I broadly agree with this. Russian propaganda drastically overstates the numbers of actual neo-nazis in the Ukrainian military. One of our best “intel for hire” agencies that we use puts the size of Azov as approx 3,500 now, as they have grown in recent years, but either way, it is certainly no more than that.
But their existence is much more complicated than a few hundred neo-nazis standing on the front lines of the Donbass. Let’s go back to the article from the National Post in Canada. The Canadian military actively - a full year in advance of training activities - plotted and formulated a way to directly train Azov - a group that their own records show they considered to be neo-nazis, while keeping said training from Canadian/Western media, and even going so far as to generate a protocol to diffuse the situation if the press ever DID get wind of it. A year in advance. If Azov was merely a bit-player in the overall Ukrainian military, then Canada would not have made such efforts - essentially abandoning their moral convictions - to work with them. The payoff in doing so had to be significant. Same goes for the US…if Azov was insignificant and just some bit-player, the US Congress wouldn’t have risked the political fallout of removing them from the designated terrorist list, as military victory over Russia would be just as likely by arming the remaining 90-someodd percent of the Ukrainian military. The reason this type of politically risky behavior has occurred is because while indeed smaller in number, they are the key to any type of organized resistance in Ukraine. They are the “tip of the spear”, and no one disputes this. So, therefore, they are the ones who will be getting the high-tech weapons, they will have access and control over local populations as a result, and they are the ones who will be completely unmanageable if Ukraine collapses internally. Which, mark my words, it will.
But stepping away from the discussion on their value to the Ukrainian military to the much more important issue to the Germans: let’s look at the internal, domestic impact of these neo-nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine right now, which is largely fueled by these exact same groups. Over the last five years, some of the shit that has gone on in Ukraine - if widely circulated in the US - would destroy any semblance of optimism that this country is anywhere even close to becoming a functional democracy. The Right Sector, Azov, C14, The National Militia - which let’s face it, are all just different branding for the larger neo-nazi fascist network in Ukraine - and others have systemically asserted what can only be described as brown-shirtism across large swathes of Ukraine, particularly in large population centers like Kiev and Lviv. In short, in an effort to placate these groups, the Ukrainian state has completely surrendered its monopoly on violence, even going so far as to literally sign agreements with them for the creation of a “Municipal Guard’ that can legally patrol the streets...patrols which frequently result in atrocious acts of violent, neo-nazi rage. This is not good. And while it is known abroad, albeit not adequately discussed IMO, when the natural progression towards Ukraine’s internal “troubles” occurs, these groups are poised to inflict absolute hell on the Ukrainian populace. This is 1930s brown-shirtism in its absolute, replicative form.
For a comprehenisve, detailed view of this, I highly recommend the Atlantic Council's piece on this - the most pro-NATO/EU of all think tanks: "Ukraine's Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn't Write this Headline)"
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/
Also, this Reuters article from 2018 has a very accurate section on this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TY
I am separating out the most damning sentence from behind the Quote function: C14 and Kiev's city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a "municipal guard" to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kiev, and at least 21 operate in other cities."
This is complete insanity. Human Rights Watch has also recently written about how out of control these street patrols are: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/29/radicals-target-roma-people-ukraine
And while Poroshenko is now gone (although my estimation is that he is primed to return to power when the fallout of the current situation plays out), current president Zelensky has not taken any meaningful steps to resolve this out of fear for his own presidency. In fact, this “reformist” Zelensky even continued the notorius fascist Avakov’s tenure until Avakov resigned a few months ago out of his own volition, setting the stage for what many see as the early stages of an organized coup in league with the ascendant Poroshenko. Regardless, the fascist right still exerts massive levels of control at the street level in Ukraine, they still exert massive control within the hierarchy of the Interior Ministry - and thusly, the Ukrainian military - and no Ukrainian Govt can govern without at least their tacit acquiescence.
So when one simply applies Occam’s Razor to the question: “If these groups cause such massive, massive PR obstacles for Ukraine in the eyes of critical European states like Germany in gaining acceptance and political support, and if their influence is simply an overstatement generated by Russian propaganda, then why does the Ukrainian state continue to allow them to effectively act as extrajudicial paramilitary groups operating with complete impunity across the country, along with actual, legally-recognized, formal ties with the Ukrainian intelligence services, and why - at least until his voluntary departure - was the Interior Ministry for years headed by one of their most notorious allies? If they were weak, then why not end their access to power?”
