Azov, Ukraine's most prominent ultranationalists

[Hatshepsut]

Azov, Ukraine's Most Prominent Ultranationalist Group

KYIV -- Robert Rundo, the muscly leader of a California-based white-supremacist group that refers to itself as the "premier MMA (mixed martial arts) club of the Alt-Right," unleashed a barrage of punches against his opponent.

But Rundo, a 28-year-old Huntington Beach resident who would be charged and arrested in October over a series of violent attacks in his hometown, Berkeley, and San Bernardino in 2017, wasn't fighting on American streets.

It was April 27 and Rundo, whose Rise Above Movement (RAM) has been described by ProPublica as "explicitly violent," was swinging gloved fists at a Ukrainian contender in the caged ring of a fight club associated with the far-right ultranationalist Azov group in Kyiv.

A video of Rundo's fight, which was streamed live on Facebook (below), shows that the American lost the bout. But for Rundo, who thanked his hosts with a shout of "Slava Ukrayini!" (Glory to Ukraine), it was a victory of another sort: RAM's outreach tour, which included stops in Italy and Germany to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday and spread its alt-right agenda, brought the two radical groups closer together.

For the Ukrainians, too, the benefits extended outside the ring. It marked a step toward legitimizing Azov among its counterparts in the West and set in motion what appears to be its next project: the expansion of its movement abroad.

"We think globally," Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for Azov's political wing, the National Corps, told RFE/RL in an interview at one of the group's Kyiv offices last week.

The Rundo fight has received fresh scrutiny following an FBI criminal complaint against him unsealed last month that preceded his arrest. In it, Special Agent Scott Bierwirth wrote that Azov's military wing is "believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations."

Washington has armed Ukraine with Javelin antitank missile systems and trained its armed forces as they fight Russia-backed separatists in the east.

But it has banned arms from going to Azov members and forbidden them from participating in U.S.-led military training because of their far-right ideology.

It was Azov's Semenyaka who hosted Rundo along with fellow Americans Michael Miselis and Benjamin Daley, RAM members who participated in last year's "Unite The Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that was the backdrop for the death of 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer.

This month, in Kyiv, she hosted and translated for American Greg Johnson, a white nationalist who edits the website Counter-Currents, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "an epicenter of 'academic' white nationalism."

Over the past year, she's made several outreach trips to Western Europe to meet with far-right groups and spread Azov's ultranationalist message.

And when she's not doing it herself, Semenyaka said, that task is sometimes given to Denis Nikitin, a prominent Russian soccer hooligan and MMA fighter who founded the white nationalist clothing label White Rex and has a garnered a large following across Europe and the United States. In November 2017, the two traveled together to Warsaw and participated in the Europe Of The Future 2 conference organized by Polish white supremacist group and "ally" Szturmowcy (Stormtroopers), where they were meant to speak alongside American Richard Spencer, Semenyaka said. But Polish authorities barred Spencer from entering the country and he was unable to attend.

Often in Kyiv when he's not traveling through Europe or visiting family in Germany, Nikitin operates as a sort of unofficial Azov ambassador-at-large and organizes MMA bouts at the Reconquista Club, the ultranationalist haunt where Rundo fought. A combination restaurant, sports center, and fight club, Semenyaka said Rundo and Nikitin met there and "exchanged ideas."

In the current climate, with an apparent shift toward nationalism in parts of Europe, "it's possible for far-right leaders to come to power now and -- we hope -- form a coalition," Semenyaka told RFE/RL. And Azov, she added, "wants a position at the front of this movement."

From Battlefield To Political Arena

The Azov Battalion was formed in May 2014 in response to the Russia-backed separatist advance sweeping across eastern Ukraine. Comprised of volunteers, it has roots in a group of hard-core, far-right soccer fans, including many violent hooligans, commonly known in Eastern Europe as "ultras."

With Ukraine's weak military at the time caught flat-footed, Azov and other such battalions did much of the heavy fighting in the early days of the war, which has killed more than 10,300 people.

