{"id":803,"date":"2024-07-26T20:16:52","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T14:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ainews.prativad.com\/index.php\/ukraines-rebranded-neo-nazis-dazzle-the-western-press-on-tour\/"},"modified":"2024-07-26T21:11:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T15:41:49","slug":"ukraines-rebranded-neo-nazis-dazzle-the-western-press-on-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ainews.prativad.com\/index.php\/ukraines-rebranded-neo-nazis-dazzle-the-western-press-on-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"While on tour, Ukraine’s rebranded neo-Nazis astonish the Western press."},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The Third Assault Brigade’s extreme Azov Battalion origins are readily forgotten as it continues its European public relations tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an article carried by Radio France Internationale (RFI), the French state media, Agence France Presse reported that “four soldiers from Ukraine’s popular Third Assault Brigade kicked off their meet-and-greets in the Polish capital on Sunday, home to large numbers of Ukrainian refugees, more than two years into the conflict.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPopular?\u201d<\/em> Really? That\u2019s the only defining characteristic that came to mind when describing the Ukrainian Army faction created in 2022 from what was left of the Azov Battalion in the wake of the battle of Mariupol? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little digging in the French press itself would have revealed that, when this same Brigade was being trained here in France last year, a leaked report prompted the French investigative outlet, Mediapart, to describe one member as having a Nazi SS logo tattooed on his head, while a photo of the same guy showed him with a swastika flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Mediapart started digging around online for details on some of the other members who were training in central France, at the La Courtine camp, they hit a social media jackpot of ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes, Hitler art, and a potpourri of various Nazi SS division emblems like they were some kind of Hitlerized stamp collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And those were just the half-dozen or so attendees who were dumb enough to post it all over social media when this rebranded Azov Batallion had gone to all the trouble of hiring a 12-person, full-time media team, including a cameraman, press officers, and editors, according to<\/a> the European Center for Policy Analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Ukrainian showman and comedian who was also a member had been doing some vlogging to promote the Third Assault Brigade, according to the think tank. All this industrial-grade whitewashing and here these trainee members were, all over social media, Naziing it up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guess the Azov brand was too tarnished. Too closely associated with neo-Nazism. And with losing to Russia. So here\u2019s the rebranding. They should have to take out an ad in the newspapers announcing a name change like anyone else. Especially since it\u2019s pretty clear that the Western press isn\u2019t going to take the initiative and investigate in the public interest. That would be rather inconvenient for all the Western elites interested in promoting these \u201cheroes\u201d<\/em> to do the West\u2019s bidding against Russia. Who needs a negotiated peace that could save lives on all sides when the Western elites have an opportunity to stuff the pockets of their special-interest cronies by making and selling more weapons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter the Azov movement\u2019s Third Assault Brigade\u2019s six-country, nine-city European summer tour. If the Olympic Games in Paris or music festivals in Ibiza aren\u2019t your thing, then perhaps you\u2019d like to fork over \u20ac20 to hang out with members of a rebranded neo-Nazi group at the Intercontinental Hotel in Berlin, or let them regale you alongside one of Europe\u2019s largest Picasso collections at the Ludwig Museum in Koln. Billed as the \u201cOur People are Everywhere\u201d<\/em> tour, with admission available for purchase on a European ticketing site alongside gigs like the band Thirty Seconds to Mars\u2019 concert in Istanbul and Lenny Kravitz\u2019s latest tour. Instead of those shows, people can be entertained by \u201cstories from the front,\u201d<\/em> according to their online promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spin here in Europe now seems to be that all these guys are \u201cpopular\u201d<\/em> heroes. And if you happen to notice that the group is the successor to Azov, then the spin dictates that they\u2019re not all neo-Nazi bad guys. That\u2019s just Russian propaganda. Which is kind of like someone joining Alcoholics Anonymous and then arguing that they\u2019re strictly there for the free coffee and snacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Western press used to at least be a bit more honest, prior to the Ukraine conflict going red-hot.\u00a0\u201cAzov fighters are Ukraine\u2019s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, calling the group\u2019s\u00a0\u201cfar-right volunteers\u201d<\/em>\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cdanger to post-conflict stability.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Even in the early days of the conflict\u2019s latest incarnation, on March 5, 2022, an NBC News piece, whose author clearly had no love lost for Russian President Vladimir Putin, nonetheless\u00a0underscored\u00a0that\u00a0\u201cUkraine\u2019s Nazi problem is real,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and cautioned of the need to\u00a0\u201cguard against it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward just over two years and the Azov movement has now toured Stanford University as heroes, where a research department has since dropped Azov from its roster of radicalized groups, and Oxford\u2019s\u00a0Reuben College.\u00a0They received a\u00a0warm welcome\u00a0at the British Parliament\u2019s Westminster Palace for a roundtable discussion, and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was\u00a0photographed\u00a0posing with their flag, whose wolf\u2019s hook symbol was used by various Nazi divisons during the Second World War.\u00a0And just last month, Washington\u00a0lifted<\/a>\u00a0its ban on directly supplying the Azov movement with weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US State Department said<\/a> at the time that Russia had \u201clong tried to conflate Ukraine\u2019s National Guard Unit of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov with a militia formed to defend Ukraine against Russia\u2019s invasion in 2014, called the Azov Battalion,\u201d <\/em>which it says was \u201cdisbanded in 2015.\u201d<\/em> Well, that settles it, then. All the neo-Nazis just went home a decade ago, kicked up their feet, cracked open a cold one, and took up gardening and soap carving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter a thorough review, Ukraine\u2019s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed vetting,\u201d<\/em> the State Department added, adding that \u201cno evidence\u201d<\/em> of violations of the questionable, neo-Nazi kind had been found. That\u2019s not actually that hard to believe when considering that the entirety of the Canadian parliament couldn\u2019t see an original article Nazi when he was plopped right in front of them, clapping and cheering for an actual bona fide World War II-era Ukrainian Nazi invited as a guest of honor to celebrate Vladimir Zelensky\u2019s visit to Ottawa \u2013 before learning that a Ukrainian killing Russians was effectively Hitler\u2019s homeboy. Woops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Ottawa Citizen observed, Canada also knew exactly who Azov was even before the current conflict, when military brass expressed concern over Nazi tattoos on its trainees. However, they finally chose to remain silent in the hopes that the public would never learn of Azov’s identity. But according to the State Department, they’re all retired? It seems like they were the ones who lost interest in their newfound hobby of competitive dog grooming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Western elite celebrates actual neo-Nazi groups as cool and heroic badasses, while seeing anti-establishment right-wingers in their own countries as the enemy. Maybe, just maybe, it’s all about the masters that they all serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Third Assault Brigade continues its European PR journey, its roots in the radical Azov Battalion are conveniently forgotten Read Full Article at RT.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[306,305],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news","tag-neo-nazis","tag-western-press"],"yoast_head":"\nWhile on tour, Ukraine's rebranded neo-Nazis astonish the Western press. - Leading the AI News Frontier<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ainews.prativad.com\/index.php\/ukraines-rebranded-neo-nazis-dazzle-the-western-press-on-tour\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"While on tour, Ukraine's rebranded neo-Nazis astonish the Western press. - 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