Azov is a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit whose members – estimated at 900 – are ultra-nationalists and accused of harboring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.

The unit was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.

The unit received backing from Ukraine’s interior minister in 2014, as the government had recognised its own military was too weak to fight off the pro-Russian separatists and relied on paramilitary volunteer forces.

These forces were privately funded by oligarchs – the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region.

Individual members have professed to being neo-Nazis, and hardcore far-right ultra-nationalism is pervasive among members.

In January 2018, Azov rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to “restore” order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community.

“Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” a correspondent for the US-based magazine, the Nation, wrote in 2019.

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced that their own forces will not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon.

This is from Aljizeera, not a Russian propaganda mill, like the US media would like you to believe, and before the war, Azov was reported like this by even the mainstream West.

If you defend NATO actions in Ukraine, you’re disgusting. You support white supremacists that carried out pogroms against the Roma people and the LGBTQ. That’s a fact. I don’t care how bad modern Russia is, it’s not worth teaming up with these people to defeat them. NATO is just helping to create another ISIS for selfish reasons.

If you shit on the left and dishonestly accuse us of defending far-right capitalist Russia because we don’t want to support the whitewashing of literal Nazis then you can fuck right off. You are the bad guys in this far-right VS far-right war. You’re the ones dragging out the bloodshed for the economic interests of the West when what we really should be doing is trying to get peace as fast as possible.