In early 2021, just over a year before the Russian invasion, a neo-Nazi gang leader from Queens, New York started a podcast with one of the most prominent Russian neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It was 2018, less than a year after “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, that one of its notorious participants, Robert Rundo, leader of the violent Rise Above Movement (RAM), met his future co-host Denis Kapustin, better known as Denis Nikitin. They named their podcast after Rundo’s new “Active Club” network, which has drawn inspiration from neo-Nazis in Ukraine and proliferated in NATO countries as “the preeminent organizing model for far-right streetfighters.”

Thanks to his Jewish grandfather, Kapustin grew up in Germany. Today he commands the Russian Volunteer Corps, perhaps the most heavily neo-Nazi military unit in Ukraine. Years ago he inspired Robert Rundo, and not only as the godfather of white nationalist Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) tournaments in Europe, or the owner of a successful neo-Nazi brand, “White Rex,” which Rundo considered to be an exemplary “active lifestyle movement.”

When they first met, Kapustin essentially played the role of an “unofficial … ambassador-at-large” for Ukraine’s Azov movement. Rundo has said these neo-Nazis, and Kapustin in particular, “opened my eyes to the importance of sports culture to our movement.” A couple months after the Russian invasion, he taunted the Southern Poverty Law Center, “we [Active Clubs] are like AZOV but the US version.”

“This is always my whole inspiration for everything,” he [Rundo] told a right-wing podcast in September 2017, referring to Azov as “the future.” “They really have the culture out there,” he said. “They have their own clubs. They have their own bars. They have their own dress style.” (Time, 2021)

“Going to Kyiv [in 2018] and being able to compete, honestly, that was one of the greatest memories of my life. It was an honor. And I’ll always stand by those who stood by me... A lot of what inspired me...our ideas, the structure, the vision..it came from groups like Azov, CasaPound [an Italian neo-fascist movement allied with Azov], and others. (Rundo, 2023)

Last year, Active Club Finland adopted Azov’s so-called “Idea of the Nation” symbol. “This turn of events doesn’t surprise me; on the contrary, it was predictable,” commented Oleksiy Rains, the most public-facing ideologist of the Azov movement. “Thanks to its emotional power and aesthetic appeal, the IN [‘Idea of the Nation’ / Azov-style ‘wolfsangel’] will slowly but surely become a symbol of international far-right solidarity. Other equally powerful symbols have followed the same path in the past.”

Almost a dozen years ago, the newly created Azov Battalion launched a podcast, “Azov FM.” Olena Semenyaka, the International Secretary of the Azov movement, admitted in one 2015 episode (discovered by the journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko) that Azov hoped “to create our own Right International.” In the same interview, she said, “Our movement is growing, but it’s still too small to compare it to a real movement of the kind that Germany had in between wars. But we’re moving towards this goal.”

The main topic of the Semenyaka interview was her “Reconquista” project, which hosted the Azov FM podcast on its website, “whitereconquista.com.” Oleksiy Kuzmenko investigated Reconquista, “Azov’s own white supremacist geopolitical initiative,” and later revealed that Robert Rundo followed Semenyaka’s project by the spring of 2015, well before he created the Rise Above Movement.

Three years later, when Rundo and other RAM members traveled to Ukraine, they met with Semenyaka and sparred at Azov’s Reconquista Club in Kyiv, where Denis Kapustin organized MMA fights. RAM “showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has,” according to Semenyaka. Rundo got a tattoo of the White Rex logo, and by the end of 2018, the FBI raided his home. “Denis was the first one to pick up the phone,” Rundo recalled, who wanted to flee to Kyiv. Kapustin was probably his associate in Ukraine who promised, “we’ll take care of you … just see to it that you get your white terror ass here.”

Olena Semenyaka was still transparent about Azov’s ambitions in those days. For instance she told the US-funded broadcaster RFE/RL, “it’s possible for far-right leaders to come to power now” in Europe, and Azov “wants a position at the front of this movement.” Semenyaka has kept a low profile since 2022, but in 2024 she attended the launch of a “Nation Europa” network, which the Russian Volunteer Corps and Azov movement organized with CasaPound and other likeminded groups.

Weeks earlier, one of the top neo-Nazis in the Azov movement, Dmytro Kukharchuk, who now directs the ideological service of the 3rd Army Corps, declared that “if a European Reconquista begins, it will start with us.” According to the journalist Leonid Ragozin, for the Azovites who think globally, their ultimate goal is “to stage a white race revolution in Europe that begins in Ukraine, spreads into Russia and when these two join forces - proceeds into the rest of Europe.”

The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), one of the “elite” units in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, is probably trying to lay the groundwork for “stage two” of the “White Reconquista.” Over at Events in Ukraine, Peter Korotaev has written numerous article about Azov and RVC-adjacent networks of neo-Nazi accelerationists that are getting teenagers to go on killing sprees in Russia. The latter tend to be fans of “M8L8TH,” AKA “Hitler’s Hammer,” a Russo-Ukrainian National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) band associated with the RVC (and before that Azov). Korotaev writes, “no aspiring school shooter in Russia is without such a [M8L8TH] hoodie.” In 2018 they released an album titled “Reconquista.”

To be sure, North America has also seen a rise in what the FBI is classifying as “Nihilist Violent Extremism.” Rundo doesn’t support “the accelerationists,” so he says, but he hasn’t shunned them from joining his network either. In one episode of the “Active Club” podcast, the future RVC commander Denis Kapustin sounded like he was just coming to appreciate “that the propaganda does work” on Russian youth, and “there’s a lot of things we can do.”

Right now, there’s a video on the Russian internet segment where a mother is filming her ten year old son, and he says … ‘I don’t want to talk to you because you are Putin-brainwashed lady,’ and they speak about the Second World War … and, you know, he speaks the unpleasant truth, although he’s a ten year old boy, and his mother’s being like totally hysteric … and she is being like the absolute bitch … and the little ten year old boy, he just says things that he obviously picked up from the internet from some forums, Telegram channels, stuff like that. So you know, I realized that the propaganda does work, and you know, we get nationalist Telegram channels now that are like over 100,000 followers on Russian internet ... So you know, there’s still things to be done … There’s a lot of people who don’t know whom to follow, you know, and they’re looking for role models. … All my friends around me are getting children now, maybe now it’s even more work, you need to put out the propaganda for little ones, because I see these terrible videos with trannies reading fairy tales in United States.

Kapustin wants to break up Russia, and create a smaller neo-Nazi state centered in Moscow, which may surprise some readers, but perfectly aligns with Azov’s Reconquista. He likely sees the rise of so-called “Nihilist Violent Extremism” in Russia as a means to counter “cultural Marxism” and destabilize the country. “Wotanjugend,” a hardcore neo-Nazi group (associated with M8L8TH) that is enmeshed in the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Azov movement, asked its followers in 2023, after the RVC launched raids into the Belgorod region of Russia, “well then couch potatoes, is it not the RaHoWa [Racial Holy War] yet?”

Since 2024, a Russian neo-Nazi who reportedly served as the “formal head” of Azov FM, Mikhail Oreshnikov, has led the “Coalition,” which ostensibly unites pro-Ukraine “national resistance movements” in Russia and allied groups, including some RVC entities. Active Club Finland is connected to far-right Karelian separatists who recently left the Coalition but maintain ties to the RVC. For example, the “Soldiers of Greater Finland,” co-founders of the Coalition who believe in “the relevance of blood and our blood family,” have trained with Active Club Finland. The latter also supports the RVC, which has a “Nord” squad of Karelian fighters connected to Ukraine’s branch of the international neo-Nazi network “Blood & Honour.”

Not long before Active Club Finland embraced the Azov symbol, a Finnish-Ukrainian venture capital firm announced that it partnered with the Azov movement’s school for drone operators, “Killhouse Academy,” associated with the 3rd Assault Brigade and 3rd Army Corps. Its founder commanded a battalion that included French neo-Nazis, apparently with connections to Active Club France. According to Double Tap Investments, “we’re bringing this combat-tested experience to Finland and beyond.”

The upcoming Killhouse Academy Finland program will train not only drone pilots but also engineers, mechanics, and support specialists — building the ecosystem of skills Europe needs to meet new security challenges. … This initiative is more than a training program. It’s a bridge — connecting Ukrainian battlefield innovation with European defense readiness.

Apologies for going off on a tangent, but I wonder if this training program will appeal to Azov’s fellow travelers in Europe? A month after the Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, massacring 51 people and wounding dozens more in 2019, Olena Semenyaka addressed a neo-Nazi conference in Finland. In a blog post, “New Zealand Shootings: Who’s Guilty?” she seemed to blame the “wicked system” of “maniacal political correctness.”

Wotanjugend praised Tarrant as a “vengeful Viking who has definitely earned his place in Valhalla,” shared the livestream of his white nationalist rampage, and promoted a Russian translation of his “Great Replacement” manifesto. Other neo-Nazi elements connected to Azov (and now the RVC) have also celebrated him. Tarrant claimed that he traveled to Ukraine, fueling speculation that he trained with Azov. Semenyaka, after all, had invited the neo-Nazi “Nordic Resistance Movement” (NRM), already banned in Finland, to do the same. According to her, the German neo-Nazi organization Der Dritte Weg (“The Third Way”) became “our link” to the NRM.

The NRM and Azov were two groups supported in the far-right internet forum “Iron March,” which spawned the terroristic “Atomwaffen Division,” AKA the “National Socialist Resistance Front,” an international network of neo-Nazi accelerationists that also circulated Tarrant’s manifesto. According to Events in Ukraine, some Atomwaffen Division members attended the 2018 “Pact of Steel” conference in Kyiv, which was held in conjunction with the annual NSBM festival organized by Alexei Levkin, the lead singer of M8L8TH and another band, “Adolf Cult.” Levkin is another prominent figure in the RVC, also a leader of Wotanjugend, and a Russian ideologist in the Azov movement. “Hail the New Reconquista!” Semenyaka declared at the first “Pact of Steel” conference in 2016, which she probably organized with Levkin. Earlier that year, Azov FM conducted an interview with Andrew Oneschuk, a young neo-Nazi from the United States who soon joined the Atomwaffen Division (AWD).

In 2018, a 13 year old boy founded the “Feuerkrieg Division” (FKD), initially as the Estonian affiliate of the Atomwaffen Division, however it grew into an international AWD spin-off, which was also proscribed as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom. According to a report by the “Center for Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism” at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies,

In February 2020, another American FKD member in his early 20s, U.S. Army soldier Jarrett William Smith (a.k.a. Anti-Kosmik), pleaded guilty to charges that he shared information online regarding explosives, weapons, and other destructive devices. Smith was based in Fort Bliss, Texas and Fort Riley, Kansas during this time. According to an official FBI affidavit related to the case, Smith discussed plans to attack CNN offices with a car bomb and a plot to assassinate Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Smith told FBI agents that he aimed to create societal chaos with his attacks. Smith also revealed that he had planned to join Ukrainian far-right paramilitary group the Azov Regiment once his Army contract ended.

In 2021, the Canadian government designated the Atomwaffen Division as a terrorist organization, and VICE News exposed Patrick Gordon MacDonald, “a 20-something graphic designer from Ottawa,” as the prolific AWD propagandist “Dark Foreigner.” According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, “After the [terrorist] listing, many former Atomwaffen Division members joined Active Club Canada,” which was just getting started. Apparently that included MacDonald, who did some work for Robert Rundo’s brand and media company “Will2Rise,” as well as video editing for Alexei Levkin’s NSBM record label “Militant Zone,” which also sells hardcore neo-Nazi merchandise.

The RCMP eventually arrested Patrick MacDonald and two other Canadian AWD members on terrorism charges. During MacDonald’s trial, it came out that he created a “Ukrainian” AWD video in Canada, made to look like a message from the Azov Regiment in the National Guard of Ukraine. The RCMP also arrested Matthew Althorpe and Kristoffer Nippak from Ontario as propagandists for the AWD and the “Terrorgram Collective.” VICE News reported that Nippak was “one of the key players who laid the groundwork for the national Active Club scene,” “the fastest-growing neo-Nazi movement in Canada.” VICE also exposed him as the blogger “James A Rants,” which for him began in March 2022. Nippak shut down the channel over a year later, claiming victory for “the pro-White pro-Ukraine community.”

[In 2022] I was not only incredibly upset with the events in Ukraine … But more than that I was seeing large portions of the [neo-Nazi] community I gladly gave 12 or so years of my life to supporting White Genocide and the most anti-Nationalist regime in the Western world [Putin’s Russia] … But now I feel I can delete my channel with less guilt for one simple reason: the Ziggers [a “pro-Ukraine” slur for “pro-Russians”] have been quite beaten down … Unfortunately support for Ukraine is not unanimous in the Nationalist community, especially in America and the UK, but without a doubt the pro-White pro-Ukraine community is much larger and louder in July 2023 than March 2022, and the reverse is true for the Ziggers.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network discovered that “Active Clubs across Canada are being run by members and affiliates of the Vinland Hammerskins, a violent white power gang.” The international Hammerskins are also connected to Active Clubs in the United States and Europe. In November 2022, touring the Active Club network in Scandinavia, Kristoffer Nippak visited Finland’s “Hammer House.”

AC Canada is also associated with “White Lives Matter [WLM] Canada.” While Nippak met his Finnish comrades, WLM Canada staged a small neo-Nazi protest in Toronto “in remembrance of the Holodomor,” or the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine, which they described as “the anti-White genocide committed against our people by the (((bolsheviks))).” In 2023, members of AC Canada attended Toronto’s Ukrainian Independence Day Festival and were delighted to find a booth decorated with the original neo-Nazi flag of the 2014 Azov Battalion. Soon thereafter the Canadian Active Club network took credit for the appearance of “pro-Ukraine” graffiti, inspired by a Militant Zone poster, which said “DeNazification Never!”

Around that time, a major scandal erupted after Volodymyr Zelensky and the Canadian government gave standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, a 98 year old veteran of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS “Galicia Division.” AC Canada subsequently declared Hunka “a hero” and laid flowers at a memorial to the Galicia Division in the Toronto area, which probably had something to do with its removal in early 2024. “For the first time in decades at least, someone received a standing ovation in Canadian Parliament who truly deserved it,” the group said on its (since deleted) Telegram channel.

Also in the aftermath of the Hunka scandal, near Philadelphia, a small neo-Nazi organization, “S14,” also known as “Storm Division,” made a video at a Ukrainian Waffen-SS memorial on the anniversary of the KGB’s assassination of the 20th century Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera. S14, perhaps named after the Ukrainian neo-Nazi organization C14, worked with the Embrace Struggle Active Club and other likeminded groups in the tristate area. Andrew Takhistov, a teenager from New Jersey, split with S14 and created his own “White Legion,” just in time to kick off 2024 with a celebration of Bandera’s 115th birthday. Later that year, Takhistov tried to conspire with an undercover FBI informant to attack power stations in New Jersey, after which he intended to join the RVC. According to WIRED,

Court documents describe Tahkistov as a virulently hateful young man who fantasized about attacking a synagogue and participated in a March 2024 demonstration by an Atlantic City-based “active club” in support of jailed neo-Nazi leader Robert Rundo, [and] was ever-present in the Terrogram Collective’s Telegram channels.

A few days before the Russian invasion, Active Club Indiana reportedly “posted a pro-Russian message,” but this proved to be the exception to the rule. The AC chapter “later deleted the statement and posted a modified comment supporting white people and not one specific side.” In the United States, the Active Club network is most closely allied with the neo-Nazi organization “Patriot Front,” which its far-right rivals deride as an FBI front group, the “Fed Front.” Last year Patriot Front and various Active Clubs tried to exploit the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, putting up fliers and murals. Patriot Front even assembled outside a courthouse in Charlotte, North Carolina to declare “our once prosperous country has been gutted and made into a racial hellscape.”

In the summer of 2023, the neo-Nazi organizations “Blood Tribe” and “Goyim Defense League” marched in Orlando, Florida with the notorious skinhead Kent “Boneface” McLellan, who got away with calling himself an Azov veteran for years. I am rather embarrassed to admit that I am one of those who fell for this hoax. At that point, “Boneface” and Blood Tribe founder Christopher Pohlhaus were admins of the Telegram channel “American Banderite Network” (ABN) which aspired to be an umbrella group for “pro-Ukraine” neo-Nazis in North America. Many if not most of the ABN’s “members” were affiliated with Active Clubs, but others came from WLM Canada, S14, and elsewhere.

Christopher Pohlhaus befriended Denis Kapustin by 2021, and two years later announced that he would be leading “a squad of mostly vets” to Ukraine, and hopefully become the principal neo-Nazi “liaison for the anglosphere.” However, after Boneface’s exposure, the ABN fell apart, which turned out to be run by 16 year old twin brothers from Oregon, and Pohlhaus had a falling out with Kapustin, leading him to renege on his commitment. For some people, these episodes confirmed that the threat of neo-Nazi blowback from Ukraine is overblown.

AC France, which is reportedly more centralized, supports Ukraine, and the RVC in particular. According to the journalist Ali Winston, “Outside of North America, the Active Clubs have proliferated most widely in France, the first European country to start such an organization.” The same article noted that “Sébastien Bourdon, a French journalist with Le Monde’s video investigations unit who authored a forthcoming book on that country’s far-right, says Active Clubs are the fastest-expanding facet of far-right militancy in France.”

Last year Bourdon led a Le Monde investigation of the neo-Nazi cesspool that is the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade. In 2023, AC Finland shared an image of two “Nationalists from Active Club France & Active Club Finland somewhere in Ukraine.” The French neo-Nazi, who goes by “Kenneth” (allegedly his real name is Gwendal Delange), served in the 3rd Assault Brigade. More recently, Bourdon investigated Kenneth’s unit of French neo-Nazis, now fighting with another far-right group. The video below has subtitles which can be translated.

In 2023, a group of French neo-Nazis, including French army veterans, formed the “Legion Pirates” in the 3rd Assault Brigade’s anti-tank battalion, which was commanded by Oleh Romanov, the neo-Nazi founder of Killhouse Academy. In particular, the French unit joined a company affiliated with the Poltava branch of Centuria, the Azov movement’s paramilitary youth organization. Robert Rundo and “Kenneth” have both expressed support for Nord Storm, a hardcore neo-Nazi group associated with Wotanjugend and the Kharkiv branch of Centuria.

The French “Pirates” are now part of the Revanche Tactical Group in the International Legion under Ukraine’s HUR, or military intelligence agency. Revanche is affiliated with “Tradition and Order” (TiP), another far-right Ukrainian group that thinks globally. TiP formed a German chapter in 2019 and started to work with Denis Kapustin by the following year. Standing in solidarity with the Rise Above Movement, TiP staged a protest in the spring of 2020 outside the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. TiP is allied with the Ukrainian monarchist youth organization “Hetman’s Garrison,” which formed a group in the Revanche unit. Hetman’s Garrison is also active in France, where it is getting to know the monarchist Action Française (AF, or “French Action”).

In February of this year, battling the far-right in the streets of Lyon, French anti-fascists severely beat a 23 year old former AF member, Quentin Deranque. His death a couple days later provided a new martyr for the far-right, and “cast a shadow over elections” as the left took all the blame. Alice Cordier, another former AF member, leads the “femonationalist” group Némesis, which was protesting a lecture by Rima Hassan, a left-wing French-Palestinian politician. It was Cordier who announced, “A member of our security detail is fighting for his life after the Lyon action. He was lynched by young Antifa activists.” In the coming days the French parliament observed a moment of silence, and Nazi salutes were seen at a far-right march in Lyon. Then “Kenneth” posted an old picture of Cordier making a neo-Nazi gesture, and Robert Rundo shared an image of Active Club Finland posing with a flag of the Russian Volunteer Corps and a banner that said “Quentin Present!”

Western journalists and media outlets that have covered the proliferation of Active Clubs and neo-Nazi accelerationists tend to display stunning hypocrisy when it comes to Azov and likeminded groups in Ukraine. For example, in 2018, Frontline PBS and ProPublica made “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis,” an award-winning documentary about the Atomwaffen Division. Last year, Frontline co-produced “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a documentary starring an openly neo-Nazi unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade, which isn’t even acknowledged to be far-right. The film ends with a torchlit Azovite ceremony and a roll call of martyrs, borrowed from the Italian fascist tradition, with “Presente!” called out after each name.

VICE News stopped covering Azov since the 2022 invasion. Former VICE reporter Ben Makuch, who exposed the Canadian AWD propagandist Patrick MacDonald, has written extensively about Active Clubs, and even the Russian Volunteer Corps. In 2023 he appeared on Democracy Now! for a segment about “The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, but last year, Makuch interviewed a neo-Nazi from the 3rd Assault Brigade about how “Russia is recruiting civilians into its shadow war,” without acknowledging his visible swastika tattoo or the Azov movement.

Mainstream reporters are largely trapped by the dogmatic belief that Russia is the main exporter of far-right politics, which makes Azov an inconvenient topic to write about. For example, last year, The Guardian published an article about “how a Russian fight club expanded into the US with the help of American neo-Nazis.” It concluded with the observation that “it is curious that active club US fighters are getting involved with a pro-Russian invasion group,” because Active Clubs are “supposed to stay neutral in this war.” If anything, they support Ukraine.

Avery Ross Ruiz, a member of Texas’ Lone Star Active Club, leads the new U.S. chapter of “Streets Fight Club,” and it is highly doubtful that he is “pro-Russian invasion.” Robert Rundo is a friend who “coached Ross in his first MMA fight.” Ross is an Instagram follower of Centuria, as well as the medical service of the Azov Brigade, and a Ukrainian fighting league which is connected to the Azov movement. This year he participated in the Patriot Front’s “American Muscle” tournament in South Carolina, and the first “Forest Fights USA” event, hosted by Active Club Pennsylvania. Denis Kapustin appears to be a fan of Forest Fights USA, which follows just 18 accounts on Instagram, including his brand, White Rex.

Ali Winston, perhaps the top journalist when it comes to Active Clubs, is not one to whitewash the Azov movement, and continues to identify it as “neo-Nazi.” But last year, Peter Korotaev (Events in Ukraine) felt compelled to write an article, “American nazis in Kyiv,” after Winston appeared on the “TrueAnon” podcast to discuss neo-Nazi accelerationism. “In short, Winston was quite transparently trying to blame Russia for the post-2020 explosion in rightwing accelerationists in the west. This is apparently part of Putin’s nefarious plan to undermine western civilization.”

In the spring of 2022, Robert Rundo instructed journalists from Bellingcat and the Southern Poverty Law Center, “we are like AZOV but the US version so grow some balls call out azov and show you are a putin shill or tuck tail and write no comment.” One of those journalists, Michael Colborne, had just written a book about the Azov movement, but subsequently took Rundo’s advice and went silent on the topic, except to write an article about the “Boneface” hoax and tell the Washington Post he “wouldn’t call [Azov] explicitly a neo-Nazi movement.”

Colborne also deleted years of social media posts about the far-right in Ukraine. He remains obsessed with Rundo, but no longer seems to think that Azov is relevant. In 2023, WaPo reported that Colborne predicted “any remaining far-right elements within Azov probably would continue to be ‘diluted’ as the unit grows and that the issue had become less important as Ukraine confronts an existential threat.” Let’s just say this take has aged poorly. Around that time, not long after I started to get some traction writing about Azov, Colborne declared that I am a “complete loon” to be avoided “at all costs.”

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“I am glad that we are not quite a party, but a social movement with real membership,” Sobolevsky once said about the National Corps. “We don’t even care about elections, we care about people who believe in our ideas and are ready to follow us.” In 2020, he squashed “the last Ukrainian peacemaker” Sergei Sivokho’s “National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity.” Asked about his favorite books that year, Sobolevsky named some by German WWII generals, Erich von Manstein and Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand, as well as “Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front,” by the Belgian Nazi leader Léon Degrelle.

Last spring, Sobolevsky participated in a national security conference hosted by Harvard Business School and MIT, speaking after the deputy head of the U.S. Special Operations Command. In the fall, Sobolevsky and Hrytsenko returned to Washington for meetings at the State Department, the Atlantic Council, the Army and Navy Club, and with “DoD [Department of Defense] and congressional teams.” Now the Snake Island Institute has concluded another trip to Washington and “high-level meetings on Capitol Hill,” this time without him.

But first, some other updates on the Snake Island Institute that didn’t make it into my latest “Azov Lobby Review” (Fall 2025-Winter 2026). For starters, the SII has a new communications director, Christopher Collins. According to his website, “Since 2019, I have supported development projects financed by USAID, the FCDO [U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office], Global Affairs Canada, and European agencies.” At the time of the Russian invasion, Collins was a senior project manager for the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute.

In February 2022, Frances Lee Forbes worked in the U.S. Senate as a legislative correspondent for Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-D). Last December, she became the International Partnerships Coordinator of Snake Island Institute. Earlier in 2025, SII hired a pair of Azov Battalion veterans, Maksym Plyska and Artem Klimin, as its Ukraine Partnership Officers. Klimin was a deputy battalion commander in the 3rd Assault Brigade, and Plyska most likely also served in this unit. In 2017, they co-founded the “National Militia,” the “combat wing” or “street branch” of the Azov movement and its National Corps. This neo-Nazi paramilitary organization relaunched as “Centuria” in 2020.

As a reminder, just before the SII made it to Washington in September, Grace Wright left her job on Capitol Hill as the communications director for Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO) to become the Senior Analytics Manager of Snake Island Institute. Her old boss is a member of the House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence committees. The SII also has new interns, such as Theo Hisherik, a British Jewish political science student at John Hopkins University in Baltimore who wrote a blog post for the Times of Israel about the necessity of confronting Iran: “The time for hesitant half-measures is over.”

In February, 3rd Assault Brigade combat medic Viktoria Honcharuk visited England, and addressed the Advanced Command and Staff Course at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. She also met with the director of the Joint Services Command and Staff College. In March, the UK Defence Academy gave Honcharuk a shout-out for International Women’s Day. The next day she appeared on BBC News for a report on the “Ukrainian anti-drone ‘Bullet’ that could help defend Gulf.” Honcharuk, who used to work on Wall Street, is the SII’s Director of Defense Tech, and joined the latest trip to Washington.

Before Honcharuk got to England, the Snake Island Institute published a report, “Holding Back the Sky: Ukraine’s Air Defense Campaign, 2022-2025.” The SII produced this report with the “Intelligence Team” of the Azov movement’s “Colonel Yevhen Konovalets Military School,” which is named for the founder of the fascistic Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists that helped the Nazis to perpetrate the “Holocaust by Bullets.” Former CIA director David Petraeus praised their “superb analysis.” Laura Cooper, the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia (2017-25), was so impressed that “I’m having my students at Georgetown refer to it during the technology segment of the course I’m teaching on Russia’s war on Ukraine. Thanks to Snake Island Institute for producing this!”

“Love everything the Snake Island Institute puts out,” said Chris O’Connor, the logistics warfare chair of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Perhaps thanks to him, SII’s Vladyslav Sobolevsky and Viktoria Honcharuk addressed a packed room at the Naval Postgraduate School last year.

Before the full delegation arrived in Washington, SII co-founders Maryna Hrytsenko (executive director) and Catarina Buchatskiy (Director of Analytics) flew to Florida. They participated in the Heritage Foundation’s inaugural Miami Security Forum, which promoted the “Donroe Doctrine” for 2-3 days in the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at the Trump National Doral golf resort. The Heritage Foundation’s event organizer salivated at the possibility “for some real changes in Cuba.” Retired colonel Mike Jernigan from the Heritage Foundation — formerly the commanding officer of the Marine Corps Engineer School (2019-21) and a production fixer for the famous Youtuber “Mr. Beast” (2022-25) — moderated a panel discussion with Hrytsenko and Buchatskiy on the “Ukrainian Frontline Experience.”

Before co-founding Snake Island Institute, Maryna Hrytsenko was a foreign policy aide in Washington for Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of the liberal nationalist “Holos” faction in Ukrainian parliament. Catarina Buchatskiy, who interned at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, led a project with Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution about “lessons from the war in Ukraine for Taiwan, including research on the use of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] in Ukraine and how to transfer operational and tactical lessons to Taiwan.” Buchatskiy said she “got called a baby murderer” for wearing her “I love Raytheon” shirt around campus. Her boyfriend is the CEO of Neros Technologies, a Peter Thiel-funded startup company based in California that is among the “leading U.S. drone producers.”

During a recent podcast interview for the Council on Foreign Relations, Catarina Buchatskiy made it sound as if the initiative to create Snake Island Institute did not come from the Azov movement, but herself and Hrytsenko. “We wanted to create a platform for the military,” she half-explained.

The concept of having this neutral third party that represents the military and works for them on their behalf is novel, in a way, and it definitely was not intuitive to a lot of our military partners when we first started talking to them about it, but pretty quickly, we were like, OK, let’s find the top military units that are really really the best of the best, and the best that we have, and sign them on. We’ll kind of act as their institute.

In other words, Snake Island Institute is a think tank that works for Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazi movement, because the Azovite 3rd Army Corps and 3rd Assault Brigade are clearly its main “military partners.” Anyway, I removed the paywall for my recent “Azov Lobby Review,” and might do the same with this article, but consider becoming a paying subscriber to learn more about SII’s latest trip to Washington and to support my work.

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On March 22, shortly after the spring equinox, the Hitlerite core of the Azov movement could not resist the urge to highlight the 1488th day of the Russo-Ukrainian war, simply because this is the favorite number of many neo-Nazis around the world. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi leader David Lane wrote his Fourteen Words (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) and “88 Precepts” in a prison cell. “88” (H.H.) is a well-known code for “Heil Hitler.”

Among those who commemorated the 1488th day, Dmitriy Krukovsky from the 53rd Mechanized Brigade and Alexey Levkin from Ukraine’s Russian Volunteer Corps came as no surprise. Krukovsky has a tattoo of Adolf Hitler, and led the Azovite paramilitary youth group Centuria in 2024-25. The Russian Levkin, a celebrity ideologue in Centuria, is the chief organizer of National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) concerts in Ukraine, and even a “Fuhrernight” in 2019. Levkin sings,

Blood and soil under wheels of Totenkopf

Pressing rivals’ short skulls into filthy mire

Preachers of Kabbalah, offspring thereof

Labour in Death Camps, burn in furnace fire

3rd Assault Brigade medic Yury Pavlyshyn, now a leader of its Hatred Battalion who appears on billboards and in videos for the 3rd Army Corps, is the bass guitar player in Levkin’s Russo-Ukrainian NSBM bands M8L8TH (aka “Hitler’s Hammer”) and AKVLT (“Adolf Cult”). Pavlyshyn’s latest tattoo is of Charles Manson, so of course he also had to post something — the same image as Krukovsky, who reposted it from a mutual friend of the Russian Volunteer Corps’ commander “White Rex.”

From Pavlyshyn, the image found Yan Klishayev, who I wrote about recently. Klishayev, the neo-Nazi coordinator of the new Veteran Corps of the Azov movement, also acknowledged the 1488 milestone, on the day before he signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Minister for Veterans Affairs of Ukraine.

“Bolgar,” a notable Azovite in the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU), who used to have the numbers 14 and 88 in his Instagram username, shared the same screenshot from an application counting the days since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. He formed the openly neo-Nazi “Neptune” group in the 12th Azov Brigade (even featuring an 88 in its emblem), and now commands the personnel training battalion of the 1st Azov Corps. Vladyslav Blinsky, a company commander from the 3rd Assault Brigade and co-founder of the popular Azovite brand “Only Wars,” captioned a picture of himself with a POW, “1488 days of this fool.”

Neo-Nazi football hooligans, who gave rise to the Azov movement years ago, naturally found reason to celebrate, for example the “Dynamo Ultras,” part of the “White Boys Club” in Kyiv. “Northern Division,” the new youth movement associated with the neo-Nazi rap group “Nord Division,” held a “large-scale sporting event” (big brawl of hooligans) apparently supported by the HUR, or Ukrainian military intelligence. Nord Division originated in the Azovite HUR Kraken regiment.

Supposedly these fanatics commemorated Ukrainian Volunteer Day from the previous weekend, but they posed with a large banner that said “1488 days of war.” As told by Events in Ukraine, “Nord Division” has a neo-Nazi rap song according to which HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov “supervises us” and “gives us assignments,” and even “listens to our tracks in Russian” before interviews. “All of Ukraine’s counterintelligence says that we are art.” Now Budanov heads the Office of the President.

Almost a month earlier, the full-scale war in Ukraine entered its 5th year. Stanislav Ryzhenkov, a veteran of the NGU Azov Regiment, received a standing ovation in the European Parliament (as seen in the video below). “We will win this war,” he said. Ryzhenkov, a former POW after his neo-Nazi unit surrendered in Mariupol, is now an advisor to the mayor of Kyiv as the city council’s commissioner for veterans affairs. He addressed the European Parliament at the invitation of center-right Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius, who previously won an auction for a framed photo of Ryzhenkov missing an arm in the Azovstal complex in Mariupol.

Meanwhile in Kyiv’s Mariinsky Palace, a visibly uncomfortable Volodymyr Zelensky handed the “Hero of Ukraine” award to an emotionless senior lieutenant in the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade. In 2022, Oleksandr Khyzhnayk joined the 98th Territorial Defense Battalion “Azov-Dnipro,” a unit with neo-Nazi emblems that formed the 1st Mechanized Battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade. “There is no exhaustion from the war,” he said after the ceremony.

There is a certain demotivation due to what is happening outside the army. Corruption scandals, the population’s support for the military has decreased, and of course, scandals with the TCK [mobilization offices], namely people who see TCK employees as the enemy…

Commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Oleksandr Syrsky also presented awards to service members of the NGU 1st Azov Corps. And at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, there was a documentary screening co-starring Vladislav Shatilo, a neo-Nazi Azov veteran. He appeared at last year’s February 24 NATO HQ commemoration in connection with the film.

Vladislav Shatilo, a friend of the Hitler-tattooed Centuria leader Dmitriy Krukovsky, now leads the Veteran Corps in Chernihiv. Vladislav Shatilo used to be a football hooligan, part of the “SS Men” (Parny SS) ultras along with his friend Oleksandr Tarnavsky, who has a swastika tattoo, and led the local branch of the National Corps, the political party of the Azov movement.

At a February 24th demonstration in Brussels, a representative of the Azovite patronage service told the media, “I want to say to all Europeans that although you try to understand Ukrainians, you cannot.”

Someone who works with NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic commented that day, “The most exciting part of the frontier now is UGVs [Unmanned Ground Vehicles]. They are becoming stronger, faster, more independent and are an integral part of how the 3rd Assault Brigade fights.” Perhaps he saw that the Modern War Institute at West Point had just published “War Without Soldiers: The Evolution of Warfare in the Age of Machines,” a blog post that General James Mingus wrote (with the help of an intelligence officer) days after he ceased to be the 39th vice chief of staff of the US army.

General Mingus’ short February 24 article opened with a robotic military operation of the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade from last summer, the claim to fame for its star UGV company “NC13,” which originated in a unit with a modified emblem of the Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade. That day the London-based magazine New Scientist also published a report from the Azov movement’s “Killhouse Academy” in Kyiv which opened a school for UGV operators last summer: “How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war.”

At the Latvian National Opera in Riga, the President of Latvia attended a Ukraine-themed concert, which featured a screening of Azovite propaganda directed by Yevhen Matviyenko, in particular two episodes of his “Varta” project. I already wrote about one of them before. “Made in Ukraine” showcases proud neo-Nazis in the Special Operations Forces “Azov-Kyiv” Regiment established in 2022, which spearheaded the 3rd Assault Brigade, the elite infantry unit that now leads the 3rd Army Corps. The other short film “She” features some women from the 3rd Assault Brigade, including a hardcore neo-Nazi who died in the war, and a medic now serving in the Hatred Battalion.

According to the Russian Volunteer Corps, the high-profile neo-Nazi HUR unit, its supporters took to the streets in Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Poland, and even Israel on February 24. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko noted, “Italian neo-fascists affiliated with CasaPound organized a commemorative marathon on the streets of Italy, honoring Ukrainian far-right fighters from Azov, Right Sector, and other groups who were killed during the war. Many of them were posthumously awarded the title of Heroes of Ukraine. Streets, schools, and other public facilities have been named after them.”

Anyway, here’s a table of contents for today’s post.

• Russian Nazis on the rise in Ukraine?

• Nazi propaganda roundup

• Heroization and Azovization

• Conferences (Davos—Kyiv—London—DC—and beyond…)

Russian Nazis on the rise in Ukraine?

Once upon a time, all the way back in 2023, the western media had little to no problem acknowledging that Ukraine’s small Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK, Russkiy Dobrovol’cheskiy Korpus) is a far-right (neo-Nazi) unit. At the end of last summer, The Telegraph in London published an article about the RDK that only briefly mentioned a “far-Right [sic] extremist” founded the group. This is how publications like the New York Times learned to write about the National Guard’s Azov Regiment in 2022.

Otherwise The Telegraph made the RDK sound like a heroic anti-Putin resistance movement. “Not a word about its fascist and racist manifesto. Not a word about the neo-Nazis in their ranks. Not a word about the fact that some RDK members openly celebrate Hitler and justify his crimes,” Marta Havryshko publicly commented on the article. “And not a word about how the West is effectively propping up these extremists.” The journalist Leonid Ragozin pointed out, RDK commander Denis Kapustin (aka “White Rex”) even “attacked and injured England [football] fans, turning Marseilles into a war zone in 2016,” but that’s water under the bridge.

In October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) agreed to create a “Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces.” Maria Mezentseva chairs the Ukrainian delegation to PACE and the Ukrainian parliament’s commission to “Make Russia Small Again.” She immediately called for the neo-Nazi RDK to be included. By November, the exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky invited RDK ideologue Vasily “Cardinal” Kiryushchenko to a meeting of his Anti-War Committee in Brussels. As Leonid Ragozin explains, “Cardinal” is “the son of the film director responsible for Servant of the People - the series that turned Zelensky into who he is today.” Events in Ukraine wrote about Kiryushchenko, the well-connected “Showbiz Hitlerian,” earlier this year.

In the meantime, RDK culture warrior Alexey Levkin’s band “Adolf Cult” released a live album from a 2025 performance in Lviv, and the Azovite paramilitary youth group Centuria celebrated its 5th anniversary. The RDK is strongly connected to Centuria, arguably the neo-Nazi backbone of the Azov movement. Levkin, a leader of the Hitler-worshipping “Wotanjugend,” has always been a prominent ideologist in Centuria, which is largely populated by fans of his National Socialist Black Metal music.

They also share some martyrs. For example, one of the top RDK fighters killed in the war, “Tourist,” was a “legionnaire” of Centuria. “Nord Storm” was another group (founded by prominent Centuria members, all dead now) that glorified Hitler. Last year, Nord Storm’s reconnaissance platoon, “Hatred,” created a battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade that is now one of its most heavily neo-Nazi units, including squads from the Azovite group “Avangard,” the Kharkiv branch of Centuria, and the Russian “Format18” (that is 18 as in A.H., Adolf Hitler).

The Nazi punk band “Apartheid” also appears to be linked to the Hatred Battalion. Levkin’s bass guitar player Yury “Doom” Pavlyshyn became a spokesperson for the unit in late October when he issued the call for international volunteers to join them. By late November, “Doom” (and apparently others from Nord Storm) visited the CasaPound headquarters in Rome. The Italian neofascists from CasaPound are some of the most eager partners of the Azovites, for example when they participated in a “Nation Europa” conference that Pavlyshyn co-organized with the RDK in 2024.

Alexey Levkin and Vasily Kiryushchenko spoke at the national academy of the Ukrainian ministry of internal affairs in December, just days after the 10th anniversary of M8L8TH (“Hitler’s Hammer”) starting a new chapter in Ukraine after leaving Russia. Meanwhile, Pavlyshyn and other pagan neo-Nazis connected to the Azov movement prepared for the winter solstice, and the RDK submitted its application to join the Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces, declaring itself “the only military-political organization within the Russian opposition, as well as the only one with a nationalist orientation.”

On December 25 in an undisclosed location in the Ukrainian capital, M8L8TH, AKVLT, Apartheid and other neo-Nazi bands performed at “Yule Night,” the latest underground NSBM festival starring Alexey Levkin. The Russian Volunteer Corps and the Hatred Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade organized the event, and the RDK commander gave a speech. They allegedly sold 1,500 tickets. “The swastika will forgive your enemies,” declared the lead singer of Apartheid.

Attendees included Artem “Grot” Kuzmich, a Belarusian Azov veteran who had recently signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports on behalf of his Azovite biker fight club “M13.” Not long before that, “United24 Media” profiled his biker club “Memoria 13.” United24 Media is a Ukrainian government outlet that promotes the Azov units so regularly that it’s not worth including in my “Nazi propaganda roundup” (the next section of this article).

