Karl-Olov Arnstberg is a Swedish writer, ethnologist, and retired university professor. His essays are posted at the blog Invandring och mörkläggning. Below is today’s edition of his “Sunday Chronicle”. Many thanks to LN for the translation:
Sunday Chronicle: Ukrainian Nazism
by Karl-Olov Arnstberg
March 19, 2023
When Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on February 24, 2022, it was with the stated mission of “demilitarizing and de-Nazifying” the country.
For Western media, Putin’s language was inaccurate and offensive. As in all other contexts, it was obvious that Putin was lying. Eventually I realized that the Ukrainian Nazis were not just a matter of general accusations, and decided to dig, not too deep but a little bit. What I found no MSM reporter would ever dream of writing.
As a journalist, you must not violate the moral dichotomy: if one is evil, the other is good. When the Russians invade Ukraine, they are evil. And because they are evil, the Ukrainians are good. When I write about Nazism in Ukraine, I become evil because I am attacking the good guys. If I had written about Russian Nazism instead, I would have ended up among the good guys. Yes… there are quite a few people who think that stupidly.
But not you, right?
The actor and comedian Volodomyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election in April 2019. He didn’t have much of a platform, but he promised to stop the low-level civil war that had been raging for five years between Russian separatists and far-right paramilitaries in the Donbass region.
Of the latter, the openly Nazi Azov Battalion was the largest and most militarily capable unit. Since 2014, it had been part of the Ukrainian National Guard. Eight percent of those who participated in the Euromaidan belonged to Azov. That doesn’t sound like much, but another report says that they were extremely effective and without them the effectiveness of Euromaidan would have dropped by 90%.
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, Azov had de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages.
The majority were killed in the battle for the Azovstal steel plant, where they held out for three months against the vastly superior Russian army. When they finally surrendered, there were 500 soldiers left. I don’t think they have survived either, having taken part in the fighting in Bakhmut.
What enabled Zelensky to campaign so successfully was the support of the Ukrainian oligarch and billionaire Igor Kolomoisky. He also supported the Azov Battalion and financed private militias such as the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions.
When needed, he used them privately, to protect his financial interests. In early October 2021, the leaked so-called “Pandora” documents showed that Kolomoisky had used foreign accounts to make Zelensky and his inner circle wealthy.
On October 25, 2019, six months after his election as president, Zelensky unexpectedly appeared in Zolote, a small town in the battle zone of the Donbass region. A ceasefire was underway. Both the Russian-backed militia and the Ukrainian army would retreat, leaving a no-man’s land between them. If Zelensky achieved a ceasefire, he could start peace talks with Putin. Now he wanted to meet the Azov veterans. They had to stretch out their arms, too.
This did not go well at all. When Zelensky learned that Azov was hiding illegal weapons to continue fighting, he was furious, and scolded them. The scene was filmed and went viral on social media.
The Chairman of Credit Suisse identified the uproar on social media as the reason why his bank collapsed. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories and right-wing websites were blamed for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
