SO FEW AND FRINGE?
- Jul 2
- 24 min read
Updated: Jul 12
A popular debater, streamer, and social media personality was recently posting about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Specifically they were concerned with the discussion of Nazis making up some portion of the force the West is backing against Russia. The argument was that it was deeply silly and unethical even to purity test the armed forces of a nation who had been invaded and had its territory stolen by a vastly larger neighbouring nation. Though emotionally compelling, I only have problems with this argument, and the issues are many.
But first a proviso:
Russia should get the hell out of Ukraine. And the US and her friends in NATO should, too. Sadly, I don't think either action solves the problem there.
I have no reason to suspect that far-right extremism and extremist rhetoric isn't actually worse in Russia (or Belarus or Italy or any number of other places) than in Ukraine; but the situation in Ukraine over the last two decades has been at best appalling. And the reason this situation in Ukraine is worth pointing out is because the West continues to provide unimaginable volumes of resources and moral support to many of the worst actors. That's not happening with Belarus or Russia.
That would be bad enough but, since our full-throttle support for Ukraine began, there has also been an aggressive cover-up here in the West of these actors and their actions; or, if you wish to be less conspiratorial, a total failure to investigate and merely treat our "allies" as we would treat our own. Government and the press do not want you to know the extent to which you are funding, training, and sending all manner of weapons to violent and bigoted extremists who gladly spell out their fascist, white supremacist aims for all to see. These people are not even shy about their views when they have a BBC, PBS, or CBC camera in their face. That’s a real problem. You may not see it as such.
Based on mainstream press and institutional reports, published academic papers and books, I contend that, contrary to much of the popular discourse:
A) The number of terrible actors with terrible motivations, conducting terrible deeds as they seek a terrible future for Ukraine are not nearly so limited as others suggest, given that the iconography, rhetoric, and actions still manifest just as they did a decade ago
B) The worst bigotry is very obviously tolerated and even endorsed by leading figures, from celebrated historians and lawmakers to military recruiters and training teams, from war heroes to new recruits; and
C) A “tiny fraction” (10%, 1%, 0.01%) of the citizenry, the military or intelligence community, or political establishment is a very large number and too many. Similarly humungous is the "tiny fraction" of Western financial and material aid landing in these people's hands when the sums are in the hundreds of billions
Just these worst folks are receiving an unimaginable volume of resources. Yes, it is literally unimaginable that our military would knowingly train one dude (yes, one) with a SS tattoo on his face or elbow or that $1 (yes, just one dollar) from taxpayers would go to him or his friends who want to purge their country of anyone they assert are not Ukrainian or who like to pretend the Holocaust didn't happen or wish to try and start another. I suspect the funding he and his friends and the general he marches under have gotten is in the tens or hundreds of millions, maybe upwards of a billion dollars — and, of course, there is no sign of this sponsorship or the overabundance of unearned moral support slowing down. Somehow we couldn't do so little as condition the continued receipt of howitzers and surface-to-air missiles upon their key military trainers not sharing on our televisions their most visible examples of those symbols last sported by the armies of Adolf?
TO BEGIN WITH
A critical first point is needed regarding identity. Many of Ukraine’s militant ultranationalists — who are happy to fight with or kill those they don’t consider Ukrainian to get them out of positions of power or out of the country — choose not to associate with Nazism even while they gladly sport and spread the worst symbols and slogans. They tend to prefer to self-identify, just like Germany’s mid-century warfighters, as “nationalists” or “national-socialists.” Cute, right?
Still, let there be no doubt, they are perfectly happy to sit down with Western journalists and declare in front of the camera, for example, “We are Aryans and we will rise again.” It is that subtle. As you see, when they reject Nazism it is not the ideas or aims they oppose but the association with something they consider to be insufficiently organic or endemic to their own nation’s fertile steppes. So, you just aren’t going to find folks self-identifying as “Nazis”, even if they’re extremely proud of and participate in the annual celebrations of their grandfathers who fought under Hitler and within local Nazi divisions during WWII. So, the bulk of the problem was never folks sporting swastikas, though there are, indeed, seemingly endless numbers of folks in that category. And then framing any discussion of the problem this way, as about Nazis, is inappropriate.
