One of the central arguments of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to justify the invasion of Ukraine is the objective of “denazifying” the country. Supporters of Ukraine reject this accusation and counter that their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish.
In the midst of the war, the role of the extreme right in Ukraine has been the subject of constant debate and propaganda from the different sides of the conflict.
But really, is there neo-Nazism inside Ukraine? What is the role of the far-right militias inside the country? Does the Ukrainian state support and is supported by these ideologies? Is there an extreme right in Russia?
Is there a far-right ideology in Ukraine?
Yes. Ukrainian officials and foreign allies, such as the United States and European countries, often deny the importance of neo-Nazi and far-right movements in Ukraine’s domestic politics, but such groups exist.
This topic is still very sensitive, rejected by politicians and the press. No one wants to feed the Russian propaganda machine that often emphasizes, and sometimes exaggerates, the role of these groups in Ukrainian politics.
One of the most prominent movements in this conflict is the so-called Azov Battaliona neo-Nazi group that in 2014 fought the Russian invasion of Crimea in the city of Mariupol.
The group has been fighting Russian separatists in the region ever since and has played a major role in the Ukrainian resistance.
Last week, the Azov Battalion (named after the Sea of Azov, located southeast of Ukraine and north of the Black Sea), claimed responsibility for the death of a Russian general, Oleg Mityaev. The battalion is a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, the country’s military police.
In practice, the group has become in recent years a war militia whose greatest enemy is the Russians.
The Azov is criticized for displaying Nazi symbols, such as the Wolfsangel, used by the 2nd SS Das Reich Division, and the Black Sun.
There are also other groups considered far-right by experts, such as the Svoboda Party, the C-14 and the Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector)which have created their own armed militias, many of which have joined the regular Ukrainian forces.
In recent years, before the current conflict in Ukraine, the BBC has reported on how these groups have taken an increasingly important role in the daily lives of Ukrainians, taking advantage of the power vacuums left by other institutions, such as the police.
In 2017, the BBC showed far-right militias raiding gambling establishments and attacking political enemies with the collusion of governments.
In the city of Cherkasy, far-right militiamen stormed the city hall and threatened all legislators, saying that none of them could leave until the mayor’s proposed budget was approved.
There were also violent clashes between the militia and the police.
Ukraine was greatly affected by the confrontation between Nazism and Communism during World War II. Several regions were occupied by Nazi troops during Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Before that, under the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin, Ukraine had faced the famine known as Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words ‘holod’ meaning famine and ‘mor’ meaning extermination.
It is estimated that at least three million Ukrainians starved to death between 1932 and 1933 in the Holodomor famine.
During the war, the Ukrainians were divided between collaborating with the German Nazis or with the Russian Communists.
One of the most prominent and controversial figures of this collaborationist Ukrainian nationalism was Stepan Bandera, who first acted to facilitate the Nazis’ domination of the region and then turned against them when he realized that their plan for Ukraine’s independence Ukraine would not come to fruition.
Bandera spent years in a Nazi concentration camp and was finally assassinated by a KGB agent in 1959.
Ukraine is also marked by the Babi Yar massacre, when Nazi German forces killed the more than 33,000 Jews living in kyiv and buried the bodies in a common grave.
The massacre, which took place on September 29 and 30, 1941, is considered by historians to be one of the largest in the history of the Holocaust.
After the war, the Soviets banned the construction of memorials on the site.
What is the role of the extreme right in the Ukrainian government?
Far-right groups are mobilizing against the Russian invasion, but they play little role in Ukrainian politics and there are no proven links between them and President Zelensky.
But in the recent past there have been concerns about links between far-right militants and former interior minister Arsen Avakov.
In 2017, Avakov appointed a notorious Azov Battalion leader, Vadym Troyan, to the post of deputy minister. Troyan was fired in 2019 and Avakov resigned from the ministry last year.
The alleged influence of neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government is one of the crucial points pointed out by Putin to justify his invasion.
In the recent past, during the 2014 revolution, the Azov Battalion supported the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Putin.
While there is far-right influence in Ukrainian politics, it remains a tiny minority in the country: During the 2019 elections, far-right candidates and groups like Svoboda fell well below the minimum 5% required to enter parliament.
Technology experts accuse the Moscow government of orchestrating a social media disinformation campaign about international fears of these far-right movements.
Since last November, there have been spikes in press searches linking Ukraine to Nazism, according to Logically, a technology company that tracks hundreds of pro-Kremlin social media accounts.
Russia is “quick at labeling its adversaries and victims in Europe as Nazis,” says Keir Giles, an expert who wrote a NATO report on information warfare.
“We saw this not only in Ukraine, but also in the Russian smear of the Baltic states,” he says.
How is the war affecting the extreme right in Ukraine?
Some analysts suggest that the invasion of Ukraine may even be benefiting far-right groups inside and outside the country, which are gaining strength by recruiting fighters.
“The conflict has clearly created an opportunity for extremists to recruit foreign white supremacists seeking training and networking, or seeking to increase their involvement in the cause in other ways,” says researcher Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Innovation Lab for the Polarization and Extremism Research (PERIL), American University, USA.
“Leaders of far-right militias in Europe responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by raising funds online, recruiting fighters and planning trips to the front lines, activities that SITE Intelligence Group described as ‘enormous support for Ukraine’ by ‘numerous white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups’ throughout Europe and North America.
Ukrainian journalist Lev Golinkin says that people need to reconcile two positions that may seem contradictory: that Ukraine has far-right groups that are dangerous, but that these groups cannot serve as an excuse for Putin to invade Ukraine.
“This does not give Russia any reason, any justification to invade an inch of Ukrainian territory. Both are true at the same time. What we need to do in the US is to condemn and fight Russia, making sure that they do not have extremists who they travel and train with Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” Golinking told the online news outlet Democracy Now.
“Someone always benefits from a war. And the extreme right in Ukraine is the main beneficiary of the Ukrainian side of this war, because now they manage to attract people from all over the world and are seen in the front line of the fight for white civilization “.
What is Russia’s relationship with the extreme right?
The Russian government has been constantly accused in Western countries of fomenting neo-Nazi and far-right groups.
In 2020, the BBC revealed that Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of the American neo-Nazi group The Base, ran the organization from an apartment in a wealthy neighborhood in the city of Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Base is a target of FBI terrorism investigations.
Researcher Robert Horvath, from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, assures that while Putin talks about “denazifying Ukraine”, the Russian president “cultivates his own Nazis”.
In a recent article in The Conversation, the researcher says that the Kremlin has ties to the Russkii Obraz, a neo-Nazi group that has attended frequent televised debates in highly government-controlled media.
In recent years, Putin’s government has distanced itself from the group, but some of its members remain influential in the country’s political life.
For Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, an independent consultancy in Moscow, Putin seeks to maintain a “monopoly” of nationalism in the country and therefore does not tolerate many independent far-right political movements, even when they also support Russian nationalism.
“Certainly he [Putin] he is a nationalist, a believer in a strong state, and this kind of nationalism is completely monopolized by the government… The government does not accept the formation of any kind of organization, even those that are similar, “Verkhovsky said in an interview with BBC Monitoring.
One of the problems for Putin is that some of these radicals have gained combat experience in the Donbass region and this could come in handy against the Russian leader should there ever be a major dissent against the government.
“There is almost nothing left of the movement [nacionalista]. They don’t have their own space in the political arena.”
Verkhovsky believes that, unlike activists who have been arrested or pressured, Putin is not an ethnic nationalist.
Putin’s goal is to unite the nation against “foreign enemies,” he said.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-60870477, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-03-25 09:10:05
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