azovâs version added some fascist whimsy by giving the skull a beard and hipster mustache.)
Azovâs current acting commanderâwho took over in June 2022, after Prokopenko surrendered to Russian forcesâis also an original Azov veteran.
But thatâs just the first Azov Brigade. Over the past year, the movement has spawned new formations led by extremists.
MORE HEADS FOR THE HYDRA
In February 2022, as Russian tanks tore across the land, Ukraine began activating territorial defense forces (TDFs), militia units based in cities. Prominent ones included Azov offshoots in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Sumy, which were eventually merged. Today, the Azov Movement counts two brigades: the initial one in the National Guard and the recently created one in the army.
Maksym Zhorin, an Azov TDF commander in Kyiv whoâs a veteran of the 2014 battalion and a leader in the National Corps (Azovâs far-right party, which the Western media assures us has been severed from the military units) worked closely with Biletsky.
Rodion Kudryashev, the deputy commander of Azovâs army brigade, is also a 2014 veteran and a National Corps leader; he says Biletsky is the first person he turns to for guidance. An Azov SSO Regiment commander, Denys Sokur, previously headed the National Corpsâ Sumy branch.
Dmytro Kukharchuk, one of the main commanders of Azovâs army brigade (he commands the unitâs Second Battalion), is another 2014 veteran who worships Biletsky and has been photographed with a T-shirt of the Reconquista Club, a thinly veiled reference to the white supremacist movement to âreconquerâ Europe.
Azov runs its own military school, an example of the enormous autonomy that Kyiv grants the movement. Its commander, Kyrylo Berkal, is another 2014 veteran whose social media featured Nazi symbols.
These are only some examples of Azov military units commanded by veterans of the original neo-Nazi battalion and/or leaders of the National Corps. So much for denazification.
NEO-NAZI BRIGADE CHECKS ITS WHITE PRIVILEGE
A few years ago, the exâKu Klux Klan leader David Duke embarked on a rebranding campaign by telling journalists that he was not a white supremacist but a âhuman rights activist.â His claim was covered by Esquire, ABC, Politico, and The New York Times.
Whether Duke sincerely meant what he said depends on oneâs definition of âhuman.â Yet none of the outlets that reported on his rebranding were naive enoughâor, given the recent rise of white terrorism, oblivious enoughâto start referring to the former Grand Wizard of the KKK as âhuman rights activist David Duke.â
In their rush to lionize Azov, however, Western institutions have been far more reckless. The Times of London celebrated Azovâs supposed conversion by referring to it as âan elite battalion challenging its far-right reputation.â The purported evidence for this included a Ukrainian soldierâs claim that âWe are patriots but we are not Nazis,â and a statement by âan expert on the European rightâ that âAzov has evolved so far from its origins as to make its far-right roots meaningless.â
The photos The Times ran with the article show an Azov soldier wearing a T-shirt for M8L8TH, a vicious neo-Nazi band with songs praising Hitler and featuring unabashed anti-Semitism. M8L8TH is linked to Azov; the California neo-Nazis arrested by the FBI had met with its lead singer in Kyiv. Itâs hard to find a more fitting illustration of the media blithely whitewashing neo-Nazis.
Forbes similarly cheered Azovâs alleged denazification by running the demonstrably false claim that it had stopped using the Wolfsangel symbol. The Wolfsangel is one of the first things you see on Azovâs website, just as it was on the day the Forbes story ran; in fact, itâs the profile photo for all Azovâs social media accounts.
The whitewashing of neo-Nazi history extends even to Biletsky, who had been so toxic that even Azovâs defenders refused to normalize him. That didnât stop the Financial Times from running Biletskyâs quotes about Azov being âpatrioticâ and ânationalist.â The FT then quoted him praising Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator whose men massacred Jews, as a hero.
A far more dangerous platforming came from Facebook, which had banned Azov in 2019. In February 2022, Facebook loosened the ban in surreal, Dril-esque fashion: The company acknowledged that Azov remained a hate group but decided to allow posts praising it, as long as the praise was about defending Ukraine. It was a âboth-sides-ingâ of white supremacy, a chilling message that, sometimes, neo-Nazis are heroes.
Meta, Facebookâs parent company, later simplified matters by removing the Azov Regiment from its list of dangerous organizations.
Others, too, said the quiet part out loud. âFinally, it is worth noting that the âneo-Nazi Azov regimentâ has never been implicated in any actual extremist actsâwith the sole exception of credible reports of human rights violations, including torture of detainees, by Azov fighters in the Donbas in 2015â2016,â wrote The Bulwark.
They may have tortured people, but nobodyâs perfect.
PRIME TIME
By September 2022, as the campaign to transform Azov into paladins of democracy purred along, America rolled out the red carpet.
Azovâs US tour was initially reported by researcher Moss Robeson. The group made stops in Washington, D.C., and in New Jersey, where its soldiersâincluding a founder of the original battalionâmet with Senators Rick Scott and Todd Young and Representatives Pete Sessions, Dan Crenshaw, Adam Schiff, and Michael Waltz, among others.
Then came Stanford University, which welcomed Azov even though seven months earlier its own program for tracking extremism had published an exhaustive study detailing Azovâs Nazi ties. The event was attended by Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia and an adherent of the âAzov has been denazifiedâ myth, who stood in front of a projection of its Wolfsangel insignia.
It sometimes seems that weâre witnessing an experiment in Americaâs willingness to ignore whatâs in front of our own eyes. In February, an employee of the federal governmentâs US Helsinki Commission giddily tweeted out photos of himself posing with the Azov Wolfsangel and wearing a patch with a picture of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator; the employee continued defending the tweets, even as he eventually deleted them. Itâs hard to imagine this being tolerated with other Holocaust perpetrators (see the media storms surrounding similar collaborators).
Or take Azovâs press officer, Dmytro Kozatsky, who was paraded around Congress, MSNBC, Vogue, and a Manhattan film festival. As Robeson reported, Kozatskyâs Twitter account was a Whitmanâs Sampler of white supremacy, including the â1488â neo-Nazi code, Waffen-SS insignia, a swastika, and myriad âlikesâ for images such as a Totenkopf, Adolf Hitler, Nazi murderer Amon Goeth, the KKK, and graffiti reading âDeath to Kikes.â
THE CHOICE
As Azovâs defenders in Washington love to point out, the brigade and its offshoots are merely a tiny fraction of Ukraineâs armed forces. Why focus on them? they intone. Thatâs what Putin does!
The saddest thing about this logicâaside from stating that a battle-hardened neo-Nazi formation in an unstable, war-torn country isnât a big dealâis that itâs true.
Azov is a small fraction of those fighting to save Ukraine. For every feat attributed to Azov units, there were many more accomplished by others. Even the legendary siege of Mariupol last year that made Azov famous involved Ukrainian marines who suffered and held out just as bravely. We could have honored them. Instead, we went out of our way to glorify Azov.
Nobody forced us to. Itâs been a choice, and considering that Googling Azovâs name yields hit after hit about white supremacy, itâs a conscious, informed one.
Putin isnât the only one obsessed with Azov. We canât get enough of them. Theyâre our neo-Nazis.