The marginally less bad guys in Ukraine.
When the Russian government claimed their invasion of Ukraine was a mission to “de-Nazify” the country’s leadership it was greeted with almost universal derision because it is complete bullshit for a wide array of reasons, not the least of which that President Volodymyr Zelensky is the world’s only currently serving Jewish head of state besides Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet.
But like most right wing nationalist propaganda, it started with a small kernel of truth: The Azov Battalion, an extremist fascist paramilitary backed by the Ukrainian government. The Azovs have been fighting against the Pro-Russian separatists in the eastern breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk since the campaign started in 2014, and their record is extremely spotty there to say the least, with allegations of torture, war crimes, and looting by Azov members over the past decade. Over the years the group became somewhat of a magnet for global right wing terrorists looking for a fight to join – among them a former US Army soldier who was arrested for in 2019 for a bomb plot against an unnamed TV news station who expressed interest in joining the Azovs, and Brenton Tarrant, the Nazi terrorist who massacred 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019 who claimed he had trained with the group in Ukraine prior to the attack.
Do Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders regard the Azovs as a necessary evil? Probably, but we don’t know what they’re thinking. The fact that they’ve released convicts with combat experience from prisons to fight off the Russian invasion says a lot about their situation. Their support for the Azovs somewhat echoes the Pakistani government’s sponsorship of Islamic extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba to fight for territory against Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region.
But the Azov Battalion are not all, or even most of Ukraine’s defense – especially now given that the country is mired in a total war against the Russian invasion – and to say they’re representative of a fledgling democracy fighting for its very existence is simple bad faith. So naturally the MAGA trolls on the other site are seizing on them as a justification for Russia’s assault:
Obama Bin Lootin • 10 minutes ago
️There are reports that Azov Nazis are firing on civilians who try to evacuate.
Mon, 3/7/2022 9:20 AM on ‘Ukrainian mayor wounded during evacuation, officials say’
JackStraw • 18 hours ago
️Hey leftists, what is the Azov Battalion?
Sun, 3/6/2022 3:56 PM on ‘Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian artillery’
These took all of ten minutes to find, we’re sure we could dig up more as this new angle spreads among MAGA nation while they creep back towards being pro-Russia after getting bored with pretending to be on Team Ukraine for a week. The hypocrisy of people upset over “libs using January 6th to make all Trump supporters look bad” turning around to paint all Ukrainians with the same broad brush is so fucking stale and predictable but we felt we should give our readers the heads up that “Azov Battlaion” is the new MAGA code for “the Russians are the good guys again”.
Dwayne Elizondo MDH Camacho • an hour ago
️Google A30B Battalion. These are the people you are supporting.
Mon, 3/7/2022 8:27 AM on ‘Kyiv: Moscow’s humanitarian corridors from Ukraine to Russia, Belarus ‘unacceptable”