How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nazis
Last month the historian Marta Havryshko noted that a (formerly) USAID-funded Ukrainian outlet produced a “heroic saga” documentary about the NGU Azov Brigade, featuring one of its ideological/recruitment officers, Vladyslav “Docent” Dutchak. According to Havryshko, the filmmaker said to him, “The roots of this demonization of Azov go back to its formation. So, I have to ask — were there people in the unit at the beginning who held neo-Nazi views?”
“I didn’t see such people in the unit,” Dutchak answered. Back in 2015, before the New York Times and Foreign Policy magazine described Azov as “openly neo–Nazi,” but after it joined the National Guard, a foreign affairs reporter for USA Today interviewed Alex, a drill sergeant in the Azov Regiment, who “admitted he is a Nazi and said with a laugh that no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis.”
He said he supports strong leadership for Ukraine, like Germany during World War II, but opposes the Nazis’ genocide against Jews. Minorities should be tolerated as long as they are peaceful and don’t demand special privileges, he said, and the property of wealthy oligarchs should be taken away and nationalized. He vowed that when the war ends, his comrades will march on the capital, Kiev, to oust a government they consider corrupt.
Andriy Diachenko, a spokesperson for the Azov Regiment, tried to do some damage control, and said that “only 10% to 20%” of Azov fighters in the National Guard were really Nazis. “I know Alex is a Nazi, but it’s his personal ideology. It has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov,” Diachenko told Oren Dorell from USA Today. “He’s a good drill sergeant and a good instructor for tactics and weapons skills.” Dorell also spoke with Oleg Odnorozhenko, then deputy commander of the regiment, who “complained that Alex does not speak for the group.” Odnorozhenko was in those days the main ideologue of two neo-Nazi organizations (the Social-National Assembly and Patriot of Ukraine) associated with the Azov Battalion. (more...)
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