US lifts ban on Ukraine’s ‘neo-Nazis’ to use American weapons to fight Russia

The United States has lifted a 10-year ban on Ukraine's Azov Brigade, officially authorizing the use of American weapons by the "neo-Nazi" unit to fight against Russia.

The US State Department announced on Tuesday the notorious far-right ultra-nationalist unit has now been granted official permission to use the American arms. 

The US House of Representatives had passed a provision in the US appropriations law (Leahy Law) prohibiting sending arms and training of Azov members by American forces, citing the group's neo-Nazi roots and gross violations of human rights.

US officials in the State Department have now said that they found "no evidence" of gross human rights abuses or violations from the Azov Brigade, which has been absorbed into Ukraine's National Guard as the 12th Special Forces Brigade.

“After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the US Department of State,” the department wrote, claiming that because the Azov Battalion of 2014 is different from the present Azov Brigade within Ukraine's National Guard, restrictions due to US appropriations laws no longer applied.

After Tuesday's lifting of restrictions on the Azov Brigade by the State Department, the unit is no longer banned from US arms support.

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After the ban was lifted, Azov Brigade announced on Instagram, "This is a new page in our unit's history.

"Azov is becoming even more powerful, even more professional and even more dangerous for occupiers," it said.

However, Russia has rejected the US officials' explanations as absolute fabrications, denouncing the Ukrainian group as neo-Nazis.

In Russia, the Azov Brigade is viewed as an "ultranationalist armed formation."

It has been designated as a "terrorist group."

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had an "extremely negative" feeling about Washington's decision, saying the move proved once more that the US officials were "ready to flirt with neo-Nazis".

Peskov described the Azov brigade as a group of “ultra-nationalist armed units.”

“This sudden change of position by Washington shows that they do not shy away from anything in their attempts to suppress Russia, using Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as a tool in their hands.”

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The Azov Brigade is lionized among the nationalist extremist groups in Ukraine and its ultra-nationalist members are praised by Kiev as the defenders the country against Russia’s invasion.

However, the pro-Russia population in eastern Ukraine have long been subjected to persecution by the Ukrainian nationalism movement led by neo-Nazi figures linked to Kiev, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion founder, Andriy Biletsky.

Biletsky, the self-proclaimed “White Leader” of Ukraine's anti-Russian neo-Nazis, has called on Kiev to impose a “tough and balanced state policy”, which incorporates genocide alongside eugenics, to procreate a pure biological quality of individual Ukrainian families in the Russian-dominant regions of eastern Ukraine.

His manifesto – “Language and Race—Primary Issues” – outlines the scheme.

“Ukrainian social-nationalism considers the Ukrainian Nation to be a blood-racial community… Race is everything for nation-building—Race is the basis on which the superstructure grows in the form of national culture, which again comes from the racial nature of the people, and not from language, religion, economy, etc.”

“The issue of total Ukrainization in the future social nationalist state will be resolved within 3-6 months with the help of a tough and balanced state policy,” Biletsky wrote, calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine.

In the meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that one of Moscow's objectives for launching the 2022 special military operation in the Donbas region was to halt the persecution of its Russian-speaking population by Kiev’s pro-Nazi extremist elements.

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