Then we have the current international optics and need for outside resources. Since Putin’s invasion and his stated aim of the “denazification”, the farthest right in Ukraine have had a PR problem. It didn’t help that immediately prior to the current war and in early 2022 the most mainstream of the Western press hadn’t yet pivoted to the new reality (not yet denying basic historical facts or purging their previous reporting.) It took time to grok that for NATO to back Ukraine we would all have to agree to abandon all our principles and pretend homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism wasn’t rampant in Ukraine and that we weren’t fully aware of the extent to which the culture remained poisoned by hate and her institutions and citizenry unaccustomed to tracking down or meaningfully punishing even the most terrible actors.
So, even in 2022, our media were still publishing articles about how serious the problem of far-right extremism was in Ukraine, just as they have been for a decade or more. As such, Ukraine’s avowed ultranationalists and passionate White supremacists (those self-identifying as such and adorned in t-shirts and visible tattoos attesting to their beliefs and desires) started realizing that, if they wanted backing against Russia’s much larger and better equipped military, it might be in their best interest to be a little more discrete, at least in certain company. And that did happen. The loudest and proudest displays have dampened. And the press here in the West have got in line, too. But, of course, their iconography and slogans still managed to make their way onto our nightly news and continues doing so. This highlights, for me at least, just how bad the problem is.
From there we can talk about the recent conflict. As I wrote about at the outset of the 2022 invasion, just as many mainstream Western scholars and journalists have pointed out, I think there’s good reason to consider the current conflict as directly precipitated by and an escalation of the events of 2014. And, too, there are plenty of reasons to suspect the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s government, popularly known as the Euromaidan Revolution, was at minimum endorsed, but more likely engineered, by the US. Even at that time the renowned John Pilger published in The Guardian a piece titled “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia.” There he observed as explicitly as possible that “Washington’s role in Ukraine, and its backing of the regime’s neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world.” Pilger went on to notice that “Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained ‘pariah’ role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.” For me, there’s no doubt that Russian leaders continually stated how NATO bases in or NATO membership for Ukraine, right there on Russia’s border, was the brightest of uncrossable red lines, tantamount to a declaration of war — likely a nuclear one. And, of course, even ignoring the overthrow of the Russia-friendly government in Ukraine, the ever-closer relationship with the West paired with discussions of these sorts of forbidden activities (little different to many from Soviet nukes in Cuba or Russian, Chinese, and Iranian operations in Venezuela) has only increased over the last decade and exploded in the last couple of years. So, it seems clear, maybe only to me, that the ubiquitous demand that the 2022 invasion was the start of something or unprovoked are totally indefensible and little more than smoke and mirrors.
But why does that matter to this discussion? It matters for all kinds of reasons but especially because, as the debater/commentator noted in their post, “at its height, it is estimated there were some 900, maybe, Nazis in the Azov Battalion.” Folks love limiting the problem to this one group and to events of a decade ago, but nothing was ever so distant or limited.
Azov (Азов) is by far the most talked about organization. You might recall, this battalion was the self-funded volunteer militia who weren’t just full of neo-Nazi thugs and other militant right-wing goons but operated under a Nazi emblem and commanded by the neo-fascist, white supremacist Andriy Biletsky. This is the basic information most folks reading or watching the news attained on this topic after the revolution and again at the outset of the Russian invasion.
