Over two dozen Azov members Moscow-designated ‘terrorists’ stood in court behind the plexiglass for sentencing. (Credit: public domain)
It’s a demented feature of our days that if you stand to the right of Che Guevara in the political specter, automatically all the Liberal-Globalists in a choir will call you ‘a literal Nazi’, but when confronted with the real-life, present-day, self-identifying Ukrainian Nazis from the Azov Regiment and other groups like the Right Sector, these same groups in the western societies will stay dead silent.
If today the USAID-media is willing to whitewash and even lionize these radicals, it wasn’t always like that: in 2014, The Guardian described Azov as a battalion with far-right, neo-Nazi leanings, openly expressing admiration for Hitler and displaying swastika tattoos, while Time highlighted its neo-Nazi symbols like the “black sun” and “wolf’s hook,” and its appeal to far-right volunteers from Europe and the U.S.
Also in 2014, The Daily Telegraph called Azov a neo-Nazi force, and The Washington Post noted that Azov’s far-right volunteers included foreign neo-Nazis.
(…) Yesterday (26), as over two dozen Nazi extremists, Moscow-designated ‘terrorists’ stood in court behind the plexiglass for sentencing, MSM called them Azov Fighters, Ukrainian fighters, Captured Ukrainians, Ukrainian POWs…
The Russian military court yesterday handed down long prison sentences to 23 Azov members.
“The defendants, charged with terrorist activity and with violently seizing or retaining power, were sentenced to between 13 and 23 years in prison, Russian state media reported.”
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets: “‘Ukrainian prisoners of war are combatants, not criminals! They were fulfilling their duty to the state, protecting its territorial integrity and sovereignty’, he said.”
The Reuters report uncritically states that Kiev says Azov was ‘reformed away from its radical nationalist origins and is now apolitical’ – which if you have been following the war, you know it’s not an accurate description.
In the devastated ruins of Mariupol, they bravely defended against the Russia siege between February and May 2022, after which 2,500 eventually surrendered, ‘emerging from their refuge in a vast network of bunkers tunnels beneath the city’s Azovstal steelworks’.
Russian courts have so far reportedly convicted 145 Azov members.
(…) Sputnik reported:
“In 2022, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed Azov’s use of banned warfare methods, including killing, rape and torture of civilians and child killings.
In May 2014, Azov executed Mariupol police officers who refused to disperse protestors opposing the February 2014 coup in Kiev, then opened fire on a peaceful demonstration.”