We end today’s show with the first — we are going to talk today about what’s happening in Ukraine. We’re joined right now by two people, by a journalist who’s written extensively in The Intercept, a reporter who’s looked at the role of neo-Nazis in the war. The Ukrainian-born journalist Lev Golinkin is also with us. He recently wrote a piece for The Nation headlined “The Western Media Is Whitewashing the Azov Battalion.” The piece looks at the neo-Nazi roots of one of Ukraine’s most heralded paramilitary forces. Earlier this month, Turkey released five former Azov commanders who were being held in Turkey. They flew back on a plane with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Meanwhile, The Intercept recently detailed how an anti-Putin Russian militia that carried out attacks inside Russia in May is led by a neo-Nazi who’s maintained links with American neo-Nazis. That piece was written by Ben Makuch, a national security reporter who used to work as a correspondent for Vice News Tonight. Ben has also just written a new piece for The Intercept about an American Army vet, wanted for murder in the United States, who escaped to Ukraine to fight with the Right Sector, an ultranationalist Ukrainian militia. We’re going to get to that in a moment.
It always bothers me how neatly these talking points fold in to Russia’s propaganda blitz that “Ukraine = neo-Nazis” that they used to justify the invasion. (Spoiler alert; they’re not.)
I’m not sure what the utility of exploring this is even if it’s true. Does the existence of problematic Ukrainians or Americans justify Putin’s war of aggression? Does it mean Ukraine should not be able to defend itself?
Ultimately Ukraine has more pressing problems at this moment. And discussions like this that seem to justify Russian aggression suck air out of the room that could be used to talk about real, larger problems.
No one said all of Ukraine are neo-Nazis, and no one is truing to justify anything Russia is doing.
And as much as I agree that the war is a bigger problem, arming neo-Nazis and giving them legitimacy is extremely bad.
Ukraine needs to be able to function as a state after the war, and honestly ignoring these types of issues, not to mention the various weird laws they passed since the war started, doesn’t make very confident in their future.
Oh I entirely disagree; I think comments like this are already falling into the trap.
Purity testing Ukraine and its armed forces is the point. Zero neo-Nazis is not a standard we’ve asked of any other armed forces on the planet, including our own — and we are currently at peace so it seems like something that would be easy for us to achieve. Asking Ukraine to both fight for its life and also perform rigorous ideological testing of its armed forces seems… well, pretty helpful for Russia, honestly.
And for what? Certainly there must be one or two neo-Nazis in there. But there isn’t anywhere near enough to call the entire kit and kaboodle neo-Nazi, or to justify the amount of time and effort involved. Or the slew of Putin-aligned articles like this where useful idiots “just ask questions” about neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
Ultimately we have to ask if we are willing to accept some amount of negative externalities in Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. Asking Ukraine to commit collective suicide because they don’t pass an arbitrary purity test is too much of an ask. If a few isolated neo-Nazis are empowered as a result of Russia’s war of aggression, that is because of Russia forcing Ukraine into this situation, not because Ukraine is secretly super duper pro-neo-Nazi.
If Ukraine relies on neo-Nazis so much that they would lose this war if they kicked them out, they have no future as a functioning state anyway.
If they don’t, why not kick them out? I don’t think it will take as much effort as you assume, you don’t need to find every single neo-Nazi - just dismantle the Azov regiment (estimated at hundreds to a few thousand soldiers), spread them out throughout the Ukrainian military and remove leaders in it which are known to be or have connections to neo-Nazis.
I’m not sure who “we” is, my country is certainly not at peace, but assuming you are American I don’t think your military and country are good examples of how to act.
I just don’t see why it has to be so black and white… ensuring your fighters operate in a sane way is a very important part of managing a military.
Ignoring Ukraine’s issues because of the war will only hurt it in the long run.
Because “kicking them out”:
I have no idea how you can say “ignoring Ukraine’s issues will only hurt it in the long run” when they are literally fighting for their very existence fight now. Like, doing anything except fighting for its life certainly seems like THAT would hurt it in the long run, since if it loses this war there is no long run!
This is also totally ignoring the fact that Ukraine just elected a Jewish President after an anti-Russia pro-democracy revolution in which far-right parties acquired less than 4% of the total vote. In what sense does any of that justify systemic concern about neo-Nazis?
