War makes strange bedfellows, especially when viewed from opposite sides. According to this article, there are Nazi elements in Ukraine who are part of the Ukrainian military. Putin's rational for invading Ukraine is based the Russian view of the Nazi invasion during WW!!.
The fact is there are fierce fighting elements of the Ukrainian military who are Nazi's. However they are defending their President who is Jewish. Putin has framed his invasion around the Nazi invasion of Russia during WWII, not the Holocausts.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/ … k?icid=rss
It is a shame you posted this. It is one of the most pro-Russian pieces I have seen. The writer knows NOTHING about Ukraine. Trust me, you have more to worry about with Nazi behavior from the Russians than any other group of people in the world, except for maybe, China.
I hope you've read how Russa has treated Ukrainian civilians. What they've done to Ukrainian cities.
Elements of the Ukrainian army that are Nazi's? This is a total joke.
This upsets me because I hear daily of things Russians have done. I could tell you many stories. I help refugees when possible. If you heard the horror stories I have heard, you would have an entirely different take on this article.
RMN: I can appreciate your sentiment. This is everything that you wanted to know about the Asov Battalion, but were afraid to ask.. It is made up of mainly of Neo Nazi sympathizers, but is fiercely fighting against Russians to hold Donbas and Mariupol regions.. I have removed the ads and I have copied this from CBS News, 3/22/2022
Since Vladimir Putin ordered his military to invade Ukraine on February 24, his government has stubbornly defined the attack as a "special operation" to liberate Russia's neighbors from the clutches of a criminal regime beholden to "neo-Nazis." But the premise for Putin's war, and his repeated insistence that Russia's military is carefully avoiding civilians with its artillery barrage, are belied by the reality on the ground in cities like Mariupol.
The southern port has been under siege by Russian forces for weeks, with officials and aid groups saying food, water, and electricity have all been cut to thousands of people still trapped there. Ukrainian authorities say at least 2,300 civilians have been killed in Mariupol alone, with some buried in mass graves amid the relentless shelling.
Still, Moscow sticks to its line: "Kyiv instructed the Nazi battalions in Mariupol to leave the city under the guise of civilians, including through humanitarian corridors," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Monday.
"More than 130,000 people are still held by the nationalist battalions [in Mariupol]. People are being held hostage, they are simply not allowed out of the areas controlled by the Nazi battalions, threatened with executions and physical liquidation," Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-backed separatist regime in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, said a few hours later on Russian state TV.
Russia's alternate reality
References to "Nazi battalions" appear in virtually all Russian news reports about the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has doubled down on the narrative that Russia is "liberating" Ukraine from Nazis, and that narrative has maintained a consistent focus on one extremist militia in particular - the Azov Battalion.
Russian state TV anchors have worked around the clock to portray Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who is Jewish — as a leader of a neo-Nazi-leaning government infiltrated by the Azov group.
To Russian viewers with little or no access to alternative sources of information, it may indeed appear that Russia's soldiers are fighting hordes of Nazis who are using Ukrainians as "human shields" and committing atrocities against Ukraine's many Russian speakers.
How widespread are far-right sentiments in Ukraine, and how much influence does the Azov Battalion really have?
What is the Azov Battalion?
"There are no Nazi battalions in Ukraine," said Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, which tracks the Russian military in Ukraine.
"There is [the Azov] regiment... There are [estimated] several thousand people who are in this regiment. It is indeed a group where many members adhere to nationalist and far-right views," Leviev said. "But a lot of people also join it because it is one of the most prepared and fit-for-war units."
The Azov Battalion rose to prominence in 2014, at the start of the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The country's armed forces, which at the time were woefully unprepared for battle, were taken by surprise when Russian-backed separatists started seizing swaths of territory in the Donbas area, along Russia's border.
The Azov Battalion stepped in. It was better-equipped and prepared to do much of the frontline fighting against the separatists. The unit has its roots in aggressive fan clubs that support regional soccer teams, known as "ultras," but as the fighting ramped up, they attracted various far-right activists, who often made no secret of their neo-Nazi sympathies.
The militia was founded by Andriy Biletsky, an ultra-nationalist political figure who previously led groups including the openly neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly (SNA), which preached an ideology of racial purity for Ukraine.
