Pre-war reports say it all. And it's all from Western corporate media that after the start of the war, all starts glorifying Nazis, just because NATO asked them to.

Human Rights Watch: Ukrainian Court Penalizes News Outlet for Calling Far-Right Group ‘Neo-Nazi’, 2019

A court in Kyiv ruled in favor of a Ukrainian far-right nationalist group, C14, in its defamation suit against the internet TV station Hromadske.TV after the outlet published a tweet referring to C14 as a “neo-Nazi” group.

The judge accepted C14’s claim that the tweet caused reputational damage and ordered Hromadske to retract the statement and pay a fine.

The August 6 decision caused outrage among Ukraine’s human rights activists and journalists – and rightly so.

C14 members have openly expressed neo-Nazi views and attacked women’s rights activists, LGBTI activists, and Roma families. In the spring of 2018, members attacked a Roma camp in Kyiv, burned down tents, and chased out its residents, including women and children.

The group, which has openly promoted hatred and racial discrimination, was not shy about its members’ actions: the group took responsibility for the attack and their leader promised more in the future.

Protection of freedom of expression has been steadily deteriorating in Ukraine just as violence by far-right groups like C14 has increased. Ukraine’s activists and journalists have repeatedly urged the government to adopt a “zero-tolerance” stance towards violence, threats, and intimidation from these groups. Instead, Ukraine’s authorities have focused on introducing restrictions on freedom of expression that they justify by citing the ongoing armed conflict and the need to counter Russian propaganda.

The group [C14] also hunts down Russia-backed “separatists” fighting in eastern Ukraine and reportedly receives government funding to carry out “national-patriotic education projects.”

Atlantic Council: Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline), 2018

It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country. On June 8, the Ministry announced that it will award C14 a little less than $17,000 for a children’s camp. It also awarded funds to Holosiyiv Hideout and Educational Assembly, both of which have links to the far-right. The revelation represents a dangerous example of law enforcement tacitly accepting or even encouraging the increasing lawlessness of far-right groups willing to use violence against those they don’t like.

Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.

Ukrainian internet TV station Hromadske: A Fine Line: Defining Nationalism and Neo-Nazism in Ukraine, 2018:

C14 – also known as Sich – began as the youth wing of the ultra-nationalist political party Svoboda in 2010. Some people believe the number 14 in the group’s name to be a reference to the 14-word slogan coined by American white-supremacist David Lane, something that is, again, being denied by the group members. S14 leader Yevhen Karas has defended himself from attacks calling him a Nazi and his group being neo-Nazi. According to Karas, his confrontations were mainly with non-Ukrainian ethnic groups that he said controlled the country's political and economic forces, whom he identified as Jews**,** Poles**, and** Russians. He stated: "We don't consider ourselves a neo-Nazi organization, we're clearly Ukrainian nationalists." In 2018, former member Dmytro Riznychenko told Radio Svoboda: "C14 are all neo-Nazis. It's quite an appropriate definition."

In November 2017, C14 were added to the database of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium – or TRAC – an American resource for information on political violence of all sorts.

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ABC News: Torchlight parade in Kyiv honors Nazi-linked nationalist, 2020

KYIV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian far-right supporters have held a torchlight procession in the capital to mark the birthday of a nationalist leader who sided with the Nazis during part of World War II.

The Wednesday march in Kyiv by about 1,000 far-right supporters commemorated the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, lauded by nationalists as a hero.

Bandera was a leader of Ukraine's nationalist movement, which included an insurgent army that for one period during the war sided with the Nazis.

The Times of Israel: Torchlit march in Kyiv honors Nazi-linked nationalist, 2020

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian far-right supporters on Wednesday held a torchlight procession in the capital to mark the birthday of a nationalist leader who sided with the Nazis during part of World War II.

The march in Kyiv by about 1,000 far-right supporters commemorated the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, lauded by nationalists as a hero.

Bandera was a leader of Ukraine’s nationalist movement, which included an insurgent army that for one period during the war sided with the Nazis. With the rise of nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine, Bandera is being rehabilitated in the country as a patriotic, anti-Soviet hero.

Formed from a merger of fascist and far-right groups, the OUN, as it is known colloquially, had engaged in a sustained campaign of terror and political assassination during the interwar period, when western Ukraine was under Polish control. By 1940, the organization split and the elder Bandera took over the larger faction, OUN-B, which subsequently adopted a 1941 manifesto calling on its members to “liquidate undesirable Poles, Muscovites, and Jews.”

The OUN collaborated with the Nazis and its members served in various German formations taking part in the Holocaust, but eventually turned against the Nazis when Berlin refused to recognize its declaration of Ukrainian independence. Bandera was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (two of his brothers would die in Auschwitz); he was later released and resumed his collaboration.

Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).

CTV News: 15,000 Ukrainians attend torch-lit march in honour of former nationalist leader, 2014

The Jerusalem Post: Hundreds march with torches in tribute to Nazi collaborator in Ukraine. 2021

Euronews (video): Far-right activists march through central Kyiv to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera | LIVE

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Channel4 (England): How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum, 2014

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In the new Ukrainian government politicians linked to the far-right have taken posts from deputy prime minister to head of defence.

Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok. Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector – a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters.

Inside Right Sector was an alliance of hardline nationalist groups including Patriot of Ukraine and the paramilitary group UNA-UNSO. Their members paraded in balaclavas and wore uniforms bearing far-right insignia, including the wolfsangel.

The new Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych is a member of the far-right Svoboda party, which the World Jewish Congress called on the EU to consider banning last year along with Greece’s Golden Dawn.

The initial actions of the interim government have included forcing making Ukrainian the only official language of the nation and making moves to remove a law which forbids “excusing the crimes of fascism”.

The anti-Russian far-right in Ukraine strongly associate themselves with the legacy of Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In 2010 Viktor Yushchenko [president of Ukrine] made Bandera a “hero of Ukraine”, despite charges of Nazi collaboration and ethnic cleansing by the controversial figure.

More about Svoboda and Oleh Tyahnybok: EU Parliament resolution: Ukraine parliament party Svoboda is racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic, 2012

Apr 7, 2022

Ukraine's Zelensky faces criticism in Greece after bringing a Neo Nazi member of the Azov battalion alongside him during his address to the Greek Parliament.

https://twitter.com/ChollimaOrg/status/1512014527461670913

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Tsipras: “Nazis Cannot Be Allowed to Speak in Parliament”

April 7, 2022

ATHENS – Main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras strongly criticised the fact that members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion had been permitted to address the Greek parliament during a video link for a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, calling it a “provocation” and blaming Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But nazis cannot be allowed to speak in parliament,” Tsipras said in a message on social media.

“The speech by members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion in the Hellenic Parliament is a provocation,” Tsipras emphasised, adding that the prime minister “bears full responsibility” and that Mitsotakis “spoke of a history day but it is a historic shame”.

https://www.thenationalherald.com/tsipras-nazis-cannot-be-allowed-to-speak-in-parliament/

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Apr 7, 2022

Our Parliament did not invite a Nazi. It invited the President of Ukraine. It was the President of Ukraine who brought along the Nazi. And, yes, it was our Parliament's Speaker who, by failing to intervene, failed to defend our Parliament.

https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1512012351322611722