The United States has lifted its ban on the transfer of American weapons to the Nazi Azov Battalion.
Active Measures investigates the group’s origins and current leaders, its history of war crimes and the American and European neo-Nazi groups it has cultivated.
Transcript:
Well, it’s official. The United States has lifted its ban on the transfer of American weapons to neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine.
Today, Azov is led by Denis Prokopenko, a recipient of the ‘Hero of Ukraine’ award from interim Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky, a figure he once refused to salute.
Prior to becoming its commander, Prokopenko was featured on the front cover of Azov’s magazine, called “Black Sun” – named after the Nazi sonnenrad symbol.
Prokopenko is a longtime member of Azov, but before he joined the group, he was a member of the Ukrainian soccer ultra gang called the “White Boys Club.”
According to a friend and former Azov member, before joining the Nazi brigade, the two traveled almost the entirety of Ukraine to support their team.
Here is the White Boys Club celebrating their Prokopenko’s award.
I went to the White Boys Club’s YouTube channel to see what they are all about.
“100% White” reads their banner from this 2017 video.
Well I guess that answers that.
Before Prokopenko took command, Azov was led and founded by Andriy Biletsky, a longtime neo-Nazi activist.
Today, Biletsky leads an Azov detachment called the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.
Biletsky is perhaps best known by his infamous quote, wherein he pledged to “lead the white races of the world in the final crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen. But you don’t have to look very far to find equally disturbing remarks by the so-called “White Leader.”
Biletsky was a key figure in the neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine group. During one meeting, he raved: “How can we describe our enemy? The authorities and the oligarchs. Do they have anything in common? Yes, they have one thing in common: they are Jews, or behind them are their real masters — Jews.”
While in prison for allegedly ordering a murder, Biletsky’s writings were published in an essay collection entitled “the Word of the White Leader.”
“Ukraine is the light of Europe! Our Nation still has enough strength to withstand this influx of foreigners, to cleanse our land and light the fire of purification throughout Europe!”
“Ukrainian social-nationalism considers the Ukrainian Nation to be a blood-racial community… Race is everything for nation-building – Race is the basis on which the superstructure grows in the form of national culture, which again comes from the racial nature of the people, and not from language, religion, economy, etc.”
On Telegram, Azov celebrated the US lifting the ban against them using American weapons.
“Receiving Western weapons and training from the US will not only increase the combat capability of “Azov”, but most importantly, will contribute to the preservation of the lives and health of the personnel of the brigade. This is a new page in the history of our unit. “Azov” is becoming even more powerful, even more professional and even more dangerous for the occupiers.”
It’s a far cry from less than five years ago, when 40 members of the House of Representatives urged the State Department to classify the group as a terrorist organization.
Since 2018, Azov has been banned from receiving training and assistance from the United States because of its neo-Nazi ideology.
In a statement, the US State Department declared that Azov had passed Leahy vetting, which is used by the United States to prevent groups that have carried out war crimes from receiving weapons and training.
Yet such evidence is not so hard to find. During the showdown in Mariupol between Russian forces and the Azov Battalion, videos purporting to show Azov executing fleeing civilians and using civilian infrastructure for cover were not hard to come by. These are war crimes according to the Geneva Convention.
While Ukraine and NATO have blamed Russia for bombing the theater in Mariupol, which was holding civilians, Russia has accused Azov of staging a false flag.
Azov soldiers were in and around the building in the days leading up to the bombing. In fact, the Azov Battalion was publishing footage from inside the building just days prior.
Following Russia’s takeover of the city, civilians testified to the media in droves about the Azov Battalion’s use of civilians human shields. Meanwhile, a number of captured Azov fighters have been found guilty of war crimes in Russian courts.
Over the years, everybody from the United Nations to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has documented war crimes by Azov.
Yet, despite the ban, Azov was already trained by the United States and has used American weapons. It’s documented. Let me show you.
One article from 2019 in the Daily Beast begins. “There are no doubts about the neo-Nazi and white supremacist background of the Azov Battalion, a militia that has positioned itself at the forefront of the fight against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.”
In an interview with the outlet, Sgt. Ivan Kharkiv of the Azov battalion talks about his battalion’s experience with U.S. trainers and U.S. volunteers quite fondly, even mentioning U.S. volunteers engineers and medics that are still currently assisting them.
A similar interview was published in the American-funded propaganda outlet Radio Svoboda in 2018. It’s with none other than Azov commander Denys Prokopenko, identified by his call sign Radis.
