Some detailed info about the extended Azov movement for anyone interested. The source is "far right research" sponsored by the German Green Party (literally faggits) but it's pretty NPOV (as a Wikipedo would say) factual and informative, while not even sensationalist.
After the Euromaidan revolution, the Azov movement—which grew out of a volunteer battalion that was first stationed at the Sea of Azov in 2014—emerged as a new attention-grabbing, multi-dimensional political phenomenon of Ukraine’s post-revolutionary landscape. Since summer 2014, the Azov movement has become a prominent new right-wing force in Ukraine, even rivalling the Svoboda party.[40] The various organizations, departments, fronts, branches, and arms of the Azov movement have been estimated to be able to mobilize 20,000 members all over Ukraine.[41]
The Azov movement has its roots in a little known and initially Russian-speaking Kharkiv groupuscule called “Patriot of Ukraine.”[42] This initially miniscule circle emerged from the SNPU’s paramilitary wing of the same name that had been disbanded in 2004.[43] The young leader of the group, Andriy Bilets’kyy (b. 1979), as well as some other members of the “Patriot of Ukraine” were imprisoned in 2011-2012 for various reasons, including alleged robbery, beatings, terrorism, and assaults. Partly, these accusations were overdrawn and referred to political rather than criminal episodes. The locked-up ultra-nationalists were released after the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014.[44]
In spring 2014 in eastern Ukraine, Bilets’kyy and his followers organized small paramilitary units called “little black men”—an obvious reference to the nickname, “little green men,” given to Russian regular army forces who wore no identification marks while occupying Crimea in late February and early March 2014.[45] As the confrontation with pro-Russian groups in the Donets’ Basin (Donbas) and Kharkiv, Bilets’kyy’s once minor grouping grew rapidly.[46] In May 2014, it formed the semi-regular volunteer battalion “Azov” under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior.[47] In summer 2014, the Azov battalion played a central role in the liberation of the important Donbas industrial city of Mariupol from Russia-led separatists.[48]
By autumn 2014, the battalion had become a well-known professional military unit and was transformed into the fully regular “Azov” Regiment of the National Guard under the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine.[49] It has since been considered one of Ukraine’s most capable armed formations. The regiment’s commanders claim it is now operating according to NATO standards.[50] In winter 2015, veterans and volunteers of the regiment created the Azov Civil Corps and thereby started to expand their political grouping into a multi-faceted social movement.[51] In 2016, Bilets’kyy formed the political party National Corps, drawing membership from the Azov Civil Corps and veterans of the Azov Battalion and Regiment.[52]
In January 2018, an offshoot of the Azov movement, the unarmed vigilante organization National Squads (Natsional’ni druzhyny), became a Ukrainian media sensation after it held a visually impressive public torch march.[53] Further sub-organizations and branches of the Azov movement have emerged since 2014.[54] They include entities such as the Engineering Corps, Cossack House (Kozatsʹkyy dim), Plomin (Flame) Literary Club, Orden (Order) circle, Youth Corps, Intermarium Support Group, and others.[55] While being partly independent, the fronts and subunits of the Azov movement share basic stances on certain political issues, closely cooperate with each other, and accept Bilets’kyy as the unofficial leader of the entire coalition. As a result, Azov is now a multi-dimensional socio-political movement that is developing in a variety of directions.
Though initially at a distance from other Ukrainian far right groups, Azov, since 2016, has started to cooperate with other ultra-nationalists in Ukraine. In spring 2019, the National Corps joined an electoral alliance of several Ukrainian far-right parties under the organizational umbrella of Svoboda for the July 2019 snap parliamentary elections. Even this unified list of Ukraine’s far right, however, received only 2.15% in the proportional part of the elections and thus fell short of the 5% entrance barrier to parliament. The ultra-nationalist coalition also failed to win any seats in the majoritarian part of the election and so was unable to secure any official mandates in Ukraine 9th Verkhovna Rada. While the current Ukrainian parliament contains several members who have described themselves as “nationalists,” only one of Ukraine’s currently 423 national MPs, Oksana Savchuk (née Kryvolin’ska, b. 1983) from the Eastern Galician Ivano-Frankivs’k Oblast, is aligned to the Ukrainian far right, namely to Svoboda.[56]
Despite officially allying itself with Svoboda and others since 2016, the Azov movement remains an ideologically and institutionally specific phenomenon within Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist political spectrum and contains branches that profess views untypical to the traditional Ukrainian far right.[57] For example, some Azov members espouse not a Christian-Orthodox outlook, but an interest in paganism.[58] The Azov movement has conducted numerous semi-political street actions in major cities and smaller towns around Ukraine, such as rallies against the closure of a university in Zhovti Vody in the Dnipropetrovs’k Oblast.[59] Another major mobilizing issue are various ecological problems across Ukraine.[60]
