{In addition to my own work, this article benefits from the social network research postings of Clark University Assistant Professor Marta Havryshko and Ottawa University Professor Ivan Katchanovski.}
Neo-fascism and ultranationalism may not have been the most powerful element in Ukraine or even among Ukrainian nationalists before the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, but they are almost certainly so now, and they are becoming increasingly powerful military-politically, culturally, and ideologically. Ukraine’s neofascists have never been satisfied with the Maidan revolt, despite their pivotal role in overthrowing the previous oligarch-dominated order, which the Maidan revolt only replaced in part. They have always looked tot he future and completion of the ‚nationalist revolution‘, as they call it. A few years ago, Dmitro Yarosh, founder and then leader or “coordinator’ of Ukraine’s neofascist Right Sector (RS) and later advisor to now fired Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who is now Kiev’s ambassador to the UK, promised there would be a ‘second phase of the nationalist revolution’ of which the February 2014 Maidan revolt was supposedly but the first. The second phase is to sweep away the liberal and oligarchic remnants of the pre-Maidan democratic order brought into the Maidan regime, in Yarosh’s view. Yarosh recently repeated his call for the completion of the neofascist revolution on his Facebook page: “As it turned out, during the Dignity Revolution and the Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian nationalists became the main factor in the Ukrainian national-liberation struggle in the 21st century… I am a Ukrainian Nationalist – sounds proud both in Ukraine and across the world. The next power after the War for Independence should be nationalist. Otherwise, we will once again be led down an unbreakable cycle of national humiliation, corruption, degeneracy, moral degradation, economic decline, inferiority and defeat… Therefore, after the War for Independence, the wise, courageous and noble should rule in Ukraine. Glory to the Nation!”
Similar views are held by Ukraine’s many other ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist groups and their leaders, and they have been waiting for the moment to complete their revolution. The catastrophe of the war, its outcome, and consequences are bringing their dream ever closer to reality. These factors alone could assist the neo-fascist’s rise to power, even if only temporarily.
There once was a time when the West acknowledged Ukraine’s neofascist threat to republican rule, even as it helped armed, trained, and equipeed the neofascists‘ cocoons, the siloviki –, i.e. the Ukrainian military, SBU, and HRU. The de facto NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council, at the time noted:
“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 councilmeetings, 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.
“International human rights groups have sounded the alarm. After the March 8 attacks, Amnesty International warned that “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.”[1]
Below I look at the political and cultural role neofascist groups have been playing in Ukraine, particularly since the beginning of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. In this Part 1, I begin with the most powerful and influential neofascist structure, Azov. No other neofascist or other fporm of Ukrainian group has seen its power and influence in the state and society be so enhanced over the last decade and certainly since the beginning of the beginning oft he NATO-Russia Ukrsainian War. Indeed, Azov’s leader, Andriy Biletskiy could very well be Ukraine’s next president and become so in the not too distant future.
Part 1: Azov
The Azov Battalion emerged from the Nazi-inspired Social-National Assembly (SNA) founded by Andriy Biletskiy, now commander of the Ukrainian army’s 3rd Separate Assault Battalion ‘Azov’. Azov’s rise along with its politics and ideology have much in common with Adolph Hitler’s Waffen SS.[2] Prior to running the SNA, Biletskiy led the equally ultra-nationalist ‘Patriots of Ukraine,’ the military wing of the Ukrainian National Army, self-procliamed successor to the Nazi-allied outfir of the same name during World War II. The ‘Patriots were infamous their beatings of immigrants. In a 2010 interview Biletskiy described his organization as nationalist “storm troopers.[3][4] A year later Biletskiy was in prison, after his organization—already renamed the SNA—had been involved in a series of shootouts and mass brawls.
