224 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
View submission: Ukrainian thoughts on Azov
This is interesting, OP. Good write-up. Russian propaganda likes to paint them as people who don't just hate Russian state but will gladly eat Russian babies with fork and knife, given the chance. Just a note on this: I remember how the annexation of Crimea and creation of two "republics" caused a split within Russian right wing circles. Some were ecstatic, others felt that this was a tragedy and some even volunteered to fight against Putin's Russia and joined Azov (and some other batallions probably idk). Apparently some of them felt that this was a war of values and civilizations, that Russia was occupied by Putin just like it was occupied by Bolsheviks earlier and that Ukraine and the rest of Europe had to be protected from this threat etc etc. iirc they fit in pretty well and didn't have any problems because of their ethnicity.
Comment by JimMarch at 20/03/2022 at 03:29 UTC
73 upvotes, 2 direct replies
American here who has studied this situation some as well and yes, I've seen the video done by Beau of the 5th Column.
Here's what I can piece together.
During the period leading up to the revolt of 2014, a whole bunch of different political ideologies came together to confront basically a Russian puppet government supported by the Russian mafia. One of those ideologies was basically fascist; they were a very small part of the overall mix but a very loud one and, let's be honest, a tough one.
Among the Sea of various flags of the protesters in 2014, a few of those flags were from these...well, kinda-sorta Nazi-ish. A FEW.
Military minded members of that movement got clumped together into the AZOV battalion. At peak strength they had 2500 members. Since 2014 the fascist element has been diluted with new recruits that are strongly Ukrainian nationalistic and anti-Russian but not full on fascists. Hard to tell exactly what the mix is now. As of a week ago they had about 900 or so active fighters last I heard. No idea what percentage today could be described as fascist or quasi Nazi.
The political movement tied to AZOV gets less than 2% of the popular vote and hold no seats in the national legislature.
None of this is grounds to label the Ukrainian Nation or politics "Nazi". For Putin to make that claim while being photographed with the head of Wagner *who is known to have SS tattoos* is utter madness.
As to that Russian Mafia thing: my family has been at war with American politicians corrupted by Russian mob bosses *who have also tampered in Ukrainian politics*:
My wife has survived at least five assassination attempts that we know of since early 2007. I met her in 2012 when I was hired as her bodyguard and research assistant in a US election monitoring project.
Our home was firebombed in late 2013, three days before we got married.
You're at war with the Russian Mafia.
Putin is the Godfather.
Comment by [deleted] at 20/03/2022 at 09:40 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
caused a split within Russian right wing circles.
This is interesting, did this happen across all of Russia?
I've read like 2 or 3 reports by staunch Russian nationalists that predicted the shitshow in this war, and who were also against it; though I'm not sure about the extent of the reasoning for being so. One of them was a 3-star military general who got removed from service in early 2000s by Putin, he claimed a month before the invasion that a war in Ukraine would be horrible for Russia, has no meaning, etc. and that Putin has to be stopped.
The issue is that's a retired general, I'm interested if such an opposition has survived in the active military. If that's the case, then I would hope some of the Russian military are going to do something soon.
Comment by gravitas-deficiency at 21/03/2022 at 02:06 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I admit that I had a sharply negative opinion of Azov before the start of the invasion, but began to notice how conveniently their characterization fit Putin’s “de-nazification” rhetoric pretty immediately, which made me start to seriously question the assumptions and conclusions I had made previously regarding Azov.
Posts like this are good. We should *all* be doing our best to cut through to the truth. It’s quite difficult these days, what with the fog of war muddying things up when it comes to anything related to Ukraine or Russia, but it’s still meaningful and important to go back and check sources from the preceding months and years, and observe the trends that are present in the context of current events.
Comment by coobit at 25/03/2022 at 17:33 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
There are many nazi cases[1] among high levels of the government. This is my subreddit where I gather info about such... nazism indicators...