There are rumors that the Azov movement was linked to Ukraine’s 2014-2021 Minister for Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov (b. 1964). And there is evidence of connections between the Azov-dominated Veterans Movement of Ukraine and the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs.[61] Nevertheless, since 2014 the movement’s public profile has been that of a resolute opposition force engaged in clashes with the police and political mobilization against the government.[62]
The Azov Battalion/Regiment has been particularly active in recruiting foreigners to fight in eastern Ukraine.[63] Among all the foreign fighters present in the Donbas, there may have been as many as 3,000 Russian citizens who fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war on the side of the Ukrainian state.[64] Some of them served and are still serving with the Azov Regiment. As detailed below, a number of these former or current Russian citizens are also actively involved in the development of the Azov movement’s civil and political structures.[65]
In August 2020, a number of Azov leaders and veterans as well as other activists from certain nationalist student and cadet groups presented a new paramilitary right-wing organization labeled Centuria—a Roman Empire term for a military unit of hundred men.[66] The Ukrainian group uses the Latin version and transcription of the more familiar Ukrainian word sotnia (hundred) as its official name.[67] Against a backdrop of images of Roman legions, Centuria held its first public presentation with Ihor Mykhailenko, the former head of the Azov movement’s National Squads, as its main speaker. This move signaled that the National Squads had been replaced by Centuria.[68]
Centuria’s website announced that their organization represents “a group of organized youth based on the world view of Ukrainian Stateness and European tradition.”[69] Since 2020 Centuria has been involved in a variety of public activities such as participating in the annual march on October 14 in Kyiv honoring the UPA,[70] rallies against illegal logging,[71] court hearings on right-wing activists, and the promotion of Ukraine’s medieval heritage.[72] Thereby, the organization duplicates the activism of its predecessor, the National Squads. While not formally subordinated to the National Corps, most of Centuria’s members are connected to the Azov movement.[73]
Centuria describes itself as a group of “Warriors of Light and Order” in the fight against Ukraine’s “internal enemy.”[74] While the former National Squads posed as an unofficial law enforcement militia, Centuria has a more open range of interests and is primarily engaged in anti-Russian activities throughout Ukraine.[75] For instance, in L’viv in August 2020 Centuria activists attacked Mykhailo Shpira, a pro-Russian political observer,[76] and in October 2020 blocked a rally in Vinnytsia for the pro-Russian Shariy Party.[77]
One of the largest actions of the movement so far was supporting 16 convicts, mainly from Kharkiv, who attacked a bus in 2020 carrying MP Illia Kyva’s pro-Russian Ukrainian youth organization “Patriots – For Life!”[78] (More on Kyva, below.) Since then, actions in support of the convicted Kharkiv nationalists have made up the majority of Centuria‘s actions.[79] There have also been further attacks on pro-Russian actors, one of which led to mass clashes on September 21, 2020, in Odesa.[80]
Centuria uses military paraphernalia and prepares its members for military service. It trains its own territorial defense groups, in effect duplicating the operation of similar units within the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.[81] The number of members of the organization is currently unknown but is suspected to correspond with or surpass the strength of its predecessor, Azov’s National Squads, which had approximately 1,000 active members.[82]
More spicy stuff - association with Misanthropic Division and Wotanjugend
A new wave of cooperation between parts of the two ultra-nationalist camps started during and after the Euromaidan of 2013-2014 when Russian ultra-nationalists with pro-Ukrainian views participated in the uprising in Kyiv and beginning war in the Donbas.[118] The biggest accumulation of active Russian, and presumably anti-Putinist, right-wing radicals in Ukraine were within the Azov movement, including in its battalion/regiment.
Misanthropic Division’s Russian activists participated on the Maidan demonstrations, in clashes with Maidan opponents in Kharkov, and some of them took part in the Donbas hostilities on Kyiv’s side. Over a dozen of its Russian members fought in Azov. Russian Azov fighters included Serhey (“Malyuta”) Korotkikh, one of the leaders of the National Socialist Society (Natsional-sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo, NSO); Alexander Valov from Murmansk; Roman “Zukhel” Zheleznov of the Restrukt! Association; and neo-Nazi leader Mikhail Oreshnikov from Cheboksary. After the end of the active phase of the hostilities in Ukraine, almost all of them stayed in Ukraine. Some of them integrated into Ukrainian society, received Ukrainian citizenship, and now take part in local political life.[119] Moreover, some Russian neo-Nazi groupuscules are represented, with their Ukrainian branches, in the Azov movement’s various structures.[120]
[Irrelevant part about Wotanjugend & Right Sector]
Because of foreign, including Russian, fighters’ service in the Azov Regiment, the National Corps has become one of the main lobbyists for the legalization of the status (as permanent residents or citizens) of foreigners who fought against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.[123] Several such foreigners, including some Russian ultra-nationalist immigrants, received citizenship during the 2014-2019 presidency of Petro Poroshenko. Sometimes such status was granted in explicit gratitude of their contribution to the Ukrainian defense effort in the Donbas.