The SNA’s, Azov’s, and Biletskiy’s ideology is an extremist brand of Ukrainian neofascism melded with international white supremacism. The SNA program emphasizes the concept of “nationocracy,” which was later incorporated into the RS program and propaganda courses. The SNA in power would ban all political parties, organizations, associations and ideological groups, so the ethnic Ukrainian elite holds full power: “Political power is wholly owned by the Ukrainian nation through its most talented, idealistic and altruistic national representatives who are able to ensure proper development of the nation and its competitiveness.” “Supreme power (executive, legislative and judicial) of the Ukrainian state will be in the hands of the head of state, who is personally responsible to the nation’s own blood and property.” Capitalism is to be “dismantled” and democracy is to be “eliminated.” All actions that fail “to comply with obligations to the nation and the state will entail the restriction of civil rights or deprivation of citizenship … The ultimate goal of Ukrainian foreign policy is world domination.”[5]
In 2007, Azov’s ideology is reflected in its leaders statements. Top leader, commander Biletskiy, castigated a government decision to introduce fines for racist remarks, noting: “So why the ‘Negro-love’ on a legislative level? They want to break everyone who has risen to defend themselves, their family, their right to be masters of their own land! They want to destroy the Nation’s biological resistance to everything alien and do to us what happened to Old Europe, where the immigrant hordes are a nightmare for the French, Germans and Belgians, where cities are ‘blackening’ fast and crime and the drug trade are invading even the remotest corners.”[6] Biletskiy has also said: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”[7] In 2017, Biletskiy gathered his men in order to express Azov’s support for former Bosnian Serb military officer and convicted war criminal, Ratko Mladić, running directly counter to Western policy. Mladic was held responsible by a Western-sponsored war tribunal at the Hague for war crimes during the Yugoslav civil wars in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre. Biletsky declared Mladić a “patriot of Serbia” and refers to the Iinternational Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Hague as a “Zionist tribunal.”[8] More recently, in May 2025 Biletskiy claimed that Hungary, Poland, and Romania are waiting for Ukraine’s collapse so they can annex their former territories that became part of Ukraine under Sdtalin in the wake of the USSR’s victory over fascism: “They are not preparing for war. They are preparing to take their own scraps in the event of a global defeat of Ukraine,” he asserted.[9]
On the basis of Azov, Biletskiy founded the National Corps with an affiliated paramilitary organization ‘National Teams.’ One of the points of Biletskiy’s foreign policy vision and of National Corps’ program is the creation of a union of countries called the ‘Intermarium’, which would include, among others, Ukraine and Poland – an idea also propagated by many Western apologists and supporters of Ukrainian neofascism. However, Poles, as victims of the OUN’s and UPA’s massacres 80 years ago in Volyn and elsewhere, do not shy away from noting Azov’s neofascism. They point out that Azov members eagerly use Nazi symbols, including the „Dirlewanger“ of the 36th SS Grenadier Division, which massacred Poles in Warsaw’s Wola during the Warsaw Uprising.[10] And, as noted above, Biletskiy recently accused Poland, along with Hungary and Rumania, with having designs on Ukrainian territory.
In the first days of Maidan protests that would lead eventually to the overthrow of democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, the SNA and representatives of other neofascist and ultranationalist parties founded Right Sector (Praviy sektor) or RS. RS and other radical paries would lead the violence that mounted throughout late 2013 and early 2014 on the Maidan. RS, SNA and the ultranationalist Svoboda Party‘s members, which as a parliamentary party played the role in the ‘moderate’ opposition backed by the West, infiltrated the EuroMaidan protests and were incorporated into the Maidan Self-Defense (MSD) units called ‘hundreds’ (sotnyi), the traditional name for subdivisions of Cossack formations. Andriy Parubiy, the commander of the Maidan’s delf-defense hundreds, was co-founder leader the neo-Nazi Social-Nationalist Party (SNP) along with the SP’s Tyahnibok in the 1990s and later left for Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party. Parubiy coordinated the hundreds’ activities in and around Maidan and aspects of the ‘snipers’ massacre’ of 20 February 2014 and ultimately the seizure of power. He would be the Maidan government’s first Chairman of the Defense and Security Council. One Maidan shooter was apparently a member of either the neo-fascist Right Sector (RS) or one of its founding neo-fascist parties, the Social-National Assembly (SNA), and later served in the notorious Azov Battalion fighting near Mariupol and led by SNA chairman Biletskiy. I have detailed the leading role of NSA and RS in the violent Maidan revolt and overthrow of Ukraionian President Viktor Yanukovych and the establishment of the Maidan regime, its dual oligarchic-neofascist essence, and its declaration of war (“anti-terrorist operation” or ATO) against Donbass rebels sans any attempt to negotiate with them elsewhere and will not delve into all that here.[11]
