Weird shit...
Foreign Correspondent spends a week inside the alternative reality of the "anti-fascist" Donetsk People's Republic in the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
www.abc.net.au
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"That's why they had to make the militia and had to defend themselves," he says. "They were under attack both from the Ukrainian army and from Nazi battalions and Nazi paramilitary units."
He singles out a particular paramilitary group, the Azov Regiment.
"They began as Nazi paramilitary groups, they are formed from skinheads and from white supremacist groups and from Nazis. They are far-right extremists who are legal in Ukraine, that have heavy weapons in Ukraine and that they can do whatever they want fighting against people of Donbas."
It's a line the Kremlin has been pushing since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. And it's not subtle. That year, ahead of a referendum to join Russia, I saw authorities erect giant billboards across Crimea showing maps of Ukraine covered in swastikas. Other billboards showed a giant Mother Russia pushing back a Nazi stormtrooper.
In part, it was a reference to World War II, when Ukrainian extremists led by Stepan Bandera sided with Nazi Germany to try to win independence from the Soviet Union. But the Azov Regiment has been a handy update for the narrative.
Azov emerged in 2014 from a collection of often violent ultranationalists who joined peaceful democrats in the Maidan protests against the pro-Russian government. Russia portrayed the uprising as a Nazi coup and armed and supported separatists in Donbas.
The Azov battalion – mainly drawn from local Russian speakers – threw itself into the fighting with separatists, helping to wrest back the eastern port of Mariupol. Its success endeared it to a new Ukrainian government desperate to not lose more territory.
Politicians ignored or played down Azov's Neo-Nazi ideology and symbols, like the Sonnenrad (sun wheel) displayed on its insignia. Some far-right figures were given senior positions in the civil administration. In November 2014, Azov was expanded from a battalion into a regiment and absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard.
It was a propaganda gift for Russia, especially after the Christchurch massacre of 2019 when the shooter was found to have a Sonnenrad emblem on his backpack.
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There is an ocean of competing claims on the far right's influence in Ukraine, but what is clear is that it has almost no public support.
In the 2019 election, far-right parties including Right Sector, which absorbed many Azov leaders, received less than 3 per cent of the vote, below the threshold to enter parliament. Ukraine elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who appointed a Jewish Prime Minister, Denis Shmyhal.
But still, the Kremlin insists, Ukraine is a Nazi state. Russian politicians can barely mention Ukraine without saying the word. Russian state television reports are full of stories of alleged Nazi atrocities.
Alexandra Lygina is a true believer.
''Ukraine is not a part of the Russian world anymore because Ukraine chose its way to the West," she says. "It became a Nazi country. And the Russian world is against such things."
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