The most infamous case involved a former member of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party and Belarusian People’s Front Sergei Korotkikh (b. 1974) who, after his move to Ukraine in 2014, became a key figure in the Azov movement.[124] Korotkikh received his Ukrainian passport from president Petro Poroshenko personally on December 5, 2014. He worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, heading the Special Objects Protection Unit, but he left this post in late 2017. Along with his fellow Azov member Nikita Makeev, Korotkikh was suspected of involvement in the attack against Poroshenko in August 2019. However, Korotkikh never faced responsibility for this case. In the spring of 2020, he continued to act as a representative of the National Corps (Natsionalʹnyy korpus), Azov’s political wing.[125]
Another such figure was Aleksei Levkin, a former member of the Russian group Wotanjungend, who immigrated from Russia and also gained some importance in the Azov movement. He called himself a “political ideologist” for Azov’s former vigilante branch, Natsional’nyy druzhyny (National Squads). The Ukrainian political careers of Korotkikh, Levkin, and others indicate considerable influence of Russian former neo-Nazis within the Azov movement.[126]
The ideological basis for such seemingly paradoxical contacts and even partial merger is a particular type of racist pan-Slavism. In this context the issues of national sovereignty and territory are secondary to an allegedly common pan-national or even pan-European “white” or “Aryan” identity. Some branches of Russian ultra-nationalism, like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, support the concept of a community of Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians. Unlike most other permutations of Russian ultra-nationalism, these subsections do not always assert, however, a “Great Russian” supremacy vis-à-vis “Little” and “White Russians” within the triple Eastern Slavic family of peoples. They are instead obsessed with preventing large-scale non-Christian, specifically Muslim, immigration that would create a racial-cultural subversion by non-white people in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. They are also concerned with the rise of LGBTQ+ movements in these countries.
At the same time, as illustrated by the heavy involvement of Russkoe natsional’noe edinstvo (Russian National Unity, RNE) in the start of the Donbas war, the majority of Russian neo-Nazism, it needs to be emphasized, is as anti-Ukrainian as most other varieties of Russian ultra-nationalism, from neo-Eurasianism to Orthodox fundamentalism.[127] Within the latter one can also occasionally find isolated individuals or minor subsections that accept Ukraine’s nationality, sovereignty, and integrity. However, most pro-Ukrainian thinking within Russian ultra-nationalism is found in various Russian groupuscules espousing biological racism. Often these groups—whether in Russia, in Ukraine, or elsewhere—see their nations as being part of a “white” or “Aryan” pan-national community. They thus espouse sympathy towards all those who they regard as being within this larger “racial” collective.
Among the small pro-Ukrainian section of Russian political extremism, whether biologically racist or not, there is regret about Moscow’s actions in Ukraine since 2014 and considerable verbal solidarity with Ukraine’s fight for independence from Russia. Several individuals and certain groupuscules, like the Wotanjugend, have moved to Ukraine. Other such activists have more or less successfully also tried to take part in the Russian-Ukrainian war, supporting the Ukrainian side.
A curious facet of the Azov movement’s behavior was, for a while, its surprisingly neutral treatment in the Russian-language videoblogs of the notorious anti-Maidan blogger Anatoliy Shariy. The popular commentator has his own party named after him in Ukraine. Yet he lives outside the country and is often accused of implementing a Kremlin-inspired political agenda via the internet.[215]
In spite of Shariy’s otherwise radically anti-nationalist and, some would say, anti-Ukrainian positions, his early comments on the Azov Regiment were, in stark contrast to the general ideology of his widely watched video shows, ambivalent, documental, and nonjudgmental. Shariy has also criticized the Azov movement’s opponents and provided a platform for Azov representatives to respond to negative assessments of the movement’s activities.[216] In early 2018, Shariy’s program conducted an interview with Eduard Yurchenko, one of the Azov movement’s main ideologists.[217] Yurchenko heads the conservative wing of the movement, Orden (Order), which also has connections with the Svoboda party and the Tradition and Order (TiP) group.
...
Another peculiarity has been the relatively low degree of the Azov movement’s public activism countering communist and pro-Russian demonstrations in Ukraine. For example, from May 2015 to October 2018 there were 1,535 public actions of the Azov movement, as recorded in a research project by an author of this study. Yet only 51 were directed against communist and pro-Russian forces or values in Ukraine. This is, in relative terms, a surprisingly small number of such actions for an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian movement.[222]
It is further worth noting that the Azov movement has received attention and publicity from Dmytro Hordon (Russian: Dmitrii Gordon), a famous Ukrainian journalist in the post-Soviet media space. In an episode of his program, “Evening with Dmitrii Gordon,” the journalist extensively interviewed Andriy Bilets’kyy,[223] the leader of the Azov movement, whom Hordon described “as a clever and wise man.” Hordon conducts his interviews in Russian, and was an active commentator for the previously mentioned Russian-leaning TV channels, NewsOne and 112.ua.[224] These now shut down media outlets were under direct or indirect control of pro-Russian oligarchs. In his assessments concerning Ukrainian right-wing radicalism, Hordon has criticized the Svoboda party and Right Sector. In contrast, Bilets’kyy has been characterized by Hordon as a patriot of Ukraine: “The main part of the nationalists are normal people, but we have problems with nationalist leaders. We also have some good leaders, Andriy Bilets’kyy, for example.”[225]
...
