General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Warning from Malcom Nance just now re: Ukraine [View all]JHB
(37,181 posts)They were extreme-right white supremacists (if they weren't neo-Nazis, they were still in that political neighborhood) who formed a group of armed volunteers in 2014 to fight Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. They were effective enough that the Ukrainian government played nice with them and eventually even made them part of the regular army (although after they did that, it really toned down the rhetoric of its founders).
However, it's one-point-something percent of the Ukraine military, its backers who tried to go into politics lost pretty badly, and doesn't really have any influence beyond being "the guys who helped plug a hole when we really needed it."
But all it takes for shameless propagandists is some grain of truth to disguise a mountain of bullshit. Witness our own Bullshit Mountain, FOX News.