“Radis tells about the history of the appearance of all Azov officers. – Four instructors from the United States and Canada taught. Two of them are veterans of the war in Vietnam, they were 74 and 66 years old. They fought in Vietnam as ordinary soldiers, then they held command and staff positions in NATO structures – in Iraq, Afghanistan. Such a course in the USA is designed for a year, here it was shortened to two and a half months. The entire team of “Azov” – 44 people – was gathered here. There was a lot of material in English that they did not have time to translate, there were Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian languages. But they managed, especially since in “Azov” there are many officers with fluent English, there was a military translator. Only two officers failed the final exams and left the course. Then, after finishing the course, with new knowledge, we went to the training ground for combat adjustment… Then the war in the format “wall to wall” and “crowd to crowd” ended, and we understood that we urgently need to turn non-military people into military ones, otherwise we will go somewhere not there And then we chose NATO standards – from symbols, map design, personnel structures of units to tactical structures and techniques. And we got a serious head start. If you know, the Armed Forces and the National Guard have just now decided that it is necessary to switch to the NATO system.”
Meanwhile, photographs published by Azov in 2017 show its members meeting with American military instructors.
That same year, Azov published more photos of its members using American-made grenade launchers
Here I’d caution for the potential of blowback – arming and training members of a neo-Nazi organization could cause serious problems for the West. The only thing though, is that it already has.
Let’s rewind to November 2022, when Italian police busted a neo-Nazi cell, which included members of Azov.
Members of the group reportedly maintained “direct and frequent” contacts over Telegram with not just the Azov Battalion, but also the neo-Nazi Ukrainian military formations Right Sector and Centuria, “probably in the view of possible recruitment into the ranks of these fighting groups,” according to Italian media.
One of the arrested members, Giampiero Testa, was reportedly “dangerously close to far-right Ukrainian Nationalist groups” and was planning an attack on a police station.
Italian police were unable to capture another member as he was in Ukraine, fighting with Azov. Authorities say the fighter, Anton Radomsky, planned to attack a shopping mall in Naples.
Earlier that year, US Department of Homeland Security noted in an internal document that “Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists-white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia.”
That same document notes one key American intelligence gap, asking “What kind of training are foreign fighters receiving in Ukraine that they could possibly proliferate in US based militia and white nationalist groups?”
If we rewind even further, we can find direct links between Azov and American neo-Nazi groups that have carried out violence against anti-racist protesters in the United States.
For example, members of the neo-Nazi Rise Above Movement, or RAM, were arrested for carrying out unprovoked attacks on journalists and protesters in the United States, ranging from California to Charlottesville, Virginia during the infamous Unite the Right rally in 2017. In 2018, they traveled to Germany, Ukraine and Italy to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, according to the criminal complaint against them.
According to FBI special agent Scott Bierwirth, the RAM members met with Olena Semenyaka, “the leader of the international department for the national corps, which is a political party in Ukraine that was founded in 2016 out of a regiment of the Ukrainian military called the Azov Battalion. Based on my experience and training, I know that the Azov Battalion is a paramilitary unit of the Ukrainian National Guard which is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and the use of Nazi symbolism, and which is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”
In an interview with the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe, Semenyaka said the RAM members “came to learn our ways” and “showed an interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has.”
The Rise Above Movement’s founder, Rob Rundo, was arrested in Romania last year. You can see the Nazi sonnenrad tattoo on his elbow.
During the trip to Ukraine, Rundo boxed with an Azov Fighter in a highly-publicized event.
Rundo has said his idea for RAM came from Ukraine’s far-right scene. “This is always my whole inspiration for everything,” he told a right-wing podcast in September 2017, referring to Azov as “the future.” “They really have the culture out there,” he said. “They have their own clubs. They have their own bars. They have their own dress style.”
Back then, Azov compounds “could be described as a small state within a state,” Olena Semenyaka, then the head of international outreach for the Azov movement, told Time Magazine. She told the outlet that Azov’s mission was to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe.
Another Azov veteran-turned National Corps political figure, Vladyslav Sobolevskyi, expressed his desire for Ukraine to become a nuclear-armed state in a deleted interview. “I want Ukraine to have nuclear weapons. This is the shield and the sword that will allow our state to develop in any version of the foreign policy situation.”
One such group was the Atomwaffen Division, whose founder, Brandon Russell, plotted to attack Baltimore’s electrical grid to freeze out black people during the winter time.
Other members of the group have well documented ties to Azov and have been arrested for crimes including murder distributing bomb-making material.
To conclude, the United States will begin – or already has begun – arming and training a neo-Nazi group with explicit aims to take over Europe. Are you ok with your tax dollars going towards weapons for a group that wants to establish a fourth reich? Let us know in the comments.