The recently discovered existence of a torture house operated by Azov in Kiev is not an isolated case of human rights violations committed by Ukrainian Nazi groups, as we discussed previously.
Moreover, the Azov Battalion (which was transformed into a regiment after its integration into the Ukrainian armed forces) enjoys the protection of the Ukrainian state in the perpetration of its crimes. And this protection is much broader than one might imagine: the Ukrainian state treats Nazis as true heroes.
The cult of Nazism has gone through different stages over recent decades: the denial of the Soviet past (“decommunization”), the rehabilitation of collaborators with the Nazi invasion during World War II, and the explicit honoring of contemporary groups.
Soon after Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union, anti-Russian propaganda on Ukrainian television became increasingly common. “I have been to Ukraine many times. This propaganda has even divided families. Ukrainians have become experts in anti-Russian propaganda,” Misha, a journalist with Krasnoye TV, told me when we met in Moscow a few years ago. He has relatives in Ukraine who do not like speaking to their family members in Russia because of this brainwashing.
A Ukrainian magazine calculated that, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union until November 2015, no fewer than 4,200 Lenin monuments had been destroyed in Ukraine. Following the 2014 coup, attacks on Soviet historical memory increased exponentially. Between December 2013, when the fascist protests in Maidan Square began, and November 2015, 802 Lenin monuments were destroyed. In 2022, the Kiev city administration dismantled the monument depicting Russian and Ukrainian workers at the Arch of Friendship of Peoples. The arch was not demolished, but its name was changed to the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People.
The growing crisis that engulfed the country following the Orange Revolution of 2004 led to the strengthening of Nazi organizations.
One of the main far-right organizations, Svoboda (“Freedom”), takes pride in openly displaying Nazi symbols, such as those of the Waffen-SS. Until 2004, it was called the Social-National Party of Ukraine. In 2005, the group’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, signed a petition to ban all Jewish organizations in Ukraine. Shortly after the Maidan coup, in March 2014, the Kiev regime replaced all the previous governors of the country’s 25 oblasts with trusted men. Six of the new governors belonged to Svoboda, as did Kiev’s second-highest-ranking official, the prosecutor general, and several ministers.
From the Maidan protests, which began in late 2013, tributes to Nazis soared.
Monuments honoring Nazi collaborators from World War II were erected throughout the country. One of the most famous is the monument honoring Stepan Bandera, a leading figure in collaboration with Hitler, built in 2017 in Khmelnytskyi. The previous year, members of the Azov, Aidar, and Horyn battalions installed a memorial stone honoring Bandera in the city of Rivne. Regional and municipal authorities attended its unveiling.