For added context, when the revolution was over, the newly-installed government considered Biletsky a political prisoner of the overthrown, Russia-friendly Yanukovych administration. Biletsky had been a member and leader of the Social-National Party, the local version of mid-century German national socialists, and of a similar group, Patriot of Ukraine, and the poor guy was wallowing in prison for robbery and assault. To this point he was locally famous for, not as a kid but a grown-ass adult, publicly offering that the aim of the Ukrainian nation should be to “lead the White races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races].” That doesn’t sound archaeo-fasicst or neo-fascist at all. He also went on record, in his late 30s while trying to make political moves, explaining how the country is run by oligarchs who have one thing in common: their Jewishness or their being directly controlled by Jews. This is the fellow seen as the enemy of the old Ukraine and a hero of the new. That should tell you something; or, I don't see how it tells you nothing at all... The new Western-friendly government freed this ultranationalist xenophobe to form and lead the Azov militia, composed of his earlier followers, to fight Russians and Ukrainian Russian-speakers in the Donbas and also to run for government. In the 2014 parliamentary election, shortly after his release from prison, Biletsky did just that and was elected by popular vote to represent the people and pass laws as People's Deputy of Ukraine, their version of an MP. That's how marginal, how fringe this guy was.
But that was the past. After the 2022 Russian invasion, Biletsky organized volunteer forces, largely composed of former Azov Battalion veterans, and joined the Ukrainian Ground Forces. At this same time we were told Biletsky came to be known amongst his men as the “White Ruler”. In January 2023 his volunteer units were once again reorganized, this time into the 3rd Assault Corps (with maybe 75,000 service men) and Biletsky promoted to its commander. By 2025, Biletsky had become Brigadier General and the units under him were described as being among Ukraine's most effective and motivated, with many emphasizing their extreme “nationalist” ideology. So this is precisely to whom we always were and now are, apparently, frantic to get all the dollars, training, tech and weapons of war.
Ask yourself, in what universe has this man or his ultranationalists army — now thoroughly combat hardened and against a Russian military composed of many thousands of Kenyans, Syrians, Indians, North Koreans, Cubans, and more — drastically moderated their feelings about those they deem outsiders or reduced their propensity toward violence? Similarly, why would anyone suspect he and his White legion are not stockpiling Canadian, British, German, and US arms for a post-war revolution to build his lifelong dream of an ethnonationalist utopia, at minimum purged of foreigners, Ukrainian Roma, Jews, Tartars, and any Russian-speakers, as well as the nation’s queer community? Too, given his lifelong political ambitions and how beloved Biletsky has become, why would anyone doubt that he will start another political party and run for president when the war ends? After all, he's already effectively running a national and international PR campaign for his leadership.
Biletsky in a 3rd Assault Corps recruitment video
Sadly, there are many such characters in Ukraine and support for folks of this sort is far from uncommon. Beliefs like those Biletsky so publicly espoused, and doubtless still holds, are astonishingly well subscribed and not as those on the podcast circuit, in the news, or in government love to demand: exceedingly rare. But, now, if one offers such contrarian things one must be willing to provide examples or point fingers. Right? Okay.
THE FEW, IRRELEVANT, OR NONEXISTENT
Nadiya Savchenko is a former helicopter pilot and hero of the civil war in the Donbas. She is also a former POW-turned-lawmaker. She belonged to the Aidar Battalion, notorious for its extremist far-right ideology and enlisting avowed neo-Nazis from Germany and Sweden as well as for being accused of committing copious war crimes, not by Russia but Amnesty International. Writing about this, Newsweek offered, “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-style’ War Crimes.” And they included details such as images of beheadings and the unverified account of a mother receiving a wooden box containing the head of her son. And we are told 30 such battalions were in operation. But that was then.
In her more recent political life, Savchenko liked to publicly exclaim that Jews are too numerous in Ukraine and have disproportionate control over the levers of power. The national hero, with public squares and streets named after her, was asked on live television by a caller on NewsOne (the pro-Russian channel) why, when everyone in the streets are talking about it, she is silent on the matter of whether there has been a Jewish takeover of Ukraine. Her response? “Yes, thank you. Good question. If people talk about it, then they speak the truth. And yes, our government, if we look at it from this perspective, really has non-Ukrainian blood, let’s put it that way. We can speak about this — but what can be done about it? We must think and act!” She, a 35-year-old by this time, had the presence of mind to not explicitly call for Kristallnacht so, you see, she’s clearly a moderate.