One of the new foreign contacts of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists has been the Italian extra-parliamentary fascist group CasaPound, which espouses an ambivalent position on the Russian-Ukrainian war. This movement, largely unknown outside of Italy, started as a commune in Rome for “true Italians,” welcoming the families of their ideological supporters. Over time, this practice spread throughout Italy, and the group became a notable neo-fascist actor in Western Europe.[259] Some members of CasaPound have voiced their support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, while others support the Kremlin and have even fought on the side of pro-Russian militants in Eastern Ukraine.[260]
Since 2014, the Carpathian Sich together with the international department of the Azov movement have conducted joint conferences in Uzhgorod and L’viv with CasaPound. According to FOIA Research, representatives of the Intermarium Support Group and CasaPound participated in an Acca Larentia commemoration in 2019.[261] The multi-national meeting of the European far-right representatives, including representatives of the Azov movement, was part of a series of yearly events held in Rome commemorating the death of three young neo-fascist activists in 1978 in violent clashes on the street Acca Larentia.[262]
...
Even more awkwardly for the fiercely anti-Kremlin Azov movement, Franco Freda is a dedicated fan of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In an interview in November 2018, Freda not only spoke highly of pro-Russian far-right populist Matteo Salvini, but had the highest of praise for the man who literally engineered Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. “Putin is a champion of the white race,” Freda said. “I think of the Slavic peoples, they’re the ones who won the Second World War […] they’re brutal individuals, of course, but they are the only ones who can resist.” That wasn’t Freda’s first foray into lavishing praise on Putin. In 2014, while the Azov Battalion was fighting Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine, Franco Freda also took time to compliment the Russian president. “It is my impression that the only decent European politician is Vladimir Putin,” Freda said in October 2014.[292] It was remarkable, moreover, that Freda, though having made these statements after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in spring 2014, would still be embraced and his work translated by activists of Ukraine’s far right.
One more oddity: the "Russian Insurgent Army", coming with some WWII history and a lot of paradoxes
An expression of this type of Russian-Ukrainian far-right interaction came together to form the quasi-party Russian Center and its paramilitary arm, the Russian Insurgent Army. The latter is the hyperbolic name for a miniscule group apparently made up of several dozen young adults. So far this small, irregular, and supposedly armed entity’s activity has been largely virtual.
The group was created in 2015 by Andrei Kuznetsov (aka “Orange”), a relatively well-known Russian opposition blogger who had emigrated from Russia to Ukraine.[128] Together with some other immigrants from Russia, he formed what was suggestively called the Russkaia Povstancheskaia Armiia (Russian Insurgent Army). The title alludes to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a western Ukrainian nationalist, partisan movement during and after World War II that fought Soviet and Nazi troops but was tainted by some of its units committing mass murder of Polish and Jewish civilians in western Ukraine.[129] The name, Russian Insurgent Army, may also refer to the Russian Liberation Army, the unfamous Vlasov Russian unit that fought alongside the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union during World War II.[130]
The Russian Insurgent Army claims to have participated on the Ukrainian side against pro-Russian forces in the Donbas war.[131] It has also been rumored to have conducted clandestine activity within Russia, a supposition that seems implausible.[132] The Russian Insurgent Army was first presented to the public on December 29, 2014 at a press conference in Kyiv. The young anti-Kremlin activist Andrei Kuznetsov made an appeal for the unification of anti-Putinist Russian forces. He addressed “all adequate Russians, […] descendants of white immigrants […] who do not want Russian culture to disappear from the world.”[133]
The movement rejects Eurasianism and officially espouses an ethno-centric, yet supposedly “moderate,” right-wing ideology. It mostly uses concepts and symbols representing radical rather than liberal nationalist discourses. While the group may be made up of a variety of individuals of different persuasions, it is seemingly dominated by racist activists, as various entries on its website illustrate.[134]
The formation of the Russian Insurgent Army led to creation of an ethnic Russian political organization in Ukraine called the Russian Center, linked to the Azov movement. Its existence was announced on October 11, 2015 in Kyiv.[135] The Russian Center is another minor organization made up of Russian nationalist political immigrants in Ukraine. Natalia Yudina detailed that the Russian Center was
created in September 2015 by members of Wotanjugend, an ultra-right online group, and by activists of the Kirov cell of the Movement against Illegal Immigration (Dvizhenie protiv nelegal’noi immigratsii, DPNI-Vyatka), now banned in Russia. The Russian Center positions itself specifically as pan-Slavist, calling for the unity of all Slavs, and seeking to reach beyond Russia and Ukraine. They cooperate with nationalists in other countries, primarily with Polish nationalists from Zadruga (a Polish neo-pagan organization created in 2006 in Wroclaw) and People’s Free Poland (a radical Polish group that became famous in 2015 after the destruction of a Ukrainian cultural center in Warsaw). In September 2018, they conducted an event “to strengthen the Polish-Russian ties” in partnership with People’s Free Poland. They also participated in the nationalist “independence march” in Warsaw on November 11, 2018. The Russian Center from Ukraine marched along with the Black Bloc, chanting “White Revolution” slogans (“Europe, Youth, Revolution” and “Honor and Glory to the Heroes”), and they burned the LGBT+ and EU flags […]. In February 2019, some of its activists participated in the torchlight procession on the 101st anniversary of Estonia’s independence and the Etnofutur third international nationalist conference in Tallinn.
