The U.S. mainstream media’s deeply biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis – endlessly portraying the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev as “the good guys” – reached a new level of absurdity over the weekend as the Washington Post excused the appearance of Swastikas and other Nazi symbols among a Ukrainian government militia as “romantic.”Bizarre. See Azov Battalion aka Azov brigade
In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population – and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing.…
Over the past several days, more evidence emerged about the presence of Nazis in the ranks of Ukrainian government fighters. Germans were shocked to see video of Azov militia soldiers decorating their gear with the Swastika and the “SS rune.”
NBC News reported last week: “Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past on Monday night, when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.Consortiumnews.com
“The video was shot … in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2. ‘We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,’ Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television station, told NBC News.
Ukraine’s ‘Romantic’ Nazi Storm Troopers
Robert Parry
4 comments:
" the Washington Post excused the appearance of Swastikas and other Nazi symbols among a Ukrainian government militia as “romantic.”"
Smelling a rat, I went to read the WashPo story he's complaining about. And, of course, I found that they weren't trying to "excuse" anything.
Parry is such a bullshit spin artist.
Demands for a counterinsurgency are growing particularly within Ukraine’s voluntary battalions created last spring to bolster national defenses. Effectively paramilitaries, they are populated mostly by amateur fighters — including many adhering to far-right ideologies. Several of them, when asked, expressed skepticism of Poroshenko’s peace plan.
Many have also begun to lose faith in the official command structure. In a recent bloodbath in the city of Ilovaysk, battalion members say they were ordered into a fight, then abandoned by the Ukrainian military.…
If Kiev strikes a deal they are not happy with, “believe me, we will not only fight the rebels, but will fight the government, too,” he said.
The debate over tactics here is shining a fresh spotlight on the paramilitaries, which have become something of a wild card in the conflict. Many of them — a hodgepodge of activists, professionals, blue-collar workers and wayward youths — have fought valiantly for their country.
But some units have also become a haven for far-right thought, and, like the rebels themselves, have been charged by Amnesty International with committing extortion, kidnapping and worse in the areas where they operate.…
If Kiev reaches a deal with rebels that they don’t support, paramilitary fighters say they could potentially strike pro-Russian targets on their own — or even turn on the government itself.
In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But Kirt, a former hospitality worker, dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers — many of them still teenagers — embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of “romantic” idea.
He insisted the group’s primary goal is defending its country against Russian aggression.
“It’s like 1924,” he said. “Putin is the new Stalin.
Sounds to me like Parry has it right. What the WaPo does is fist off a ridiculously simple description of the Azov brigade as "a bunch of teenagers."
I would not call it an excuse as much as a whitewash.
Germans, Russians, other Europeans, and Jews to see Nazi insignia on contemporary fighters associated with the Ukraine military are under no illusions about this, nor should anyone who has read about the history of the Ukraine Nazis be either. The WaPo is either negligent in reporting or whitewashing a scandal for propaganda purposes.
As an American I am insulted by it.
I'm curious if a white supremacist or black panther wanted to join the US military, what would happen? I'm sure they do some sort of background check.
During war time, they might conscript everybody, regardless. I think the Ukraine government made military service mandatory for all men of age, did they not?
Actually, they didn't do background checks or else let lots of stuff by when they did during the period of low enrollments in order to meet quotas. So they were stuck with a lot of undesirables — extremists and gang members — in the US military. I don't know whether they have been weeded out, or to what degree. But it came to be recognized as a problem, especially since many of these folks were receiving training that could be useful criminally when they got out.
The big problem in the military now, since it emanates from high up the chain of command, is the pervasion of right wing Christianism. It is rabidly anti-Muslim and sees wiping out Islam as a core objective of the US military.
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