Neo-Nazi pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine, 2014. Image Credit: rferl.org
Fighting Nazis With Nazis?
Vladimir Putin has frequently invoked World War II and the denazification of the world as an excuse for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Keep in mind that Volodimir Zelensky, Ukraine’s democratically elected president, is Jewish and lost relatives in the holocaust.
In a speech justifying his “special military operation,” Putin is quoted as saying: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”
Right, Putin is there to save the Ukrainian people. Moving on…
Putin making a Victory Day speech, May 9th, 2022. Image Credit: rev.com
Rusich
It is with no small amount of hypocrisy that neo-Nazi groups are fighting in Ukraine in the name of Russia. A leader of one of these groups, Rusich, is proud Nazi Aleksei Milchakov. He makes no bones about who he is. Milchakov stated clearly on a Russian Nationalist YouTube channel, “I’m a Nazi. I’m a Nazi. I’m not going to go deep and say, I’m a nationalist, a patriot, an imperialist, and so forth. I’ll say it outright: I’m a Nazi.” Not much room for interpretation there; he’s a Nazi.
The man isn’t exactly shy with his feelings; he goes on to say, “You have to understand that when you kill a person, you feel the excitement of the hunt. If you’ve never been hunting, you should try it. It’s interesting.” Interesting? F*****g interesting!? It’s interesting to find out that North Korea and Cuba are pretty much the only two places in the world where Coca-Cola is not sold. Taking a human life is decidedly not interesting. Only a psychopath would describe it that way.
Milchakov is infamous for supposedly killing a puppy, bragging about it, and posting the photos on social media. I’m not squeamish in the least, but I really don’t want to see those photos, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. Therefore, I only did a halfhearted search for them online. Great, now part of my browser history is “Nazi kills puppy.” Try explaining that one away. But I digress…this is a really bad man.
This probably comes from the unproven claims that Nazi SS in soldiers in WWII were made to kill puppies given to them during training as a way to harden them psychologically to the taking of life.
Russian neo-Nazi Aleksei Milchakov. He has been credibly linked to atrocities in both Syria and Ukraine. Image Credit: rferl.org
Rusich isn’t the only Russian far-right-wing group fighting in Ukraine. The Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group designated by the US government as “global terrorists,” is there as well, as are others. They fight in conjunction with Russia’s regular army or allied separatist units.
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service is keeping a close eye on neo-Nazi activity in Ukraine. The well-known German news magazine Der Spiegel has been reporting their findings. They have outed Putin’s hypocrisy in allowing Nazi groups to supposedly attempt to de-Nazify Ukraine. Der Spiegel says, in regards to Putin’s thought process,
“This renders the alleged reason for the war, the so-called denazification of Ukraine, absurd.”
Milchakov, a former Russian paratrooper, is noted as being the co-leader of Rusich, along with another Russian man by the name of Yan Petrovsky. Some military analysts say Rusich is in some way affiliated with the infamous Wagner Group.
In many photos of Wagner Group mercenaries, Nazi tattoos are visible on their bodies. Wagner group is often called Putin’s personal army and is made up of Russian military veterans.
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