Posted on 03/16/2022 3:41:21 PM PDT by FarCenter
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Azov headquarters in Mariupol
It is also where the Azov Battalion, which is part of the Ukrainian National Guard and thus subordinate to the Interior Ministry, has set up its headquarters. Its fighters are well trained, but the unit is controversial because it is composed of nationalists and far-right radicals. Its very existence is one of the pretexts Russia has used for its war against Ukraine.
Initially, Azov was a volunteer militia that formed in the city of Berdyansk to support the Ukrainian army in its fight against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Some of its fighters came from the small but active far-right group Pravyi sektor (Right Sector), whose core members were from eastern Ukraine and spoke Russian. Originally, they had even advocated the unity of East Slavic peoples: Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some were soccer ultras, others were active in nationalist circles. "In Germany," says Andreas Umland from the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, these groups would be described as free comradeships" which are organized neo-Nazi groups.
Far-right connotations
Umland told DW that Azov had been controversial from the outset because of its emblem, which bears the Wolfsangel symbol. "The Wolfsangel has far-right connotations, it is a pagan symbol that the SS also used," said Umland. "But it is not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine."
The Azov Regiment wants the symbol from the Nazi era to be understood as stylized versions of the letters N and I, standing for "national idea."
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
The demonized image is one thing that Azov doesn’t want people to notice but it doesn’t take much scratching of the surface to find the darker paint beneath. - Azov has hosted neo-Nazi concerts replete with swastikas, tried to recruit foreign far-right extremists, openly assaulted feminist,, and leftist activists, and cleared a Roma camp with hammers and axes.
When your country has been invaded it is all hands on deck no matter what your politics.
So just because you don’t like the people defending Mariupol your solution is to surrender it to the enemy?
Sorry that’s not the way I was taught to fight.
What they claim is meaningless. The only thing that counts is how many are in the field and armed or in support roles. The highest reliable estimate is 2500 and the actual count on the rolls officially is just over 1000 men. Even if they really had 10,000 men in the field it still would be a pittance compared to the regular Ukrainian military. These guys are “boogeymen” and like all other boogeymen, their reach and influence are grossly overestimated but they are a convenient excuse for Putin to do his dirty work.
Maybe the politics and belief systems in that part of Europe are not as simplistic as the propaganda bots in Moscow and Langley would like you to believe.
How about the Sparta Battalion, a neo-Nazi military unit backed by the Kremlin, and its leader Vladimir Zhoga? Putin just awarded him "Hero of the Russian Federation".
It seems like Putin likes to give high honors to neo-Nazi warlords.
See more here, and here.
"Bandera cultivated German military circles favorable to Ukrainian independence, and organized OUN expeditionary groups. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, he prepared the 30 June 1941 Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv, pledging to work with Nazi Germany.[4][5] For his refusal to rescind the decree, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo, which put him under house arrest on 5 July 1941,[6] and later between 1942 and 1943[7] sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[8] In 1944, with Germany rapidly losing ground in the war in the face of the advancing Allied armies, Bandera was released in the hope that he would be instrumental in deterring the advancing Soviet forces. He set up the headquarters of the re-established Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, which worked underground. He settled with his family in West Germany where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations[9][10] as well as with the British intelligence agencies.[9] Fourteen years after the end of the war, Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents in Munich.[11][12]"
You call Bandera a Nazi, but he spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. Is that where most Nazis spent the WW2 years?
It is true that groups fighting against the Bolsheviks also attacked Jews, and they shared Bandera's goal of an independent Ukraine. But when the battle shifted his groups helped Jews being hunted by real Nazis.
"However, when Bandera was in conflict with the Germans, the UPA under his authority sheltered Jews,[84] and included some Jewish fighters and medical personnel.[85][86] In the official organ of the OUN-B's leadership, instructions to OUN groups urged those groups to "liquidate the manifestations of harmful foreign influence, particularly the German racist concepts and practices."[87] Several Jews took part in Bandera's underground movement,[88] including one of Bandera's close associates Richard Yary who was also married to a Jewish woman. Another notable Jewish UPA member was Leyba-Itzik "Valeriy" Dombrovsky. (While two Karaites from Galicia, Anna-Amelia Leonowicz (1925–1949) and her mother, Helena (Ruhama) Leonowicz (1890–1967), are reported to have become members of OUN, oral accounts suggest that both women collaborated not of their own free will, but following threats from nationalists.[89]) By 1942, Nazi officials had concluded that Ukrainian nationalists were largely indifferent to Jews and were willing to both help them or kill them if either better served the nationalist cause. A report, dated 30 March 1942, sent to the Gestapo in Berlin, claimed that "the Bandera movement provided forged passports not only for its own members but also for Jews."[90] The false papers were most likely supplied to Jewish doctors or skilled workers who could be useful for the movement.[91]"
During the 1900s millions of Ukrainians were killed by Russian communists, and then by German Nazis, and then again by Russian communists who refused to allow Ukraine to be independent. The Russians are back once more in 2022 trying to take over Ukraine again.
