Yeah, there is a lot of ugly stuff surrounding this that has been a subject of a ton of controversy for years here. And it has gotten even worse over the past week, where almost every major daily has run stories about Azov and its less-than-savory elements. But for clarity, no one here outside of the extremist fringes on each side believes the problem is so bad in Ukraine that it justifies/mitigates the moral bankruptcy/criminality of Putin's invasion. However, I do think if Putin would have limited is actions to the Donbass it would not have triggered nearly the reaction that it has here, as the Germans essentially viewed the Donbass issue as an Azov vs. Separatist issue and were prepared to look the other way. Just another example of huge miscalculation on Putin's part.
And as background, a lot of the attention to this issue within Germany over the past years has been self-inflicted by the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, who has made Germany's support of Ukraine much more difficult politically. One of the first things he did when he became ambassador was to take a highly visible and highly promoted trip to the grave of Stepan Bandera here in Munich - over the very loud objections of the Merkel government - at which time he attempted to rehabilitate Bandera from Nazi-collaborator/antisemitic war criminal to "Hero of Ukraine" while standing in the middle of Munich, which of course has significance in German culture as the birthplace of the National Socialist movement. This infuriated the Bundestag, which then formally restated the genocidal acts of Bandera against Jews and Poles and reaffirmed the German position that Bandera was a war criminal who colluded with the Nazis to exterminate Poles and Jews. I remember when it happened and the entire political spectrum in Germany essentially, did a collective "What the fuck?" headscratch as to why he thought this was such a necessary move as ambassador to the country that was essentially bankrolling Ukraine's existence at the moment, particularly in light of the 2014-2015 events. It was really ugly.
People here didn't (and still don't) really understand that that era for Ukrainians was complex, with Nazis on one side and Soviets on the other...so the nuance of "allies-by-convenience" re Ukrainian nationalism is easily lost for modern Germans, who are understandably trained to knee-jerk strongly against anything that could be seen as excusing/justifying Nazi atrocities. So this creates fertile ground for the Russians wrt Azov and the neonazi narrative.
Ever since that time, the relationship between the German government and Melnyk - and therefore by extention Ukraine - has been absolutely terrible...and the stage was set for repeated public discussions about Azov and its ties with neonazi movements within Germany like Der III Weg and the NPD. Which did, in fact, occur regularly on public media...stories on the ZDF showing the Azov regalia, and quoting its founder, Biletsky, etc, which was pretty severe stuff, and documenting ties between the worst elements of German neonazism and Azov, etc.
Melnyk through this and a variety of other regular invocations of Germans-as-Nazis helped inject the issue into the national discourse, which in a perverse way only resulted in amplifying the Russian propaganda narrative, which definitely caught on across party lines. This basically gave the Russian propaganda high-octane fuel to embed into German political coverage, which was then exploited by the Russians and by Putinverstehers in various parties. We are seeing the attempted unwinding of this phenomenon now.
So that said, the information environment on this topic in Germany is very different than it is elsewhere, as the environment here is obviously quite different when it comes to Nazi-era topics. But again, no one here views this is as justification for what has gone on, and given the brutality of this war, most people now understand that less-than-desirable people are going to end up with German weapons, and that is a price that Putin's actions have caused.
Melnyk's history as ambassador here was subject to a write-up on this yesterday in the Frankfurter Rundschau (which is an established paper traditionally associated with the SPD government), where you can get an idea of the tone of the debate: