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An interesting thing that can be seen in this whole web of groups is that when it comes to the international groups, the Russian Imperial Movement and the Azov Movement have many of the same friends, we could take the Atomwaffen Division as an example for instance.
At a glance it seems contradictory that movements would be linked to both Pro-Russia and Pro-Ukraine groups involved in the conflict, but actually this does make sense when you think about it more.
While many of these groups do have international ambitions, their primary focus is usually on nationalism in their home country, which means to support their agenda at home, they will often be pragmatic abroad, if forming ties with both Pro-Russia and Pro-Ukraine organisations will give them the greatest amount of experience and connections, that’s what they’ll do.
And as long as this conflict continues, and its 2 sides continue to turn a blind eye to the ambitions of their Fascist brothers in arms, the “Nazi problem” will continue to exist.
In Ukraine, blatant problems were ignored or even tolerated for far too long, inadvertently showing ambitious extremists and sleazy politicians that Might can be Right. If one has the funds and the correct ties, another militia with dubious intentions can be founded in no time, no questions asked. The proliferation of far right military organisations and political movements happened in a more than opportune time, as Ukraine was and still is defending itself from an invading force, however what happens when the Russians leave and the dust settles?
In one way or another, the Ukrainian government has to divorce itself from its (temporary) far right allies, because they may fight for Ukraine, but they don’t fight for the Ukraine we know, they fight for their Ukraine, one that a majority of Ukrainians likely wouldn’t want to reside in.
The government should implement a zero tolerance attitude towards these ideologies infecting state bodies, when the time is right; Deradicalising extremist units when possible and disbanding them when not, the past calls for these groups to end their vigilantism need to be repeated, but as a demand, not a request. And very importantly, Ukraine’s leaders need to approach their own nation’s history with an honest and reflective demeanour instead of rosy romanticism, learning to not repeat Bandera’s destructive actions.
Being made aware of a problem existing is a required step in fixing it, which means that we should handle these issues with honesty, even if it may seem counter intuitive. Won’t we proliferate Russian propaganda narratives if we report on the far right movements in Ukraine? Is it really the time to put “our team” on blast? What if certain reporting sours relations between Ukraine and its allies? In our view, the negative consequences for concealing these truths far outweigh the temporary benefits.
In not even a decade, groups of hooligan football fanatics were given guns and badges. Political movements were born exploiting the current war in hopes to build a state within a state. Politicians are getting away with vigilantism.
The longer we lie by omission, damage that may previously have been benign or reversible, could become impossible to account for and as long as the international fascist connections exist, organised crime and future acts of terrorism are more likely to happen. If we aren’t honest now, it will be exponentially more difficult for Ukraine to rid itself from a dangerous ideology in the future.
Really, just how Ukraine should adopt a zero tolerance policy, so should the media when it comes to its reporting. Zero tolerance for deleting old reporting, zero tolerance for hand waving problems away and zero tolerance for trivialising issues just because the team you root for could lose face.
Comparable problems also prop up on the Russian side, the Wagner mutiny proved just how volatile the situation is and we absolutely cannot forget that fascistic Russia sympathetic international networks exist as well, with crossbleed between the Russian and Ukrainian Far Right scenes.
Russia similarly needs to come to terms with itself and the corruption that has been allowed to settle in its system, its laws against mercenarism need to stop being suggestions and become enforced rules; Under Russia’s legal system groups like Wagner or Rusich, or the Imperial Legion and their Partisan training camp, should never have existed, but this system was ignored for cynical political interests, only being selectively tackled when those interests were threatened, that selectiveness needs to stop otherwise everyone could be caught in the backblast.
This is a cancer that needs to be cut out, and the mentality that any crime can be redeemed through blood needs to die.
But of course, these are only actions governments can take, and odds are if you’re watching this, you’re not part of one, so what can we as ordinary people do?
Well, let’s be honest with ourselves, we can’t change the situation on the ground, but what we can do is educate ourselves.
Much of the information on these groups is scattered and hard to find, buried in obscure research papers, news articles and websites, in fact many of these organisations don’t even have so much as a Wikipedia page, to even get the basics on some of these factions we had to switch to Ukrainian or Russian wiki with translations, because English pages were either thin, missing information or simply non existent.
It was hard for us to compile all of this info when we knew how to look for it, imagine how someone with none of that knowhow would get on, probably not too well, there needs to be much better resourcing on these groups, so people can know who they are, what their symbols look like, and the risks they might pose.
Hopefully our repository can be a starting point to that, because we definitely don’t have all the facts, not by a long shot, but we think we’ve made a decent base to go off of.
And remember, you can view the repository for yourself through this repository1, it includes extra material we’ve left out from the documentary due to time constraints, and we encourage you to explore it for yourself if you want to know more about this issue.
As a collective we can make a change using collaborative research, and especially if you are well versed in the Russian or Ukrainian language, you can help us all in casting a light on something we could have never found speaking the languages we do.
If we want to, we could educate each other, and understand our world better by making use of the different languages we speak and skills we acquired.
This effort doesn’t necessarily have to manifest in a multipart documentary such as this one, but you could provide heaps of knowledge by translating media, supplementing incomplete Wikis or even by pointing someone the right way in a discussion. No one needs to be an expert on everything, but if you find a small piece of the puzzle, you could let the collective know about it, and hey, you might even have fun while doing it!
We decided to contribute in the best way we could, but maybe you prefer a different path. We are looking forward to what we could learn from you, no matter if it is a movie, an article, an image gallery, or something else entirely.
However, we are not ready to hang up on this topic just yet, there’s still a few more things to cover; Up next we’ll close out the Ukrainian Divide with its most extensive episode, moving away from the physical war and its causes and moving into the war of words, the war being fought on our TV screens and our social media profiles, the war that in a way is just as important as the one going on at the front lines, if not more so, the war where the text and the photo becomes just as powerful a weapon as the bullet and the gun.
So stay tuned for the final episode of the Ukrainian Divide series, we’ll see you soon and thank you for reading MEGA!
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Footnotes
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Start viewing the Far-Right repo via this link! 000. INDEX ↩