Some detailed info about the extended Azov movement for anyone interested. The source is "far right research" sponsored by the German Green Party (literally faggits) but it's pretty NPOV (as a Wikipedo would say) factual and informative, while not even sensationalist.
After the Euromaidan revolution, the Azov movement—which grew out of a volunteer battalion that was first stationed at the Sea of Azov in 2014—emerged as a new attention-grabbing, multi-dimensional political phenomenon of Ukraine’s post-revolutionary landscape. Since summer 2014, the Azov movement has become a prominent new right-wing force in Ukraine, even rivalling the Svoboda party.[40] The various organizations, departments, fronts, branches, and arms of the Azov movement have been estimated to be able to mobilize 20,000 members all over Ukraine.[41]
The Azov movement has its roots in a little known and initially Russian-speaking Kharkiv groupuscule called “Patriot of Ukraine.”[42] This initially miniscule circle emerged from the SNPU’s paramilitary wing of the same name that had been disbanded in 2004.[43] The young leader of the group, Andriy Bilets’kyy (b. 1979), as well as some other members of the “Patriot of Ukraine” were imprisoned in 2011-2012 for various reasons, including alleged robbery, beatings, terrorism, and assaults. Partly, these accusations were overdrawn and referred to political rather than criminal episodes. The locked-up ultra-nationalists were released after the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014.[44]
In spring 2014 in eastern Ukraine, Bilets’kyy and his followers organized small paramilitary units called “little black men”—an obvious reference to the nickname, “little green men,” given to Russian regular army forces who wore no identification marks while occupying Crimea in late February and early March 2014.[45] As the confrontation with pro-Russian groups in the Donets’ Basin (Donbas) and Kharkiv, Bilets’kyy’s once minor grouping grew rapidly.[46] In May 2014, it formed the semi-regular volunteer battalion “Azov” under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior.[47] In summer 2014, the Azov battalion played a central role in the liberation of the important Donbas industrial city of Mariupol from Russia-led separatists.[48]
By autumn 2014, the battalion had become a well-known professional military unit and was transformed into the fully regular “Azov” Regiment of the National Guard under the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine.[49] It has since been considered one of Ukraine’s most capable armed formations. The regiment’s commanders claim it is now operating according to NATO standards.[50] In winter 2015, veterans and volunteers of the regiment created the Azov Civil Corps and thereby started to expand their political grouping into a multi-faceted social movement.[51] In 2016, Bilets’kyy formed the political party National Corps, drawing membership from the Azov Civil Corps and veterans of the Azov Battalion and Regiment.[52]
In January 2018, an offshoot of the Azov movement, the unarmed vigilante organization National Squads (Natsional’ni druzhyny), became a Ukrainian media sensation after it held a visually impressive public torch march.[53] Further sub-organizations and branches of the Azov movement have emerged since 2014.[54] They include entities such as the Engineering Corps, Cossack House (Kozatsʹkyy dim), Plomin (Flame) Literary Club, Orden (Order) circle, Youth Corps, Intermarium Support Group, and others.[55] While being partly independent, the fronts and subunits of the Azov movement share basic stances on certain political issues, closely cooperate with each other, and accept Bilets’kyy as the unofficial leader of the entire coalition. As a result, Azov is now a multi-dimensional socio-political movement that is developing in a variety of directions.
Though initially at a distance from other Ukrainian far right groups, Azov, since 2016, has started to cooperate with other ultra-nationalists in Ukraine. In spring 2019, the National Corps joined an electoral alliance of several Ukrainian far-right parties under the organizational umbrella of Svoboda for the July 2019 snap parliamentary elections. Even this unified list of Ukraine’s far right, however, received only 2.15% in the proportional part of the elections and thus fell short of the 5% entrance barrier to parliament. The ultra-nationalist coalition also failed to win any seats in the majoritarian part of the election and so was unable to secure any official mandates in Ukraine 9th Verkhovna Rada. While the current Ukrainian parliament contains several members who have described themselves as “nationalists,” only one of Ukraine’s currently 423 national MPs, Oksana Savchuk (née Kryvolin’ska, b. 1983) from the Eastern Galician Ivano-Frankivs’k Oblast, is aligned to the Ukrainian far right, namely to Svoboda.[56]
Despite officially allying itself with Svoboda and others since 2016, the Azov movement remains an ideologically and institutionally specific phenomenon within Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist political spectrum and contains branches that profess views untypical to the traditional Ukrainian far right.[57] For example, some Azov members espouse not a Christian-Orthodox outlook, but an interest in paganism.[58] The Azov movement has conducted numerous semi-political street actions in major cities and smaller towns around Ukraine, such as rallies against the closure of a university in Zhovti Vody in the Dnipropetrovs’k Oblast.[59] Another major mobilizing issue are various ecological problems across Ukraine.[60]