In 2014, the battalion was backed by Ukraine's controversial then-Minister of Interior Affairs Arsen Avakov and was financed by several Ukrainian oligarchs. The new benefactors included some wealthy Ukrainians of Jewish descent, who appeared to be prioritizing the group's efficacy in the battle for Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas over its ideology.
In late 2014, Azov was expanded from a battalion into a regiment, and was officially embedded into the Ukrainian National Guard — an official law enforcement agency, but not part of Ukraine's national armed forces.
In the wave of Azov's battlefield successes in Donbas, Biletsky won a seat in the Ukrainian parliament as an independent candidate in September 2014. That gave Moscow more ammunition to tar Ukraine's central government as sympathetic to Nazis. Biletsky was not re-elected when his term ended five years later.
Over the course of the grinding eight-year war in Donbas, the United Nations human rights commissioner's office documented a litany of human rights violations by both sides in the fight, including allegations of the "extensive use of civilian buildings and locations… and looting of civilian property, leading to displacement" by Azov Battalion forces.
Azov on the digital front
Off the battlefield, Azov became known for its presence on social media, where it regularly posted slickly produced videos of marches and other events.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it has pivoted to posting high-quality videos, often shot by drones and professional cameras, capturing both the devastation of Russia's aerial bombardment, and successful counterattacks on the invading Russian forces.
The Kremlin has seized on the Azov origins of the content to push its narrative that Ukrainian forces are all neo-Nazi sympathizers.
"Azov has achieved levels of mainstream media exposure far in excess of the group's minimal electoral support," Oleksiy Kuzmenko, a Washington D.C.-based investigative reporter who has tracked the battalion for years, wrote in a commentary for the Atlantic Council.
"The far-right in general, and their apparent impunity, have significantly damaged Ukraine's international reputation and left the country vulnerable to hostile narratives exaggerating the role of extremist groups in Ukraine," he concluded.
The Azov group's media presence, in particular, made it something of a magnet for far-right minded people abroad, Kuzmenko said, with foreign men seeking to join the militia to gain combat experience. In a report for the investigative group Bellingcat, Kuzmenko and Ukrainian organizations found links between the Azov Battalion and white supremacist groups in the U.S.
Leviev said the militia's influence had declined in recent years, however, after its main backer Avakov was essentially forced to retire.
Overall, the influence of various officials, including Avakov, outside of Azov, is very limited," Leviev said. "There were no Nazi battalions roaming around the streets and trying to embed into [the government] system, as the Kremlin is trying to portray."
"So if not for this war, this stage of the war, the far-right movement would have eventually vanished," he said.
Let me respond honestly and say, "I don't care."
Rather than believe the propaganda of Russia, why don't you focus on the hard reality of what Russians have actually done to Ukrainians? The mass murder of innocent civilians. The mass rape of innocent Ukrainian women. Intentional destruction of hospitals, apartment buildings, schools and even playgrounds. These are things that are well documented.
I regularly hear the horror stories of what people are experiencing there at the hands of the Russian army.
THEN someone like YOU has the unmitigated audacity to bring up that a Ukrainian battalion, fighting and dying in the war with the Russians, has neo-nazi views.
Why would anyone care? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look to me? With millions of refugees, tens of thousands of civilian deaths, entire cities destroyed, and YOU worry about political beliefs of people fighting against the Russians?
Do you know there are battalions of men who have been released from prison to fight the Russians? Think about it, murderers, rapists and thieves fighting and dying to protect the Ukraine from Russia.
Who cares? IF they are willing to fight the Russians, let them fight.
I like how the article ends.
"There were no Nazi battalions roaming around the streets and trying to embed into [the government] system, as the Kremlin is trying to portray."
I have always had the belief that liberals aren't the sharpest tools in the shed and have a limited ability to comprehend reality. You have simply validated that belief.
RMN; Thanks Mike for the insults. You missed my point completely. I was pointing out the irony of this war based on what Putin is saying and doing. My heart bleeds just as much as yours does for the Ukrainian people and the way they are being treated.
I appreciate your emotional involvement in this, but needless insults of liberals is not going to help you or me or the Ukrainian people. I believe Putin is committing genocide and needs to pay the price for it.
The problem is he has justified this war to the Russian people based on the WWII German invasion of Russia where Russian troops were able to repel the Germans, It was called the Great Patriotic War and he uses it today to motivate the Russian people and his Troops to commit these atrocities'. The Holocausts is not even as important to them as The Great Patriotic War.