But it was Azov that attracted those of far-right persuasion, including at least three Americans and many others from Western nations. One such fighter was Mikael Skillt, a Swede who trained as a sniper in the Swedish Army and previously described himself as an "ethnic nationalist."

Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for Azov's political wing, the National Corps

The Azov Battalion flaunts a symbol similar to that of the former Nazi Wolfsangel. (The group claims it is an amalgam of the letters N and I for "national idea.") It has been accused by international human rights groups, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), of committing and allowing serious human rights abuses, including torture.

Following a 2015 deal known as the Minsk Accords that was meant to be a road map to end the fighting but did little more than turn down the intensity, the Azov Battalion was officially incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard and its leadership shifted focus from the battlefield to the political arena.

The Azov National Corps entered the political fray in October 2016, appointing battalion commander Andriy Biletsky to lead it. Biletsky was previously tied to other far-right groups and, in 2010, reportedly said that the nation's mission was to "lead the white races of the world in a final crusade...against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans]."

The party incorporated two other far-right organizations, including Patriot of Ukraine, which according to the Kharkiv Human Rights Group "espoused xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideas and was engaged in violent attacks against migrants, foreign students in Kharkiv, and those opposing its views."

As RFE/RL reported at the time, the National Corps' inaugural ceremony arguably had pomp more reminiscent of 1930s Germany than of postwar democracy. It included nationalist chants, raised fists, and a torchlit march through central Kyiv.

In January, in another flashy ceremony, Azov introduced a new paramilitary force that it calls the National Militia. On a snowy evening, some 600 of mostly young men in matching fatigues marched from Kyiv's central Independence Square to a lighted fortress on a hillside in the Ukrainian capital, where they swore an oath to clean the streets of illegal alcohol, drug traffickers, and illegal gambling establishments.

While not officially part of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry or any other government body legally authorized to enforce the law, the National Militia has more often than not been allowed to establish what it considers "Ukrainian order" on the streets of cities across the country. In many cases, that has meant attacking LGBT events and Romany camps, actions for which members of the group have not been prosecuted.

Combined, these groups are known as the "Azov movement," which includes more than 10,000 active members, according to Semenyaka.

'State Within The State'

But Azov's success in growing the movement so far has not translated into much political success at home.

While the party has not yet been tested in parliamentary elections, less than 1 percent of eligible voters said they would vote for National Corps or its fellow far-right group Right Sector, according to June polling by Kyiv-based Razumkov Center.

Those groups didn't fare much better in July, when GFK Ukraine asked whether voters would support an alliance of National Corps, Right Sector, and a third far-right party, Svoboda, and only 2 percent responded positively.

At the same time, however, Azov believes its influence has grown. In an October 29 post on Facebook, Semenyaka went so far as to say that "just within 4 years, the Azov Movement has become a small state in the state."

Much of the success has come from recruiting new, mostly young, members, who it hopes will come to the polls in next year's parliamentary elections.

Azov has done so with youth camps, including some that teach children as young as 9 years old military tactics and far-right ideology, recreation centers, lecture halls, and far-right education programs.

It has also utilized the reach of social media, particularly Facebook and Telegram, where the group recruits and promotes patriotism, nationalism, and a sport-focused lifestyle. Much of that effort caters to Ukrainians coming of age in a time of war and as illiberal governments rise on the country's periphery, said Ukrainian sociologist Anya Hrytsenko, who researches far-right groups.

"Azov has made far-right nationalism fashionable, and they have been strategic in how they portray themselves, shedding the typical neo-Nazi trappings," Hrytsenko told RFE/RL. "This has helped them to move from a subculture to the mainstream."

Explaining that strategy, Semenyaka, who has been photographed holding a flag with a swastika and making a Nazi salute, said that "more radical" language was used previously, such as during the height of the war in 2014, when the Azov Battalion needed fighters, "because it was required by the situation."

Now, she said, the strategy is to "moderate" in order to appeal to a broader base in Ukraine and abroad. But only to an extent.

"We are trying to become mainstream without compromising some of our core ideas," she continued, adding that "radical statements...scare away more of society."