There are rumors that the Azov movement was linked to Ukraine’s 2014-2021 Minister for Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov (b. 1964). And there is evidence of connections between the Azov-dominated Veterans Movement of Ukraine and the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs.[61] Nevertheless, since 2014 the movement’s public profile has been that of a resolute opposition force engaged in clashes with the police and political mobilization against the government.[62]
The Azov Battalion/Regiment has been particularly active in recruiting foreigners to fight in eastern Ukraine.[63] Among all the foreign fighters present in the Donbas, there may have been as many as 3,000 Russian citizens who fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war on the side of the Ukrainian state.[64] Some of them served and are still serving with the Azov Regiment. As detailed below, a number of these former or current Russian citizens are also actively involved in the development of the Azov movement’s civil and political structures.[65]
In August 2020, a number of Azov leaders and veterans as well as other activists from certain nationalist student and cadet groups presented a new paramilitary right-wing organization labeled Centuria—a Roman Empire term for a military unit of hundred men.[66] The Ukrainian group uses the Latin version and transcription of the more familiar Ukrainian word sotnia (hundred) as its official name.[67] Against a backdrop of images of Roman legions, Centuria held its first public presentation with Ihor Mykhailenko, the former head of the Azov movement’s National Squads, as its main speaker. This move signaled that the National Squads had been replaced by Centuria.[68]
Centuria’s website announced that their organization represents “a group of organized youth based on the world view of Ukrainian Stateness and European tradition.”[69] Since 2020 Centuria has been involved in a variety of public activities such as participating in the annual march on October 14 in Kyiv honoring the UPA,[70] rallies against illegal logging,[71] court hearings on right-wing activists, and the promotion of Ukraine’s medieval heritage.[72] Thereby, the organization duplicates the activism of its predecessor, the National Squads. While not formally subordinated to the National Corps, most of Centuria’s members are connected to the Azov movement.[73]
Centuria describes itself as a group of “Warriors of Light and Order” in the fight against Ukraine’s “internal enemy.”[74] While the former National Squads posed as an unofficial law enforcement militia, Centuria has a more open range of interests and is primarily engaged in anti-Russian activities throughout Ukraine.[75] For instance, in L’viv in August 2020 Centuria activists attacked Mykhailo Shpira, a pro-Russian political observer,[76] and in October 2020 blocked a rally in Vinnytsia for the pro-Russian Shariy Party.[77]
One of the largest actions of the movement so far was supporting 16 convicts, mainly from Kharkiv, who attacked a bus in 2020 carrying MP Illia Kyva’s pro-Russian Ukrainian youth organization “Patriots – For Life!”[78] (More on Kyva, below.) Since then, actions in support of the convicted Kharkiv nationalists have made up the majority of Centuria‘s actions.[79] There have also been further attacks on pro-Russian actors, one of which led to mass clashes on September 21, 2020, in Odesa.[80]
Centuria uses military paraphernalia and prepares its members for military service. It trains its own territorial defense groups, in effect duplicating the operation of similar units within the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.[81] The number of members of the organization is currently unknown but is suspected to correspond with or surpass the strength of its predecessor, Azov’s National Squads, which had approximately 1,000 active members.[82]
More spicy stuff - association with Misanthropic Division and Wotanjugend
A new wave of cooperation between parts of the two ultra-nationalist camps started during and after the Euromaidan of 2013-2014 when Russian ultra-nationalists with pro-Ukrainian views participated in the uprising in Kyiv and beginning war in the Donbas.[118] The biggest accumulation of active Russian, and presumably anti-Putinist, right-wing radicals in Ukraine were within the Azov movement, including in its battalion/regiment.
Misanthropic Division’s Russian activists participated on the Maidan demonstrations, in clashes with Maidan opponents in Kharkov, and some of them took part in the Donbas hostilities on Kyiv’s side. Over a dozen of its Russian members fought in Azov. Russian Azov fighters included Serhey (“Malyuta”) Korotkikh, one of the leaders of the National Socialist Society (Natsional-sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo, NSO); Alexander Valov from Murmansk; Roman “Zukhel” Zheleznov of the Restrukt! Association; and neo-Nazi leader Mikhail Oreshnikov from Cheboksary. After the end of the active phase of the hostilities in Ukraine, almost all of them stayed in Ukraine. Some of them integrated into Ukrainian society, received Ukrainian citizenship, and now take part in local political life.[119] Moreover, some Russian neo-Nazi groupuscules are represented, with their Ukrainian branches, in the Azov movement’s various structures.[120]
[Irrelevant part about Wotanjugend & Right Sector]
Because of foreign, including Russian, fighters’ service in the Azov Regiment, the National Corps has become one of the main lobbyists for the legalization of the status (as permanent residents or citizens) of foreigners who fought against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.[123] Several such foreigners, including some Russian ultra-nationalist immigrants, received citizenship during the 2014-2019 presidency of Petro Poroshenko. Sometimes such status was granted in explicit gratitude of their contribution to the Ukrainian defense effort in the Donbas.
