For now, Ukraine is willing to embrace his form of bad guy. As a Russian militant who led eye-catching paramilitary raids into Russia from Ukrainian territory this year and last, Kyiv sees Kapustin has a role to play as an ally against President Vladimir Putin.
But there are hazards in holding him too close. German authorities say Kapustin — sometimes known as Denis Nikitin — is “one of the most influential neo-Nazi activists” on the European continent, and that’s a godsend to Russian propagandists, who are seeking to whitewash their murderous invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to “de-Nazify” Kyiv.
“Think of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’” adds Kapustin, who leads the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), the largest of three anti-Kremlin Russian militias fighting for Ukraine. “Before, you just had good guys and bad guys dressed in black in cowboy movies, and then Clint Eastwood comes along and he’s dressed in black and fighting for good,” he says.
Kapustin is indeed dressed in black for his discussion with POLITICO in a downtown Kyiv hotel — though his clothing is free of any neo-Nazi logos or flashes. That’s despite the fact he runs a far-right apparel line of T-shirts and caps emblazoned with white nationalist and xenophobic imagery as well as the Nazi symbol 88 — the eighth letter of the alphabet twice being a not-so-subtle code for “Heil Hitler.”
“I walk a thin line,” Kapustin says, disputing the neo-Nazi label and noting, almost teasingly, that he doesn’t put swastikas on any of the T-shirts he flogs, as though that proves anything.
Russian state media relish pointing to Kapustin’s origins as a far-right football hooligan as it bolsters their pretext for the war.
“It is also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the Hitler-Stalin Pact. The arrangement included a 10-year non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. It also called for economic cooperation and territorial expansion. The German-Soviet Pact prepared the way for World War II.”
Well, there's a opportunity to "Edit" Politico!
You must have watched the enlightening conversation between Steve and Ben on the War Room this morning.
Not much difference between Nazis and commies.
"If that weren’t enough, Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine’s forces are Nazis overlooks the fact that avowed neo-Nazi groups are fighting for Russia too. Including the notorious Rusich militia, which happily displays Nazi flashes, advocates racist ideology and has been accused of battlefield atrocities in Ukraine and Syria, and the white supremacist Russian Imperial Movement, designated a “terrorist organization” by the United States."
John McCain and other State Department members have troubling ties to the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party
February 25, 2014
https://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/
The enemy of your enemy can be your “friend” in war. In WW II the USA gave massive military supplies to Stalin,one of the greatest mass murders in human history.
Below is the salient quote in that article which for some reason was omitted in the parent post:
“Moscow’s continual attempt to cast their struggle as a rerun of World War II against Nazism rings hollow in reality, however. Not only is Ukraine’s president Jewish but far-right extremist parties have near negligible support in national representative politics.”
“If that weren’t enough, Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine’s forces are Nazis overlooks the fact that avowed neo-Nazi groups are fighting for Russia too. Including the notorious Rusich militia, which happily displays Nazi flashes, advocates racist ideology and has been accused of battlefield atrocities in Ukraine and Syria, and the white supremacist Russian Imperial Movement, designated a “terrorist organization” by the United States.”
Yet the Putridnistas who ignore the Russian Nazis embedded in their brutal, genocidal, scorched earth invasion of Ukraine can only point their hypocritical finger at Ukraine.
What they are speaks so loudly I cannot believe what they say.
Russian propaganda.