Another interesting fact is that Azov recognized by Congress as a terrorist organization. Now, they turned into heroes overnight.
Azov never were nor will they ever be heros. That’s like saying Isis and Antifah are heroes.
I know a family of Russian Ukrainians from Donbass where the dad and eldest child are now in Zaporozhye, with the dad serving in the Ukrainian national guard and his kid working in the emergency room (that Russia has already shelled once).
What do they say about Azov Nazis? Nothing complimentary. What do they say about the Azov Battalion? Half full of Nazis, the other half are simply people who signed up to be in the NGU and ended up with Azov.
The Russian dad I know was fighting alongside Azov for a time but got abuse from some of the nazis, so he complained to the NGU,and they transferred him out to another group that’s a mix of Russian and Ukrainian guys.
He tells me that pound to a penny, half those fighters in Azovstal were family men who only picked up arms because Russia was pounding their city into dust, and they were in Azovstal with civilians because (shock horror) a nuclear bomb proof subterranean complex was a far safer place for civilians to be than any ohher shelter in the city... and certainly safer than topside where Russians were razing the city to the ground, and shooting civilians trying to flee.
What the Putin puffers also don’t like to tell people is, since 2019 the Donbass hostilities have mostly been confined to sectarian clashes between the DPR and Azov (one side is a Putin sponsored rashist paramilitary with nazis in it, the other is a paramilitary that was 50% nazi before the invasion).
And since January 2019 the civilian casualty numbers have plummeted. It isn’t just the UN, Western media, Ukrainian propaganda saying that. Donbass Russians in Ukraine say it. Donbass Russians who are refugees in Europe now, also say it. Even the DPRs published figures say it.
Imagine someone arguing that every death in the Troubles in Northern Ireland was 100% due to the actions of the Ulster Volunteer Force only; and not one death in that conflict was the IRA’s fault; and then imagine 3 years after the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated, those people then told you that every Unionist in Belfast was a UVF agent and there was such an imminent risk of genocide on the Catholic community that flattening Belfast with shock and awe, and imposing rule from Dublin, was the only solution to an existential crisis.
That would sound too stupid to even remotely be true, wouldn’t it.
And yet that’s the pretext Putinistas bought for the Russian Special Military Occupation, the razing of Mariupol, the civilian mass slaughter in Bucha, tge destabilisation of Chernobyl...