Recent media reports have highlighted Ukraine’s intention to retake Crimea, particularly after its success in recapturing Kherson. This has been the stated policy of the Ukrainian government since losing it to Russia in 2014.
A brief history of the region’s difficult relationship with Ukrainian rule before 2014, however, shows why this would be extremely difficult.
It is well known that in 1954 the region was transferred from the Russian SFSR (Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,) to the Ukrainian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic,) as a “gift” to the Ukrainian people in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslavl Rada that joined Ukraine to Russia. Less known, however, is that in January 1991, as the USSR was disintegrating, the Crimean regional government decided to hold its own referendum on restoring the autonomy of Crimea.
Nearly 84 percent of registered voters participated in this referendum, and 93 percent voted for Crimean sovereignty. This opened the door to potentially separating Crimea from both the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR, thus potentially allowing it to join the new Union Treaty then being proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev as an independent member.
On February 12, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (its main legislative body) recognized those results. On September 4, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the now Autonomous Crimean Republic (ACR) proclaimed the region’s sovereignty, but added that it intended to create a sovereign democratic state within Ukraine. It is in this context of regional sovereignty that 54 percent of Crimeans voted in December 1991 in favor of Ukrainian independence, with a voter turnout of 65 percent, the lowest of any region in Ukraine.
From the outset, however, both sides had diametrically opposed interpretations of what Crimean “sovereignty” meant — Simferopol, Crimea’s capital, wanted sovereignty, while the Ukrainian capital of Kiev a weak form of autonomy within a unitary state in which Ukrainian language and culture would be the norm.
On May 5, 1992, the Supreme Soviet of the ACR effectively declared total independence from Ukraine and announced a new referendum to be held in August 1992. The Ukrainian parliament declared Crimea’s independence illegal and authorized President Kravchuk to use any means necessary to prevent it. After a two-week stalemate, the Crimean parliament rescinded its declaration of independence in exchange for a negotiated devolution of power from Kiev to Simferopol. Crimea was given its own president and prime minister, as well as the authority to hold its own local referendums.
The crisis was averted, but only temporarily, since it did not deal with the core issue — the desire of a large portion of the Crimean population to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine. It therefore resurfaced in 1994, when Yuri Meshkov and his “Russia Bloc” party won the presidency of Crimea on a platform advocating reunification with Russia. Again, an incipient crisis was averted on March 16-17, 1995, when Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, after consulting with his Russian President Boris Yeltsin and receiving his support, sent Ukrainian special forces to arrest the Crimean government. Meshkov was deported to Russia, and, that same day, the Rada abrogated the Crimean Constitution and abolished the Crimean presidency.
Still, it took three more years to pass a new Crimean constitution that declared Ukrainian the sole official language of Crimea and specified that Crimea was an inalienable part of Ukraine. In a surprisingly candid interview in 2018, the last Ukrainian-appointed prime minister of Crimea, Anatoly Mogiloyv, explained that Crimea had always been “a Russian region,” and said that he repeatedly warned Kiev that, if it refused to grant the peninsula more autonomy, it would bolt to Russia.
The results of the Crimean referendum of March 16, 2014, have been rightly called into question because of the anomalous conditions under which it was held, but they were hardly surprising. Anatoly Karlin has conveniently compiled a list of 30 public opinion surveys taken between 1994 and 2016. Twenty-five show Russophile sentiment at over 70 percent, and five at 25–55 percent. One of Crimea’s foremost sociologists, Natalia Kiselyova, says that the percentage of Crimeans who “yearned for Russia” between 1991 and 2014 was always greater than 50 percent, while the percentage that favored Crimean regionalism was never less than 55–60 percent.
Since 2014, a number of Western-sponsored polls have likewise shown a high level of support for reunification with Russia. Thus, a Pew survey from April 2014 showed that 91 percent of Crimean respondents believed the 2014 referendum was free and fair. A June 2014 poll, this one by Gallup, found nearly 83 percent of the Crimean population (94 percent of ethnic Russians and 68 percent of ethnic Ukrainians) thought the 2014 referendum reflected the views of the people. A spring 2017 survey conducted by the German-based Center for East European and International Studies found that, if asked to vote again then, 79 percent said they would cast the same vote.
