Russia's misguided 'denazification' of Ukraine is a self-fulfilling prophecy

[Fla Dem]

How a relatively small private pro-state battalion in Ukraine triggered a global surge in neo-Nazi recruitment.

March 27, 2022, 9:54 AM EDT
By Cynthia Miller-Idriss, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

In early March, one of the world’s leading intelligence experts sounded the alarm about a Ukrainian militia’s public invitation to foreigners to join its ranks and fight against Russia. That call, from the Azov Battalion, triggered a surge of volunteers from across Europe and the U.S., including in neo-Nazi chat rooms and channels. Warning of the risks of extremist mobilization among foreign fighters, terrorism analyst and founder of Search International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group Rita Katz warned that we haven’t seen “such a flurry of recruitment activity” since ISIS.

The warning follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s misguided and deeply false claims of “denazifying” Ukraine via his offensive. It also brings into sharp relief the impact that volunteer militias in Ukraine can have on violent movements far outside the boundaries of the conflict for which they originally mobilized.

“Volunteer battalions” — pro-state militias organized by private citizens — have played an unusual and outsized role in Ukraine since they first organized in the fight against pro-Russian separatists nearly a decade ago. Inadequate military infrastructure at the start of the conflict with Russia inspired bands of private citizens to organize to defend the state in ways that were largely welcomed at that time as a useful and necessary form of patriotic support. Most private militia groups in Ukraine were subsequently legally subsumed into state entities.

This is also the case for the Azov Battalion, which emerged as a volunteer regiment in 2014 during the earlier phase of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Congress passed a resolution to block U.S. military funding for Ukraine from being used to support the Azov Battalion in 2015, although the ban was lifted in 2016. And in 2019, the U.S. tried but failed to have the Azov Battalion declared a “foreign terrorist organization.”

At the time of its founding, Azov had explicit extremist ties to neo-Nazi and ultranationalist groups, including the Social National Assembly and the Patriot of Ukraine. The Azov regiment fought on the front lines in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists, was rapidly incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine, and was later recognized by then-president Petro Poroshenko as the country’s “best warriors.”

Once it became an official part of the state, the Azov Battalion distanced itself from neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology, and its far-right leadership left the regiment. But interviews with individual members, its use of insignia that was also used as a Nazi symbol, assessments from experts and recent social media video posts from the group clearly show continued anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, antisemitic and white supremacist views among its fighters.

Any and all propaganda about the need for “de-nazification” must be denounced; but to ignore the presence of groups like the Azov Battalion will be at our own peril.


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Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). Her most recent book is "Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right."

[lagomorph777]

1. Zelenskyy should consider making them change their insignias.

It might not be top of his list at the moment, however.

[mitch96]

3. I get the impression they are a private army/contractors like Blackwater. Guns for hire that

happen to be Nazi... For the size of the Azov group the "de nazify" statement does not hold water..
m

[multigraincracker]

2. This might fit nicely into the

60s Social Psychology Contact Theory. Find an idea that can be shared between opposite groups to find a common idea to unify the two parties.