The most infamous case involved a former member of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party and Belarusian People’s Front Sergei Korotkikh (b. 1974) who, after his move to Ukraine in 2014, became a key figure in the Azov movement.[124] Korotkikh received his Ukrainian passport from president Petro Poroshenko personally on December 5, 2014. He worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, heading the Special Objects Protection Unit, but he left this post in late 2017. Along with his fellow Azov member Nikita Makeev, Korotkikh was suspected of involvement in the attack against Poroshenko in August 2019. However, Korotkikh never faced responsibility for this case. In the spring of 2020, he continued to act as a representative of the National Corps (Natsionalʹnyy korpus), Azov’s political wing.[125]
Another such figure was Aleksei Levkin, a former member of the Russian group Wotanjungend, who immigrated from Russia and also gained some importance in the Azov movement. He called himself a “political ideologist” for Azov’s former vigilante branch, Natsional’nyy druzhyny (National Squads). The Ukrainian political careers of Korotkikh, Levkin, and others indicate considerable influence of Russian former neo-Nazis within the Azov movement.[126]
The ideological basis for such seemingly paradoxical contacts and even partial merger is a particular type of racist pan-Slavism. In this context the issues of national sovereignty and territory are secondary to an allegedly common pan-national or even pan-European “white” or “Aryan” identity. Some branches of Russian ultra-nationalism, like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, support the concept of a community of Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians. Unlike most other permutations of Russian ultra-nationalism, these subsections do not always assert, however, a “Great Russian” supremacy vis-à-vis “Little” and “White Russians” within the triple Eastern Slavic family of peoples. They are instead obsessed with preventing large-scale non-Christian, specifically Muslim, immigration that would create a racial-cultural subversion by non-white people in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. They are also concerned with the rise of LGBTQ+ movements in these countries.
At the same time, as illustrated by the heavy involvement of Russkoe natsional’noe edinstvo (Russian National Unity, RNE) in the start of the Donbas war, the majority of Russian neo-Nazism, it needs to be emphasized, is as anti-Ukrainian as most other varieties of Russian ultra-nationalism, from neo-Eurasianism to Orthodox fundamentalism.[127] Within the latter one can also occasionally find isolated individuals or minor subsections that accept Ukraine’s nationality, sovereignty, and integrity. However, most pro-Ukrainian thinking within Russian ultra-nationalism is found in various Russian groupuscules espousing biological racism. Often these groups—whether in Russia, in Ukraine, or elsewhere—see their nations as being part of a “white” or “Aryan” pan-national community. They thus espouse sympathy towards all those who they regard as being within this larger “racial” collective.
Among the small pro-Ukrainian section of Russian political extremism, whether biologically racist or not, there is regret about Moscow’s actions in Ukraine since 2014 and considerable verbal solidarity with Ukraine’s fight for independence from Russia. Several individuals and certain groupuscules, like the Wotanjugend, have moved to Ukraine. Other such activists have more or less successfully also tried to take part in the Russian-Ukrainian war, supporting the Ukrainian side.
Assorted oddities
A curious facet of the Azov movement’s behavior was, for a while, its surprisingly neutral treatment in the Russian-language videoblogs of the notorious anti-Maidan blogger Anatoliy Shariy. The popular commentator has his own party named after him in Ukraine. Yet he lives outside the country and is often accused of implementing a Kremlin-inspired political agenda via the internet.[215]
In spite of Shariy’s otherwise radically anti-nationalist and, some would say, anti-Ukrainian positions, his early comments on the Azov Regiment were, in stark contrast to the general ideology of his widely watched video shows, ambivalent, documental, and nonjudgmental. Shariy has also criticized the Azov movement’s opponents and provided a platform for Azov representatives to respond to negative assessments of the movement’s activities.[216] In early 2018, Shariy’s program conducted an interview with Eduard Yurchenko, one of the Azov movement’s main ideologists.[217] Yurchenko heads the conservative wing of the movement, Orden (Order), which also has connections with the Svoboda party and the Tradition and Order (TiP) group.
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Another peculiarity has been the relatively low degree of the Azov movement’s public activism countering communist and pro-Russian demonstrations in Ukraine. For example, from May 2015 to October 2018 there were 1,535 public actions of the Azov movement, as recorded in a research project by an author of this study. Yet only 51 were directed against communist and pro-Russian forces or values in Ukraine. This is, in relative terms, a surprisingly small number of such actions for an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian movement.[222]
It is further worth noting that the Azov movement has received attention and publicity from Dmytro Hordon (Russian: Dmitrii Gordon), a famous Ukrainian journalist in the post-Soviet media space. In an episode of his program, “Evening with Dmitrii Gordon,” the journalist extensively interviewed Andriy Bilets’kyy,[223] the leader of the Azov movement, whom Hordon described “as a clever and wise man.” Hordon conducts his interviews in Russian, and was an active commentator for the previously mentioned Russian-leaning TV channels, NewsOne and 112.ua.[224] These now shut down media outlets were under direct or indirect control of pro-Russian oligarchs. In his assessments concerning Ukrainian right-wing radicalism, Hordon has criticized the Svoboda party and Right Sector. In contrast, Bilets’kyy has been characterized by Hordon as a patriot of Ukraine: “The main part of the nationalists are normal people, but we have problems with nationalist leaders. We also have some good leaders, Andriy Bilets’kyy, for example.”[225]
