ARE NAZIS THE GOOD GUYS NOW?

The UK Telegraph & German Deutsche Welle whitewash Azov Brigade!

German News Outlet Whitewashes Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade

March 19 (EIRNS)—As much as the West wants to deny there are Nazis in Ukraine, every so often Western media outlets feel the need to whitewash the existence of such groups. Germany’s Deutsche Welle English-language news site did exactly that in a story posted yesterday on the Azov Brigade which in effect says that while Nazi organizations are outlawed in Germany, they’re okay in Ukraine. Andreas Umland from the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, told DW that the associations which the right-wingers in Ukraine formed would be described as “free comradeships,” or organized neo-Nazi groups in Germany. Umland noted that Azov had drawn early attention by using the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its emblem.

“The Wolfsangel has far-right connotations, it is a pagan symbol that the SS also used,” said Umland. “But it is not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine.” (!) The Azov Regiment wants the symbol from the Nazi era to be understood as stylized versions of the letters N and I, standing for “national idea.”

Umland went on to dismiss the “legend” of Azov as right wing extremists as the product of Russian propaganda. “Normally, we consider right-wing extremism to be dangerous, something that can lead to war,” Umland said. But in Ukraine, it is the other way around, he argued. The war had led to the rise and transformation of marginal comradeships into a political movement. But their influence on society is overrated, he said. For most Ukrainians, they are combatants fighting an overbearing aggressor. Umland’s argument appears to be little more than a variation of the British meme that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

London’s Telegraph: Azov Brigade Are Nazis, but They Are Good Nazis!

March 19 (EIRNS)—Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph in London ran a long apology for the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade in Ukraine, admitting they were indeed Nazis, but that they were doing a wonderful job in killing Russians and stopping the government in Kiev from making any compromises with Moscow or the Donbas republics. Under the headline: “Inside Azov, the Neo-Nazi Brigade Killing Russian Generals and Playing a PR Game in the Ukraine War,” the Telegraph essentially admits that the British were fully behind the Nazis—as they were when they sponsored the rise of Hitler as a way of getting Germany and Russia to bleed each other to death for the sake of the Empire’s glory.

“While most of Ukraine’s armed forces have been quietly engaged in the grind of a gruelling tug-of-war with Russia, one battalion has been busy putting out slick videos and images trumpeting its own achievements. In a photograph released this week, a burly man in dark-blue uniform lies unconscious on the snow-covered ground, his right side caked in blood.

‘Azov has eliminated a major general! And by thy sword shalt thou live!’ reads the caption.”

The Telegraph decries the “long-time focus of Kremlin propaganda attempts to smear all Ukrainians as neo-Nazis,” they praise the Nazis’ ”well-oiled PR machine which has been producing Ukraine’s arguably best-quality war videos with camera drones perfectly capturing the attacks as they happen in real time. Ukraine’s armed forces have happily used Azov’s videos as visual proof of the country’s counter-attacks on the invading army.”

They note that the Azov Brigade “never held much sway in Ukraine’s politics, but videos of its occasional torch-lit marches have helped to feed the false Kremlin narrative of Ukrainians being neo-Nazis....

After the Anglo-American-orchestrated Nazi coup in 2014, they write, “the Azov Battalion was one of the several volunteer forces that took the job of fighting the separatists that the army seemingly did not want to do. Months later, prominent rights advocacies such as Human Rights Watch reported ‘credible allegations of torture and other egregious abuses’ by Azov and other volunteer battalions.”

Azov founder Andriy Biletsky is described by the Telegraph as “an ultra-nationalist political figure who had had run-ins with the law and had been involved in various groups that toyed with Nazi symbols.” They show a picture of a swastika on the wall of an Azov office in Mariupol, which they admit is occupied by the Nazis. They quote Biletsky that Ukraine’s “historic mission in this century to lead white peoples of the world on their last Crusade against Jew-led Untermensch.”

They add that “Azov fighters in the east happily rolled back their sleeves to show Nazi tattoos to foreign correspondents while Mr. Biletsky’s team were announcing the creation of local militia forces to deal with issues in big cities.”

Russia, Ukraine Close to Agreement on Neutrality but Not on De-nazification

March 19 (EIRNS)—Are the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine really making progress or not? Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, yesterday, in response to a comment made by Mykhailo Podolyak, his Ukrainian counterpart, said that there can be no meeting of the two Presidents until there’s a document ready to be signed. “I’m absolutely not ready to comment on that. I can only say that before we even mention a meeting of the leaders, delegations of negotiators must prepare and agree on the text of a treaty. After that, the text of the treaty should be initialed by foreign ministers, and approved by governments. After that, a possibility of a summit can be discussed,” he said on March 18, reported TASS.

Podolyak had reportedly stated earlier that a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy might be organized after the work on the settlement document was completed. According to him, such a meeting was possible in the next couple of weeks.

Medinsky had earlier pointed out what the roadblock in the talks actually is, and it’s not Ukraine’s neutral status. “The topic of neutral status and non-accession of Ukraine to NATO is one of the key issues of the negotiations. This is the issue on which the parties have brought their positions as close as possible,” Medinsky stated. “Then details begin relating to what security guarantees Ukraine receives in addition to those already existing in case of its refusal to join the NATO bloc.”

Other questions however, namely Russian demands to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine, remain the subject of debate. The delegations are only “halfway” into finding common grounds on the former issue, Medinsky revealed, while the situation with the latter remains “rather strange,” with Kiev continuing to deny the very existence of neo-Nazis in the country. “Ukrainian colleagues believe that there are no Nazi formations in Ukraine,” he explained.

Just in case anyone thought there was any ambiguity in what the Russians mean by “denazification,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained yesterday: “And of course, denazification is an absolute must. And it includes not only cancelling the laws encouraging Nazi ideology and practices, but it also includes withdrawing any legislation which discriminates against the Russian language and other national minority languages and in general national minority rights in Ukraine, which have been hugely discriminated and offended,” he told RT in an interview.

Putin Addresses Huge Rally in Moscow on Anniversary of Crimea’s Reunification with Russia

March 19 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin defied Western fantasies about the Russian people being about to overthrow him by addressing a rally at a sports stadium in Moscow attended by a reported 200,000 people. The linked video of the event shows the stadium packed on the inside with many tens of thousands more on the outside, waving thousands of Russian flags. The occasion for the rally was the eighth anniversary of the return of Crimea to Russia.

“Over these years, Russia has done a great deal to help Crimea and Sevastopol grow. There were things that needed to be done that were not immediately obvious to the unaided eye. These were essential things such as gas and power supply, utility infrastructure, restoring the road network, and construction of new roads, motorways and bridges,” Putin said. “We needed to drag Crimea out of that humiliating position [imposed on it by Kiev] and state that Crimea and Sevastopol had been pushed into when they were part of another state that had only provided leftover financing to these territories.”

“People who lived and live in Donbas did not agree with this coup d’état, either,” Putin went on. “Several punitive military operations were instantly staged against them; they were besieged and subjected to systemic shelling with artillery and bombing by aircraft—and this is actually what is called ‘genocide.’ ”

“The main goal and motive of the military operation that we launched in Donbas and Ukraine is to relieve these people of suffering, of this genocide,” he said. “At this point, I recall the words from the Holy Scripture: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ And we are seeing how heroically our military are fighting during this operation.”

It has been eight years since Crimea decided to become part of Russia, following a referendum in which 98% voted in favour of the move.
RT shared a recap of the years passed.

Also RT, removed from our screens by sanctions, broadcasts live on Odysee.