Everything is “far right” — except Ukrainian neo-Nazis

Guest post by Irish journalist Ciarán O’Regan (Substack; Twitter).

Irish prime minister (Taoiseach) Simon Harris and the establishment of which he is figurehead never seem to tire of warning the Irish public about the “far right”. As my recent piece for Gript sought to illustrate, however, the danger posed to Irish society by the indigenous “far right” is relatively tiny in comparison to what are, objectively, much more pressing concerns.

This is clearly illustrated by vast data on immigrant crime and jihad from across Western Europe including rape gangs and rates of non-indigenous violence in England, Islamic terrorism in France, gang violence in Sweden, and rates of rape and stabbings in Germany. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has just published a concise overview of important data around this very bleak situation. And, importantly for Irish readers concerned about reckless immigration policies, Ayaan’s work mirrors the sobering picture painted by Peter Ryan: “How Soaring Crime Changed Immigration Policy in Denmark and Sweden”.

Though somewhat rough aesthetically, I will, whenever possible, present “far right” in quotation marks throughout this essay — what else is one to do with an irresponsibly deployed term that, according to establishment usage, apparently includes everyone from the nearly-assassinated Robert Fico of Slovakia’s social-democratic Smer party to mass murderers like Anders Breivik? Has the boy not cried “Wolf!” so often that the term is being drained of all meaning?

Despite what some online commenters suggested, however, I wasn’t implying in the above-mentioned article that an Irish “far right”, depending on how Justice Minister Helen McEntee eventually defines it, doesn’t exist. I merely suggested that, given the evidence-based hierarchy of concern, the proportion of attention given to what can reasonably be described as Ireland’s indigenous “far right” is, to put it bluntly, warped.

We see this trend across Europe, where the spectre of a “far right” populist revolt has sent de-nationalised elites into a panic. This was recently epitomised by the hysteria around the AfD’s success in eastern Germany. Something similar happened in France with Le Pen’s successes, and to a lesser degree in Portugal with Chega, Spain with Vox, Sweden with Sweden Democrats, Italy with Meloni and so on.

But one European country whose “far right” we never really hear about anymore is Ukraine. This is curious since Ukraine has extremely powerful and officially militarised organisations who proudly proclaim some of the most classical “far right” views: ethno-supremacism and totalitarian-statism. And while the evidence suggests Ireland’s genuine “far right” are relatively tiny and disorganised, Ukraine’s are serious operators.

Journalist Aris Roussinos, in a March 2022 interview with Freddie Sayers of UnHerd, provides a fascinating introductory overview of this landscape. Roussinos describes the views of Andriy Biletsky, the founder of a “neo-Nazi group” called Patriots of Ukraine: “He says that Ukraine’s mission is to lead the white race to fight against the Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans) of the world”. An early 2022 CNN report tells us that, in 2010, “Andriy Biletsky, now leader of the National Corps, the Azov movement’s political wing, reportedly said his goal was to ‘lead the White races of the world in a final crusade’”. Biletsky is also the founder and leader of the 3rd Separate Assault brigade, the successor of Azov, as shown by their charitable foundation, Support Azov. Azov/3rd Assault has been described by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) as “The Elite Ukrainian Brigade Everyone Wants to Join”.

Source: Arnaud Bertrand’s Twitter/X (for the full clip, got to 2:04:57 of this broadcast from August 15, 2024).

In a recent mainstream French TV show highlighted above, pundits are caught by surprise when a Nazi helmet shows up in footage from Ukraine’s recent incursion into Kursk. One pundit suggests a link to Azov. The Azov brigade has been described as “neo-Nazi” by the Guardian in 2018. Since then, a 2021 video report by TIME, which by now has received well over two million views, describes Azov as “a far-right group that has increasingly been linked to violence around the world”. An essay by TIME published shortly before their video describes the Azov movement as a “Ukrainian militant group that has trained and inspired white supremacists from around the world”.

But they have also trained many Ukrainians and have started them young. In a short 2017 video by NBC News about an Azov summer camp, “Ukraine’s Hyper-Nationalist Military Summer Camp for Kids”, we see a young boy standing by a fire exclaiming: “What is our slogan? We are Ukraine’s children! Let Moscow lay in ruins, we don’t give a damn! We will conquer the whole world! Death, death to the Muscovites!”. The Guardian also provided some insight into these camps with a longer 2017 documentary: “Is the Azov battalion really creating a modern Hitler Youth organisation,” ponders their YouTube description, “or is it trying to prepare young Ukrainians for the tough reality that awaits them?”. According to the TIME essay, Azov “has its own political party; two publishing houses; summer camps for children; and a vigilante force known as the National Militia, which patrols the streets of Ukrainian cities alongside the police. (…) The main recruitment center for Azov … stands in the center of Kyiv, a four-story brick building on loan from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry”.