One might expect the famous 3rd Assault Brigade to keep its distance from “Yule Night,” but the Hatred Battalion is becoming one of the Azovites’ star units, along with the new “Kraken 1654” regiment in the 3rd Army Corps, the leadership of which is also very close to the Russian Volunteer Corps.

Two days after the concert, the 3rd Assault Brigade, Centuria, Kraken 1654, and other Azovites mourned the death of RDK commander Denis Kapustin, but this turned out to be a hoax by the HUR, ostensibly to swindle his Russian assassins. The Telegraph jumped at the story and seemingly almost forgot to mention that Kapustin is a “far-Right extremist” (apparently copy and pasting that from its last article). The journalist Leonid Ragozin commented on his “death,”

Among the mourners of Denis “WhiteRex” Nikitin/Kapustin, former Russian oligarch and current Haaretz co-owner Leonid Nevzlin stands out in a big way. “Be blessed the memory of Denis”, he wrote himself and circulated several other obituaries, including the one which says that “unlike Navalny, WhiteRex was a symbol of real power”. As his alias attests, Nikitin [Denis Kapustin] was a symbol of the “white power” movement, a neo-nazi who was banned from entering Germany where he grew up for exactly that, being a nazi. There’s no big surprise an Israeli businessman glorifies a person like that these days.

It’s intriguing to note that Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov resurrected Denis Kapustin just one day before Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Budanov to lead the Office of the President of Ukraine. Kapustin’s fake death could have been a special operation to boost the standing of Budanov and the RDK, which was seeking admission to PACE’s new platform. Events in Ukraine published a very informative article on the RDK’s rise in the Russian opposition.

“A real denazificiaton has occurred!” The Lithuania-based Russian politician Leonid Volkov, who worked closely with the late Alexei Navalny, fell in hot water for privately celebrating Kapustin’s demise: “finally, this Nazi has died.” He also wished for Budanov to land in prison. Oops! According to the New York Times, “The reaction among Lithuanian leaders to Mr. Volkov’s remarks was swift,” and even the Prime Minister called for his expulsion. Ukraine reportedly charged Volkov with “justifying Russian aggression.”

Back from the dead, Kapustin publicly fired off disgusting messages to the historian Marta Havryshko, a prominent researcher of the far-right in Ukraine. Leonid Ragozin observed that he was “back to his usual agenda.”

His last five [Telegram] posts are dedicated to black women who won beauty pageants in Brandenburg (2025) and Helsinki (2017). It’s all proof that “globalists, leftists and their media dogs have decided to attack European culture and white ethnicity”, he claims.

Later in January, the German journalist Susann Witt-Stahl reported for junge Welt that the RDK partnered with the “Free Russia” association in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. Navalny supporters created this Düsseldorf-based organization connected to the center-right Free Democratic Party. Events in Ukraine noted that “Antifa.ru provided two explanations of why exactly the RDK has launched this campaign to re-enter the broader anti-Putin liberal opposition.” For starters, peace negotiations could lead to the liquidation of the unit.

Under such conditions, RDK members may require asylum in other “unfriendly countries.” However, their reputation as neo-Nazis and their ties to far-right extremist circles would work against them—who would want such a headache at home, especially given their combat experience? Overcoming this would only be possible with the help of political lobbying, which in turn means that some kind of political subject within the Russian opposition abroad would need to be formed in advance: establishing connections, finding guarantors, and so on.

In the coming days, United24 Media highlighted “Russia’s Growing Neo-Nazi Networks” that “act with relative impunity,” in particular the group “NS/WP” (National Socialism/White Power). Actually, Events in Ukraine informs us, “the NS/WP isn’t an organization that one can join, but merely a brand name” that has “declared total war with the Russian state.” Furthermore, it is “widely respected” by neo-Nazis in Russia and Ukraine.

In 2023, the Ukraine-based Russian politician Ilya Ponomarev (accidentally?) published a NS/WP manual, which he later blamed on the RDK. In 2024, the NS/WP took credit for the assassination of the Ukrainian nationalist politician Iryna Farion after she denigrated the Russian-speaking Azovites. “Luckily there won’t be any more vomit coming out of her filthy mouth,” declared Aleksey Kozhemyakin, a Russian neo-Nazi commander in the 3rd Assault Brigade. Last autumn, he showed up in a courthouse in western Ukraine on behalf of half a dozen fighters from his Azovite unit that Ternopil police detained for violently kidnapping people, extorting them, and confiscating their property.

Earlier this year, Marta Havryshko noticed that the Hatred Battalion put out a recruitment video in Russian. “Where is the language ombudswoman?” she wondered. “Where are all those brave crusaders who regularly go after Russian-speaking internally displaced people — scolding them for speaking Russian and somehow holding them personally responsible for Russian missiles?” Clearly, Russian-speaking neo-Nazis “act with relative impunity” in Ukraine.

The Azovite 3rd Army Corps signed a memorandum of cooperation with the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in February. “This is a partnership about preserving the memory, truth, and history of our struggle,” according to Dmytro Kukharchuk, the deputy commander of the 3rd Army Corps responsible for its ideological service. In March, the neo-Nazi RDK opened an exhibition at the World War II museum in Kyiv, which was promoted by Ukrainian military intelligence. Leonid Ragozin wrote about this desecration.

An overwhelming majority of today’s Ukrainians come from families whose members fought on the Soviet side in the WWII. But Lyovkin [Alexei Levkin]’s Russian Volunteer Corps draws inspiration from Gen. Andrey Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army created by the nazis out of Soviet POWs and White Guard emigres. The exhibition in the museum was adorned with RVC’s [Russian Volunteer Corps’] Spayka logo coined as a symbol of the Russian Fascist Party which was set up by young White Guard emigres in the 1930s.

The exhibition at the WWII museum is a larger-than-life manifestation of something which the self-proclaimed “liberal” supporters of Ukraine tend to deny - that the rehabilitation of nazism is part of the government’s policy. The museum, one of Ukraine’s largest, is of course run by Ukraine’s ministry of culture. The museum announced in 2024 that it would remove all the massive Soviet era bass reliefs and other monuments in its territory which depicted Soviet soldiers who fought in the WWII.

According to the museum,

In his opening remarks, the Director General of the Museum, Yurii Savchuk, shared memories of when and how the idea for a joint project between the RDK soldiers and our institution first emerged. It happened during the premiere of a film detailing the Corps’ operation to liberate the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant. The screening, also held at the Museum, evoked a wave of genuine emotion from the audience.

In this 2024 HUR operation, the Russian Volunteer Corps lost two men from the Ukrainian branch of “Blood and Honour,” which the Canadian government considers to be a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. The mission involved other units from the HUR’s International Legion and Tymur Special Unit that joined the “Nation Europa” conference just a month earlier. The HUR released a photo from Vovchansk with two soldiers making Nazi salutes. The “Junger Group,” which also participated, still has a picture with Nazi salutes as one of its first Instagram posts. Budanov reportedly joined his neo-Nazi fighters during a “key stage” of the Vovchansk operation. Today he is undoubtedly one of the most powerful people in Ukraine.

Nazi propaganda roundup

In the first days of autumn, Centuria hosted a screening of 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a documentary from PBS Frontline and the Associated Press starring an openly neo-Nazi unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade. As I mentioned in my last article, the film ends with a fascistic ceremony honoring the brigade’s fighters who died in battle. 2000 Meters follows the Hydra platoon. Denis “War” Sokur, its battalion commander, is a neo-Nazi leader of the Azov movement in the Sumy region who works with his local Centuria branch.

The director’s previous film, 20 Days in Mariupol, glossed over the NGU Azov Regiment and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2024, so 2000 Meters came with high expectations. It recently upset some people that the Oscars and the British Academy Film Awards “snubbed” the Ukrainian war movie and honored a Russian anti-war project instead, Mr. Nobody Against Putin.

Foreign Policy published an article at the end of September, “The Controversial Past of Ukraine’s Newest Heroes.” This piece by Berlin-based journalist Paul Hockenos focused on the 1st Azov Corps and 12th Azov Brigade in the National Guard. According to him, the NGU Azov fighters had an “early association with far-right parties and figures,” but “by late 2016”(!) they “shed any vestiges of political extremism.” The next day, Zelensky handed the “Hero of Ukraine” award to NGU Azov officer Denis “Byk” Tkalych, another neo-Nazi from the Neptune unit who oversees the training of new soldiers in the 1st Azov Corps. Later that year, Foreign Policy reviewed 2000 Meters to Andriivka, “A War Film to Change All War Films,” and Tkalych reconnected with his friend Alexey Levkin at “Yule Night.”

In October, “She” premiered at the Tate Modern art gallery in London, and there was also a screening of “Made in Ukraine,” with the support of the Ukrainian embassy. Hatred Battalion medic Sophia Yanchevska, a friend of the neo-Nazi Veteran Corps leader Yan Klishayev, attended this event and made it to the BBC News studio for an interview. Yanchevska soon appeared on a billboard advertisement for the 3rd Army Corps. “She” is dedicated to 3rd Assault Brigade medic Valentyna “Valkyria” Nahorna, a M8L8TH fan featured in the film who did not live to see it. Ukrainian AP journalist Alex Babenko, one of the creators of 2000 Meters, once wrote a fluff piece about “Valkyria” and her neo-Nazi boyfriend “Berserk” “who fell in love on the frontline and died together in a Russian shell attack.”

“She” premiered days after CBC News in Canada published a surprisingly scandalous video report by Ben Makuch, “How Russia is recruiting civilians into its shadow war.” Makuch is a national security reporter who has written numerous articles for The Guardian about “The Base,” a neo-Nazi group from the United States. He has also written about the proliferation of “active clubs” (so-called “white supremacy 3.0”), and the Russian Volunteer Corps, which is “undeniably affiliated with the far right,” as well as the connections between these topics. In 2023, Makuch appeared on Democracy Now! alongside journalist Lev Golinkin to discuss “The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis … How Far Right is Exploiting Ukraine War.” Nevertheless…

Last autumn, Makuch visited a training base of the “elite” 3rd Assault Brigade and interviewed a burly Azovite for CBC News, without acknowledging his clearly visible neo-Nazi tattoos or even the “controversial past” of the unit. We see a couple billboards in Kyiv featuring the “White Fuhrer” Andriy Biletsky, but he is not mentioned, this is only B-roll footage. After Twitter/X user “Emo Morales” posted a screenshot of the interview which went viral, CBC News simply censored the most obvious swastika tattoo. Golinkin wrote about this for The Nation: “Canadian Government Media Blurs Out the Swastika on a Ukrainian Soldier.”

The CBC didn’t appear to be concerned that interviewing a man tattooed with neo-Nazi iconography is being legitimized—only that the “offensive” material is kept from the public. This literally Orwellian action by Canada’s government media is indicative of the country’s relationship to both neo-Nazis and their World War II predecessors. The dark reality lurking beneath the placid demeanor of America’s northern neighbor is that Canada’s institutions have spent decades protecting fascists and sweeping evidence under the rug. Canada’s elites guard this bloodstained legacy to this day.

A few days later, the HUR International Legion published a trailer for “Killhouse,” an upcoming movie, said to be “Ukraine’s first-ever tactical action film,” which apparently includes the RDK commander Denis Kapustin among the cast members. As told by United24 Media, it was produced “in collaboration with Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Third Separate Assault Brigade, and defense industry specialists.” The Ukrainian filmmaker Lubomyr Levistky seems to think the Azovites will help him realize his dream of becoming the Michael Bay of Ukraine. His previous film, “We Were Recruits,” also starred the 3rd Assault Brigade.

Levitsky appears to have named his latest movie after the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “Killhouse Academy.” In February of last year, “We Were Recruits” premiered in Washington, where he presented a “concept teaser” for “Killhouse” alongside some neo-Nazis from the 3rd Assault Brigade. That included Vladyslav Sobolevsky, a deputy commander of the unit. Sobolevsky soon launched Snake Island Institute (SII), an Azovite think tank that helps to promote Killhouse Academy and make inroads for Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis in NATO countries. The SII leadership organized that trip to DC for Levitsky, and they also got roles in “Killhouse.” They were probably among the “defense industry specialists” who helped to make the film.

According to Green Flag Ventures (GFV), it is the “leading US-based VC in Ukraine’s dual-use, defense, AI, and cyber early-stage product startups with global market potential.” It is one of the companies that Snake Island Institute recently thanked for having “worked alongside us this year and made our projects possible.” GFV co-founder Deborah Fairlamb appears in “Killhouse,” and apparently so does Misha Rudominski, co-founder of “Himera,” one of the Ukrainian military startups in GFV’s investment portfolio.

Also in October, the German army (Bundeswehr) published a troubling propaganda video of its commander-in-chief Christian Freuding visiting the 45th Panzer Brigade stationed in Lithuania. “Is the resemblance to NS [National Socialist] aesthetics coincidental or intentional … ???” wondered Sevim Dağdelen, a former member of German parliament. Almut Rochowanski, a feminist activist and fellow at the Quincy Institute, commented on the video, “It’s all there: pounding choir soundtrack, flaming torches, German soldiers yelling ‘Hoorah’ in a forest.” Susann Witt-Stahl from the left-wing newspaper junge Welt suggested that Freuding “emulates Azov” with this “archaic warrior ritual in the glow of firelight.” Indeed, Freuding spent the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ surrender at Killhouse Academy last year.

Closing out 2025, Germany’s Der Spiegel published a fawning article about “The Survivor” Oleksandr Ivantsov, who once advised his friends to “be careful!” when visiting Auschwitz, and only after reading what Holocaust deniers have to say about it. The New York Times covered Ivantsov’s story in December 2023 (“He Was Ready to Die, but Not to Surrender”), and a month later The Guardian published an “exclusive” by Luke Harding on his “Escape from Mariupol: how one Ukrainian soldier fled the Azovstal steelworks against the odds.” Ivantsov, who co-stars in “We Were Recruits,” accompanied Lubomyr Levitsky and the SII leadership to Washington just over a year ago. Zelensky decreed him a “Hero of Ukraine” in June. Since then, the “remarkable” Ivantsov wrote an “extraordinary memoir,” says the famous British journalist Luke Harding, who attended the book launch in November. Ivantsov drew the symbol of the Azov movement in Harding’s copy. According to Der Spiegel,

As a teenager, he [Ivantsov] was a fan of the football club FC Zorya Luhansk and met a group of “ultras” on the bus: supporters who fought with the opposing team after matches. Some were shaved, wore white shoelaces, and glorified Hitler. Ivantsov says he doesn’t share these ideas and has “nothing to do” with Hitler. But to this day, he describes himself as a nationalist and—like some other Ukrainians—isn't bothered by far-right tendencies. Back then, Ivantsov found the ultras exciting; he sensed an adventure. He became one of them and traveled to the games—and the fights.

Vladyslav Datsky, a commander in the 3rd Assault Brigade, also co-starred in “We Were Recruits.” For New Year’s, he took a picture of himself with an African Russian POW holding a banana. Later the 3rd Assault Brigade published a video of the “interview,” titled “Black Humor with Datsyk.” In the meantime, Zelensky’s tech guru Mykhailo Fedorov became the new Minister of Defense. Fedorov, the godfather of United24 Media, previously helped to unblock the Azovites (in particular the NGU Azov Brigade) from Facebook and Instagram as the Minister of Digital Transformation. After his latest appointment, the command of the 1st Azov Corps joined a newly established Digital Logistics Management System, and the Ministry of Defense launched “a secure environment designed to train and test artificial intelligence models using real-world battlefield data” with Palantir. Surely Fedorov is just the man to turn the war around.

In January, amidst power outages in Ukraine, the 3rd Army Corps and Azovite “Veteran Corps” sensed a PR opportunity and started to deploy food trucks with phone-charging stations. United24 Media naturally obliged them. Azov veterans told grateful Ukrainians about their beloved leader Andriy Biletsky who inspires them to “develop a healthy, strong nation.” Energoatom, the largest producer of electricity in Ukraine, just so happens to be a proud supporter of the 3rd Army Corps, which has received over 600 million UAH (~$14.4 million USD) from this state-owned nuclear energy company.

At the end of the month, the Zelensky government’s Ukrainian Cultural Foundation launched “a collaboration for a new grant program” with the 12th Azov Brigade to support “cultural and artistic projects dedicated to the war.” The head of the state agency noted that they signed a similar agreement with the 3rd Assault Brigade a year earlier. Centuria also hosted a book presentation, “Natiocracy 2.0,” featuring an ideologue of the 1990s Social-National Party of Ukraine. (This was the original neo-Nazi party in post-Soviet Ukraine. “Natiocracy,” borrowed from the 1930s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, is what the Azovites call the dictatorship they plan to establish.) Meanwhile, the New York Post ran a story on the Snake Island Institute’s Viktoria Honcharuk, “From Wall Street to war: How a Big Apple banker traded her dream life in finance for the front lines of Ukraine’s bloody battle with Russia.” The SII has collaborated with Centuria. Honcharuk soon visited London, where she also used to live, and appeared on Sky News and Times Radio.

In February, the 3rd Assault Brigade released an energy drink, and enlisted one of its neo-Nazi commanders “Procent” for the AI advertising campaign. He used to have an “88” in his Instagram username. “Procent” is associated with a neo-Nazi brand which sells KKK and Hitler patches. Later that month, 2000 Meters to Andriivka won the George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting.

In March, an Instagram account associated with the Ministry of Defense’s “Army TV” informed its followers about the “Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalist” which an OUN leader wrote 90 years ago and the Azovites made one of their “sacred texts” to perform as a call-and-response chant. “This Prayer continues to ring in the modern military,” it was said — as if this is simply a patriotic tradition. According to Azovite ideologist Oleksiy Rains, “Initially, this was done exclusively in AZOV [the NGU unit], but today the tradition has spread across a variety of communities, from military units to civic organizations and beyond.”

Heroization and Azovization

As Zelensky handed the “Hero of Ukraine” award to neo-Nazi 1st Azov Corps officer Denis “Byk” Tkalych at the start of October, the 3rd Army Corps announced that its commander Andriy Biletsky was made a brigadier general. Before the establishment of the 3rd Army Corps in March 2025, Biletsky led the 3rd Assault Brigade. Especially since becoming a general, the “White Fuhrer” has overseen the “Azovization” of the rest of the 3rd Army Corps. Events in Ukraine cited a report from Strana:

“As soon as we were absorbed, the new command informed us that all commanders, from battalion commanders to brigade commanders, would undergo personnel checks. It was stated that the criterion would primarily be the combat effectiveness of the attached brigades. However, in reality, all the officers in these units understood that this was about freeing up positions for Biletsky’s cadres from the 3rd Brigade, as well as for those who were ready to obey them unquestioningly. Those who were too independent or had patrons from Syrsky’s entourage immediately fell into disfavor. In the summer of 2025, a ‘drift’ began - many commanders of the attached brigades were transferred to other units, realizing that those who had long been close to Biletsky would take their positions. Some officers were directly forced to transfer. Those who did not understand the hints and did not transfer were then thrown into the most difficult sections of the front. With the ensuing consequences - if the unit lost ground, they were immediately removed from their positions,” a major of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who previously served in one of the brigades “annexed” to the Third Corps, told Strana.

Take for example the 60th Mechanized Brigade. Just days later in October, General Biletsky appointed its new commander, Dmytro Rohozyuk, a former Centuria “legionnaire” and leader of the “Vinnytsia Ultras.” Rohozyuk previously served in the 3rd Assault Brigade as the deputy commander of its 1st Assault Battalion, which originated in the Special Operations Forces Azov-Kyiv Regiment. His former superior, Volodymyr Fokin, was then appointed to command the 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade. Peter Korotaev (Events in Ukraine) reported, “Fokin immediately declared the start of a personnel purge, leading to a number of officers being sent on frontline assaults as infantrymen.”

Of the brigades “annexed” to the 3rd Army Corps, the 60th might be the most heavily transformed so far. The 60th Mechanized Brigade now includes the neo-Nazi “German Volunteer Corps,” and the Azovite drone battalion “Fatum,” one of the units associated with Killhouse Academy. “Dynamo hooligans are leading two linear battalions within the 3rd Army Corps,” the Dynamo Ultras boasted in November, hinting they meant the 60th brigade. Its 3rd Mechanized Battalion was formed on the basis of the former 97th Mechanized Battalion. According to “MilitaryLand,” this unit “effectively ceased to exist due to heavy losses sustained during the battle of Bakhmut. However, on September 26, 2023, the battalion was recreated from scratch on the basis of Azov-Kharkiv,” another Azovite special forces unit from 2022.

The symbol of the 3rd Mechanized Battalion is a Scythian dagger, and “our god is our weapon!” Andriy Malkov, a former “Dynamo hooligan” and co-organizer of the far-right “Nation Europa” conference in 2024, who I wrote about later that year, likely commands this unit in the 60th brigade. Previously there were hints that he served in the Fatum unit. In any case, Malkov recently presided over an Azovite ceremony for the 3rd battalion that featured the neo-Nazi band “Nezhegol,” which performed at Yule Night. The online “Encyclopaedia Metallum” lists the themes of Nezhegol’s music: “Nature, Heritage, Aryanism, Heathenism, National Socialism, Paganism.” On the evening of the spring equinox, the Nazi pagan Malkov made a video of a spinning fire-wheel next to a waving banner of the 60th Mechanized Brigade.

The Azovization of the 3rd Army Corps exposes the wishful thinking of so-called “experts” who predicted the inevitable dilution of far-right military units back in 2022. Relatively normal people may have swelled the ranks of the 12th Azov Brigade and 1st Azov Corps in the National Guard, but the old guard remains in control, with an ideological service named after the 1930s OUN leader who coined “Natiocracy.” The NGU Azovites also have a youth group, “Rukh404,” filled with M8L8TH fans. The openly neo-Nazi “Neptune” squad in the Azov Brigade (in particular “Bolgar” and “Byk”) took over the training battalion of the 1st Azov Corps. The head of recruitment for the entire corps is also a neo-Nazi, but more about him later.

In early November, after awarding more Azovites at the top of the month, Zelensky visited command posts for the 1st Azov Corps and the Nazi-infested Rubizh Brigade, which is part of the National Guard’s 2nd Khartia Corps. I wrote about this and the famous Khartia Corps last year, which has a nationalist ideological service, inspired by the Azovites. A few days later, Khartia hosted a NATO delegation. In the meantime, representatives of the 3rd Army Corps, Snake Island Institute, and the Kyiv City Council commissioner for veterans affairs Stanislav Ryzhenkov attended the unveiling of a memorial in the Ukrainian capital dedicated to the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade and its numerous units with neo-Nazi emblems, such as the “Dirlewanger” company.

Ryzhenkov apparently quoted Biletsky in his speech. Later that month, he joined a working group on forming a 2026 calendar of youth projects and events in Kyiv, and an NGU Azovite source boasted that “Azov is Helping Reform School Education in Ukraine.” According to “Azov Insider,” “As part of the reform of the ‘Defense of Ukraine’ curriculum initiated by the Ministry of Education and Science, service members of the 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov have joined the creation of training hubs and teacher instruction.” The education ministry later published a video starring “Hero of Ukraine” Lev Pashko, now the chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, as part of a series “about people who fill the subject ‘Defense of Ukraine’ with real content.”

The prominent Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, a professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, named three “national figures” that could replace Volodymyr Zelensky: the former commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, the HUR spymaster Kyrylo Budanov, and the Nazi general Andriy Biletsky. Since then a poll came out which suggested that a party led by Biletsky would come in 3rd place in a parliamentary election, besting Zelensky and Budanov, but still behind Zaluzhny and the former president Poroshenko.

Budanov soon praised Biletsky as “a figure who inspires young people: the power of words and weapons, nobility, responsibility for people, the will to fight, results on the battlefield that give confidence in the victory of good over evil.” At the end of November, Ukrainska Pravda unveiled its annual “UP100 list” of “Ukrainians who are shaping the independence and future of the country today.” The Defenders category included Andriy Biletsky, Kyrylo Budanov, Oleksandr Ivantsov, the NGU Azov Corps commander Denys Prokopenko, and Kharita Corps commander Ihor Obolensky.

Standing next to Stanislav Ryzhenkov at an event in early December, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko made a fist and put it over his heart, mirroring an Azovite gesture which is becoming increasingly widespread in the Ukrainian military. On the next day, Klitschko delivered 10,000 drones and 20 UGVs to Killhouse Academy for the 3rd Army Corps. The “White Fuhrer” greeted the mayor. According to Klitschko, “This year [2025], Kyiv has provided the corps’ soldiers with nearly 20,000 UAVs [drones]—including today’s shipment—and a modern mobile training school [for Killhouse] … Since the beginning of the year, Kyiv has allocated 1.3 billion hryvnias [~30 million USD] from the city budget to the 3rd Corps for equipment.”

Around that time, Zelensky awarded an apartment to an ideological officer in the 3rd Assault Brigade who served in the Hyrdra platoon that starred in 2000 Meters to Andriivka and received a standing ovation at one of its screenings in Ukraine. Also, Killhouse Academy quietly partnered with the Finnish-Ukrainian company Double Tap Investments (DTI), which is “committed to invest in Ukrainian defense technology startups.” According to DTI, “we’re bringing this combat-tested experience [Killhouse Academy] to Finland and beyond.”

The upcoming Killhouse Academy Finland program will train not only drone pilots but also engineers, mechanics, and support specialists — building the ecosystem of skills Europe needs to meet new security challenges. … This initiative is more than a training program. It’s a bridge — connecting Ukrainian battlefield innovation with European defense readiness.

“The point of the partnership is to develop the project in other countries,” says DTI co-founder Oles Khudoba, the former “head of finance and partnership” for the Ukrainian government’s “Brave1” platform designed “to establish a strong DefenseTech industry in Ukraine.” DTI’s CEO Jan-Erik Saarinen, a former Brave1 advisor from Helsinki, soon presented the Killhouse program at Finland’s DECOI 2025, or “Defense Ecosystem of Innovators” event. Meanwhile, the 3rd Army Corps struck a deal with the Munich-based Circus Group, “the leading AI robotics company, specializing in the translation of the fine art of cooking into full autonomy.”

Readers may recall that Biletsky’s former press secretary Oleksandr Alfyorov, who led the ideological service of his 3rd Assault Brigade, took over the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) last summer. A decade earlier, he attended the launch of a neo-Nazi “Russian Center” in Kyiv. Poland also elected a former football hooligan and nationalist historian as president, Karol Nawrocki, who previously led the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (2021-25). Alfyorov met Nawrocki when he visited Kyiv in December. Zelensky apparently considers Biletsky’s man to be part of the team. A few days later, Alfyorov presented an award to the First Lady of Ukraine on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Kicking off 2026, Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of the Kyiv School of Economics, wrote for the Financial Times that “it has been military units like Khartia and the 3rd Assault Brigade that have transformed the methods and morale of the Ukrainian military and made it a world leader in technological innovation and tactical agility.” At the Institute of Biology and Medicine of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, a medic from the 3rd Army Corps participated in a winter course as a guest lecturer. Later the psychological service of the 12th Azov Brigade held an event with the Kyiv School of Economics about creating a “veteran-oriented society.”

Lieutenant Colonel Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the 1st Azov Corps, and another “Hero of Ukraine,” signed a memorandum of cooperation with the head of the Ministry of Defense’s National Army Academy (NAA) in mid-January. According to the prestigious NAA, “For over six months now, the khorunza [ideological] service of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine ‘Azov’ has been holding meetings with cadets … These include lectures on military history, discussions about tradition and modernity, our values, and the reasons for the war.”

Lecturers from the NGU Azov ideological service include Ivan Patrilyak, the Banderite dean of history at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The NAA said the memorandum simply “formalized” their cooperation, which “involves conducting joint educational and scientific events, meetings, lectures, and discussions aimed at developing the necessary qualities in future officers.”

In 2021, the journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko authored a report about Azovite infiltration of the NAA, “Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for Western military assistance to the country.” This story focused on “Centuria,” but not the same organization that I’ve mentioned throughout this article. Kuzmenko wrote that since 2018, the NAA became the home to “a self-described order of ‘European traditionalist’ military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the country’s military along right-wing ideological lines and defending the ‘cultural and ethnic identity’ of European peoples against ‘Brussels’ politicos and bureaucrats.’”

The group envisions a future where “European right forces are consolidated and national traditionalism is established as the disciplining ideological basis for the European peoples.” … The group has been able to proselytize Ukraine’s future military elite inside the NAA. Apparent members have also gained access to Western military education and training Institutions. One apparent member of the group, then NAA cadet Kyrylo Dubrovskyi [who is now an officer in the 12th Azov Brigade], attended an 11-month Officer Training Course at the United Kingdom’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, graduating in late 2020. During that time, Dubrovskyi apparently maintained ties to the group. Another apparent member and then NAA cadet, Vladyslav Vintergoller, attended the 30th International Week held by the German Army Officers’ Academy (Die Offizierschule des Heeres, OSH) in Dresden, Germany, in April 2019. Meanwhile, inside Ukraine, members of the group have apparently had access to American military trainers, as well as American and French cadets. As recently as April 2021, the group claimed that since its launch, members have participated in joint military exercises with France, the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and Poland.

To avoid confusion with the other Centuria, we’ll call this NAA-connected group the Centuria Military Order (CMO). In 2020-21, Kuzmenko writes, the NAA denied the existence of the CMO. Meanwhile, he identified an NAA cadet and Azov veteran Yuriy “Milan” Havrylyshyn as one of the leaders of the group, and found a video of Havrylyshyn wearing a “White Pride World Wide” shirt. Despite western media picking up on Kuzmenko’s research, “Milan” is now the head of recruitment for the 1st Azov Corps, after serving in the 3rd Assault Brigade. At some point, Havrylyshyn founded “Slon FM” (apparently CMO 2.0) which is described as “a cadet-officer community with the goal of reforming Ukrainian military higher education.”

Also in January, the ideological service of the 3rd Assault Brigade celebrated the anniversary of the defunct neo-Nazi organization “Patriot of Ukraine,” and British politician Jack Lopresti (former deputy head of the Conservative Party) announced that he’s joined the 12th Azov Brigade, just a few days before it paid homage to one of its dead neo-Nazi commanders, Oleg Mudrak. Zelensky also held an awards ceremony for veterans who represented Ukraine at the “Invictus Games” in 2023-25. That included the 2025 team captain Oleksiy Tiunin from the 3rd Assault Brigade who is now part of the Veteran Corps and models for the neo-Nazi brand “Svastone.” In 2024, he golfed at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C.

In mid-February, cadets from the national academy of the Security Service of Ukraine took part in a “pistol-handling exercise” led by NGU Azov officer David “Chemist” Kasatkin at his “Rukh404” facility. Kasatkin, a deputy commander of the 12th Azov Brigade’s sniper detachment, has over 550,000 followers across Instagram, Tiktok, and Telegram. He founded the “Rukh404” youth group. Before joining Azov, “Chemist” led the straight-edge “Teivaz project” in Mariupol, named after a runic symbol “used to denote a continuation of the ‘struggle and victory’ of Nazi Germany.” With a neo-Nazi hat from “Svastone,” and a comrade behind the camera, he harassed and intimidated people who dared to drink or smoke in public.

A couple days before the 4th anniversary of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress held a large protest in Toronto. A flag of the 3rd Assault Brigade waved in the audience. It might as well be an unspoken rule in the Ukrainian diaspora that no patriotic demonstration is complete without at least one red and black (Banderite) flag. At some point since 2022, it seems you cannot have a Ukrainian rally in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Australia without a “Free Azov” sign or some other show of support for Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis. The “Azovization” of the Ukrainian diaspora is also on the horizon.

In the run up to the anniversary, the retired US general and former CIA director David Petraeus commended the Azovite think tank, Snake Island Institute. At this point no “Azov Lobby Review” is complete without Petraeus. According to him, the SII is “an independent Ukrainian defense analytics and coordination center with whose leaders I met with in recent weeks in both Kyiv and Munich.” Dominic Ventimiglia of Squad Ventures, a DC-based venture capital firm focused on Ukraine, also praised the SII as a “Ukrainian think tank on steroids!! ‘IMPRESSIVE!!!’ … [and] an organization that is quietly becoming one of the most important bridges between Ukrainian frontline experience and Western strategic thinking.” Jim Dolbow, national security advisor to U.S. Rep. Austin Scott (GA-R), commented, “Agree 1000% about Snake Island Institute!”

By the end of February, NGU Azov commander Denys Prokopenko became a brigadier general; “khorunzi” from his ideological service lectured at the Odessa military academy; the fundraising unit of the Azov Brigade got a new “International Partnerships Lead” (who used to work with USAID and a German equivalent, GIZ); and the National Academy of Internal Affairs hosted a meeting between the 1st Azov Corps and the 2025 laureates of a scientific state prize that Zelensky established (the Boris Paton National Prize of Ukraine).

The Minister of Internal Affairs also ordered the Lyceum of Security Direction and National-Patriotic Education in Vinnytsia to be named after the famous Azov fighter Nazarii “Grenka” Hryntsevych. “Grenka” was a Centuria legionnaire and the youngest “Azovstal defender” in 2022, who was released in a POW exchange along with Prokopenko. In 2023, he founded the well-known “Kontakt-12” unit in the Azov Brigade. In 2024, Hryntesyvch died, and Zelensky posthumously declared him a “Hero of Ukraine,” while in Germany, Ukrainian fans unfurled a huge banner of “Grenka” at the UEFA European Football Championship.

Around the turn of the month, the Hitler-tattooed Centuria leader Dmitriy Krukovsky took part in an awards ceremony for the 53rd Mechanized Brigade in the 3rd Army Corps. Centuria’s founder Ihor Mykhailenko, the second commander of the NGU Azov Regiment after Biletsky, soon took over the 53rd brigade. Krukovsky posted something about being in the 1st Mechanized Battalion of this unit, followed by an image of bullets in the shape of a swastika.

Vladyslav Dutchak, a leader of the ideological service of the 1st Azov Corps, lectured at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the Military Institute of Taras Shevchenko National University in early March. Then Zelensky visited the command of the 1st Azov Corps again, followed by a meeting at the Office of the President with “Hero of Ukraine” General Prokopenko. The NGU Azov commander was once a football hooligan with the neo-Nazi “Albatros” ultras affiliated with the “White Boys Club.” In 2019, Prokopenko refused to salute the newly elected President Zelensky, but look at him now.

For Volunteer Day (March 14), Ukraine’s “memory czar” Oleksandr Alfyorov visited “Halt,” an Azovite military social hub in the capital. He spoke about the main ideologist of the Azov movement, Mykola “Kruk” Kravchenko, who died early in the war. Alfyorov wore a jacket from 2014 with a patch of the neo-Nazi “Black Corps” that formed the Azov Battalion. “The Black Corps” (Das Schwarze Korps) was the newspaper of the SS and a nickname for that Nazi paramilitary organization.

In 2024, as the head of the ideological service of the 3rd Assault Brigade, Alfyorov organized a conference on “real reforms of the humanitarian [ideological] sphere in the military,” and met with the Parliamentary National Security and Defense Committee to discuss “humanitarian [ideological] reforms.” The Azov-inspired ideological service of the National Guard’s 2nd Khartia Corps took part in both meetings.

Last month, the 3rd Army Corps and Khartia signed a memorandum of cooperation on the development of joint training programs for the Ukrainian army. Apparently this means scaling up the Azov movement’s Yevhen Konovalets Military School, named for the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. According to the information agency of the Ministry of Defense, this is “a systemic step to turn combat experience into training standards that can be implemented across the entire Ukrainian army.”

Conferences (Davos—Kyiv—London—DC)

The 2025 UK Conservative Party Conference took place in Manchester in early October. It included a “Conservative Friends of Ukraine” event with NGU Azov Brigade ideological officer Volodymyr Vernyhora and the Conservative shadow defense secretary James Cartlidge. This is one of the Azovites who met Boris Johnson in London a couple years back.

Jack Lopresti, the former deputy head of the party soon to join the Azov Brigade, was also there. Conservative MP Iain Duncan said he was “honored to share the platform” with Vernyhora. One British columnist, Mark Wallace, insisted that Vernyhora gave “the best speech I heard this week - indeed one of the best I’ve ever heard.” British MPs also applauded Vernyhora in 2024, when he participated in a roundtable discussion in the UK Parliament about Azov POWs.

Later that month, two events took place simultaneously in Kyiv: the 2025 Ukrainian Women’s Congress, and a “Man in the Army” conference. The guest of honor of the Ukrainian Women’s Congress, supported by the EU, Japan, UN, the US-funded National Democratic Institute, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation (affiliated with the German Green party), was Tetiana Tepliuk, a 73-year-old medic in the Azov Brigade.

Tepiuk joined the Azov Regiment in 2015, when it was still an openly neo-Nazi unit. She survived the siege of Mariupol and Russian captivity, and then returned to the Azov Brigade. For her dedicated service to aiding neo-Nazis, Tepiuk received the 2025 Congress Award for Outstanding Achievements in Women’s Leadership. The “grandmother” of Azov received multiple standing ovations at this event, which the First Lady Olena Zelenska and HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov addressed remotely.

Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the 1st Azov Corps, gave a speech about his unit’s “motivation system” at the “Man in the Army” conference, supported by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and Military Ombudsman. Half an hour earlier, two panel discussions concluded, one featuring Rostyslav Nyzytsky, the fascist deputy commander of the Yevhen Konovalets Military School, who appears to have left the Azov Brigade. “Our task is to form the backbone” of Ukraine, he once said in 2023. “One hundred percent gentle Azovization.”

The other panel discussion included founders of “Slon FM” and “Company Group Team,” another Azovite project cultivating an influential brand and “military community.” Yuriy Havrylyshyn, the head of recruitment for the 1st Azov Corps, appeared with his Slon FM sidekick Ivan Halenko, the deputy commander of a drone unit in the Azov Brigade. Halenko graduated from the CMO-infiltrated National Army Academy in 2024, and since then has exposed numerous scandals at Ukrainian military universities. He’s another one going around giving lectures at military educational institutes.

Their co-panelist Volodymyr Malyshevsky co-founded Company Group Team, which I’ve written about before, but I probably need to revisit this topic soon. Speaking of the “Special Branding Operation to Nazify Ukraine,” in mid-November, the major Ukrainian military brand M-TAC (owned by a blatant neo-Nazi) showcased at Milipol Paris, which describes itself as the “leading event for homeland security and safety, organized under the patronage of the French Ministry of Interior.”

Around then, the NGU Azov Brigade/Corps dispatched a delegation to the United States led by Nestor Barchuk, who I previously introduced as an amateur DJ and “NGO nepo baby who is happy to play the part of liberal Azov spokesperson.” He was accompanied by an older gentleman with a neo-Nazi (Black Sun) elbow tattoo who apparently has a very “Ukrainian” sense of humor. For Christmas one year, he posted an image of a Nazi Santa Claus with an Azov patch. The “depoliticized” Azovites, “they’re not sending their best,” as Trump once said about Mexico.

With representatives of the 1st Azov Corps touring the Ukrainian American community, the neo-Nazi publisher who runs the ideological service of its Lyubart Brigade (Marko Melnyk) organized the “Steel World Forum” in Kyiv, and the neo-Nazi commander of the ideological service of the 3rd Army Corps (Dmytro Kukharchuk) spoke at a “Global Leadership Summit,” also in the capital.

In November 2014, as the Azov Regiment joined the National Guard of Ukraine, it established an openly neo-Nazi magazine, “Black Sun” (Chorne Sotne), with Marko Melnyk as the editor-in-chief. In 2016, he retired from military service and founded his own publishing house connected to the Azov movement and other far-right groups such as the Kholodny Yar Historical Club. Melnyk returned to the National Guard last year, not long after the expansion of the 12th Azov Brigade and its 5th “Lyubart” battalion.

According to the pro-Azov website “Military Land,” the original Lyubart unit “was formed by Azov veterans and members of the Centuria movement from Volyn Oblast … during the first hours of the full-scale invasion.” This was one of the Azov movement’s units in the Special Operations Forces, but instead of consolidating in the 3rd Assault Brigade, it joined the Azov Brigade in 2024. Now the Lyubart Brigade includes a “Nachtigall Battalion,” which was also a Ukrainian unit formed by German military intelligence in 1941.

The Steel World Forum featured many speakers, from the Azov and Khartia Corps, the government, and elsewhere. Yaroslav Nitsoy, who led the far-right “Ukrainian Student” group at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2024-25, gave a lecture about national-patriotic education. In a recent article about Ukraine’s “military-patriotic” Dzhura games, I forgot to mention that after graduating, the Azov-friendly Nitsoy found employment in the Ukrainian State Center for National-Patriotic Education which oversees this nationalist competition.

