French President Emmanuel Macron claimed in his Wednesday address to the nation that Russia’s special operation to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” Ukraine is “not a fight against Nazism”, thus joining the chorus of political leaders and media outlets in the West who downplay or altogether deny the problem of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism.
Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi battalions made headlines after the 2014 February coup d’etat in the country only to be largely overlooked and downplayed in the ensuing years by the mainstream media.
“Far-right, anti-Semitic, anti-Russian, and openly fascist groups have existed and do exist as a blight on modern Ukraine”, CNN wrote in March 2014. It quoted a 2012 European Parliament resolution raising 18 points of concern over policies embedded in the laws of the nation’s parliament, and denounced “the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine”.
CNN admitted that Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist parties and groups, including Svoboda and the Right Sector ultra-nationalists, played a significant role in the 2014 regime change in Kiev and later assumed positions in the National Security and Defence Council, the office of the Prosecutor General, and the ministries of ecology and agriculture of the interim government.
Shortly after the coup, Ukraine saw the formation of volunteer nationalist battalions that carried out attacks against the breakaway Donbass republics and terrorised Eastern Ukrainian civilians. One of them, Azov, was led by Andriy Biletsky, former leader of the Kharkov branch of “the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organisation ‘Tryzub'” and co-founder of the ultra-nationalist movement, the Social-National Assembly.
Hellbound and Down 