And in its recalibration, Azov is not only thinking of Ukrainians but of like-minded groups abroad. Hence the addition of members like Semenyaka and collaboration with Nikitin, who literally speak the language of their counterparts abroad.

Members of the Azov Battalion attend a protest against local elections in separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine in Kyiv on May 20, 2016

"Their English has gotten better," Hrytsenko said, referring to Azov members behind the group's Western outreach.

Nikitin, who could not be reached for an interview, is a Russian and German speaker.

Another thing that has helped, Hrytsenko noted, is that Ukraine's break from Russia and move toward the European Union has allowed Ukrainians visa-free travel, making Azov's outreach easier logistically.

Making Friends In The West

In recent months, Semenyaka and other Azov members have taken advantage of that, making several visits to EU countries to meet numerous European counterparts, according to investigations by RFE/RL and the open-source investigative group Bellingcat.

Semenyaka participated in and blogged about the Young Europe Forum in Dresden in August alongside far-right sympathizers from groups in Germany, Italy, and Austria. Specifically, she said she has met with those from groups that Azov considers close allies -- for instance, Greece's Golden Dawn, Italy's CasaPound, Poland's Szturmowcy, and Germany's National Democratic Party and Alternative For Germany.

Other Azov members have traveled to meet counterparts in Baltic states and Croatia, she added.

Besides speaking about their shared ideologies, Semenyaka said, Azov members in some cases have "shared experiences in creating territorial defense forces," a reference to the groups battalion and vigilante street units.

Asked about the FBI allegations in the criminal complaint first reported by The New York Times -- that Azov was "training and radicalizing" American far-right groups -- she said it was not and dared U.S. authorities to "provide real evidence of this."

In the case of Rundo, Miselis, and Daley, Semenyaka said, "they came to learn our ways" and "showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has."

The Azov Battalion flaunts a symbol similar to that of the former Nazi Wolfsangel

On the visit, the three Americans also attended a concert by the white-nationalist metal band Sokyra Peruna, where concertgoers made Nazi salutes and waved Nazi flags. They also posed for photographs to promote Rundo's The Right Brand clothing line at Kyiv's Independence Square, joined Azov members at Kyiv's famous outdoor gym, Kachalka, for a weight-training session, and fought at the Reconquista Club. Rundo even got White Rex's Viking warrior logo tattooed on his left calf.

"But there was no military training," Semenyaka insisted.

Counter-Currents' Johnson was perhaps the most recent American to ask for Azov's help. In a rare public appearance, the alt-right ideologue visited Kyiv at the invitation of Semenyaka to lecture on October 16 about his Manifesto Of White Nationalism. Semenyaka translated for Johnson, who spoke to a small but crowded room at Azov's Plomin (Flame) cultural center.

In a video of the event published on Azov's Plomin YouTube channel, Johnson, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as "one of the leading voices of the far-right" and "an international figure for white nationalism," doesn't hide his motive for the trip: to learn from Ukraine's ultranationalists and their successes.

"This is not a speaking tour, it's a listening tour. I really want to learn how maybe we can do things better in the United States and Western Europe," Johnson said, lamenting the state of the alt-right in the United States.

"It was a very, very influential and powerful movement for a very short time," he said of America's alt-right movement, without providing a precise time frame.

A woman says goodbye to a volunteer from the Social National Assembly before he and others were sent to eastern Ukraine to join the ranks of the Azov Battalion, in Kyiv in June 2014

"And at the peak of it, we had a network that extended all the way to the office of the president," he continued, in what appeared to be a reference to Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and alt-right figure.

"There were very few degrees of separation between people who were making ideas...and people who were in a position to make political policy, and that was totally destroyed," Johnson added.

He praised Ukraine's far-right groups, who he said were capable of "real street activism."

Associations Too Much For Some In Azov

While Azov's cooperation with groups like RAM has been largely welcomed by the group's members, some have found it uncomfortable.

Skillt, the Swedish national who fought as a sniper in the Azov Battalion, is one of them.

"I don't mind [Azov] reaching out, but the ones they reach out to... Jesus," he told RFE/RL, in an allusion to RAM. He added that he had recently distanced himself from Azov because of that association and others with far-right groups in Europe.