In his 2023 book, The Tragedy of Ukraine, professor Nicolai Petro from the University of Rhode Island describes how, in “the 1990s, the ‘Patriots of Ukraine’ split off from its parent, the SNPU, in order to become the military wing of Svoboda, and then later, the Azov battalion”¹. A few pages earlier, professor Petro describes how the “unpalatable sounding SNPU” — Social National Party of Ukraine — was renamed Svoboda. The reader may be forgiven for thinking that his description of their ideology remains quite Nazi (which, we may remember, is derogative slang for the National Socialist German Workers Party):

Svoboda’s political program was, in fact, an updated version of Sziborsky’s 1935 book Natiocracy, which called for “Ukrainian spiritual totalitarianism”. For Svoboda, the first task of the new Ukrainian nation must be “a radical cleansing” that ensures its spiritual-blood unity. (…) All political parties, associations, and divergent ideological groups are to be banned, and full political power vested in “the Ukrainian nation”. The executive, legislative and judicial branches are to be combined in one individual — the Head of State — who will be responsible for the nation’s “blood and property”.²

A BBC report from January 2014 shows thousands of people, led by “far-right Ukrainian party Svoboda”, marching through Kyiv commemorating the memory of Stepan Bandera. While quite a controversial character according to the BBC, Bandera is mainstream in Ukraine to the extent that a former president awarded him a major honorific title. In a 2015 academic paper, professor Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa writes:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading United States (US)-based Jewish organization, expressed its “deepest revulsion at the recent honor awarded to Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others”. (…) The European Parliament in its resolution of February 25, 2010, concerning the situation in Ukraine stated that it “deeply deplores the decision by the outgoing President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously to award Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of ‘National Hero of Ukraine’; hopes, in this regard, that the new Ukrainian leadership will reconsider such decisions and will maintain its commitment to European values”. (…) German, Soviet, OUN-B, and US sources provided evidence of collaboration between Bandera and Nazi Germany, primarily during the first two years of World War II.

And though electorally very small, Roussinos outlined in his interview how Ukraine’s “far right” is crucially different to other “far right” cohorts across Europe in one key way: they have been armed and supported by the Ukrainian State. They have also been officially supported by the US since June, 2024, when it “lifted its long-standing ban on weapons supplies and training to Ukraine’s Azov brigade”. (I say “officially” because there are reasons to believe, including evidence in the interview with Roussinos, that NATO had been providing weapons to Azov for at least two years prior to the ban being lifted).

Source: Aaron Maté’s Twitter/X.

In May, 2024, representatives from Azov — no doubt a brigade with many brave and accomplished fighters — were welcomed in London by Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, as “heroes”. Pictured above, we see Boris holding the Azov flag which Roussinos describes as the same Wolfsangel rune as the Nazi SS Das Reich Division.

Source: Wikipedia.

Roussinos draws a comparison to Western-backed jihadists in Syria and argues that groups like Azov, “because they are so ideologically committed, they make very good fighters. (…) They’re extremely useful to the Ukrainian state, but they also represent a potential future threat”. “And I think like the jihadist problem in Syria”, continues Roussinos, “there’s a tendency in the early stages to underplay the potential threat they represent because people in the West think that it provides useful ammunition to the enemies of the broader project”.

Indications toward this “potential threat” might be found in the role played by various “far right” groups in blocking Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, signed in 2014 and 2015 respectively. In an extensive essay, journalist Aaron Maté describes Zelenskyy being threatened by a powerful “far right” leader soon after he was elected on a promise of bringing a peaceful resolution to the civil war that had begun in 2014:

In his inaugural address, Zelensky promised that he was “not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings”, and even “my own position — as long as peace arrives”. (…) But Ukraine’s powerful ultra-nationalists had other plans. Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Yarosh, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, responded: “No, he (Zelensky) would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk (Kyiv’s main street) — if he betrays Ukraine” by making a peace with the Russian-backed rebels.

Interestingly, professor Petro describes how Yarosh “claims to have personally led the first assault against the rebels in the Donbass on April 20, 2014. Although it was beaten back”, Yarosh “considers it a success because it torpedoed the Geneva peace process”³. Professor Petro goes on:

At the beginning of the conflict in the Donbass, the Ukrainian military refused to shoot at the local population. At this critical juncture, the Right Sector stepped in to ensure the conflict would not end in a negotiated settlement that gave the region greater autonomy. According to the chief military prosecutor of the Ukrainian military, Anatoly Matios, these volunteer battalions also routinely engaged in punitive expeditions against the local population. Although some of these individuals were later prosecuted and their units disbanded, most were re-integrated into the regular military, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or the police.⁴

In a January, 2021, essay for Harper’s Magazine, “The Armies of the Right: Inside Ukraine’s extremist militias”, Roussinos describes meeting Olena Semeniaka, “the thirty-one-year-old international secretary of Azov and the group’s diplomatic representative to other radical right-wing and fascist groups across the continent”. A photograph of Semeniaka from 2014 in which she is “giving a Nazi salute while holding a Hitler Youth flag” was apparently a regular aspect of Russian propaganda. Roussinos quotes from their meeting:

“We have some revolutionary trends, we are ready for different scenarios”, she said. Azov fighters played a central role in the Maidan revolution, she reminded me, and the group would be ready to rekindle that revolution if the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, became “a puppet of the Kremlin”. “We are also ready to defend our integrity in the streets”, she added. “In this aspect the national revolution scenario can repeat”.

