Aidonian's blog

After watching a documentary on Ukrainian kids going on to Azov camps during holidays or weekends where they thought to hate Russians, I started thinking on the political situation in Ukraine and the relation to the far right.

After the Maidan revolution in 2014 Azov gained traction when they as a paramilitary faction became involved in the civil war in the Donbass. They were also controversial because they were far right, leaning heavily into fascism. Due to the involvement in the Donbass fighting, they became popular. Not because of their ideology but because of what they did for Ukraine. Because of that, they seemed to have become somewhat mainstream where they created children camps (Youth Corps). The ideology of fascism wasn’t present there. They knew that Ukrainians werent fond of their ideology and they wouldn’t get away with it. I doubt that many Ukrainians even know what crimes Azov commited during and after Maidan?

where is the left opposition?

the left side of the political spectrum seems crippled. At first glace it seems that the leftist parties were banned. This seems like to justify what Putin has been saying but the thing is, if you look further you will find out why that happened. Most parties were banned after the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, so that doesnrt support the claim of Putin. The party to which Zelenskyi belongs to is a liberal party. After the fall of the USSR and the independence day of Ukraine in august that year, most former USSR countries started to decommunisation of their countries. Which made sense. After the second world war, everything that had to do with nazi’s and fascism was outlawed and banned. Even so, neonazi’s and fascism wasn’t popular either. Which made sense seeing what atrocities the Nazi’s commited during the occupation.

Why did Ukraine ban the leftist parties? The reason lies that after the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, many stated that they were pro Putin. That even communists sided with the invading forces is something that I don’t understand. Even communists in Russia sided with Putin and were openly pro-war. The original Communist party was banned so later communists had to come up with a different name. In 2015 Ukraine passed laws to ban nazi and communist ideology and symbols used in public domain. So they made it clear that they wanted to walk a different path. Its not really clear as to why leftist parties became pro Russian and sided with Russians against Ukraine. The main issue seem that the left in Ukraine had trouble getting from under the shadow of the USSR shadow of the past.

Azov movement

After Maidan, Azov became popular but not because of their ideology but through their actions in the Donbass region. As usually it goes, oligarchs started funding far right groups like свобода, a far right political party. Before that, before 2014 far right parties rarely got above the political thresshold to be allowed into parlement. At first the far right were linked to skinheads, neonazi’s but also pro Russian and Ukrainian ultra nationalists. Maidan changed everything. A civilian movement was created so that they would become more mainstream and they started to tone down their rhetoric in a effort to become more accepted. Its a tactic that other far right groups started using to gain more acceptance among the masses. It works. We see it everywhere in the world. In Flanders with Vlaams Belang we see that they put on a social mask to mask their far right ideology and rhetoric with every now and than they show their true colours when it comes to certain topics like immigration, anything related to “woke”. Azov maintained ties with other groups like Golden Dawn but after the acceptance they toned down their symbols and rhetoric but its always there, even if it is beneath the surface. A couple of years ago, Zelensky was on a video call with the Greek parlement where he allowed a service member speak for the parlement, but one member of parlement was awake during this and spotted the fascist symbols and stated that Zelensky allowed a fascist speak for a foreign parlement. PR wise, it was a disaster. It does show that Ukraine like many European countries are struggling with their far right groups and parties within their borders.

During economic crisis or hardship the oligarchs, capitalists invest in far right groups and parties to try to maintain their power over society, knowing full well that they will do their bidding. Right now, for the last decade or more, we are seeing the general acceptance of certain far right elements who appear civillised to the masses. As we can see, the far right is far more organised than the left is.

Even so, even if we view what Azov is doing the last decade and more, its in no way of saying that I support the war in Ukraine, which I don’t and never will. All the reasoning that Putin gave is BS. If Putin really feared that Kyiv was becoming a fascist regime, he needed to bring evidence, which he does not have. The existence of movements like Azov does not mean that a country is fascist. If that was the case, Belgium(VB), France (FN) the Netherlands (PVV, FVD) and even Germany (ADF) would be deemed far right countries which they aren’t of course. As i have stated before, this war is about resources and spheres of influence than anything else. Even the NATO argument is not a strong argument for it.

I have stated it before and i will say it again. This war needs to end preferably yesterday than tomorrow. Russia needs to witdraw from Ukrainian regions. It got stuck in a war of attrition and i doubt that they will win this war. All because a moron called Putin connected his political fate and legacy with this war.