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Hopefully now you can see that Ukraine’s “Nazi problem” is not something that’s irrelevant, or a fiction created by propagandists in Moscow, it is real and it is expansive.
Does that mean Putin was right all along? Put simply, no, we still stand by our original diagnosis of this problem from our Ukraine Narratives documentary, Ukraine is not a Nazi country, it is not ruled by Nazis, and its people and culture are not captured by Nazism.
In fact, we have proof that these radical parties are clearly unpopular in Ukraine, through their abysmal election results, but their strength does not come from public support, it comes from apathy, from their rampant proliferation of paramilitaries and party backed militias, the refusal of the Ukrainian authorities to react and disband them, and the whitewashing of far-right movements in Ukraine’s public consciousness.
And this has allowed these groups to make a mockery of the Ukrainian state for years, with Right Sector and its allies defying the Ukrainian military by creating their own “alternative general staff” to call the shots on the front line, and refusing to integrate with the military despite repeated demands from the state for them to do so.
As far back as 2016 Right Sector was called out for this, with the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps being labelled an “illegal armed formation” by the Ukrainian government’s chief military prosecutor, who said that the existence of these unaccountable paramilitaries was “the collapse of the foundations of the state”, yet for 6 years after this the Right Sector simply ignored these orders and got away with it, and they only finally integrated with the military at a time of their choosing, as a tactical move to get better weapons, rather than because they were brought to heel. And of course, the Volunteer Army still refuses to integrate to this day, 7 years and counting.
And that is why you are in the “Ukrainian Volunteer Army” and not in the Armed Forces?
So. We are free. We see the enemy - we kill.
Your status is still not regulated by law. And frankly, I don’t see any prospect of that happening anytime soon. Do you have the same opinion or are you more optimistic?
For us, the legalization of the voluntary movement is needed only in one case, but there is an answer to that as well - it is the dead and wounded, severely maimed, where arms and legs are torn off. Because this ( official status, - S.K. ) enables prosthetics, treatment, and social protection from the state. Although we are all aware of why we came, where we came. And to every fighter who comes to me, to the “Ukrainian Volunteer Army” as a volunteer, I definitely remind that he can be killed, and I will not help in anything, except in a friendly way, in whatever way I can. That the state, as such, cannot provide any help, because we are not in the structure. I always have to know who is responsible for a person - mother or sister. And when I see that a person hesitates, that he did not see what he expected, I call my mother, my brother. I ask, do they know, however, that their son or brother is at war, and in a month I will send him to the front? Sometimes it changes everything. We are all aware of what we were going for. Therefore, we do not have to demand anything from the state. We don’t want anything. That’s not what they came for.
The ability of these groups to ignore orders from the government to either join the military structure or disband for years massively undermines Ukraine’s claim to have gotten all these groups under control and deradicalised them.
And it’s important to remember that the threats these groups pose are not hypothetical, they are real. Remember, the National Socialist Society, whose founder is now in the National Corps, has carried out 28 murders, the Atomwaffen Division which has ties to National Corps has carried out several more, Wotanjugend spends its time glorifying terrorists who have killed hundreds, Denis Niktin and his crowd have carried out hooligan attacks, Right Sector, the National Militia, Centuria and others have participated in mob violence, and these groups have ties to far-right and Neo-Nazi organisations around the world, offering training and promoting propaganda praising terrorist figures and a worldview of hate.
These are the organisations Ukraine is putting trust in to defend their country, these are the organisations being allowed to gain military experience and legitimacy, even as they make it blatantly clear how little respect they have for the elected leadership in Ukraine.
In 2021 Dmytro Yarosh threatened to use force against the Ukrainian government to stop them arresting sanctioned Chechen fighters linked to Right Sector.
In 2019 Olena Semenyaka said that the Azov Movement would create parallel state structures and use “entry strategies” if Zelensky was believed to be a traitor, and claimed the movement had plans to do so, that same year Dmytro Yarosh said that Zelensky would “hang from a tree” if he was perceived to be a traitor to the revolution and Rodion Batulin attacked President Poroshenko’s car, an act that got him banned from Ukraine for being a national security threat, only for him to emerge again doing promos for Belarussian militias.
That same year, Zelensky had to personally confront activists of the National Corps in the town of Zolote in Luhansk after they tried to block a planned mutual withdrawal between the Ukrainians and separatist forces, infamously telling National Corps leader Denys Yantar, “I wanted to see understanding in your eyes. But, instead, I saw a guy who’s decided that this is some loser standing in front of him,” and “I came to you and told you: remove the weapons. Don’t shift the conversation”.
Even as far back as 2015, Right Sector were talking about bringing down the government, and that was after having already done so before in 2014.
The existence of these groups: Azov and its branches, National Corps, the Right Sector conglomerate, Svoboda, C14 and others show that there’s a really bizarre level of military might that political groups can wield in Ukraine, there is a chasm between a military force representing an entire state and its integrity, versus a military force which represents a party, its leader and its ideology, especially when that ideology calls for hate and mob violence.
Put simply, this is not normal.
And our media, our politicians, our leaders, need to stop pretending that it is, before it’s too late.