Skillt, who runs a private intelligence agency in Kyiv and said his clients "really don't enjoy bad company," argued that the group has made a mistake by not reaching out more to right-wing conservatives who could help with "influential contacts in Europe [so] you don't get branded a neo-Nazi."

But Semenyaka described praise of Azov from foreign ultranationalist groups who are increasingly welcoming it as evidence that the organization is taking the right path. And she said it isn't about to let up.

Next, she said, Azov hopes to win over larger, more mainstream far-right and populist Western political forces who "can be our potential sympathizers."

"If crises like Brexit and the refugee problem continue, in this case, partnerships with nationalist groups in Europe can be a kind of platform for our entry into the European Union."

https://www.rferl.org/a/azov-ukraine-s-most-prominent-ultranationalist-group-sets-its-sights-on-u-s-europe/29600564.html

[Hatshepsut]

There's One Far-Right Movement That Hates the Kremlin


Delegates sing the Ukrainian national anthem during the first congress of the new political party National Corps, created from the members of Azov civil corps and veterans of Azov regiment in Kiev on October 14, 2016

Ukraine's Azov movement is hostile to Russia, friendly to neo-Nazis, and inspired by France's new right. It's not running in Ukraine's presidential elections because it plans to win power by playing a long game

KIEV, Ukraine—If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably snapped a photo of the very spot that's a symbol for a far-right movement more than 1,000 miles away.

It's here along the banks of the Seine, at Notre Dame Cathedral, that an aging French man decided to make what he called a “sacrifice” a few years ago. Before Tuesday's devastating fire it might have been the most recent time the centuries-old cathedral made such shocking news.

On May 21, 2013, 78-year-old Dominique Venner, a man known in France as a “nationalist extremist” and a “militant populist with a violent past,” walked into the 12th-century cathedral, stood next to the altar, pulled out a revolver, and shot himself.

Outside of France, few knew Venner's name. But right-wing nationalists in Ukraine certainly did. The far-right Azov movement was founded in 2014 to help defend Ukraine against invasion by Russian-led proxy forces. It began by recapturing the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, near the annexed Crimean Peninsula, from Russian proxies. (Russia has since partially blockaded the Kerch Strait, harassing Ukrainian vessels and nearly cutting off the Azov coast from the rest of Ukraine.)

The Azov movement's early victories also earned it a reputation as a place where far-right extremists and self-confessed neo-Nazis could make themselves at home. In more recent months, it has become better known for its street battles against incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, injuring almost two dozen police officers in one violent protest against alleged corruption in Poroshenko's inner circle.

Members of the Azov movement have made Venner a martyr. On the anniversary of his death in 2015, Azov members laid flowers and lit a candle for him in front of the French Embassy in Kiev. They give lectures on his works, post quotes from him on social media, and even sell bookmarks with his face and name emblazoned on them.

Venner is one of several icons of France's Nouvelle Droite (New Right) who, beginning in the late 1960s, started laying out a new strategy for the postwar far-right. And while the Azov movement is a relatively new player on the global far-right scene, the key to understanding it has its roots nowhere near Ukraine.

Venner was a writer and historian known for his works on themes popular with the far-right in France and beyond, from conspiracies to destroy Europe with Muslim migration to apologetics for France's Nazi-collaborating Vichy regime. In a note found on his body, he lamented what he called “the crime of the replacement of our people” by Muslim immigrants.

It's a clear nod to the so-called “great replacement” theory promoted by fellow Frenchman Renaud Camus, a theory that continues to inspire right-wing extremists—including the Christchurch terrorist, who plagiarized the title of one of Camus's books for the title of his rambling manifesto. Venner's final blog post before his death was an anti-LGBT rant: France was, at the time, in the midst of a heated debate over same-sex marriage.

But Venner made a far-right name for himself decades before. In 1962, he was released after spending 18 months in jail for being part of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS). A right-wing terrorist group that was formed to try to prevent Algerian independence, the OAS killed an estimated 2,000 people in just over a year and tried to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle several times.