In an interview with journalist and author Robert Wright, professor Katchanovski describes how Zelenskyy was unable to control Azov fighters who didn’t want peace and, instead, wanted to keep fighting the separatists in eastern Ukraine. He also corroborated Maté’s account of the public threat toward the recently elected Zelenskyy in 2019, but added that there was no criminal investigations or legal trouble afterward for Yarosh despite threatening to hang Ukraine’s new President in downtown Kyiv. Professor Katchanovski then goes on to carefully point out that the “far right” are a small electoral force in terms of public support, but that they have serious influence because of their willingness toward, and capability for violence:

Far right is not supported by many Ukrainians. It is a marginal political force from the point of view of public support (or) their presence in parliament or the government, but they have very strong influence over Ukrainian politics and can block decisions by Zelensky.

An illustration of this ability to block the president’s decisions might well be the case of Serhiy Sivokho, a friend of Zelenskyy who was hired in October 2019, to be responsible for humanitarian policy, as advisor of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC). Professor Petro quotes Sivokho in his early 2020 calls for warring parties to “correct mistakes, to forgive and to ask for forgiveness”. Sivokho sought the beginnings of peace: “More terrible than the coronavirus is the virus of hatred. (…) What my team is doing is trying to incline people to mutual understanding”⁵. According to professor Petro, however, Azov were having none of it. The “far right” wanted war:

At first Sivokho’s optimism seemed to be echoed by President Zelensky. During the 2020 Munich Security Conference, and then later that year at the Forum on Unity in Mariupol, Zelensky called for “a massive national dialogue” in which people could discuss Ukraine’s future face-to-face. To this end, the creation of a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity was announced in Mariupol, and formally presented to the public on March 12, 2020. That presentation lasted only twenty minutes, however, because a gang of about seventy young people from the National Corps (Azov) stormed into the hall shouting “traitor” and threw Sivokho to the ground. Two weeks later he was fired from his advisory position at the NSDC.⁶

What hope is there for peace in Ukraine if, on top of the external pressure to perpetuate violent conflict from western powers — something I have previously written about and which former US Ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland, has essentially confirmed — President Zelenskyy is also on the receiving end of internal pressure from uncontrollable military factions who hold unapologetically inflexible ideological commitments? On this totalising anti-Russian ideology, professor Petro writes:

The sine qua non of modern Ukrainian nationalism is the designation of Russia as the Eternal Enemy. The Ukrainian state will never be secure until the Russian state is destroyed. War with Russia, therefore, is to be welcomed because it will “arouse the militaristic spirit of the nation”, a point also made by several Ukrainian government officials. (…) It is therefore not surprising that, as members of the Far Right have entered the state apparatus, violence has become an increasingly accepted means of dealing with one’s opponents, be they members of the political opposition, the opposition media, or the opposition Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).⁷

On this last point, the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Thomas Fazi has recently penned a piece for Compact detailing its banning by Zelenskyy. “Given the blunt weaponization of religion by the Ukrainian and American authorities and the growth of ultra-nationalist and anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine”, he writes, “it was only a matter of time before the state came for a church seen as closely linked to Moscow”. Such religious persecution is symptomatic of a disturbingly totalitarian situation:

It ultimately falls upon a new government body, the State Service for Ethnopolicy and Freedom of Conscience, to determine whether individual parishes have ties to Russia or not. Expecting impartiality would be wishful thinking. We are talking of a country, after all, where even suggesting that Ukraine should negotiate a territorial settlement with Russia can land you in jail for treason.

The impetus for this essay is that Ireland’s Taoiseach was in Kyiv September 4, as pictured above, to formalise with Zelenskyy a new ten-year agreement: “Ireland remains unwavering in its commitment to support Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders as of 1991, including its territorial sea”.

Given the fact that some of the spiciest contents of this essay are sourced from respected mainstream outlets, while the rest is easily verifiable, the commonly deployed “Russian disinformation” or “conspiracy theory” tropes are null and void. As such, Ireland’s “far right”-condemning Taoiseach must already have a highly sophisticated opinion on Ukraine’s extremely influential and, in some cases, even state-supported “far right”. So, what is it?

1 Nicolai N. Petro, The Tragedy of Ukraine, Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023, pg. 97.

2 Ibid., pg. 93.

3 Ibid., pg. 102-103.

4 Ibid., pg. 111.

5 Ibid., pg. 241.

6 Ibid., pg. 241-242.

7 Ibid., pg. 114-115.