Azov Battalion key to Russian propaganda justifying invasion of Ukraine
"I have taken the decision to launch a special military operation. Its aim will be to defend the people who for eight years have suffered persecution and genocide by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will aim at the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine". With these words, uttered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in the early hours of 24 February.
After months of building up troops on the border, Russian tanks entered the country while the Russian air force invaded Ukrainian airspace and launched attacks on civilian infrastructure. After 41 days of war and thousands of deaths, both Russia and pro-Moscow groups continue to justify this military aggression as a 'crusade' against Ukrainian Nazis.
But what lies behind Putin's statements and Russian propaganda arguments, what is the Kremlin's basis for defending the invasion, and what influence do Ukrainian extremist groups have?
?? #Ukraine Los combates en Mariupol continúan.
— Atalayar (@Atalayar_) March 29, 2022
?️La lucha urbana ya se inició hace semanas, y deja imágenes como esta.
?Un combatiente ucraniano falla su tiro de misil antitanque que rebota contra la torre de un T-72B. pic.twitter.com/h8UhwBt3ZX
First of all, it is necessary to go back to the time of World War II and the spread of Nazism in Europe. A part of Ukrainian society, as was the case in most of the countries that were invaded by the German army, began to collaborate with the Nazis when they entered the country in 1941. Nazi propaganda in Ukraine portrayed the Germans as "friends of the Ukrainian people" and the dictator Adolf Hitler as a "liberator".
Here it is worth noting the great repression of the Ukrainian population by Iosif Stalin's regime. A good example of this was the Holodomor, a state-planned famine that starved to death around 4 million people between 1932 and 1934. In addition to starvation, 5,400 people were executed and 125,000 were sent to Siberian gulags on charges of stealing food, historian J.M. Sarduni tells National Geographic History. Sarduni, like other scholars, argues that Stalin, with this famine, sought to "suppress any symptom of a resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism that was defined as pro-European and anti-Moscow".
Thus, part of Ukrainian society saw the Nazi invasion as an opportunity to fight against the Soviet regime and thus gain independence. This led to the creation of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUNb), led by Stepan Bandera, and later its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). This paramilitary group was mentioned in a cyber-attack against Ukrainian government websites earlier this year as the threat of a Russian invasion grew.
However, more than 5 million Ukrainians lost their lives fighting against Nazism. The country's Jewish community was also murdered and deported to extermination camps. This is where the family of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, who is of Jewish origin, comes in.
As he said, his grandfather was one of the many Ukrainians who fought in the Soviet army against the Nazis. "You (Russians) are told that we are Nazis. But can a people who gave more than 8 million lives for the victory over Nazism support the Nazis?" the Ukrainian leader declared shortly after Moscow launched its offensive to "denazify" the country.
Decades later, Ukrainian nationalism and some of its leaders, such as Bandera or Ivan Pavlenko, continue to be very present within part of Ukrainian society. The Maidan protests, Moscow's annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in the Donbas have accentuated this nationalism which, in some cases, has taken on very extremist overtones.
Images of Nazi collaborationist Bandera were very common during the demonstrations in the central Kiev square in 2013. Thus, as Brian Taylor, Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University and author of The Code of Putinism, tells BBC News, 'this reference to Nazis and neo-Nazis became very prominent in the Russian media around December 2013'. Ukrainians again took out Bandera banners on its anniversary day, 1 January, coinciding with the Russian troop build-up on the border.
However, Taylor also points out that there is a part of the Ukrainian population that remembers these attempts to achieve Ukrainian independence by cooperating with Hitler, not as collaboration with Nazism, "but as acts of Ukrainian patriots and national heroes".
The Maidan protests and the subsequent conflict with the pro-Russians in the East gave rise to nationalist ideological groups that have sometimes been described as neo-Nazis, such as the Azov Battalion, Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) or the political party Svoboda. The emergence of these movements was used by the Kremlin to call the ousting of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych a "coup d'état". Likewise, the neo-Nazis in power card was played to justify the annexation of Crimea.