Most striking of all has been the turnaround in the attitude of Crimean Tatars. A 2020 report in Foreign Affairs found that the proportion of Tatars who indicated that they thought being part of Russia would make them better off rose from 50 percent in 2014 to 81 percent in 2019.
Many leading Ukrainian political and cultural figures, including the writers Vasyl Shklyar, Yuri Andrukhovych, and former President Viktor Yushchenko, have referred to Crimea as foreign to Ukraine and depicted its multiculturalism as a threat to the nationalist Ukraine they were trying to create. After 2013, some have suggested letting this territory go its own way. The danger of doing so now, however, according to President Poroshenko’s permanent representative in Crimea, Boris Babin, is that “if we don’t liberate Crimea and the East [militarily], then all of Ukraine will become the East and Crimea.”
The history of Crimea since 1991 thus offers a vivid illustration of how nationalism can lead national elites to self-delusion. Knowing full well the region’s long-standing aspirations for autonomy, Kiev’s nationalist politicians chose to ignore or suppress them.
The same problems could also arise for Russia, though, until now, it has managed to avoid them through a mixture of pragmatism and massive investments in areas of concern to the local population. For Crimean Tatars, these include the April 21, 2014, decree rehabilitating the deported peoples of Crimea, additional federal funding for the expansion of education in the Tatar language, the construction of more than 150 new mosques, and recognition of the Tatar language as official in Crimea, something never achieved under Ukrainian rule.
Critics counter that Russia is only pretending to address the concerns of the Crimean Tatars. In reality, they say, there has been a tenfold reduction in the number of Tatars in positions of authority in Crimea, because the Crimean Tatar Mejlis (Assembly) is now outlawed, and Tatars must run for office within different parties. It probably has not helped the overall popularity of the Mejlis in Crimea, however, that some of its exiled leaders in Ukraine support the policies of the Ukrainian government, which include the possible deportation of several hundred thousand Russian residents of the peninsula.
To be clear, the loss of Crimea stems directly from Russia’s illegal annexation, but, as Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, acknowledged in 2019, it was fed by years of “very aggressive attacks of one region [Galicia in Western Ukraine – NP], which often believes that its ideology is the most correct, the most essential for the Ukrainian people; [and it] encounters the opposition of all regions of Ukraine that have a different ideology, or maybe different views, to be more precise, on the situation in Ukraine.”
To regain their loyalty, Kiev will have to acknowledge the role that its own policies, most notably forcible Ukrainianization, have played in fracturing Ukrainian society, or face the prospect that recapturing these territories will result in a new cycle of violence, at some point in the future.
In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”
Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. The war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.
A month later, in April, when a settlement seemed to be within reach at the Istanbul talks, the US and UK again pressured Ukraine not to pursue their own goals and sign an agreement that could have ended the war. They again pressured Ukraine to continue to fight in pursuit of the larger goals of the US and its allies. Then British prime minister Boris Johnson scolded Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He added that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.”
Once again, the war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.
At every opportunity, Biden and his highest ranking officials have insisted “that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how and when or if they negotiate with the Russians” and that the US won’t dictate terms: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” But that has never been true. The US wouldn’t allow Ukraine to negotiate on their terms when they wanted to. The US stopped Ukraine from negotiating in March and April when they wanted to; they pushed them to negotiate in November when they did not want to.
The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals. It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world.
Ukraine became the focus of that ambition in 2014 when Russia for the first time stood up to American hegemony. Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, says that since the end of the Cold War Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly.
But when, in 2014, the US set up and supported a coup in Ukraine that was intended to pull Ukraine closer into the NATO and European security sphere Russia responded by annexing Crimea, Russia broke out of its post Cold War policy of compliance and pushed back against US hegemony. The 2014 “crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.”