Dmytro Kukharchuk, who commanded a battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade, now directs the “Khorunza School” of the 3rd Army Corps. Kukharchuk is a former Sieg Heiling football hooligan who led the National Corps (Andriy Biletsky’s political party) in Cherkasy, central Ukraine. He apparently despises what Events in Ukraine describes as the “liberal-aligned” leadership of the 1st Azov Corps. “We can talk about corruption, we can talk about war, we can talk about crime—all of these things have causes,” Kukharchuk said at the “Global Leadership Summit,” a conservative Christian event in Kyiv. “And the main reason for this is a lack of spirit.”

Azovites once again starred at the Kyiv Youth Security Forum in early December. This annual event, supported by NATO, is organized by the foundation of the former prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (2014-16) which counts NATO, the Atlantic Council, and the Ukrainian Women’s Congress among its partners. Killhouse Academy and Ukrainian military technology companies showcased at the forum.

• Panel 1: Mykyta “Raz-Dva” Nadtochiy, another neo-Nazi deputy commander of the 1st Azov Corps, shared the stage with Mykola “Makar” Zinkevich, the neo-Nazi commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade’s star UGV unit “NC13,” and a drone operator from the Kraken 1654 regiment.

• Panel 3: “Boche,” the head of R&D for the 3rd Army Corps’ anti-aircraft regiment, and “Zozulia” from the R&D division of the 1st Azov Corps appeared alongside the managing director of the Munich-based technology company “Quantum Systems,” among others.

• Panel 4: Vitali Klychko, the mayor of Kyiv, made a speech before panelists took the stage, such as Olena Tolkachova, the head of the “Angels” patronage service of the 3rd Army Corps. Tolkachova might appear to be a benevolent member of the Azov movement, but she was married to its chief ideologist Mykola Kravchenko, and now appears to be involved in the Veteran Corps.

• Panel 5: The final panelists included Maryna Hrytsenko, executive director of Snake Island Institute, and Viktoria Kovach, the head of the 3rd Army Corps’ medical service.

Also in December, the Ukrainian “anti-corruption” NGO “ANTS” held a “Veterans Forum” featuring Stanislav Ryzhenkov, the Azov veteran turned Kyiv City Council commissioner for veterans affairs, and Yan Klishayev, the neo-Nazi leader of the newly established Veteran Corps. ANTS leader Hanna Hopko, a prominent representative of Ukrainian “civil society,” had recently visited Japan and Korea with NGU Azov ideological officer Volodymyr Vernyhora. Soon she interviewed Olena Semenyaka, the “international secretary” of the National Corps, and one of the “intellectual” Azovites who dreams of a Nazi International.

In January, at the invitation of the British ambassador to Ukraine, the Azovite memory czar Oleksandr Alfyorov spoke at a conference in Kyiv dedicated to the one year anniversary of Ukraine signing a “100 year strategic partnership” with the UK. According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM), “We would like to remind you that in November 2025, as part of a cooperation between the two countries, the Chairman of the UINM [Alfyorov] spoke at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the ‘Ukrainian Week in the United Kingdom 2025.’”

At least a couple Azovites made it to this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. In addition to the annual “Ukraine House,” the foundation of the Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk presented an exhibition and discussion program “Ukraine: Future’s Frontline.” That included a panel discussion, moderated by an editorial board member of the Financial Times, between the director of the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, and Kyrylo Berkal, the deputy commander of the 3rd Army Corps responsible for training.

Some hail Berkal, who Sieg Heils the Slavic god of war, as “The Man Shaping the Army of the Future.” He joined another panel discussion hosted by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation, and echoed its theme, saying there is “only one solution: change or die.” During the “Davos Ukrainian Breakfast,” Yuriy Filatov, the head of unmanned systems for the 3rd Army Corps, sat at Pinchuk’s table, just next to the stage.

A few steps away from Filatov, two moderators including CNN host Fareed Zakaria led a panel discussion with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Latvian president Edgars Rinkevics, Finnish president Alexander Stubb, Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof, and Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenković. Toward the end, Zakaria introduced Yuriy Filatov, who got up and spoke for several minutes. The 3rd Army Corps, he said, is “the corps that is larger than average European army, the corps that is holding 200 kilometers of frontline, and which is destroying 1,000 enemies per week. And from this perspective, I have a couple advices.”

Just accept the reality, the new reality that international law doesn’t work. … Unfortunately, I don’t really believe in deals, because deals are kind of rational, but also they are not, so please accept this.

Fareed Zakaria had to excuse himself to chair another session with the Israeli president, so his co-moderator Zanny Minton Beddoes from England, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, took over and thanked Filatov for his “powerful intervention” and “extremely powerful point: Ukraine is already protecting European security.” Beddoes then introduced U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (NC-R), who insisted on another standing ovation for the Ukrainian “heroes” in the room.

In the last week of January, the US-Ukraine venture capital firm “MITS Capital” teamed up with the 1st Azov Corps for a flashy military technology conference at Kyiv’s WW2 museum. I first wrote about the WW3-mongering MITS Capital warming up to the Azovites in 2024. Its U.S. co-founder Perry Boyle said their event was “a unique opportunity for military and commercial attaches, diplomats, NATO military personnel and investors to hear directly from one of the most fearsome fighting forces in history.” Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Corps, was not present but delivered an introductory speech, and retired Canadian lieutenant general Trevor Cadieu moderated a panel discussion with Prokopenko’s deputy Mykyta Nadtochiy. The commander of the National Guard also made a speech.

In the first week of February, at least a couple Azovites from the National Guard attended the annual “Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast” in Washington. On the next day, the so-called “Christian Taliban” (Bratstvo, or “Brotherhood”) in Ukraine hosted a “Right Conference” attended by Azovites and others. Bohdan Korchysnky, the head of the Bratstvo movement, wants to establish a far-right theocracy. Pagan Azovites probably won’t go for that, but Korchynsky commands respect as a longtime far-right leader in Ukraine going back to the 1990s. More importantly, his movement has a celebrated battalion in the HUR’s elite Tymur Special Unit, which includes the Russian Volunteer Corps. According to its commander, Oleksiy “Borghese” Seredyuk,

Those who fight against the TCK [Territorial Centers of Recruitment—mobilization offices], criticize, comment, obstruct, or spread relevant content on the internet (and thus disrupt mobilization) are enemies of Ukraine and more dangerous than a Russian soldier. At least I can shoot at the latter. … We all understand that at a critical moment (unfortunately, it will come), the task of mobilization will be carried out by combat battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (as has happened more than once in history). I will laugh wholeheartedly. … Personally, our [Bratstvo] battalion, in the frontline zone where we are currently operating, dragged all draft evaders out of their homes along the way.

Events in Ukraine reported, “The official Facebook page of the Kyiv oblast TCK shared Borghese’s text, titling it with the quote ‘Those that are against the TCK are enemies of Ukraine’. They ended up deleting the post.” Anyway, the “Right Conference” had a few speakers from the 3rd Army Corps. “It’s time for us, the military, to start helping the enlistment offices [TCK] catch that whole pack of draft-dodging scum,” said Yevhen Vryadnyk, who is a co-founder of the Azovite publishing house “Plomin,” and the leader of “Avangard,” a group associated with the Hatred Battalion. According to Marta Havryshko, he “suggested mobilizing the youth wings of Azov, Right Sector, Bratstvo and other far-right organizations for the task.”

Dmytro Savchenko, the founder of the far-right publishing house “Zaliznyy Tato” (Iron Dad), was the deputy chief of staff of the Nazi-infested Right Sector movement’s “Da Vinci Wolves” battalion. Savchenko has said “it was difficult for me to accept” the addition of the “Gonor” (Honor) group to the battalion — former Azovites “who had a tarnished reputation within right-wing circles.” After the neo-Nazi hipsters from Gonor split the unit, Savchenko proposed for Right Sector’s remaining battalion to join the 3rd Assault Brigade. Instead, he became an officer in the 3rd Army Corps. According to Korchynsky, the principal author for “Zaliznyy Tato,” Savchenko called for “intensifying external propaganda (graffiti, stickers, social media) of the main #TCK_ULTRAS slogans; forming mobile groups of active citizens to neutralize the street thugs who hinder the mobilization efforts of #TCK_ZSU servicemen … [and] more pronounced intolerance toward those who speak Russian.”

Dmytro Kukharchuk, the deputy commander of the 3rd Army Corps responsible for its ideological service, also spoke at the conference. According to Marta Havryshko, he “scolded liberal, hedonism-infected Europe.” Since then, Kukharchuk has claimed that his Khorunza School is “growing and training others: sergeants and officers of the 21st Corps, the Joint Operations Command, and the Air Force Command—those who share our values and principles.”

Havryshko summarized the “Right Conference” in this way: “Representatives of elite HUR units—Bratstvo, Tradition and Order—along with units of the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] such as the Third Assault Brigade, Raid, and other far-right formations, spent five straight hours in central Kyiv under the watchful eye of Ukrainian security services and military intelligence explaining just how bad, weak, and feeble Europe supposedly is and how European men are ‘no longer men.’” She also warned of an emerging “alliance of the ultra-right and the draft officers in Ukraine.”

Days later, MITS Capital hosted another event, “The Secret Sauce of Ukraine’s Victory: The Rise of New Defense Tech.” The guest of honor was General Andriy Lebedenko, deputy commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. Bohdan Krotevych, the famous former chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, also spoke at the event. Last November, Leonid Ragozin said that Krotevych “threatens Zelensky with another Maidan if he keeps covering up his corrupt friends. Krotevych quit army service early this year [2025] to become a prolific political commentator.”

I already covered the Munich Security Conference, which took place in the coming days. In case you missed it, the neo-Nazi commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “NC13” company of “ground-based systems” sat front and center at the Munich Security Breakfast with Viktoria Honcharuk from Snake Island Institute. Partnering with MITS Capital and others, SII held a private event on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference with David Petraeus and speakers from the 3rd Army Corps. Leonid Ragozin also wrote about the Azovites in Munich, and “the unholy alliance between Ukraine’s far right and the Western defence industry.”

At the end of May 2017, a group of far-right activists stormed Lviv region’s legislature and briefly detained its deputies inside the occupied building. They demanded amnesty for the veterans of the Russo-Ukrainian war who had been jailed for violent crimes inside and outside the war zone. Only one of the attackers was charged at the end of the day — Mykola “Makar” Zynkevich of the National Corps, the political wing of the Azov Movement, as its members themselves call their vast network of large military units and paramilitary groups.

Fast-forward seven years and the battle-hardened commander Zynkevich appears at a large event organised on the sides of the Munich Security Conference. Zynkevich’s unit deals with cutting edge war technology, namely terrestrial robotic systems which aid — and may one day replace — soldiers on the battlefield. The unit is called NC13, in which NC likely stands for Zynkevich’s political alma mater, National Corps. Number 13 is defined by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist symbol Aryan Circle (A being the first and C being the third letter in the alphabet).

For the 4th anniversary of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Society at Sheffield University in England held a conference featuring a former football hooligan as its guest of honor. “Django” is now the deputy commander of the 413th Raid Regiment, which supported the Right Conference earlier that month. Yevhen Karas, the notoriously neo-Nazi commander of this unit, was one of the main speakers at the Right Conference and remotely joined the event at Sheffield University. Karas is not associated with the Azov movement, but he led the neo-Nazi group “C14,” once a youth wing of the Svoboda party. In November, Karas spoke at Chatham House in London, and in December, Zelensky personally awarded him the “Cross of Military Merit.” The Ukrainian president established this distinction in 2022, based on the highest award of the 1940s Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Bratsvo leader Dmytro Korchysnky regretted that Ivan Zaliznyak from the Raid Regiment could not make it to his Right Conference, because “I wanted to hear the thoughts of my comrade and undisputed authority in the right-wing movement.” According to Events in Ukraine, Zaliznyak is “one the main voices calling to kill, beat and humiliate draft dodgers [ukhilyants].” This neo-Nazi has declared “war on ukhilyants, jihad on the indifferent,” and also joined the conference at Sheffield University via Zoom.

Sheffield University’s remote neo-Nazi speakers, Karas and Zaliznyak, both helped to ratchet up recent tensions between Ukraine and Hungary. On the day of the Right Conference, Karas also participated in the annual “Bandera Readings,” saying that “Russia is not our only enemy.” A clip of Karas at the 2022 Bandera Readings fantasizing about a full-scale war leading to the collapse of Russia went semi-viral before the invasion, but this year he raised the issue of “certain territorial issues from our other neighbors who will fear our strength.”

“What will Orbán do, this punk? Right now, the 128th brigade could reach there in two minutes.” The Hungarian prime minister’s political director shared the clip on Twitter/X, outraged that “a Zelenskyy-decorated Ukrainian army officer and leader of the neo-Nazi C14 group openly threatened Hungary with military invasion. This is intimidation against a sovereign NATO state. Hungary will not be blackmailed.” As for Zaliznyak, he soon issued an “action plan regarding Orbán and company.” Step four: “Deploy ten crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces to the Hungarian border, equipped with strike capabilities of sufficient range to reach Budapest.”

In March, outside Utrecht in the Netherlands, the head of recruitment for the 1st Azov Corps addressed a human resources conference (“Back to the HR Future”) held by the Defense Support Command of the Dutch Ministry of Defense. As a reminder, the former CMO leader Yuriy Havrylyshyn previously served in the 3rd Assault Brigade, the same unit which alarmed the leading Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in December. The headline read, “Dutch ex-soldier Hendrik candid about horrors on the Ukrainian front: ‘Every morning the Nazi salute was given.’”

The [3rd Assault Brigade] commander who received him assured him that all that [Nazi stuff] was a thing of the past. “This is not the Azov of the past,” he was told. “Azov has been reformed, purified, and rebuilt.” … Hendrik grabbed his bag, said he was leaving, and reported to the office to pick up his file. There, a confronting sight awaited him: Stepan Bandera flags, inverted swastikas, Nazi symbolism. “I didn’t want anything to do with this whole mess anymore. And I wasn’t the only one. A few other foreign guys had left too; they had seen teams where the Nazi salute was given every morning.”

A few days later, Kyiv hosted the second annual “Natsprotiv” (National Resistance) forum dedicated to “the development of a system of preparing citizens for national resistance.” The 3rd Army Corps and the “Resistance Movement” of the Special Operations Forces partnered with the official organizer of this Azovite production: the Kyiv Regional Center for Preparing the Population for National Resistance, which was established in 2024 at the initiative of the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Kyiv Regional Military Administration. The new Veteran Corps (VC) of the Azov movement seems to be associated with the Azovite-led “National Resistance Center.” Neo-Nazi VC leader Yan Klishayev took a photo at the conference with his friend, the Kyiv City Council commissioner for veterans affairs.

Iryna Vereshchuk, the deputy head of the Office of the President, introduced Andriy Biletsky at this event, which received support from Ukraine’s ministries of defense, education, and veterans affairs. She sat in the front row next to one of his deputy commanders, Maksym Zhorin. A former commander of the NGU Azov Regiment, Zhorin once presided over a Nazi pagan ceremony at the Azov base near Mariupol. Vereshchuk moderated a panel discussion with him and the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration. Last October, Leonid Ragozin reported that Biletsky’s deputy “laments that Ukraine is not militarising society and especially young people as well as children the way Russia does - ‘without leftist fuckery’.” Another panel included the memory czar Oleksandr Alfyorov. Representatives of the National Academy of Internal Affairs also participated in the forum.

In the next 48 hours, Volodymyr Zelensky presented an award to Volodymyr Avdeyenko for Volunteer Day. Avdeyenko is the director of the Kyiv Regional Center for Preparing the Population for National Resistance. He is also the go-to model for the neo-Nazi brand “Svastone,” for example, to sell baseball caps with a “Flower of Perun” swastika presented in a Waffen SS shield on the front, and the number 14 on the back. A week later, he probably rejoiced at the 1488th day of war.

In February, Zinkevich sat front and center at the Munich Security Breakfast, which kicks off the “leading international security forum.” He also participated in a Q&A session. The next evening, Zinkevich joined former CIA director and retired US general David Petraeus for a private event (co-organized by an Azovite think tank) that took place alongside the Munich Security Conference.

In the meantime, the Munich-based European Defense Tech Hub (which has in the past collaborated with the Azovite think tank) organized a hackathon featuring “mentors” from the Azovite 3rd Army Corps and the 1st Azov Corps in the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU). A week later, representatives of the Azov Corps and another Nazi-infested NGU brigade (“Rubizh”) addressed Germany’s Air Force Union.

Marking the fourth anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azovites then stole the show at the annual “Cafe Kyiv” event in Berlin, which is said to be “Europe’s most outstanding event on Ukraine.” At a rally in front of Brandenburg Gate, a flag of the hardcore neo-Nazi “Russian Volunteer Corps” (linked to the Azov movement) waved in the crowd. Meanwhile in Nuremberg, an Azov officer from the National Guard spoke at “the leading trade fair for security and defence in Germany.”

It was a busy month for the “Azov Lobby” in Germany.

Viktoria Kovach, the head of the medical service of the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade and now the 3rd Army Corps, is not a liberal newcomer to the most powerful armed movement in Ukraine. In 2014, she became a combat medic in the NGU Azov Regiment, when it remained an openly neo-Nazi unit.

Almost a year ago, Kovach met with a decorated official from the German Army Medical Service in Berlin. In early February 2026, about a week before the Munich Security Conference (MSC), she attended a five-day “Joint Medical Planning Course” at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany. Kovach wants NATO countries to prepare for war with Russia instead of “‘imaginary’ adversaries and made-up data sets used by our partners across a variety of training scenarios.”

The Munich Security Breakfast is described as “the leading platform for defense-oriented startups and companies within the framework of the Munich Security Conference.” Some of the main speakers at this year’s event previously rubbed shoulders with the Azovites:

• In 2024, Andrius Kubilius, the European Commissioner for Defense and Space, met with an NGU Azov delegation in Brussels, which included an Azov medic interested in the Belgian Nazi collaborator Léon Degrelle.

• Last year, Christian Freuding, now the head of the Germany army, spent the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ surrender at the drone school of the Azov movement, “Killhouse Academy,” and got a look at their “ground-based robotic systems.”

Mykola Zinkevich, the commander of the NC13 “company of ground-based robotic systems,” which originated in the Dirlewanger unit of the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade, attended the Munich Security Breakfast with Viktoria Honcharuk, apparently his girlfriend, who used to work on Wall Street. They sat several feet away from Freuding when the top German general gave his speech.

Honcharuk, a former investment banking analyst for Morgan Stanley, and then a combat medic in Ukraine, nows leads the “defense technology department” at Snake Island Institute (SII), a think tank established last year. Also in 2025, she co-founded AB3 Tech, a “startup accelerator” for the 3rd Assault Brigade and 3rd Army Corps. These Azovite entities have been making lots of friends from the political-security establishment and military-technology complex of NATO countries.

Canadian politician Chrystia Freeland, co-chair of the MSC Advisory Council, sat down with celebrity Ukrainian writer Serhii Zhadan at noon to discuss “Ukraine’s Uncertain Future.” Zhadan, ostensibly a “liberal nationalist,” is part of the Azov-inspired ideological unit in the famous NGU Khartia brigade/corps, which is more publicly aligned with the (openly neo-Nazi) 3rd Army Corps than the (more crypto-Nazi) 1st Azov Corps. As of this year, Freeland is an advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine, now led by Kyrylo Budanov, the former military intelligence chief and top patron of neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine.

The Munich Security Conference officially began the next morning, which included the unveiling of “Ukraine House,” a high-profile platform at the MSC, organized by the Office of the President and the oligarch Victor Pinchuk Foundation, that was previously limited to the World Economic Forum. For whatever reason, the Azovites seemingly avoided Ukraine House at the MSC, although they have taken the opportunity to speak at Davos and Pinchuk’s annual conferences in Ukraine. The main attraction of Ukraine House Munich was an exhibition of drones being used in Ukraine, accompanied by a message from Kyiv displayed in illuminated letters: “CHANGE OR DIE.”

That first afternoon, Maryna Hrytsenko, the executive director of Snake Island Institute, joined a “Drone Assembly Workshop” at the Amerika Haus in Munich, appearing alongside the commander of the Centre for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr, among others. Thanks to SII’s relationship with the European Defence Tech Hub, the Technical University of Munich (TUM, “the top-ranked technical university in the EU”) also hosted a hackathon featuring “mentors” from the 1st Azov Corps and 3rd Army Corps.

Meanwhile at the MSC, there was a screening of the documentary “Second Wind,” about a group of Ukrainian veterans who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as some kind of demonstration of their mystical “Ukrainian resilience.” One of those wounded soldiers, Vladislav Shatilo, is a neo-Nazi who served in the 3rd Assault Brigade and now leads the Azov movement’s new Veteran Corps in Chernihiv. He has a matching tattoo with the (former?) head of the Azovite paramilitary youth group “Centuria,” a hardcore neo-Nazi “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.” Shatilo did not make it to Munich, but he is currently embarking on a tour of Canada.

That evening on the sidelines of the MSC, the Azovite SII reported to its 5000 LinkedIn followers, the Snake Island Institute and its partners “gathered around 200 investors, defense-tech founders, ecosystem and military representatives, and decision-makers for a candid fireside chat on cases of Ukrainian battlefield breakthroughs — air defense in drone-contested environments and strike UGVs [Unmanned Ground Vehicles].” SII used the opportunity to promote Killhouse Academy with an “FPV training booth, offering participants an introduction to [the Azov movement’s] veteran-led FPV academy.”

Former CIA director David Petraeus gave the keynote speech. He sure is becoming a good friend of the Azovites. Like the head of the German army, Petraeus has visited Killhouse Academy and was introduced to some prominent neo-Nazis, including SII president Vladyslav Sobolevsky, who didn’t make it to Germany this year. Sobolevsky is an important Azovite and alleged war criminal whose favorite books are by Nazi generals (Erich von Manstein and Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand) and Léon Degrelle. In 2024, Petraeus met Azov veterans at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, for a golf tournament that he hosted.

In addition to Mykola “Makar” Zinkevich, several Azovites from the 3rd Army Corps took the mic, such as Oleksandr “Zhan” Vorobiov, the deputy chief of air defense. His superior, Maksym Zaichenko, formerly led the Azovite political party (the National Corps) in the Zaporizhia region. “Boche,” the head of R&D for the anti-aircraft regiment, and Serhiy “Rut” Shakun, the chief of electronic warfare, also talked about their alleged breakthroughs on the battlefield.

Another speaker was Yevhenii “Bater” Batrun, said to be “the chief instructor” at Killhouse Academy, and “one of the first FPV pilots in the 3rd Assault Brigade.” Like the neo-Nazi founder of Killhouse Academy, Batrun is affiliated with the “Kraken 1654” drone regiment in the 3rd Army Corps. A neo-Nazi contingent of this relatively new regiment were considered to be some of the top fighters at the disposal of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. Now they are supposedly in one of the most technologically advanced units in Ukraine’s army.

According to a former associate of the Munich-based Quantum Systems, the Azovites received “a strong interest from the investment crowd.” Earlier that day, someone from the Kyiv Post spoke with Zinkevich and Batrun. Their German interviewer described the 3rd Assault Brigade as “an elite unit widely recognized for its tactical innovation and being at the absolute tip of the Ukrainian spear.” As for the partners of the private event that evening, Friday the 13th:

• MITS Capital, a high-powered US-Ukraine venture capital firm betting big on World War III, invited the intelligence chief of the NGU Azov Brigade to its inaugural “MITS Forum” in Kyiv dedicated to “Ukrainian Defense Tech as a Partner for Pax Americana.” This year, MITS Capital held a flashy conference with the NGU Azov Corps—more about that coming soon.

• TUM Venture Labs, earlier that day, hosted the EDTH hackathon (featuring the 3rd Army Corps’ electronic warfare chief) and launched the “MSC Startup Hub.” This outfit at the Technical University of Munich aims “to accelerate scalable business models and start-ups in software, data and AI.” According to them, “We are THE Springboard for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship.”

• Bifrost Defence, based in Copenhagen, explains, “We buy and build defence companies, focused on hardware.” The managing partner, who was recently in Israel to meet with its National Cyber Directorate, is proud that one of their portfolio companies has been recognized for supporting the 125th Mechanized Brigade in the 3rd Army Corps, which is going through a process of “Azovization.” He raved about the SII event, “What started as an idea by Viktoriia Honcharuk [SII, AB3 Tech] has turned into one of the biggest (unofficial) Munich Security Conference side-events on this year's calendar, and today we already have over 200 invited guests registered!”

• Rasmussen Global, “Europe’s preeminent independent geopolitical advisory firm,” also headquartered in Copenhagen, was founded in 2014 by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Prime Minister of Denmark, after serving as the secretary general of NATO. In 2023, he said “the way we can put a quick end to the conflict is to deliver all the weapons the Ukrainians need,” and invite the country to join NATO. Asked “how do you think Russia is going to react to this?” he said to great applause, “I don’t care.”

• Altas Ares, based in Paris, declares it “has been leading a NATO-backed project set to reshape the defense of Europe’s Eastern flank” by developing AI technology and learning from the war in Ukraine. Last year, “we had the privilege of mentoring” a European Defense Tech Hub event in Lviv, which the Azovites helped to organize. Partners of this EDTH hackathon included Zinkevich’s NC13 unit and the Galician Youth, as well as Centuria.

Sergei Sumlenny is a German information warrior from Russia who “fights” for Ukraine, and now the “Azov Lobby.” Like many Azov supporters in Germany, he is linked to the Green Party. Last year, Sumlenny arranged a trip to the German parliament for Valery Horishny, a neo-Nazi pagan senior sergeant in the Azov Corps who has written poetry dedicated to Adolf Hitler.

A week after the 2026 Munich Security Conference, Germany’s Air Force Union held a conference dedicated to drones. Sumlenny brought Mykyta Puz, a “Miltech Scouting and Partnership Officer” from the NGU Azov Brigade, and someone from the NGU Rubizh Brigade (part of the Khartia Corps) to speak at the event. The far-right Svoboda party has two battalions in the Rubizh Brigade, one of which has an optical illusion of Nazi SS bolts in its emblem.

Puz was one of the “mentors” at the hackathon. In the coming days, he spoke at Cafe Kyiv in Berlin, “Europe’s most outstanding event on Ukraine,” and Enforce Tac in Nuremberg, “Germany’s leading trade fair for security and defense.”

Cafe Kyiv is another high-profile event, attended by several thousand people and organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is associated with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor of Germany and president of the CDU, gave a speech at the opening ceremony. “We are learning a great deal from Ukraine,” he said.

At 11am, a junior sergeant in the 1st Azov Corps and lieutenant from the 2nd Khartia Corps spoke with the Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany and German MP Jeanne Dillschneider (from the Green Party) about “Defining the European way of drone warfare – Lessons from Ukraine for NATO and Europe.”

They were joined by the managing director of Quantum Frontline Industries, “the first fully automated industrial production line for Ukrainian military drones to be set up in Europe.” The Ukraine-based Frontline Robotics, supporters of the 3rd Army Corps, and Quantum Systems in Munich, which loomed large at the MSC and Cafe Kyiv, announced this joint venture toward the end of last year. It may very well come to work with the Azovites, if it hasn’t already.

At 2pm, there was a screening of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” starring the 3rd Assault Brigade. “I think that war is probably the best time in life to just start everything over from scratch,” a unit commander “Fedya” says in the film, “because all this Soviet influence will be gone.” The movie ends with him planting an upside down Ukrainian flag in the ruins of a village, and an ominous Azovite ceremony honoring their fallen fighters. Borrowed from the Italian fascist tradition, there is a roll call of martyrs, followed by unified chants of “Presente!” This goes on as the screen turns to black and the credits roll. It probably received a standing ovation from the audience.

At 4pm, there was a presentation of the wartime diary of Savita Wagner, a German combat medic who served in Ukraine. She died in the far-right Carpathian Sich battalion, which originated in the Svoboda party. The “German Volunteer Corps,” linked to the German neo-Nazi party Der III Weg, later joined the unit. On the 4th anniversary of the Russian invasion, members of Der III Weg demonstrated in Zwickau with the German branch of Centuria (yes, that is a thing).

By 6pm, another panel concluded on “Securing European Skies: Lessons from Ukraine’s Innovation.” Sergej Sumlenny moderated this discussion, featuring the same Azov sergeant as before (Oleksii Rudenko). There was also a captain of the Rubizh Brigade, its head of civil-military cooperation (Maksym Proskurov). They appeared alongside a German former NATO official (Gerlinde Niehus), German MP from the CDU (Roderich Kiesewetter), and a “pro-Ukraine activist” from the U.S. (Jonathan Lippert) who has fundraised for the Azovites.

At 7pm, events at Cafe Kyiv pondered the issue of “Holocaust education in times of war,” and dismantling Soviet war memorials in Berlin. Anna Vriadnyk, a strategic communications officer from the 1st Azov Corps, took the stage at 8pm to discuss Russian hybrid warfare with the Ambassador of Canada to Germany, as well as Arndt Freytag von Loringhov, a former NATO intelligence chief and deputy director of the German Federal Intelligence Service. Meanwhile, Azov Brigade lieutenant Mykyta Puz and Khartia Brigade staff sergeant Oleksandr Zhylyayev spoke with a strategic communications officer from Quantum Systems, in a panel moderated by a journalist from the prominent German newspaper Die Zeit.

“A special thanks to the Ukrainian speakers and soldiers from the Azov and Khartiya Corps for sharing their insights,” said Mattia Nelles, CEO of the German-Ukrainian Bureau, who then accompanied the NGU Azov “Miltech Scouting and Partnership Officer” to Nuremberg.

When Sumlenny brought an NGU Azov delegation to Germany last year, Nelles helped to arrange their trip to the Bundestag. He was especially impacted by Valery Horishny, an open admirer of Hitler, who he previously met at the Kyiv Security Forum. Nelles helped to organize several panels at Cafe Kyiv 2026, including the one dedicated to “defining the European way of drone warfare.”

The 1st Assault Regiment, part of Ukraine’s controversial Assault Troops, also tabled at Cafe Kyiv and held a panel: “How to turn a civilian welder into an effective assault soldier in 51 days.” This unit originated in the Nazi-infested Right Sector movement, and is named after its former commander, Dmytro “Da Vinci” Kotsiubailo, a far-right “Hero of Ukraine.”

By the end of February, according to Nelles, he “brought representatives of the 1st Assault Regiment to the German Federal Foreign Office, where 100+ diplomats joined a conversation with these highly effective fighters, deployed to prevent breakthroughs along the front and conduct counterattacks.” His former boss, Green MP Robin Wagener, chairs the German-Ukrainian parliamentary group.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more developments (including an overview of the “Azov Lobby” in Fall 2025-Winter 2026), and perhaps consider becoming a paid subscriber if you haven’t already. I couldn’t bring myself to paywall this article—maybe next time. If you want to make a one-time donation, you can “Buy Me a Coffee.”

Many people, including those who know better, still call it the “Azov Battalion.” By 2015, this neo-Nazi militia joined the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) and became the “Azov Regiment” (two battalions and additional units). Now the “Azov Brigade” (half a dozen battalions and more) leads the “1st Azov Corps” (five other brigades).

First introduced as an amendment by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the longest-serving Black member of Congress, the Azov ban made it into the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bills in 2015-16, which both died in the Senate. It was only after Conyers retired that these 23 words were ostensibly enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018: “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Conyers, “one of the last Civil Rights warriors,” passed away in 2019, and is presumably rolling in his grave.

“But the ‘Azov Battalion’ hasn’t been a thing for over ten years!” some would say today — and there is the loophole. In order to justify U.S. support for the NGU Azov Brigade (est. 2023), the State Department seemed to argue that the Congressional ban did not apply anymore. “The two units [Azov Battalion/Brigade] are not the same, despite persistent Russian disinformation to conflate them,” according to the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. This was 2024, not long after the Ukrainian foreign ministry and postal service celebrated the Azov Brigade’s “10th anniversary.”

Certain “experts” promote an evidence-free narrative that since 2014, the Azovites in the National Guard have thoroughly “depoliticized” and purged the neo-Nazis, also severing ties with the growing neo-Nazi movement led by Azov veterans and their “White Fuhrer” (Andriy Biletsky). In any case, the alleged “bad apples” who followed Biletsky formed new “Azov” units in 2022, in the Territorial Defense and Special Operations Forces. They largely coalesced as an elite infantry unit: Biletsky’s 3rd Assault Brigade, and now his 3rd Army Corps. Apparently, the Azov movement’s military units outside the National Guard sidestepped the Congressional ban by dropping “Azov” from their name.

In the summer of 2023, a friend of the Azovites in Congress (Rep. Victoria Spartz, who grew up in Soviet Ukraine) tried to repeal the ban. Another MAGA politician (Andy Ogles from Tennessee) tried to strengthen it by naming the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Azovite “Russian Volunteer Corps” as other groups that should be barred from receiving U.S. support. They both failed, and the original wording remained.

Somehow, the House of Representatives closed the loophole in its Department of Defense Appropriations Act for 2025, but the bill never made it out of the Senate. A former U.S. intelligence officer, Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), the son of the former CIA director and Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama, offered an amendment to legalize the loophole, by conditioning U.S. support for the Azovites on approval from the State Department, which the NGU Azov Brigade already received. Panetta’s bipartisan amendment failed, but several members of Congress co-sponsored it.

The loophole was closed again in the House version of the 2026 DOD appropriations bill, but the new wording (in italics) was stripped from the recently passed Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026: “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, intelligence, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion, the Third Separate Assault Brigade, or any successor organization.” Even the State Department would have to admit that the NGU Azov Brigade is a successor to the Azov Battalion, but not this year.

Investors are beating down the doors of the German defense startup Arx Robotics. “Defense has now also become a priority for venture capital investors,” said CEO Marc Wietfeld, a former Bundeswehr captain, to Handelsblatt, referring to the gradual withdrawal of the United States from the war in Ukraine. As a producer of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), which are considered game changers for the future of modern warfare, Arx Robotics is currently writing an economic mega-success story.

“I believe this is about something much bigger,” Wietfeld emphasized in November 2025. What high ideals he means can be found on the company’s website: among other things, it states that the company ensures the “sovereignty of Europe” by providing assets to strengthen its “technological resilience in every mission.” Arx Robotics promotes its unmanned tank “Gereon” using the noblest of motives: the “defense” of “freedom and democracy.” After all, it delivered 30 units to Ukraine in March 2025—financed with funds from the German federal government’s “capacity-building assistance.” Last month, a new major contract was already announced, through which Ukraine is to receive the “world’s largest military robotics fleet” (there is talk of an “expansion by several hundred systems”). Prior to this, Arx Robotics had described its support for Ukraine through its UGVs as the “decisive moment in Europe’s embrace of autonomous military technologies.”

Who else is being “embraced” in this way is revealed by the unit insignia worn by Ukrainian soldiers shown using the device in an Arx Robotics promotional video: the 3rd “Azov” Assault Brigade of the 3rd Army Corps, which is under the command of Andriy Biletsky, the most powerful neo-Nazi leader in Ukraine.

Blessed Expansion

Wietfeld founded Arx Robotics in 2021 together with his former Bundeswehr officer colleagues Maximilian Wied and Stefan Röbel. In addition to the “Gereon,” the company produces the wheeled unmanned ground vehicle “Hector” as well as an AI-based operating system that can be used to retrofit conventional military vehicles. Arx Robotics, whose customers also include the Bundeswehr, is headquartered in Oberding in the district of Erding in Upper Bavaria and has branch offices in Berlin, Kyiv, and London; it is currently building a development center in southwest England to produce systems tailored to the operational requirements of the British Army. Over the course of the year, business media reported that investment sums in the double-digit millions had been raised.

Meanwhile, engine manufacturer Deutz has joined Arx Robotics as a lead investor, and the tank transmission producer Renk and Daimler Truck have been named as cooperation partners. As early as July, Marc Wietfeld met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Rome at the Ukraine Recovery Conference to discuss Arx Robotics’ work there.

What kind of “blessing” the expansion and UGV deliveries by Arx Robotics to Ukraine represent for the “Azov” military units is illustrated by posts on the company’s LinkedIn channel: the arms manufacturer supports the UGV school of the “Killhouse Academy” of the 3rd Assault Brigade, which is equipped with its own combat robot fleet and a simulation room, “financially, technically, and through direct collaboration,” as stated there. “Together we train operators, modernize capabilities, and accelerate the deployment of unmanned systems for logistics, reconnaissance, and evacuation.” Igor Kornilov, Arx Robotics’ managing director in Ukraine, had already announced the donation of a “Gereon” to “Killhouse.” On the historic date of May 8, 2025, the cooperation received a higher level of official recognition through a visit by Major General Christian Freuding, head of the Ukraine Situation Center at the German Federal Ministry of Defense.

UGV Fighters with SS Symbols

Contrary to claims made by Western media, the 3rd Assault Brigade, which operates the “Killhouse Academy,” is by no means “depoliticized.” On the contrary, it is firmly embedded in the “Azov” neo-Nazi movement, which for years has acted as a growing state within a state. “Killhouse” initiator Oleg “Romacha” Romanov—whom Freuding posed with for a photo and who today serves in the 21st Unmanned Systems Regiment “Kraken 1654” of the 3rd Army Corps—openly displays his ideology on social media through tattoos featuring swastika ornaments.

The brigade’s UGV platoon NC13 was established in 2024 within a company that adopted a slightly modified version of the symbol of the SS special unit “Dirlewanger” as its official unit insignia. The commander of NC13 is Mykola “Makar” Sinkevych, a leader of the neo-Nazi “Galician Youth,” which recently praised him as being “true to the cause.” His organization appears with the Celtic cross, Himmler’s SS “Black Sun” symbol, and the insignia of the Waffen-SS Division “Galicia.” The latter also adorns the field uniforms of NC13 fighters shown in a propaganda video by the 3rd Army Corps. Like all “Azov” military units, NC13 firmly stands in the tradition of the Bandera wing of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

“Azov” in a Top Position

In late summer 2025, Arx Robotics presented its first combat tank, the “Combat Gereon.” It was developed in cooperation with the defense-tech startup Frontline Robotics in Ukraine, which recently entered into a joint venture with Germany’s Quantum Systems to set up a drone production line for the Kyiv armed forces. The military-industrial complexes of the two countries are networking at breakneck speed. Arx Robotics relies on the practical knowledge of Ukrainian soldiers—“users on the front lines”—for its innovations. In October, NC13, together with other “Azov” units, organized the first large-scale crash test of robotic systems under simulated combat conditions on the outskirts of Lviv (it is not known whether products from Arx Robotics were used).

“What is happening there is not an evolution of warfare, but a revolution,” Marc Wietfeld said in an interview. Not least thanks to the extensive support of his company and the German government, the 3rd “Azov” Assault Brigade is among those at the forefront, significantly expanding its leadership role as the most technologically advanced unit in the Ukrainian armed forces—and thereby also the power of militant fascist forces in the country. “This is the new reality of war, where we set the rules,” the 3rd Assault Brigade declared as early as the founding of NC13 in September 2025.

Meanwhile, “Azov” chief ideologue Oleksii Rains, a member of the 3rd Assault Brigade and head of its center for ideological training, once again made clear that the war aim of his movement is a “Ukraine for Ukrainians” and that it is not interested in “freedom and democracy.” The latter, he wrote on the Telegram channel of his publishing house—which releases writings by “Azov” and the historical OUN-B—means only “collective helplessness.” “Ukrainians and Ukraine do not need democracy, but responsible authoritarian leadership.”

A question from the junge Welt editorial staff to Arx Robotics as to how it reconciles its cooperation with fascist military units with its proclaimed values-based corporate policy has so far gone unanswered.

MurderHouse, Inc.

(The following section, providing background information on Killhouse Academy, also appeared in junge Welt.)

The facility was founded in April 2024 as a drone school by the 3rd “Azov” Assault Brigade, which today forms the backbone of the 3rd Corps of the Ukrainian Army. “Killhouse Academy” offers six-day basic courses for soldiers and civilians in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, teaching fundamental knowledge about the construction and operation of FPV drones. In advanced courses, participants learn how to equip drones with ammunition and fly them in combat. Additionally, there is an engineering program in FPV drone technology. The “Killhouse” offerings also include a three-day bootcamp with armed combat exercises and other action—promising “adrenaline” and “adventure.” The stated main goal of the “Killhouse” operators is to increase the number of specialists and make them available for use by the Ukrainian armed forces.

In spring 2025, “Killhouse” expanded and opened a UGV (unmanned ground vehicle) school to train new platoons of the 3rd Assault Brigade. “Modern warfare requires constant development of the army and the introduction of innovations,” says the advertisement for the basic course offered there. “Ground robot systems are a future that is already effectively deployed on the battlefield.” Participants learn to transport supplies, wounded soldiers, and ammunition, as well as to destroy enemy targets. The training is supported by the NGOs “Dignitas Ukraine,” based in the U.S., the military school “Boriwiter,” which cooperates with NATO institutions such as the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre, and the German company ARX Robotics.

