CARTOON: Biden Lifts Ban On Arming & Training Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade
Less than a month after D-Day observances of World War II sacrifices, Biden administration pumps weapons to modern day Nazis in Ukraine.
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
NeoNazi Brigade welcomed the decision, saying US military assistance will increase its 'combat effectiveness'
(Editor Note: Adolf Hitler may not have survived WW II, but as the United States, Israel and Nato demonstrate every day, he won it. — Mark Taylor)
By Dave DeCamp
AntiWar.com (6/11/24)
The State Department announced Monday that it has formally lifted a ban on arming and training the Azov Brigade, an infamous Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit.
The Azov Brigade celebrated the news, saying the “eligibility for US assistance will not only increase Azov’s combat effectiveness.”
“This is a new page in the history of our unit. Azov is becoming more professional and more effective in defending Ukraine against the invaders,” Azov wrote on X.
The Azov Brigade was founded as a militia in 2014, known as the Azov Battalion, to fight Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas and was later absorbed by Ukraine’s National Guard.
The military unit’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, is known for his neo-Nazi and white supremacist rhetoric. In 2014, Biletsky was also the leader of an ultra-nationalist organization known as the Social National Assembly (SNA), which dissolved in 2015.
Members of the Azov battalion with flags of the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol attend a Volunteer Day rally in central Kiev, Ukraine on March 14, 2020. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
BBC reported in 2014 that the SNA wrote in online publications that it aimed “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital.” The group also sought “to punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man.”
Biletsky was elected to the Ukrainian parliament in 2014 and later left Azov due to a ban on elected officials serving in the military. He became the leader of the National Corps Party in 2016, which he still leads today, and lost his seat in parliament in 2019.
Supporters of the Azov Brigade have tried to rebrand the military unit and distance it from Biletsky. But the regiment still uses the Wolfsangel symbol, which is associated with neo-Nazi ideology, and its current leader has been associated with the wider Azov movement going back to 2014.
“The current leader of the Azov Regiment, Denis ‘Redis’ Prokopenko, is part of the core of the Azov movement since 2014, and served under commanders who went on to lead the Azov movement political and street wings,” Oleksiy Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian-American journalist told CNN in 2022.
US assistance to Azov was banned by an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. “White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said in 2018 when the bill became law. “I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the US from providing arms and training assistance to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.”
The State Department claimed on Monday that Azov passed vetting under the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to military units that have committed human rights abuses. “After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the US Department of State,” the State Department said.
US military equipment has ended up in the hands of other neo-Nazi-linked groups in Ukraine, including the Russian Volunteer Corps, a militia made up of pro-Ukraine Russian-born fighters, some being Azov veterans. The RVC has used US armored vehicles in raids on Russian territory.
Neo-Nazi Militia Used US Armored Vehicles In 2023 Attack On Russia’s Belgorod Region
Financial Times reports that the Russian Volunteer Corps includes self-avowed neo-Nazis
By Dave DeCamp
AntiWar.com (5/23/23)
A neo-Nazi militia launched a cross-border raid from Ukraine into Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday using US armored vehicles, Financial Times reported Tuesday.
Denis Nikitin, leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, said his fighters who attacked Belgorod were in possession of US armored vehicles, including at least two M1224 MaxxPro armored vehicles, known as MRAPs, and several Humvees. Videos and pictures posted by Russia’s military corroborated Nikitin’s claims.
Nikitin is a well-known extremist who has ties to neo-Nazis across the world and has his own white nationalist clothing line. According to Financial Times, the Russian Volunteer Corps “includes self-avowed neo-Nazis.”
The group was formed in 2022 and is said to be comprised of Russian citizens who have volunteered to fight for Kyiv. Some of its members signed up to fight in the Donbas war back in 2014 and are Azov Battalion veterans.
Nikitin would not say how his fighters acquired the US-made armored vehicles. Ukrainian intelligence officials have acknowledged that they cooperate with the Russian Volunteer Corps and another group that launched the assault, the Freedom of Russia Legion.
“Of course, we communicate with them. Of course, we share some information,” Andriy Chernyak, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, told Financial Times. “And, one might say, we even cooperate.”
Chernyak denied supplying the Russian volunteers with equipment and claimed that they launched the operation on their own. However, The Times of London reported that Discord leaks show Ukraine had been planning attacks on Russian territory using Russian volunteer groups for some time. One document said the Russian citizens fighting for Ukraine are armed with “various qualitative types of NATO weapons.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about the news of US weapons being used in attacks on Belgorod and said he was “skeptical” of the reports. He insisted the US does not “encourage or enable strikes inside of Russia” but said it’s “up to Ukraine to decide how to conduct this war.”
The deception of us US citizens for all these decades, even longer if we realize all the wars this country fought and paid for in blood and money and freedoms were for Capitalists' interests.
So many lies. They aren't even hiding (well the Democrats are trying to) the fact that they are taking our freedoms away at a much faster rate. I guess Biden wants to up-stage Trump on that.
Most people who point the finger at Trump for being "literally Hitler" (which in various points is nonetheless valid) are hypocrites who are eager to overlook the Ukronazi menace to humanity and its financiers. Never forget what the Obama bin Biden cabal did in 2014 and are doing now.