Nostalgia for the lost Algerian cause—the failed effort to keep Algeria a part of France—became a core cause of the French far-right. Former OAS members, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, were instrumental in setting up the far-right National Front, the party now called the National Rally, and led by Le Pen's daughter, Marine Le Pen.

That year Venner wrote Toward a Positive Critique, a work that the Mexico-based political scientist Tamir Bar-On, the author of two books on the French New Right, calls a far-right version of Vladimir Lenin's “What Is to Be Done?”

This book helped pave the way for what would become known as the Nouvelle Droite in the late 1960s. Alongside figures such as Alain de Benoist and the late Guillaume Faye, Venner and others at GRECE (“Research and Study Group for European Civilization,” spelling out the French word for Greece) began laying the groundwork for how more palatable far-right movements could gain currency in the wake of Nazism.

The 1930s-era politics of unabashed racism, unguarded language, and unsubtle advocacy of imperialism and authoritarianism were, to say the least, poisoned by the legacy of World War II and French colonial wars in then-French Indochina and Algeria. Authors such as Venner called for a new approach; far-right nationalists needed to clean up their image and cast aside violence, overt racism, extreme rhetoric, and even electoral politics to some extent and focus more on what Bar-On calls “the long route through the wilderness.”

The goal for this new far-right was to shape attitudes and beliefs over a much longer period of time and spend less time fretting about getting votes and achieving immediate political power. “The approach,” Bar-On told Foreign Policy, “was basically, 'We have to challenge the left by capturing the laboratories of thought.'”

With its roots in a still-smoldering war, this might not sound like familiar territory for Ukraine's Azov movement. It was originally formed as a volunteer battalion in 2014 as a response to Vladimir Putin's proxy invasion of eastern Ukraine while Ukraine's army itself was a shambles. It didn't take long for the Azov Battalion to become known for having some of the fiercest fighters on the Ukrainian side—but it also quickly became known for its embrace of self-confessed neo-Nazis into its ranks.

While most observers tend to associate anyone far-right with pro-Kremlin sympathies, there was and continues to be a core of far-right extremists and outright neo-Nazis who have no time for Putin. According to Azov, Russia is a multicultural, multiethnic land, one filled with migrants and Muslim minorities and led by a man with no actual interest in preserving what one Azov ideologist euphemistically called “ethnocultural values.”

Five years later, the battalion itself is now an official part of Ukraine's National Guard. Azov formed a political party, the National Corps, in 2016; it's headed by Andriy Biletsky, who was once the leader of the neo-Nazi “Patriot of Ukraine” organization. Last year, Azov introduced the National Militia, a paramilitary group whose existence continues to worry a number of human rights groups, given their propensity for street violence and vigilantism. With a claimed 10,000 members, Azov looks set to be a fixture on the Ukrainian political scene for a while yet.

The Azov movement is not seeking to gain power through elections or realistically wrest territory back from Russian control. It is doing something far more subtle. There's a word for what the Azov movement is doing, a common one in the parlance of the French New Right: metapolitics—or, in Bar-On's words, “the capture of cultural power [as] the precondition for the capture of political power.” In less academic phrasing: The movement focuses on playing a longer-term game and worries less about poll numbers and popular support and more about whether the mainstream is shifting closer and closer to its turf.
The French New Right built the idea of metapolitics, ironically, on foundations laid by a left-wing icon—the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He argued that controlling culture was the key to controlling power and that those who controlled the institutions of thought effectively controlled society. Azov's leaders are certainly familiar with the term “metapolitics.” The movement's international secretary and one of its chief ideologues, Olena Semenyaka, peppers her speech and writings online with references to it. Speaking to FP in Kiev, Semenyaka was transparent about the French New Right's influence on Azov's work and the idea of metapolitics. Azov's strategy, Semenyaka said, is to build “cultural hegemony”—a term of Gramsci's—“or cultural revolution as a means of gaining political hegemony.”