Putin and his propaganda pals are repeating the same "nazi-nazi-nazi" propaganda they used in the last Russian communist invasions of Ukraine, and you seem to enjoy repeating Putin's talking points.
They’re a bunch of Khazarian thugs. That’s who Putin is after.
“They have a fourth rate military.”
Maybe 3rd rate. But only 2nd rate in big land wars, with their own country on the border supplying them.
Ukraine lost days ago. Zelinsky just won’t accept it. Uet.
Thos is where wiser heads from the US and other powers should talk to him. Really good Sr. Diplomats. Tough guys. Like Grenell.
But we have idiots like Blinken, Nulland, and Wendy running around with their thumbs up their butts. Oh, and Kamala and Biden.
So it’s going to be a bloodbath. We ain’t seen Russia let the dogs out, yet. And if the so called “leaders” we have give planes to Ukraine, or God forbid, do a no-fly zone, it will be very, very bad. For everyone.
Ukraine lost. But if our idiots keep telling them, “Don’t give up! We got your back!” , and Zelinsky refuses to make peace, it will look like WWI in Western Ukraine.
Anyone with brains looking objectively knows this.
According to the Red Cross, who guaranteed the humanitarian corridors after Ukraine and Russia agreed to cease fire, it was not the Ukrainians mining the corridor, sniping at the refugee column, and shelling it.
Ukraine closed the humanitarian corridors because Russian forces kept attacking them.
Lol. I should have said “these days”. Damm freepers. Always nitpicking. Lol.
Lol. Another @$$ who thinks if you aren’t completely loyal to the Ukraine that you are a Putinista. Where do all these neocons come from. One benefit of all this is that a lot of the neocons and nazi-sympathizers on the FR have revealed themselves.
Right? I made a similar comment not long ago in the wake of this new ‘crisis’.
Which makes no sense at all, either militarily or politically. NONE. There's only one side that would gain anything at all by attacking them, and that's the Ukrainians doing it to their own people. Kind of like what the NAZIS did to Germans who tried to surrender or wouldn't fight to the last man.
“There’s only one side that would gain anything at all by attacking them, and that’s the Ukrainians doing it to their own people”
Again, you’re making the fundamental mistake of treating the Russian chain of command like it’s being led by a rational AND moral actor. Which it isn’t.
If you think Russia’s got no rational reason to do it, then what makes you think they can’t have irrational reasons? Why is the only logical conclusion, all of Ukraine’s neo nazis just want to commit mass suicide and take the whole country along for the ride?
Let’s try to give Putin the benefit of the doubt...
Six weeks ago, it appears that Putin believed Ukraine’s nazis would easily be defeated by Mighty Russia AND he could save the civilians from those nazis then (a) he couldn’t possibly have seen ALL of Ukraine as an existential threat and (b) he couldn’t possibly have endorsed the use of aerial bombardment and thermobaric weapons in civilian populated areas. Sounds fair, right? Only one problem with this reasoning - Putin ordered their use.
Maybe Zelenskyy should accept peace at any cost, and go with “a peace deal”. Which one, precisely? The preceding six ones that promised humanitarian corridors wouldn’t be attacked? The one where Ukraine gave Russia its nukes back and in return had certain guarantees of its independence? The one made at the UN where Russia recognised Ukraine as a sovereign nation? Or are we talking about Putin’s latest crazy deal, which amongst other things includes a demand for America to hand Alaska back to Russia?
The safety systems operators in Chernobyl have now been kept at gunpoint on the same shift ever since the Russians kicked the door in. The safety systems are at risk of failing. The soldiers wouldn’t know what to do to fix that. So... Can we say that just because it would be totally irrational to allow Chernobyl to go boom, Putin cannot possibly be behind such utter recklessness? Except we know he is. Even Lukashenko’s pretty much admitted that.
All of this points to Putin definitely being in charge of everything, AND him being an irrational actor.
If you want to know how much faith even the ethnic Russian civilians that Russia claims to be in western Ukraine to protect have in Putin’s state of mind, just look how few of them opted to head east instead of West when they had the chance.
The LEAST plausible theory is that Ukraine’s responsible for these civilian mass casualties - because there simply isn’t even an irrational explanation for it that is plausible, let alone a rational one.
1. How can Ukraine possibly be firing (Russian) ordinance from (Russian) positions in (Russian-occupied) rural areas? Wouldn’t the Russian forces notice?
2. If the AZOV groups firing rockets, cluster bombs and thermobarics at one of the cities are the exact same AZOV groups that are preventing 200,000 people from escaping said city, how are they managing to be in two places at once, and why are they trying to incinerate themselves?
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