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The port city of Mariupol is mainly protected by the Azov regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard. But this regiment is contested, because in the ranks of the fighters there are nationalists and right-wing extremists.
A short video shows a screen in a Ukrainian military vehicle walking in the Mariupol area, on a side road standing tanks, with the inscription “Z”, a sign of Russian troops in Ukraine. Then shots are heard, the Russian military vehicle comes under fire. At the beginning of the week, the Azov regiment published this on its Telegram channel. In a statement, they claim that within a day they had “destroyed many pedestrians”, as well as three Russian armored vehicles. Soldiers of the regiment also publish the photo of a murdered man. According to them, he is a Russian general, whom they killed. Data can not be verified.
The city of Mariupol is mostly protected by the “Azov” regiment. Besides the capital Kiev, and the second largest Ukrainian city, Kharkov, Mariupol is the other city where Russia fights brutally. From the beginning of March this city with 500,000 inhabitants is surrounded and regularly bombed. There is not enough water and electricity, the supply of food items is limited.
Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationalists
“Azov” has its headquarters in Mariupol. The regiment is part of the national guard and thus under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The fighters are considered highly trained, but this military unit is highly contested because there are nationalists and right-wing extremists among it. Azov’s existence is used by Russia, among other things, as a pretext for the war in Ukraine.
A little history: “Azov” was created in 2014 as a volunteer battalion in the city of Berdyansk, with the aim of supporting the Ukrainian army in the fight against pro-Russian separatists in the east. Some fighters had previously been part of the so-called “Right Sector”, a small but quite active group of right-wing extremists. Most came from eastern Ukraine, were Russian-speaking and initially preached the unification of all East Slavic peoples: Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians. Some came from the ultra-right scene of football fans, others were active in nationalist circles. “There are groups in Germany that could be described as volunteer comrades-in-arms,” Andreas Umland, an expert at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, told DW.
“Azov” was controversial from the beginning because of its coat of arms. “The former wolf hunting symbol has a right-wing extremist connotation, once a pagan symbol, but it was also used by the SS,” says Umland. “In Ukraine he is not seen as a fascist symbol.” The Azov regiment itself sees the symbol of the union of the letters, N and I, which means “national idea”.
The ruined Mariupol Theater
Division into political and military part
The founder of the Azov Regiment was Andriy Bilezky, a 42-year-old history student at Kharkov National University. He has been active in the far-right scene. In the summer of 2014, “Azov” participated with great force in the recapture of Mariupol by pro-Russian separatists. From this autumn he acts as a regiment, and according to the media that before the start of the war had 1000 fighters and owned artillery and tanks. The government in Kiev had then decided to integrate the ultranationalists into state structures.
In 2015 and 2016, a political wing of this regiment was created. Bilezkyj resigned as commander and founded the “National Troops” party, which had no political success. It is true that Bilezky in 2019 entered the Ukrainian parliament as a member of parliament with a direct mandate, but from the 2019 elections he is no longer part of it. According to his own data he is now fighting in Ukraine, since the beginning of the war.
At the US Congress in 2019, there was an initiative to categorize this regiment as a “terrorist organization”, but this decision was not taken. The fact is that Azov has been in contact with the far-right scene outside Ukraine for years. There have been such contacts in Germany as well, it is said in a response of the German government after the written request of the parliamentary group “E Left”.
“Normally we see right-wing extremists as something dangerous that could lead to war,” Umland said. In Ukraine the opposite has happened. The war led to the strengthening and transformation of camera groups into a political movement, the expert says. But their influence in Ukrainian society is overestimated, he says. To most Ukrainians, they are fighters, defending their country from a powerful aggressor./DW
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