Later that month, when Channel 112’s anchor asked her “You don’t like the Jews, do you?” Savchenko, the member of parliament, responded “I have nothing against the Jews, but I don’t like the kikes. I have said time and time and again that there is no such thing as a bad nationality, but there are bad people who exist in every nationality. It’s the same: you’ve got Ukrainians and khokhols. There’re Russians and their katsaps… There’re Poles and their lyakhy... This is why, here in our Ukraine, it is very hard to say that Ukraine is an anti-Semitic country: because Jews make up about 2% of the Ukrainian population, but about 80% of those in power.” This goes on. And on. The journalist, on public television, inquires further, “So tell me, I want to know, who are the Jews in power?” Savchenko is happy to oblige and offers “The smartest Jews say that there isn’t anyone, that there are no Jews in power. They’re saying that it’s kikes who are in power.” The journalist [sic] insists, “Let’s name some names. Which Jews - or kikes - are in power? Let’s name them.” As if all of the question alone doesn’t sound indistinguishable from Germany in the ‘30s, Savchenko lists everyone she can think of whose last name ends in ‘man and anyone who she personally feels might have Jewish ancestry. Then they both happily conclude that the Ukrainian government is not composed of “Ukrainian blood” and so “does not care about the Ukrainian people.” And then both these moderate public voices remind us that they aren’t anti-Semitic or racist in any sense. They’re just patriots, you see. (These channels and videos, said to be pro-Russian propaganda, were purged by the Zelensky administration in February of 2021.)
For additional context, all of this was happening at the same time that, for instance, the Jerusalem Post was publishing about reports noting “A striking exception in the trend of decrease in antisemitic incidents in Eastern Europe was Ukraine, where the number of recorded antisemitic attacks was doubled from last year and surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined.” And they also tell us that this was the second year the country held such a distinction. Simultaneous with this, Germany’s Der Spiegel noted recent opinion polls where Nadiya Savchenko “...topped the list of Ukraine's most popular politicians, with 45 percent of respondents having a positive view of her.” Not such a fringe figure nor fringe views.
Shortly after these very public outbursts, Ukraine’s Attorney General charged Savchenko with planning a terrorist attack to overthrow the Ukraine's Poroshenko (“Jewish”) government, an assault on the parliament (she walked in with a submachine gun and grenades) and supporting a coup d'état. She did not deny the accusations but said there was a plot to discredit her, despite the release of undercover video showing her attempting to convince members of the military to stage a coup. She was held in pre-trial detention but, in 2019, before she could face a judge or a jury of her peers, she was simply released by her allies in the newly-elected government of Volodymyr Zelensky (our ally). That was done prior to his taking office. That's how urgent it was that the anti-Jewish terrorist, one eager to incite a national pogrom, be prevented from going to trial, receiving a conviction, or doing any time behind bars. When war broke out in 2022, Savchenko mobilized. She went on to command a rifle company on the Donetsk (eastern front) and was promoted to Major in early 2026. Not such an outsider or radical in the Ukrainian context and most certainly someone on the receiving end of moral and material support from Western donors.
Let us be clear, even during wartime in any normal NATO country, Western nation, or English-speaking one these ideas would be called out and she would be relieved of her duties. Merely holding the views she does would exclude her from any position in the military and even more certainly government. Endorsing or acting on those views so publicly and enthusiastically as she did as both a member of the military AND as an MP would see her marginalized with extreme prejudice. Not in Ukraine. That should tell you plenty. Again, it doesn’t, as commonly asserted, tell you nothing.
Then we have Volodymyr Viatrovych. He’s was a historian, visiting scholar at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, former director of the archives of Ukraine’s secret police and director of the Ukrainian Institute for National Memory. Orwell much? More recently he became advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Security Service. He’s a spook-scholar. And what is he busily doing in those roles? He likes to write about and publicly declare there is no anti-Semitism in Ukraine, and that, past and present, Jews make it all up. Oh and he was the chief propagandist writing books and running campaigns to whitewash the anti-Jewish pogroms of WWI and also the participation of the nation’s WWII Insurgent Army in the Holocaust.