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One of the new foreign contacts of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists has been the Italian extra-parliamentary fascist group CasaPound, which espouses an ambivalent position on the Russian-Ukrainian war. This movement, largely unknown outside of Italy, started as a commune in Rome for “true Italians,” welcoming the families of their ideological supporters. Over time, this practice spread throughout Italy, and the group became a notable neo-fascist actor in Western Europe.[259] Some members of CasaPound have voiced their support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, while others support the Kremlin and have even fought on the side of pro-Russian militants in Eastern Ukraine.[260]
Since 2014, the Carpathian Sich together with the international department of the Azov movement have conducted joint conferences in Uzhgorod and L’viv with CasaPound. According to FOIA Research, representatives of the Intermarium Support Group and CasaPound participated in an Acca Larentia commemoration in 2019.[261] The multi-national meeting of the European far-right representatives, including representatives of the Azov movement, was part of a series of yearly events held in Rome commemorating the death of three young neo-fascist activists in 1978 in violent clashes on the street Acca Larentia.[262]
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Even more awkwardly for the fiercely anti-Kremlin Azov movement, Franco Freda is a dedicated fan of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In an interview in November 2018, Freda not only spoke highly of pro-Russian far-right populist Matteo Salvini, but had the highest of praise for the man who literally engineered Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. “Putin is a champion of the white race,” Freda said. “I think of the Slavic peoples, they’re the ones who won the Second World War […] they’re brutal individuals, of course, but they are the only ones who can resist.” That wasn’t Freda’s first foray into lavishing praise on Putin. In 2014, while the Azov Battalion was fighting Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine, Franco Freda also took time to compliment the Russian president. “It is my impression that the only decent European politician is Vladimir Putin,” Freda said in October 2014.[292] It was remarkable, moreover, that Freda, though having made these statements after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in spring 2014, would still be embraced and his work translated by activists of Ukraine’s far right.
One more oddity: the "Russian Insurgent Army", coming with some WWII history and a lot of paradoxes
An expression of this type of Russian-Ukrainian far-right interaction came together to form the quasi-party Russian Center and its paramilitary arm, the Russian Insurgent Army. The latter is the hyperbolic name for a miniscule group apparently made up of several dozen young adults. So far this small, irregular, and supposedly armed entity’s activity has been largely virtual.
The group was created in 2015 by Andrei Kuznetsov (aka “Orange”), a relatively well-known Russian opposition blogger who had emigrated from Russia to Ukraine.[128] Together with some other immigrants from Russia, he formed what was suggestively called the Russkaia Povstancheskaia Armiia (Russian Insurgent Army). The title alludes to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a western Ukrainian nationalist, partisan movement during and after World War II that fought Soviet and Nazi troops but was tainted by some of its units committing mass murder of Polish and Jewish civilians in western Ukraine.[129] The name, Russian Insurgent Army, may also refer to the Russian Liberation Army, the unfamous Vlasov Russian unit that fought alongside the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union during World War II.[130]
The Russian Insurgent Army claims to have participated on the Ukrainian side against pro-Russian forces in the Donbas war.[131] It has also been rumored to have conducted clandestine activity within Russia, a supposition that seems implausible.[132] The Russian Insurgent Army was first presented to the public on December 29, 2014 at a press conference in Kyiv. The young anti-Kremlin activist Andrei Kuznetsov made an appeal for the unification of anti-Putinist Russian forces. He addressed “all adequate Russians, […] descendants of white immigrants […] who do not want Russian culture to disappear from the world.”[133]
The movement rejects Eurasianism and officially espouses an ethno-centric, yet supposedly “moderate,” right-wing ideology. It mostly uses concepts and symbols representing radical rather than liberal nationalist discourses. While the group may be made up of a variety of individuals of different persuasions, it is seemingly dominated by racist activists, as various entries on its website illustrate.[134]
The formation of the Russian Insurgent Army led to creation of an ethnic Russian political organization in Ukraine called the Russian Center, linked to the Azov movement. Its existence was announced on October 11, 2015 in Kyiv.[135] The Russian Center is another minor organization made up of Russian nationalist political immigrants in Ukraine. Natalia Yudina detailed that the Russian Center was
created in September 2015 by members of Wotanjugend, an ultra-right online group, and by activists of the Kirov cell of the Movement against Illegal Immigration (Dvizhenie protiv nelegal’noi immigratsii, DPNI-Vyatka), now banned in Russia. The Russian Center positions itself specifically as pan-Slavist, calling for the unity of all Slavs, and seeking to reach beyond Russia and Ukraine. They cooperate with nationalists in other countries, primarily with Polish nationalists from Zadruga (a Polish neo-pagan organization created in 2006 in Wroclaw) and People’s Free Poland (a radical Polish group that became famous in 2015 after the destruction of a Ukrainian cultural center in Warsaw). In September 2018, they conducted an event “to strengthen the Polish-Russian ties” in partnership with People’s Free Poland. They also participated in the nationalist “independence march” in Warsaw on November 11, 2018. The Russian Center from Ukraine marched along with the Black Bloc, chanting “White Revolution” slogans (“Europe, Youth, Revolution” and “Honor and Glory to the Heroes”), and they burned the LGBT+ and EU flags […]. In February 2019, some of its activists participated in the torchlight procession on the 101st anniversary of Estonia’s independence and the Etnofutur third international nationalist conference in Tallinn.
i ain't reading all that
i'm happy for u tho
or sorry that happened