The coaching team is mainly recruited from veterans of the 3rd “Azov” Assault Brigade. Prices are around €160 for civilians; active soldiers can participate for free, veterans who are no longer on the front lines pay half, and foreigners pay double. Among the latter are international volunteers serving in the Ukrainian armed forces, as well as ordinary Western civilians who want to be prepared against Russia. “Who knows if the war will reach Europe in the future,” the Irish Times recently quoted a German-Ukrainian business consultant who proudly held up his “Killhouse” certificate for completing an FPV drone course. Springer’s Welt already celebrates Azov’s “Killhouse” as a “mix of West Point and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that is, the U.S. military academy and the elite tech cadet school on the American East Coast—but in Ukrainian.”

P.S. from the Azov Lobby Blog

When I refer to the “Bandera Lobby” on my other Substack, I mean an international network of people and organizations affiliated (or at least allied) with the OUN-B, the Banderite faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which still exists. Usually I am talking about OUN-B members and front groups. The “Azov Lobby” is not so conspiratorial, because we are not mapping out a secretive international Organization of Ukrainian Nazis, but merely keeping tabs on the Azovites and their supporters around the world.

What we might call the “extended Azov Lobby” (their supporters) made a stronger showing at the latest “Ukraine Action Summit” in Washington, which brought together hundreds of people to meet with members of Congress and their staffers. It served as another reminder that the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), after decades of Banderite domination, has become almost irrelevant outside of Chicago and certain Congressional offices.

Despite being the “largest umbrella organization,” the UCCA increasingly resembles a letterhead group, even in New York where it is headquartered down the street from various OUN-B “facade structures.” The UCCA is yet to welcome into its ranks any organizations created since 2014, and these are the most active ones.

Take for example “Razom for Ukraine,” also based in Manhattan’s “Little Ukraine,” or the East Village. Razom, established in 2014, is essentially the “Ukrainian AIPAC,” as the Congressional advisor Paul Massaro once put it when he was still a prominent online cheerleader for escalating the war in Ukraine by any means necessary.

Razom spearheaded the American Coalition for Ukraine (ACU) behind the Ukraine Action Summits. Steps were never taken to centralize the ACU, to replace or merge with the UCCA. Razom probably did not want a conflict with its Banderite neighbors (real control freaks) in Manhattan, who manage the “Ukrainian National Home” where this group is headquartered.

In 2022, Razom raised over $65 million, the majority of which “became military aid, mainly tactical medicine equipment and UAVs [drones],” according to its co-founder Lyuba Shipovich. But at the end of the year, the board of directors decided to “cut military support and focus on humanitarian aid.” Razom split, and reportedly stepped back from the American Coalition for Ukraine.

In February 2023, a Razom splinter group led by IT specialists Lyuba Shipovich and Dmytro Kavun founded Dignitas Ukraine, “which has since become a leading player in channeling resources and technology to Ukraine’s armed forces.” They adopted Razom’s “military and veteran project teams” and soon absorbed the “Victory Drones” project led by the famous “NGO militarist” Mariya Berlinska. “Events in Ukraine” explains that Berlinska is “quite well-known for her constant calls to ramp up mobilization” and personally believes, “Our task is to effectively hold out until the moment Russia collapses … [perhaps] another 10-12 years.”

Whereas Victory Drones raises money for drones and trains Ukrainians to use them, Victory Robots is another training program which Dignitas launched in 2025. These entities co-founded KillHouse Academy’s UGV school with the openly neo-Nazi 3rd Assault Brigade, which has taken over the 3rd Army Corps. “When we spun off into Dignitas in 2023, I felt like we really popularized cheap FPV [drone] technology to the masses and broad adoption,” claims Dignitas co-founder Dmytro Kavun. “Now we are popularizing ground robotic systems.”

Before the neo-Nazi “NC13” became the leading UGV unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade, there was the “Nova Technology Center.” Victor Pavlov, its former commander, now directs the KillHouse Academy School for Ground-Based Systems. Almost a year ago, Shipovich and Pavlov met the former CIA director and retired US general David Petraeus, probably in connection with his visit to the Killhouse Academy drone pilot training facility in Kyiv. This was months before Dignitas and the Azov movement launched the UGV school.

On May 8, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender, Victor Pavlov met the German major general Christian Freuding (then the head coordinator of German military assistance to Ukraine), who visited Killhouse Academy and got an early look at its UGV school. Later that month, Pavlov and the “White Fuhrer” of the Azov movement (Andriy Biletsky) spoke at the “DOU Day” technology conference in Kyiv, and Dignitas co-organized the first UGV conference in the capital, which featured speakers from the “Azov family” of military units.

In June, Killhouse Academy launched its UGV school, and Dignitas established Victory Robots. Meanwhile, Pavlov joined a “strategic program” at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov (now the head of the presidential administration) sat next to the “White Fuhrer” at the Killhouse event. Later that summer, Victor Pavlov showed the UGV school to the commander-in-chief of the Latvian armed forces, and Pavlov spoke at another conference in Kyiv about post-war Ukraine with Shipovich.

In early September, the Azov-friendly Ukrainian IT community “DOU” held a “picnic” that featured AB3 Tech, the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “startup accelerator.” The Azovite booth showcased Buria, a robotic turret produced by the Kyiv-based robotic engineering firm Frontline Industries, which has since then launched “Quantum Frontline Industries” with the German technology company Quantum-Systems. According to the latter, “the new German-Ukrainian defence joint venture … will establish Europe’s first fully automated, industrial-scale foreign production line for drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

As the summer came to an end, Victor Pavlov spoke at the EU-funded Defense Tech Valley 2025, an event organized by the Ukrainian government military technology platform “Brave1” that has reportedly become “the world’s largest investment summit focused on defense technologies.” This year, it took place at a football stadium in Lviv, and was said to have raised $100 million for military technology startups. According to the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, “the event showcased Ukraine’s role as a global hub of battlefield-proven innovation.” Furthermore, “This unique expertise positions Ukraine at the forefront of shaping how defence innovations are transforming global security.” The Azovite “AB3 Tech” of course had a booth to promote its expertise with “Combat-Tested Defense Tech.” Pavlov called on investors and producers to “stop imagining things, stop coming up with some hypothesis on your own, come and ask us.”

Brigadier general Andriy Biletsky, the “Fuhrer” of the Azov movement and commander of the 3rd Army Corps, announced in early December the creation of a “Veteran Corps,” to unite veterans from all units of the Ukrainian armed forces. Of course, the Azov movement will be at the forefront. Days earlier in Kyiv, the Minister for Veterans Affairs met with the new head of the Veteran Corps, a neo-Nazi who goes by “Macgregor.” Once asked what makes the Azovite “3rd” so effective, he answered, “Commander Andriy Biletsky. There’s nothing else to say here.”

Yan “Macgregor” Klishayev has probably been a neo-Nazi for at least a decade. In 2022, he was in Poland, but last year he returned to Ukraine and lost a leg fighting in the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade (3AB) under Biletsky’s command. Years before leaving Ukraine, Klishayev attended the National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) “Asgardsrei” festival in Kyiv, organized by the Russian neo-Nazi Alexey Levkin, who is now a leading figure in the Azovite “Russian Volunteer Corps.”

Klishayev led a squad in the 3rd company of the 3AB’s 1st assault battalion, which he has described as one of the strongest companies in the brigade. After all, he explained in a December 2024 interview with the army’s information agency, the commanders of the 1st assault battalion mostly came from this unit, which has the Black Sun, a notorious neo-Nazi symbol, in its emblem. A month later, Klishayev did an interview with Centuria, the openly neo-Nazi paramilitary youth wing of the Azov movement that largely consists of insane NSBM fans. In this conversation, he suggested that Centuria’s goal is to become the Yunarmiya of Ukraine.

One of Centuria’s first questions for Klishayev was about his military training with the 3rd Assault Brigade in Britain. According to him, the British instructors asked themselves, “What are we supposed to do with them if they already know how to do everything?” Klishayev mentioned his friendship with the late Nikita “Latvian” Tarenov, who co-founded “Nord Storm,” an even more hardcore neo-Nazi group within Centuria. Earlier this year, he received a visit in the hospital from Aleksey “Kolovrat” Kozhemyakin, a well-known Russian neo-Nazi who served in the same company as him. Whereas “Latvian” covered his arms in Waffen-SS emblems, “Kolovrat” has a Hitler tattoo and swastika on his chest.

The commander of the Veteran Corps is also associated with the Azovite biker fight club “M13,” the leader of which was invited to the Ministry of Youth and Sports shortly before Yan Klishayev met with the Minister for Veterans Affairs. This year, M13 has organized fighting competitions with the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, in particular its Nazi-infested “Tymur Special Unit” that includes the Russian Volunteer Corps. The RVC commander, Denis Kapustin, better known as “White Rex” and “Denis Nikitin,” is something like a founding father of “white supremacy 3.0,” which is centered around neo-Nazi combat sports.

If the war in Ukraine is really coming to an end, expect Andriy Biletsky’s neo-Nazi army to lead a formidable veterans movement. Announcing the Veteran Corps, Biletsky said that they “paid with blood for their own state. And now they have the right and the duty to build it further.” Rostyslav Nyzytsky, a top instructor in the 1st Azov Corps of the National Guard, put it this way: “I want to take her, she belongs to me, she’s mine. I have to take it away from everyone who isn’t me.”

Yuriy Pavlyshyn, a medic from the Nord Storm-linked “Hatred” battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade, is the bass guitar player in Alexey Levkin’s NSBM band “M8L8TH,” also known as “Hitler’s Hammer.” Pavlyshyn, who co-organized a European neo-Nazi conference last year, advocates for a nationalist dictatorship of veterans, “because the real elites of our ancient Ukraine are now in trenches and dugouts.” Nyzytsky sees a model society in Starship Troopers, where only veterans can vote and hold office. Pavlyshyn calls it “Trenchocracy.”

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This year’s “corps reform” in the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) elevated the 12th Azov and 13th Khartia brigades, which still exist within the larger units. It was the 4th Rubizh brigade that Zelensky visited from the 2nd NGU corps, another “elite” unit, which has two battalions (3rd and 4th) affiliated with the far-right political party “Svoboda.” Upon closer inspection, the “SS” troops were “trolling.” Their chevrons did not contain Nazi runes but a stylized 44, as in “4th brigade, 4th battalion,” as well as the fascist “44 Rules of Life of a Ukrainian Nationalist” from the 1930s.

The prevalence of soldiers from this “SS” battalion at the ceremony, and a neo-Nazi (“social-nationalist”) flag prominently displayed at the Rubizh command post, obviously raises some questions about the brigade, which was “established as an elite unit trained and organized under NATO standards.” The Azov and Khartia brigades also pride themselves on training according to NATO standards, “to be a model” for a “new Ukrainian army” liberated from the “Soviet-era mindset.”

The famous historian Timothy Snyder is helping “pro-Ukraine” internet trolls to fundraise for Rubizh and other brigades of the 2nd NGU corps, including one which has a symbol that creates the visual impression of a swastika. But it’s the PR-driven Khartia brigade that appears to be Snyder’s favorite—a watered-down Azov copycat unit, led by a former Rubizh commander who quotes 20th century Ukrainian fascists. International volunteers have called it “the worst brigade,” but in another sense, it is an elite unit, founded by an oligarch who is “convinced the key to success is ‘radical’ reform of Ukraine’s military.”

The Azov movement has its “White Fuhrer” (Andriy Biletsky), and Khartia has Vsevolod Kozhemyako, the founder and CEO of Agrotrade Group, “one of Ukraine’s largest grain production, storage and export companies.” In 2003, he received a degree from the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, a private university in Kyiv that the historian Per Rudling wrote about in 2006 as a pillar of organized antisemitism in Ukraine. Now a proud nationalist who praises the memory of Stepan Bandera, even before 2022, Kozhemyako appears to have been a supporter of the “Da Vinci Wolves,” a far-right militia affiliated with the Nazi-infested “Right Sector” movement.

Whereas the Azov units originated in an infamous volunteer battalion from 2014 and the NGU Azov Regiment made famous by the Russian siege of Mariupol, Khartia has also become “one of Ukraine’s most famous units” and much more quickly expanded, thanks to its unique financing and PR. This year, the country’s largest oil and gas producer, Ukrnafta, raised 100 million hryvnia (~$2.4 million) for the Khartia Corps. Just a year after Kozhemyako formed a territorial defense unit in March 2022, it joined the National Guard as a brigade. According to Forbes Ukraine,

If we describe Kozhemyako’s role at Khartia in business terms, he is an executive chairman, a founder who has moved away from operational management and focused on strategic interactions with the government, key partners, suppliers, and thought leaders. His interlocutors include [Ukrainian writer/singer] Serhiy Zhadan and Howard Buffett, [Ukrainian singer/politician] Slavko Vakarchuk and [former CEO of Google] Eric Schmidt, generals and deputy prime ministers, owners and managers of private companies with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Serhiy Zhadan, a famous poet in Ukraine, is a friend of Vsevolod Kozhemyako and the most prominent “culture warrior” in Khartia, who represents the unit publicly (and even wrote its anthem) but doesn’t actually fight. As “Events in Ukraine” tells us, “This phenomenon of culture-warriors is particularly widespread in the 13th ‘Khartiya’ brigade of the 2nd Corps of the National Guard.”

Khartia is supported by a high-level marketing agency in Ukraine, the Fedoriv Group, which started to work with the Ministry of Digital Transformation in 2022, and launched the wartime United24 fundraising platform and media brand on behalf of the Office of the President. Andriy Fedoriv became a “great friend for me and Khartia” says Kozhemyako. “He helped me build a creative team within Khartia, and then worked with us and continues to work on creating and promoting the brand.”

This year, United24 highlighted the Khartia brigade as a unit that is “changing the battlefield” with “Robotic Combat Systems.” The Azovites pride themselves as pioneers in this field, and I’ll be writing more about that soon. Andriy Biletsky, commander of the Azovite 3rd Army Corps, told the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv this past summer, “the revolution of ground-based robotic systems … will radically change the battlefield.”

Ihor Obolensky, commander of the 2nd Khartia Corps, also remotely joined this panel discussion at YES 2025 with former CIA director David Petraeus, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, and Ukrainian military brass. (Obolensky spoke at YES 2024 as well.) According to an ideological officer in Khartia, “our commander, Colonel Ihor Obolensky, can say in a conversation: ‘As Dontsov claimed…’ or ‘According to Konovalets…’” referring to the main ideologue of genocidal Ukrainian fascism (Dmytro Dontsov) and the founder of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Yevhen Konovalets).

Before the corps reform, Obolensky commanded the Khartia brigade, which established a nationalist ideological department or “Khorunza service,” inspired by the Azov units, that uses the emblem of “Dontsov’s beast.” Khartia now promotes glorification of Stepan Bandera, the 1940s Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and even the pro-Nazi monarchist Pavlo Skoropadsky. Azov salutes and Azovite brands such as Company Group Team (CGT) are commonly seen in the Khartia brigade. For example, in a promotional video published this year by Khartia, and still pinned on the Facebook page of the 2nd NGU Corps, we can see soldiers making Azov salutes, a tank emblazoned with an emblem of the Wehrmacht, and someone wearing a CGT shirt who appears to be making a Nazi salute while riding another tank.

There is another ugly side to the Khartia brigade, which has reportedly “developed a reputation as an elite brigade, making it highly desirable for foreign soldiers seeking opportunities to fight in Ukraine.” To hear it from members of the “Ukraine Foreign Legion” community on Reddit, dedicated to “news and information about joining foreign units in Ukraine,” Khartia is among “the worst” to join, at least for international volunteers.

Adorable_Class_4733 (4 months ago): Khartiia is insane in the sane that just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. Nobody that has ever served in another unit and then came to Khartiia has ever liked it. I regret ever recruiting for this unit but I was naive and thought that maybe if I bring some good soldiers the problems would go away. They didn’t. Every person there with experience unanimously agree it’s the worst brigade they have ever seen. The battalion commanders either are completely dumb and retarded or intentionally lie to their soldiers saying the russians are all dead and they’re surrendering and that we cut off their logistics route and that you’re gonna be sent to clear trenches when you’re actually going on a suicide assault mission. … Khartiia is REALLY good at propaganda and hiding this shit, they had a camera crew following us 24/7, camera crew in the command centers, everywhere. But that’s it. They suck at everything else.

ATLAS_UA (4 months ago): I dont use reddit but i made an account just to write this. I fought in Ukraine on every front and this brigade is the worst it is the worst brigade I worked in. They said I will redo basic training when I came to this unit so I told them to fuck off and then they tried to send me on a mission one hour after with zero bullets or equipment. I agreed to go to the mission after a few days … I kept training for a while after this mission, really bad shitty training and then did another mission with a epileptic company commander who had a seizure in the middle of the mission after he slip in a mortar crater in nighttime. I guarantee you he bribed someone I don’t know why they made a epileptic guy company commander. and also everyone abuses drugs there. the platoon commander consumes drugs and alcohol all the time he is an alcoholic.

DonaFlotilde (1 week ago): I reactivated my account just to leave a comment here for whoever is still in doubt if they should join khartia, as i saw some posts asking about the unit … (forgive my english its not my first language) … khartia training is in the least mediocre, my training was literally how to run and how to shoot standing and kneeling, thats it, 1 month, doing this. … they call our group again, this time its an assault mission. Nice. sergeant, who is in ukraine for 5 months, says its an assault so we gonna stay there 5 days maximum, the vehicle will drop us 500m from assault point. … ended up walking 8km to position, we gotta stay in trench until we get green light. 13 days passed and we learn the fuckin assault point is 20 km away and we know theres no fuckin vehicles. they call us to advance. our guide gets lost he doesnt know how to use the FUCKIN COMPASS We walk 20km away to position, theres PLUS 4KM OF MINED OPEN FIELD TO REACH THE FIRST RUSSIAN POSITION AND A BUNCH OF FPV TRYING TO HIT US, AND OUR FUCKIN UNIT GAVE US 4 MAGAZINES, 2 GRENADES, AND ONE BOTTLE OF WATER FOR OUR WHOLE GROUP. WE HAD TO RUN, WE DISCOVER THAT THE ONE LINE OF ENEMY TRENCH IS ACTUALLY A RUSSIAN SECTOR WITH 4 LINES, 2 BMPS, AND I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW MANY FUVKIN SOLDIERS, SINCE WE MANAGED TO CLEAN ONLY THE FIRST POSITION. … [After the mission] they put me and another guy inside a a car, drive us to the woods and beat the shit out of us. they got pissed cuz of the report accuse us of treason and desertion cuz we didnt advance 2 weeks they hold our documents and cellphones. we never left the base we didnt advance cuz no fuckin ammo and no fuckin nothing

FishAndChipsSalad (1 month ago): Just don’t! I’ve been contacted to 3 brigades and hands down Khartiia is the worst in every way. Everything from shoddy equipment, appalling command and reckless missions. I was unfortunate to suffer my worst injury in this sorry excuse for a unit and naturally received no compensation at all. On top of that you will be fighting alongside the Guajiro International Unit... These twats are often worse than the russian terrorists

The Spanish-speaking Guajiro unit largely consists of right-wing Colombian soldiers who decided to fight in Ukraine instead of serve under the leftist president Gustavo Petro. “Perhaps hundreds of Colombians have passed through our brigade,” said a deputy battalion commander from Khartia, which claims that the Guajiro unit “undertakes extremely challenging combat missions.” They might have inspired the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade (that now spearheads the 3rd Army Corps) to form a “Spanish Storm Company.” Earlier this year, members of Khartia even trained with the 3rd Assault Brigade.

In recent days, since Zelensky’s visit to the Donetsk region, the 2nd Khartia Corps of the National Guard hosted a delegation of NATO ambassadors from the United States, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, and Canada. Everyone seems to love the Khartia brigade: NATO, the historian Timothy Snyder, the artist Ai Weiwei, and even the “White Fuhrer” has said that it’s one of the best in Ukraine. But in my opinion, the most interesting thing about Khartia is the convergence of Banderite memory warriors and the “Azovization” of the Ukrainian armed forces—to be continued on my other Substack…

“I am glad that we are not quite a party, but a social movement with real membership,” Sobolevsky once said about the National Corps. “We don’t even care about elections, we care about people who believe in our ideas and are ready to follow us.” In 2020, he shut down a public presentation of “the last Ukrainian peacemaker” Sergei Sivokho’s “National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity.” Sobolevsky insisted on a military offensive. Asked about his favorite books that year, he named some by German WWII generals, Erich von Manstein and Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand, as well as “Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front,” by the Belgian Nazi leader Léon Degrelle.

Sobolevsky, a former football hooligan associated with the Kyiv-based “White Boys Club,” was perhaps the only real Azovite / neo-Nazi in the delegation, but the SII is nevertheless an Azovite project. His entourage in Washington included three young women from SII: Maryna Hrytsenko (executive director), Viktoria Honcharuk (head of defense technology), and Catarina Buchatskiy (director of analytics). To recap my previous articles:

• Maryna Hrytsenko has experience in Washington as a former foreign policy aide to Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of the Atlanticist “Holos” party in Ukrainian parliament. According to Hrytsenko, “our [SII’s] mission is ambitious - we are a strategic bridge of Ukraine to the world. The voice of the Ukrainian military on an international level. We act as a direct communication channel between our Defense Forces, technological innovators and strategic allies.”

• Viktoria Honcharuk, who used to work on Wall Street for J.P. Morgan, returned to Ukraine in 2022 and became a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade. In addition to her role at SII, Honcharuk heads AB3 Tech, the “startup accelerator” associated with the 3rd Assault Brigade. She might not be a far-right nationalist herself, but apparently her boyfriend is a neo-Nazi platoon commander from the unit.

• Catarina Buchatskiy, a former intern at the American Enterprise Institute, led a “joint project” with Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in 2023-24. They focused on “lessons from the war in Ukraine for Taiwan, including research on the use of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] in Ukraine and how to transfer operational and tactical lessons to Ukraine.” McFaul has invited his social media followers, “Check out Snake Island Institute, co-founded by Stanford super-alum [Buchatskiy].”

These SII leaders were also joined by “Nick” and “Erik,” representatives of the Unmanned Systems Forces, a branch of the Ukrainian military dedicated to drones since last year. On their first day in the United States, they all took a meeting at the State Department with Kevin Covert, the Director for Eastern European Affairs. This year, Covert has also met with one of Zelensky’s chief political rivals, his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, as well as Oleksiy Goncharenko, a famous parliamentarian from Poroshenko’s party, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine (2014-16). Obviously, these people want to curry favor with the Trump administration. Roughly 24 hours after meeting Covert, Goncharenko got together with MAGA hero Michael Flynn, and said “I’m sure that everything will be fine and President Trump is making a lot of efforts to finally bring peace.”

“We didn’t come asking for help. We came to build,” says Vladyslav Sobolevsky. “In DC, we talked with DoD [Department of Defense] and congressional teams working on security aid.” Days before SII made it to Washington, Politico reported that Grace Wright, the communications director for Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence committees, was leaving her job on Capitol Hill for a new role at Snake Island Institute. Meanwhile, Sobolevsky wrote his first article for Ukrainska Pravda, about “why Ukraine needs a direct partnership with the US.” Whereas Israel became “an indispensable partner in the Middle East,” and “Taipei has integrated into US strategy through chips [semiconductors],”

Ukraine also has unique potential - combat experience, defense innovations, geopolitical position as a shield for Europe. … Ukraine must formulate its own offer to Washington: how it is and can be indispensable. In technology, these are our developments in the field of drones, electronic warfare, and cyber defense, which have proven effective in the war against Russia.

Monique Eisenhardt, a self-described “National Security, Intelligence & International Relations Expert,” who used to work for Lockheed Martin (2017-21), General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (2015-17), the Department of Defense (2013-15), the Defense Intelligence Agency (2010-11), and U.S. European Command (2008-10), was pleased to announce the arrival of the SII delegation to Washington. “During this visit,” Eisenhardt explained, “Snake Island Institute is presenting its report on maritime drone warfare and engaging [Americans] on ways to bolster the defense industrial base — issues that lie at the heart of modern deterrence and transatlantic resilience.”

“SII is making a difference,” commented David Julazadeh, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who formerly served as the chief of staff of U.S. European Command, and a deputy chief of staff at NATO Allied Command Transformation, in other words, “NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development Command.” Julazadeh is a senior advisor to NATO and Vyryn Technologies, which he describes as a “new start-up,” co-founded by Eisenhardt, “focused on bringing Ukrainian innovation to NATO and U.S. markets.” (Eisenhardt, formerly known as Monique Brown, at least used to be on the supervisory board of Azov-friendly MITS Capital, which I wrote about here.)

In the coming days, Snake Island Institute visited the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and perhaps some other DC-based think tanks. (They already made friends at the American Foreign Policy Council.) The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center hosted a joint event with SII on “Ukraine’s drone industry and the challenge of wartime supply chains.” Catarina Buchatskiy and Mykola “Nick” Holovatiuk, a drone commander from the 412th Nemesis Regiment, participated in this event alongside Laura Cooper, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2017 until this year, who “led the U.S. government team to deliver billions in wartime security assistance to Ukraine and orchestrated the 50-nation Ukraine Defense Contact Group.”

The SII delegation also held a private event at the Army and Navy Club in Washington with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). This time Vladyslav Sobolevsky and Viktoria Honcharuk spoke for the Azovite think tank, accompanied by “Nick” and “Erik,” the latter from the R&D department of the former 14th drone regiment which was apparently co-founded by the neo-Nazi organization “C14.”

In early October, the SII delegation also lectured over 100 students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, and presented their latest report, “The Black Sea’s Asymmetric Blueprint: Operational Lessons from Ukraine for 21st-Century Naval Forces.” Michael Kuiper, the adjunct professor who hosted the event, said that Snake Island Institute “captivated” the audience. “As the lights dimmed and the presentation began, the air buzzed with anticipation; each Midshipman captivated by the real-life stories of bravery and strategy unfolding before them.”

On the West Coast, Sobolevsky and friends also paid a visit to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. This appears to have been a more intimate meeting with students. In Los Angeles, the Snake Island Institute hosted a private “Defense Cooperation Forum.” According to the SII, “we brought together U.S. manufacturers, investors, and military representatives with Ukrainian military end users and defense-tech firms for a closed-door, honest conversation about the challenges and opportunities of defense innovation.” There were at least a few additional speakers, but the event partners were more interesting:

• The California-based Neros Technologies has come up a couple times before, as a tech start-up and drone producer (run by Catarina Buchatskiy’s boyfriend Soren Monroe-Anderson) that has partnered with far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and the U.S. military to become “part of a new guard of US firms in the defense industry sphere.” Neros Technologies thanked SII on LinkedIn, “It was an honor to be involved in such a great event.”

• Earlier this year, the D3 Venture Capital Firm, headquartered in Kyiv, which co-founded the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers, sponsored a “hackathon” in Lviv alongside the “incredible team” at AB3 Tech and other Azovite entities associated with the 3rd Assault Brigade, including the openly neo-Nazi youth groups “Centuria” and “Galician Youth.” D3’s managing partner, Eveline Buchatskiy, the mother of SII’s director of analytics, spoke at the “Defense Cooperation Forum” in Los Angeles.

• THE BR-DGE, which specializes in “supporting entrepreneurs building space capabilities for the rapidly growing space economy,” describes itself as a “collaboration center” and “an outreach program … powered by Disruptive Technology Index (DTI), a California nonprofit, in partnership with SpaceWERX, the US Space Force’s innovation arm for technology advancement.” This group also left a comment after the SII event: “We loved having you guys at THE BR-DGE yesterday!”

• “Learnings from Ukraine were transformative,” according to Picogrid, “a leading developer of integrated systems technology.” In 2025, this military technology firm has participated in a NATO Allied Command Transformation exercise in France, partnered with Peter Thiel’s Palantir, and scored a multimillion dollar project with the U.S. military to “provide the Air Force with technology to integrate autonomous systems into its missions.” Picogrid co-founders Zane Mountcastle and Martin Slosarik worked for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center when they established their company in 2020. Slosarik, also a former senior business analyst at the multinational consulting firm McKinsey, said he was “stoked” for the SII event, and advised people to reach out to a “deployment strategist” at Picogrid for an invitation.

• Initialized Capital is a venture capital fund worth more than $3 billion that counts among its portfolio companies Coinbase, Instacart, Patreon, Reddit, and the lesser-known Picogrid. The founders of Initialized Capital include an early Palantir employee (Garry Tan) and Reddit co-founder (Alexis Ohanian).

• The City of El Segundo, apparently another sponsor of the SII Defense Cooperation Forum, is said to be “an upstart, male-dominated defense tech enclave,” found in Los Angeles County. Neros and Picogrid are based in El Segundo, and so is the “electronic warfare startup” CX2, which has raised $31 million this year, and told Snake Island Institute, “Thanks so much for putting together this event, it was a pleasure.”

Back in Washington, Viktoria Honcharuk and Catarina Buchatskiy attended this year’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention on behalf of Snake Island Institute, which called it “the largest land power and defense industry event in North America.” The AUSA, a private organization that “serves as the professional association of the United States Army,” describes its annual “meeting and exposition” as “the army’s most powerful event.” According to SII, “We delivered a breakout briefing on Ukraine’s war,” apparently a private event at AUSA 2025. James Acuna, who “left” the CIA as a “senior operations officer” in 2022 (after twenty years) to set up a consulting firm based in Estonia, thanked the SII and U.S. drone developer Bryan Sardoch for “this amazing talk.”

After returning to Ukraine, Viktoria Honcharuk from the 3rd Assault Brigade remotely joined a class on “Technology in War” at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. Jeremy Gwinn, an adjunct professor, said he was “very excited” to make it happen. He also teaches at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. His career in the U.S. military spans almost 30 years. In recent years (2022-24) Gwinn was the Chief of Staff of U.S. Army Strategic Operations, which as he explains, made him “responsible for integrating space, cyber, electromagnetic warfare, information operations, and network capabilities for the Army.”

Jim Dolbow, the national security advisor to Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA) and alumni of the far-right Institute of World Politics in Washington, praised Snake Island Institute on its recent trip to the United States: “From Capitol Hill to AUSA and lots of other places in between, you’ll [sic] did one helluva great job of sharing your wisdom. Keep up the good work.”

European Strategy: Neo-Nazis 404

The 2025 annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, one of the premier events dedicated to “Ukraine's European future,” convened in Kyiv earlier this month. The first day — Friday, September 12 — featured two speakers from the Azov Corps in the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU), which is led by the “depoliticized” 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade that originated in the notorious Azov Battalion.

Tetyana Teplyuk, a combat medic, said she “told my colleagues when they got down, ‘You joined the Azov battalion, you knew you might go to the frontline, that this might happen, so let’s stay strong.’” The other NGU Azov speaker was Valery Horishny, “Chief Sergeant of the Azov Corps,” who keeps coming up on this blog. You might recall that this hardcore neo-Nazi adherent of the “native faith” once wrote poetry dedicated to Adolf Hitler, but that hasn’t stopped him from making speeches at the United Nations, the UK Parliament, and the Bundestag this year.

Horishny, who spent over two years as a prisoner of war after the NGU Azov Regiment surrendered in Mariupol, told those at YES, “The captivity made me better and stronger.” Furthermore, “I instruct people how to protect and return our land.” In fact, Horishny is an instructor for a new “404” youth movement associated with the NGU Azovites. David “Khimik” Kasatkin, another famous former Azov POW and deputy commander of the Azov Brigade’s sniper detachment, leads the new group. He is also evidently a neo-Nazi, as I covered in this Twitter/X thread. Recent pictures and videos from the “404 Movement” reveal numerous neo-Nazi shirts, including from the National Socialist Black Metal band “M8L8TH” (also known as “Hitler’s Hammer”). So much for depoliticization…

On the second day of YES, the very name of which alludes to the false promises recklessly made to Ukraine, the so-called “white fuhrer” of the Azov movement participated in this high-level event. Andriy Biletsky, the commander of the Azovite 3rd Army Corps, remotely joined a panel featuring retired U.S. general David Petraeus, a former director of the CIA; Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister of Sweden, who co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations; Ukrainian Marine Corps major general Andriy Hnatov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who previously commanded its Joint Forces; and Ukrainian general Yevhen Moisiuk, the Deputy Minister of Defense.

“The key issue is developing a strategy and new tactical approaches,” according to Biletsky, who is now hailed as one of the greatest military commanders in Ukraine. “In addition to the ongoing revolution in aerial drones, we are on the verge of another revolution, in my opinion. This is the revolution of ground-based robotic systems, which will radically change the battlefield and replace a significant share of soldiers, both in terms of logistics and combat use.” Here Biletsky is touting the military technology achievements of his openly neo-Nazi fighters, which was a focus of my Spring 2025 Azov Lobby Review — more about that below.

As told by the journalist Leonid Ragozin, the Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski made a “striking admission” at the YES conference.

“If we are providing security guarantees to Ukraine, we are saying that we can start a war against Russia. But I don’t think this is either convincing or trustworthy. If someone wants to fight Russia, they can start it right away. But I am not seeing anyone willing. There is nothing worse in international relations than providing guarantees that can’t be trusted”.

So NATO membership promise has been a lie all along. A clear lie since Bucharest summit in 2008, which was followed by the war in Georgia a few months later. Also, “the coalition of the willing” has exactly zero members.

What was the necessity of throwing Ukraine under the Russian bulldozer when it was possible to build relations with Russia and gradually integrate it in Euro-Atlantic structures? Alongside Ukraine within its 1991 borders.

An appetite for war fueled by the defence industry lobby and the far right tilt of the Western mainstream. That’s the only answer.

A Brief Aside…

Less than two weeks after his appearance at YES alongside a virtual Biletsky, former CIA director David Petraeus, who also led U.S. Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, sat down at the Concordia Summit in New York with Ahmed al-Sharaa (AKA Abu Mohammad al-Julani), the President of Syria since January, who once had a $10 million bounty on his head from Washington after he launched an off-shoot of al-Qaeda with support from ISIS. Presumably, Biletsky would prefer to follow in Al-Sharaa’s footsteps then, say, Osama Bin Laden. As he said in a recent interview with The Times (UK), “I always tell my people: for the foreseeable future, we are not going to be at war with Britain, the United States or France. So we are completely open to working with tech companies from such countries.”

Nazi Military Tech Updates

In the spring edition of this newsletter, I introduced readers to the Snake Island Institute (SII) and AB3 Tech, a new think tank and “startup accelerator” created by the Azov movement, and in particular its 3rd Assault Brigade (3AB or AB3), which now spearheads Biletsky’s 3rd Army Corps. Those outfits involved the “NC-13” platoon that originated in the AB3’s “Dirlewanger” company (inspired by one of the most sadistic Nazi military units), and the Azovite “Killhouse” drone school. As a reminder, after visiting the latter AB3 training facility in February, former CIA director David Petraeus predicted that Ukraine “will be the military-industrial complex, the most important one in all of Europe.” The Azov movement obviously intends to play a key role in this process, and Petraeus is among those cheering them on.

In early July, the 3rd Assault Brigade declared that its NC-13 unit (now said to be in the “Deus Ex Machina” company of the 2nd Assault Battalion) “carried out an unprecedented operation … using only drones and ground-based robotic systems.” Furthermore, the Azovites claimed, “this is the first successful assault in modern warfare using exclusively unmanned platforms! The robots are fighting, and you are in command — join now!” Just days earlier, the 3rd Assault Brigade announced the expansion of “KillHouse Academy” with the opening of the “School of Ground-Based Robotic Systems.” By August, NC-13 was officially designated a “company of ground-based robotic systems.”

As spring turned to summer, the Snake Island Institute joined Defense Tech Week in Prague (represented by the possible girlfriend of the NC-13 commander), signed a memorandum of cooperation with the elite special forces “Omega” unit in the National Guard of Ukraine, and held its inaugural event in Kyiv. At some point in the coming weeks, SII reportedly “took part in an invite-only defense workshop” at the Royal Air Force Club in London that it connected with the Omega group. The latter received the ten drones built at the workshop, which also raised money for a “Combat Driven Innovation Showcase” in Lviv organized by Snake Island Institute. Tech entrepreneur Martin van der Heijden hosted the London event. He’s the CTO and co-founder of 11xAI, a British startup that “builds automated digital workers that can be used in lieu of human employees.”

SII president Vladyslav Sobolevsky, a former football hooligan and alleged war criminal, who became an important member of Biletsky’s political party and a deputy commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, has said that his think tank “works directly with key decision-makers in both Ukraine and the U.S. to develop strategic alignment, increase institutional capacity, and support battlefield innovation with a long-term vision.” According to SII’s young executive director, Maryna Hrytsenko, “our mission is ambitious - we are a strategic bridge of Ukraine to the world. The voice of the Ukrainian military on an international level. We act as a direct communication channel between our Defense Forces, technological innovators and strategic allies.”

The June SII event in Kyiv started with a presentation, allegedly to “an audience of senior military officials, government representatives, civil society leaders, and international partners.” That was followed by a roundtable discussion that included Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, which is linked to the CIA, to put it mildly. One of Skibitsky’s predecessors, Maj. Gen. Illia Pavlenko, also participated. Here are some of the other speakers:

• Eveline Buchatskiy is the managing partner at the Kyiv-based “D3 Defense Tech Fund,” which sponsored a May 2025 “hackathon” in Lviv alongside the “incredible team” at AB3 Tech, KillHouse Academy, the NC-13 platoon, and the “Galician Youth,” a local neo-Nazi group connected to NC-13. Buchatskiy’s daughter Catarina is the Director of Analytics for Snake Island Institute, who I wrote about in the spring. More recently, Eveline announced that Denmark’s state-owned Export and Investment Fund “joined D3 as an investor.” Earlier this year, D3 co-founded the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers, which is reportedly expected to “help the country attract funds from allies to the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex for the production of weapons according to the ‘Danish model’ and the creation of joint defense enterprises.”

• Lt. Col. Giorgi Kuparashvili is the head of the Azov movement’s “Yevhen Konovalets Military School,” which formed the 354th Separate Mechanized Regiment. He led the first Azov delegation dispatched to Washington in 2022, and claimed to have met “over fifty” members of Congress in that trip alone. In 2016, Kuparashvili represented Georgia at the founding conference of the “Intermarium Support Group” — part of Azov’s white nationalist geopolitical agenda — and the following year, he met representatives of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency that visited the NGU Azov base in Mariupol.

• Lesia Ogryzko, a visiting fellow at the EU-funded European Council on Foreign Relations, directs the Sahaidachnyi Security Center in Kyiv. Before founding this Ukrainian think tank, Ogryzko was the “Deputy Chief of Party” of the USAID Civil Society Sectoral Support Activity Program in Ukraine, according to her LinkedIn account. Before that she worked for the United Nations and Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers, among other things.

• Yuriy Filatov is reportedly the “Head of UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] Operations” for the 3rd Army Corps. Apparently he is not a neo-Nazi, and perhaps not even a far-right nationalist, but an “Enterprise Architect with the overall experience of near 20 years helping big companies to maintain or regain their efficiency and startups to grow from zero to sustainable operations.” In 2015-17, he helped Ukraine’s Finance Ministry develop an online portal. Before the war, Filatov was the CTO of BrainRocket, a multinational “IT Software Development Company of the Future.”

• Stanislav Ryzhenkov, a former platoon commander in the NGU Azov Regiment, now advises the mayor of Kyiv as the “Commissioner of the Kyiv City Council for the Rights of War Veterans.” According to Ryzhenkov, the war didn’t end for him. “I just changed weapons. Now my front is veteran politics.” Despite losing an arm, he says that joining Azov was “the best decision of my life. Because there is no such brotherhood as there. This is not just a unit. This is a family that will always support you.”

In early July, the Snake Island Institute hosted a delegation from the neoconservative American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) in Washington, “including congressional staffers from both parties.” They were joined, as always, by Mykola Hryckowian from Pennsylvania, a representative of the “Bandera Lobby” who heads the DC office of the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR)—formerly housed by the AFPC—and serves as president of the Organization for Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine (ODFFU) headquartered in Manhattan. (Readers of my other Substack may recall, CUSUR and ODFFU are Ukrainian American OUN-B front groups, and the Banderites have arranged annual AFPC trips to Ukraine for over a decade.)

According to SII, “Our team also facilitated meetings for the [AFPC] delegation with the Deputy Commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps [Maksym Zhorin], the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine [Kyrylo Budanov], and representatives of the International Legion — Americans volunteering in the Ukrainian Army.” It was on the initiative of Zhorin, a former commander of the NGU Azov Regiment and leader of its openly neo-Nazi “Borodach Division,” that a neo-pagan shrine was installed on the NGU Azov base in Mariupol in 2017, which involved a ceremony that featured Nazi salutes and bloodletting. In June 2025, the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan hosted Zhorin and Kyrylo Berkal, another important Azovite, who led the 2017 ceremony.

