“Great. Let’s send Americans to die to help the neo-Nazi Azov battalion that is now pulling Zelenksy’s puppet strings since Burisma’s owner and Hunter’s employer Igor Kolomoisky left the country.”
So, one battalion (roughly 400 troops) is the puppeteer of the entire Zelensky (a Jew!) government, which necessarily includes the Ukrainian military?
You have pushed this Nazis! Nazis! Nazis! slander as much as the Democrats pushed Russia! Russia! Russia! during the Trump presidency. Simply projection and a smoke screen. Hell, Antifa in the US is far more influential in American national politics than the Azov battalion is over Ukrainian national politics. Ironically, Putin is a fascist (Nazism was a fascist movement). But, you knew that. Is that why you take his side on these threads? I wonder.
FTR: I am opposed to ANY American troops getting involved in this fight. As for China? It doesn’t have to do anything but sit back and watch the show, because the big winner in all this is...China.
“You have pushed this Nazis! Nazis! Nazis! slander as much as the Democrats pushed Russia! Russia! Russia! during the Trump presidency.”
—
The difference being there was nothing Russian in the Trump presidency, even an investigation came up with a big zero. In the other case, we’re talking Ukraine’s actual neo-Nazis.
Putin can be a bad guy and Ukraine can have a Nazi problem, it’s not a mutually exclusive thing.
You, ignorantly and despicably downplaying the neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine.
The Azov battalion is one faction of a much greater neo-Nazi movement within Ukraine:
https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/how-the-u-s-has-empowered-and-armed-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And far from “denazifying” Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiy played leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. Assistant Secretary Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt mentioned Tyahnybok as one of the leaders they were working with on their infamous leaked phone call before the coup, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the post-coup government.
As formerly peaceful protests in Kyiv gave way to pitched battles with police and violent, armed marches to try to break through police barricades and reach the Parliament building, Svoboda members and the newly-formed Right Sector militia, led by Dmytro Yarosh, battled police, spearheaded marches and raided a police armory for weapons. By mid-February 2014, these men with guns were the de facto leaders of the Maidan movement.
We will never know what kind of political transition peaceful protests alone would have led to in Ukraine or how different the new government would have been if a peaceful political process had been allowed to take its course, without interference by the United States or violent right-wing extremists. ### And, Azov has considerable power to recruit likeminded radicals to Ukraine:
https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/how-the-u-s-has-empowered-and-armed-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
In 2019, the Soufan Center, which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, warned, “The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… (Its) aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.”
The Soufan Center described how the Azov Battalion’s “aggressive networking” reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others. Violent foreign extremists with links to Azov have included Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, and several members of the U.S. Rise Above Movement who were prosecuted for attacking counter-protestors at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Other Azov veterans have returned to Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and other countries.
Despite Svoboda’s declining success in national elections, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups, increasingly linked to the Azov Battalion, have maintained power on the street in Ukraine, and in local politics in the Ukrainian nationalist heartland around Lviv in Western Ukraine.
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/10/are-there-really-neo-nazis-fighting-for-ukraine-well-yes--but-its-a-long-story/
The Soufan Center has compared the Azov Battalion's international networking strategy to that of al-Qaida and ISIS. U.S. and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks as their support for al-Qaida-linked groups in Syria 10 years ago. Those chickens quickly came home to roost when they spawned ISIS and turned decisively against their Western backers.
Right now, Ukrainians are united in their resistance to Russia's invasion, but we should not be surprised when the U.S. alliance with neo-Nazi proxy forces in Ukraine, including the infusion of billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons, results in similarly violent and destructive blowback.