A Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that supported the Wagner mercenary rebellion has announced it will no longer fight in Ukraine, accusing the Kremlin of abandoning its leader.
Azov was founded by nazis, western media and ukrainian reports that all the nazis have magically dissapeared are exagerated for obvious reasons.
This being said, there does seem to be some truth to them being less virulently fascist once they were integrated into the regular army, and maybe after so many of the original members died. The lack of anti-semitism for example, is telling. Ukrainian (orthodox) jews and members of Azov fight alongside each other.
I think the branding stuck because they were undisputably heroic and fighting Russia, and also as a fuck you to the Russians. Also, still plenty of nazis.
We have similar issues in Belgium, where flemish nationalists make excuses for collaborationists. During the first and second world war, the Germans exploited long held (and often legitimate) grievances held by Dutch speaking Belgians. So for example, they opened the first Dutch/Flemish speaking university in Belgium and offered Flanders a high degree of autonomy. During WW1 the Belgian army was also very francophone, which IRC caused some dutch speaking soldiers issues, this was exagerated by flemish nationalist and IRC german propaganda. The end result was that hardcore nationalists ended up collaborating with the Germans even during the second world war. After the war the flemish movement made excuses for them, suggesting they weren’t overwhelmingly true believers.
Something similar happened in Ireland. The blue shirts were a paramilitary organisation in the Irish free state which was opposed against the IRA. They provided physical protection to political groups which would go on to form Fine Gael, what is now a mainstream and moderate party. There’s also a debate about the blue shirts being fascists. What is true that many went on to fight alongside Franco in the Spanish Civil War and that they did the whole hand in the air thing. Their leader O’Duffy was also fascist, admired Mussolini, attended an international Fascist conference in 1934, but then perhaps crucially used the opportunity to argue against anti-semitism.
Azov was founded by nazis, western media and ukrainian reports that all the nazis have magically dissapeared are exagerated for obvious reasons.
This being said, there does seem to be some truth to them being less virulently fascist once they were integrated into the regular army, and maybe after so many of the original members died. The lack of anti-semitism for example, is telling. Ukrainian (orthodox) jews and members of Azov fight alongside each other.
I think the branding stuck because they were undisputably heroic and fighting Russia, and also as a fuck you to the Russians. Also, still plenty of nazis.
We have similar issues in Belgium, where flemish nationalists make excuses for collaborationists. During the first and second world war, the Germans exploited long held (and often legitimate) grievances held by Dutch speaking Belgians. So for example, they opened the first Dutch/Flemish speaking university in Belgium and offered Flanders a high degree of autonomy. During WW1 the Belgian army was also very francophone, which IRC caused some dutch speaking soldiers issues, this was exagerated by flemish nationalist and IRC german propaganda. The end result was that hardcore nationalists ended up collaborating with the Germans even during the second world war. After the war the flemish movement made excuses for them, suggesting they weren’t overwhelmingly true believers.
Something similar happened in Ireland. The blue shirts were a paramilitary organisation in the Irish free state which was opposed against the IRA. They provided physical protection to political groups which would go on to form Fine Gael, what is now a mainstream and moderate party. There’s also a debate about the blue shirts being fascists. What is true that many went on to fight alongside Franco in the Spanish Civil War and that they did the whole hand in the air thing. Their leader O’Duffy was also fascist, admired Mussolini, attended an international Fascist conference in 1934, but then perhaps crucially used the opportunity to argue against anti-semitism.
TLDR: it’s complicated.