After the Maidan’s seizure of power in February 2014, the SNA and Patriots of Ukraine were rewarded with Biletskiy’s release from prison, as he was regarded as a political prisoner by the new Maidan regime. The Maidan regime’s MVD would give Biletskiy command of one of the many volunteer battalions in the newly formed National Guard tasked with suppressing the movement for autonomy/secession in Donbass. This ‘Azov Battalion’ would be accused of war crimes by international human rights organizations during Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist operation’ (ATO) declared in April 2014 in rejection of negotiations with the emerging Donbass counter-Maidan revolt. Maidan MVD chief Arseniy Avakov appointed the notorious neofascist SNA leader Biletskiy as Azov’s commander, revealing the neofascist sympathies of the Maidan regime’s top law enforcement official. Azov’s battle insignia became the SNA’s flag logo, the altered German Nazi ‘Wolfsangel.’[12] The ‘Azov’ battalion thereby was ostensibly subordinated to the MVD and its chief Arseniy Avakov. According to Azov’s political commissar (zampolit) Oleg Odnorozhenko, the battalion was founded on 4 May 2014 from members of “patriotic organizations” after discussions with the MVD and Defense Ministry. However, the battalion movement emerged, according to Odnorozhenko, already in March—that is, before the declaration of the ATO. It began from the grassroots as a movement of ultra-nationalists and neofascists from groups like RS and SP, calling its members the ‘little black men’—a counterplay on the idiom ‘polite little green men’ used for the unmarked Russian special forces that spread out across Crimea at that time. In April, the little black men began to seek ‘official status’ under the ATO’s volunteer battalions.[13] Azov was the beneficiary of funding from both oligarch Igor Kolomoiskii and the ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko as well.[14] Today Azov and other groups continue to be financed by Ukrainian oligarchs, including coal magnate Rinat Akhmetov, who has reportedly bought luxury apartments in Kiev for high-ranking Azov commanders, each priced at some half a million dollars.[15]
By April 2015, Azov was attempting to reach the threshhold of 1,200 fighters who had undergone requisite training which would qualify it to receive heavy weaponry.[16] Azov units were dispersed in smaller groups across the Donbass front but established a base in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov adjacent to the Black Sea. Azov led the crackdown on mutionous police and citizens in Mariupol in Aprile 2014. It, along with RS and the SP, began holding joint Nazi-like torchlight marches through Kiev and other cities. For example, on 14 October 2014, in the wake of the first Minsk ceasefire agreement (Minsk 1), they held a march throughout Kiev threatening the new Maidan regime with a new truly ‘nationalist revolution.[17] There are many more neo-fascist elements in the Ukrainian army and National Guard than those of the Azov Battalion. Some ultra-nationalists or neo-fascists never served in the Azov or other volunteer battalions and may never serve in either those or regular units. Some are former members of those battalions, and identifying who is a former or present member is sometimes difficult to determine, though many are evident. In general, however, there is no doubt that Azov and other untis with a neo-fascist profile or reputation attract neofascist, ultranationalist, and even moderate nationalists into military, police, intelligence service.
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is strengthening Azov’s hand in Ukraine’s army, politics, and culture. In the course of the war, the Azov Battalion was incoroprated into the army, becoming the Ukrainian army’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, while retaining a brigade in the National Guard (the 12th National Guard Brigade), into which it was originally incorporated. Azov also has another military unit, known as ‚Kraken‘, under the control of Ukrainian Military Intelligence (GRU) and its director, the CIA-trained Kyrylo Budanov. Kraken has been involved in a series of war crimes, including the execution of captured Russian soldiers. This year,the 3rd Assault Brigade ‚Azov‘ was upgraded further to become the Third Army Corps ‚Azov‘.[18]Thousands of new soldiers will be integrated into Azov, and a special training school for sergeants established for it will inevitably indoctrinate recruits with ultra-nationalist ideology. Azov 3rd Assaualt Corps‘ founding ceremony, replete neo-Nazi pagan-like symbolism, was held near Kyiv and attended by Biletskiy and his fellow commanders. Participants offered “The Prayer for Ukraine,” a hymn borrowed from the neofascist, antisemitic OUN, whiuch enthusiastically collaborated with the Hitler’s Nazis in the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing of Poles during World War II.[19] The new commander of Azov’s 3rd Assault Brigade, Yaroslav Levenets, appointed in April-May, recently met Zelensky in an awards ceremony. He allegedly helped to organize the 2017 killing of Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the Russian parliament. As of December 2021, Levenets was still wanted in Ukraine.[20] Aside from the army’s and therefore Azov’s growing role in Ukrainian society as a result of the war, Azov maintains a youth organization called ‘Centuriya’, which networks Azov across Ukrainian society in schools, children’s camps, and sports clubs.