To counter this fellow's claims and be clear what we're talking about, I should spell out what actually took place. Around the time of WWI and the Russian Civil War, just from 1918 to 1921, the length of the COVID pandemic, Ukraine saw around 1,500 pogroms in 1,300 locations. The number of people internally displaced are estimated to be in the millions, roughly 12% of the population. Those who fled or were expelled from Ukraine entirely are said to number more than 500,000. There is no good estimate for the number of Jews killed in Ukraine at this time. A conservative modern historical consensus looks to be well over 100,000 direct killings and perhaps up to 250,000 if you include indirect deaths. WWII looked far worse still. Prior to the war census numbers put the local Jewish population at around 2.5 million. Though hundreds of thousands fled the Nazi advance, between 1941 and 1944, again in just a brief moment, at least half of those people were exterminated. Most serious sources, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, cite ~1.5 million killed. And we are told that "Most Jews in Ukraine were shot to death close to where they lived, not deported to distant camps. Their executioners were German but also Ukrainian, Russian, and other local collaborators." So it is this, and more, that current Ukrainian historians, intelligence insiders, and members of parliament are trying to cover up and help the nation and the world forget. And this is what you're denying when you claim there is "no Nazi [or Nationalist or White Power] problem in Ukraine."
Among other things, in his many esteemed positions Viatrovych defended the public display of Nazi symbols (technically illegal in Ukraine), so long as they are associated with a Ukrainian SS division (the one who exterminated countless local Jews). He does this alongside promoting, in essays and books as well as verbally, the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych as an eminent national figure who should be celebrated. And, you see, festivals to honour historic Ukrainian nationalists of this sort have become commonplace there since 2014, when modern-day nationalists brought down the sitting government. Damn, it’s almost like the Nazis took over. As if to confirm that fact, in 2019, Viatrovych, like Savchenko and Biletsky, was then elected MP. Worse still, knowing his beliefs and publicly stated views Canadian scholars have even invited this guy to share his valuable perspectives and promote them among their students and community. So, I ask you, how marginal is this voice? And if they've made a holiday out of celebrating Nazis and the once-popular national sport of expelling and killing Jews and other "enemies of Nazism", how limited is the broader problem?
Well, how about Vasyl Vovk? This is a guy who famously published an anti-Semitic tirade for the world on social media in which he said he, himself, would murder all of Ukraine's Jews. He offered his written declaration that he is “completely against Jews” and that “Ukraine is against Jews.” Jews, according to Vovk, “aren't Ukrainians.” He explained, further, "I will destroy you along with [Jewish MP and Head of the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Human Rights, Vadim] Rabinovych. I’m telling you one more time — go to hell, zhidi [kikes], you’ve already pissed off the Ukrainian people.”
This was a pointed public attack that the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolynsky, said was sufficiently serious, inviting ethnic exclusion and threats of death to a minority, to warrant federal investigation. This noise also got the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US and Israel, who noted the lack of any appropriate response by Ukrainian authorities, highlighted the problem of “absolute impunity for vicious anti-Semites” within Ukraine, and called for action. That didn’t happen. Why? Perhaps because of who Vasyl Vovk is.
Early in his career, Vovk was a prominent, honoured lawyer and investigator. At the time of his anti-Jewish publication he was a Major General in the Security Service of Ukraine (the secret police) and head of their Main Investigative Department. In 2019 he also became advisor to the head of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service. Today he remains a notable public figure and regular television guest and quoted voice in local print media. He self-identifies as the Major General of Justice for Ukraine, is positioning himself to lead the country’s largest arms producer, the state-owned UkrOboronProm, and is someone who the Kyiv Post calls a legend. This is not an enemy of the people or someone who doesn’t represent, and isn’t framing, the future vision of a post-war Ukraine. This is the very sort of person we’ve been backing and who is directing the resources we send.
Note the date: not 2014 but 2023. This is long after we were told such characters were entirely purged; and this is not a teen recruit but a decorated commander and avowed neo-Nazi who seeks to lead the "White race."
