April 25, 2024 (EIRNS)—One of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, Denys “There are no Nazis here” Prokopenko, took to the pages of Ukrainska Pravda to explain why there are no Nazis in Ukraine, and why the U.S. should stop discriminating against his Azov military unit. Prokopenko’s article, “Why Does Azov Still Not Receive Western Weapons?” goes on at length how the Azov formation is heroic and has been at the center of defending Ukraine, but has been so unfairly stigmatized. Prokopenko, however, assiduously avoids the elephant in the room.
Prokopenko is a graduate of Kyiv’s White Boys Club, soccer superfans whose Facebook posts include Waffen-SS insignia, the “Heil Hitler” code “88,” and “100% White” phraseology. He subsequently joined the newly-formed Azov Battalion in 2014, where his own platoon’s insignia was that of the Nazi SS, the skull-and-crossbones design called the “Totenkopf.” His right-hand man, Svyatoslav Palamar, prior to joining the Azov Battalion at its 2014 formation, was part of Andrey Biletsky’s parent group, the “Patriot of Ukraine” formation. Biletsky was notorious for his 2010 statement that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…. Against Semite-led Untermenschen” (or sub-humans). In 2014, he personally designed the windswept swastika image for his Azov Battalion. Prokopenko’s White Boys Club was a typical recruiting ground for Biletsky’s Nazi-themed paramilitary. At this point, perhaps only a short video can capture the insane quality of Prokopenko claiming there are no neo-Nazis in various incarnations of the Azov military formations.
Regardless, Prokopenko is correct that the Azov Battalion was called “openly neo-Nazi” and “fascist” in the U.S. Congress in 2017, which led to U.S. Defense Appropriations Bills disallowing U.S. weapons to them. However, he explains that all one has to do is go to the “azovcontrafake” website to find such Russian propaganda properly countered.
His further argument is revealing:
“There is no evidence or confirmation of the accusations that Russian propaganda has been spreading about Azov for 10 years. If there were, delegations of Azov fighters would not have been received in the United States, in European countries, and in Israel. Azov members would not have held meetings with representatives of the U.S. Congress and human rights organizations. They would not have spoken at the UN, the Council of Europe, or top Western universities. They would not have given interviews to the world’s leading media outlets and would not have participated in panel discussions at major military conferences. This is the absurdity of the situation: Azov is welcomed at the highest level throughout the Western world, but still not given weapons. How long will a structural unit of the Security and Defence Forces of Ukraine, subordinated to the military leadership of the state, be stigmatized by such humiliating amendments?”
How is someone who hides the hardcore neo-Nazi core of the Azov formation supposed to then be trusted in saying that their re-packaging since their “Azov Battalion” days has taken care of the problem—that is, the problem that supposedly never existed?
