Azov is facing liquidation. Why was Biletsky nervous?
On January 19 in Kiev, at the traditional event of leftist and human rights organizations on this day in memory of the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova by Russian neo-Nazis, its participants, trying to attract public attention to the problem of far-right terror and street violence, came out with posters “To remember is to fight ", "Goodbye Terror" and "I Am Against Hate".
Among the posters there was another one demanding the disbandment of the Azov regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine, which had become notorious due to the far-right views of its members. And in the speeches of the speakers of the action, among other things, there were words about the need to stop the practice of merging far-right radicals with law enforcement agencies, the infiltration of “zygomets” into the ranks of law enforcement officers and to stop the practice of secret patronage and supervision by the special services over “useful” right-wing organizations.
It is noteworthy that the promotion tried to disrupt the ultra-right street thugs. Eggs were thrown at left-wing activists, threats were chanted at them, attempts were made to physically attack, although unsuccessfully - ideological opponents this time were effectively separated by a police cordon.
At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about this event. Anti-fascist actions in memory of Markelov and Baburova have been carried out by Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian activists for several years and are not news in themselves, just like the attacks on them by neo-Nazis that have become commonplace. And in general, the current action in Kyiv would hardly have received more than a couple of lines with a photo in the news feed, if not for that little poster about “Azov”.
We repeat, there was only one poster. The promotion is not numerous. The organizers, albeit with connections in European left-liberal grant funds, human rights and political organizations, are also, in Ukrainian conditions, people of little influence. However, the founder of the Azov regiment and the leader of the far-right National Corps party, which grew up on the basis of its civilian supporters, ex-People’s Deputy Andrei Biletsky, became nervous. AND burst out on a whole blog on the platform of the popular and high-status Ukrainian mainstream publication “Ukrainian Truth” - with hundreds of thousands of readers.
In Biletsky’s blog, in addition to pretentious words about the inadmissibility of attacks on such a “sacred cow” as “the legendary Ukrainian regiment that liberated the large industrial city of Mariupol and a dozen other settlements for Ukraine,” attention is drawn to the premonition that “Given the totality circumstances, the time is not far when the left will once again reunite with the cops to terrorize patriots, as has been the case throughout the history of independent Ukraine.” Well, Biletsky, who served time under Yanukovych for murdering a man, knows well what he’s talking about. However, with all this, taking into account Biletsky’s irony about the “action, which was attended by only 19 people,” the “pillar of the nation” had a rather disproportionate response to the machinations of the “marginal left.”
So, is he still nervous?
So what happened? What happened was a seemingly small event, the significance of which, nevertheless, is difficult to overestimate. For the first time in the post-Maidan years, the thesis about the need to disband “Azov” was clearly and directly introduced into the current Ukrainian political discourse. Moreover, the news about this spread across almost all Ukrainian media – from Hromadske TV to Radio Liberty, not to mention popular Youtube channels and social networks.
Moreover, this happened against the background of the recent publication by one of the organizers of the anti-fascist action on January 19, the Kyiv Institute “Respublika”, of the results of a year-long monitoring of far-right violence, conducted from October 14, 2018 to October 14, 2019. During this period, human rights activists recorded 137 attacks by right-wing radicals on civilians. Targets for attacks include national minorities (Roma and Hungarians), LGBT representatives, artistic events, concerts, lectures and exhibitions, political meetings, book presentations, press conferences - in short, everything that is commonly called public activity in the humanitarian space.
It's no secret that the purpose of such attacks is not simply to allow thugs to assert themselves at the expense of those who cannot fight back. The main goal is to ensure right-wing hegemony in public space. And this hegemony itself is needed in order to maintain the monopoly of the more respectable right-wing and militaristic representatives on speaking on behalf of society. So that the voice of those very familiar to us from the “anti-capitulation Maidan” “volunteers, activists and veterans” sounds not as the voice of the marginalized, but as the voice of the people. The rest are silently sitting at home, because they know how going out into the street, not approved by radicals, can end in Ukrainian realities.