Events in Ukraine in 2014 marked the end of the unipolar world of American hegemony. Russia drew the line and asserted itself as a new pole in a multipolar world order. That is why the war is “bigger than Ukraine,” in the words of the State Department. It is bigger than Ukraine because, in the eyes of Washington, it is the battle for US hegemony.
That is why US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on November 13 that some of the sanctions on Russia could remain in place even after any eventual peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. The war has never just been about Ukraine: it is about US foreign policy aspirations that are bigger than Ukraine. Yellen said, “I suppose in the context of some peace agreement, adjustment of sanctions is possible and could be appropriate.” Sanctions could be adjusted when negotiations end the war, but, Yellen added, “We would probably feel, given what’s happened, that probably some sanctions should stay in place.”
That is also why the US announced a new army headquarters in Germany “to carry out what is expected to be a long-term mission” while it simultaneous began pushing Ukraine toward peace talks. The military pressure on Russia and support for Ukraine will survive the war.
It is also why on June 29, the US announced the establishment of a permanent headquarters for US forces in Poland that Biden boasted would be “the first permanent U.S. forces on NATO’s eastern flank.”
It is again why, on November 9, the State Department approved the sale of nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System to Lithuania. They are not to be used by NATO in the Ukraine war. But they will, according to the State Department, “support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the military capability of a NATO Ally that is an important force for ensuring political stability and economic progress within Eastern Europe.” At the same time, the State Department approved the potential sale of guided multiple launch rocket systems to Finland to bolster “the land and air defense capabilities in Europe’s northern flank.”
Presumably, the delivery of upgraded B61-12 air-dropped gravity nuclear bombs to NATO bases in Europe is also not in the service of current US goals in Ukraine.
Though to the US, the war in Ukraine is “bigger than Ukraine,” it is also “in many ways bigger than Russia.” Although the recently released 2022 National Defense Strategy identifies Russia as the current “acute threat,” it “focuses on the PRC,” or the People’s Republic of China. The Strategy consistently identifies China as the “pacing challenge.” The long-term focus is on, not Russia, but China.
The National Defense Strategy clearly states that “The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences.”
If Ukraine is about Russia, Russia is about China. The “Russia Problem” has always been that it is impossible to confront China if China has Russia: it is not desirable to fight both superpowers at once. So, if the long-term goal is to prevent a challenge to the US led unipolar world from China, Russia first needs to be weakened.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently said that “China will firmly support the Russian side, with the leadership of President Putin . . . to further reinforce the status of Russia as a major power.”
According to Lyle Goldstein, a visiting professor at Brown University and author of Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry, an analysis of the war in Ukraine published in a Chinese academic journal concludes that “In order to maintain its hegemonic position, the US supports Ukraine to wage hybrid warfare against Russia…The purpose is to hit Russia, contain Europe, kidnap ‘allies,’ and threaten China.”
The war in Ukraine has never been just about Ukraine. It has always been “bigger than Ukraine” and about US principles that are bigger than Ukraine and “in many ways bigger than Russia.” Ukraine is where Russia drew the line on the US led unipolar world and where the US chose to fight the battle for hegemony. That battle is acutely about Russia but, in the long-term, it is about China, “the most comprehensive and serious challenge” to US hegemony.
As Ukrainian forces took control of Kherson on Friday, soldiers flooded social media with victorious pictures and videos of themselves in the city. Nazi insignia was abundant, including Azov Regiment’s Nazi Wolfsangel, Totenkopfs, Black Suns, and patches advertising Misanthropic Division, a neo-Nazi organization that has recruited far-right volunteers for Azov from dozens of countries. As has become the norm, the overt displays of white supremacist ideology were unacknowledged in most of the major media coverage of Kherson.
“I agree with almost everything you’ve written about Ukraine,” said Mike*, a US military veteran and volunteer combatant in Ukraine, about a past article detailing mass corruption, theft of weapons and humanitarian aid, and inept military command leading to senseless injuries and deaths. “But I don’t believe that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine. That’s just Russian propaganda.”
Steve*, an American volunteer military trainer, recalls seeing Azov Regiment militants covered in SS logos and Swastikas at a course he lead in Kiev. He asked Azov commanders to order the men to remove the Nazi insignia, and they refused. Still, Steve says he doesn’t think Azov men are truly white supremacists. “I think it’s just trendy to them,” he said.
