About a month ago, France’s premier newspaper, Le Monde, published a compelling investigation about neo[fascists] in the Ukrainian armed forces that inevitably zeroed in on the Azov movement’s 3rd Assault Brigade, which is often said to be one of the biggest and most effective in Ukraine.
In just 10 days, French journalists identified more than 350 Ukrainian soldiers displaying neo[fascist] symbols on public Instagram accounts, with at least 200 of them linked to this one unit. Inspired by their investigation, I’ve begun compiling examples on my Twitter/X account, starting with artillerymen and the main battalions of the brigade.
It’s taken months for details to emerge about the composition of the new 3rd Army Corps since Andriy Biletsky announced its creation in March. “MilitaryLand,” a pro-Azov database of Ukrainian military units, recently backpedaled its breaking news that the Azovite military intelligence “Kraken” regiment would be joining the 3rd Army Corps.
Apparently only “part” of the unit has sought the transfer, but “this move has not yet been approved by officials.” Meanwhile the 60th Mechanized Brigade has reportedly been reassigned, including its 97th Mechanized Battalion, another Azovite unit that “is closely aligned with Kraken.”
Le Monde and MilitaryLand note that Biletsky could command up to 50,000 troops if his forces are fully expanded. For now, let’s take a closer look at the origins of this corps, and the neo[fascist] backbone of the 3rd Assault Brigade.
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The National Militia relaunched as “Centuria” in 2020, and could be described as a neo[fascist] street gang, at least before the Russian invasion. Since then, as the “newest Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN],” it’s become the premier group for young Azovites.
Dmytro Krukovsky, the acting head of Centuria, is a veteran of the 3rd Assault Brigade, with a Hitler tattoo on his arm. If only under his leadership, the organization inaugurates the changing of the seasons with [neo]pagan cross-burnings. Last year he led an anti-LGBT march in Kyiv.
With Krukovsky’s help, the Azov movement is reviving the OUN death cult alliance of radical war veterans and young extremists. It appears that he’s joining the ideological service of the 3rd Army Corps.
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When Centuria founder Ihor Mykhailenko handed out SSO Azov Regiment patches with a new design, the western media gave rise to a myth that the Azov movement abandoned [Fascist] symbolism. (Le Monde has decisively proved otherwise, and the issue is hardly just an Azov problem.)
“It still has a lot of its neo-Nazi presence,” admitted Justin, an impressionable young American who wanted to defend Ukraine. He joined SSO Azov-Kyiv in the spring of 2022, not long after arriving in the capital. “You sort of just adapt to it, because these are your guys,” he explained.
Regardless of my battalion commander, my company commander being the Nazis that they were … I still get a kick out of this. I came in one day, and … you have to understand, these guys are hyper-fucking-masculine, these guys are almost borderline insane in terms of … they’re hyped-up warriors, you know, they’re these fucking gung-ho guys. So they kind of idolized the American Special Operations Forces, they wanted to be like them … so we watched these old History Channel Ranger School videos and stuff, and when my company commander opened his laptop on this huge fucking TV screen, he had a fucking desktop photo of fucking Adolf Hitler.
This was an interesting interview on Decline and Fall, journalist Kit Klarenberg and Marxist Alexander Mckay’s new outlet. Hravyshko, a Ukrainian native and genocide scholar, rattles off a list of fascist Ukrainian military units.