According to Havryshko, Azov benefits from „enormous media presence“ and university support in Ukraine and uses „celebrity journalists and media experts to create a glamorous image of their units.“[21] Indeed, Biletskiy, other leaders and members appear frequently on mainstream television and other media. Ukrainian and foreign media propagate Azov’s units as „true patriots“ and “elite brigades,” respectively, whereas in the West before the war there was significant reporting on Azov‘s and other Ukrainian groups‘ neofascist political orientation and ideology. Whitewashing Azov was the purpose of a recent puff ‚news‘ piece on Ukrainian media „The Demonization of Azov“.[22] Universities, scholars, and experts routinely apologize for Azov, claiming it has undergone a wartime transformation or was never a serious right-wing threat. Thus, one broadly published ‘expert’ on Ukraine is frequently featured in Westrrn media, including repeated publication in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. This is OUN and Ukrainian neofascism and ultranationalism apologist, Alexander Motyl, who is also affiliated with the ultranationalist Moghylev University in Ukraine. Motyl once referred to Ukraine‘s ultranationalist Svoboda Party, which played a role in the original Maidan regime-founding terrorist snipers‘ attack and subsequently others, as akin to America’s ‘Tea Party’, even though the American ‘Tea Party’ is founded on strict republicanism and has never been involved in violence let alone organized violence and terrorism.[23]
With this media and academic network, Azov is able to insinuate neofascism into every knook and cranny of Ukrainian society. For example, it has been at the forefront of a campaign to slander and threaten the life of a leading scholar of historical and contemporary Ukrainian neofascism, Professor Marta Havryshko of Clark University in Massachusetts, running her out oft he country. As a result of the campaign Havryshko was fired from her position in the Kripyakevich Institute for Ukrainian Studies for her research on various aspects of this subject inculding the violence committed by the WW II-era Ukrainian fascist organizations OUN and UPA allied with Nazi Germany, contemporary Ukrainian glorification of Ukraine‘s Waffen-SS division “Galicia”, and her rejection of ultra-nationalist driven history policies. She was recently placed on the death list of the partially U.S. government-funded ultranationmalist Ukrainian platform Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”), which “outs” or posts data of those they consider “traitors”, several of whom were murdered after placement on the list, which includes many American analysts and activists. Havryshko regularly receives murder and rape threats. Jaroslaw Kulyk, a radical priest and employee of the Azov website Polititchna Teologiya (Political Theology), has publicly wished that she will “follow Oles Buzyna” – a centrist Ukrainian journalist assassinated after being so listed in 2015. Kulyk’s father, Volodymyr does research at Harvard, Stanford, and the London School of Economics, and is a representative of Ukraine in the European Commission against Racism.[24]
Azov members run stores and online businesses selling Nazi and Azov paraphernalia and Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols (the Black Sun, Celtic Cross, Dirlewanger, Swastika, Totenkopf, Swastika, and SS lightning bolts).[25] Azov has its own publishing house from which one can be literature, clothing and toys with neofascist symbols.[26] This cultural and propaganda support and presence help Azov to recruit, including prominent neo-Nazis and ultranationalists from other neofascist and ultranationalist organizations.[27] They themselves routinely wear these symbols on their uniforms, even in public ceremonies.[28]
Moreover, Azov is targeting youth for recruitment as do other similar groups and has its own youth organization, called ‚Centuria‘, which conducts ideological indoctrination and military training. According to Clark University Professor Marta Havryshko, who is from Ukrtaine’s neofascist hotbed Lvov (Lviv) and specializes in studying such extremist groups, Centuria has „widened ist activities across Ukraine.“ Centuriya „prepares youth for street violence and confrontation with the police“ and „ha already used for political violence against LGBTQI+, leftists, and feminist activists.“ It, like its parent group Azov, maintains close ties and conducts activities with other neo-Nazi groups like the Misanthropic division, Ukrainian Unity in Blood, Ukrainian Galician Youth, and others.[29] Azov’s and Centuria’s cult of violence – so reminiscent of WW II Germany’s Nazis, is evident in a Centuria video posted on the internet.[30] A well-known Swastika-laden neo-Nazi from the Ukrainian army’s Azon-controlled 3rd Assault brigade recently created a new youth organization.[31]
According to Havryshko, the Maidan regime extends Azov members impunity for criminal activity. Members imprisoned for such before 2022 were released after the start of Russia’s February 2022 invasion or ‚special military operation‘ (SVO).[32] She also reports that Azov may have illegally accessed the personal data of Ukrainian citizens and used it with impunity to send automatic messages on a mass scale across Ukraine.[33] Azov’s and other neofascist groups‘ many criminal types are now feted as national heroes and desigated as “freedom fighters” by Ukrainian and Western media. Many Azov and other neofascist groups‘ members have even been decorated by Ukrainian President Volodomyr with medals.[34]
Fascist ideology and criminality offers a powerful mix among Azovites for the expression of hate and the commission of violence. Ukrainian neofascists ‚celebrated‘ the beginning of Maidan Ukraine’s ‚anti-terrorist operation‘ against Donbas‘s separatists. Rejecting negotiations oft he kind Russia conducted with its Chechen separatists for three years in 1992-1995, the new Maidan regime immediately declared war on the separatists in April. Neofascist took up the call with zeal, carrying out violent repressions in Zaporozhiya, Mariupol and most famously in Odessa. On May 2, 2024, ultranationalist elements led by the neofascist group Right Sector hunted down and burned alive and otherwise killed at least 45 anti-Maidan demonstrators. Today, Azov elements separate the terrorist act, touting it as the grilling of shashlyk at a picnic. This outrageous manifestation of neofascist hate was recently expressed on the eleventh anniversary of the Odessa crime by a Ukrainian neofascist priest, Yaroslav Yasanets, tied to Azov and other neofascist groups.[35] The ideologist of the Azov 3rd Assault Brigade (now Corps), Oleksiy ‘Consul’ Reins, also celebrated the eleventh anniversary as a “Day of Cleansing” and “Decisiveness,” regretting that the same was not done in Donbass’s Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.[36]
At the same time that Azov and other neofascist groups glorify and carry out violence and terrorism against co-citizens, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy, touted in the West as another in a long list of ostenisble ‚beacons of democracy‘ spreading ‚the good word‘ globally, recently appointed an Azov member, Oleksandr Alferov, to head up the Institute for National Memory. Alferov glorifies both Hitler and the SS SS Galicia Division, manned by members of Bandera’s OUN. Thus, Putin and Russians, he claims, are said by Alferov to be lesser beings, less cultured and educated than Hitler, the Nazis, and World War II-era Germans.[37] As Professor Ivan Katchanovski has noted, „(t)his is Zelensky’s response to SS Galicia Division veteran in Canadian parliament debacle“, in which Zelenskiy and his wife stood along with the entire Canadian parliament two years ago to applaud an aged Ukrainian Nazi.[38]
Welcome to Ukraine, the land ‚without neofascists,‘ and the outpost of Western civilization standing strong against authoritarian hordes from the East. Welcome to Azov, the now ‚moderate formerly nationalist‘ group, as U.S. and other Western media will tell you.