Because we’ve seen this happen before, Western governments supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and ignored the presence of radical extremists, the groups that later became the Taliban and Al Qaeda in that resistance, spreading propaganda that Afghan rebels were all “goodness personified”, heroic freedom fighters.
And we know what happened next.
We know that most of the people fighting for Ukraine, most of the people in Ukraine, don’t share these views, but we have to stop lying about the minority that do, or trying to shove them under the rug, because once the mutual enemy we share with them, Russian imperialism, is gone, they will not be our friends, just as Osama Bin Laden turned on the West after the mutual enemy of the Soviet Union was erased.
These far-right groups have made no secret of their disdain for the values Western nations are built on, they don’t hide that they don’t want to be part of our world, and that in fact if they had their way, our world would be destroyed and remade in a new image, a far more disturbing one.
So we have a choice, do we want to live in blissful ignorance until it comes back to bite us, or do we want to acknowledge the problem now, before that threat gets bigger and bigger, and harder to solve once we’re finally forced to stare it in the face?
I know what my answer is, because this ignorance helps no one, although much of the media in the West tries to ignore the subject for fear of undermining Ukraine and emboldening Russia’s narrative, refusing to discuss it does even more damage. By refusing to face up to the “Nazi problem” and whitewashing or running interference for those involved, we’re not making it go away, we’re simply handing it off to those who will talk about it, and that will probably be people far less honest than us, like the propagandists at RT.
And ironically, those propagandists and the Ukrainian far-right have something in common, Russian propagandists and the Ukrainian far-right are both trying to blur the line between far-right ultranationalism with normal Ukrainian nationalism, the far-right does this to normalise themselves and the Russians do it to embolden the image of Ukraine as a Neo Nazi country and delegitimise Ukraine’s nationhood.
So by participating in this atmosphere of denialism regarding these groups and their symbols, we’re aiding both Neo-Nazis and the Kremlin propaganda machine, the last people we should want to be giving support to.
So who do we want to set the message? People with integrity and honesty? Or delusional propagandists and ideologists?
A textbook example of this is an incident in September 2023 when Petro Poroshenko, the ex President of Ukraine himself, was filmed meeting soldiers on the frontlines sporting a Black Sun patch, which resulted in Kremlin apologists instantly jumping on photos of this event as proof of Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” rhetoric, and laughable denialists embarrassing themselves by once again repeating false claims of the Black Sun being an innocent ancient slavic symbol.
Hopefully, and almost certainly, this display was a case of extreme ignorance on Poroshenko’s part, rather than a showcase of his real ideology, but the normalisation on display was still extremely disturbing.
To make matters worse, only weeks later yet another scandal broke during a state visit by President Zelensky to Canada, when Zelensky, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the entire Canadian Parliament stood up in applause for a 98 year old Ukrainian war veteran who had “fought the Russians during WW2”, that veteran was Yaroslav Hunka, who had served in the SS Galicia Division.
In this case, the scandal was blamed on the Canadian Speaker of Parliament, who took full responsibility for inviting Hunka and claimed that neither the Ukrainian or Canadian governments knew about his visit in advance, but even if that was the case, it’s absolutely baffling that seemingly no one in the crowd remembered which sides the Russians and their enemies were on in World War 2, once again this case was a conduit for Pro-Russian propaganda and laughable denialism in response.
Again, this incident was a display of ignorance, not genuine Nazi sympathy, but this absurdity, which we’ve seen again and again and again, is extremely damaging to everyone who isn’t an ideological crackpot, and it needs to stop.
We can see that the cult of denialism surrounding these groups is extremely pervasive in Ukraine, reaching even those far removed from Nazi ideology, and clearly there has to be pushback, because this messaging is spreading towards the outside world too, distorting our understandings of current extremism and past history.
Ultimately, there’s a quote that sums up this issue better than we ever could, from an article called “Look far right, and right again”, published by the outlet “Ukrainian Policy”:
The Constitution of Ukraine unequivocally states that ‘Ukraine is the sovereign and independent, democratic, social, legal state’ (Article 1). For some Ukrainians, the Russian threat to their country’s sovereignty and independence has obscured the rationale of being sovereign and independent – that is to secure the democratic, social and legal state. Furthermore, the Constitution unambiguously recognises, ‘the human being, his or her life and health, honour and dignity, inviolability and security’ as the highest social value. At the same time, the main duty of the state is ‘to affirm and ensure human rights and freedoms’ (Article 3).
It is absurd to assume that the neo-Nazis who ‘are taking a stand for Ukraine’s independence’ are doing this in the name of Ukraine’s highest social values or to reinforce the main duty of the state as stipulated by the Constitution. Rather, they are arming themselves, learning how to fight and kill, as well as recruiting new members. Their ‘ideal Ukraine’ is not only different, but is the direct opposite of a democratic, social and legal state. To ignore these values, to override them for the sake of sovereignty and independence, is to move closer psychologically in the direction of Putin’s russkiy mir without even acknowledging it.”
Ironically, the person who wrote this, researcher Anton Shekhovtsov, later turned to denialism himself, dropping his skepticism towards Azov and embracing the messaging that they were Ukrainian heroes, even going as far as accusing Western commentators who had spoken out against them of “enabling genocide”, if that doesn’t show how powerful the misinformation machine surrounding the far-right is, I don’t know what does.