Azov was founded in 2014 as a volunteer militia led by Andriy Biletsky during the Donbas War and was later integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard. Azov’s use of neo-Nazi iconography and abundance of members with far-right, white supremacist ideology immediately made them controversial, as did their violent attacks on feminists, minorities, and the LGBT community in Ukraine.
Major media outlets that condemned Ukraine’s ultranationalists in the years before the war now gloss over the history of human rights violations and white supremacist ideology of far-right organizations like Azov. In a piece examining Russia’s designation of Azov as a terrorist organization, German outlet Deutsche Welle writes, “the Azov Regiment originally grew out of a controversial right-wing extremist volunteer battalion. These days, Azov has been absorbed into Ukraine’s national guard, which answers to the interior ministry,” seemingly implying that the Ukrainian government’s legitimization of Azov eliminated the group’s deeply-rooted neo-Nazi ideology.
On a leadership level, Azov says it has purged its ranks of white supremacists. All of the Azov militants interviewed for this piece adamantly insist that they are not neo-Nazis. That said, all of the Azov militants interviewed for this piece openly display Nazi insignia and express white supremacist views.
“I want my nation to survive and prosper,” Dmytro said in an interview. “I support traditional values and the revival of white Europe. It’s important for white families to restore the greatness of Europe. Look at America. It’s a crime to be white. Look at Black Lives Matter!”
Centuria
Dmytro joined Azov through Centuria, a far-right Azov spin-off organization led by Igor Mykhaylenko, an ex-Azov commander who has been referred to as Azov founder Andriy Biketskyi’s right hand. Mykhaylenko went on to lead the National Guards, the militia associated with the far-right National Corps party. In 2020, Centuria emerged as a rebrand of the National Guards.
Centuria began steadily supplying its members to Azov units after the start of the war in Ukraine. “Centuria basically became the backbone of Azov Special Forces,” Dmytro said. “We are very important to the war effort.”
Centuria describes itself as a group that, “stands on the ideological foundations of Ukrainian Statehood and European traditions.” Centuria members espouse white supremacy, misogyny, and homophobia. “Terrorism is the result of Western Europe’s multicultural policies,” Centuria wrote on its Telegram channel. “The only thing that can save France is the nationalists.”
Vitaly Avramenko, a commander of an Azov Centuria Special Forces unit, referred to the Zelensky Presidency as the “Jewish government” on his Telegram channel. Der III Weg, a German neo-Nazi party, celebrated the inception of Centuria on their website in 2020. Centuria, in turn, promoted Der III Weg’s endorsement of the organization.
Centuria emphasizes the importance of providing Ukrainian youth with nationalist education. “No government in Ukraine has been interested in educating the youth,” reads a blurb on Centuria’s official website. “They thought only about their own enrichment, not about building the national future. Our task is to raise a strong, proud Ukrainian.” Centuria often announces efforts to recruit boys as young as 15 years old.
Marko* is one such youth, recruited into Centuria as a teenager. He speaks about Centuria with the formality of a spokesperson. “We consider right-wing, patriotic movements very important to our country,” he said. “Centuria was formed for the Ukrainians who want to see Ukraine be a strong, independent, and prosperous European state.
“We believe that the best ideology for Ukraine is nationalism. Our nation, language, traditions and customs have been destroyed by enemies for much of history, and now, the Russian invaders are again trying to wipe the Ukrainian nation off the face of the earth. We will never forget how Russia tried to destroy our nation, and we will take revenge for every drop of Ukrainian blood shed.”
Marko poses in front of a Nazi Party flag hanging on the walls of his barracks. “That’s just to troll the Russians,” he said. “Because the Russians are always calling us Nazis. The Russians are the real Nazis.”
