“De-Nazis and Demilitarize Ukraine”. On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified it in this way. russian army military attack against your neighbor. This argument, tirelessly repeated by the Kremlin, exaggerates the real existence of militias. neo-nazis They say they are fighting on the side of Kiev, but they are trying to hide that the ultra problem also extends to Russia.
This issue surfaced at the heart of the Ukrainian uprising in 2014. Euromaidan. At the time, hooligans from ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi football clubs formed the Azov Battalion to fight against the pro-Russian government. Victor Yanukovych and separatists declaring the independence of the regions Donetsk y Lugansk, east of Ukraine. Its first commander, Andriy Biletsky, went so far as to say that his country’s mission was to “lead the white race in the final crusade against the Semitic subhumans.”
His important military role Donbas They managed to retake the city Mariupol– and the lack of soldiers in the regular army led to the formation of the government. Petro Poroshenko To include the Ukrainian National Guard in the regiment, under the control and financing of Kiev. The decision legitimized this armed group and has since received military training from Western countries such as Canada. The UN accused Azov of raping and torturing prisoners in Donbas and persecuting the Roma and LGBTQ communities.
Ukraine is a multi-ethnic country where the government is democratically elected, anti-Semitism is banned, and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. “Government and society tolerated these groups as an instrumental element because they feared the threat from Russia, but they do not share their opinions,” he says. Abel RiuHe is the head of the Catalonia Global Institute think tank. In the 2019 elections, in which Zelenski prevailed, the far right received only 2.15 percent of the vote. However, Riu points out that over-legitimating allows for a historical revisionism that normalizes the glorification of figures such as the following. Stepan BanderaUkrainian independence leader who fought against the Soviets and collaborated with the Nazis in their pogroms against the Jews.
Ukraine, ultra pilgrimage site
Since 2014, Donbas has become a residential area. ultra pilgrimage Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other right-wing extremists from around the world flock to learn military tactics. “Instability in Ukraine extremists It’s the same training opportunities that instability in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have offered jihadist militants for years,” the researcher told the New York Times. Ali SufanFormer FBI agent who has been tracking down Bin Laden and al-Qaeda for years.
In Ukraine, neo-Nazi militias like Azov or Misanthropic Section they used digital propaganda to create an international guerrilla network. The first group is estimated to have increased from 300 soldiers to 2500. Many are supporters of Ukrainian neo-fascist parties. Pravy Sector HE svoboda, minority but very noisy but they also come from outside. According to the SITE intelligence group, the war accelerated this activity, and ultras from the USA, Spain, Germany or Sweden showed interest in joining these ranks. “I haven’t noticed so much recruiting in the entire movement since ISIS declared its caliphate in 2014 and gathered supporters around the world,” said its director. Rita Katzal ‘Washington Post’.
The case of Miguel, 23, residing in Segur de Calafell, went to Krakow on March 5, and from there “the Ukrainian people and the West. ”, he explained to CNN. He was arrested a few years ago for giving the Hitler salute while wearing the Hungarian neo-Nazi emblem in a synagogue during his graduation trip, ARA newspaper reported. Although the journalist Michael Ramos According to Juanjo Fernández, who identified how the Spanish Falangists engaged their members with the Ukrainian militia, Civil Guard sources greatly limit this phenomenon. “There is little capacity for extremist mobilization among fellow groups in Spain,” says a police source.
Global security threat
Internet Ultra is an essential part of recruiting strategy, as it is in digital spaces like Telegram, 4chan, and even TikTok. “The most obscene meme communities have been recreating themselves with the Ukraine war over the years, there are multiple ultranationalist groups that support both Ukraine and Russia,” he says. Iago Moreno, sociologist from Cambridge University. “These platforms are flooded with war pornography, explicit images of the dead, and brutal propaganda like I’ve never seen before, shared on accounts of neo-Nazi battalions.”
Experts warn that Ukraine has become a laboratory where ultras learn guerrilla tactics that they can then use to carry out acts of terrorism in their home country. In 2019, the G7 called on Ukraine to curb the spread of violent far-right groups on its territory, but the emergence of an all-out war against Russia lowered that concern as the last of the weapons sent by the West to support Kiev has come to an end. the hands of these militias…
Russia goes to ultras
Russian propaganda equated Ukraine with a Nazi regime in order to completely discredit its military. Despite being caught, this strategy is not without irony. And some of the radicals who made a pilgrimage to Donbas to arm themselves prorussian separatists. It advocated a return to the Tsarist regime and was founded by St. It is the case of followers of the Russian Imperial Movement, a fierce ethno-nationalist organization that trained neo-Nazis from all over the world in camps near St.
This extreme right The global economy has multiple sensitivities and interests, and many supremacists have been drawn to Putinist Russia, which has for years supported a white, Christian, conservative society. Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former leader of the neo-Nazi paramilitary group The Base, who was seen wearing T-shirts with Putin’s face and urging his followers not to fight in Ukraine, was greeted as a resident.
Among Ukraine’s so-called gas purifiers Russia, Wagner GroupThe Kremlin’s paid mercenary militias that have waged Moscow’s dirty wars for years from Syria to Donbas. This group is headed by Dmitry Utkin, a self-confessed neo-Nazi, former director of Russian military intelligence (GRU) and a veteran of the wars that Putin devastated Chechnya. In 2016, he was rewarded by the Kremlin, which denied using its services.