To celebrate August 24 Vladimir Zelensky took to Instagram to upload a series of portraits of commanders born in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Unsurprisingly one serviceman’s image, alongside his full name and credentials, was pictured wearing a Nazi insignia of the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division.

That unit of the SS recruited primarily Ukrainian collaborators, and has been accused of committing several massacres in Poland.

  • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
    92·
    2 years ago

    In 2014 the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government led to a shit tonne of nazis in prominent positions. Among those, for example, Arsen Avakov, one of the major funders of Azov before it became part of the state. He took over the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a ministry with executive power over:

    • National Guard of Ukraine

    • National Police of Ukraine

    • Special Tasks Patrol Police

    • State Border Guard Service of Ukraine

    • Ukrainian Sea Guard

    • State Emergency Service of Ukraine

    • State Migration Service of Ukraine

    He appointed Vadym Troyan as his deputy minister, former deputy commander of Azov Batallion. Zelensky appointed him as Chief of Police for the Kyiv Oblast prior to this, a role directly appointed by Zelensky.

    In their time inside this ministry Avakov and Troyan created the Special Tasks Patrol Police, creating 56 volunteer “special police” forces across the country. These were ALL populated by fascists. They took the various gangs of paramilitary fascist groups and officialised them into the state, much like Azov was officialised into the state. This was an expansion of the Azov project.

    To understand why this is important you need to understand a little about history and what this mirrors. The Azov Batallion started out as volunteer group, much like the Nazi SS or Schutzstaffel. It was later officialised into the state upon the fascists taking power and then given vast access to state resources for its growth and expansion. It expanded from a small volunteer batallion into a “special police” force that covered the entire country, providing an organisational body that exists to perform terror and “special” operations. The creation of the Special Tasks Patrol Police was this expansion within the Ukrainian state. Einzatsgruppen, the wing of the SS specifically created for the purposes of mass murder, means “Task Forces” in German.

    Every single one of these 56 batallions created by the Ukrainian government are loyal and deeply ideologically fascist forces.

    This is just the story of what happened to one single position when the government was couped in 2014. Fascists got into many other positions taking similar actions and set the country on a path that can not be reversed. Even Zelensky himself says that the country will be “big Israel”, they are intending to copy a country that has been completely fascist for 50 years at least. They are openly stating their intent to be fascist when saying this.