Top US media outlet CNN promoted a commander from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov regiment, failing to mention his militia’s white-supremacist ideology.
Azov then proudly shared the video on its official Twitter account.
Leading US media network CNN has promoted a commander of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov regiment, without mention of his hate group’s extremist views.
In 2014, a gang of Ukrainian neo-Nazis formed a militia called the Azov Battalion. These far-right extremists played a leading role in a violent US-sponsored coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government, which they had deemed too “pro-Russian.”
The new pro-Western regime that was installed in Kiev after the 2014 “Maidan” coup waged a brutal war on Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists in the east of the country. Kiev turned to fascist gangs like Azov to help strengthen its weak military forces.
Azov was officially incorporated into the Ukrainian state. It became a regiment in the National Guard, while still maintaining its white-supremacist ideology and use of numerous Nazi symbols.
This March 21, the neo-Nazi Azov militia posted a video on its official Twitter account of one of its commanders being promoted on CNN.
CNN had republished a video clip of Azov Major Denis Prokopenko, who was helping lead the fight against Russian troops in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
The major US media channel described the fascist extremist simply as a “Ukrainian military commander who has been defending the city from the siege.”
CNN subsequently quoted this neo-Nazi commander in two different print reports, which failed to disclose his far-right politics.
A March 19 CNN report titled “Mariupol residents are being forced to go to Russia, city council says” quoted him simply as “Major Denis Prokopenko, from the National Guard Azov Regiment,” with no further details.
Ironically, just two paragraphs before, CNN had cited the mayor of Mariupol to try to compare Russia to Nazi Germany.
A similar CNN article from earlier that same day repeated the same quote from Prokopenko, but did mention euphemistically in passing that the “Azov Battalion is an ultra-nationalist militia that has since been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.”
With state backing, Azov preaches a white-supremacist ideology and uses Nazi symbols like the German Wolfsangel and racist black sun.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, neo-Nazi extremists from Azov and other far-right militias have played a leading role in the fight.
NATO member states have provided Azov with weapons and training. And Ukraine’s National Guard proudly tweeted a video of an Azov Nazi greasing his bullets with pig fat to kill Russian Muslims, whom the Ukrainian state institution demonized as “orcs.”
CNN is far from the only Western media outlet that has actively promoted neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
Many major media outlets amplified a propaganda photo shoot that was staged by Azov before the Russian invasion.
US government-sponsored network PBS even heroized notorious neo-Nazi Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of the Ukrainian city Konotop, in a softball interview in which he demonized Russians as “cockroaches.”
PBS did not mention the “heil Hitler” symbol on Semenikhin’s car, or even the portrait of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera that was on the wall behind the extremist in the video.