The Washington Post ran a cover story yesterday on the rebranding of the Azov brigade into a “non-ideological but tough” fighting force. The Kiev regime is attempting to reconstitute the Azov brigade, after the disaster it suffered in Mariupol last year, by recruiting 6,500 new members and trying to gain the release of 1,000 of its troops still in Russian POW camps.
The Ukrainian government, the Post says, has designated Azov, which recently absorbed other elements of the country’s National Guard, as one of six “offensive brigades” that will help spearhead Ukraine’s attempt to recapture Russian-occupied areas.
The newest recruits are drawn to Azov, not for the ultranationalist ideology of its origins, but for its “proven combat skill,” brigade leaders say. “It is a name that, thanks to the defense of Mariupol, became known to the world,” a 28-year-old master sergeant, who goes by the call sign Maslo, said at a recent training session outside Kiev. “It was known in a certain negative way,” Maslo added. “Now it is in a positive way because what we do works.… The recruits coming to us understand that.”