I have learned all of this from doing the research by "not being the sharpest tools in the shed." That's why the first sentence in my introduction is: War makes strange bedfellows, especially when viewed from opposite sides.. Now do you get my point?
"The fact is there are fierce fighting elements of the Ukrainian military who are Nazi's. However they are defending their President who is Jewish. Putin has framed his invasion around the Nazi invasion of Russia during WWII, not the Holocausts."
You are right. I overreacted. I get your point.
I've seen a lot of things in this war and have heard so many horror stories from refugees I am a bit intense about it. My experience goes beyond what you see in the media.
I mistakenly saw an attack on the Ukraine where there was none.
I was wrong.
Mike: It's O.K. I know where you are coming from and respect your viewpoint. I believe Putin is holding the world hostage with his nuclear threat. I think we need to call his bluff. He is crazy, but I hope not that crazy.
He is definitely committing genocide when he starts killing the children. They are the future of Ukraine and he does not want them to survive. Again the irony is he is acting just like Hitler with his final solution of the Jews.
I have watched a lot of YouTube videos and I want to believe even though Ukraine is out numbered, they are smarter and more tactful then Putin's troops. I hope they can hold out.
Putin has a lot of highly sophisticated weaponry, but they don't know how to use it. I have seen them take out Su35's aircraft and state of the art helicopters because they don't know how to use them.
Nobody wins believing propaganda from a communist country either.
True. Nor from a "free" country, a dictatorship or from any other government entity.
Never forget that propaganda is designed and intended to convince listener of something, and that truth will always take a backseat to what government wants.
This is unfortunately true and when those of us go digging for more than the canned MSM messaging we find that things aren't so black and white.
Would Russia/Putin have acted in such a way against Ukraine if Crimea's secession had been accepted by "the West"?
We don't know.
What I know is that Zelenskyy in March of 2021 determined that Crimea would be taken by force, announced these plans, and put them into law.
Ukraine began its build up for war and Russia began its build up along the borders in response.
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Ukrainian forces hadn't begun a mass artillery bombardment on the "rebel" forces in the Donbas region on February 16 2022?
We don't know.
Its not that I think Putin is a nice guy, or that he is innocent or in the right, but I am saying we cannot trust our own News sources to tell us the complete entirety of what is going on... what we will get is biased, and absent of many facts regarding this war.
Don't think for a second that OUR government doesn't have an agenda in this fight, they do, and they have strongly influenced making this conflict happen.
Propagating war is insane. Violence is insane. You can't justify these acts.
Thanks to the 24 hour media cycle. This war is different than other wars, because the media makes it up front and personal on both sides.
The use of the word Nazism in this conflict is just pure propaganda; scaremonger.
Nazism is a form of Fascism; both are classified as far-right politics; as these Wikipedia articles make clear:-
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Po … l_spectrum
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
I imagine you are one of the many people on these forums who don't write articles for magazines. FYI...when you have to cite a source, MOST publications refuse to let you use or cite Wikipedia as a source. It is not reliable or accurate.
I beg to differ, it's far more reliable than a lot of the right-wing crap that Americans cite as sources; many of which are either conspiracy theorist websites, propaganda or fake news websites.
Wikipedia is Objective, not subjective and emotive like many sites that many right-wing supporters refer to; and to get anything approved by the moderators on the Wikipedia site it needs to well referenced from reliable sources; hence why Wikipedia banned the Daily Mail as a 'reliable source' a few years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ … or-website
I only speak from personal experience with writing for professional publications.
Again, like it or not, with MANY publications Wikipedia is NOT considered a viable source to use or quote.
Who moderates the Wikipedia moderators? There are many things published on Wikipedia that are simply wrong.
Yeah, I know that there are sometimes minor errors and omissions in Wikipedia, but they're generally not significant enough to detract from the general accuracy of the information e.g. the Wikipedia articles are factual and objective, based on good reference sources and they don't contain propaganda or fake news.
Besides, its not as if these forums on HubPages are part of a professional publication; you get many people quoting and accepting a lot of dodgy sources in these forums. Besides, a lot of the American news media, and some British news media don't 'fact check', or don't fact check very well and print propaganda (twisted facts/half truths etc.) and sometimes even fake news with impunity.
If you're not satisfied with the Wikipedia's definition of 'Fascism', are you going to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of 'Fascism'?
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10 … 0practice.
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