But this is only part of the puzzle. Another part of it is that the Ukrainian ultra-right has long ceased to be an exclusively internal Ukrainian problem. They became heroes of the European and American media, filming stories about the same children’s camps in Azov, or about C14 receiving funding from the Ministry of Youth and Sports, or about young racists from among right-wing football fans attacking foreigners in Kyiv. And not only attackers in the streets, but also unfurling scandalous xenophobic banners during football matches - with calls, for example, to “kill the Serb” or simply with swastikas.
The famous Ukrainian football player and part-time philanthropist of far-right volunteer battalions, Roman Zozulya, became the hero of scandalous publications in the Spanish and German press. And another ex-national guard, Vitaly Markiv, became well known to Italians from the local press, which covered the noisy trial of a Ukrainian accused of murdering an Italian reporter in the Donbass. Numerous and noisy delegations of Markiv’s ideological brothers-in-arms to Italy - in his support - only added color to this canvas. We can also recall the story of the Italian sister cities of the Ukrainian neo-fascists, who were featured in the scandalous story of the impending assassination attempt on Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
Meanwhile, in the United States, an American volunteer from the Right Sector is being tried, accused in his homeland of premeditated murder. At the same time, American congressmen several times appealed to the State Department and the President with a demand to prevent the transfer of money and weapons sent by the Americans to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the already mentioned Azov regiment and to include Azov in the list of extremist organizations banned in the States - along with ISIS, Al-Qaeda , Hamas and Hezbollah.
And just the other day, news came from Britain that the Ukrainian ultra-right, including from football-related groups, had so annoyed the local intelligence services that their symbols were included in the official police manual on extremism.
We are talking, among other things, about the tattoos that “fighters for the race and nation” like to decorate themselves with.
And if the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for obvious reasons, found the strength to stand up for the small state emblem of the trident, demanding that the British exclude it from the police manual, then the diplomats still had the intelligence and prudence to refrain from trying to stand up for the symbol of “Azov” included in the same manual - rune wolfsangel (colloquially “wolf hook”, also known as “Idea of the Nation”).
It is clear that in the new conditions, when the Ukrainian leadership seeks to detente relations with Russia, the Ukrainian far-right will continue to become convenient scapegoats for the authorities, against the background of which Zelensky’s team will look like “ambassadors of peace and goodwill.” Moreover, given the desire of the authorities and special services and the amount of criminal incriminating evidence accumulated on the “heroes of the nation,” it is possible to easily promote more than a dozen high-profile trials similar to the “Sheremet case.”
And Ukrainian human rights activists are trying – the information they disseminate penetrates into the Western press. Here it is already ambassadors of a number of countries clearly say about the inadmissibility of not only the glorification of historical collaborators and nationalists of seventy years ago, but also increasingly raising the question of the need to eliminate the presence of modern far-right and neo-Nazis in the political agenda of Ukraine, which is disproportionate to their real social weight.
In particular, according to Jewish sources, it was precisely this issue that was connected with the refusal of President Zelensky, invited to a forum held in Israel in memory of the Holocaust and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, to speak at this event. “We were not invited to perform. But in any case, I will be present at this ceremony,” Zelensky noted in an interview with Israeli media.
It is clear that such signals from abroad cannot remain without consequences, even taking into account the well-known spinelessness of the “green team” and its tendency, more than once recorded by observers, to cave in to the far right.
In such conditions, the demand expressed at the anti-fascist rally to disband “Azov” can easily be picked up by the political mainstream. This scenario cannot be ruled out. In fact, the majority of Ukrainian politicians who do not belong to the conventional right-wing nationalist camp are afraid of these armed ultra-rightists and will be glad to find a formal reason to get rid of them.
That is why Biletsky was so frightened by one small poster at a small rally in Kyiv.
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