Openly racist Nazi forces are now integrated into Ukraine’s military and are receiving training from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade.
The U.S.-funded Ukrainian government in Kiev has merged the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and several other battalions into the Ministry of Defense. Further, the foremost neo-Nazi leader in Ukraine, Dmitry Yarosh, has been made a Special Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Army. And according to the Minister of the Interior, the U.S. Army is now training Azov.
Yarosh is the leader of Right Sector, a political movement initiated by the CIA-backed Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that closely collaborated with Hitler. Through several armed formations (notably the UPA, or  “Ukrainian People’s Army”), the OUN killed over a million Jews, Poles, Russians and others during World War II. Right Sector and its military arm, Azov battalion, openly embrace the wartime OUN leaders, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko, as well as the UPA.
On April 20, components of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade began training the Azov Battalion, according to Arsen Avakov, Minister of Internal Affairs. U.S. agencies have said they are training three “National Guard” units without identifying them. With the merger of Azov with Aidar and Sich units, which also have Nazi ties, they are now called National Guard.
As further evidence of the Nazification of the Ukrainian regime in Kiev, a law was passed banning all symbols, expressions of sympathy or political actions labeled communist. The law creates new memorials for fascists like Bandera, Stetsko, as well as for the UPA—for those perpetrating mass extermination in World War II!
While the law ostensibly bans symbols of German Nazism, it glorifies Ukrainian Nazism. Ironically, the Azov Battalion uses three German Nazi symbols in its literature, on its flags and on its military unit patches, without fear of penalty. This law to criminalize historical truth and political belief, speech and behavior was inspired by pressure brought last October by Right Sector/Azov and others, such as the Svoboda party.
The Obama administration calls the shots in the Ukraine, primarily through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, who has been on the U.S. payroll for many years. U.S. policy aims to strengthen the Nazi forces in western Ukraine to use them to beat down the rebels in the east.
By giving these fascists state power, however, the U.S. is making other allies nervous. General Waldemar Skrzypczak, a Polish retired general and now a deputy defense minister, has long been an anti-Russian hard-liner. But after the law was passed glorifying “bloodthirsty nationalism” he withdrew his support for Ukraine and suggests that Poland will now have trouble supporting Kiev. His family was a victim of the UPA; its massacres in 1943 are well-known in Poland.
Recently the U.S. Congress demanded more lethal military aid to Ukraine.
The merger of the Nazis into the Ministry of Defense increases resources for the Nazis by burying it in general military aid, so that donor nations are not criticized for helping groups like Azov.
The Azov Battalion, like neo-Nazis everywhere, makes a big deal about the symbolism encoded in dates and numbers—like “88,” which refers not only to the millimeter gun size of Hitler’s biggest tanks, but also to the eighth letter of the alphabet, HH, for Heil Hitler.
Another highly symbolic date is April 20, Hitler’s birthday. On this day, the neo-Nazis get the gift of a lifetime: six months of expert U.S. military training. Money for Nazis, but none to stop water shutoffs, school shutdowns and home foreclosures.
The working class in Ukraine has no stake in any of the bosses’ camps. As tensions heat up, the choices for workers are clear: racist Nazis or communist revolution?