Who else? In the press and on social media stories have emerged about Kapustin, whose nom de guerre is “White Rex”. White Rex is also this man's clothing brand (the logo for which sports a Nazi sonnenrad paired with a smattering of extremist symbols with runic script folks of this ilk enjoy, all accompanied by the slogan “zero tolerance”) as well as being the name of an MMA tournament he runs — but more on that in a moment. Kapustin is a lovely transnational extremist busily linking war-fighting capacity with violent extreme-right communities through cross-border networking. He’s a Moscow-born Russian who is not just a commander fighting for Ukraine but someone who has received Ukrainian war decorations, such as the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, celebrating his bravery and exceptional behaviour on the battlefield. A proud ally and now war hero, his publicly stated ultimate aim includes the overthrow of Putin for the purpose of creating an all-White Russian state and, I suppose, installing himself as emperor (hence his nickname).
Because of all of this, Kapustin is actually stuck in Ukraine. He can’t go back to Russia, obviously, and is banned from entering the EU due to his very public neo-fascist outlook and activism. And that's fine because the Ukrainians couldn't be happier to have him. Social media, local news reports, and institutional reports, such as from The Counter Extremism Project, have shared how in early 2026 the Ukrainians helped their celebrated hero fake his death to thwart Russian assassination attempts and also how he now runs German neo-fascist and Russian anti-Kremlin volunteer units who, of course, gladly take Western and NATO aid.
Just like all the raging racists and anti-Semites in Ukraine — while Kapustin declares in front of PBS cameras in 2023, for instance, that he despises multiculturalism (having spent his entire youth, by his own account, as a “skinhead bashing immigrants”) and dreads the coming “Great Replacement” — he also likes to tell us he’s not anti-Semitic or racist in any way, that he “doesn’t have a problem with any ethnicity.” He just doesn’t want Muslims or Jews or any immigrants in Ukraine or Russia (and I presume anywhere in Europe, either.) And he argues that his beef with Putin is that he is not a leader of the White race, as he should be, but is instead a filthy multiculturalist, unlike himself who is a true and proper White nationalist and ethnic saviour.
In such interviews, White Rex really wants us to know he would never do so little as throw up a Nazi salute, he’s just not that kinda guy. This, despite explaining this was his favourite pastime early in life and video of him doing just that at his own White Rex MMA event, a neo-Nazi gathering of thousands held in 2013. The event, titled “The Birth of a Nation” (referencing the 1915 film romanticizing the Ku Klux Klan), included neo-Nazi skinheads and White-power activists as honoured guests all serenaded by the neo-fascist band You Must Murder. There the crowd is found saluting White Rex, Nazi-style, and him mirroring back the same… When pressed by journalists, the few attempting to do their job on this topic since the Russian invasion, he likes to return to a common talking point: “I have said many times already in my interviews, I might be a right-wing nationalist, conservative, or neo-Nazi, as you label me, OK, maybe; but I am right now fighting for democracy. Right now, I'm fighting for your freedoms as well. We might not be the good guys, but we're definitely fighting for the good cause.” That is quite the admission. “I might be a neo-Nazi but I'm your neo-Nazi, fighting on your behalf with your weapons and ammunition.” Well, I'd have to agree.
HOW MANY MORE EXAMPLES DO YOU NEED?
As I’ve written about in the past, it’s not just that there are many investigations and reports into Ukraine becoming a serious training ground and gathering point for far-right extremists from around the globe, both prior to and since the outbreak of the latest conflict. In addition to that we have key organizations who watch out for this stuff — folks like the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, the German government-funded Counter Extremism Project, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in the US, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others — all pointing to right-wing extremists and their impunity in Ukraine as a real problem not just for that nation but for the world.
If that wasn’t enough, we also have lots of other evidence for the prominence and seriousness of this problem. Some of those include the US having to adjust the language in or remove amendments to funding bills to exclude requirements that there be measures to prevent support of violent, homophobic xenophobes just to be able to provide Ukraine dollars, training, and material support post-2014. And then, in 2024, the US lifted its ban on providing weapons and training to Azov Battalion, now under the banner of the 12th Special Forces Brigade.