As subscribers already know, Andriy Biletsky’s former press secretary Oleksandr Alfyorov became the director of a more powerful Ukrainian Institute of National Memory this past summer. In early September, SII president Vladislav Sobolevsky joined a panel discussion hosted by UkrInform (AKA the National News Agency of Ukraine) on the topic of national memory. According to SII, the speakers “stressed that history is also a battlefield.” In addition to Alfyorov, there was Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence; Serhiy Belyaev, Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine; and George Barros from the DC-based Institute for the Study of War, who previously “served as a policy advisor on Ukraine and Russia for a U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee member.”

In the coming days, AB3 Tech organized a forum dedicated to “ground-based robotic systems” with SII, NC-13, and the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers, co-founded this year by the D3 venture capital firm. Meanwhile, the Azovites are not far removed from the “drone revolution” taking place in the United States.

As I wrote in the spring, SII’s Director of Analytics, Catarina Buchatskiy, the daughter of D3’s managing partner, is dating Soren Monroe-Anderson, the CEO of California-based Neros Technologies. According to CNN, Monroe-Anderson’s tech startup company, funded by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, is “part of a new guard of US firms in the defense industry sphere” and already among the “leading US drone producers.” In July, U.S. Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth released a video (which may have featured one of Neros’ products, Archer Strike), “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance.” Monroe-Anderson excitedly shared this post. “It’s official,” he said. “America is going to build millions of drones. Proud to have our Archer Strike featured as the FPV drone of choice for the US military.”

In the past month, the Department of Defense/War’s Defense Innovation Unit selected Neros as a “Phase 2 Project GI winner, after two weeks with Marines at [Camp Pendleton in California], deploying Archer in realistic scenarios.” According to Neros, its Archer drone was “part of the discussion & demonstration” during Hegseth’s recent visit to the 75th Ranger Regiment of the U.S. Army. Neros also thanked representatives of the army’s Fort Irwin National Training Center for visiting its drone factory a couple weeks ago.

In late August, Catarina and Eveline Buchatskiy spoke at “TechBBQ” in Copenhagen, said to be “the biggest tech and innovation event in Scandinavia.” They joined a panel discussion, “From Crisis to Capability — How Ukraine is Pushing the Boundaries of Defense Tech.” The many other speakers included TikTok’s Managing Director in the Nordics & Central Europe, the Director of Public Policy for Meta’s Northern Europe division, the Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, the CEO of The Atlantic, the Chief Product Officer of LinkedIn, the Chief Editor of The Copenhagen Post, the Chief Europe Correspondent at Shanghai Media Group, the French Deputy Ambassador for Digital Affairs, and the Chief Information Officer at Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund.

Meanwhile in Lviv, the “Head of Projects”/“Head of Defense Tech” at Snake Island Institute joined a conference supported by the EU Delegation in Ukraine: “Joint Ventures, Joint Defense — How Europe and Ukraine can leverage each other’s innovations.” I wrote about SII’s representative, Viktoria Honcharuk, in the spring, who I believed to be the girlfriend of the neo-Nazi NC-13 commander. (Now I’m not sure, forgetting how I came to that conclusion.) Honcharuk, who used to work on Wall Street, co-founded SII and AB3 Tech. Since 2022, she returned to Ukraine and wound up in the medical service of the 3rd Assault Brigade. “Now we see a new trend: the Ukrainian military codifying their innovations together with companies. This is the path forward,” Honcharuk said in the last panel discussion, moderated by Martin Jõesaar from Brussels, who leads the EU Defense Innovation Office in Kyiv.

The “Joint Ventures, Joint Defense” conference was organized by “Tech Force in UA,” which is described as “a coalition of over 60 leading defense tech manufacturers” in Ukraine. The main partner of the event was the Munich-based Quantum Systems Group, an international “aerial data intelligence company” which is allegedly “one of Europe’s fastest-rising defense drone firms” and has “deepened its partnerships across NATO and allied nations,” in particular Ukraine. According to Quantum Systems, it is “at the forefront of AI-powered aerial robotics, developing a family of smart systems that go far beyond traditional drones.”

Around this time, Snake Island Institute helped to bring graduates from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Ukraine for the 2025 “Harvard/MIT Ukraine Trek.” SII president Vladyslav Sobolevsky and executive director Maryna Hrytsenko spoke to participants at the “CDTO Campus” in Kyiv. As explained by its website,

In 2020, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine established the position of CDTO (Chief Digital Transformation Officer). These officers, embedded within government bodies, are responsible for leading and implementing digital transformation across all areas of Ukrainian public life. CDTO Campus is a national educational initiative dedicated to preparing CDTOs and their teams — digital leaders capable of implementing innovative technological projects within public administration.

According to SII, by hosting Ukraine Trek at the CDTO Campus, “Defence Intelligence of Ukraine and representatives of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps and their subsidiary Kill House Academy were connected directly with global changemakers.” Earlier this year, as I wrote here, Sobolevsky and Honcharuk (who was accepted to Harvard before returning to Ukraine in 2022) joined Azov instructor Giorgi Kuparashvili at the 2025 Technology and National Security Conference hosted by Harvard Business School and MIT. Liudmyla Kurnosikova, the “lead organizer of the trek,” is an alumni of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who used to work for the Ukrainian consulate in Hamburg.

Shortly before Andriy Biletsky’s appearance at YES, it became official that the (openly neo-Nazi) “Kraken” unit controlled by Ukrainian military intelligence is forming a drone regiment in Biletsky’s 3rd Army Corps. Kraken, of course, originated in the Azov movement, so this is hardly a surprising development. Two days after the AB3 Tech forum, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency announced “a new level of cooperation” between itself and the 3rd Army Corps, with the creation of the “Kraken 1654” regiment. “And they are already starting to build a new high-tech unit.”

Oleh Romanov, one of the neo-Nazi commanders of Kraken 1654, founded KillHouse Academy and formerly led the 3rd Assault Brigade’s anti-tank battalion. His family lives in Washington. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Azov movement’s pet filmmaker Lubomyr Levitsky, who I wrote about here, has an action movie in the works, “KILLHOUSE,” which was produced in collaboration with military intelligence and Biletsky’s unit. Maryna Hrytsenko, the executive director of SII, even has a role in the film as the Vice President of the United States. Currently, Hrytsenko is in Washington for another round of meetings on Capitol Hill, accompanied by SII leaders Sobolevsky and Honcharuk from the 3rd Assault Brigade.

Nazi Propaganda Updates

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In case you didn’t hear, there’s a new “memory czar” in Ukraine, and his name is Oleksandr Alfyorov. In 2015, he spoke at the founding congress of the neo-Nazi “Russian Center” in Kyiv, a sort of predecessor to the likeminded “Russian Volunteer Corps” that now fights for Ukrainian military intelligence.

Alfyorov, the new head of the Ukrainian government’s Institute of National Memory, is a former press secretary to Andriy Biletsky, the Führer of the Azov movement, and more recently led the ideological department of Biletsky’s openly neo-Nazi 3rd Assault Brigade, which is considered to be one of the most effective units in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko pointed out that Alfyorov is someone who “expresses admiration for Hitler.” Furthermore, “He curated his brigade’s museum exhibit in Kyiv, ‘In Steel Storms,’ which glorified the [Ukrainian] Waffen-SS Division Galicia.” The journalist Leonid Ragozin commented, “The first neo-nazi in charge of a government institution in Europe, perhaps.”

Above we see Oleksandr Alfyorov (top right) and Azov ideologist Mykola Kravchenko (top left) at the first congress of the "Russian Center." Below (left to right) is the presidium: Alexey Levkin from the Hitler-worshipping "Wotanjugend" and National-Socialist Black Metal band "M8L8TH" (aka "Hitler's Hammer"); Roman Zheleznov, a good friend of Aleksey Milchakov from the Russian neo-Nazi group "Rusich"; Andrey Kuznetsov, "ideologist of the Russian Insurgent Army" (named after the OUN's Ukrainian Insurgent Army); and Aleksandr Noinets, the Russian editor of the Ukrainian publication "Peter and Mazepa." Note that the fascist "Spayka" symbol of the Russian Center apparently inspired the Russian Volunteer Corps. 

20 years ago, Oleksandr Alfyorov was a young “Hetmanite,” or follower of Pavlo Skoropadsky (1873-1945), the German puppet ruler of Ukraine in World War I, who later spent the interwar period cozying up to the Nazis. Skoropadsky had a villa in Wannsee, the Berlin suburb that later hosted the conference dedicated to the “Final Solution.” Skoropadsky and his followers vied with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) to be the Nazis’ preferred Quislings in Ukraine. The Hetmanites were a smaller, more openly pro-Nazi monarchist movement (supported by Germany in the 1930s) that just barely survived the Cold War in North America. In the 2000s, Alfyorov helped to revive Skoropadsky’s “Union of Hetman-Statesmen” in Ukraine and led its “conservative” youth group.

Alfyorov has reportedly “emphasized that the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance needs to expand the chronological framework, which was narrowed during the [Banderite] reforms of 2014–2015.” He is not just thinking of Skoropadsky, but appears to be far more interested in the “thousand-year history” of Ukraine than the Nazi-era “liberation movement.” Given the prevalence of Nazi paganism in the Azov movement, and those fascinated with Ukraine’s supposed “Aryan” roots, it makes you wonder about his relationship to those ideas. When Alfyorov laid out his five priorities for the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP, Ukrayinsʹkyy instytut natsionalʹnoyi pam'yati), two related to the Thousand-Year History.

3) Strong inclusive national memory. Promote the thousand-year history of the Ukrainian people without looking back at centuries-old Russian narratives. Tell the history of Ukraine without looking to the East, as if Russia had never existed. Strengthen the mutual integration of the memories of Ukraine and Europe. We are not going to Europe — we are returning home.

…

5) A broad contextual framework for history. We will not only talk about the history of Ukraine in the 20th century, but also focus on other periods of Ukrainian history. We will reveal to society the thousand-year-old tradition of Ukrainian statehood and its continuity.

In 2014, Alfyorov became the press secretary to the Azov Regiment (until 2015) and Andriy Biletsky (until 2018). In 2016, he joined the leadership of Biletsky’s “National Corps,” a new Azovite political party. One year later, the Azov movement formed the “National Militia,” which in 2020 relaunched as the paramilitary “Centuria.” As Leonid Ragozin put it, the Azov movement is “built on a very clear ideological foundation - far right politics and adoration of nazi collaborators.”

Alfyorov spoke at a press conference with the neo-Nazi leadership of Centuria in 2018. He might have first gotten involved with the UINP in 2019, when he lectured officers of the Joint Operational Headquarters of the Ukrainian armed forces on “The Role of Religion in the Formation of Ukrainian Statehood.” He thanked Roman Kulyk, a far-right UINP staffer, for the opportunity (more about him next time).

When the National Corps and Centuria formed new Azov units in 2022, which largely consolidated in the 3rd Assault Brigade, Alfyorov became an officer in the Special Operation Forces “Azov-Kyiv” Regiment, and later a “historian lieutenant” in Biletsky’s brigade. Alfyorov was put in charge of the 3rd Assault Brigade’s ideological “humanitarian training group,” or “Khorunza service,” which keeps the unit grounded in Azov’s “very clear ideological foundation.”

In the spring of 2022, the Kyiv city administration pledged “to get rid of all dubious and false signs of Russian-Ukrainian friendship that affect our cultural consciousness and contribute to the spread of Russian propaganda and falsification of Ukrainian history.” Furthermore, it established a “toponymic commission” or “expert working group” on “De-Russification” led by Azov-Kyiv Regiment officer Oleksandr Alfyorov. The group included “experts” from the UINP and various institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). Since 2010, Alfyorov worked as a research fellow at the NASU Institute of History, and apparently he joined the commission as its representative.

According to Alfyorov, “the work of the expert commission was undermined, and in some cases even neutralized.” Nevertheless, they identified almost 300 “city objects” to be renamed and offered two options for Ukrainians to choose from, by opening the “Kyiv Digital” app and locating the “vote for derussification” page. (Alfyorov rejects this term, because “there is a hidden reality that Rus’ and rus’ke [what belongs to Rus’] are ours.” He also objects to “decolonization,” because this would “connect us with Africa and Latin America.” So he prefers “de-imperialization.”) As a result, the “Heroes of the Azov Regiment” and “Heroes of Mariupol” streets appeared in the capital, replacing those named after Marshals of the Soviet Union. In 2023, Alfyorov helped to rename Leo Tolstoy Square and its corresponding metro station in central Kyiv to “Ukrainian Heroes Square,” and Leo Tolstoy Street was changed to honor “Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.”

It was later in 2023 that the Yaroslav Hunka scandal erupted, when a veteran of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division received standing ovations in Canadian parliament, including from Volodymyr Zelensky. For Alfyorov, the main issue was that Ukraine has not “defined its position regarding the SS ‘Galicia’, and even regarding the UPA,” or the OUN’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Meanwhile, the ideological department of the 3rd Assault Brigade presented a photo exhibit at the Museum of Kyiv, which saw Azovite soldiers recreate images of the UPA and Waffen-SS. This year, after Alfyorov became the new UINP director, the political scientist Ivan Katchanovski suggested that this was “Zelensky’s response” to the “Canadian parliament debacle.”

Over a year later, in October 2024, Oleksandr Alfyorov joined a panel discussion on “derussification” with Anton Drobovych, the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (2019-24), and Roman Lozynskyj, a member of parliament from the Atlanticist “Holos” party. Later that month, the “Khorunza service” of the 3rd Assault Brigade organized a round table event to discuss “real reforms of the humanitarian [ideological] sphere in the military.” Representatives of the Main Directorate of Psychological Support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Psychological Support Staff of the “Khortytsia” Strategic Group, the Communication Department of the Land Forces Command, the Northern Territorial Administration of the National Guard, the National Defense University of Ukraine, and several military units participated. These included the far-right 1st Separate Assault Regiment named after Dmytro Kotsiubaylo, the 49th Assault Battalion “Carpathian Sich,” and the National Guard’s Azov Brigade. They were also joined by Roman Lozynskyj and an unnamed “colonel of a NATO country.”

Days later, Alfyorov spoke at a conference on “democracy during war,” which was organized by the western-funded Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition in partnership with the German Agency for International Cooperation. In December 2024, shortly before UINP director Anton Drobovych left his post, Alfyorov and others from the ideological department of the 3rd Assault Brigade joined a meeting of the Parliamentary National Security and Defense Committee to further discuss “humanitarian reforms” in the army. We’ll be returning to these events in future installments of this series.

In early 2025, the Foundation of the President of Ukraine for Support of Education, Science and Sports held the First National Forum of Talented Youth, and tapped Oleksandr Alfyorov to award students on behalf of the President of Ukraine Foundation. In March, the Ministry of Defense’s “Army+” application launched “a new course focused on national identity and Ukrainian military history,” featuring Alfyorov, who helped to develop the program. The Azovite ideological officer subsequently appeared in several Army+ videos. Later that spring, before his release from the army to join the UINP, Alfyorov was invited to speak at a panel discussion organized by the National Bank of Ukraine to discuss the imagery on Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia.

The news broke in late May about Alfyorov’s appointment to lead the UINP. Apparently he wants to rehabilitate not just Nazi collaborators, such as the Hetmanites and OUN-UPA, but Ukrainian soldiers who swore loyalty to Hitler. The historian Marta Havryshko reported in July, “The first bold move by the new head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory—Azov veteran Oleksandr Alferov, known for praising Hitler and curating an exhibition glorifying the Waffen-SS Galicia Division—was to rehabilitate Zenon Wrublewsky, a fighter from that very division.” What else might we expect from Alfyorov? Maybe Azovites will increasingly staff the Institute, and perhaps Skorodpadsky will replace Bandera in the UINP pantheon of heroes? Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we will explore Alfyorov’s relationship to the Bandera followers that formerly dominated the UINP (2014-19).

The western media’s favorite Ukraine “experts” all but claimed that those in NGU Azov ceased to be real “Azovites,” because the neo-Nazi “origins” of the 2014 Azov Battalion were ostensibly overcome in the National Guard, and the extremists left the unit at some point between 2014-22, either because they were purged, or simply retired from military service and joined the Azov veterans’ movement.

If people really believed this, alarm bells should have been going off as new Azov units formed outside the National Guard and consolidated under the fascistic leadership of Andriy Biletsky, the original Azov commander. After all, his core followers are “old” Azov veterans, the type who never bothered to clean up their image. The depoliticization experts apparently took an oath of silence as more openly neo-Nazi fighters began to receive the hero treatment in Ukraine and abroad.

By 2023, with one Azov brigade “clean,” and the other (Biletsky’s 3rd Assault) “dirty” —according to the experts’ forgotten logic — and both of them famous, it became inconvenient for the anointed truth-tellers to seriously distinguish one unit from the other. “Didn’t we already settle this issue?” some journalists must have wondered about Biletsky’s proudly extremist forces. “Russian propagandists never grow tired of the discredited ‘Ukrainian Nazi’ trope!”

Over three years into the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war, the Azov movement, although fractured, leads an army within an army, from one regiment (2022) to a pair of brigades and other units (2023), and now two corps (2025), which suggests the Azovites will command tens of thousands of soldiers, comparable to the 1940s Ukrainian Insurgent Army that they valorize. Most important is the 3rd Assault Brigade in the Ground Forces of Ukraine, the foundation of Biletsky’s new 3rd Army Corps. By 2024, you could read about Azov’s Führer (“Vozhd”) in the western media as an effective and quotable military leader, without any reference to his neo-Nazi movement, which is the best armed and most powerful one in the world.

3rd Army Corps

About a month ago, France’s premier newspaper, Le Monde, published a compelling investigation about neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian armed forces that inevitably zeroed in on the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade, which is often said to be one of the biggest and most effective in Ukraine. In just 10 days, French journalists identified more than 350 Ukrainian soldiers displaying neo-Nazi symbols on public Instagram accounts, with at least 200 of them linked to this one unit. Inspired by their investigation, I’ve begun compiling examples on my Twitter/X account, starting with artillerymen and the main battalions of the brigade.

• 1st Assault Battalion

• 2nd Assault Battalion

• 1st Mechanized Battalion

• 2nd Mechanized Battalion

It’s taken months for details to emerge about the composition of the new 3rd Army Corps since Andriy Biletsky announced its creation in March. “MilitaryLand,” a pro-Azov database of Ukrainian military units, recently backpedaled its breaking news that the Azovite military intelligence “Kraken” regiment would be joining the 3rd Army Corps. Apparently only “part” of the unit has sought the transfer, but “this move has not yet been approved by officials.” Meanwhile the 60th Mechanized Brigade has reportedly been reassigned, including its 97th Mechanized Battalion, another Azovite unit that “is closely aligned with Kraken.”

Le Monde and MilitaryLand note that Biletsky could command up to 50,000 troops if his forces are fully expanded. For now, let’s take a closer look at the origins of this corps, and the neo-Nazi backbone of the 3rd Assault Brigade.

—The ‘Combat Wing’ of the ‘Civilian Part of the Regiment’

The Azov movement, as something bigger than the original Azov Battalion/Regiment in the National Guard, took shape by 2015-16 with the establishment of the “Civil Corps” NGO and later the “National Corps” political party, as well as Azovite youth camps. These and other structures (like the Azovite “ATEK” base in Kyiv), led by Biletsky and his cadre of neo-Nazi veterans, kept the movement intertwined with the NGU Azov Regiment, for example with recruitment, fundraising, ideological lectures, support for veterans, and the “Yevhen Konovalets Military School” for sergeants.

NGU Azov fighters supported the National Corps, and their commanders continued to refer to Biletsky as their leader, years after he formally left the unit in 2014 to become a member of parliament. Relations have strained since 2022, especially in recent weeks, but that is another story.

In 2017, Andriy Biletsky swore in Denys Prokopenko, the current NGU Azov commander. Also that year, under the leadership of Ihor Mykhailenko, another former Azov commander, the National Corps established a “combat wing” or “street branch” called the “National Militia.” Alexei Levkin, a prominent Russian neo-Nazi, is an important ideologist in this sector of the Azov movement that ultimately formed the backbone of the 3rd Assault Brigade. (He’s now affiliated with the Azov-linked “Russian Volunteer Corps,” which has a high concentration of neo-Nazis.) Levkin’s friend Danil Koval, another Nazi pagan ideologist from the National Corps and alleged expert on the “ancestral home of the Aryans,” at least used to oversee the brigade’s recruitment center in the Ukrainian capital.

The National Militia relaunched as “Centuria” in 2020, and could be described as a neo-Nazi street gang, at least before the Russian invasion. Since then, as the “newest Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN],” it’s become the premier group for young Azovites. Dmytro Krukovsky, the acting head of Centuria, is a veteran of the 3rd Assault Brigade, with a Hitler tattoo on his arm. If only under his leadership, the organization inaugurates the changing of the seasons with pagan cross-burnings. Last year he led an anti-LGBT march in Kyiv. With Krukovsky’s help, the Azov movement is reviving the OUN death cult alliance of radical war veterans and young extremists. It appears that he’s joining the ideological service of the 3rd Army Corps.

“Patriot of Ukraine,” the youthful Nazi pagan paramilitary group that largely formed the Azov Battalion in 2014, has a powerful spiritual successor. Take a look at any Centuria events today and you will probably see young people wearing merchandise from Alexei Levkin’s band “M8L8TH” (AKA “Hitler’s Hammer”), the most popular National Socialist Black Metal group in the Azov movement. The National Militia used the same Nazi-linked runic symbol as Levkin’s Azov-linked “Wotanjugend,” a Hitler-worshipping organization from Russia that’s connected to M8L8TH. “Nord Storm,” another Hitler-glorifying Azovite organization, sprung up in eastern Ukraine as a group within Centuria.

Last summer, Centuria held a knife-fighting (“Knife Cult”) tournament to honor a prominent fallen member, Oleg “Malysh” Fadeenko, who co-founded Nord Storm, the Knife Cult, and a special “Hatred” unit that migrated from Kraken to the 3rd Assault Brigade. Some of the event organizers wore shirts covered in swastikas. Mykhailenko was there—the founder of Centuria, a deputy commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, and former deputy head of the Patriot of Ukraine. So was “Istok,” another former Patriot of Ukraine militant who ran the brigade’s “young fighter course.” Less than a year before the Russian invasion, “Malysh” and Nord Storm held a knife-fighting tournament to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s 132nd birthday, an event fondly remembered this year by the Hitler-tattooed leader of Centuria.

—Azov Special Forces: ‘Borderline Insane … Hyped-Up Warriors’

In 2022, the Azov movement created territorial defense units across the country, most of which joined Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO, Syly Spetsialnykh Operatsiy). That spring, while the NGU Azov Regiment was seemingly defeated in Mariupol but reborn in “pro-Ukraine” propaganda, the SSO Azov Regiment formed in Kyiv, spearheaded by the National Corps and Centuria.

It behooved the new Azov units to merge in the 3rd Assault Brigade, and drop their favorite word from the name of the unit, if only to sidestep a Congressional ban on US weapons and training for the “Azov Battalion.” It also helped to muddy the waters for journalists who preferred to not think too hard about this stuff. The Azov movement needn’t be mentioned when writing about any of the Azovite units.

In the spring of 2023, the New York Times took notice of the 3rd Assault Brigade, but dithered about callings its fighters “Azov soldiers.” Andriy Biletsky was meekly identified as “a former far-right politician.” Some articles about the battle for Bakhmut mentioned Biletsky and his unit, but not “Azov.” In May, NYT reporter Marc Santora conducted “an extended interview with Colonel Biletsky near the front,” describing him as “a former ultranationalist politician and the founder of the [NGU] Azov regiment, a group that was part of Ukraine’s national guard before the war and is now integrated into the country’s military forces, with little or no political bent.” The Times implied by omission, in this article and the rest to come, that Biletsky’s openly neo-Nazi unit also has “little or no political bent.”

Later that year, the US “newspaper of record” referred to the 3rd Assault Brigade as “one of Ukraine’s most battle seasoned units,” once again without reference to Azov or its troubled “origins.” In June, the New York Times even started to use images from the 3rd Assault Brigade as artwork for articles about the war in Ukraine and the much-hyped 2023 “counteroffensive.” This was before the Azovites published a historical photo project, reaffirming that they see themselves as the spiritual successors of Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators. So it wasn’t really Azov that evolved, but their media coverage, in Ukraine and around the world.

When Centuria founder Ihor Mykhailenko handed out SSO Azov Regiment patches with a new design, the western media gave rise to a myth that the Azov movement abandoned Nazi symbolism. (Le Monde has decisively proved otherwise, and the issue is hardly just an Azov problem.) “It still has a lot of its neo-Nazi presence,” admitted Justin, an impressionable young American who wanted to defend Ukraine. He joined SSO Azov-Kyiv in the spring of 2022, not long after arriving in the capital. “You sort of just adapt to it, because these are your guys,” he explained.

Regardless of my battalion commander, my company commander being the Nazis that they were … I still get a kick out of this. I came in one day, and … you have to understand, these guys are hyper-fucking-masculine, these guys are almost borderline insane in terms of … they’re hyped-up warriors, you know, they’re these fucking gung-ho guys. So they kind of idolized the American Special Operations Forces, they wanted to be like them … so we watched these old History Channel Ranger School videos and stuff, and when my company commander opened his laptop on this huge fucking TV screen, he had a fucking desktop photo of fucking Adolf Hitler.

A short Azovite propaganda film, “Made in Ukraine,” captures the neo-Nazi essence of the SSO units behind the 3rd Assault Brigade, and in turn the 3rd Army Corps. It starts with “Martyn” shaving his head, which has “Made ꑭ Ukraine” tattooed on the back, so this becomes the title sequence. A couple minutes later, “Doc” is wearing an “88K” patch, the first sign of an openly neo-Nazi squad that stars in this project. The camera cuts to another group of “88K” fighters. Leading them is “Toten,” a platoon commander with the Nazi SS slogan tattooed on his arm in runic letters.

Then we see “Tokha,” with a tattoo of the 3rd SS Panzer Totenkopf Division emblem and the number 88 (“HH,” or “Heil Hitler”) on his shoulder. Moments later, a pouch with a hand-drawn swastika swings from a machine gun held by another soldier. Soon “Tokha” is back wearing the insignia of the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division, and “Doc” reveals a Black Sun tattoo and Patriot of Ukraine patch. We see Azov fighters laughing in the grass, next to a machine gun with an SS symbol. There are several more instances of Nazi imagery, including a Nord Storm patch at the end. The full video, including the opening sequence and credits, is less than 10 minutes.

The SSO Azov Regiment produced “Made in Ukraine” with “Neutrino Film,” an obscure venture based in London and Kyiv. Jack Hershman, the British co-founder, meanwhile worked as a Content Director for Google at Redwood BBDO in London, supposedly “the world’s leading content agency.” A longtime Azov photographer “Yara” went unrecognized in the credits, but the Ukrainian director confirmed her involvement. In the summer of 2023, “Yara” completed a photo project that saw Azov fighters from Andriy Biletsky’s brigade recreate historical images of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the armed wing of the fascistic OUN’s “Banderite” faction that massacred Jews, Poles, and other “enemies of the nation.” As noted by the historian Marta Havryshko, the ideological service of the 3rd Assault Brigade produced this photo series, “In Storms of Steel,” which was exhibited at the Kyiv History Museum in September 2023.

The 3rd Assault Brigade was established by early 2023. As far as I know, Andriy Biletsky wasn’t revealed to be its commander until his 44th birthday in August. Later that month, on Ukraine’s Independence Day, the brigade presented “In Storms of Steel” on social media. In the meantime, Volodymyr Zelensky and his team visited Biletsky’s command post in the Bakhmut sector, as if to rubber stamp his position. Recently, an ideologist from the 3rd Assault Brigade joined Zelensky’s government as the new head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. (Stay tuned for more on the “Azovization” of the memory war…)

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1st Azov Corps

Colonel Andriy Biletsky was the first brigade commander in Ukraine to announce the creation of a new corps under his leadership, but it seems that he did so prematurely, perhaps in order to upstage the NGU Azov commander, Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko, whose fame surpassed Biletsky as a result of the 2022 siege of Mariupol.

About a month later, in April 2025, when Prokopenko became the second brigade commander to make such an announcement, he could also name the new units in the National Guard’s 1st Azov Corps. As for Biletsky, we still don’t know how many brigades will join the 3rd Army Corps or come from the Azov movement. With a feud apparently brewing between Biletsky and Prokopenko, the latter might be trying to start a new “Azov family” in the 1st Azov Corps, which consists of five brigades, including its namesake.

Until its recent expansion, the Lyubart brigade was the 5th battalion in the NGU Azov Brigade. In 2022-23, Lyubart was its own unit in Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, “formed by Azov veterans and members of Centuria movement in Volyn Oblast on the day of [the] Russian full-scale invasion,” according to MilitaryLand.net. The first battalion is represented by “Dontsov’s beast,” a lion-wolf-hedgehog hybrid conjured in the twisted mind of the genocidal fascist ideologue who translated Mein Kampf into Ukrainian. The second battalion uses the aforementioned runic symbol favored by Wotanjugend and Azov’s former National Militia (now Centuria).

Just two of the five NGU Azov brigades are truly Azovite, and neither has purged the far-right. Certain “experts” and the many journalists who echoed them routinely claimed that Azov was long ago “integrated” in the National Guard, as if that implied depoliticization. Now three brigades are being integrated into the NGU’s 1st Azov Corps: “Bureviy,” “Chervona Kalyna,” and “Kara-Dag.” Perhaps that will not be too difficult. The 3rd battalion of the Chervona Kalyna brigade, for example, has an undeniable neo-Nazi symbol (Black Sun) in its emblem, and the reconnaissance company is represented by a patch shaped like several Waffen-SS divisions.

Arsen “Lemko” Dmytryk, the far-right chief of staff of the 1st Azov Corps, wrote an article for Forbes Ukraine this month about “why we cannot win the war without rethinking the essence of the army and state,” with “Azov as the bearer of a new management code.” According to Dmytryk, “When Ukraine enters the reconstruction phase after the war – not only of cities, but also of state institutions – this new type of leadership will be crucial. … Azov is not adjusting to the old Ukraine. It is preparing a new one. And this is its main victory. And our main hope.”

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Clearly, the conflict is about much more than Korynevych, or else it probably would have stayed private. The situation apparently threatens to spiral into a sort of civil war in the Azov movement, evoking the violent feud that split the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in World War II. I think the postwar conflict within the Banderite (OUN-B) faction is more relevant, but we’ll come back to that.

As a reminder, Andriy Biletsky was the founder and first commander of the Azov Battalion/Regiment in 2014, which grew into the Azov Brigade of today under the leadership of Denys Prokopenko (since 2017). Biletsky formally left the unit, but remained (more than!) its spiritual leader, and founded the National Corps and other groups that make up the broader Azov movement, which largely coalesced in the 3rd Assault Brigade under his command. As of this year, Prokopenko leads the 1st Azov Corps in the National Guard, and Biletsky heads the 3rd Army Corps, with the latter apparently still in formation. Since the full-scale Russian invasion, there have been some signs of tension between their units, but not enough to justify “pro-Ukraine” propaganda about the “depoliticization” of the NGU Azovites.

Almost exactly two years before the attack on Korynevych, I wrote about “a potential rift” in the Azov movement, which until now seemed to have aged poorly. On Biletsky’s initiative, the “Support Azov” charity was established in mid-2022, but later changed its name after the newly upgraded NGU Azov Brigade launched “The One and Only” charity “Azov One” in early 2023. As somebody said recently, “‘Support Azov’ collects millions, and the [NGU] Azov fighters see zero. Has anyone noticed where the cache is disappearing?”

Until last September, the Azovite units shared a patronage service, “Azov’s Angels,” which grew out of the Azov Battalion and partnered with “Azov One.” Last September, the NGU Azov Brigade launched a separate patronage service, blindsiding the “Angels” and the rest of the movement. Dmytro Kukharchuk, one of Biletsky’s most prominent lieutenants, appeared to be talking about Prokopenko and his entourage when he reacted to this news: “the ambitions of certain individuals cannot be the reason for our oblivion.” Nowadays, Kukharchuk might be the most divisive figure in the Azov movement, who has said that the attack on Korynevych “looks like a provocation of enemy intelligence agencies.”

The only question — are they playing in the dark, or are they doing it consciously. Although it doesn't surprise me anymore. After:

• statements of the command of the 12th Brigade in the world media against our unit

• disruption of exchanges due to unauthorized departure from Turkey, contrary to agreements

• apartments for 600 thousand euros on Novopecherskie Lipki — against the background of hundreds of homeless brothers

• bullying of the wounded who could not get up from the trenches near Bakhmut, when we were called "the third mud"

• outright spitting in the direction of the patronage service

I'm not surprised at anything anymore. The command of the [NGU] unit, which holds less than 10 kilometers of the front, hype on throwing mud at the [AB3] brigade, which holds sixty. They accuse top intelligence officers who have been fighting since 2014 of participating in a "special operation" against no-name [Korynevych], who is just someone’s driver without any combat experience. I believe in the decency of many in the NGU 12th [Azov] brigade. But those who tolerate such behavior have no right to call themselves either azovites or nationalists. Show yourself on the battlefield, not inventing provocations steeped in your wet fantasies. [My emphasis]

The “statements … in the world media against our unit” might refer to a March 2022 CNN article, according to which the NGU Azov leadership said it “appreciates and respects Andriy Biletsky … but we have nothing to do with his political activities and the National Corps party.” The “disruption of [prisoner] exchanges” is a quite serious accusation, because Kukharchuk is essentially blaming the NGU Azov leadership for the fact that hundreds of Azovites remain POWs; Prokopenko and others were supposed to remain in Turkey for the duration of the war after their release in September 2022. Last December, the news broke that Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, purchased elite apartments for several NGU Azov commanders. This is the only scandal to plague the unit since 2022, and Kukharchuk twists the knife by contrasting their good fortune with the economic plight of rank-and-file Azov veterans. Perhaps most outrageous for the NGU Azovites, widely regarded as Ukraine’s most glorious fighters, is Kukharchuk’s statement, “Show yourself on the battlefield.” He also implies that Prokopenko and other famous NGU Azov officers “have no right to call themselves either azovites or nationalists.” At the same time, he seems to praise Korynevych’s attackers as “top intelligence officers.”

Others Biletsky loyalists have taken their gloves off, such as Serhiy Bevz, a former deputy commander of the NGU Azov Regiment (2016-19), who also led the Kyiv branch of the neo-Nazi paramilitary group “Patriot of Ukraine” (2006-10). “Gentlemen! It's time to call a spade a spade, not a convenient euphemism. Talks about a united Azov movement have long had nothing to do with reality. No matter how painful it is. No matter how shameful it is in front of those who have completed their earthly journey with dignity.”

A movement, as a phenomenon, presupposes the presence of certain signs. One of the key ones is loyalty to the leader. Both branches of the OUN declared their loyalty to [OUN founder] Konovalets after the split. And this is the main difference between what happened 85 years ago and what is happening now. Now the “revolutionary youth” [—this is a reference to the Banderites, which called themselves the “revolutionary” faction—] has denied the authority [of Biletsky] and is trying to devalue everything that Konovalets did and is doing in the twenty-first century. … I think it is absolutely clear to anyone who knows how to analyze who is the Konovalets of the twenty-first century and who is Bandera, who staged a mutiny in the Organization (movement) while Konovalets was alive.

Among other things, Bevz indirectly pushes back against the March 2022 statement of the NGU Azov Regiment that it had “nothing to do with” Biletsky. According to him, “as a former deputy of Redis [the call-sign for Denys Prokopenko], I know that at least every Thursday he had a report to Andriy [Biletsky] on the state of affairs in the regiment.” When might this have ended? Bevz also reminds his followers that Biletsky allegedly organized the “attempt to de-blockade” Mariupol during the Russian siege of spring 2022 that transformed the NGU Azovites into Ukrainian superheroes, suggesting there is lingering resentment that Biletsky does not get enough credit or respect for his behind-the-scenes role in the unit and defending the city. Perhaps most importantly, the battle for Mariupol transformed Prokopenko into the greatest military commander in Ukraine, at least in the eyes of his loyal fighters. But many of them have moved on to the 3rd Assault Brigade, and in the meantime, some Azovites have gone in the opposite direction, so it will be interesting to see if there are major defections from either side.

3rd Assault officer "Dock" (more about him later) shared the above videos on Instagram yesterday. The second clip shows fictional Mafia boss Tony Soprano superimposed over footage of the attack on Korynevych: "I see some guy walking down the street with a clear head. You know the type, his always fucking whistling, like the happy wanderer. I just want to go up to him and rip his throat open. I want to fucking grab him and pummel him for no reason, why should I give a shit if a guy's got a clear head? I should say 'good for you.'"

Meanwhile, prominent NGU Azovites have also weighed in on the situation, accusing their counterparts of being corrupted by the “Russian criminal world.” Apparently Prokopenko’s wife Kateryna even labeled those from the 3rd Assault Brigade as “bandits,” which evokes the use of “Banderite” as a pejorative. In return, she has been accused of being a corrupt pro-LGBT activist, which reminds me of OUN leaders accusing each other of marrying Jewish women at the height of their quarrels.

Of course, the Azov movement has always harbored criminals. This is partially why the conflict reminds me of the postwar split in the OUN-B (just as likely instigated by western intelligence agencies as their Soviet counterparts) more than its wartime feud with the OUN-M. Stepan Bandera, the spiritual leader of the Banderites’ Ukrainian Insurgent Army, was a fascist control freak who insisted on remaining the movement’s dictator, whereas many of his longtime comrades became fed up with him, and they wanted to adopt a new strategy of appealing to western powers with a superficial “liberal” makeover. For Bandera, this was unacceptable, and yet, some of the top “reformers” were even bigger Nazi collaborators and war criminals than Bandera and his people — and there are still plenty of high-ranking neo-Nazis in the NGU Azov Brigade. Framing either conflict as “moderate” vs. “extremist,” or “law-abiding patriots” vs. “criminal thugs,” is misleading—“pragmatic Nazis” vs. “uncompromising Nazis” is more like it. (Guess which ones the CIA preferred?) And of course, both sides now question the others’ right to call themselves “Ukrainian nationalists.”

Whereas Bandera and company accused his postwar rivals of turning into “neo-Marxist CIA stooges” during the Cold War, a neo-Nazi officer from the 3rd Assault Brigade, “Dock” (who co-stars in the Azovite propaganda film “We Were Recruits”), says “it will be clear who is for the idea of the nation, and who is on the dick of Soros.” He writes, referring to the NGU Azovites who have formed an alliance with the “Sorosites” (western-funded NGO activists, or so-called “liberal nationalists”) in Ukraine, “all who support LGBT are enemies of our country and are subject to destruction.” At the same time, the head of the openly neo-Nazi “Neptune” squad in the NGU Azov Brigade, who also serves as first deputy commander of the training battalion of the Azov Corps and played a role in creating the 3rd Assault Brigade, remains loyal to Prokopenko. As he sees it, “after the attack, there were two options.”

The first was to eliminate the attackers, which would have led to an escalation of the conflict, revenge, and most likely an armed confrontation within the movement. The second is to act within the framework of the law, for which we are all publicly fighting. The second path was chosen, and I consider it a manifestation of responsibility. The public announcement of the attack is a chance to stop the catastrophe. This is an opportunity for the movement to recover, to analyze what should not have happened in the first place. The next time it will not be about fractures, but about deaths, and then the point of no return will be passed.

The neo-Nazi paramilitary group “Centuria,” more or less the spiritual successor of “Patriot of Ukraine,” and the real “revolutionary youth” of the Azov movement, of course are standing by Andriy Biletsky, the head of their “family.” Furthermore, they “are extremely disappointed with the unmanly behavior of the representatives of the [NGU Azov] unit from which their older brothers came.” Meanwhile, a prominent ideologist affiliated with the 3rd Assault Brigade writes, “Chiefdom [Vozhdyzm] is an integral part of our ideology.” This refers to the cult-like “Leadership Principle” that the OUN cribbed from Nazi Germany. As Marta Havryshko commented, “Once upon a time, the Führer was Bandera. Now it’s Biletsky. Just the kind of boys Europe can’t wait to welcome into their living rooms.” Leave it to a historian to notice, “Criminal-style showdowns within the Azov movement are escalating.”

(I’m running late for work, so stay tuned for more updates on this conflict… Next time, we will take a closer look at the 3rd Brigade/Corps. If you want to support my [real] work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee” or pledge to become a paid subscriber.)

During the first week of May, the Special Operations Medical Association (SOMA) held its annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, “the largest gathering of Special Operations Forces medical providers in the world.”