PART 2
RIGHT SECTOR
Right Sector (RS), along with ist military wing, the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (DUK is perhaps the second most powerful neofascist organization in Ukraine today. RS was founded on the Maidan on the night of 29-30 November 2013 by several radically nationalist groups, including Biletskiy‘s NSA. RS was at the center of the Maidan’s radicalization, the February 2014 snipers‘ massacre and Maidan seizure of power, and likely led and publicly claimed responsibility for the burning to death and otherwise killing of at least 48 anti-Maidan regime demonstrators in Odessa on 2 May 2014, and its members have participated in many other crimes.[39]
Dmitro Yarosh founded RS “on the ideological and personnel foundation” of the group ‘Trizuby imeni S. Bandery’ (Trident in the name of S. Bandera) or simply ‘Trizuby.’ The source works for Right Sector’s philosophy, ideology, and propaganda are those of ‘integral nationalism’ proselytized by the OUN and UPA, OUN leader Stepan Bandera, and other inter-war and post-war Ukrainian ultra-nationalist luminaries.[40] Its programmatic key words are the “Ukrainian nation,” “the Ukrainian national idea,” “nation-centric” (natsiotsentichnoi), and “nationocracy” (natsiokratiya).[41] The Ukrainian nationality and state—depicted as being under constant threat from alien forces: ethnic, foreign, religious and cultural—are placed above all else. The “main slogan” of RS’s modified and softened electoral program is “God! Ukraine! Freedom!” The individual is subsumed to God and the “Homeland,” since, according to RS, “(t)he purpose of human existence is be closer to God,” and “(t)he way to God is through the Homeland.” Under the main slogan ‘Ukraine’, the program emphasizes that “the Almighty created us, the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian nation, and let His will be hallowed forever. Only in their own national state can Ukrainians, Ukrainian Christians, and Ukraine survive. So Ukraine for us – above all! By defending Ukraine and seeking to create a Ukrainian national state, we not only defend our national rights but, above all, the will of God. And so – God is with us!” Freedom is defined not in terms of individual freedom and rights but rather as the Ukrainian nation’s freedom protected by its own state: “Stateless and oppressed people can not act according to the laws of God, nor its own; it is doomed to live as those who oppress it would dictate. And so the struggle for human freedom, the nation, and Ukraine is our Christian and national responsibility. Our duty is the cultivation and propagation of the Ukrainian national idea – the idea of self-assertion of state of the Ukrainian nation, and the Ukrainian national state’s creation of an effective system of Ukrainian democracy.”[42]
All non-ethnic Ukrainians are judged on the basis of their support for building a home for the Ukrainian ethnicity – “Ukrainian Ukraine.” Thus, for RS, the “national state” is the consequence of the “natural desire” of every “developed” nation’s “political self-assertion through which it becomes full and sole master of their destiny in its land.” The realization of the “national state” is “a state in which citizens of other nations recognize the indigenous people of the host country and have not only the level of the (indigenous nation’s) rights but also its duties, know and respect its language, laws and history.” The educational system should create “nationally conscious, active, selfless and sacrificial citizens for the Ukrainian national state.” Similarly, cultural policy will aim to form the “national ethical and aesthetic consciousness of society, making every Ukrainian spiritually and ideologically immune to alien cultural imperialism. In order to overcome the “religious and denominational fragmentation in Ukraine”, the state will be directly involved in religion seeking “the spiritual and ecclesiastical unity of all Christians” in “a single local national Christian Church” that will assume “responsibility before God and people for failing to lead the way and bring Christ to the people of God who entrusted that people with what he created and for what the Lord wants to see, and not what would make it different, the invaders and their heirs – purge the servants of Satan.” [43]
The program claims Ukraine is undergoing a genocide, having fallen victim to “carefully cultivated and propagated perversion, drug addiction, alcoholism, fornication, homosexuality, violence, spirituality, denationalization, political apathy and more. The anti-Ukrainian government recruited young Ukrainian obedient servants, non-Ukrainian politicians, a mindless electorate, cosmopolitan business, unpretentious mercenaries, criminals, blind artists, foreign capital, and disenfranchised and cheap slaves.” Media is seen as being at present under the control of alien forces undermining the nation: “Ukraine’s information space was formed by non-Ukrainian, anti-Ukrainian, cosmopolitan and pro-Russian oligarchic clans, and this is not in the interests of the Ukrainian nation, society and state. The media became a powerful and permanent factor in the de-spiritualization and ideological and political denationalization, demoralization and disorientation of Ukrainian society. Therefore, the dominance of clans in Ukraine’s information space of Ukraine must be replaced by its fundamental Ukrainization.”[44]
