Victory over Nazism?
Support for neo-Nazis 'looks like deliberate policy'
Oleh Romanov, the commander of the anti-tank battalion in the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade, has a swastika tattooed on his arm, and last year he approved of a controversial stunt pulled by one of his fighters who visited Auschwitz. According to his latest Instagram post, Romanov celebrated Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism (on May 8) with Major General Christian Freuding, who leads the German army’s “Situation Center Ukraine.” They posed with a new shirt from the Paskuda Group, a drone unit in Romanov’s battalion. A drone operator with Black Sun and spider web elbow tattoos represented the Paskuda Group in a recent collaboration with Ukraine’s top military brand.
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.
Knife fights, bonfires, music videos and record labels, clothing lines and eventual paramilitary training. These folks definitely know how to cultivate a youth movement.
It's honestly a glaring show of vitality from an American point of view. That kind of shit would get shut down by law enforcement at every level. They have deep pockets of course and are fresh meat for shadowy games. Some cheeky dudes (and gals). Was scouting always like this?