Lots of folks seem really motivated to falsely paint the Azov Battalion (which isn’t merely a battalion anymore) as Nazis. These guys aren’t Nazis. They’re strong nationalists, to be sure; but they are not Nazis.
There is a reason their opponents want to paint them in this way, so it is worth walking through the steps of how these guys have been successfully smeared. The smear campaign has been so successful that many conservative folks have been duped into believing it. (Note: It is possible that leftist media folks – which comprise the majority of media – might also have been duped, but I do not consume their product, so I cannot comment on it).
In this article, I present a thumbnail sketch of how the Azov Battalion (which later grew to a regiment) came to be smeared. I will explain the steps and the motivations of the folks who originated the smear.
CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND: Ukraine has a military and a National Guard – separate entities with distinct missions/roles – which, along with their police and customs/immigration/border folks comprise the broader security sector.
The military is under the Ministry of Defense and has the primary responsibility for defending the territory. The military also has the role of force projection (to the extent that they can or will project forces beyond their borders; think of that role more as a “we can contribute to coalition efforts” sort of role).
The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ National Guard Units – which are not exactly like the USA’s concept of National Guard – are more of a localized territorial defense and react-to-civil-disturbance unit modeled on the western Europe concept of gendarmerie such as France’s legendary National Guard. The National Guard units function similarly to what we in USA consider to be military.
Another way of differentiating between the military and National Guard is that the Army is like a Zone Defense whereas the National Guard is man-to-man; NG has localized responsibility for high value infrastructure security such as nuclear power plants and other sites of strategic value, whereas the military has broad responsibility for national efforts.
That’s how they existed when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014.
The Azov Battalion – as part of the National Guard – had its sector of responsibility which included the strategically important coastal area of the Sea of Azov; hence the name of the unit. That region of Ukraine is one which has a reasonably heavy concentration of Ukrainian Jews; not has high as in Odessa, but Jews are scattered among the population there nonetheless.
RUSSIA ATTACKS IN 2014: When Russia took Crimea in 2014, the Ukraine security sector was caught rather flat-footed. That Russian effort was so successful and bloodless that it caused the Russians to be very confident about any and all subsequent efforts. Therefore, the Russian incursion into the Donbass region (Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts) came shortly thereafter.
Part of the Russian aim for the Donbass incursion was to create a land-based route linking Russian territory (Rostov region) to their newly stolen Crimea. That required them to conquer/seize all of the Donetsk Oblast as well as Zaporozhye Oblast. Mariupol was a vital city for the Russians to seize to establish a land corridor to Crimea.
This second incursion into Ukraine (after the Crimea incursion) did not go as smoothly for Russia. They managed to secure a foothold in parts of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, but they failed to seize Mariupol (which is part of Donetsk Oblast).
The Battle for Mariupol was crucial. The Russians fought hard but they were repelled by a smaller Ukrainian military force which included the Azov Battalion. As I understand it, the Azov Battalion didn’t do it alone, but they played a key role in the fight.
STABILIZATION AND ADJUSTMENTS: Once things stabilized, the Ukrainian national authorities faced a challenge – they needed to win in Donbass (at least not LOSE there) and do so with a minimum force because committing too large a portion of the Ukrainian military to Donbass would leave other vital territories defenseless. So somebody was going to get tasked with an Economy of Force mission in Donbass while the rest of the army strengthened and prepared for the Russian attack on Kyiv, Karkhiv, and other areas. This is what I and others expected the Russians to do in 2014 – attack to seize Kyiv – and they might have done that if not for the Ukrainian decision to fight in Donbass with an Economy of Force.
So who got the Economy of Force mission?? You guessed it – the Azov Battalion.
To be clear, the Azov’s mission wasn’t necessarily to eject the Russians from Donbass; they weren’t resourced for that. Their mission was simply to prevent Russian success. Win by not losing. However, the Ukrainian government allowed them greater resources than normal, so the battalion grew to something larger, bolstered as well by successfully recruiting Ukrainian patriots who wished to contribute to the fight. Now they alternately call themselves a Regiment and another name which is less universally standard. I will refer to them as the Azov Regiment hereafter.
RUSSIAN ADJUSTMENTS: Stated in the simplest terms, the Azov Regiment was successful in Donbass; so successful, in fact, that the Russians began a disinformation campaign aimed specifically at them. The Russians seized upon the Regiment’s iconography, claiming that it is Nazi oriented. They seized upon their fierce nationalism, claiming that it was “like the Nazis”.
The Russian misinformation campaign ignored, of course, the fact that many of the unit’s personnel, including some subordinate leaders, are Jewish. They ignored the fact that the unit’s iconography is not a copy of Nazi symbolism; it is two letters overlaid upon each other, the letters providing the initials for the unit motto which translates to something similar to “National Idea” (this information came to me courtesy of my Jewish translator).
To be clear, the 2014 Russians did not suddenly invent a disinformation industry based on their desire to smear the Azov Regiment. By that date, Russia had almost a century of history in crafting misinformation. They were already masters at it.
THE REST OF THE WORLD’S ADJUSTMENTS: Meanwhile the rest of the world ignored what was going on in Donbass. Nobody cared to challenge the Russian claims of Naziism from the Azov Regiment, so that misinformation went unchallenged for 8 years. The Ukrainians knew it was nonsense; the Russians knew it was nonsense; and almost everybody else in the world ignored it.
