Inside the Extremist Group That Dreams of Ruling Ukraine
Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2019
Another Obama/Hillary state department regime change success story!
You can find it just off Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the city’s main square. A former hotel, three stories high, its thick metal front door emblazoned with a symbol the occupants continue to deny is the one used by several Waffen SS divisions and U.S. white supremacist terror group Aryan Nations (the Wolfsangel).
It’s called Cossack House, a social center for Ukraine’s far-right Azov movement.
Through the cold, dark lobby is a site “to develop yourself,” as the group’s Facebook page declares, “a place where you can express yourself!” There’s a gym, a shop that sells far-right music and clothing, an art studio and even a massage room. Upstairs, overlooking a courtyard that hosts concerts during less snowy times of year, is a literature club with a classroom and small library.
It is here where Haaretz heard firsthand from the movement’s members about what they’re up to, and how they like – and don’t like – to be discussed.
“We have always been dissatisfied by the way Western media represent our movement,” Azov’s international secretary, Olena Semenyaka, tells Haaretz. “They label us as far-right, sometimes as a neo-Nazi movement,” she says. “Of course that’s a misconception. We are new nationalists.”
But these “new nationalists” seem to act an awful lot like the old ones. They continue to form international connections with open anti-Semites and Nazi sympathizers. They promote and encourage the works of virulently anti-Semitic Nazi figures. They make Hitler salutes and “Sieg Heil” chants behind closed doors. Members even muse that some Jews would not be allowed to stay in Ukraine if they ever seized power.
Hired muscle
The was formed in 2014 in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forceful annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine with Russian-led proxy forces. With Ukraine’s army lacking firepower and in tatters, Azov quickly earned a reputation as one of the most committed fighting forces on the Ukrainian side. But it also became known as a place where self-described neo-Nazis from home and abroad had been welcomed into the fold.
Almost five years on, Azov’s influence in Ukraine has only grown. The original battalion is now an official Ukrainian National Guard formation. In 2016, Azov formed a political party, the National Corps, headed by Azov fighter (and former head of the neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine organization) Andriy Biletsky, though the party barely registers in polls. And last year, the Azov movement made waves with the introduction of the National Militia – a street force that Semenyaka described as an “affiliated paramilitary structure” in a January Facebook post.
The Azov movement, observers tell Haaretz, has benefited from its close relationship with Arsen Avakov, the country’s interior minister and arguably Ukraine’s second-most powerful man. He has connections with Biletsky and other Azov figures dating back to his time as regional governor in Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second-largest city), when Biletsky’s Patriot of Ukraine organization cooperated with the local administration, acting as muscle in business and political disputes.
When Avakov became interior minister in 2014, he also became Azov’s chief political patron. Under his watch, former Patriot of Ukraine associates have found themselves in positions of power, like the current deputy minister of internal affairs, Vadym Troyan.
“Avakov resigning would solve 80 percent of the problem,” says Anya Hrytsenko, a Ukrainian researcher who studies the far right. Under Avakov’s protection, she says, Azov has been able to expand its operations and act with impunity. Over the past year, Azov-affiliated groups have assaulted activists, forcibly shut down drug rehabilitation clinics and violently ejected Roma (or “Gypsy scum,” as they called them) from camps…
But at an Azov-affiliated neo-Nazi concert in Kiev in December – organized by the Militant Zone label that has its brick-and-mortar store in Azov’s Cossack House – the neo-Nazi imagery, caricature or not, was on open display. Haaretz found multiple pictures and videos online of fans giving Hitler salutes and shouting “Sieg Heil” at the concert, Many were also wearing clothes emblazoned with far-right imagery, including swastikas.
The concert featured neo-Nazi bands from across Eastern and Western Europe, including Der Stürmer – whose songs include “Dawning Israel’s Perdition” and “Piles of Pigheads in the Synagogue.” It also featured a Russian-Ukrainian band headed by Alexey Lyovkin, a Russian neo-Nazi who came to Ukraine to fight for Azov in 2014.
“Ukraine is now the only place where ultra-right forces have the opportunity to get together,” Lyovkin confidently told an Italian journalist in January 2018. “I think our movement can change the future of Europe.”
Blaming Israel
The Azov movement’s representatives also sing a different tune to their friends than to foreign journalists. Last year, Semenyaka gave an interview to the Nordic Resistance Movement – a neo-Nazi movement now banned in Finland – in which she said Israel was responsible for the refugee influx in Europe and lamented that “having had a minority of Jews involved within our nationalist political sphere has damaged our reputation.” She also said that if Azov ever came to power, Jews with ties to international capital “would not be allowed to stay” in Ukraine…
“We are on the march to power,” Semenyaka bragged to the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement last year. “And we will either have to get there by parliament or by other means.”
Be seeing you
Hillary and Victoria Nuland Well, this is another fine mess you have gotten us into Hillary!
MCViewPoint 
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