U.S. House Passes 3 Amendments By Rep. Conyers to block the training of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia, 2015

==== the press release ====

U.S. House Passes 3 Amendments By Rep. Conyers To Defense Spending Bill To Protect Civilians From Dangers Of Arming and Training Foreign Forces
June 11, 2015 Press Release

WASHINGTON— Late yesterday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives considered H.R. 2685, the “Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2015.” During consideration of the legislation, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Congressman Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) offered bipartisan amendments to block the training of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia* “Azov Battalion,” and to prevent the transfer of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles—otherwise known as Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS)—to Iraq or Ukraine.

[*personal note: Well, it was paramilitary back in the 2015 but now AZOV is an official part of Ukraine Army]

“If there’s one simple lesson we can take away from US involvement in conflicts overseas, it’s this: Beware of unintended consequences. As was made vividly clear with U.S. involvement in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion decades ago, overzealous military assistance or the hyper-weaponization of conflicts can have destabilizing consequences and ultimately undercut our own national interests,” said Rep. John Conyers. “I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions.”

Ukraine’s Azov Battalion is a 1,000-man volunteer militia of the Ukrainian National Guard that Foreign Policy Magazine has characterized as “openly neo-Nazi,” and “fascist.” Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who oversees Ukraine’s armed militias, announced that Azov troops would be among the first units to be trained by the Pentagon in Operation Fearless Guardian, prompting significant international concern.

Since their initial use on a battlefield in 1978, MANPAD attacks have resulted in nearly 1,000 civilian deaths.

Added Conyers, “Both U.S. and Israeli officials have feared that these weapons could be used by terrorists to bring down commercial jets. As the boundaries are increasingly blurred between insurgents fighting the Syrian government and those fighting the Iraqi government, providing additional arms could further destabilize the Middle East. The same can be said for Ukraine, where an anti-aircraft missile allegedly downed Flight MH17 last summer, killing 298 civilians. The possibility that MANPADS—or any weapon—could fall into the hands of radical groups in Iraq, Syria, or Ukraine, would unquestionably increase the already-devastating human toll in both of these volatile regions.”

According to Reuters, The Azov battalion originated from a paramilitary national socialist group called "Patriot of Ukraine"**, which propagated slogans of white supremacy, racial purity, the need for authoritarian power and a centralized national economy. Azov’s controversial founder, Andriy Biletsky***, organized the neo-Nazi group the Social-National Assembly (SNA) in 2008.

[** personal note: about the nazis from the Patriot of Ukraine (__one__, __two__) >> ]
[*** Nazi Biletsky (__one__, __two__) ]

“The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites,” wrote The Telegraph. Since Azov was enrolled as a regiment of Ukraine's National Guard in September and started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms, however, Biletsky has toned down his rhetoric, Reuters reported. According to the Washington Post, battalion members “could potentially strike pro-Russian targets on their own — or even turn on the [Ukrainian] government” if it pursues a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

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The Foreign Policy: Preparing for War With Ukraine’s Fascist, 2014

quote:
Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and “fascists” in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.

The Jerusalem Post: Kiev regional police head accused of neo-Nazi ties, 2014

quote:
The newly appointed police chief for the Ukrainian province in which Kiev is located came under fire on Monday after it was alleged that he had past ties with a neo-Nazi organization.

Vadim Troyan was appointed to head the Kiev Oblast regional police on October 31 by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who feted him on Facebook as a respected commander whose like would form “the basis of a new national police force.”

Prior to his appointment he was deputy commander of the volunteer Azov Battalion, which has been engaged in combat operations against pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east. Kiev, while within the district, is an independent jurisdiction.

P.S. Troyan is the second from the left. The sign (blue letters on the wall) on the photo: "the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Kyiv Region" I post this dull photo for a reason ... to be continued...

Die Welt (Germany): Ukrainian Army uses civilian buildings as a shield, 2022

So far it was Putin troll propaganda - now "DIE WELT" admits that Ukrainians are shooting from civilian buildings such as schools.

In doing so, the Ukrainians are turning civilian facilities into military targets, which is a war crime. By shooting down a school, they provoke a Russian counterattack, which is then portrayed in the western media as if Russia were deliberately killing civilians.

So far this has been dismissed as Russian propaganda.

Die Welt: Ukraine Army position heavy artillery in residential areas, close to social infrastructure, hospitals, 2022

a poor transcript:

What we have also experienced here is destroyed residential buildings, destroyed schools. We also saw it in Bachmut, of course, it is a fact and that is also part of the truth of this war that (and we have already repeatedly seen and heard) the Ukraine position their guns, whether they are howitzers, whether they are mortars or grenade launchers, they actually position them in residential areas and often in the vicinity of civilian facilities and hospitals too.