Like many nationalistic programs, RS’s is fetishistic about the “village” as the purified carrier of the nation: “The Ukrainian village—formed by the millennia, an effective and unique system of full material and spiritual sustenance, nation-creating and nation-preserving—can not be ‘wasted’ villages. Each (village) carries a Ukrainian national share of the world and every need of the nation. (We must) revive, develop and maintain every village – not just as a production unit, but above all as a living and irreplaceable cell of the national organism.”[45]
A short course for RS members on the ideology of “nationalist revolution” and “nationocracy” states that the RS is founded on the ideas of OUN, Bandera, among other Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. Specifically, the polity of the “National Order” will be built not on the basis of political competition and parties but on “orders” or brotherhoods designed not to represent various interests but rather to unite the Ukrainian nation in a “Ukrainian Community of Independent States” (Ukrainskaya Sobornaya Samostiynoi Derzhava) or UCCD. In both Ukrainian and Russian, the concept of ‘sobornost’ means an organic unity that presumes unity of belief and values and precludes conflict between interests within a community. Thus, quoting the nationalist philosopher Ivan Franko, the course notes assert: “Everything that goes beyond the frame of the nation is either hypocrisy or sterile sentimental fiction.” The Ukrainian collective order envisaged by RS’s philosophy rejects the “empires of communism, Russian great-power chauvinism, democratic liberalism and cosmopolitanism” which are inherently “hostile to the Ukrainian nation.” Ukraine is seen as “caught on the edge between two worlds,” and Ukrainian nationalists’ “sacred mission” is to defend the West in “the ongoing struggle against the latest generation of Asian hordes” and “create a new life.”[46]
The course instructs members that “the only way to build the Nation and the State is by way of a National Revolution made by the Ukrainian people and led by the National Revolutionary Order.” Thus, the RS sees the present Maidan regime as a “transitional stage between the USSR and UCCD.” The “Militant Ukrainian National Revolution” will have a strong religious element and “will not distinguish between the defense of the Christian faith and the Church of the national liberation struggle.” The RS views the Maidan regime, Ukraine’s constitution and the law as expendable. The higher value is the nation, which supercedes the rule of law until such time as the RS is writing the laws. The course notes:
The Constitution is a law and no more, the basic law, but only a law. Establishing the national idea should be primary in the minds of the people, not only in the Constitution. People can exist without a Constitution, but they are doomed without a national idea, which turns it into a nation. The national idea is above the law. …The national idea is the general goal of the nation; the law is just the means of implementing the national idea. … The national idea is in the category of the permanent, but the law is in the category of the transient.Change in the law—the rule in the state—that is a modification or replacement of the national idea is a national crime. Woe to the people and state authorities whose laws run contrary to the national idea. If the law is contrary to the national idea, it is not the law, but rather instructions for supervisors and rules for the conduct of slaves. Citizens do evil, if they execute laws opposed to the nation, state, or humanity.[47]
Despite the course’s significant talk of Christian love, the RS rejects the idea of bloodless revolution. Yarosh’s deputy Andrey Stempitskiy, who would head the RS’s military wing after the Maidan’s ouster of Yanukovych, warned: “Undoubtedly, completely bloodless revolution is impossible. After the revolution the intensification of hostilities is quite expected. And the one who says ‘I do not want blood!’ has yet to say ‘I do not want the return of the occupied territories’ (referring to Crimea and Donass after March 2014) and ‘I do not want to Ukraine’s liberation from the power of Moscow.’ Freedom and greatness of a nation is something for which you pay a high price.”[48]
Thus, like other extremist ideologies, the RS member is expected to sacrifice his life for the cause: “To ensure the existence of future generations of our nation, the Ukrainian nationalist revolutionary is willing to give even his life. … Death in the struggle for the freedom, power and glory of Ukraine is eternal life in the memory of the people, is the crown of eternal glory in the nation, is eternal paradise with the Lord. Each death is new proof of the holiness and justice of our ideas, its vitality and victory.” In some sections of the RS short course the cult of self-sacrifice attains a level equal to that of the jihadists’ cult of death and martyrdom: “This Cossack Baida, three days hanging on the hook, but did not betray his people. The woman – Olga Basarab, bloody perished from beatings and torture without betraying the slightest confidence. … Their names have become immortal. You act in this way and when you find yourself in the most critical, hopeless situation quietly and calmly, as they killed themselves, shoot yourself in the forehead or explode a grenade—proof of Your ideology, self-holiness, courage and endurance.”