Did the amendment removal and ban happen because there WASN'T an acknowledged Nazi or White supremacy problem in that country? And is the current provision of resources to these exact same people because they've all undergone psycho-spiritual reform and now reject what was their entire worldview and identity for their whole adult life? Somehow I doubt it.
We also know Canada was and continues to train those same folks, folks still wearing fascist emblems and endorsing fascist ideals — even after promising the public this did not, would not, and could not happen as they have a strict screening process just as in our own military. We were told Canadian soldiers would never train neo-Nazis or those affiliated with Azov (or C14, Svoboda, Right Sector, National Corps, the OUN Volunteer Movement, the Brotherhood, the Carpathian Sich, the Social-National Assembly, Patriot of Ukraine, the UNA-UNSO, Tradition and Order, Revenge, the Revolutionary Right Forces, or like groups... See how few and rare?)
And then you read that Canada spent nearly a $1 billion training Ukrainian forces through Operation UNIFIER prior to the Russian invasion, back when we were still noticing the problem. And you read recent investigative reports showing the social media accounts of, for example, Kyrylo Berkal (Azov regiment leader, commander of its 2nd infantry battalion, and head of the Colonel Yevhen Konovalets Military School) and others posting photos of themselves training with Canadian instructors. These posts on the socials are, of course, accompanied by other offerings of theirs featuring Nazi and extremist symbols and expressions of their radical, lunatic views. And, to be clear, this same character, Berkal, is not just a rising star and Ukrainian military hero, now a senior officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, but he just had speaking engagements and was celebrated at both the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Davos gathering and Munich Security Conference. So, how marginal or historical is this character, prone to sharing sonnenrads, Totenkopfs, Wolfsangels and the like to his family, friends, colleagues, and the wider world on his social media?
Along with this investigation we also got a CBC report, one that was also reproduced as part of an evening news segment on CBC’s The National. It wasn’t exposing national-socialists, CBC isn't doing that work, instead they just highlight their efforts and good works. The story was about Ukrainian Special Forces and featured a fellow, our friend on the ground, sporting a prominent swastika tattoo. The CBC was good enough to blur out the tattoo for its sensitive audience. They were also thoughtful enough to deactivate comments on the article and video on their website as well as on YouTube.
It seems like it needs to be said that it is too bad this fellow wanted to get such a tattoo. And it is a bigger shame he never saw any need or felt any social pressure to remove or merely conceal it, and still more tragic that no one in the Canadian press or government or any taxpayers seem to give a damn.
But, really, should any of that come as a surprise? It was just back in 2023 when Yaroslav Hunka, aged 98, came with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to be celebrated by all of Canadian Parliament, and by extension the Canadian people, for having fought the dastardly Russians in WWII. Apparently no one in or working for government or the press seemed to know whose side the Russians were on or that Hunka, who pledged allegiance to Adolf Hitler, fought with the First Ukrainian Division (also known as the Nazi Waffen-SS Galicia Division.) Are we to believe the current leader of Ukraine, as well as members of his government and all their PR-oriented colleagues and minders, did not know of the Ukrainian contribution to Jewish extermination or that their people fought for Germany against the Red Army? To me, Canada, just like Ukraine, seems to have lost its way.
This is just where we are at. And, regardless of who wins the war or when, there seems little doubt the enemies of humanity will find home in Ukraine. Will we have to go to war with them when the current conflict is over? Would it not be better for those who want good things, actual good things, for Ukraine to purge from their ranks even just the worst bigots and barbarians? I think so. Some will continue to pretend that has already taken place. I will continue to disagree until there is some evidence of that. I will also continue to demonstrate how, if such barriers existed or were enforced, the country would lose much of its government, military, and intelligence community — certainly many of the most prominent and celebrates people therein.