At least a few medics from the so-called “depoliticized” Azov Brigade/Corps in the National Guard of Ukraine spoke at the event, including Lt. Daryna Smolnikova, who rubbed shoulders with George Soros’ heir at the World Economic Forum in January. Her boyfriend, the famous Azov officer “Gandalf,” who once said he doesn’t “believe in any holocaust, it’s just a story,” already made it to Davos last year. More recently, Illia “Gandalf” Samoilenko met the right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro during his trip to Ukraine for an interview of Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade, a more openly neo-Nazi military unit, also sent a delegation to SOMA 2025, thanks to the New York City-based NGO “Razom for Ukraine,” which has been described as the Ukrainian AIPAC. At least some speakers at this event dedicated their time to sharing “key lessons from Ukraine’s medical response … to adapt TCCC [Tactical Combat Casualty Care] practices for future peer conflicts,” that is, between the United States and China.

Meanwhile, “SOF Week 2025” kicked off in Tampa, Florida, “the premier annual event for the international Special Operations Forces (SOF) community.” Featured speakers included US intelligence chiefs and military commanders, foreign leaders and defense ministers, with keynote speeches by Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense; Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Commander of the US Special Operations Command.

“Everything starts and ends with warriors, from training to the battlefield,” said Hegseth. “We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsession, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses.” Straight Arrow News reports, “According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, SOF will shift from a counterterrorism-centric mission to a broader role in great power competition.”

Andriy Smolensky, a severely wounded Ukrainian veteran who has spent many months undergoing treatment in the United States, met General Fenton at SOF Week, which Smolensky attended as the “U.S. Partnership Officer” of a new US-Ukrainian think tank connected to the Azov movement. About a month earlier at Harvard Business School, under the cover of this recently established organization, which is “dedicated to fortifying the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States,” some prominent Azovites probably met Fenton’s Vice Commander of the Special Operations Command. These and other stories about the burgeoning “Azov Lobby” have flown under the radar in recent months.

Nazi Tech Movement

“It’s no secret that all top brigades have their own R&D [research and development],” according to Roman Sudolsky, the editor of an online publication “covering Ukrainian defense tech,” but last month, when the 3rd Assault Brigade (AB3), allegedly the largest of its kind, launched its own “startup accelerator” to support testing new military technology on the battlefield, Sudolsky praised this “next level” step taken by the Azov movement, which is currently forming the 3rd Army Corps. A “Global Macro Investor” based in the San Francisco Bay Area also described the founding of “AB3 Tech” as “next level thinking … to get the best tech for the frontlines.”

To hear it from the Azovites, “We combine the expertise of military professionals, engineers, and entrepreneurs to help startups, investors, and defense companies accelerate time-to-market, test products in real combat conditions, and attract funding.” AB3 Tech offers “rapid feedback,” “practical insights,” “brand recognition,” a “competitive edge,” “combat-proven performance data,” “video content of product performance in battlefield conditions,” and official “letters of interest to gain credibility in fundraising.” Their website promises that these neo-Nazis are “trusted by defence industry leaders for real-world validation.”

On May 16-17, the capital of Ukraine hosted “DOU Day,” an annual event which is said to be “one of the largest technical conferences for the Ukrainian IT community.” One of the main speakers was Andriy Biletsky, the leader and founder of the Azov movement, and an infamous neo-Nazi, put in charge of the new 3rd Army Corps. The Azovites called this event their first “IT Dvizh.” As the journalist Leonid Ragozin explains, the Russian word Dvizh is “a slang term widely used by Russian and Ukrainian neo-nazis to designate their [‘NS’ or National Socialist] movement.” Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Ukrainian IT community “DOU” launched a large fundraiser for the 3rd Assault Brigade, just as AB3 Tech got off the ground. DOU even rolled out a special website for the campaign.

This seasonal edition of the Azov Lobby Blog almost started with something I missed in my last one (Winter 2025). Taking place alongside the Munich Security Conference in February, the German-based European Defense Tech Hub (EDTH) held a “hackathon” featuring a unique representative of the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade. Viktoria “Tori” Honcharuk, 25, moved to the United States at 15 years old, started an investment banking career on Wall Street, and got accepted to Harvard University. “I was living the life of my dreams,” she says. Since 2022, Honcharuk returned to Ukraine to become a combat medic, ultimately in the 3rd Assault Brigade, “where her sister serves as an assault rifleman.” This year, she co-founded AB3 Tech and a think tank.

Viktoria Honcharuk seems to be dating Mykola “Makar” Zinkevich, a young neo-Nazi commander from the 3rd Assault Brigade, specifically from its “Dirlewanger” company, which takes inspiration from one of Nazi Germany’s most horrendous military units. He has some suspicious arm tattoos—a valknut and life rune, “one of the most common neo-Nazi symbols.” Zinkevich is also affiliated with the Lviv-based neo-Nazi organization “Galician Youth,” which intimidates LGBT people, pays homage to the Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS, and distributed antisemitic fliers in the year before the full-scale war with Russia.

Last month in Lviv, the European Defense Tech Hub held “our boldest and most impactful hackathon,” for which it partnered with AB3 Tech, the Galician Youth, Zinkevich’s “NC-13” platoon, the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “Killhouse” drone school, and the Azovite paramilitary youth group “Centuria,” which more or less forms the neo-Nazi backbone of the Azov movement. (This year in Zelensky’s hometown, the local branch of Centuria welcomed the spring equinox with a Nazi pagan ceremony.)

There’s more to say about “Tori” and “Makar,” but first, a bit more about this year’s hackathons. In Munich, the Ukrainian government’s “defense tech cluster” Brave1 was represented by its CEO Nataliia Kushnerska, who also directs the Ukrainian Startup Fund, another state institution. Also present was Ragnar Sass, whose name might ring a bell for readers of my Medium blog. Sass is an Estonian entrepreneur, and according to him, an angel investor in over 50 companies, who made a name for himself delivering NAFO-themed trucks to the frontlines in Ukraine. The Azov units, including the 3rd Assault Brigade and Kraken Regiment, rank among the top recipients of these vehicles.

Last year, Sass co-founded the Darkstar Coalition which consists of “over 30+ unicorn founders, hackers, and investors from Estonia, Ukraine, Germany, France and UK. We are united by one goal: building up the European Defense Tech ecosystem!” This coalition has reportedly partnered with Brave1 and representatives from Ukrainian Military Intelligence. “Every fucking day has a price,” the Estonian roused Bavarian hackers in the birthplace of Nazism, wearing a hoodie from Ukraine’s 14th Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Regiment, which appears to have partially originated in the neo-Nazi organization C14. “Ukraine has to fight smart, and to fight smart we need to be ahead of the game in defense tech,” said Honcharuk.

In the first days of spring, Ukrainska Pravda, the top online media outlet in the country, held an awards ceremony in Kyiv to honor 100 women who “defend Ukraine on the front lines, turn difficult circumstances into opportunities for business and the public sector, develop Ukrainian culture, sports, science and creative industries, and bring important changes to Ukraine.” One of the recipients of this “Women’s Power Award” went to the ceremony with her boyfriend from the Dirlewanger Company. In March of this year, they appeared in a music video to raise money for the 3rd Assault Brigade, alongside their mustachioed neo-Nazi hipster friend, “Nehidnyk,” another combat medic, whose left arm is covered in fractal swastika tattoos.

Snake Island Institute

Readers of this blog may recall that an Azov delegation visited Washington in February, including an alleged war criminal, Vladislav “Borisfen” Sobolevsky, that was accompanied by Marina Hrytsenko, a young Ukrainian foreign policy aide based in the US capital. In the past month or two, Sobolevsky (president) and Hrytsenko (executive director) co-founded the Snake Island Institute (SII), a think tank “dedicated to fortifying the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States, with a particular focus on defense and security cooperation.” Viktoria Honcharuk became the “Head of Projects” at SII, which wasted no time getting busy.

Days after Ukrainska Pravda honored Honcharuk, she made it to Harvard with SII president Sobolevsky and Giorgi Kuparashvili, the Georgian head of the Azov movement’s Yevhen Konovalets Military School (named after the founder of the fascistic Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). They were invited to speak at the April 2025 Technology and National Security Conference hosted at Harvard Business School and MIT, which included keynote speeches from Jake Sullivan (former National Security Advisor to Biden), Mark Esper (former Secretary of Defense under Trump), and Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, the Vice Commander of the US Special Operations Command. The Azovite panel on “Lessons Learned from Ukraine” followed Donovan’s speech, after which there was a “networking reception.”

In the coming days, the Azovite delegation visited Alabama, Washington, and perhaps other places. In the Heart of Dixie, Honcharuk, Hrytsenko, and Kuparashvili appeared at an event alongside Birmingham lawyer Stephen Humphreys, who investigated Russian war crimes in Ukraine. In Bucha, he said, “the most horrific war crimes ever imagined were committed.” Perhaps it was him who invited the Azovites to Alabama. Around this time, NPR interviewed Honcharuk and Sobolevsky, and reported that these “Ukrainian military officers are meeting with American politicians, church leaders and others to dispel what they say are the myths of Russia’s war.”

Apparently the delegation also met with think tankers in the US capital, in particular from the Atlantic Council and the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). Upon returning to Ukraine, Hrytsenko and Sobolevsky introduced at least one of their “American partners” to Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, and visited the National University of Ostroh Academy. They spoke to students, telling them that “everyone will have to fight,” and signed a memorandum of cooperation with the administration.

In early May, the Senior Vice President of the neoconservative AFPC wrote an article for Newsweek, inspired by a “recent study” of the Snake Island Institute. Ilan Berman, a former CIA consultant obsessed with “taking on Tehran,” praised the “burgeoning [defense tech] ecosystem” in Ukraine, but lamented that “these innovations haven’t received enough sustained attention.” However, he added, “A cohort of activists, like those of the Snake Island Institute, a Ukrainian-based defense and security think tank, is aiming to change that—by sharing the military advancements and innovations made by their country with Western audiences.” In conclusion, Berman said that the Azovite SII has a “message worth heeding.”

Another person seemingly already wooed by the SII is Robert Potter, a “renowned cybersecurity expert” from Australia, who personally thanked the group and Vladyslav Sobolevsky in particular “for his assistance” during Potter’s latest trip to Ukraine in May. Among other things he runs the Cyber Activities Group, “a cutting-edge cybersecurity and defense application firm based in the United States and Australia.” According to the organization’s website,

[Robert Potter] is an experienced cyber, national security and government executive having held several high-profile roles as a leader in the space. These include leading the Australian Government’s cyber programs in the Pacific, being part of President Biden’s Counter Ransomware Initiative (one of 16 company executives selected globally and the only Australian), working as an expert for the United States Department of State and Global Affairs Canada as a leading expert in critical infrastructure security, sitting on the board of Ukraine’s Cyber Diia capacity building institution, leading BAE Systems Applied Intelligence cyber operations in APAC [the Asia-Pacific] and working as the first head of cyber security at the Washington Post. Robert has a history of securing and delivering large deals for partners and founding cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0.

Indeed, the SII appears to have some prominent early supporters. The president, Vladislav “Borisfen” Sobolevsky, one of the deputy commanders of the 3rd Assault Brigade and an important figure in Azov’s dormant political party, recently made a Twitter/X account. He has just 36 followers, but that includes Omri Rahmil, a former Campus Outreach Director for AIPAC in Washington who, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for the State Department in 2021-22 in several roles, such as a “Ukraine Task Force Member.” Rahmil was also a “Presidential Management Fellow” in 2020-22. Since April 2022, he’s been an executive at Forward Global, a “global community of philanthropic funders,” which describes him in this way:

Omri Rahmil is a public affairs and policy professional in Washington, D.C. He has advised Fortune 500 executives, members of Congress, and State Department officials on a range of high-profile communications, policy, and political matters. Omri recently served at the Department of State where he advanced U.S. strategic communications priorities related to China, the Indo-Pacific, economic and business affairs, and more. He has also worked in the U.S. House of Representatives and at a boutique consulting firm.

Marina Hrytsenko appears to lead a team of young Ukrainian women charged with running Snake Island Institute. Their Kyiv-based advocacy manager, Yuliia Turba, also works for the United Nations. Nataliia Zelinska, an executive assistant for SII, is an undergrad at Emory University in Atlanta, studying international relations and participating in the Model UN club. And then there is Catarina Buchatskiy, a former intern at the Ukrainian parliament and the neocon American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who is the new think tank’s Director of Analytics.

According to her LinkedIn, in 2023-24 at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Buchatskiy led “a joint project with [former US Ambassador to Russia] Michael McFaul on lessons from the war in Ukraine for Taiwan, including research on the use of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones] in Ukraine and how to transfer operational and tactical lessons to Taiwan.” She was also a research assistant for Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which McFaul chairs. Some readers will recall that Stanford has hosted two Azov delegations since 2022, which were greeted by Michael McFaul and Francis Fukuyama, another senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). And of course, it was Stanford’s Mapping Militants Project, supported by the FSI and the US government, that quietly deleted its profile on the Azov movement last year.

Buchatskiy’s boyfriend, Soren Monroe-Anderson, is a “former world champion drone racer” turned defense contractor. Last month, he joined the 2025 Class of Thiel Fellows. Peter Thiel, the powerful right-wing venture capitalist, has funded Monroe-Anderson’s Los Angeles-based military technology company “Neros” since at least 2024. Earlier this year, the startup drone manufacturer won contracts to supply its Archer FPV (First Person View) drones to Ukraine and the US Marine Corps. Neros reportedly “worked with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and the US Defense Innovation Unit on development of the drone over a period of 16 months.” Vice President J.D. Vance personally tested the weapon in March, about a month after humiliating Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

PS. As it turns out, neo-Nazis may have participated in recapturing Snake Island in the Black Sea during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The Security Service of Ukraine’s Alpha Group is one of the country’s most elite special forces units. Its amphibious assault “Mich Team” lost a couple people trying to take back the strategically located island in May 2022. But this unit is associated with the rather popular Ukrainian military brand “North Side Group,” which still goes by “NS Dvizh” (‘National Socialist Movement’) on Telegram, and appears to have originated in the Azovite “Shkid” outfit of the Special Police Regiment in the Kharkiv region. At some point, I will have to return to the topic of the “Special Branding Operation to Nazify Ukraine.” As I once said on Twitter, the following mashup of videos posted by the “North Side” Telegram channels reflects Azov fighters’ idolization of US special forces AND Nazi Germany.

In Other News…

At the start of spring, Yevhen Avdeenko, a veteran of the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade who joined its ideological service, embarked on a “theatrical military stand-up” tour of the United States. He has a Black Sun prominently displayed on his right arm, which helps to cover up another (perhaps more incriminating) tattoo. As if that isn’t enough evidence that Avdeenko is a neo-Nazi, I’ve found a picture of him wearing a “Zero Tolerance” shirt, featuring an automatic weapon with a Black Sun, from a Nazi pagan brand. I also discovered that he “liked” an Instagram video of an Azovite Nazi pagan ceremony from 2017, with music added from the National Socialist Black Metal group “M8L8TH” (also known as “Hitler’s Hammer”). The video includes Nazi salutes “to the sun,” which are alluded to in the caption of the Instagram post with palm and sun emojis.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian documentary “People of Steel,” about the 2022 siege of Mariupol, toured the United States. The film apparently glorifies Azov, and features prominent “Azov Lobbyists” such as “Gandalf,” who made the fanciful claim (as seen in the trailer) that “up to 100,000 people” died in Mariupol. During the battle, he put the number at 25,000 civilians, which is still far higher than the estimate from Human Rights Watch and others (“at least 8,000 people,” including soldiers).

Earlier this year I wrote about “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a sequel to the Oscar-nominated documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” which went with Azov’s number of 25,000. Whereas Azov was mostly absent from “20 Days,” an openly neo-Nazi unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade stars in “2000 Meters.” The latter, which appears to be a pro-Nazi propaganda film, made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Since then, it has been screened in Copenhagen (March) and the Cannes Film Festival (May). About a week ago, “2000 Meters” made its debut in Ukraine, and several Azov fighters were invited to the event. At least one of them, Andriy “2.0” Serhiyenko, is a “legionnaire” of the neo-Nazi paramilitary group “Centuria.”

When Vladyslav Sobolevsky, the president of Snake Island Institute, made his first visit to the United States this year in February, his delegation met with Oleksandr Tkachenko, a Detroit-based fundraiser for the Azov units. In April, Tkachenko met Viktoria Honcharuk and Giorgi Kuparashvili, who gifted the major Azov supporter three copies of a painting, depicting the daring evacuation of severely wounded Azov fighters from Mariupol, that hangs in the office of military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. Last month one of the replicas joined a special exhibit of “trench art” and war memorabilia (much of it Azov-related) that Tkachenko has curated at the Ukrainian American Archives and Museum of Detroit. (Below is Tkachenko’s walk-through of the exhibit.)

It was in mid-April that US Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), a former FBI Special Agent, visited “some Ukrainian warriors” from the 3rd Assault Brigade, allegedly near the front line, after meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv. “This is just one example of Russian occupied territory, up until not too long ago, that they’ve completely burned down,” said Fitzpatrick. “This is what the Russians do. They just level buildings, indiscriminate burning and destruction of civilian areas and that’s their M.O., that’s what they do.” Of course, the Congressman recently reaffirmed that “we stand—as we always have—with our ally Israel in shared purpose and mutual defense.” Back in February, Republican leaders in Congress tapped Fitzpatrick to chair the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s Central Intelligence Agency Subcommittee, “an elite and highly sought-after leadership post charged with overseeing all operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including all international covert operations.”

As the CIA Subcommittee chairman rendezvoused with Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis, Azov officer Dmytro “Diplomat” Andryushchenko visited the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England, more or less the British army’s West Point. “Diplomat” also met with the former general turned ambassador Valery Zaluzhny, and joined a “Free Azov” protest in London. In both cases he displayed a Ukrainian flag emblazoned with the chevron of the Azov Brigade and a soldier who appears to be wearing an “Operator Skull” (updated Nazi Totenkopf) patch from the neo-Nazi brand “R3ICH.” Although he made the trip with the “Carpathian Bears,” a football “charity team for veterans” founded in 2023, Andryushchenko also represents the National Guard’s Azov Brigade in the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which is led by Ukrainian spymaster Kyrylo Budanov and his spokesman Andriy Yusov. The Coordination Headquarters appears to have played an important role in organizing foreign lobbying trips for former Azov POWs, such as Valery Horishny, the one who wrote poetry for Hitler, but still managed to speak at the United Nations and British parliament this past winter.

More recently, Horishny spoke at the Kyiv Security Forum and the German parliament. His trip to Berlin last month with other representatives of the Azov Brigade was organized by Sergej Sumlenny, a notorious German think tanker from Russia and “former employee of Putin’s spin doctor” who became “the star of English-speaking and Ukrainian-language Twitter,” and affiliated with the German Green Party. The Azovites had a busy trip to Berlin, which the 1st Azov Corps in the National Guard of Ukraine proudly summarized to its social media followers.

On the eve of the anniversary of the exit of the Mariupol Garrison into Russian captivity, the delegation of the 1st Corps of NGU "Azov" held a series of high-level advocacy measures in Berlin. On May 13, in the Bundestag, the delegation took part in a parliamentary event on the issue of protecting the rights of prisoners of war and supported by the office of MP Robin Wagener [The Greens] in collaboration with the European Resilience Initiative Center. The event was attended by representatives of democratic parties. Among other: Defense Committee member Roderich Kizevetter (HDS) and European Policy Committee member Johannes Sharps (SDPN), Chairman of the European Affairs Committee Anton Hofreiter, Security Policy Speaker Sarah Nanni, Defense Committee member Agneszka Brugger and others. There were also experts in international law, human rights activists, journalists and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Senior Sergeant Valery Horishny, who spent two years and four months in Russian captivity, gave testimony about the conditions of detention, systematic torture, moral destruction, as well as the path of rehabilitation and return on track. Junior Sergeant Nestor Barchuk stated that tortures and violence in Russian captivity are not single cases, but a targeted state policy of Russia aimed at destroying Ukrainian identity. According to him, more than 90% of Ukrainian prisoners of war go through systematic torture and humiliation, so Russia should not escape responsibility.

The delegation held a separate meeting on May 12 at the Foreign Ministry with Conrad Artz von Straussenburg and Eva Lannert, responsible for policy concerning Eastern Europe and Ukraine. With the assistance of the German-Ukrainian Bureau, the delegation held bilateral meetings with the deputies of the Bundestag and became part of the dialogue in the Foreign Policy Analysis Center European Council on Foreign Relations. Representatives of the delegation also reported at the Conference on Security Architecture of Europe and on the panel of the UN International Intergovernmental Conference organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Azov mentioned “the assistance of the German-Ukrainian Bureau,” which describes itself as “an expert company focused on research and strategic advisory to enhance German-Ukrainian relations.” Its CEO Mattia Nelles greeted what he called “a group from the legendary Azov Brigade in Berlin.” He publicly thanked Sumlenny, on the day that Azovites spoke in the Bundestag, for “enabling these incredible voices to being heard by more people.” In return, Sumlenny thanked Nelles “for having organized an additional greet meeting today.”

The German-Ukrainian Bureau CEO said that Valery “Yarylo” Horishny’s testimony was the most powerful. As he explained, they were already introduced to each other at the latest Kyiv Security Forum: “Before meeting the group in Berlin, I recently met Yarylo in Kyiv and was astonished by his strength, composure and ability to speak about what he had to endure for nearly three years. … See you [again] in Kyiv, mate.” The journalist Leonid Ragozin recently noted that Horishny “tells somewhat contradictory stories of his imprisonment.”

“My fellow prisoners of war and I endured systematic torture in detention. It included inhumane treatment, brutal beatings, some leading to lethal cases, including with electric shock and other forms of torture”, he said at the hearings in the UN in January. But here is what he told the Ukrainian outlet Media Port: “Speaking about conditions [in Russian captivity] - I’ll say that it all depends on the location, it can be normal sometimes. There were kind people who helped us. There were mental people who allowed themselves too much. There are people who are not returning in such a good and cheerful state as I do. There are people who they tried to break and who got broken. Different methods of influence were applied to different people, so to say. Maybe I was lucky, but my conditions in captivity were not too bad, because there are people who went through hell”.

Viktoria Kovach, who leads the medical service of the 3rd Assault Brigade, also made a trip to Germany last month, after joining a session of the NATO Military Medicine Centre of Excellence in Poland. She appears to have met with an official from the German Army Medical Service in Berlin. Kovach also visited Leipzig, where the European Gymnastics Championships was taking place, and the Ukrainian men’s team paid tribute to the Azov-affiliated Kraken Regiment, an elite neo-Nazi unit at the disposal of Ukrainian military intelligence. Meanwhile, a neo-Nazi former press officer of the National Guard’s Azov Regiment, Dmytro Kozatsky, took a trip to Amsterdam, around the time that a “Free Azov” mural appeared in the city. More recently, the neo-Nazi commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade’s anti-tank battalion, Oleh Romanov, visited his family in Washington, DC. The German left-wing newspaper junge Welt already reported on Horishny’s trip to Berlin, but everything else you’ve read in this seasonal edition of the Azov Lobby Blog has escaped the attention of journalists around the world. What will summer bring?

P.S. For now everything is free on the Azov Lobby Blog. If you want to support my work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee,” or pledge to become a paid subscriber, so I can dedicate more time to this newsletter.

Last month the historian Marta Havryshko noted that a (formerly) USAID-funded Ukrainian outlet produced a “heroic saga” documentary about the NGU Azov Brigade, featuring one of its ideological/recruitment officers, Vladyslav “Docent” Dutchak. According to Havryshko, the filmmaker said to him, “The roots of this demonization of Azov go back to its formation. So, I have to ask — were there people in the unit at the beginning who held neo-Nazi views?”

“I didn’t see such people in the unit,” Dutchak answered. Back in 2015, before the New York Times and Foreign Policy magazine described Azov as “openly neo–Nazi,” but after it joined the National Guard, a foreign affairs reporter for USA Today interviewed Alex, a drill sergeant in the Azov Regiment, who “admitted he is a Nazi and said with a laugh that no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis.”

He said he supports strong leadership for Ukraine, like Germany during World War II, but opposes the Nazis’ genocide against Jews. Minorities should be tolerated as long as they are peaceful and don’t demand special privileges, he said, and the property of wealthy oligarchs should be taken away and nationalized. He vowed that when the war ends, his comrades will march on the capital, Kiev, to oust a government they consider corrupt.

Andriy Diachenko, a spokesperson for the Azov Regiment, tried to do some damage control, and said that “only 10% to 20%” of Azov fighters in the National Guard were really Nazis. “I know Alex is a Nazi, but it’s his personal ideology. It has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov,” Diachenko told Oren Dorell from USA Today. “He’s a good drill sergeant and a good instructor for tactics and weapons skills.” Dorell also spoke with Oleg Odnorozhenko, then deputy commander of the regiment, who “complained that Alex does not speak for the group.” Odnorozhenko was in those days the main ideologue of two neo-Nazi organizations (the Social-National Assembly and Patriot of Ukraine) associated with the Azov Battalion.

After a handful of critical mainstream media reports, the House of Representatives unanimously adopted an amendment to its 2015 military spending bill to ban US assistance and training to the “Azov Battalion,” which the late Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) denounced as a “repulsive neo-Nazi” group. The Nation reported that the House Defense Appropriations Committee eventually stripped Conyers’ amendment “under pressure from the Pentagon.” (The amendment finally stuck, or so it seemed, in 2018.)

In the meantime, Kristofer Harrison, a former advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration, smeared Conyers as “Putin’s Man in Congress” for promoting “the Moscow-inspired lie that [the Azov Regiment] is a neo-Nazi organization.” Azov’s emblem isn’t a wolfsangel, he insisted; “the resemblance is merely coincidental.” Harrison offered no serious debunking of “the Moscow-inspired lie,” but said that “one of [Ukraine’s] most effective units” had “some PR spade work to do.” He helped them get started by interviewing “Azov’s spokesman, Roman Zvarych.”

The Azov’s spokesman, Roman Zvarych, told me that the battalion has a selective screening program that accepts only 50 out of almost 300 recruits each month. He says they have a thorough background check and reject members for various reasons, including having fascist leanings. He explained further that they have actually committed two former members to psychiatric hospitals because of their pro-fascist viewpoints.

In those days, the Azov Regiment had a Swedish neo-Nazi running its training program, while Roman Zvarych allegedly functioned as “the interlocutor between the Ukrainian far-right and their foreign sponsors.” Zvarych was a leader of the new “Civic Corps,” on its way to establishing a political party for Azov veterans. Today his brother, Ihor Zvarych, is the treasurer of the nationalist Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA).

Born in Yonkers, New York in 1953, Roman Zvarych at least used to be a prominent member of the OUN-B, or “Banderite” faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. (Note for readers of the “Bandera Lobby Blog”: Andriy Diachenko, the other Azov spokesman, was a former member of the OUN-B’s “Youth Nationalist Congress” from western Ukraine.) By the 1980s, the OUN-B took over the UCCA, and Zvarych became a personal secretary to Banderite ideologue Yaroslav Stetsko, who led the OUN-B from 1968 until his death in 1986. In the early 1990s, his widow Slava Stetsko co-founded the unsuccessful far-right political party, “Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists,” with Roman Zvarych. Meanwhile, according to the historian Per Rudling, the 1990’s “Social-National Party of Ukraine” — a neo-Nazi forerunner to the Azov movement — rooted itself in “Stetsko’s ideology of ‘two revolutions,’ one national and one social.”

Zvarych regularly participated in events of the Stetskos’ Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, “the largest and most important umbrella for former Nazi collaborators,” and the World Anti-Communist League, the unofficial “Fascist International” of the Cold War. Decades later, Zvarych reportedly helped the Azov movement seize its “ATEK” headquarters in a former factory on the outskirts of Kyiv, which became the home of a recruitment and training center for the Azov Regiment, as well as an Azovite sergeant school, named after OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets. As told by the journalist Leonid Ragozin, “The school functioned outside Ukraine’s system of military education - one of many reasons to suspect that Azov was highly autonomous and never truly integrated in the armed forces.” (More recently, the Azov school formed the 354th Mechanized Training Regiment in the Ground Forces of Ukraine.)

Zvarych and Azov parted ways by the 2016 launch of the National Corps, an Azovite political party led by Andriy Biletsky, the first Azov commander, rumored to be called the “White Chief.” The creation of his National Corps ironically helped to launder the reputation of the military unit that he founded, as well as the larger Azov movement. After Vladimir Putin launched his “Special Military Operation,” the Western media (and apparently Washington) scrambled to revive a debunked narrative from several years ago. “Pro-Ukraine” propagandists essentially argued that Azov already achieved “deNazification,” if only by establishing a far-right political party.

When people said that the NGU Azov unit “shed any far-right associations,” that included the Azov movement led by Andriy Biletsky, who now commands the 3rd Army Corps in the Ground Forces. From 2023 until recently, Biletsky led the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade, which will continue to exist in the new corps, like the NGU Azov Brigade. Certain “experts” argued before the war, such as Anton Shekhovtsov in 2020, that “the toxic far-right leadership formally left the [Azov] regiment and founded what would become a far-right party called ‘National Corps.’” The journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko refuted this, also in 2020: “the available evidence indicates that the regiment remains joined at the hip to the internationally active National Corps party it spawned, and the wider Azov movement associated with the regiment.”

Shekhovtsov, a far-right activist turned “far-right expert,” was responding to an op-ed in the New York Times by then-Congressman Max Rose (D-NY) and former FBI agent Ali Soufan, in which they called for the US government to designate the “Azov Battalion” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In the spring of 2022, the Soufan Group, led by Rose and Soufan, made a U-turn and published a special report on Ukraine that claimed, “Azov has been largely regularized under the command and control of the Ukrainian armed forces, which has worked to winnow extremists from its midst. … According to experts on the European far-right like Anton Shekhovtsov, the Azov of 2022 is nothing like the group from eight years ago.” Mollie Saltskog, a senior intelligence analyst at the Soufan Group, told the Washington Post that the National Guard “had to purge a lot of those extremist elements.”

Vyacheslav Likhachev is another “expert” cited by the media to downplay the far-right in Ukraine. He has echoed Shekhovtsov’s claim that Biletsky and the National Corps retained no more than a symbolic link with Azov, having tried and failed “to exploit the Azov ‘trademark’ in political life.” To be fair, the NGU Azov unit, wanting US support, has paid lip service to this narrative. In a March 2022 statement to CNN, the Azov Regiment said it “appreciates and respects Andriy Biletsky as the regiment’s founder and first commander, but we have nothing to do with his political activities and the National Corps party.” However, as Oleksiy Kuzmenko wrote in 2020,

the role of the far-right leadership in the regiment remains evident. Both the National Guard unit and the political party admit to being part of the wider “Azov movement” led by the regiment’s first commander and current National Corps party leader Andriy Biletsky. The unit routinely hosts Biletsky (and other former commanders) at its bases and welcomes his participation in ceremonies, greeting him as a leader. Biletsky positions himself as the curator of the regiment, and has claimed to deal directly with Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov on related matters – a claim that Avakov appeared to confirm in early 2019. Shekhovtsov describes the regiment as a regular unit of the National Guard, but it is not. Regimental commanders have said that their unit owes its special status to being shielded from government interference. In 2019, the head of Azov’s military academy claimed Biletsky protected Azov from being “destroyed” by Ukraine’s leaders, while another commander described Biletsky as someone who “finds sponsors that really invest money.” Furthermore, Azov’s Kyiv recruitment center and military academy share a location with the offices of the National Corps.

The NGU Azov Brigade might have distanced itself from Andriy Biletsky in the past few years, but as deputy commander Illia “Gandalf” Samoilenko admitted in 2023, “Soldier to soldier and officer to officer, we have good relations with the 3rd Brigade [led by Biletsky].” In addition to the Yevhen Konovalets Military School, which unites the Azovite units and salutes Biletsky as their collective leader, the NGU Azov Brigade has a “standard-bearer school” named after Mykola Stsiborskyi, a fascist OUN ideologue who drafted an explicitly totalitarian constitution for Ukraine on the eve of World War II. The Azovites have also called this their “Natiocracy School,” named for Stsiborskyi’s concept of nationalist dictatorship. Kuzmenko observed several years ago, this school trains “political-ideological officers” for the NGU Azov unit, and was “tied to the far-right National Corps party” since its establishment in 2017. He called this “another strong link between AR [the Azov Regiment] and the larger Azov movement.”

Denys Prokopenko has been the NGU Azov commander since 2017. Andriy Biletsky made a speech at his torchlit inauguration ceremony. According to Stanford University’s “Mapping Militants Project,” Prokopenko was one of the earliest members of the Azov Battalion. He is known to be a former football hooligan, affiliated with the “Albatross” firm, which is a member of the racist “White Boys Club” that refers to Prokopenko as a “legend of our movement.” Reporting Radicalism, a website created several years ago by the Ukraine branch of the US-funded Freedom House, had this to say about the “death rune,” which Prokopenko has tattooed on his upper-right arm.

It is one of the most common neo-Nazi symbols and is used widely by members of the Far Right in various countries as a marker of Nazi, neo-Nazi, and racist views. ... The ‘death rune’ is used widely in Ukraine to demonstrate Nazi and racist views, often without any connection to a specific organization. Supporters of far-right ideologies almost always use it to symbolize death, most commonly in conjunction with the ‘life rune.’ This rune is almost never mistakenly used.

Prokopenko was one of the first members of the Azov Regiment’s “Borodach Division” platoon, just like his predecessor, Maksym Zhorin. The group’s symbol was a bearded Nazi Totenkopf, which is flanked by SS bolts in some cases, for example, on the arm of Oleg Mudrak, who commanded the first battalion of the Azov Regiment in 2022. On the birthday of the Borodach (“Bearded Man”) Division, in 2017 and 2018, the regiment shared a group photo of Prokopenko’s old platoon on social media, but with their backs turned away from the camera, facing toward a large Perun idol outside of Kyiv.

Perun is a Slavic god of war, worshipped by some pagan fighters in Ukraine. In 2017, on the initiative of Maksym Zhorin, the third commander of the Azov Regiment, the unit installed a Perun idol on its base in Mariupol. As the shrine went up, Azov fighters threw up their right arms in a ceremony that involved bloodletting. According to the NGU Azov press service, this site was intended as a “sacred place, where before combat missions, each fighter could consecrate their weapons and worship the deity, gaining strength and invincibility from the shrine for the upcoming battle.”

Meanwhile Azov held a sports tournament to celebrate a 10th century Kievan prince’s military victory over Khazaria, which had a Turkic elite that converted to Judaism. “This grandiose victory over the Jewish state ranks among the most significant events in Slavic and world history,” Zhorin told assembled fighters. “With small forces, the prince was able to defeat the enemy. This testifies, first of all, to the courage and professionally high level of training of his warriors. The invincible spirit and weapons of the descendants of Perun destroyed the parasitic system. We can draw many parallels to today’s events.”

Kyrylo “Kirt” Berkal, who commanded the Yevhen Konovalets Military School and the 2nd battalion of the NGU Azov Regiment, led the Nazi pagan ceremony. Later that year he met with representatives of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an agency in the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with countering “weapons of mass destruction and emerging threats.” According to the DTRA, since 2005, its Biological Threat Reduction Program has “assisted the Ukrainian government in converting former Soviet biological weapons research facilities,” which of course became the famous “US-funded biolabs.” In 2017, after Denys Prokopenko succeeded Maksym Zhorin as commander, the press service of the NGU Azov Regiment reported that its base in Mariupol hosted “a multinational inspection group” including U.S. military officials. The NGU Azov leadership held a meeting with the foreign delegation, which included several officials from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, such as Brian Cotter, an arms control inspection officer who is now a “Political-Military Planner” for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

According to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a favorite source for pro-Azov information warriors, “right-wing radicals who clearly articulated their views were deliberated ‘cleaned out’ by the new commandment of the regiment in 2017. In recent years, there are absolutely no grounds for accusations that neo-Nazis serve in the Azov regiment.” Supposedly under Prokopenko, Azov purged extremists as it worshipped a pagan god of war, established a “standard-bearer school” named after a fascist OUN ideologist, and developed its own version of the Nazis’ “Cathedral of Light.”

Defending History, an online publication that combats Holocaust revisionism in Eastern Europe, noticed the Azov Regiment staged a demonstration in September 2018 that “looks like it was inspired by the Nazis’ 1930s Nuremberg rallies. Searchlights, torches, the giant banners - Leni Riefenstahl’s legacy is alive and well.” Oleksiy Kuzmenko also commented on the “striking images” from this ceremony. It appears that Azov started to use searchlights in 2017, the year of Prokopenko’s ascent. Although the Black Sun already disappeared from its official chevron, NGU Azov videos regularly featured the following sequence until 2019.

If the expert Azov defenders had any shred of honesty or good intentions, they might at least acknowledge that their alleged “cleansing” missed some spots. For example, in 2021, Oleksiy Kuzmenko unmasked Yuriy “Milan” Gavrylyshyn as the head of a neo-Nazi network that “made its home in Ukraine’s major Western military training hub.” These days, Gavrylyshyn is a prominent NGU Azov officer who leads its recruitment center. In 2022, Kuzmenko also reported the “addition of notorious far-right figure Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn to the Azov Regiment” as a “recruitment officer.” Some twenty years ago, Mykhalchyshyn is known to have founded a short-lived “Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Prokopenko’s forces in Mariupol included an absurdly neo-Nazi squad, the “Vedmedi SS,” which now serves in the Ukrainian Marine Corps. Around that time, Oleksiy Kuzmenko noted that the page for the Yevhen Konovalets Military School on the website of the Azov Regiment linked to an Azovite Youtube account featuring interviews with white nationalists from the US and Europe. Last year, another openly neo-Nazi unit, the “Neptune” tactical group, appeared in a reconnaissance company of the NGU Azov Brigade. The Neptune unit’s chevron often includes “88,” a well-known neo-Nazi code for “Heil Hitler,” and a wolfsangel rune, which Azov defenders insist has nothing to do with its trademark symbol.

Hundreds of former Azov fighters remain in Russian captivity, but there was never a purge. For that reason, the “experts” evidently fail to agree on who did the cleansing, and when (2014? 2017? 2022?), and if this was an organic process, or took place “under the pressure of U.S. and Ukrainian authorities.” For the most part, Azovites in the National Guard have made a superficial effort to clean up their image. Meanwhile other Azov units reap the PR benefits, without bothering to do the same.

In 2022, the National Corps and its paramilitary youth wing Centuria formed territorial defense (TDF) and special forces (SSO) units that were more openly neo-Nazi and eventually coalesced in Andriy Biletsky’s 3rd Assault Brigade, which is now creating the 3rd Army Corps. In an operation overseen by Ukrainian military intelligence, the SSO Azov-Kyiv Regiment tried to come to the rescue of the NGU Azov Regiment in Azovstal.

Several soldiers from the SSO Azov unit joined the Mariupol garrison, and numerous wounded Azovites from the National Guard were evacuated, in risky helicopter trips. These missions enamored people like John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, who put an Azov sticker on his laptop.

Mykyta Nadtochiy, one of the evacuated Azovites, eventually gathered all the remaining forces that “became the backbone” of the post-Mariupol NGU Azov unit. Nadtochiy served as the acting commander until Denis Prokopenko returned to Ukraine in 2023. If there was ever going to be a purge, this might have been the time, but Nadtochiy also appears to be a neo-Nazi.

Among the SSO Azov fighters that flew to Avozstal was Ruslan “David” Serbov, who later became a “Jewish” ambassador of the NGU Azov Brigade. After his release from Russian captivity, Serbov spent at least a couple months in Israel receiving medical treatment. He took pictures there wearing a hoodie from a neo-Nazi Ukrainian brand. Its name is abbreviated as “NS” because that also stands for “National Socialism.” Soon after returning to Ukraine in early 2023, Serbov met with the “Galician Youth,” an Azov-linked group which spread antisemitic fliers before the war.

Earlier last year, the SSO “Lyubart” unit, established by Centuria members in the Volyn region, joined the NGU Azov Brigade as its 5th special forces battalion. Centuria, the openly neo-Nazi street wing of the Azov movement and the National Corps, more or less formed the backbone of the SSO Azov units. Its founder, Ihor Mykhailenko, commanded the NGU Azov Regiment after Biletsky — together they led the SSO Azov Kyiv-Regiment — and declared at Centuria’s fascistic launch ceremony that “everything anti-Ukrainian will be annihilated.” Now the Centuria-linked Lyubart unit is forming a brigade in the National Guard’s “depoliticized” 1st Azov Corps.