As in many extremist organizations there is a strain of primordial prometheanism—a harkening back to the nation’s ancient, eternal existence and “millennial” struggle. Its past heroes are portrayed as having attained “superhuman heroism” in struggle against eternal and omnipresent enemies. Today’s generation is obliged to emulate them for the sake of the nation’s survival, encouraged to “(a)venge the deaths of the great mighty ones.” “The enemies of the Ukrainian nation killed her best sons – chiefs, leaders, and political men (Grand Knights). They all perished in cruel deaths from an executioner’s hand, because rightly they fought for freedom for you, your family and the entire Ukrainian people. This struggle is always a feast, and he who opposes it is a criminal and tyrant. That is why revenge for the death of our Great National Knights is infinite, reasonable, just, and holy. Their Hot blood penetrated the black earth, crying for vengeance. This blood fire burns thee, that thou shouldst not forgive wrongs. This revenge was, is and shall be holy.”[49] The reference to red blood sinking into the black earth invokes RS’s red over black flag.
At the same time that RS is committed to violent national revolution, it claims to adhere to a long-term strategy focused primarily on expanding its influence in society and secondarily on infiltrating state organs. Stempitskiy notes: “(T)o take the path of revolution does not mean to go right now and storm the Administration of the President and the Verkhovna Rada. This would mean lost opportunities in catching up rapidly in all areas – in the promotion (of the movement), the formation of structures, and winning over those social groups that understand there is no alternative to the revolutionary path and that are looking for someone to take the lead.”[50] The RS short course supports an “auxiliary” strategy of the “penetration of nationalists into the camp of the authorities.”[51] The strategy is clearly one of building the movement’s strength before engaging the revolutionary seizure of power.
Yarosh and other RS leaders have been insistent that RS is not anti-Semitic. It would be more accurate to say that RS is not openly anti-Semitic. Thus, RS’s program states anti-semitism is an enemy ideology along with communism and several others, but it refers to “cosmopolitanism” and “cosmopolitan business” – code phrase for Jewish business.[52]Upon close questioning they tend to reveal an anti-Jewish bias. For example, when asked in a March 2014 interview with a Western journalist whether RS was anti-Semitic, a top RS leader, Igor Mazur, said this was impossible since his son’s godfather was “half Jewish.” However, he also stated that all of Ukraine’s hated oligarchs are Jewish and he does not like them because they “care only for their trans-national business empires, for making money. They don’t really care for Ukraine.” When asked if all Ukrainian oligarchs are Jewish, he simply shrugged, and when asked if the unpopular Yulia Tymoshenko is Jewish, he replied: “We don’t know for sure. We think she has some Jewish blood in her.”[53]
In foreign policy, RS programs have proposed a non-aligned course, with a caveat. Partnership with NATO, the EU, the CIS and other existing international organizations is regarded as “dangerous and destructive.” Instead, Ukrainian geopolitical strategy is to be based on something like Pilsudski’s ‘Intermarium’: the creation of a “priority space” encompassing a north-south axis extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus and Black Sea based on countries Ukraine has “historically cooperated with” – Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey, Georgia).[54] More recently, picking up on the Western-sponsored policy of dismembering Russia by provoking separatism among its ethnic minorities, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center hosted an event during which the RS signed a memorandum with the Indigenous Peoples’ Coalition on combating Russian imperialism.[55]
Throughout the early winter of 2013, RS, SNA and SP members would infiltrate the EuroMaidan and be incorporated into the Maidan Self-Defense (MSD) units called ‘hundreds’ (sotnyi), the traditional name for subdivisions of Cossack formations. They would hijack the Maidan movement, transforming the Maidan process into a violent revolt from below. As this radical fascization developed, Western-backed (and likely diaspora-backed) elements were lending ideological support to these more dark forces. As the Maidan violence was only just beginning to percolate in December 2013, Western-backed ‘pro-democracy’ Ukrainian media outlets like the Kyiv Post were issuing apologias for Ukrainian ultra-nationalism:
For someone decidedly critical of right-wing politics — in Ukraine as well as in the USA — to defend the memory of Bandera is indeed a matter of fairness and not ideological inclination. It is for me. Bandera is someone who spent most of the war in a Nazi concentration camp, where also his two brothers were murdered. He is someone who, with the OUN, openly stood up against Adolf Hitler, by declaring an independent Ukraine in Lviv on June 30, 1941, eight days after the start of German – Soviet hostilities. It promptly led to his arrest and jailing of his closest cohorts. That was when many well known personalities in western Europe, yes, cooperated with the Nazis to avoid Hitler’s wrath. And he is someone who, alone among Ukraine’s so-called leaders of that time, postulated an axiom saying that national liberation must rely on own (sic) forces, and not on foreign assistance. It was the time when the country was prostrate on its back under Stalin’s boot.[56]