The goal, according to Semenyaka, is to pull Ukrainian society closer to Azov's side of the political divide. “We want to bridge this gap between nationalism and the rest of society,” she said. And even as the National Corps barely registers in polls—Biletsky announced in January that he wasn't going to take part in March's first-round presidential elections—the movement is following a decades-old script laid out in France. Semenyaka brags about everything the Azov movement does, from mixed martial arts sessions and weapons trainings with military equipment to hosting a network of youth camps and support groups for veterans of the ongoing war with Russian-backed forces in the country's east.

It's part of what Semenyaka calls an effort to neutralize resistance to far-right ideas in Ukrainian society. Ukrainians support their initiatives without knowing they're linked to the Azov movement, she said, and are happy to support the movement when its sponsorship or involvement is revealed. It doesn't hurt that it's easier to garner support for a movement when it's still associated in much of the public mind with a heroic defense of the country against foreign invaders. “They don't associate it with some far-right radicals who do some violence in the streets,” she said. Instead, the hope is that they will think, “'These guys are OK. They're doing something for us. The government doesn't have such programs for us—why wouldn't we support them?'” and end up backing the movement. “We just want to overcome this demonized image,” she added.

That demonized image is one thing that Azov doesn't want people to notice. Despite Semenyaka's protestations to FP that the movement was far from neo-Nazi-friendly, it doesn't take much scratching of the surface to find the darker paint beneath. Azov has hosted neo-Nazi concerts replete with swastikas, tried to recruit foreign far-right extremists, openly assaulted feminist, LGBT, and leftist activists, and cleared a Roma camp with hammers and axes. Azov's less cunning edges aren't hard to find, even if it's something it doesn't like to talk about; Semenyaka herself has been photographed giving a Hitler salute with a swastika flag behind her.
The French New Right, however, has long been much more subtle than this. Azov is trying to borrow from this playbook. Semenyaka told FP about a project inspired by the French New Right theorist Guillaume Faye, who wrote a dictionary explaining New Right terms—an effort to turn anti-democratic, xenophobic, or even racist ideas into something much more palatable for the mainstream.

“He doesn't say what 'chauvinism' is, as leftists would do,” Semenyaka said. “He explains what 'ethnomasochism' is for instance. He would say that whites are always guilty, and by definition you have to embrace multiculturalism, create a single human race.” References to European culture rather than “the white race” is another popular euphemism in these circles. Semenyaka said the movement has plans to create a video based on terms in Faye's book for a Ukrainian audience, an idea that she said has the backing of Biletsky. “It's quite a witty way to gain political hegemony,” she said.

Political power, however, isn't anywhere near the horizon for Azov. With Biletsky's withdrawal from Ukraine's presidential race—he had been polling at less than 1 percent—Azov's National Corps party is focusing on October's parliamentary elections, where it hopes to surpass the 5 percent threshold to get into Ukraine's parliament. (It currently holds two seats from single-member districts and is polling around 1 percent.)

Semenyaka didn't sound worried. It's all an opportunity, she claimed, to gain new contacts, new “political technologists”—a term common in the post-Soviet sphere to describe the art of political manipulation—new supporters, and, eventually, to become what she called “a party of ideas.”

Besides, there isn't time for campaigning at the moment. Azov's leading lights are too busy building relationships with far-right figures from across Europe and beyond—at least those who aren't pro-Kremlin. It's not the easiest task, considering that much of the European far-right, from France's National Rally and Germany's Alternative for Germany to the upstart Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands, seem to be firm fans of the Kremlin. Still, groups such as the neo-Nazi Third Way and the Nordic Resistance Movement—a group now banned in Finland—and figures such as the American white nationalist Greg Johnson have visited Azov in the Ukrainian capital in the past few months.

Members of Azov, including Semenyaka, regularly travel across Europe to connect with other far-right groups, from Italy's CasaPound to Germany's National Democratic Party, which German authorities have tried to ban. And while some members of these movements are more sympathetic to the Kremlin than to Kiev, Azov's ideologists sound confident that they can convert more than a few of them to their side and build a different transnational far-right movement with themselves at the center.