But Marko’s Instagram account contains enough virulently racist, misogynistic, and homophobic rants to fill a manifesto. He quotes George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. “If Israel is a Jewish Country and has the right to be Jewish, if Ghana is a negro country and has the right to be black, then why don’t we whites have the right to keep our white race?” He decries the white women who have children with “Chinese, Turks, Arabs, and Negroes”, wears a shirt that says, “White Pride World Wide”, and complains that Ukrainian youth aren’t sufficiently educated about Ukrainian nationalism.
Oleksander*, 24, is another Centuria member who joined an Azov unit when the war began. His Instagram is full of masked selfies in uniform, sometimes featuring a Hitler salute. Oleksander quotes figures he finds inspirational, like Adolf Hitler and American neo-Nazi Dylann Roof, who shot and killed 9 people in a predominantly Black South Carolina church in 2015.
“Once I found out who Dylann Roof was, I read his manifesto,” Oleksander said. “I began to admire him. I understand him, because he is a nationalist, like me. I support him. He is a man who loves his nation. The blacks commit crimes against his nation, and those crimes go unpunished. He is a hero. My call sign in my military unit is his name.”
Oleksander bristled when asked if he considered himself a neo-Nazi. “Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis are two different things,” he said. He didn’t respond when asked why he’d quote Adolf Hitler if he didn’t have Nazi sympathies.
Anton Radko, 32, is a professional MMA fighter and trainer who became an Azov commander after the war started in Ukraine. He, too, complains when he is referred to as a neo-Nazi, though he, too, uses Nazi iconography and white supremacist symbols liberally.
The username of Radko’s private Instagram account was “SSGalizien”, referring to the predominantly Ukrainian 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS. And fittingly, Radko posted Nazi content, including pictures of Nazi party flags and SS marches, on a near-daily basis before his account was suspended by Instagram. The Azov Regiment, which has claimed repeatedly to have purged its ranks of neo-Nazis, uses Radko in its official videos, social media posts, and even on billboards in Ukraine.
Groups like Azov have long been a draw for far-right volunteers from Western countries. It’s not clear how many foreign volunteers have traveled to Ukraine to join Azov, or how many have switched from other militant groups while in Ukraine. Centuria’s Poltava division recently shared an interview with a 23 year-old American militant in their ranks. “Francis,” from Texas, came to Ukraine and joined the International Legion, the official unit of foreign volunteers.
“I always wanted to join Azov,” Francis said. “I jumped when I got the chance.” When asked about how he felt about the US government’s issues with Azov, Francis said he was unconcerned. “To be honest, I don’t care,” he said. “I have my own opinion. I came to work, help, and support my friends.”
Azov and the West
US Congress has included stipulations in appropriation provisions that Azov may not receive “arms, training, or other assistance.” But a 2021 report found that that Azov Centuria members were trained by Western countries while at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy. But it’s clear that US aid is reaching Azov. Azov militants are frequently seen in photos with weapons provided to Ukraine by Western countries.
Beyond aid from Western governments, private donations have poured into Ukraine from the West. In March, money transfer and online payment system PayPal expanded their services to allow Ukrainians to receive funds from abroad. Virtually every Azov militant with social media uses it to court donations.
One Azov militant sought donations in honor of a fallen solder in an English-language Instagram post. “He spoke about support of the European people against Black Lives Matter riots. Our fight is 14 words,” referring to a quote from American neo-Nazi David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” The Azov militant linked his PayPal account at the end of the post.
In September, a delegation of Azov members visited Washington, reportedly meeting with more than 50 members of Congress. The meetings apparently went so well that an Azov co-founder present in them, Giorgi Kuparashvili, predicted that Congress would remove the ban on funding and arming Azov.
The current size of the Azov Regiment is unknown, though the size of Azov relative to the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a whole is often cited to downplay the influence and danger of the organization. As a result of a widespread, continuous recruitment initiative, Azov’s ranks are growing. Azov’s recruitment page mentions that special dispensations can be made for active military personnel who aren’t able to visit recruitment centers in person, indicating that Azov is potentially swelling its ranks by poaching soldiers from elsewhere in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Azov is one of a number of ultranationalist militant groups active in Ukraine. Although bans on US funds being used to arm and train militants only apply to Azov, the rest of the Ukrainian far-right is equally problematic.
