Kiev’s Marshal Malinovsky Street was renamed “Heroes of the Azov Regiment” Street yesterday. The neo-Nazi founder of the Azov Battalion, Andrey Biletsky, attended the ceremony. Current etiquette is that one is supposed to look the other way, regarding Biletsky’s clearly expressed view — that he and Ukraine had to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen” — and, instead, only refer to him as a “far-right nationalist.” (Yes, he really invoked Hitler’s German term for his ‘Ukrainian’ mission.)
Marshal Radion Malinovsky, in contrast, had been honored for liberating much of southern Ukraine from the Nazis, including from his home city of Odessa. At one time, that was considered a good thing. Yesterday, Kiev’s mayor Vitaly Klitschko explained the importance of changing the name: It is “an important step towards reducing the deceitful manipulations and influence of the Russian aggressor on the interpretation of our history.”