In the spring of 2022, the Guardian tried to explain that the Azov Regiment used to have a “nationalist far-right affiliation … but has become a unit of the Ukrainian national guard,” as if the Interior Ministry of Ukraine would never tolerate far-right nationalists. Arsen Avakov, the Interior Minister from 2014-21, was widely regarded as the chief patron of the Azov movement. In those years, a former deputy commander of the Azov Battalion served as the chief of police in Kyiv Oblast.

The far-right Svoboda party has a Nazi-infested battalion in the National Guard’s elite “Rubizh” brigade, and nobody pretends that their “extremist side” is screened and purged. In any case, the New York Times assures us that “experts say the [NGU Azov] group has quelled much of its extremist side under pressure from authorities.” It would be more accurate to say that “much of its extremist side” is forming the 3rd Army Corps. Dmytro “Velichar” Babych led the “special communications service” of the Azov Regiment when he was killed in action in 2022. A dozen years earlier, Babych planted a bomb in an Orthodox church that killed an 80-year-old nun.

In his 2020 article, “Why Azov should not be designated a foreign terrorist organization,” Anton Shekhovtsov acknowledged that the “National Corps is actively building contacts with like-minded movements and organizations across the West while many Western far-right activists visit representatives of the National Corps in Ukraine.” He admitted that the Azov Battalion was “formed by the leadership of a neo-Nazi group called ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ in spring 2014.” (Babych, for example, led the organization in Zaporizhia, where he forged ties to a local neopagan group.) But, Shekhovtsov argued, “while the ideologically inimical nature of Azov’s roots is indisputable, it is likewise certain that Azov attempted to depoliticize itself; the toxic far-right leadership formally left the regiment,” to build the Azov movement. Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Brigade, and before that a member of the Patriot of Ukraine, perhaps did not yet receive the memo. “We have a leader in Andriy Biletsky,” he said in 2019, five years after Biletsky left the unit.

“The historical mission of our Nation in this turning point of the century is to lead the White Peoples of the world in the last crusade for their existence. A march against the Semitic-led subhumans.” Andriy Biletsky’s infamous quote is actually an excerpt from the manifesto of his Kharkiv-based neo-Nazi organization “Patriot of Ukraine,” which dissolved into the Azov movement. The 1990’s “Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine” disbanded its paramilitary youth wing, the Patriot of Ukraine, when it rebranded as the Svoboda party in 2004, but Biletsky revived the group in Russian-speaking Kharkiv (AKA Kharkov). Under his leadership, the organization defined its ideology as “Ukrainian racial Social-Nationalism.” According to the manifesto of this Nazi pagan paramilitary group that launched Azov, “Our task is to fight for the creation of a powerful Social-Nationalist movement that will encompass the entire Nation and gain power in the State.”

On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Intercept published an article about Facebook’s decision to “temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy.”

According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”

The materials stipulate that Azov still can’t use Facebook platforms for recruiting purposes or for publishing its own statements and that the regiment’s uniforms and banners will remain as banned hate symbol imagery, even while Azov soldiers may fight wearing and displaying them. In a tacit acknowledgement of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and its white nationalist heritage.”

In December 2024, the same Intercept reporter, Sam Biddle, wrote this about “The Facebook Apostate” Hannah Byrne.

For two years, Hannah Byrne was part of an invisible machine that determines what over 3 billion people around the world can say on the internet. From her perch within Meta’s Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations team, Byrne helped craft one of the most powerful and secretive censorship policies in internet history.

…

Still, Byrne had doubts about the model because of the clear intimacy between American state policy and Meta’s content moderation policy. Meta’s censorship systems are “basically an extension of the government,” Byrne said in an interview. …

Within weeks [of the Russian invasion], Byrne found the moral universe around her inverted: The heavily armed hate group sanctioned by Congress since 2018 were now freedom fighters resisting occupation, not terroristic racists. As a Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations policy manager, Byrne’s entire job was to help form policies that would most effectively thwart groups like Azov. Then one day, this was no longer the case. “They’re no longer neo-Nazis,” Byrne recalls a policy manager explaining to her somewhat shocked team, a line that is now the official position of the White House.

In early 2023, Meta welcomed the Azovites back to Facebook and Instagram, allegedly because it was convinced that “the Azov Regiment is now separate from the far-right nationalist Azov Movement.” But as Oleksiy Kuzmenko explained years ago, it is “next to impossible to draw a clear line between the [Azov] regiment itself and the wider Azov movement, including the National Corps.” With the creation of other Azovite military units, it became easier, and yet, while Meta continued to ban Andriy Biletsky and his political party, it opened the floodgates for his Azov movement, in particular for Centuria, the 3rd Assault Brigade, and their dominant neo-Nazi elements.

Shortly before the Ukrainian government announced Meta’s change of policy, Biletsky’s brigade hosted a “Day of the Dead” ritual, which featured the ceremonial burning of a Viking longboat. “Inside the flame, our fallen symbolically board drakkars to travel to Valhalla,” explained Maksym Zhorin. The NGU Azov chief of staff, Bohdan Krotevych, appeared on the podium with Andriy Biletsky, who reached for the flags of the Azov Regiment and the 3rd Assault Brigade, and brought them together in his hands.

A year later, on the eve of 2024, Lt. Illia “Gandalf” Samoilenko of the NGU Azov Brigade said, “A huge amount of efforts has been invested to break through these myths and lies” about his unit — “a lot of international campaigns, a lot of conferences, visits.” Samoilenko, for example, a former Holocaust denier, went to the United Nations and Davos, and spoke at the Harriman Institute in New York. He’s the one who said, “Soldier to soldier and officer to officer, we have good relations with the 3rd [Assault] Brigade.”

The Association of Azovstal Defenders Families (AADF), established in 2022, has played an important role in this “huge amount of efforts.” The wife of the Hitler-tattooed “Vedmedi SS” commander spoke at the group’s first press conference. Led by Kateryna Prokopenko, the wife of the NGU Azov commander, and Yulia Fedosiuk, whose husband is a sergeant in the Azov Brigade, the AADF has coordinated “Free Azovstal Defenders” rallies in Ukraine and abroad, and led international Azovite delegations to lobby, network, and fundraise. Days before their husbands surrendered in Mariupol, Prokopenko and Fedosiuk visited the Vatican in Rome and met Pope Francis with Peter Verzilov, a former spokesperson for Russia’s “Pussy Riot.”

Whereas Mrs. Prokopenko is apparently a figurehead of the AADF, Mrs. Fedosiuk is undoubtedly an operative of the Azov movement. Yulia Fedosiuk led “Silver of the Rose,” an anti-feminist group linked to Azov, and is a former staffer of “Plomin,” a far-right publishing house affiliated with the Azov movement. Fedosiuk was close friends with Plomin co-founder Serhiy Zaikovskyi, “a representative of the intellectual wing of the [neo-pagan] Native Faith movement of Ukraine.” In 2019, when the journalist Aris Roussinos visited the Azov movement’s “Cossack House” in Kyiv, where Plomin was based, he spoke with Fedosiuk. “We use the example of the [mystical fascist] Codreanu movement,” she said, referring to the Iron Guard of Romania.

Like Olena Semenyaka, the “international secretary” of the National Corps, Yulia Fedosiuk might still be an assistant to Ukraine’s youngest member of parliament, Sviatoslav Yurash. In 2021, Vienna’s prestigious Institute for Human Sciences controversially awarded Semenyaka a short-lived fellowship. “Far-right experts” Anton Shekhovtsov and Vyacheslav Likhachev came to Semenyaka’s defense. Shekhovtsov, a “former” far-right activist, even bemoaned this example of “cancel culture,” and declared Azov researcher Michael Colborne, “The Stalker of Semenyaka of the Year.” In 2020, Anton Shekhovtsov admitted that her party was “actively building contacts with like-minded movements and organizations across the West while many Western far-right activists visit representatives of the National Corps in Ukraine.” A change of heart? As of early 2023, Shekhovtsov “liked” over 100 of Semenyaka’s Instagram posts, including pictures of her working out, visiting boxing clubs, and promoting the Azov movement.

Although Semenyaka said in late 2022 that a charity established by the National Corps consumed a “considerable part of my current activities,” she also coordinated the Azovites’ geopolitical project, the “Intermarium Support Group.” According to Oleksiy Kuzmenko, “The advance of the Intermarium is seen by Azov as an integral part of the long-term strategy of Reconquista, which is meant to bring together nations of European origin globally under the [white supremacist] banner of reclaiming land and culture.” Reconquista is the name of Azov’s more ambitious geopolitical agenda, “to create our own Right International,” in Semenyaka’s words—and to “defend the white race.” In 2023, the NGU Azov-linked AADF supported an Azov movement delegation that traveled to Lithuania. This trip was organized by Olena Semenyaka under the banner of the “Intermarium caucus” that Yurash established in the Ukrainian parliament several years ago.

Semenyaka might have played a role in organizing the first delegation that the Azov movement dispatched to the United States in 2022, which raised money for the National Corps’ new charity organization and allegedly met with over fifty members of Congress. Prokopenko and Fedosiuk from the AADF joined a few Azov veterans led by Giorgi Kuparashvili, the commander of the Yevhen Konovalets Military School, who represented Georgia at the founding conference of the Intermarium Support Group in 2016 and met representatives of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in 2017. During the siege of Mariupol, Kuparashvili was seriously wounded and evacuated from Azovstal. Shortly before the Russian invasion, Oleksiy Kuzmenko noted that the page for the Konovalets school on the official website of the Azov Regiment linked to the “RECONQUISTA Ukraina” Youtube channel, featuring interviews with white nationalists from the US and Europe.

The first Azov delegation arrived in the US in September 2022 and made its first public appearance at the Ukrainian Cultural Center of New Jersey. Then the group went to Washington. Kuparashvili later told an audience in Detroit about their alleged success. “We went to the Senators, Congressmen, from both parties,” Kuparashvili said. “Honestly, the majority we met, there were like over fifty of them, and the head of their fractions, they all gave 100% support.” Among other things, they advocated for prioritizing the release of Azovite POWs, and for Congress to lift restrictions on supplying arms and training to Azov. “We told them, ‘are you supporting this [Azov ban]?’ and everybody knows it’s just a mistake,” according to Kuparashvili.

The Detroit event raised $33,416 for “Support Azov,” the National Corps charity that took up a “considerable part” of Olena Semenyaka’s time. Among other items, they auctioned an Azov Regiment patch with its controversial wolfsangel. Before the bidding commenced, Kuparashvili insisted that it’s not what it looks like. “If you know, there is a symbol,” he said, tapping the patch on his left arm, “which I’m gonna explain now, because they call us Nazis, all this crap.”

Another “Azovstal defender” on this trip was Vladyslav Zhaivoronok, whose release from Russian captivity was prioritized due to his severe injuries. He apparently went by “WP” because this was a double entendre for his call-sign “Wikipedia” and the neo-Nazi slogan “White Power.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, which I hesitate to cite at this point, the acronym is sometimes “used to denote things that are white supremacist, such as ‘wp music’ or ‘wp skinhead.’” In the case of this Azov veteran, his Instagram username used to be “wp_cyberpunk,” and he wrote “WP” on his helmet. In June 2023, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Azman delivered a propaganda coup to Azov and recorded a video with Zhaivoronok, blessing him as a hero of Ukraine. Recently, Azman introduced “Wikipedia” to South Carolina pastor Mark Burns, who is described in the media as “Trump’s spiritual advisor.”

In September 2022, over a hundred POWs from NGU Azov were released in a surprise prisoner exchange, including Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, and Illia Samoilenko. Zelensky awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine” to Prokopenko and Palamar. Whereas Zhaivoronok spent months in the US for medical rehabilitation, AADF president Kateryna Prokopenko cut her trip short, in order to meet her husband in Turkey. The New York Times ran a story about their “emotional reunion” that only described the “Azov Battalion” as “celebrated.”

Fedosiuk, Kuparashvili, “Wikipedia,” and another wounded Azov veteran returned to Washington and then traveled across the country to speak at Stanford University in California. Stanford professor Michal McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia (2012-14), dropped in to give moral support. Earlier that year, Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) published a detailed report on the “Azov Movement … a far-right nationalist network.” The CISAC is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which McFaul directs. He took no issue with Azov’s “Nazi-linked” symbol projected on screen behind him. In June 2023, as Rabbi Azman blessed “WP,” another Azov delegation made its way to Stanford University. This time it was Yulia Fedosiuk, her newly freed husband Arseniy, and Kateryna Prokopenko.

Arseniy Fedosiuk has been pictured with people making Nazi salutes. Based on his VK profile, he appears to be a neo-Nazi himself. A picture of his laptop showed a Patriot of Ukraine sticker, and another suspicious sticker that began, “Das ist mein kampf…” He also followed an overtly pro-Nazi page called “12 years not a slave,” referring to the years when Hitler was in power. Fedosiuk’s profile on Academiu.edu says that he studies “Right-Wing Extremism.” In early 2023, he received medical assistance in Israel. Yulia Fedosiuk and Azov intelligence officer Illia Samoilenko joined him there. Samoilenko appears to have been accompanied by two Ukrainians that live in Israel, one of whom is a pretty blatant neo-Nazi that even captioned a photo with Fedosiuk and Samoilenko in Tel Aviv with a reference to the slogan, “White Pride World Wide.”

Making her way back to Stanford University in 2023, Yulia Fedosiuk posted a selfie with the caption, “Surf the Kali Yuga,” which is a far-right meme that “essentially means embracing being the bad guy and riding the wave of the dark age and what it might bring.” The special guest at this event was Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute directed by Michael McFaul. Fukuyama told a local news website that he’s “proud to support” the Azov Brigade, and dismissed a reporter’s concern about their “longstanding far-right ties and connections to neo-Nazis.” In an email to the SFGATE news website, Fukuyama said, “I think you need to do a little more reading on Azov. They originated among Ukrainian nationalists, but to call them neo-Nazis is to accept Russia’s framing of what they represent today. By the time they defended Mariupol they were fully integrated into the [Armed Forces of Ukraine] and are heroes that I’m proud to support.” Fukuyama greeted the Azovites, with a quote from NGU Azov commander Denys Prokopenko projected on the screen behind them that said, “Ukraine belongs to us.”

Bellingcat, the investigative journalism group that “popularized OSINT tradecraft” with support from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy, published some vital work on the Azov movement, until 2022. Whereas Oleksiy Kuzmenko was their most valuable contributor, Michael Colborne actually worked for Bellingcat and led their “Anti-Equality Monitoring Project” (AEMP) which was mostly focused on the Ukrainian far-right. “Azov needs a war,” he said in December 2021. A few months later, while Russia invaded Ukraine, Colborne’s book on the Azov movement came out. But he nearly went silent on the topic. Since then, Colborne appears to have deleted the AEMP account and his personal one on Twitter/X, erasing years of social media posts about the far-right in Ukraine.

“There are clearly neo-Nazis within its ranks,” Colborne told the Washington Post in the spring of 2022, but clarified that he “wouldn’t call it explicitly a neo-Nazi movement.” (In the past, he described Azov as a “a key node in a global far-right extremist network” and a “dangerous neo-Nazi-friendly extremist movement” with “often outright neo-Nazi affiliations.”) Over a year later, the Washington Post reported that “Michael Colborne, who wrote a book about the Azov movement and leads Bellingcat’s work on the global far right, said the [NGU Azov] unit’s focus appears to have shifted over time from ideology to military effectiveness.”

He said that any remaining far-right elements within Azov probably would continue to be “diluted” as the unit grows and that the issue had become less important as Ukraine confronts an existential threat. “In Ukraine, the term nationalist or patriot describes a heck of a lot of people right now,” Colborne said.

In October 2022, less than two weeks after the first Azov event at Stanford, the journalist Lindsey Snell was dogpiled by “pro-Ukraine” Twitter trolls and info-warriors for sharing the above image of SSO Azov fighters. As the former Bellingcat editor Natalia Antonova said, “These aren’t members of Azov. These aren’t Ukrainians. Look at their kit. You’re posting disinformation, Lindsey.” Although Snell shared proof that these were Azovites from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, this didn’t matter to people like Antonova and Illia Ponomarenko, a popular reporter at the Kyiv Independent, who continued to mock her, “This is the most massive L seen on Twitter in years.”

A researcher at George Washington University also confirmed Lindsey Snell’s findings, and Aric Toler, the former director of research at Bellingcat, chimed in, “there’s no real reason to doubt these photos,” but Antonova refused to give in. “Imagine trying to correct someone in good faith — but they are too addicted to likes,” she said after Snell blocked her. Earlier that year, Antonova touted her expertise, “having studied Azov for years and having dealt with death threats for my research.” A couple months ago, she told somebody, “You don’t know anything about modern day Azov. There’s a reason there’s no more weapons bans facing them, they’re as integrated as the rest of the UKR National Guard.”

“NAZI!!!!” tweeted Dmytro Kozatsky, a 26 year old press officer in the Azov Regiment, three days before the last of his unit surrendered in Mariupol. Thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink, he was using a short-lived internet connection to argue with a Dutch blogger who brought up some of Kozatsky’s deleted social media posts, including pictures of a pizza he made with a swastika on top, and an image of his ankle tattoo featuring a double-armed swastika worn by some German concentration camp guards.

Before surrendering, Kozatsky uploaded his Azovstal photos to the internet, and made a short film, “Last day at Azovstal.” The Guardian published his work with a disclaimer that the regiment “retains some far-right affiliations.” During his imprisonment, Kozatsky won several photography awards for his Azovstal series, “The Light Will Win.” Not long after his release from Russian captivity in September 2022, Kozatsky took a trip to the United States. Around that time, Blue Star Press published Relentless Courage, a hardcover book of images of the Ukraine war “from some of the most respected photojournalists of our time,” in addition to some essays, one of them by Oksana Markarova, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States. Kozatsky’s famous self-portrait, standing in a beam of light in Azovstal, went on the front cover. Whereas the first Azov delegation to Washington only managed to land TV interviews with Newsmax, a far-right channel, Kozatsky appeared on MSNBC with the Ukrainian ambassador and a four time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist.

From Washington, Dmytro Kozatsky rode to New York City in a motorcade of Ukrainian activists sponsored by United Help Ukraine, a DC-based charity that works closely with the Ukrainian embassy and has supported several far-right Ukrainian units since 2014. The United Help Ukraine website used to display a certificate from the original Azov Battalion signed by Andriy Biletsky, featuring a large Black Sun in the background. Kozatsky attended a New York City film festival for the US premier of “Freedom on Fire,” a documentary that used his pictures and footage, including a video of Azov fighters bringing candy to children in Azovstal. After the screening, Kozatsky participated in a Q&A session with Evgeny Afineevsky, the Israeli-American director, who previously admitted that he downplayed the Ukrainian far-right in his Oscar-nominated prequel, “Winter on Fire.”

“Hey, I got a question!” a woman called out from the audience. “Why don’t you let everybody here know that Mr. Kozatsky is an open neo-Nazi?!”

“Fuck you! Shut the fuck up! Get the fuck down you piece of shit!” Members of the audience, who just watched the movie, immediately started to curse her. “Kremlin shill! Get out of here fucking bitch!” Before staff members kicked her out of the theater, she yelled, “We are being propagandized like the Germans were in the Thirties! He is a neo-Nazi and we are celebrating neo-Nazis!” Another man stood up after she left. He didn’t know her, but was also waiting to say something. “I oppose this war, but this guy’s got a huge amount of antisemitic content. I’ve got copies here… Let’s address it!” He too was removed from the School of Visual Arts Theatre in Manhattan.

Dmytro Kozatsky subsequently tried to address the “aggressive disinformation campaign” that “Russian servants” waged against him. They didn’t understand “Ukrainian humor,” which makes “a mockery of Russian propaganda about so-called ‘Nazism in Ukraine.’” Kozatsky used to be fond of wearing far-right clothing and posting references to 1488, a well-known neo-Nazi code. Scrolling back through his “likes” on Twitter (when those were still public), I found graffiti that said “Death to Yids,” and Nazi memes, for example, a Totenkopf captioned, “Your face when you read news about gypsies.” The latter was posted in 2018, the year that the US Helsinki Commission (now Azov’s biggest fans in Washington) warned, “attacks on Roma in Ukraine have escalated dramatically.” Kozatsky ended his public “apology” with a caveat: “if the Russian servants see me as a threat and are conducting such an aggressive disinformation campaign against me, then I am doing everything right.”

After getting dinner with the actor Sean Penn, the former Azov press officer was soon on his way back to Washington with Evgeny Afineevsky and a couple Ukrainians who appeared in the documentary, including another Azov Regiment wife. First they attended a screening of the film at the State Department. The next day, there was another screening and Q&A to kick off a “Ukraine in Washington” conference organized by the US-Ukraine Foundation. This think tank has a “Friends of Ukraine Network” with a member list that reads like a “Who’s Who” of Russia and Ukraine-obsessed Beltway hawks. The event had an awards ceremony to honor the following “Stars of Ukraine”: Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), and Evgeny Afineevsky. Kozatsky and the “Freedom on Fire” crew took a group picture with Kaptur, a co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation and perhaps the youngest member of Zelensky’s inner circle, also spoke at this December 2022 event in Washington. He brought gifts from United24, the official fundraising platform of Ukraine, which is associated with Fedorov’s ministry and at some point started to use Kozatsky’s famous self-portrait. Kozatsky, Afineevsky, and Marcy Kaptur posed with United24 bracelets, “made from the last pre-war batch of steel manufactured at the legendary Azovstal plant.”

Fedorov soon announced in January 2023 the “important news” that Meta agreed to remove the Azov Regiment from its list of dangerous organizations, just in time for the unit’s elevation to a brigade and the launch of its own fundraising platform. Fedorov’s ministry apparently helped to convince Meta that “the Azov Regiment is now separate from the far-right nationalist Azov Movement.” The Ukrainian government, and especially the media arm of United24, a state-run propaganda outlet for the English-speaking world, has done its best to promote the Azovites (and not just from the National Guard) as elite warrior heroes.

According to Dmytro Kozatsky, now a photographer for the Defense Ministry of Ukraine, the Secretary General of NATO greeted him at the June 2024 meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Brussels. Meanwhile, the State Department approved the Azov Brigade to receive US weapons and training. In the days leading up to this news, Azov veterans golfed at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, Stanford University’s Militant Mapping Project (supported by the CISAC and Freeman Spogli Institute) quietly deleted its profile on the Azov movement, and the UK “Conservative Friends of Ukraine” held a fundraiser for the AADF in London with Boris Johnson. The UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ukraine also hosted a roundtable discussion with an Azov delegation including AADF leaders, Arseniy Fedosiuk, Ruslan Serbov, and a representative of the “Natiocracy School” — all of whom met the former Prime Minister that evening.

“We must not believe a single word of Putin’s propaganda about the Azov Brigade,” Boris Johnson declared, because they are “gallant soldiers” and “heroes” on whom “we rely wholly.” That night, Serbov gave Johnson a copy of his memoir about Mariupol, with a Hitler-tattooed friend of his, the “Vedmedi SS” commander, on the front cover. It was around this time that Guardian editor Dan Sabbagh insisted Azov “has shed any far-right associations … and is one of the military’s elite forces.” As the journalist Lev Golinkin once said, “we went out of our way to glorify Azov. Nobody forced us to. It’s been a choice, and considering that Googling Azov’s name yields hit after hit about white supremacy, it’s a conscious, informed one. Putin isn’t the only one obsessed with Azov. We can’t get enough of them. They’re our neo-Nazis.”

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Meanwhile, the broader Azov movement led by Andriy Biletsky is forming the 3rd Army Corps. There are other Azovite units, and Azov-inspired ones. After three years of war, the “gentle Azovization” of the Ukrainian armed forces is accelerating, but this seems to be met with the quiet approval of western media and officials. Apparently they consider far-right nationalism to be Ukraine’s secret weapon.

In 2022, Russia captured the remaining Ukrainian coastline on the Sea of Azov to establish a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula. The main obstacle, which the Russians destroyed, was the city of Mariupol, with its principal defenders being the NGU Azov Regiment. This partially explains the immediate role played by neo-Nazis in the information war.

With eyes on Mariupol in the early days of the war, the western media mostly abandoned any remaining concern and curiosity about neo-Nazis in the Azov Regiment (and other Azovite units). Hundreds of Azov fighters, in addition to other soldiers and civilians, held out for weeks in the city’s massive Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. New York Times reporter Michael Schwirtz, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, called it “Ukraine’s version of the Alamo.”

In “The Battle for Azovstal,” a podcast episode by the New York Times, Schwirtz claimed that “this group has a very complicated history going back to 2014,” when Andriy Biletsky, an infamous neo-Nazi, founded a “battalion of misfits” that welcomed everyone. “Anybody who wanted to could join … And, very, quickly, the Azov Battalion became associated with a band of far-right nationalists bordering on fascists.” But this was just “a small contingent of people,” and an “association that the Azov Battalion had in its infancy.” Or so they said…

As I’ve said before, the New York Times is a case study in the western media’s whitewashing of the most powerful neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine, and probably the world. Andrew Kramer, the Kyiv bureau chief for the NYT, appears to have been its first reporter to describe the “Azov group” as anything other than a “pro-Ukrainian paramilitary” force, a “militia fighting in the east,” or “one volunteer unit.” In 2015, Kramer wrote that Azov is “openly neo-Nazi.”

In early 2022, the NGU Azov Regiment was still “far-right,” according to the New York Times. On February 25, the day after Russia attacked Ukraine, the NYT worried that Azov “has drawn far-right fighters from around the world.” Over the next month, the Times said this “far-right military unit” is “known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers but remains a fringe presence in the country and its military.” That spring, amidst the Russian siege of Mariupol, the ideology of the Azov Regiment started to become past-tense in the “newspaper of record,” for example: “the Azov Battalion … was founded as a far-right volunteer unit.”

During the second half of April, Azov evolved from “a force that does include far-right soldiers, some of them foreign, including white supremacists and people who have been described as fascists”; to “a highly skilled and controversial unit” that is “filled with far-right fighters”; to “a force that does include nationalist soldiers, which the Kremlin has used to paint the unit as fascist”; and finally, a complicated unit “whose history as a far-right group has helped fuel Russia’s largely false claim that it is fighting fascists in Ukraine.” The Times settled on a phrase about Azov’s “history” that it repeatedly deployed. The far-right “roots” of the unit “lent a veneer of credibility” to Russian propaganda.

In May 2022, one might have read in the New York Times, “Though the Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 out of Ukraine’s ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups, experts say the group has quelled much of its extremist side under pressure from authorities.” Around that time, the NYT conducted a soft-ball interview with Lt. Illia Samoilenko, “an intelligence officer who speaks fluent English, [and] seemed intent on defining the legacy of the Azov Battalion.”

“We know about our past,” he said. He acknowledged the Azov regiment’s “obscure” origins and its past association with far-right extremists — something he said the group had shed when it became part of the national military. Independent military analysts and experts who study the far right support that assertion, saying that Azov’s incorporation into the regular combat forces of the Ukrainian military led to a purging of extremist elements. Lt. Samoilenko said lingering public misperceptions about the battalion could explain why the group did not get as much support as it might have in the run up to the war.

Some so-called experts might “support that [evidence-free] assertion,” but the New York Times must have known this was hardly the consensus among those who study the far-right in Ukraine. The Times did not bother to fact-check Samoilenko, and subsequently began to describe Azov as “a former far-right militia” with ambiguous “connections to far-right movements” and “a hard-core contingent” that has “far-right origins.” The newspaper became a broken record when it mentioned “the Azov regiment, whose roots in far-right movements have offered a veneer of credibility for Mr. Putin’s tenuous claims that Ukraine has been infected with Nazism.” As for Samoilenko, better known as “Gandalf,” he once told a Czech reporter, “I don’t believe in any Holocaust, it’s just a story.”

The New York Times downgraded Azov from “far-right” to “nationalist.” Unidentified “analysts” assured the Times that “the Russian media’s portrayal of the group exaggerates the extent to which its members hold neo-Nazi views.” In July 2022, this infamous military unit “with roots in ultranationalist political groups” became a “strongly nationalistic group of fighters whose fame in Ukraine and early connections to far-right political figures have been used by the Kremlin to falsely depict the entire country as fascist.” That summer, Michael Schwirtz wrote that Azov became “a source of inspiration and pride for Ukrainians, with the commanders’ likenesses displayed on billboards around the country.”

Even Azov’s undeniably extremist “origins” were watered down as “strongly nationalist,” and the Times said that “Russian propaganda has attempted to paint [the Azov Regiment] as neo-Nazis.” Unfortunately for this newspaper, its Kyiv bureau chief once described Azov as “openly neo-Nazi,” and in 2019 the World News section published an article on the “Global Reach of White Extremism,” which mentioned “the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”

It used to be standard to downplay the Azovites as a “fringe presence,” until that changed, and it became fashionable to whitewash these elite neo-Nazis as “fighters who are regarded in Ukraine as national heroes.” By the end of 2022, the New York Times described the “Azov Battalion” as “a powerful symbol of resistance,” “a nationalist fighting force,” and “a nationalist group whose early ties to far-right figures have been used by the Kremlin.”

In 2023, the Azov Brigade quickly went from having “far-right connections” to “onetime far-right connections,” and by spring, the unit reportedly had “little or no political bent.” In June, the month that Ukraine began its failed counter-offensive, the New York Times reported the death of Oleh Mudrak, the former commander of the first battalion in the Azov Regiment, not long after his release from Russian captivity. The Times did not mention Mudrak’s numerous Nazi tattoos, including a Black Sun and SS bolts on his arm, but explained that captured Azov members, “long painted as neo-Nazis by Russia as part of its justification for the war, came in for especially harsh treatment.” Last year, the New York Times said that the Azov Brigade simply “has a nationalist heritage.”

About a decade ago, the Washington Post reported that Azov “has become a source of controversy for its use of neo-Nazi symbols and rhetoric.” In 2017, WaPo published an op-ed by former USAID project officer Josh Cohen that touched on the Azov movement: “Ukraine’s ultra-right militias are challenging the government to a showdown.” Five years later, less than two weeks after Russian forces invaded, a team at the Post wrote about the (re-)emergence of Azov as “a controversial defender of Ukraine.” The article mentioned “the battalion’s far-right nationalist ideology,” and said that its “own leaders and fighters concede that some extremists remain in their ranks.” However, the Washington Post reassured readers, “Under pressure from U.S. and Ukrainian authorities, the Azov battalion has toned down its extremist elements.” That spring, Azov was described as “a nationalist group” and “far-right.”

In January 2023, when Meta reversed its ban on the NGU’s Azov unit, the Post still described the regiment as “a Ukrainian far-right military group” with “connections to far-right nationalist ideology.” However, “Meta argues that the Azov Regiment is now separate from the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. It notes that the Ukrainian government has formal command and control over the unit.” Within a few months, WaPo reliably echoed the story about “Azov’s apparent evolution,” and reported that “[Azov] Brigade leaders are seeking to move past the controversy surrounding Azov’s far-right roots.” That summer, Azov was said to be “one of Ukraine’s most adept military units,” and a former “far-right militia with ultranationalist roots.” In some cases, it was acknowledged to be a “controversial” brigade that “undoubtedly has at least some extremists in its ranks” and “has used the medieval Wolsangel insignia made infamous by Nazi German SS units.”

In June 2024, the Washington Post broke the news that the State Department cleared the Azov Brigade for US weapons and training, ignoring a Congressional ban that refers to the “Azov Battalion.” The US government insisted that the Azov Brigade of 2024 had nothing to do with the Azov Battalion of 2014, not long after the Ukrainian government celebrated Azov’s “10th anniversary,” going back to the day that Andriy Biletsky became its founder. “The two units are not the same, despite persistent Russian disinformation to conflate them,” the State Department Bureau of Political Affairs said in June 2024, chastising Erik Sperling, who runs a progressive think tank in Washington and brought about the Azov ban as a former senior advisor to Congressman Ro Khanna.

Fact check for you, @ErikSperling: USG [the US Government] never provided supported to the now disbanded militia known as the “Azov battalion.” In contrast, The 12th Special Forces “Azov” Brigade received arms and equipment after successfully completing necessary security forces vetting. [Original emphasis]

The WaPo article that triggered this exchanged quoted Svyatoslav Palamar, the brigade’s deputy commander, several times. For example: “Now that the ban is lifted, it brings us to a full understanding of how poisonous Russian propaganda is.” The Post did not issue an apology for its previous reporting, but dropped the issue about Azov’s “past.” The Washington Post noted that Palamar joined the Azov Battalion in 2014 (before its alleged cleansing), but did not mention his long-time membership in the “Patriot of Ukraine,” the neo-Nazi group that largely formed the unit.

In 2014, The Guardian published several articles that dealt with Azov and the far right in Ukraine. Aside from an op-ed by sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, titled “Ukraine has ignored the far right for too long – it must wake up to the danger,” the bylines all included Shaun Walker, who is today the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent. The most significant article of his, “Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat,” is worth quoting at length.

The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi, leanings of many of its members. Dmitry claimed not to be a Nazi, but waxed lyrical about Adolf Hitler as a military leader, and believes the Holocaust never happened. Not everyone in the Azov battalion thinks like Dmitry, but after speaking with dozens of its fighters and embedding on several missions during the past week in and around the strategic port city of Mariupol, the Guardian found many of them to have disturbing political views, and almost all to be intent on "bringing the fight to Kiev" when the war in the east is over.

The battalion's symbol is reminiscent of the Nazi Wolfsangel, though the battalion claims it is in fact meant to be the letters N and I crossed over each other, standing for "national idea". Many of its members have links with neo-Nazi groups, and even those who laughed off the idea that they are neo-Nazis did not give the most convincing denials.

"Of course not, it's all made up, there are just a lot of people who are interested in Nordic mythology," said one fighter when asked if there were neo-Nazis in the battalion. When asked what his own political views were, however, he said "national socialist". As for the swastika tattoos on at least one man seen at the Azov base, "the swastika has nothing to do with the Nazis, it was an ancient sun symbol," he claimed. …

Dmitry said he believes that Ukraine needs "a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process”. Many in the Azov battalion with whom the Guardian spoke shared this view, which is a long way from the drive for European ideals and democracy that drove the protests in Kiev at the beginning. The Russian volunteer fighting with the Azov said he believes Ukraine needs “a junta that will restrict civil rights for a while but help bring order and unite the country.”

In 2018, Guardian reporter Kevin Rawlinson referred to Azov as “a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia,” and days later, the Guardian published an article by journalist Marc Bennetts about the newest arm of the Azov movement, its paramilitary street wing, the National Militia, which later became “Centuria.” Bennetts described the Azov movement as “a far-right group with a military wing [the Azov Regiment] that contains openly neo-Nazi members, and its political spin-off, the National Corpus party.” A year later, the Guardian published a photo essay about “Ultranationalism in Ukraine,” according to which, “The growing presence of far-right groups in Ukraine leaves the west in a quandary.” It mentioned “the Azov battalion, a Ukrainian ultra-right paramilitary group that advocated white supremacist views.”

Oleksiy Kuzmenko shared the above video in August 2020: "Ukraine's far-right Azov movement now openly talks an EXPANSIONIST agenda for Ukraine and 'Fight of civilizations'. 'We have to attain victories over foreign enemies by grabbing territory': Azov's promo video from the roll-out of the 'Centuria' organization on August 1st."

In 2020, the Guardian published an article that described Azov as a “neo-Nazi extremist movement” and “a neo-Nazi paramilitary force.” About a week before Putin launched his so-called Special Military Operation, the Guardian reported that a British airport was conducting checks “over fears far-right extremists may travel to Ukraine.” According to this article, “The most notorious far-right group is the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary force which uses Nazi-linked symbols and has had many members who have professed far-right extremist views.” Almost three years later, the Guardian reported, without any sense of alarm, “Ukraine’s highest profile combat unit [NGU Azov Brigade] to recruit English-speaking soldiers.”

In April 2022, during the siege of Mariupol, the Guardian published an article that described Azov as “a unit associated with a far-right political party [National Corps] and containing a significant proportion of neo-Nazis.” A month later, the Guardian started to dodge this reality and echo the new narrative that Azov “has in the past had nationalist far-right affiliation … but has become a unit of the Ukrainian national guard.” (It joined the National Guard in 2014.) The next day, another article acknowledged that “some of its leaders are known to hold far-right views.”

A few days later, the Guardian published an article which said Azov “has historical far-right affiliations,” and a series of photos from the press service of the Azov Regiment, with a caption that clarified, “The Azov regiment retains some far-right affiliations.” In a flurry of articles about the surrender of Ukrainian forces that held out for weeks in Azovstal, the Guardian arrived at the following formulation, which it repeated numerous times (with some variations): “The Azov regiment was formed in 2014 as a volunteer militia to fight Russia-backed forces in east Ukraine, and many of its original members had far-right extremist views. Since then, the unit has been integrated into the Ukrainian national guard and its commanders say it has moved away from its far-right origins.”

By September, the Guardian said at least three more times that the Azov regiment “retains some far-right affiliations.” That month, Shaun Walker wrote that Azov “first formed as a volunteer battalion in 2014, when many of its members had far-right leanings.” In February 2023, Walker and a team of Guardian journalists (including Luke Harding) explained that leaders of the Azov Brigade are “insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.”

In March 2024, the Guardian conceded, “The Azov brigade has often been criticized for its links with Nazism and the far-right … [and] some have suggested its far-right links and symbolism have remained.” However, less than a month later, the Guardian's defense and security editor Dan Sabbagh insisted that Azov “has shed any far-right associations … and is one of the military’s elite forces.” After Washington cleared the brigade for US weapons and training, the Guardian reported that “current members reject accusations of extremism and ties with far-right movements.”

This leading UK publication has also dropped the issue of the “revered” Azov’s “past,” apparently except when Sabbagh wants to bring it up (“decade-old nationalist origins have made it a target of Russian propaganda”). He wrote the January 2025 article about the goal of “Ukraine’s highest profile combat unit to recruit English-speaking soldiers” for its own International Azov Battalion.

Last summer, the Guardian quoted a Telegram post from NGU Azov officer Roman Ponomarenko. Fellow readers of “Events in Ukraine” will recognize the name of this Azov military analyst. His other “area of expertise” is “World War II and Ukrainian formations in the German armed forces,” and he also runs a neo-Confederate Facebook page dedicated to the US Civil War. According to Ponomarenko, the “Galicia Division” of the Nazi Waffen-SS was “the most motivated and well-trained Ukrainian military formation of the 20th century.”

So did Azov change, or just its Western media coverage? Stay tuned for Part 2: The ‘Experts’ Lied to Us: ‘Evolution,’ ‘Integration,’ and ‘Depoliticization.’ If you want to support my work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee.” Thanks for reading.

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Also on May 8, Freuding spoke at the Kyiv Security Forum, “Ukraine's Premier International Platform on War, Peace, and Security,” which was dedicated to the Ukrainian version of “Victory Day” and called on the world to “Unite Again to Defeat the Global Aggressor.” The German general said he is proud that “we equaled Russian military power with regard to drones.” Other speakers included Admiral Rob Bauer, the former Chair of the NATO Military Committee (2021-25); CIA veteran Ralph Goff, who was almost appointed its chief of clandestine operations this spring; the famous historian Timothy Snyder; and former CIA director David Petraeus, another fan of Azov’s drone capabilities.

The opening ceremony of the latest Kyiv Security Forum included a video that claimed in World War II, “hundreds of thousands joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA], resisting both Nazi and Soviet forces.” In fact, tens of thousands joined the far-right UPA in 1943-44, and many of them were already Nazi collaborators and war criminals. The first panel featured Valery Horishny, who I wrote about before on this blog because he made a speech at the United Nations in January. This hardcore neo-Nazi from the Azov unit in Ukraine’s National Guard, who has dedicated poetry to Adolf Hitler, also spoke at last year’s “Kyiv Security Forum for Youth.”

“It now looks like deliberate policy by Western governments to whitewash, support and use open neo-Nazis in Ukraine in proxy war,” the political scientist Ivan Katchanovski commented on the Romanov-Freuding meeting. “There was a similar policy of Western governments to whitewash, support and use open Nazi collaborators from OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] and UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] in the Cold War.”

Russia announced a unilateral ceasefire from May 8-10 to coincide with events marking the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that he couldn’t guarantee the safety of foreign officials celebrating in Moscow, and Ukraine launched a large drone attack on the night of May 6-7 that grounded flights in the Russian capital, presumably as some of those officials were arriving. The symbolic drone strikes followed a suspiciously-timed ceremony in Kyiv that saw Zelensky honor the Azovite 3rd Assault Brigade, which is probably the most important neo-Nazi unit in the Ukrainian armed forces.