Ukraine’s Far-Right Beyond Azov
Carpathian Sich, a volunteer battalion formed by the ultranationalist Svoboda Party in 2014, was originally comprised of nationalists unable to enlist with the National Guard. Carpathian Sich’s current iteration, the 49th Separate Rifle Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has been an official part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since May and has a substantial number of foreign volunteers. Unlike Azov, Carpathian Sich seems to have muted its overt expressions of neo-Nazi ideology since the war began.
While volunteers from the US and Europe were welcomed into Carpathian Sich, a volunteer from a South American country says volunteers from his part of the world had a different experience. The volunteer, an army veteran, visited a Ukrainian Embassy and was encouraged to travel to Ukraine to join the International Legion. Once he arrived, the International Legion rejected him because he didn’t speak English. He was directed to Carpathian Sich.
The volunteer says that Carpathian Sich initially refused to enlist volunteers from South America. Eventually, they agreed to spend a month on the frontlines without payment. At the end of the month, Carpathian Sich was satisfied with their performance and enlisted them. The South American volunteer said he planned to remain in Ukraine permanently after the war.
Mikhail*, a militant from a Carpathian Sich-linked militia, says non-white volunteers should go back to their home countries as soon as the war is over. “Europe is white,” he said. “Europeans are meant to be white. This is how we Europeans differ from savages such as the Russians.
“We appreciate the help people from other countries have given us,” Mikhail continued. “But we have paid them, and they really should go back to their countries when the war ends. This is why we send food and grain to Africa, for example. So they don’t flee to Europe and try to live here.”
Right Sector
The Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK) is the militant wing of the Right Sector, a far-right wing, ultranationalist organization founded in 2013. Today, the DUK is an official part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But in the years following the Euromaidan, even as other militias split or merged into the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Right Sector remained independent. Though Right Sector’s prolonged consternation with Ukrainian authorities eventually mellowed, the organization’s ultranationalist, neo-Nazi ideology remained strong.
Right Sector rails against the LGBT community and feminism, even crediting the war in Ukraine for slowing the spread of tolerance by causing the departure of “most supporters of feminism and LGBT”. Human rights watchdog organizations have cited Right Sector’s role in many violent, racist attacks, noted that some municipalities have used members of far-right groups as street police, and complained that Ukrainian authorities have prosecuted activists attacked by far-right groups while taking no action against their far-right attackers.
Right Sector has an active youth outreach program with chapters throughout the country. Like Centuria, Right Sector places heavy emphasis on nationalist indoctrination of youth. “Right Sector seeks to educate the youth and eliminate the internal occupation,” said one DUK militant whose Instagram username features both “white boy” and “88” (a numeric abbreviation for “Heil Hitler”). “That means the political forces that reduce the rights of our indigenous nation to a minimum.”
As with Azov and all other far-right militant groups in Ukraine, the current size of the DUK is unknown. The DUK consists of “combat units, reserve units, operational units, initiative groups for the creation of reserve units, training centers, local training bases, and other auxiliary structures.” New militants are actively being recruited. As with Azov, Right Sector mentions that it’s possible for soldiers in the Ukrainian Army and elsewhere to transfer into DUK.
The Other Carpathian Sich
“Alien, remember! The Ukrainian is the boss!” chanted black-clad men demonstrating against the Hungarian minority in Uzhgorod in 2017. The demonstrators were members of a second, distinct group named Carpathian Sich.
This Carpathian Sich existed pre-Euromaidan and has been responsible for many of the worst attacks against marginalized communities in Ukraine. Among the group’s stated activities are patrols to combat “ethnic crime.” Carpathian Sich often joins forces with Azov and Right Sector. In 2016, 300 members of the three groups marched through the streets of Uzhgorod, calling for the extermination of Hungarians.
Carpathian Sich founder Teras Deyak says that at the start of the war in February, Carpathian Sich reformatted into a military unit. Existing members took up arms, and volunteers approached Deyak to join. In the years before the war, Deyak actively participated in Carpathian Sich’s attacks on feminist demonstrations. In 2017, Deyak filmed attacking people inside a bar in Uzhgorod and yelling “Sieg Heil!”
