The 2014 coup which ousted Yanukokovich – not a stellar figure by any means, but still a democratically elected leader – was spearheaded by Svoboda and other far-right groups, who openly profess their admiration for the Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. (Bandera’s collaboration, by the way, was not mere opportunism, as his OUN participated in several high-profile massacres of Jews and Poles). The current government has passed laws banning the Russian language in media, has torn down monuments to Red Army fighters, and has since 2014 been engaged in a war of extermination against the Russian-speaking minority in the Donbass. This war has been spearheaded by open neo-Nazi units such as Azov and Aidar. It is important to understand that this is not just an issue of individual soldiers, or individual units, professing neo-Nazi ideology, as happens in most armed forces worldwide; these neo-Nazi units have been the backbone of Ukraine’s war in the Donbass, and have played an enforcing role in the Ukrainian army, since the conscripts who make up the bulk of the Ukrainian armed forces were demoralized well before 2022. Even today, the Ukrainians with their chronic ammunition shortages continue to waste valuable resources shelling residential areas, schools, and places of worship in the Donbass, apparently out of nothing more than sheer genocidal hatred (I get depleting the enemy’s manpower, but in the desperate straits Ukraine is in, these weapons could certainly be put to better use elsewhere).

Now it is true that in the latest round of elections, the far-right parties were decisively rejected at the polls, so that today Svoboda, the political wing of Azov, etc. hold relatively few seats in the Rada (Ukrainian parliament). However, these same groups are represented in the goverment, security services, and the military far out of proportion to their actual presence in the Rada, such that they continue to call the shots, both literal and figurative. Zelensky himself is a case in point. He was elected as something of a moderate, replacing Poroshenko, a famous oligarch and hardliner; he was certainly never pro-Russian, but he did want a peaceful resolution to the situation in the east, and was willing to negotiate. Almost immediately, he was isolated, with neo-Nazi parties and paramilitaries in his country threatening a “second Maidan,” i.e., coup, unless he fell in line; which of course he did, becoming the somewhat pitiable figure we know today. These are not just thugs on the street; they are reprented in the highest offices in the land, making the Ukrainian government effectively and ideologically a fascist one.