Support for neo-Nazis 'looks like deliberate policy
Oleh Romanov, the commander of the anti-tank battalion in the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade, has a swastika tattooed on his arm, and last year he approved of a controversial stunt pulled by one of his fighters who visited Auschwitz. According to his latest Instagram post, Romanov celebrated Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism (on May 8) with Major General Christian Freuding, who leads the German army’s “Situation Center Ukraine.” They posed with a new shirt from the Paskuda Group, a drone unit in Romanov’s battalion. A drone operator with Black Sun and spider web elbow tattoos represented the Paskuda Group in a recent collaboration with Ukraine’s top military brand.
Also on May 8, Freuding spoke at the Kyiv Security Forum, “Ukraine's Premier International Platform on War, Peace, and Security,” which was dedicated to the Ukrainian version of “Victory Day” and called on the world to “Unite Again to Defeat the Global Aggressor.” The German general said he is proud that “we equaled Russian military power with regard to drones.” Other speakers included Admiral Rob Bauer, the former Chair of the NATO Military Committee (2021-25); CIA veteran Ralph Goff, who was almost appointed its chief of clandestine operations this spring; the famous historian Timothy Snyder; and former CIA director David Petraeus, another fan of Azov’s drone capabilities.
The opening ceremony of the latest Kyiv Security Forum included a video that claimed in World War II, “hundreds of thousands joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA], resisting both Nazi and Soviet forces.” In fact, tens of thousands joined the far-right UPA in 1943-44, and many of them were already Nazi collaborators and war criminals. The first panel featured Valery Horishny, who I wrote about before on this blog because he made a speech at the United Nations in January. This hardcore neo-Nazi from the Azov unit in Ukraine’s National Guard, who has dedicated poetry to Adolf Hitler, also spoke at last year’s “Kyiv Security Forum for Youth.”
“It now looks like deliberate policy by Western governments to whitewash, support and use open neo-Nazis in Ukraine in proxy war,” the political scientist Ivan Katchanovski commented on the Romanov-Freuding meeting. “There was a similar policy of Western governments to whitewash, support and use open Nazi collaborators from OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] and UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] in the Cold War.” (more...)
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