New Far-Right Groups Emerge
As the war drags on, there is an ever-growing number of new far-right militias appearing in Ukraine. Ilya*, a Russian militant belonging to the Russian Volunteer Corps, a new unit of far-right Russians fighting against Russia in Ukraine, has a tattoo on his left hand bearing an SS logo and the numbers 14 (“14 words”) and 88. In one of the photos on his Instagram, he is standing in front of an American flag. 14, 88, and SS are written on his ear protection.
Still, Ilya balked at being labeled a neo-Nazi based on his use of neo-Nazi insignia. “1488 is a lifestyle,” he said. “Muslims kill people all the time, but no one is trying to cancel the Islamic religion. And the world is determined to commit genocide against white Slavs, so this lifestyle is necessary,” apparently referencing the inherently white supremacist “Great Replacement” theory.
There’s Nordstorm, co-founded by an Azov Centuria militant from Latvia. “Nordstorm is more radical than Centuria. “We are engaged in more right-wing, radical actions,” he said in an interview. “The things we do are illegal, and I can’t say what they are. But the people who know Nordstorm know what we do very well.”
Additionally, white supremacists are plentiful within militant groups in Ukraine that aren’t inherently far right, like the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, a unit of Belarusian volunteers. One Belarusian volunteer with the Kastuś Kalinoŭski posted collection of horrifically racist poetry on his Instagram account. Excerpted from one: “Once in the white Europe, enslaved by the Jew. They broke in like their own home. Open doors cannot be closed.”
In short, Ukraine’s far-right is a growing problem, and it’s much bigger than the Azov Regiment alone.
“Here comes the myth that we’re Nazis,” said Boris* an Azov militant and member of Misanthropic Division, frustrated by our questions about the use of white supremacist symbols. “Russians confuse nationalism and Nazism.” We asked why so many nationalists in Ukraine would get Swastika tattoos, express admiration for the SS, and use 1488 if they weren’t neo-Nazis.
The interview is behind a paywall and I’ve not been able to access it to read directly. I’ve read a few articles in English speaking media summarizing a few points from it. Below is Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s summary of Alexander Mercouris’ commentary on the interview as it relates to Russia, the Minsk Agreements and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Angela Merkel, former German chancellor, has given an interview with Die Spiegel in which she indicates that had she been in control the crisis would not have taken place. She mentioned her initiative with Macron to get a conversation going between Russia and the EU in 2021. She discovered that the Russians by that time were skeptical and doubtful whether she would be able to deliver on her promises, given that she would not be chancellor for much longer. She was regretful that she ran into opposition from the Baltic States, from Poland, from the Netherlands which made dialog with the Russians impossible. She also talked about the Minsk agreements, which she largely authored, about how by 2021 the Minsk agreement had been hollowed out (Ukraine’s Poroshenko has openly admitted he never intended to honor it anyway) and she indicates she was looking for some form of Minsk III.
Mercouris considers that Merkel lacks understanding of how Russia thinks about these things. He recalls how Macron offended the Russians intensely by telling Putin to forget about Minsk II, to hand the Donbass back to Ukraine, and talk with Zelenskiy. Neither Merkel nor Macron ever understood how giving up on Minsk and letting Zelenkiy off the hook for Ukraine’s egregious failure to implement the peace agreement, poisoned relations with Russia. They seem to have thought that, provided the price was right, Russia could be persuaded to give up the Donbass, despite the clarity with which Russia had told Europe otherwise – reminiscent of the US attitude to the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 when the Americans thought they could get Russia to agree to abandon its support for Assad. Russia insisted that the joint interest was fighting the jihadists.
Merkel’s inability to understand Russia, to take its positions seriously, is critically revealing of Europe’s fateful disdain for its opponent. The West badly underestimates Russian persistence, and maintains wholly flawed misconceptions of the true nature of Russia and Russian institutions.
Link to Mercouris video here. Begins around 49 minute, 50 second mark.