One organization which did NOT ignore the Russian disinformation, however, was the US State Department. The easiest thing for the bureaucrats to do was to prohibit any US military assistance or advice to the Azov Regiment. The primary justification for the prohibition, of course, was that any assistance to the unit would require US personnel – either military or contractors – to enter into the active war zone of Donbass; and any US casualties would be a diplomatic and political nightmare. But the State Department would not be the State Department without some good old fashioned political correctness, so they reinforced their justification for the prohibition by pretending to believe the lies about Nazi ties to the Azov Regiment. Sure, they knew it was a lie; but it had utility for them because it helped to justify the prohibition.
ADAPTATION OVER THE COURSE OF 8 YEARS OF WAR: 8 years is a lot of time to be fighting a win-by-not-losing war on one’s home territory. For comparison, USA’s involvement in WWII lasted less than half that time. And look at how brutal things got in that war, only one major battle of which took place on American soil.
So you can imagine how brutal things have gotten in Donbass as the Azov Regiment waged the Economy of Force mission against the war-crime-prone Russians. And those Russians were frustrated at being stymied by the Azovs, so their misinformation continued to spew out about them. For 8 years.
In the course of those 8 years of brutal fighting, the Azov Regiment took notice of what Russians fear, and individual soldiers have adopted some iconography to capitalize on that fear. Among the fears the Russians have revealed is a fear of Nazis. So some of the unit’s personnel have added some Nazi-like iconography to their uniforms when in public so that these images would be circulated among the Russian forces fighting in Donbass – a sort of PSYOP at the individual level.
ASIDE: One should note that this sort of icon-centric mind-game is common among military units. An example is the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division’s embrace of the moniker “Devils in Baggy Pants”. Go to Fort Bragg and try to find a T-Shirt stand without several shirts for sale with that logo. It is a rather ubiquitous theme. It even shows up on unit websites and descriptions of unit lore.
Does this mean that the 82nd Airborne Division is populated with Devil-worshipers? Nope. It means that the men and women of that unit take pride in the fact that the Germans – yes, the NAZI Germans – described their unit this way. The Germans didn’t intend it as a compliment, of course, but the paratroopers received it as a badge of honor because it illustrated that the enemy feared them.
RECENT RUSSIAN ESCALATION AND THE WORLD’S MEDIA REACTION: Suddenly in 2022, the world decided to pay attention to Ukraine when Russia attacked other parts of Ukraine which, heretofore, had not been subject to the 8 years of sustained Russian aggression, ethnic cleansing, and murder of citizens.
The world’s media kicks into high gear!! Reporters need story lines, pronto!!
Fortunately for them, the Russians have been providing them with an archive of press releases about those alleged Nazis in the Azov Regiment. The entire world had ignored the reports because they either did not care or did not believe the Russians. But now they needed red meat, and they think that the old steady stream of misinformation provided it for them.
What they actually have is 8 years of marinated bull-shit.
Everybody has an opinion now on Russian aggression; everybody has an agenda. In the USA, some folks want our forces committed to Ukraine whereas other folks want to keep our powder dry.
Ignoring the fact that there are legitimate arguments for why USA should not commit forces into Ukraine, intellectually lazy journalists and others have seized upon the archive of Russian disinformation to form a sort of “The Ukrainians Deserved to Be Attacked” argument. “They’re Nazis; and Nazis should be attacked, right?” “Certainly they should never be assisted, right?”
The Russians noticed the fact that their misinformation had caught on. While Putin’s early justifications for the attack did not focus on their out-of-thin-air Nazi BS, he quickly shifted focus to the Nazi angle once he realized that the gullible western press had bitten on that fish-hook.
FULLY INVESTED IN THE MISINFORMATION: Now it seems that most of the conservative talking heads – those on television as well as in VLOGs – have swallowed the Russian bait. They do not even know they have been duped, so they seek to call anybody who refutes the Russian-generated narrative “warmongers” or worse. As Mark Twain observed – “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
As a conservative myself… and as one who believes that USA’s interests lie in keeping our powder dry and limiting our involvement in Ukraine to providing a steady stream of lethal munitions… it actually pains me to see the likes of Tucker Carlson and others get hoodwinked like this by the Russian misinformation. But this is life in 2022, and I do not expect Carlson or anybody else to back away from their fully entrenched – and horribly misinformed – positions.
(SOURCES: Along with personal observations over the course of several years, my sources for this article include multiple Ukrainians who are still in the country. Even those sources who are no longer in Ukraine for various reasons have family remaining there. I will not cite their names because, like all Ukrainians at present, each of them and/or their families are subject to Russian reprisals.)
Follow AFNN:
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAz…
Twitter: @AFNNUSA
GETTR: @AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
Patriot.Online: @AFNN
Excellent commentary. I learned a lot. Thanks!
It’s not just Tucker, on the right, though. There are several sites spreading some of that misinformation, especially the NAZI garbage. It’s kinda rich, too, since Zelensky is a Jew, and is not just sitting on the sidelines while his fellow countrymen are fighting.
Lots of misinformation to go around.
You’re correct; it is not only Tucker Carlson. In fact, Lara Logan seems to have a single-minded focus on the absurdly off-target Nazi angle. I have written an open letter to her, and that should be published on this site soon.
But there are more, of course. Several VLOGgers who I follow have bitten on that fish-hook as well. That’s what spurred me to write this article. Few Americans are actually in a position to speak from personal knowledge, so they rely on the observations of trusted media folks; but I have personal knowledge, so I spoke up.