The Azov Battalion, which is part of Ukraine's National Guard, has concentrated its operations in Mariupol in recent years, the coastal city that has been ravaged by the war. For this reason, the port city is one of the main targets of Moscow, which has repeatedly accused the battalion of using the civilian population as a human shield, as well as preventing the use of humanitarian corridors. The Russian Defence Ministry also claimed that Azov was responsible for the shelling of the theatre housing civilians.
The Nazi emblems worn by the Azov Battalion, as well as controversial statements by its founder, Andriy Biletsky, deeply discredit the Ukrainian army, as well as the country itself. Azov has been accused of committing war crimes and rape in conflict zones. Moreover, in a 2015 report, the UN accused the group of deliberately deploying its weapons in civilian residential buildings to hide them from enemy forces. A year later, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights accused armed groups on both sides of the Donbas conflict, including Azov, of human rights abuses.
Media reports point to Ukrainian-Cypriot-Israeli businessman Ihor Kolomoisky as the main financier of the group. As the Arabic daily Asharq reports, Kolomsky's funding of the brigade dates back to 2014, when the Ukrainian authorities, with the aim of forming a front against pro-Russian separatists, placed more responsibility on the regional rulers.
To this end, Kiev decided to appoint wealthy Ukrainians as municipal and regional governors. Kolomsky was appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a region in the east of the country close to pro-Russian influence. For this reason, the Ukrainian billionaire decided to finance far-right militias in the area.
However, former Ukrainian president Peter Poroshenko dismissed Kolomsky as regional governor, and in 2021, due to the financing of Azov and accusations of corruption during his tenure, the US decided to impose sanctions on the tycoon.
Within training and armament, Israel, Canada and the US have been targeted. Firstly, the Azov fighters have carried Israeli-made weapons, such as the Tavor rifle and the Negev machine gun. In addition, Canadian military officials have met with leaders of the battalion. As for Washington, Ivan Kharkiv, one of the commanders, told the US newspaper The Daily Beast that the US had prepared training programmes for the group.
Now, with the Russian invasion, many radical European fighters have joined the Azov ranks to fight Russian troops. This is of particular concern to Colin P. Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, who tells CNN that far-right extremists in Europe may gain "combat experience and training in Ukraine and then use it for terrorist attacks".
Azov's links to European neo-Nazi movements are nothing new. According to German media outlet DW, the Ukrainian militia has for years maintained contacts with far-right movements abroad, including with groups in Germany.
With the current war, the Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian ultras groups have once again taken centre stage in the conflict, as well as playing a special role in Russian propaganda. While Moscow claims to 'liberate' the country from Nazism, Putin's supporters argue that the war is aimed at denazifying Ukraine, although these paramilitary groups do not have the influence they are believed to have.
"Ukraine is not controlled by Nazis or fascists, despite the growth of ultra-nationalist and fascist groups in recent years, a global problem that is not unique to Ukraine," Russia expert Amy Randall told the BBC. Randall also refers to Zelensky's family background, murdered during the Holocaust.
On this point, Alexander Ritzman of the NGO Counter Extremism Project agrees, stressing to CNN that Ukraine "is not a cesspit for Nazi sympathisers". Ritzman recalls that, in the 2019 elections, the political wing of Azov obtained only 2.15% of the votes, which left Biletsky out of parliament.
Likewise, the analyst at the extremism-focused NGO argues that there are also prominent far-right actors in Russia. "There is a far-right problem on both sides of the conflict, but there seems to be a bias in reporting only on the far-right problem in Ukraine," he adds.
The head of the DNR, Denis Pushilin, awarding a medal to Lieutenant Colonel Timur Kurilkin for "destroying 250 Nazis" - which is ironic, considering Kurilkin has two neo-Nazi patches clearly visible on his uniform. pic.twitter.com/JPXzkzts04
— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) April 4, 2022
Putin uses the relevance of World War II and the fight against Nazism within Russian society to justify and defend the war in Ukraine. The fight against the alleged Nazis in Kiev feeds national pride, which seems to revive the heroic events of the 1940s, although the only things that are repeated from those years are the bombings, the suffering and the train stations full of people trying to flee the war.