That is also part of it, it has to be formulated clearly and we also heard from the soldiers that, on the one hand, it is possible to hold the lines of defense for the most part, but on the other hand, you also have to take heavy losses, the Russians are also there south of Bachmut troops when it was not far but advanced again...

P.S. Whoever can make a decent job of transcripting this video, will be praised!

Reuters: In the battle between Ukraine and Russian separatists, shady private armies take the field, 2015

quote:
... More than 30 of these private battalions, comprised mostly of volunteer soldiers, exist throughout Ukraine. Although all have been brought under the authority of the military or the National Guard, the post-Maidan government is still struggling to control them.

Some* of Ukraine’s private battalions have blackened the country’s international reputation with their extremist views. The Azov battalion, partially funded by Taruta and Kolomoisky, uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, and many of its members openly espouse neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic views.

The battalion members have spoken about “bringing the war to Kiev,” and said that Ukraine needs “a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.”...

LA Times: Ukrainian political parties publicly praise many aspects of Nazism, 2014

quote:

It’s become popular to dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin as paranoid and out of touch with reality. But his denunciation of “neofascist extremists” within the movement that toppled the old Ukrainian government, and in the ranks of the new one, is worth heeding.

...
why wave a red flag in front of a nervous bull? The answer is that for Svoboda, Right Sector and other Ukrainian far-right organizations, it was barely a handkerchief. These are groups whose thuggish young legions still sport a swastika-like symbol, whose leaders have publicly praised many aspects of Nazism and who venerate the World War II nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, whose troops occasionally collaborated with Hitler’s and massacred thousands of Poles and Jews.
...
But scarier than these parties’ whitewashing of the past are their plans for the future. They have openly advocated that no Russian language be taught in Ukrainian schools, that citizenship is only for those who pass Ukrainian language and culture exams, that only ethnic Ukrainians may adopt Ukrainian orphans and that new passports must identify their holders’ ethnicity — be it Ukrainian, Pole, Russian, Jew or other.

Is it so hard to understand Russians’ shock that senior U.S. officials (such as Sen. John McCain, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland) flirt with extremists who have been denounced as anti-Semitic, xenophobic, even neo-Nazi by numerous human rights and anti-defamation groups? That they were snapping pictures and distributing pastries among protest leaders, some of whose minions were at that same moment distributing “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on Independence Square?
...
The European Parliament in 2012 condemned Svoboda’s racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia as “against the EU’s fundamental values and principles.” The U.S. should not hesitate to do likewise now. It is not only the right thing to do, it would also open a door to compromise with Russia over this dangerous crisis. To remain silent sends exactly the wrong message to extremists on both sides.

Sky News Australia: Zelensky endorsing The Right Sector, 2022

The Cory Bernardi special on the Australian TV.
quote:
I can't bite my tongue any longer...
...
The West glosses over is the terrible things that have happened to the primarily ethnic Russian people in parts of the Ukraine under Zelensky's rule.
...
This was just after they were promised to vote on independence in 2014. That vote has never taken place. Zelensky promised to end the civil war. He clearly hasn't done so. Instead he's facilitated the goading of Russians by endorsing The Right Sector* whose leader publicly claimed he: "Fed the bones of Russian children to his pet wolf"**
==quote's end==

* The Right Sector is an openly fascist political party in Ukraine with a wide paramilitary wing serving in the official Ukraine Armed Forces. (source of the claims: The Guardian, The Time and others)

**The Times: Ukraine’s newly decorated war hero remains troubled by an ill-chosen remark concerning the bones in the cage of his unit’s pet wolf, 2022

Max Blumenthal: John McCain and Paul Ryan Hold 'Good Meeting' With Veteran Ukrainian Nazi Demagogue Andriy Parubiy, 2017

quote:
Andriy Parubiy is one of the most notorious right-wing extremists in Ukrainian politics. A founder of the far-right Social-National Party of Ukraine, whose name and symbols were inspired by Germany’s Nazi Party, Parubiy directed the street muscle in Kiev’s Maidan Square that drove the 2014 U.S.-backed coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russian-oriented government.

In 2016, just two decades after founding a neo-fascist party that declared at its opening ceremony that it was the “last hope of the white race, of humankind as such,” Parubiy leveraged his street cred to rise to the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

P.S. Well, there are many photos of US figures meeting with Ukraine nazis out there, including ones with Victoria Nuland and Biden