The President of Ukraine also presented a battle flag to the commander of the Azov movement’s Yevhen Konovalets Military School (YKMS, named after the founder of the fascistic OUN) that has formed the 354th Mechanized Training Regiment in the Ground Forces of Ukraine. Vladyslav Datsky (AKA “Datsyk”) received the “Hero of Ukraine” medal, the highest state award. “Datsyk” has a Slavic swastika, or kolovrat, tattooed on the back of his right leg. He commands the “Decepticons” platoon, which has a Black Sun in its chevron, and co-starred in the Azovite propaganda film “We Were Recruits” that I wrote about in my last post.

Zelensky also awarded the 3rd Assault Brigade “For Courage and Bravery,” which was received by the new commander of the unit, Yaroslav Levenets. Until recently, he was only known publicly as “Bot,” and led the 1st Mechanized Battalion in Andriy Biletsky’s 3rd Assault Brigade. Biletsky, the leader of the Azov movement, will remain in charge as the head of the new 3rd Army Corps. It should include about five brigades, but how many are “Azovite” remains to be seen.

Levenets is an interesting choice to succeed Biletsky as brigade commander. Since 2012, he was reportedly wanted by Ukrainian authorities for “committing crimes under Article 28, part 3 (organization of a criminal group), Article 205, part 2 (organization and conduct of a fictitious business) and Article 209, part 3 (legalization (laundering) of money obtained by a group of persons in a particularly large amount).” Levenets spent a year and a half in prison, but was released about six months after the 2014 revolution. He subsequently broke his house arrest to join the Right Sector, which led to his re-arrest in 2016, and a slap on the wrist. Since 2017, Levenets was (and perhaps technically still is?) wanted in connection with the killing of Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the Russian parliament and Communist Party (2011-16) who fled to Ukraine. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko blamed the Kremlin for this “Russian state terrorism,” but an official investigation concluded that Levenets co-organized “two drivers and a hitman,” and he remained a wanted man in December 2021.

On Easter of this year, the historian Marta Havryshko accused the militant Azovite youth group Centuria of “spreading Christian antisemitic legends” across its many social media accounts. This also happened to be the 136th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler. The Hitler-tattooed Centuria leader (Dmitriy Krukovsky) recalled a neo-Nazi knife-fighting tournament that “Nord Storm,” another Azovite organization connected to Centuria, held on the 132nd anniversary. That event produced a group photo featuring Nazi salutes, a Nazi flag, and representatives of Wotanjugend and Misanthropic Division—the most notorious neo-Nazi groups affiliated with the Azov movement that also celebrate Hitler’s birthday. In that coming week of April 2021, Havryshko tells us, “For the first time in Ukrainian history after 1991, the march commemorating Division Waffen-SS Galicia took place in Kyiv city center.”

This spring, although there was no march in the capital, the Ukrainian far-right openly celebrated the 82nd anniversary of the establishment of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division by Nazi Germany. To their outrage, on that same April day in Lviv, the former capital of the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and the unofficial capital of Ukrainian nationalism, a pro-LGBT event was scheduled to take place that asked the question, “Jesus-Queer?” Local far-right and neo-Nazi youth assembled in Lviv and forced its cancellation. At least one of those groups, “Galician Youth,” is affiliated with the Azov movement.

The 3rd Assault Brigade recently paid tribute to the Galicia Division. “On its official social media, it uses antisemitic leaflets that promote the Judeo-Bolshevik myth, which was employed by the Nazis and their collaborators to justify the mass murder of European Jewry,” according to Marta Havryshko. She also reported that the far-right “Svoboda” party’s National Guard battalion and the Azovite group Centuria honored the Galicia Division, the latter with another knife-fighting competition in Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown. Meanwhile, the 413th Separate Unmanned Systems Battalion “Raid” held a music festival, which featured far-right musicians on stage and some Nazi salutes from the audience (one example below). The military unit behind “Raid Fest” is led by Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Yevhen Karas.

As reported by the journalist Leonid Ragozin, this year even “Ukraine’s most reliable war mapping service Deep State, officially affiliated with the defence ministry, celebrates the anniversary of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as Galicia Division, with a nazi propaganda poster.” (The latter was generated with AI, or perhaps an AI filter.) About a week later, Ragozin noted that Deep State also paid tribute to the 11th anniversary of the 2014 Odessa massacre that helped to ignite a civil war in Ukraine. “I don’t remember a year when the Ukrainian far right linked to security agencies were so open about taking responsibility for the tragedy,” commented Ragozin.

Just yesterday, Leonid Ragozin wrote, “The far right provide deniability to secret services and oligarchic fashions when they need to do something clearly illegal, like post-Maidan political assassinations, in which various far right characters, primarily from Right Sector, have been implicated in police investigations, though hardly anyone has been punished.” (Take for example the new commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, a former Right Sector fighter.) My favorite blog, “Events in Ukraine,” recently suggested that the US teenager who allegedly killed his parents in a plot to assassinate Donald Trump this year was at least “interested in the MD,” or the mysterious Misanthropic Division, which “seems to be specialized in recruiting westerners into Ukraine’s neo-nazi Azov movement.” But can you even call it “blowback” when the repercussions are so painfully obvious and inevitable?

Stay tuned for more on the 3rd Assault Brigade, the whitewashing of the Azovites, and recent activity of the international “Azov Lobby.” If you’d like to support my work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee.” Thanks for reading.

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• ‘The best concert in the history of the modern Black Metal scene’

• Nazi pagan fighter addresses the UN Security Council

• Azov in Davos for the World Economic Forum

• British delegation meets with Azov battalion commander

• Nazi propaganda wins award at Sundance Film Festival

• Nazi propaganda brings Nazi fighters to Capitol Hill

• Trudeau and Prince Harry embrace neo-Nazi veterans at ‘Invictus Games’

• Standing ovation for neo-Nazi in Danish parliament

• Former CIA director visits Azovite ‘Killhouse’

• Three years of ‘deNazification’

• Azov Brigade chief of staff resigns after telling Elon Musk to ‘fuck off’

• Russian Nazis march in Berlin, and Azov recruits in Germany

• British politicians welcome Azovites back to Parliament

‘The best concert in the history of the modern [National Socialist] Black Metal scene’ — ‘I have only one question for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine: WTF?’

DECEMBER 26 — Just as winter began, Russian Nazis spearheaded a National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) concert in a Kyiv bomb shelter. The organizers of “YuleNight” are associated with the Azov movement in Ukraine. The historian Marta Havryshko said that “about 700 passionate people” attended the event, “who couldn’t help but perform Hitler’s salute during the festival.”

• ‘DAY OF THE DEAD’ — It was around this time that Andriy Biletsky, the neo-Nazi leader of the Azov movement and commander of its 3rd Assault Brigade in the Ukrainian Ground Forces, led the Azovites’ annual “Day of the Dead” ceremony. During that event, organized by the ideological service of Biletsky’s unit, his commanders burned a Viking warship, as if to send their fallen fighters to Valhalla. In the coming days, Biletsky voiced approval for a ceasefire.

• ‘ARMY.INFORM’ — In January, the information agency of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry interviewed Alexei Levkin, the leader of two bands, “M8L8TH” (Hitler’s Hammer) and “Advlfcult” (Adolf Cult), that performed at “YuleNight.” Levkin is a pagan Azov ideologist from the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RDK, Russkiy Dobrovol'cheskiy Korpus), which is subordinated to Ukraine’s military intelligence service, and in turn, the Ministry of Defense. “I have only one question,” Marta Havryshko commented. “WTF?” Levkin, on the other hand, taunted Havryshko, “the audience was delighted! an evening of international music that unites listeners regardless of nationality and borders!”

• ‘NATION EUROPA’ — Andriy Malkov from the 3rd Assault Brigade called “YuleNight” the “event of the year,” and gave thanks to RDK commander Denis “White Rex” Kapustin and M8L8TH bass player Yuriy “Doom” Pavlyshyn for organizing the show. “Doom,” a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade, declared it “the best concert in the history of the modern Black Metal scene.” Malkov, Kapustin, Pavlyshyn, and Levkin appear to have been the main people behind last summer’s “Nation Europa” conference in Lviv, which aimed to launch a continental neo-Nazi network. Both of their events raise questions about the approval of Ukrainian military intelligence.

Nazi pagan fighter addresses the UN Security Council

JANUARY 13 — Valery Horishny, a senior sergeant and instructor of the 12th Special Forces “Azov” Brigade in the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU), landed in the United States with an O-type visa “for people with extraordinary ability or achievement in certain fields.” At the invitation of the British government, Horishny gave a speech at an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York. Later he traveled to Washington, listening to “My Native Land” by M8L8TH. “OUR ELEPHANT,” Alexei Levkin also taunted me online. Once again, we find fingerprints of Ukrainian military intelligence.

• REMEMBER ‘YARILO’? — I wrote about this Nazi pagan Azov fighter once before, after he shared a stage with a Nobel Peace Prize winner in Ukraine last year. Valery Horishny’s call-sign “Yarilo” refers to an obscure Slavic god. Until September 2024, he spent over two years in Russian captivity after the NGU Azov Regiment surrendered in Mariupol. Kyiv’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War—chaired by the Ukrainian military spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, probably the most important patron of the Azov movement—organized this trip to the United States.

• KUDOS FOR TEACHING NAZIS ENGLISH — Barbara Woodward, the Permanent Representative of the UK to the United Nations, introduced Horishny as “a former prisoner of war who was part of the defense of Mariupol in 2022, and before that, he was the manager of an educational youth and national project, and also an English teacher.” Here the British UN ambassador (perhaps unwittingly) made a reference to Horishny’s work for the National Corps, the political party of the Azov movement. The Azovite “School of Young Leaders” saw Horishny collaborate with Alexei Levkin, the Russian Azov ideologist, who is a leader of notorious NSBM bands and the Hitler-worshipping group, “Wotanjugend.”

• NAZI PAGAN POETRY — Horishny, a self-described “adherent of the Native Faith,” has a poetry account on Instagram, which used to be public, but now is private. I archived a few poems from 2021, including one in English dedicated to Hitler: “You, my Love, I admire, And I’ll serve you, my Sire.” The Hitler-worshipping kind of neo-pagans associated with Wotanjugend and the Azov movement are obsessed with the alleged Aryan roots of Ukrainians. In a poem about war, Horishny said, “The trenches are a lot of work! The work of passionate people. The descendants of the Aryans work with the strength of formidable insurgents.” In another poem, he wrote, “Our ancestors — Aryan-Scythians — were philosophers, warriors, teachers,” and, “We are the children of Great Scythia, we pray to the Knife!”

• NEXT STOP: WASHINGTON — From New York, Horishny flew to DC, where the BBC and Voice of America interviewed him. “Yarilo” took at least one meeting on Capitol Hill with Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC), who chairs the U.S. Helsinki Commission. He also visited the State Department and the Netherlands’ embassy with Maksym Butkevych, a famous Ukrainian human rights activist who already received an “Anne Frank Special Recognition Award” from the Dutch embassy in Washington.

Azov in Davos for the World Economic Forum…again

JANUARY 21 — The day after Donald Trump returned to the White House, a pair of Azovites spoke at “Ukraine House Davos,” an annual side event at the World Economic Forum. Daryna Smolnikova, a medic in the NGU’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade, appeared alongside Vadym Mazevych, an officer from the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade in the Ukrainian army. These Azovites literally rubbed shoulders with George Soros’ heir at the event.

• SO MUCH FOR ‘DEPOLITICIZATION’ — Smolnikova, a.k.a. “Rina Reznik,” is the head of the “Care Service” of the NGU Azov Brigade. “If the Western countries are preparing for a big war, they at least need to learn how to do it … and we have the experience now to share,” she said in Davos. Samolnikova used to serve in the Hospitallers Medical Battalion, which is affiliated with the far-right “Ukrainian Volunteer Army,” a Right Sector splinter group, but now she’s dating Azov Brigade deputy commander Illia Samoilenko, better known as “Gandalf.” Years before he visited Israel and attended the 2023 World Economic Forum, becoming the poster boy of his unit’s fake “depoliticization,” Samoilenko once told a Czech journalist, “I don’t believe in any holocaust, it’s just a story.”

British delegation meets with Azov battalion commander

JANUARY 23 — There are, of course, numerous Azov Battalions these days. British MP Ian Duncan Smith, former head of the Conservative Party, led a small delegation from the UK that visited Ukraine and met with Dmytro “Slip” Kukharchuk, the commander of a battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade. Kukharchuk, a fanatic leader of the Azov movement in the Cherkasy region, operated a gym with a large Black Sun on the floor, like the Wewelsburg castle that Heinrich Himmler redesigned. His Azov battalion is represented by a pair of “Tyr” runes, which are “used widely as an indicator of Nazi views” in Ukraine (for example by Wotanjugend). He oversees multiple units with emblems referencing the Waffen-SS, in particular the Dirlewanger Brigade and Galicia Division. Kukharchuk said about this visit, “the unification of the conservative community at the international level will ensure the existence of the institution of traditional values as opposed to the leftist plague.”

• ‘SLIP’S’ TRIP — After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Kukharchuk shared a picture of a Trump-signed MAGA hat he received from Ukraine-born Congresswoman Viktoria Spartz in 2022. A couple weeks later, “Slip” already made it to Washington with Kyrylo “Kirk” Berkal, another important Azovite. They visited the Pentagon, made speeches in front of the White House, joined the Helsinki Commission on Capitol Hill, and met with the International Republican Institute, which ironically lost its USAID funding this year. The day after the televised meltdown of US-Ukrainian relations in the Oval Office, Kukharchuk nevertheless sounded optimistic, because it presented “our alternative” as the path forward:

  - Reform of the army. Because without it we will not survive.

  - Our own powerful military-industrial complex. Because dependence is death.

  - A real, not nominal, nation. Because otherwise we simply will not exist.

  This is our chance. Yes, it will be difficult. But we have no other choice. And we’ve never had it.

• NEW RECRUIT — Jack Lopresti, a Conservative politician who lost his seat in Parliament last year, joined the British delegation, but he wasn’t in the photo with Kukharchuk. After he got there, Lopresti announced that he’s joining the International Legion that belongs to Ukraine’s military intelligence service. Last year as the deputy head of the Conservative Party, Lopresti met with Yulia Fedosiuk, the far-right deputy head of the “Association of Azovstal Defenders’ Families,” and he spoke at a London event that raised money for this organization which is a pillar of the “Azov Lobby.”

Nazi propaganda wins award at Sundance Film Festival

JANUARY 24 — I already wrote about 2000 Meters to Andriivka, but that was before the director won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. “When I’m going around the world, I keep hearing questions,” Mstyslav Chernov said at the festival. “How do Ukrainians feel? How do they feel about the land? I always want to give an answer but I never know what to say. So I go and I try to make a film about it.” Although it may sound well-intentioned, Chernov’s new documentary stars an openly neo-Nazi unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade. His last film, 20 Days in Mariupol, won an Academy Award.

Nazi propaganda brings Nazi fighters to Capitol Hill

FEBRUARY 9 — “We Were Recruits,” an Azovite documentary starring neo-Nazis in the 3rd Assault Brigade, made its US premiere on Capitol Hill. This screening brought three representatives of the 3rd Assault Brigade to Washington during a “Ukrainian Week” lobbying spree, including some notable neo-Nazis from the Azov movement who joined numerous meetings in DC.

• ‘SKHID’ — Last winter, the media told the story of Oleksandr Ivantsov, also known as “Skhid” (East), who fought in Mariupol with the NGU Azov Regiment. “He Was Ready to Die, but Not to Surrender,” said the New York Times. Ivantsov was one of the young Azov soldiers that signed up for a daring helicopter mission in the spring of 2022 to join his comrades at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol. Unwilling to join them in Russian captivity, he creeped 125 miles back to safety. Ivantsov found his way to a “Nachtigall” drone unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade, named after a Ukrainian nationalist battalion in the armed forces of Nazi Germany. “Be careful!” he warned after visiting Auschwitz in 2018. “The museum appeals more to feelings and emotions than to reason. So try to take everything critically. Before the trip, it is recommended to read biographies of the camp leaders, memoirs of prisoners, historians and Holocaust deniers.”

• ‘BORISFEN’ — Vladislav Sobolevsky, 36, is an important Azovite who joined “Skhid” in Washington. His call-sign “Borisfen” apparently refers to the “Aryan-Scythians” that Valery Horishny wrote about. Sobolevsky is a deputy commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade and top member of the Azov movement’s National Corps. In his youth, he was a football hooligan who joined the Kyiv-based “White Boys Club.” During the first “bloody winter” of 2013-14, he hunted “titushky” in the Ukrainian capital. The following spring, Sobolevsky joined the Azov Battalion, which became the Azov Regiment when it joined the NGU. By the end of 2014, “Borisfen” was the chief of staff of this openly neo-Nazi military unit that still had a Black Sun in its emblem. His retirement from military service in 2017 might have stemmed a notorious war crime that the BBC dismissed as Russian propaganda. That year on May 9, the Azov Regiment shelled a separatist Victory Day parade in the village of Bezimenne, using a 1944 Soviet field gun allegedly borrowed from a museum. It didn’t take long for a Russian hacktivist group to release documents (naming Sobolevsky) from an official Ukrainian investigation into Azov’s unauthorized use of artillery in this case.

• ‘NOT QUITE A PARTY’ — In a 2020 interview, as the first deputy head of the central headquarters of the National Corps, Sobolevsky laughed about that 2017 incident and said, “I haven’t gone anywhere, I’m just in the civilian part of the [NGU Azov] regiment.” (He was talking about the National Corps.) Furthermore, “I am glad that we are not quite a party, but a social movement with real membership. … We don’t even care about elections, we care about people who believe in our ideas and are ready to follow us.” Earlier that year, “Borisfen” was one of the leaders of an Azovite gang that violently shut down a public presentation of “the last Ukrainian peacemaker” Sergei Sivokho’s “National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity.” Sobolevsky insisted on a military offensive to “liberate” the separatist territories. Asked about his favorite books, he named some by German WWII generals, Erich von Manstein and Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand, as well as “Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front,” by the Belgian Nazi leader Léon Degrelle.

• ‘MEETINGS MEETINGS MEETINGS’ — Marina Hrytsenko is a young foreign policy aide in Washington for Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of the liberal nationalist “Holos” faction in Ukrainian parliament. Hrytsenko met “Skhid” and “Borisfen,” apparently to lend her services for “Ukrainian Week.” They were joined by Holos MP Roman Lozynsky and Azov medic Viktoria Kovach, also from the 3rd Assault Brigade. Kovach’s medical service is evidently proud to include “Doom,” the bass guitar player in M8L8TH, and other hardcore neo-Nazis. Hrytsenko shared a group photo with these Azovites in Washington, and captioned a video on Capitol Hill, “meetings meetings meetings meetings.”

• ‘AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN’ — “Ukrainian Week” coincided with the annual National Prayer Breakfast, followed by a Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast the next morning. According to the New York Times, Ukraine sent “its largest-ever delegation” to this “gathering of politically influential Christian leaders in Washington.” At some point, Ukrainians took the stage, and the Azovites stood next to the podium. With the messages “Pray for Ukraine” and “Peace for Israel” behind them, representatives of the 3rd Assault Brigade held up a flag that is reportedly “associated with a push for a more Christian-minded government” since its adoption by “Stop the Steal” campaigners.

• ‘CAPTAIN UKRAINE’ — “We Were Recruits” director Lubomyr Levitsky says, “The stories of our [Azovite] heroes, who ride on American armor and hold American weapons, are skillfully told in the film and help U.S. government officials to see the results of their work and at the same time to experience the emotions felt by our defenders.” According to him, “Americans grew up with superheroes and I know for sure that if we can present our heroes in the right way, in the storytelling they are used to, they will be delighted.” Before the 2022 invasion, Levitsky was pursuing his dream of making a Hollywood superhero film, “Captain Ukraine.” (Ukrainian Wikipedia explains, “The source of the hero’s superpowers is the [‘ancient Ukrainian’] Trypillian culture and its secret rituals.”) So he says, “All contracts was signed, all budget in place, best team on board, press conference was scheduled on February 24. Meantime actors were on their way to Kyiv for casting. But everything changed overnight.” Now Levitsky makes war propaganda to present Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis as real-life superheroes. He also works with Ukrainian intelligence agencies. For example, in January of this year, his team made a video for the Security Service of Ukraine “warning Ukrainian teens not to commit terrorist acts in service of Russia.”

Prince Harry and Trudeau embrace neo-Nazi veterans at ‘Invictus Games’ in Canada

FEBRUARY 8-16 — Prince Harry is credited with founding the Invictus Games, a yearly sporting event for wounded military personnel. This year an Azov veteran led Team Ukraine to its second best performance since the competitions began in 2014, and the British prince wore a patch from the Rubizh Brigade, which is an elite unit in Ukraine’s National Guard that includes a Nazi-infested battalion from the far-right “Svoboda” party. Justin Trudeau made a speech and thanked the Ukrainians at the closing ceremony. “You are an inspiration, and we will be with you every step of the way until victory!” Trudeau roared. “Slava Ukraini!”

• CAPTAIN UKRAINE — Oleksiy Tiunin, Ukraine’s team captain at the 2025 Invictus Games, is a veteran of the 3rd Assault Brigade. He was one of the Azovites that golfed at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, DC last year. At that event, he wore a “Ukraine Fortress Europe” hat from a Ukrainian neo-Nazi brand featuring an “SS” on the back, above its symbol of a truncated swastika. Since last year, Tiunin has made videos asking random Ukrainians if they can identify various far-right military figures, such as Andriy Biletsky and other Azov commanders. He is pictured above with Trudeau and Harry.

• NAZI VETERANS — At least one more Azov veteran and two other neo-Nazis participated in the 2025 Invictus Games for Team Ukraine. Oleksandr Androschuk, a former football hooligan, got his picture taken with the British prince. He joined the Azov Regiment about a decade ago, when it was still known as an openly neo-Nazi unit. Oleksiy Prytula might not have served with Azov, but in that case he became an Azov supporter who wears neo-Nazi brands, including a shirt with an SS helmet on it. Prytula awkwardly dapped up the Duke of Essex. Anatoliy Byrko might not have met British royalty. At one point, after wrapping himself in a Ukrainian flag, Byrko pumped his fist in the air, showing off his Black Sun and fractal swastika tattoos.

• ‘FREE AZOV’ — Prince Harry took pictures with several attendees wearing “Free Azovstal Defenders” shirts, made by the Azovite-led Association of Azovstal Defenders’ Families. In one photo with him, they held a Ukrainian flag that said “Free Azov.” A few of the Ukrainian competitors posed with a “Free Azovstal Defenders” flag during the Invictus Games, and several joined a “Free Azov” demonstration in Vancouver.

Standing ovation for neo-Nazi in Danish parliament

FEBRUARY 19 — Dmytro Kanupier, a former POW from the Azov Regiment, addressed a public hearing of Danish parliament dedicated to the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kanupier spent two-and-a-half years in Russian captivity, until last September, he was freed in a prisoner exchange, despite being sentenced to 29 years in prison for alleged war crimes in Mariupol. Last month in Copenhagen he received a standing ovation from those present, which is said to have included “the parliamentary speaker, lawmakers and parliamentary faction leaders, Denmark’s ministers of defense and foreign affairs, the chair of the Committee on International Cooperation, and Ukraine’s Ambassador to Denmark.”

• ‘READ MEIN KAMPF’ — Kanupier turned out to be a neo-Nazi, not that anybody cared. He has been pictured wearing a patch of the notorious “Misanthropic Division,” and the featured quote on his former VK profile was “Read Mein Kampf.” This social media page said that he got an education in “NS/WP” (National Socialism/White Power) and listed Babiy Yar as his hometown. Kanupier also got a standing ovation at the Royal Danish Air Force academy. While updating his Instagram followers about this, he added music by “Nord Division,” a group of neo-Nazi rappers from the Azov movement who got their name from a Waffen-SS unit. According to “Events in Ukraine,” they “rap exclusively in Russian,” and the top Ukrainian general, Oleksandr Syrsky, recently “called them his favorite rap group,” because “they are very relevant.”

• UKRAINIAN WORLD CONGRESS — The Toronto-based Ukrainian World Congress announced that it “co-organized” Dmytro Kanupier’s speech in the Danish parliament, thanks to its cooperation with the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (CHTPW). Kanupier presented a book of pictures of his fellow Azovites in Russian captivity to Denmark’s Foreign Minister. This book, which his friend Valery Horishny also brought to the UN Security Council, was produced with assistance from the CHTPW.

Former CIA director visits Azovite ‘Killhouse’

FEBRUARY 20 — David Petraeus, a former CIA director and retired four-star US general, visited the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “Killhouse” drone pilot training grounds. A pair of neo-Nazi commanders from this famous Azov unit, Dmytro “Slip” Kukharchuk and Vladislav “Borisfen” Sobolevsky, hosted Petraeus shortly after he participated in a “Defense Tech Innovations Forum” in Kyiv. A couple days later in the Ukrainian capital, Petraeus said at a special event of the “Kyiv Security Forum” dedicated to the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, “We spent time on this trip with an assault brigade that you all will know well, at its training facility.” Last year, this former commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan predicted that Ukraine “will be the military-industrial complex, the most important one in all of Europe.”

• ‘FREEDOM SUMMIT’ — Last spring, David Petraeus and the Borderlands Foundation hosted the first annual “U.S.-Ukraine Freedom Summit” in Washington, including a charity golf tournament with Azov veterans. Who will be the lucky Nazis this year?

• ‘KILLHOUSE’ (2025) — Ukrainian director Lubomyr Levitsky, who apparently dreams of being the Michael Bay of Ukraine, has another project in the works, which happens to be named “KILLHOUSE.” His team appears to be making a pretty awful action-thriller movie starring the 3rd Assault Brigade and special forces from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. Levitsky presented a “concept teaser” at the Washington premier of “We Were Recruits.” According to him, the convoluted plot is “based on a real-life story about a unique rescue operation.” At least in the film, “This operation gains global attention and, with the involvement of U.S. intelligence, turns into a desperate struggle for life. The film will feature many real military personnel and veterans.”

• KILLHOUSE ON WHEELS — Oleh Romanov, the neo-Nazi founder of the KillHouse drone school, and head of the anti-tank battalion in the 3rd Assault Brigade, met with the mayors of Lviv and Kyiv in January. Last year, Romanov visited Washington, where his family lives. This year in the Ukrainian capital, he unveiled a mobile “KillHouse” drone school with Mayor Klitschko. Around the first day of winter, this Azov battalion commander spoke (while wearing a neo-Nazi “Greater Ukraine” patch) at a “Victory Drones Defense Tech Bootcamp” organized by an Azov-friendly US-Ukrainian venture capital firm.

Three years of ‘DeNazification’

FEBRUARY 24 — NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division held an all-day event at its headquarters in Brussels, “Commemorating 3 Years of War in Ukraine.” Vladyslav Shatilo, an Azov veteran whose public Instagram account includes pictures of his friends making Nazi salutes, participated in the Monday event. Shatilo appears to be good friends with Dmitriy Krukovsky, the Hitler-tattooed leader of the Azov movement’s paramilitary “Centuria” organization for neo-Nazi youth. They have matching tattoos on their right thigh. On the third anniversary of Putin launching his “Special Military Operation,” a neo-Nazi from the Azov movement “discussed Ukraine” with the Chair of the NATO Military Committee and Deputy Secretary General of NATO. He arrived to NATO headquarters with a group that sponsors Ukrainian veterans to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

• COPENHAGEN — Meanwhile, another Azov veteran, Dmytro Kanupier (a neo-Nazi war criminal, according to Russia, that it released last year) spoke at a “pro-Ukraine” demonstration in the Danish capital. Nicolai Wammen, the Minister of Finance, made a speech, and so did the leaders of several opposition parties in parliament, including the Socialist People’s Party. Magnus Barsøe, a Social Democratic candidate for the EU Parliament, said he was “pissingly proud” (Pissestolt) that “one of the last fighters at the Azovstal steelworks camp and spoke at the demonstration on Monday. The Russians are always bashing the Azov battalion, but don’t listen. They do it because Azov is their toughest and most feared opponent.”

• TEL AVIV — “Free Azov” and “Free Azovstal Defenders” signs have become a common-sight at “pro-Ukraine” demonstrations around the world, including the latest one in Israel. A couple days later, a charity yoga session at the Ukrainian cultural center in Tel Aviv raised money for a medical rehabilitation project that is partnered with the patronage service of the Azov movement.

• NEW YORK — On the second floor of a progressive church in Manhattan, C-list actors performed a benefit reading for the Hospitallers Medical Battalion, affiliated with the far-right “Ukrainian Volunteer Army.” Ismenia Mendes performed as Olena Nikulina, “who has been waiting for her husband from Russian captivity for 2+ years.” That husband, Maksym Nikulin, is an Azov fighter who wore a patch of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division. In Times Square, people chanted “AZOV—STAL! AZOV—STAL!”

• CHICAGO — Congressman Mike Quigley and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke at a Ukrainian-American rally. At one point they stood next to a group of soldiers and one man draped in a flag of the Kraken regiment, another neo-Nazi unit affiliated with the Azov movement, which is subordinated to Ukrainian military intelligence. Someone brought a banner from the 3rd Assault Brigade, possibly auctioned off by an Azov delegation that came to town in 2022.

• DETROIT — Oleksandr Tkachenko, the founder of a local charity that supports the 3rd Assault Brigade, “led a group of hundreds of marchers through the heart of downtown Detroit.” Earlier this year, Tkachenko visited Washington, not to catch a glimpse of “the entire Ukrainian ‘beau monde’ [which] had flocked to Ukrainian Week,” but “rather to spend time with my friends” from the 3rd Assault Brigade: “Skhid” and “Borisfen.” If I remember correctly, the Azov banner in Chicago was from Tkachenko, who gave it to a local group.

• ANTARCTICA — On February 23, the National Antarctic Research Center of Ukraine and NGU Azov Brigade published a video of an Azov flag being raised at the Ukrainian Vernadsky Research Base in Antarctica. Valeria “Nava” Subotina, who served in the press service of the Azov Regiment, said it was her dream to visit Antarctica before suffering a year in Russian captivity. In December 2024, thanks to Zelensky’s UNITED24 platform (and former astronaut Scott Kelly), her dream came true. She didn’t make it to the base, but her flag did.

• DUBLIN — People chanted “Free Azov!” dozens of times.

Azov Brigade chief of staff resigns

FEBRUARY 26 — After ten years in the original Azov military unit, which grew from a battalion to a brigade under the National Guard, Bohdan Krotevych resigned as the chief of staff to the NGU Azov commander, just one week after he told Elon Musk to “fuck off” in a since-deleted comment. Krotevych gave thanks to those he served with over the years, and said about the Azov veterans who left the unit before him, “it is inspiring to see you now forming the backbone of some of the most capable combat units.” As one of the famous Azov commanders, Krotevych reassured his followers (“much to the delight of the inept MPs”) that he’s not going into politics. “My business is war, and I have no intention of leaving the military sector. Over time, I will be able to share more.” In the past, Krotevych has recommended that Azov recruits read a 1953 memoir by Nazi war criminal Albert Kesselring.

• WHAT NEXT? — A couple days later, after the President of Ukraine’s humiliation at the White House, Krotevych made a viral post on “X” thanking Zelensky “for not allowing such words to be spoken about Ukraine. No one should raise their voice on Ukraine or speak so disrespectfully.” According to the journalist Leonid Ragozin, Krotevych “appears to be campaigning for Zelensky,” not because of this statement, but another, that Valery Zaluzhny, the popular former commander-in-chief, shouldn’t seek the presidency. Ragozin commented, “Far right figures like Krotevych are some of Ukraine’s most prominent media personalities commanding large online audiences. They will be co-opted by main political forces as the prospect of peace and elections looms.” Last year, Bohdan Krotevych became a notably outspoken figure in the military, and it emerged that a mysterious patron had donated expensive apartments in the center of Kyiv to half a dozen NGU Azov commanders, including him.

• ‘WOW’ — Meanwhile on February 28, Elon Musk posted, “Time to find out what really happened to the hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Ukraine…” Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, chimed in, “It was laundered and a lot of it was used to fund NEO NAZIS in the Azov Battalion. We funded NAZIS.” Musk, a proud supporter of the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) who largely turned “the digital town square” into a far-right echo chamber, simply responded “Wow.” If the Trump administration should become alarmed about neo-Nazis in Ukraine, that might provide an opportunity for people like Loomer, according to whom, “The CIA is funding a color revolution in the United States via Ukrainian Nazis and American Nazis who are being recruited by the CIA and FBI to fight overseas in the Azov Battalion and then come back to the US to instigate Nazi political movements in a psyop intended to make right wingers look bad.” Just the other day, an instructor from the Azov movement’s autonomous military school bemoaned that Ukraine’s chief supporters are liberals while “Trump and Putin directly discredit the right-wing agenda.”

  And when we are supported by those who have different values, it means that we have to take advantage of it, use it, but not sell our own values in return — the ones that will become the trunks of the future Ukraine.

Russian Nazis march in Berlin as the Azov Brigade recruits for ‘International Battalion’

MARCH 1 — Representatives of the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RDK), an openly neo-Nazi military unit linked to the Azov movement, are said to have literally formed the fifth column at a Russian opposition march in the German capital led by Yulia Navalnaya. Only the left-wing Berlin-based newspaper Junge Welt reported on this “Parade with Nazikorps,” and recent NGU Azovite efforts to recruit an “International Battalion.” German police, normally eager to beat up Berliners in the name of combatting “antisemitism,” did nothing to enforce German laws against displaying Nazi symbols (Azov wolfsangel doesn’t count?) and protesters masking their face, which several did, when some of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in the world decided to launch a new phase of their public activities.

• MARCH ON BERLIN — Marta Havryshko observed that German neo-Nazis from “Der III Weg,” which co-sponsored last year’s “Nation Europa” conference, joined their Russian comrades at the march in Berlin, and the RDK “distributed leaflets featuring the numbers 88 (Heil Hitler) and 14 (a reference to the white supremacist slogan coined by David Lane).” Havryshko also said, “There is probably no greater concentration of Nazis in Ukraine’s military than in the RDK under HUR [military intelligence] supervision.” Leonid Ragozin commented, “The pro-Ukrainian neo-Nazis at the Russian opposition march in Berlin were led by Vasily ‘Cardinal’ Kiryushchenko, the son of the film director responsible for Servant of the People - the series that turned Zelensky into who he is today.”

• INTERNATIONAL BATTALION — Once upon a time, concerns were raised in the Western media about foreign fighters joining Azov. This past February, more than half a dozen people from the NGU Azov Brigade and its new “International Battalion” made a “business trip” to Germany and Poland. Among them was Lt. Col. Yuri Chekh, the commander of the new unit, and his wife, Mariia “Gerda” Chekh, who traveled to Antarctica in December with the former Azov press officer. First they went to Berlin. According to Junge Welt, the delegation included a former instructor at the European Security Academy, which has trained numerous Azov fighters in Wrocław. Incidentally, Wrocław was their next stop, shortly before a screening of “We Were Recruits” in that city.

• WHITE REX — The RDK commander, Denis “Nikitin” Kapustin, a.k.a. “White Rex,” grew up in Germany, but couldn’t make it to Berlin. In 2019 the German government banned him from most of Europe (the Schengen Area) “because of his efforts against the liberal democratic constitution.” Kapustin is one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in Europe, who helped the Azov movement get connected to likeminded people across the continent (and the world, in the case of Robert Rundo from California). Days later, Kapustin’s friends in the 3rd Assault Brigade wished him a happy birthday, such as Rodion Kudryashov, a deputy commander of the unit who led the central headquarters of the National Corps. Last year, CNN interviewed Kudryashov for a piece about the “Killhouse.”

• CAFE KYIV — I’m almost done writing this, and I noticed that Serhiy “Jedi” Rotchuk, an officer in the NGU Azov Brigade, just made it to Berlin for this year’s “Cafe Kyiv” event in the German capital. “Jedi” is another Azovite who was invited to play golf near Washington last year. He also visited NATO headquarters. Like “Borisfen” and “Nikitin,” he’s interested in Léon Degrelle, the Nazi collaborator who led the far-right Rexist Party in Belgium. (According to Leonid Ragozin, after the RDK’s March 2023 raid into Russian territory, “White Rex” shared a quote from the Rexist leader.) Rotchuk’s oldest Instagram post (from 2019) shows him wearing a “Rock Against Communism” shirt by a NSBM brand affiliated with M8L8TH and Wotanjugend. He participated in two panel discussions, alongside politicians such as a German Green MP (Sebastian Schäfer) and Ukrainian military fundraiser (Serhiy Prytula).

British MPs welcome Azovites back to Parliament

MARCH 3 — In Committee Room 12 of the House of Parliament, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Ukraine held a roundtable on Ukrainian POWs. Valery Horishny thanked the British for inviting him to London and the United Nations. He made it as part of a small Azov delegation that included the NGU Azov commander’s wife, Kateryna Prokopenko, the head of the Association of Azovstal Defenders’ Families. Later they spoke at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

• ‘HONOURED’ — John Whittingdale, a longtime Conservative MP, hosted the roundtable event. Alistair Carns, the British Minister of Veterans, said he was “honoured to take part.” Labour MP Alex Sobel, who chairs the Ukraine APPG and recently became the UK’s Trade Envoy to Ukraine (spurred by Trump’s “minerals deal”), also said he was honored to meet Prokopenko “and start work with her” Association of Azovstal Defenders’ Families. A month ago, Sobel attended a screening of “People of Steel,” a documentary about the Azov-led defense of Mariupol that claims “up to 100,000 people” died in the siege (a huge exaggeration, because apparently the real number is less than 10,000). This film toured the UK “with the support of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.”

• ‘NASTY’ — On his way to Westminster, Horishny shared an unflattering image of me with his Instagram followers. “This ‘alpha male’ writes all sorts of nasty things about Ukraine, my brothers and me in particular,” he commented. “Basically the face speaks for itself, there is nothing more to add.” Three crying emojis.

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• Azov Delegation Visits U.S. — Part One (Sep. 22, 2022), Part Two (Oct. 5, 2022)

• Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Visits U.S. — Azov Regiment photographer travels to DC and NYC, Part One (Nov. 10, 2022), Part Two (Dec. 3, 2022)

• The Azov Lobby — Part One: Growing Networks to ‘Support Azov’ (Jan. 15, 2023); Part Two: The Intermarium Project (Feb. 5, 2023); Part Three: ‘Support Azov’ vs. ‘Azov One’ (Jun. 14, 2023)

• A Special Branding Operation to Nazify Ukraine — Part One: Far-right underbelly of Ukraine’s ‘most powerful brand’ (Jan. 17, 2023); Part Two: M-TAC revisited (Mar. 14, 2023); Part Three: Zelensky boosts crypto-Nazi ‘military community’ (Aug. 8, 2023)

• Another Azov delegation visits the United States (Jun. 11, 2023)

• ‘Ukraine Belongs to Us’ (Jul. 17, 2023) — Azov Lobby updates

• ‘Who is Afraid of Far-Right?’ (Aug. 15, 2023) — Azov and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation

• Azov Brigade Invades London, Greeted as Liberators (May 29, 2024) — Warm welcome for neo-Nazi movement in England

• ‘This is Where the Presidents Play’ (Jul. 1, 2024) — Petraeus hosts golf tournament for neo-Nazis at Joint Base Andrews

• ‘Gandalf’ and ‘Azov 2.0’ (Sep. 2, 2024) — An Azov intelligence officer and propaganda about ‘depoliticization’

• Did ‘Our Little Baby’ Make a Nazi International? (Sep. 11, 2024) — Ukrainian military intelligence and ‘Nation Europa’

• ‘Love is Blind’ Meets Azov (Oct. 1, 2024) — American Azov veteran co-stars in Netflix reality TV show

• Azov Goes to Brussels (Oct. 17, 2024) — NATO headquarters welcomes Azov Brigade

• Valhalla and the Black Sun (Oct. 22, 2024) — Nazi paganism and the Azov movement

• ‘Junger,’ ‘Steiner,’ and ‘Terror’ (Oct. 24, 2024) — The neo-Nazi ‘Special Forces’ that recaptured a ‘Russian stronghold’

• ‘100% Gentle Azovization’ (Nov. 1, 2024) — Neo-Nazis train Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade, and top instructor calls Ukrainians slaves that must be weaponized

• ‘WW3 is Game On’ (Nov. 10, 2024) — Azov intelligence chief speaks at inaugural military technology conference by new venture capital firm betting big on WW3

• Kyiv Youth Forum: Nazis Are Our Future (Nov. 12, 2024) — Azov stars at NATO-sponsored youth conference

• Match Made in Azov (Nov. 16, 2024) — Associated Press whitewashes neo-Nazi love story

• Which Way Ukrainian Hooligan? (Dec. 31, 2024) — Nazis at a Crossroads: ‘Nation Europa’ or European Union

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P.S. If you want to support my work, you can “Buy Me a Coffee.”