SOME REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Newsweek (2014)
Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes
https://www.newsweek.com/evidence-war-crimes-committed-ukrainian-nationalist-volunteers-grows-269604
FAIR (2014)
Denying the Far-Right Role in the Ukrainian Revolution
Foreign Policy (2016)
The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past
The Nation (2016)
Congress Has Removed a Ban on Funding Neo-Nazis From Its Year-End Spending Bill
European Jewish Congress (2017)
Ukrainian general calls for destruction of Jews
Hope Not Hate (2017)
‘Disgraceful and deplorable’ celebration of Ukrainian anti-Semitic nationalist leader
The Hill (2017)
The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
The Guardian (2017)
Ukraine's far-right children's camp: 'I want to bring up a warrior'
Radio Free Europe (2018)
Historian Beevor 'Astonished' At Ukraine Ban On Best-Selling 'Stalingrad'
Human Rights Watch (2018)
Joint Letter to Ukraine's Minister of Interior Affairs and Prosecutor General Concerning Radical Groups
Forward (2018)
Why Does No One Care That Neo-Nazis Are Gaining Power In Ukraine?
Hromadske (2018)
Far-Right Group C14 Wins Funding From Ukrainian Government
Human Rights Watch (2018)
Ukraine: Investigate, Punish Hate Crimes: Violent Attacks by Radical Groups Increasing
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (2019)
FSWC Investigating Concerning Reports Surrounding Recent Monument Commemoration in Ukraine
The Nation (2019)
Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine: Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.
The Guardian (2019)
Ultranationalism in Ukraine – a photo essay
Radio Free Europe (2019)
Ukrainian Court Rules Against News Outlet That Called Violent Far-Right Group 'Neo-Nazi'
Bellingcat (2019)
"Defend the White Race": American Extremists Being Co-Opted by Ukraine's Far-Right
Combatting Terrorism Center (2020)
The Nexus Between Far-Right Extremists in the United States and Ukraine
Freedom House (2020)
A New Eurasian Far Right Rising: Reflections on Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia
Time Magazine (2021)
Inside A White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine
Time Magazine (2021)
Like, Share, Recruit: How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members
The Times of Israel (2021)
Hundreds in Ukraine attend marches celebrating Nazi SS soldiers
MacKenzie & Kaunert (2021)
Radicalisation, Foreign Fighters and the Ukraine Conflict: A Playground for the Far-Right?
The Illiberalism Studies Program (2021)
Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub
Tablet Magazine (2022)
The Killing Fields of Ukraine: Massacres of over 100,000 Jews between 1918 and 1921 paved the way for the Nazi Holocaust-by-bullets
Simon Wiesenthal Center (2022)
Wiesenthal Center Protests Kiev March to Honor Birthday of Ukrainian Nazi Collaborator Stefan Bandera
CTV News (2022)
Mounting evidence Canada trained Ukrainian extremists, gov't needs to be held to account: experts
Jacobin (2022)
A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
NBC (2022)
Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (2022)
How Foreign Far-Right Volunteers Are Arriving to Fight in Ukraine
Michael Colborne (2022)
From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right
Kaunert, MacKenzie, & Leonard (2023)
Far-right foreign fighters and Ukraine: A blind spot for the European Union?
Global Network on Extremism & Technology (2023)
A Move from Nazism to Nationalism: Changes in Far-Right Online Discourse Post-Ukraine Conflict
Counter Extremism Project (2023)
The Faked Death of the “White King” in Ukraine: What the Kapustin ‘Killing’ Episode Means for Europe’s Violent Extreme Right
Democracy Now (2023)
The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis: Lev Golinkin & Ben Makuch on How Far Right Is Exploiting Ukraine War
PBS (2024)
U.S. lifts ban on providing weapons and training for Ukraine's controversial Azov Brigade
International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (2024)
Far-Right Political Violence in Ukraine: Assessment of the Donbas War and the Odesa Massacre
Zero Hedge (2025)
Watch: MSM Interview Covers Up Ukrainian Fighter's Swastika Tattoo
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-msm-interview-covers-ukrainian-fighters-swastika-tattoo
