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.
Too bad, Euro far right types of all sorts are way more interesting (and organized, also militarily, and most of all socially and politically accepted) than the totally marginal and commonly despised autists and feds in America ("persecuted by the FBI", but also the FBI) that are typically discussed and discussing over here.
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.
...
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.
i ain't reading all that
i'm happy for u tho
or sorry that happened
Too bad, Euro far right types of all sorts are way more interesting (and organized, also militarily, and most of all socially and politically accepted) than the totally marginal and commonly despised autists and feds in America ("persecuted by the FBI", but also the FBI) that are typically discussed and discussing over here.