Russia’s Investigative Committee is looking into the training of Ukrainian neo-Nazis by Canadian instructors. “The Investigative Committee’s investigators, who are looking into this fact as part of criminal cases related to the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists, will employ measures to identify those engaged in military training programs teaching ways to commit crimes against civilians,” the IC said in a statement issued yesterday. TASS adds that according to the available data, Canadian military instructors engaged in a training mission in Ukraine are grooming members of the nationalist Azov Battalion.
In Ottawa this matter is not being dismissed as mere Russian propaganda. That NATO forces, including Canadian instructors, were training neo-Nazis in Ukraine first came up in a report from George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies released in October of last year. Canadian military involvement in the training of Ukrainian neo-Nazis was subsequently confirmed in investigations by the Ottawa Citizen, Radio Canada and CTV News, according a CTV News report posted on April 28. Radio Canada’s investigation into documents related to Canada’s mission in Ukraine found evidence that soldiers from the Azov Regiment, identified by patches on their clothing and other insignias, have participated in training with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as recently as 2020 at the Western-backed Zolochiv training center in Western Ukraine.