Well I did some more research and it seems that there is a disagreement about this topic amongst journalists and historians.
One thing I did find during this research, was a video (twitter) published by the Ukrainian National Guard last year which appears to show members of Azov greasing bullets with pig fat in preparation of a battle with a Chechen force (Muslims).
This is extreme, and lends to the idea that there is still a neo-Nazi element there, not to mention the fact that soldiers in a war who waste their time on this kinda stuff when they could actually be preparing for battle are bad soldiers in either case.
Do you have military experience? I don’t want to seem condescending, but “purging neo-Nazis” shouldn’t stop the military, and ensuring problematic soldiers don’t get to do whatever they want (not to mention encouraging bad behavior) is very important for the effectiveness of a military force.
No offense, but I don’t think one Twitter video that appears to show something that might have happened is very good proof that there’s a neo-Nazi problem in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Especially, again, when this is the very point that Putin is basing his entire invasion on. With all of Russian intelligence at his beck and call, he could manufacture very, very good evidence. (Certainly better than this is which seems pretty weak to me at least.)
You’d have to:
Interview and investigate every member of the military. The bad apples won’t simply volunteer that they are neo-Nazis, after all. This will disrupt the entire military while a huge bureaucratic apparatus investigates and processes all its members. People who simply don’t like each other will accuse each other of being neo-Nazis. Some will manufacture evidence to get their enemies removed.
Get rid of all the neo-Nazis. I imagine most won’t go willingly and they’re members of the military so many are probably highly-trained and well-armed. Even once you succeed, the units that they left will have morale problems. (All units will have morale problems because this process will be laborious and paranoid, and will take place while they are fighting an armed conflict against an external enemy, never mind internal investigators doubting each and every person’s loyalties.)
Have an appeals process (and thus an entire separate bureaucracy from the first bureaucracy) because the investigators and interviewers will get it wrong and there needs to be a way for innocent people, wrongly accused, to appeal their discharges.
So in the end, you’ve spent time and money to weaken your military, both in terms of membership and morale, to execute a witch hunt that basically vindicates the opposing army’s reason to invade, to get rid of some small amount of neo-Nazis… instead of actually defending your country against that existential threat. Which (even if it exists) can be handled properly after the war is over.
I don’t want to seem condescending either, but the ask here is totally outrageous, especially when there’s no “long term” goal here, because as I said, failure to defend Ukraine will result in literally no “long term” goals for Ukraine mattering.
That Twitter video was posted by the Ukrainian National Guard.
There are also many photos of members of the Azov Battalion with Nazi insignia (them being neo-Nazis in the past is 100% not propaganda), these people don’t just stop believing this stuff cause someone told them to.
And no offense but what you describe is insane - there’s no reason (and no way) a military would do that. I said I don’t want to be condescending in my previous comment because I do have military experience, and militaries don’t operate in the way you described at all (especially during a war).
These aren’t civilians, they don’t get the same rights, and you don’t need to “catch” all of them (or even most of them) to send a message that neo-Nazis aren’t welcome. Just arrest or at least remove some prominent ones, maybe spread current Azov members across various units, and the situation will improve dramatically.
But so what? Does that make it true? Why do you believe it? Ukraine was governed by a pro-Russia Putin stooge less than a decade ago. Do you think it’s possible there are people still in Russia (and outside it) that would push this angle as hard as possible even if it might not be factual? How would you determine what’s true and not? Why are you using Twitter videos to do it? You accuse me of naiveté but there is simply not very good evidence for this, and extremely good reasons to be skeptical of it.
What I describe is the only workable method of doing this. “Oh, just remove them” is magical thinking. How are you supposed to even find them? What do you do if some of them claim they’re not? Obviously they’re not civilians, but you still don’t want to get it wrong because you’ll alienate large swathes of your own (well-armed and well-trained) armed forces… and, again, for what? Why do it now when you can just do it after the war? Since if Ukraine loses, this debate won’t matter at all anyway since everyone involved will be dead.
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Imagine this was the invasion of Afghanistan by Russia in the 1980s - knowing what you know now about 9-11 would you be just as cavalier about accountability with who the United States were training and supplying?
