A Pact With The Devil

"It is unacceptable for our armed forces to be emboldening neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, or any other country, through the provision of CAF training."

"This is an issue fundamental to the purpose of Canada’s forces and to the respect we owe our veterans – who sacrificed so much to defeat fascism in Europe."

"We urge the Department of National Defence to immediately launch an investigation into the evidence that has been revealed by the George Washington University study and to develop new policies and procedures to ensure that all foreign trainees receive some type of background check to eliminate the possibility of neo-Nazi or other extremist affiliation before receiving training from Canadian forces."

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Canada

October 18, 2021 

"The Canadian government didn't do its due diligence. It's the responsibility of the Canadian defence ministry to know exactly who they are training."

"There is no question that there are neo-Nazis in different forms in Ukraine, whether they are in the Azov regiment or other organizations."

Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust scholar, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel

April 12, 2022

EVGENIYA MAKSYMOVA | Credit: AFP

 

The world is watching with bated breath and  hoping that by some miraculous intervention, Ukrainian resolve and the courage of its people, the defiance and practised skills of its military will manage to succeed in pushing back the advance of the Russian military from Ukrainian territory. A vastly out-numbered Ukrainian military, defending itself against the superior advanced technology of the Russian military has seen courage in real time, as Ukrainian forces steadfastly held out against an immense Russian convoy planning to enter and occupy the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine's charismatic president has minced no words in calling upon Western alliances and Ukraine's European neighbours to come to its aid, invaded by a malign Russian Federation's president who claims to be 'liberating' his neighbour from the malign forces of evil personified in the presence of neo-Nazi fighting volunteers committed to fascism and infused with antisemitism and overall racist values that are contemptful of minorities. A contempt so deep and malicious they volunteered during WWII to act alongside Nazi SS Panzer units whose focus was to advance the Holocaust aspirations of genocide.

Ukraine has a shameful  history of antisemitism and was complicit with the Nazi occupiers in destroying vast numbers of Jewish lives. But so too was every other Eastern European country under occupation, from Lithuania to Hungary to Poland. And nor was Western Europe exceptional in shielding Jews from the Third Reich's 'Final Solution'. Vichy France was a collaborationist country, Italy was an Axis nation, and Holland surrendered most of its Jews to their grim fate.

 

 SERGEY BOBOK | Credit: AFP via Getty Images

As a fierce fighting group whose loyalty as committed nationalists Ukraine depends upon in its defence from Russian aggression, the former president of Ukraine welcomed the Azov Battalion and a number of other fascist Ukrainian militias into the ranks of its institutional national military. The current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy knows his history very well, as a son of Holocaust survivors. He well understands his country and its ongoing flirtation with fascism. But it is his country as much as it is the fascists' and it is certainly not Russia's geography in a war of cultural/political/territorial imperative.

Canada, which celebrates itself as a bastion of Liberal Democracy, has among its citizenry the third largest Ukrainian population after Ukraine itself and the diaspora contingent in Russia. Canada's Liberal Party currently in power under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a virtue-signalling country portraying itself as an enemy of injustice and a champion of human rights. When Ukraine appealed to the world community for aid in his country's time of desperate need, he appealed to NATO and EU countries particularly for military equipment.

When ethnic-Russian Ukrainian rebels separated the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine from the West-leaning government in Kyiv, in a conflict that created their self-styled Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Moscow surreptitiously sent its military to support the separatists, and finally marched across the border between Russia and Ukraine to claim the Crimean Peninsula as its own territory, appeals for military aid failed to resonate; no other countries relished the prospect of clashing in conflict with Russia.

Now that the Kremlin has decided it was time to finally destroy Ukraine as a nation, military gear is being freed up for Ukraine; too little, too late. In response to the ongoing separatist conflict and the Crimean crisis, military trainers were made available under NATO to teach modern warfare techniques to the Ukrainian military, and Canada had a contingent of trainers preparing the military in Ukraine for future defence. It was these trainers and those among the Ukrainian military known for their white-supremacist fascism who were among those being trained that caught the eye of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

 

Al Mayadeen English

The Canadian government, through the Canadian Forces denies it has an obligation to know of the presence of neo-Nazis among those that were being trained by Canadian military experts. Despite the presence of one Ukrainian soldier who proudly wore the crest of a Nazi SS unit -- the insignia of the WWII Ukrainian fascists who joined the Nazis, on his uniform -- and the presence of known fascists in the Azov regiment, an all-inclusive training continued. 

The meaning of the insignia was not lost on the Canadian trainers. All Canadian military members engaged in training Ukrainian troops were exposed to information enabling them to recognize patches and insignia associated with right-wing extremism. In theory, should Canadian soldiers suspect Ukrainian counterpart trainees to be possessed of racist values or belonging to such organizations, the trainees are removed. But no burden of proof is on the Canadian Armed Forces beyond a reasonable doubt to act as theorized.

"Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis", a briefing note on the Azov Battalion acknowledged, produced by Canadian officers with Canada's elite Joint Task Force in 2017. The American Congress banned U.S. funds from reaching Ukraine to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion in view of its links to the far-right and neo-Nazis. Both the UN and Amnesty International accuse the unit of conducting human rights violations.

"There is an element of the ultra-right in Ukraine and it's absurd to ignore it", repeated Efraim Zuroff. The impetus is there to ignore it, since its presence in Ukraine is cited sanctimoniously by Vladimir Putin as justification for his invasion of Ukraine. In the context of Ukraine's moving cri de coeur, the emphasis is, rightfully so, on its preservation, its right to exist as an independent nation, to choose its future course. And the need to help in whatever way is possible, short of igniting the fuse for a Third World War.

This situation is what is meant by a dilemma of contradiction and making a pact with the devil.

"The call for Ukraine’s defence has been met by a wide section of Ukrainian society, from the young to the old. Volunteer battalions include anarchists, gay go-go dancers, imams and Hasidic Jews, for example. In Irpin, I met a lesbian territorial defence volunteer named Anna, who was fighting alongside a native Georgian. To ignore these people and concentrate solely on Azov does little to serve Ukrainian civil society, which faces an existential threat at the hands of Russian fascism".

"That’s where this argument moves from the absurd to the obscene. Vladimir Putin is a major sponsor of far-right political parties across Europe, and is close to a militia (the Wagner Group) that is involved in military action around the world and has been linked to white supremacy movements. Under Putin, Russia has regressed into a totalitarian fascist regime. He threatens Ukraine not because it has a far-right element, but because Ukraine is a growing, sovereign liberal democracy that he can no longer control."

:Russia’s information war focuses on Ukraine’s neo-Nazis because it seeks to take control of the narrative. It wants to dehumanise Ukrainians to the point that when a bomb is fired on a theatre full of children in Mariupol, it can blame the atrocity on Azov and avoid international condemnation and accountability. This is a tried-and-tested model that Russia has perfected in Syria over the past decade."

Oz Katerji, The New Statesman

Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces during training at a former asphalt factory on the outskirts of Kyiv. Photo by Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images