The only reasonable answer is that they are, in fact, not weak and inconsequential…in fact, in a domestic sense, they are very, very powerful in the overall clusterfuck that constitute Ukrainian domestic politics. That Reuters article said it all: Presidents fear their administrations can't withstand getting cross with them.
Furthermore, the sanctuary that Ukraine passivity/deference creates re neo-nazism is very dangerous to the larger world.
I point to a 2022 article in Newsweek, where even the western media is beginning to acknowledge openly what Germans have long known: Ukraine has become a training ground for foreign neo-nazis, many from the US, to come and learn the tricks of the trade, including the very groups that have designs on our own institutions in the US.
From that article a few weeks ago, which I highly, highly recommend everyone read if you would like to see a great dissection of the ties between the extreme right movements that we see in the US and the neo-nazis in Ukraine:
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-draws-us-far-right-fight-russia-violence-home-1665027
At the risk of being Debbie Downer, the true position of the German government, which they can’t really come out and say, is that the idea of providing weapons to Ukraine is akin to pointing a garden hose at a raging industrial fire and is currently nothing more than a PR stunt by western allies for their own domestic consumption. It is far too little, far too late. The Russian air superiority is so massive, and so designed for this exact conflict, that Russia is simply going to rain hell down upon the Ukrainian front lines with essentially no deterrence capable of diminishing Russian air superiority, potentially inflicting damage from the air deeper into the area east of the Dnieper. The Russians have no incentive to actually expend any energy slogging through ground invasion until the Ukrainian resistance are completely demoralized or obliterated. So none of these weapons are going to make much of a difference, because the Germans do not see the Russians as preparing for an actual occupation. But what the German government DOES see, and which I also agree with, is that whether a Russian attack comes or not, the state of Ukraine OUTSIDE of the breakaways is primed to descend into civil war with one another. In fact, its foundation is shaking right now without so much as a shot being fired and I would put this likelihood at a probability, not just a possibility. And it is THAT which the Germans are trying to inoculate themselves against. The PR catastrophe of these notorious right wing militias gunning down innocent protestors with Hechler and Koch arms or Krause-Maffei self-propelled artillery would be incomprehensible here.
Zelensky’s indictment of former president Poroshenko for treason, and Poroshenko’s in-your-face, defiant return to Kiev to face the charges last week, has set the stage for the Pro-EU/Pro-NATO/Pro-Western wings to turn on each other, which will be carried out to a very large extent by the neo-nazi /far-right street gangs that patrol certain urban areas of the major cities. These noises are already being made in local statements and increasingly hostile rhetoric…all at the precise time Ukraine SHOULD be uniting against a common enemy. But they are so dysfunctional that they can’t even do that.People in the West suffer from this great delusion that two political parties who hate Russia must, therefore, be aligned and friendly. Well, these two movements are not. At all. And there are smatterings of lesser parties that will be in the mix, as well, with questionable moral tendencies and massive predispositions to corruption.
I will leave it with this: we looked at expanding operations into Ukraine two years ago as part of a German Federal Government incentive program to bring certain types of industry to Ukraine to help wean Ukraine from their ever-expanding dependency on the German tit. We were looking at multiple spots in the west of the country. It would have been a great financial move for us if we could nail down the operational hurdles. We hired our standard, well-known consultants who specialize in analyzing risks for large corporations seeking to expand into new countries. I have personally overseen over a dozen of these types of analyses over the years and I can say I have never seen one come back essentially saying, “y’all motherfuckers are insane if you do this.”
The results were essentially:
1) Terrible governance;
2) Massive culture of corruption, specficially supply chain ops will be unable to perform without violating German and American anti-corruption laws
3) Failing infrastructure with little chance of modernization, with or without western investment at the governmental level
4) High potential for domestic unrest fueled by extensive far-right elements.
We didn’t even move to secondary explorations of the proposed expansion. C-Suite killed it the same day that they read the findings. It was terrible.
So just to be clear, I do not believe the existence of these groups warrants a hands-off policy, per se. But I do think that the West needs to seriously contemplate the long-term fallout of arming these groups to the teeth in the dead center of Europe.