Azov is also forming connections with less subtle, and openly violent, far-right extremists whom Venner might have warned it to ignore. U.S.-based white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement visited Kiev last year before being arrested back in the United States for a number of violent attacks they perpetrated in 2017. Hendrik Möbus, a convicted murderer and founder of the German neo-Nazi band Absurd, spoke at an Azov event last December.

But in Venner's home country, Azov hasn't had much luck with the mostly pro-Kremlin French far-right; Semenyaka freely admits that her efforts to make connections with members of the National Rally have gone nowhere. It has left the group little recourse but to find allies among the most violent fringes, especially the Social Bastion movement. Over the last two years, Azov's friends in Social Bastion have beaten people with metal bars while calling them “dirty Arabs” and broken a man's jaw when they mistook him for a local anti-fascist activist. Last year, as a group of men walked past a Social Bastion hangout in the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand, one of them joked to his friends, “C'est le local des fachos” (“This is the fascist local”). Members of Social Bastion emerged and attacked the men, breaking one of their legs. It's hardly the more sanitized, more respectable face of the far-right that Venner would have wanted.
As Notre Dame continued to smolder earlier this week, Azov made it perfectly clear what it meant to them. An Azov-affiliated record label posted the message “Europe is falling apart” on social media alongside a drawing of Notre Dame burning. “First, Venner's sacrifice, now the fire,” the post stated.

Azov's French-inspired march through the wilderness has impressed its far-right friends abroad, many of whom are more than happy to work with Azov to try to build a new international far-right movement. Azov benefits from a unique situation for an ambitious far-right group—an ongoing war started by an imperial neighbor, an already conservative and nationalistic political climate, and the alleged protection of one of the country's most powerful politicians, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who is widely believed to be Azov's patron.

Above all, however, Ukraine's political climate is one where Azov's outright violent actions don't often get the scrutiny they deserve. Azov hopes, in that environment, it can start to turn some of Venner's far-right fantasies into reality.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/17/theres-one-far-right-movement-that-hates-the-kremlin-azov-ukraine-biletsky-nouvelle-droite-venner/

[Hatshepsut]

Why Azov should not be designated a foreign terrorist organization

In their recent New York Times op-ed, “We once fought jihadists. Now we battle white supremacists,” Democratic Congressman Max Rose and former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent Ali H. Soufan raise a critical question: to what extent can we consider domestic right-wing terrorism an exclusively domestic phenomenon? As a follow up, they also ask about the role transnational links have in the radicalization process between different far-right groups.

One of the examples that the op-ed presents to the readers is that of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, which the FBI calls “a paramilitary unit” notorious for its “association with neo-Nazi ideology.” Unfortunately, this, and other references to Azov made in the op-ed, are misleading, which makes the entire example unreasonable and, sadly, damaging for the important argument of the authors.

What the authors call a “Ukrainian Azov Battalion,” where they add a description of it as “a paramilitary unit,” is, in fact, a Special Operations Detachment “Azov”—a regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This means that Azov is neither a paramilitary unit nor has any independence from the state, but that it is an integral part of official structures and that it follows orders given by the Interior Ministry.

It is true, however, that Azov's history is rooted in a volunteer battalion formed by the leadership of a neo-Nazi group called “Patriot of Ukraine” in spring 2014. Against the background of Russia's armed invasion of eastern Ukraine and the total inefficiency of the regular Ukrainian army (which was weakened and plundered by the previous pro-Kremlin regime), the state needed anyone who would be ready to join volunteer units and fight. Yes, “anyone,” included far-right activists, but also anarchists, liberals, conservatives, and apolitical people. Even Azov, the leading core of which was formed by the far right, included fighters of different ideological convictions.

But, while the ideologically inimical nature of Azov's roots is indisputable, it is likewise certain that Azov attempted to de-politicize itself; the toxic far-right leadership formally left the regiment and founded what would become a far-right party called “National Corps.” The party formed an electoral bloc with the other Ukrainian far-right parties for the 2019 parliamentary elections, but even a united far-right front obtained only a miserable 2.15 percent of the vote and thus failed to secure a single seat in the Ukrainian parliament.

