Tetyana Teplyuk, a combat medic, said she “told my colleagues when they got down, ‘You joined the Azov battalion, you knew you might go to the frontline, that this might happen, so let’s stay strong.’” The other NGU Azov speaker was Valery Horishny, “Chief Sergeant of the Azov Corps,” who keeps coming up on this blog. You might recall that this hardcore neo-Nazi adherent of the “native faith” once wrote poetry dedicated to Adolf Hitler, but that hasn’t stopped him from making speeches at the United Nations, the UK Parliament, and the Bundestag this year.

Horishny, who spent over two years as a prisoner of war after the NGU Azov Regiment surrendered in Mariupol, told those at YES, “The captivity made me better and stronger.” Furthermore, “I instruct people how to protect and return our land.” In fact, Horishny is an instructor for a new “404” youth movement associated with the NGU Azovites. David “Khimik” Kasatkin, another famous former Azov POW and deputy commander of the Azov Brigade’s sniper detachment, leads the new group. He is also evidently a neo-Nazi, as I covered in this X (formerly known as Twitter) thread. Recent pictures and videos from the “404 Movement” reveal numerous neo[fascist] shirts, including from the National Socialist Black Metal band “M8L8TH” (also known as “Hitler’s Hammer”). So much for depoliticization…