By Gordon Hahn, Substack, 8/20/26
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is coming to its endgame in Russia’s favor, sharply raising the temperature of domestic Ukrainian politics. To add catastrophe to disaster, the Ukrainian Maidan regime, state, and army are riven with schisms threatening the existence of them all. Thus, on the ‘left’ and on the right, particularly the far right neofascist wing of Ukrainian politics, pressure on the Volodomyr Zelenskiy iteration of the Maidan oligarchic-neofascist regime is being intensified. On the right, the 3rd Army Corps ‘Azov’, based on the Azov neofascist political movement, has been put in charge of the defense of what remains (approximately 15 percent) of Ukraine’s hold on Russian-claimed Donetsk Oblast. There, in western Donetsk, Russian forces have entered Dobropiliya and are in the process of encircling the Slovansk and Kramatorsk strongholds. To the west of these three towns lies nothing but undefendable open fields leading to the middle of the Dnepr River. To this must be added the increasingly dire situation in Ukraine’s northern oblasts of Kharkiv and Sumy, with their provincial capitols under threat of siege and encirclement. Russian victories in the north would revive the threat to Kiev long dormant since the war’s first months. In the southern oblast of Zaporozhe, the road to its provincial capitol of the same name is about to open with the imminent fall of Orekhov.
Alongside this imminent military catastrophe for the recruit- and equipment-starved Ukrainian army has an equally catastrophic political dynamic. The appointment of Azov to defend the last of Donetsk can have several political consequences. If the defense is successful or at least if defeat is drawn out and can be framed as a victory, Azov and its commander, Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletskiy, will receive yet another boon to his reputation. Previous boosts have come from past military efforts and the endorsement of the Azov 3rd Army Corps by President Zelenskiy by way of military promotions, medals, and the expansion of the Azov Brigade to an army corps of some 50,000 personnel. Another heroic battle or two will further promote Biletskiy eventually, leading to a general staff position or to the post of commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, replacing Gen. Mihkaylo Drapatiy or a successor. Azov, with its neofascist ideology, will see another rise of its status within the military and society, putting its 3rd Army Corps in a position to seize power during a regime or state crisis.
Recently, Azov and Biletskiy himself were placed front and center when two former leaders of the World War II era, Nazi-allied Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA) were reburied on Zelenskiy’s orders from abroad to Ukraine, with elaborate ceremonies replete with Nazi symbolism and pomp were led by Biletskiy. It cannot be excluded out of hand that Zelenskiy sought or at least sees the side benefit of the Azov armed element’s weakening as a result of its pitch battles with the more powerful Russian forces. Suspicions on this score could come to the fore within Azov when the body bags come home as the battles are lost. This would enflame a mood within Azov that could facilitate a coup attempt or some other oppositionist machination.
Azov could also be prompted to political action by the ‘leftist-liberal’ protest movement sparked by Zelenskiy’s firing of Mikhaylo Fedorov as defense minister. The Western globalist backers of the Maidan regime and Zelenskiy are behind Fedorov and the protests against Zelenskiy’s firing of Fedorov. The strength of the liberal globalist threat was enough to prompt Zelenskiy to fire commander of the armed forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, bringing the more neofascist-friendly Drapatiy to head the army. The foreign-backed globalist demonstrations against Zelenskiy, who has facilitated the rise in the authority and power of neofascism in general and Azov in particular during the war, and their fomenting in war time cannot but raise the ire of Azov types, who are not foreign-, globalist-, Western-, democracy-, or particularly Zelenskiy-friendly by nature. A major confrontation in Kiev could force Azov to play coup poker or outright execute a coup itself in order to ‘save the nation’ and ‘restore order.’
The events of recent days can hardly suggest stability in Kiev. Demonstrations for the return of Fedorov to the Defense Minister’s position, which often include calls for Zelenskiy to hold presidential elections or even resign, Fedorov’s own call for holding presidential elections, and anti-corruption agencies’ raiding of the offices and apartment of deputy head of the Office of the President Irina Mudraya and a series of Rada deputies on the eve of the vote on the nomination of a former SBU official Yevgenii Kharma as defense minister, forced Zelenskiy to fire Mudraya. Although Khmara’s nomination was approved in the Rada vote, the tapes released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) showing Mudraya talking about taking over money flows, political cliques, and most infamously quoting another, unnamed top official (Zelenskiy?): “He says: ‘Corruption must be systematized and controlled, not struggled against’” (https://strana.news/news/510857-nabu-opublikovalo-audiozapisi-po-delu-forrest-hamp.html).
In addition, the tapes show Murray saying she needs to launder hundreds of millions of hryvna on “the instructions of her boss”
But Mudraya was not an appointed to the OP under new OP chief Kyryllo Budanov, former HRU director. Rather, she is a creature of Zelenskiy and his recently fired OP chief Andriy Yermak for his ties to the Mindichgate and other corruption cases; she was hired in 2024 before Budanov became OP chief earlier this year. So the target of the new investigation and tape releases is likely Zelenskiy, not Budanov.
Budanov came to the OP leadership position with numerous former Yermak appointees retaining their position and evidence that they and Yermak himself were controlling the Office. So it is possible that Budanov has made an alliance of convenience with the globalists at NABU and SAPO in order to gain full control of the OP and even weaken Zelenskiy, whom he could challenge. So is this anti-corruption case yet another in a series of such cases undertaken by anti-corruption authorities loyal and captive to the West to undermine Zelenskiy or at least to remind him who is his master or is there another more complex configuration at least in this year.
The Fedorov demonstrations continue after the Rada confirmation vote and corruption scandal and are likely to do so for a while. Meanwhile, the Zelenskiy clique has undergone another humiliating discrediting. Its corruption is abhorred by the neofascists and to a lesser extent by the far fewer republicans as well.
Finally, there is even the potential for the neofascists to cut a deal with the liberal-republican globalists, joining them in a temporary united front against Zelenskiy as a step towards seizing power for themselves. Budanov at the HRU supported Azov and other neofascist initiatives. Another leading neofascist figure has endorsed Fedorov’s protest movement. Azov’s Serhii Sternenko announced his support for demonstrations to back the Fedorov movement (https://strana.news/news/510831-vozle-verkhovnoj-rady-projdet-aktsija-v-podderzhku-fedorova.html). Sternenko has not just a neofascist pedigree but a criminal past as well (https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/is-the-uk-readying-a-coup-option?utm_source=publication-search; https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/the-dead-end-of-zelenskiys-great?utm_source=publication-search; and https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/zelenskiy-weakened-siloviki-strengthened?utm_source=publication-search).
As Kiev destabilizes, the defense front crumbles, the economy collapses under the Black Sea blockade, and Azov personnel are put through the Russian meat grinder, why wouldn’t Biletskiy or other Azov and neofascist elements consider a coup?