Yet, misconceiving the current status of Azov as a “paramilitary unit” rather than an official regiment is only part of the trouble with Rose's and Soufan's op-ed, which features the following misleading paragraph:

“The Australian [Brenton Tarrant] who in March last year murdered fifty-one worshipers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, claimed in his manifesto that he had traveled to Ukraine; during the attacks he wore a symbol used by the Azov Battalion. The FBI director recently warned that American extremists, too, are traveling overseas for paramilitary training. Among those who have trained with Azov are several of the men responsible for fomenting violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.”

Let us analyze this paragraph in more detail. Addressing his potential followers in his hateful manifesto, Tarrant made his only reference to Ukraine in the following passage: “You will find no reprieve, not in Iceland, not in Poland, not in New Zealand, not in Argentina, not in Ukraine, not anywhere in the world. I know, because I have been there.”

“Been there” does not necessarily mean that Tarrant was in Ukraine—the phrase generally means that he has seen the world: “anywhere in the world…I have been there.” And this, to a certain degree, is true; Tarrant did visit several countries over the years preceding the terrorist attack, although it is surprising that he did not mention France. However, since the phrase allows for a different interpretation, let us assume that Tarrant did visit Ukraine, keeping in mind that this is his only reference to the country.

Then, the authors attempt to link Tarrant to Azov by saying that he wore “a symbol used by the Azov Battalion.” In one of the pictures of Tarrant's attack, one can see a patch featuring a so-called Black Sun symbol. The Black Sun was appropriated by Nazi Germany and, later, became a popular symbol with right-wing extremists around the world. Azov did use the Black Sun symbol in the past, but connecting it exclusively to Azov is incorrect, because the latter simply used the already available and wide-spread far-right imagery. No organization, apart from the historical Nazi party, can claim a monopoly over the Black Sun symbol.

Nevertheless, the authors go even further and argue that “American extremists, too, are traveling overseas for paramilitary training.” The use of “too” implies that Tarrant not only allegedly enjoyed the sights of Ukraine, but also participated in paramilitary training exercises. Despite this claim, there is not a single piece of evidence that supports the idea that Tarrant was actually in Ukraine in the first place, let alone for paramilitary training.

Finally, the article argues that “among those who have trained with Azov are several of the men responsible for fomenting violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.” This allegation comes from only one source—namely, from an affidavit and criminal complaint against Robert Rundo and three members of the American far-right Rise Above Movement (RAM), which Rundo founded. They were charged “with inciting and conspiring to commit violence in connection with several rallies, including the August 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

The complaint was written in October 2018 by Scott Bierwirth, who by that time had possessed ten months of experience working as an FBI special agent. It is in his statement that Azov was originally incorrectly called “a paramilitary unit” (this phrase would uncritically travel to Rose's and Soufan's op-ed) and it is in his statement that Azov was “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.” Bierwirth presented no evidence to support his belief that Azov provided paramilitary training for the RAM's members, but Rose and Soufan present this claim as a hard fact. Interestingly, in June 2019, a US District Court judge ruled to dismiss federal charges against Rundo and his associates.

This is not to say that there is no cooperation between American and Ukrainian far-right activists. The international far-right milieu is as dynamic as any other international political scene. The Ukrainian National Corps is actively building contacts with like-minded movements and organizations across the West while many Western far-right activists visit representatives of the National Corps in Ukraine.

But the authors produce no clear proof of ongoing links between American right-wing terrorists and a unit within Ukraine's Interior Ministry.  To label that unit “a foreign terrorist organization under federal law” would be a grave mistake and a gift to the Kremlin.

Anton Shekhovtsov is an external lecturer at the University of Vienna, senior fellow at the Free Russia Foundation, and general editor of the “Explorations of the Far Right” book series at ibidem-Verlag. He is the author of the books New Radical Right-Wing Parties in European Democracies (ibidem-Verlag, 2011) and Russia and the Western Far Right (Routledge, 2017), as well as co-editor of The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right (Palgrave, 2014).

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-azov-should-not-be-designated-a-foreign-terrorist-organization/

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Марш «Степан Бандера» (March «Stepan Bandera»)

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Гурт Лорд - Батько наш Бандера