= new reply since forum marked as read
and the Azov brigade(?) is fighting on the "right" side... but, aren't they still nazis and fascists? How am i supposed to feel about these people?
Kicked but not Recced
that details this? I'm reading the Wiki entry and see no mention of "purging"...
on edit, wiki says this:
"According to Foreign Affairs magazine, "After the union, the government’s first act was to root out two groups within Azov, foreign fighters and neo-Nazis, by vetting group members with background checks, observations during training, and a law requiring all fighters to accept Ukrainian citizenship. Fighters who did not pass this screening were offered the chance to join civilian volunteer corps to help the war effort; these corps assisted police, cleared snow (a crucial task in Ukraine), and even worked on a public radio."[47] At this time, the unit worked to depoliticize itself: its far-right leadership left and founded the National Corps political party, which works with its associated activist organization, the Azov Civil Corps. The national socialist "Patriot of Ukraine" websites were shut down or put under restricted access.[39]
Michael Colborne, journalist and researcher at Bellingcat, says that it "would be a mistake to claim...that the Azov regiment is somehow not a part of the broader Azov movement" and points to repeated description of the regiment as the "miltary wing" of the Azov movement by Olena Semenyaka, the main international representative of the movement.[65] Branko Marcetic, a staff writer for the Jacobin magazine, cites the University of Ottowa’s Ivan Katchanovski saying “The Azov Regiment maintains close ties to the National Corps. This is a rebranded Patriot of Ukraine and a civilian wing of the Azov Regiment. Therefore, the Azov Regiment can be best described as far-right-led or far-right-linked.” and Oleksiy Kuzmenko stating “I believe they’re absolutely part of the same movement, and I have been presenting evidence thereof”[66]
Other experts take the view that that there is increasingly great separation between the Azov Movement and the Azov Battalion. Kacper Rekawek, a research fellow with the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, told CNN that, "People always assume it [the Azov regiment and Azov movement] is one Death Star. Year by year, the connections [between the regiment and the movement] are looser."[67] Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on Russia’s connections to Europe’s far-right, told the Financial Times that though it was originally formed by leadership of a neo-nazi group, "It is certain that Azov [the battalion] has depoliticised itself. Its history linked to the far-right movement is pretty irrelevant today.”[68]