Putin is an autocrat and Wagner are fascists, but the journalists featured here don’t have any influence in the east. They are doing the right thing by demanding Ukraine be held accountable. Both the journalists have clearly stated whose ‘side’ they’re on, and repudiated Putin’s claims. This is no place for Soviet whataboutism.
Mark my words: The next wave of mass shooters and white supremacist terrorists are being trained with American taxpayer money. If they’re so hard up for support, why don’t they permit anarchist battalions? There are veterans with years of military experience in Kobanî who were eager to fight the invasion, and the Ukrainian MOD delayed and stymied their participation. Yet they’re bending over backwards for people who want to cleanse their society of gay people and minority ethnic groups. Anarchists and communists have already given their lives in the defense of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not a fascist, but wouldn’t it be a great propaganda coup against Putin’s narrative for Ukraine to fight alongside a modern Abraham Lincoln brigade?
Wow… that doesn’t make any sense.
First, even a passing comparison between Afghanistan and Ukraine is absurd. Just take a quick look at Wikipedia’s demographics page (or like, Britannica, etc.?) for both of them.
Second, the crux of the issue isn’t that these journalists aren’t on “our side,” it’s that we’ve been literally bombarded with these sorts of articles since day one, usually something like: “Sure Ukraine has the lowest rate of antisemitism in Eastern Europe, and its far-right political parties have less seats proportionally than the AfD or RN, but here are some marginal dudes who are undoubtedly nazis, localized entirely in places that have no political power.” A lot of these articles are predicated on the patronizing idea that Ukrainian society has no agency and that (justified) American political anxieties about the far-right can be neatly mapped onto Ukraine. I mean, just look at this quote from the article:
LEV GOLINKIN: Yeah. It’s pretty insane that every time Marjorie Taylor Greene sneezes, it’s the second coming of Hitler, and yet here we have two brigades — brigades — of neo-Nazis, and we’re perfectly fine with it.There isn’t an Enabling Act lurking somewhere in the ~4% of far-right Ukrainian voters, just waiting to pounce when us soft Westerners let our guards down. Nor is there some far-right putsch hiding in the perhaps 10k (if you squeeze it) far-right-aligned soldiers out of the 700k soldiers in the army. Because Azov isn’t some rogue militia farming poppy to buy RPGs, it now answers to an elected government with effective control of the armed forces. In a liberalizing society. That launched a revolution against an authoritarian government. Specifically so that it could join the EU.
Lastly, there literally are anarchists groups fighting for Ukraine, just not as a government-sanctioned militia. Most of them take inspiration from Nestor Makhno! As for the Kobanî, just look at their Wikipedia sidebar. Ukraine is fighting for its life and Turkey’s a strategic ally! Knowing how they go apeshit over every issue related to: burning Qurans, Aegean islands with Greeks on them, and the YPG especially, you can’t reasonably blame Ukraine for refusing their support.
The fascists are literally dipping bullets in pig’s blood. Why isn’t Ukraine concerned about losing Turkey as a strategic ally by making heroes out of crusaders, but a situation where there would be less soldiers to check Erdogan’s southern ambitions is going to make him throw away all that Bayraktar money.
If they’re such a minor element of Ukrainian society, why can’t they disband the battalions? You can’t have it both ways. You’re right, it’s not Afghanistan; Ukraine aspiring to EU status makes the threat worse.
Dipping bullets in pig’s blood doesn’t make entire battalions fascist. Even if the Twitter videos are true (why do you think this is?) you wouldn’t fire everyone involved. You’d have to investigate all the members of those units, a process that would cripple morale across the military and play directly into Putin’s propaganda that he’s invading Ukraine to get rid of its neo-Nazis.
Why not wait until after the war is won and then investigate? The problem isn’t going anywhere and it won’t matter at all if Ukraine loses, since everyone involved will be dead at that point anyway.
This isn’t some random twitter user; it was posted by the National Guard of Ukraine, and officially identified as an Azov soldier. It’s a pretty fucking fascist thing to do, but if you think this is the first and only indication that Azov is fascist, you haven’t been paying attention. I bring it up because it’s one of the many ways Azov is undermining resistance against Putin’s fascists: creating propaganda that alienates Ukraine’s Muslim allies.