RS’s first leader and continuing influencer, Dmitro Anatoliyevich Yarosh, was born on 30 September 1971. He began his political life during the perestroika era, becoming a member of the nationalist ‘Rukh’ party in 1989. He co-founded ‘Trizuby’ in 1994 and led the organization from 1996 to 1999, then becoming its “main inspector” and again heading the group until autumn 2015 when he handed the reins to his deputy and the commander of RS’s military wing Andrei Stempitskii. Like many nationalists and ideologues, Yarosh is focused on the Ukrainian language and culture, having graduated from the Ivan Franko Drogobychskii Pedagogical University’s Philogical Department in 2001. He then published a book putting forward his ideas of a nationalistic revolution entitled The Ukrainian Revolution in the 21st Century. Yarosh notes the purpose of founding RS was “to state the position of rightist forces,” given the EuroMaidan’s limited goal of signing the EU AA, and pursue “implemention of a nationalist revolution and overthrow of the regime that we call a regime of internal occupation.”[57]In March 2014, shortly after Yanukovych’s fall, media reported that Yarosh had appealed on his social media ‘VKontakte’ page to the amir ‘Abu Usman’ Doku Umarov of the Caucasus Emirate, the jihadist successor group of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya (ChRI) based in Russia’s North Caucasus, for assistance in fighting the emerging Donbass separatist movement. PS rejected the charge, claiming Yarosh’s account had been hacked.[58] However, RS’s Igor Mazur acknowledged at the time that he along with 14 of his comrades fought against Russia for the ChRI and for Georgia against its breakaway republic of Abkhazia. He claims the ChRI separatists awarded him medals for valor for his combat role.[59]
Yarosh has run for president receiving a percentage of the vote in the low single digits as has RS in parliamentary election. But the democratic game is not neofascists’ focus or expected path to power, as the Maidan events demonstrate. Their sidelining to a secondary role in the new Maidan regime, playing second fiddle to various oligarchs, such as Zelenskiy’s patron, Ihor Kolomoiskiy has left them yearning for the consummation of the aborted fully ‘nationalist’ (read: neofascist) revolution. In July 2015, Right Sector and NSA successor, the Azov Battalion, along with others marched in central Kiev and called on “all patriots” from across the country to begin the process of “freeing the country of internal and external enemies” and the “anti-Ukrainian regime” of “Poroshenko, Turchynov, Yatsenyuk, and Groisman.” They called on the Poroshenko administration to nullify the Minsk accords, renew the civil war against Donbass, and carry out a real war against ‘corruption’.[60] In April 2020, Yarosh again threatened the Maidan regime with the last and ‘nationalist’ phase of the revolution begun by the Maidan revolt: “We will live through the (COVID) quarantine, overcome the pandemic, and go onto the offensive, be liberated from the next blood-suckers, and finish our war for independence with victory.”[61] Later, he threatened Zelenskiy to „show who is boss in Ukraine.“[62]
The path to power for actors such as Yarosh and Biletskiy are the security, intelligence, and military organs, which offer access to the organs and means (law enforcement, weapons) of coercion. For RS, this path has led to ties to both the secret police, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), but more so the military. After the Maidan takeover, Yarosh demanded an appointment as deputy prime minister in charge of the security and police organs, but his demand was rejected.[63] There were discussions about appointing him to the office of deputy head of the SBU, but the idea was quickly abandoned. Yarosh then was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, but he refused to accept this post, claiming it was beneath him.[64] Thus, Yarosh and RS played an instrumental role in pushing forward the ATO. On 20 April 2014, Dmytro Yarosh said he was ordered on 20 April 2014 by acting president Oleksandr Turchinov to lead 20 RS members to sabotage a television tower seized by Donbass rebels in Sloviansk. This led to the first combat fatalities in the seminal siege of Sloviansk. Yarosh denied his and RS’s role in these events for two years before acknowledging his contribution to accelerating the ATO and eschewing negotiations.[65]
In 2015, Yarosh was appointed an adviser to the army chief of staff, Viktor Muzhenko, acting as a liaison between the military and the ultra-nationalist-dominated volunteer battalions.[66] In November 2021 Yarosh was appointed an advisor to the chief of the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces and future commander of Ukraine’s forces fighting on the Russian front, Lt. Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, now Kiev’s ambassador to London, to continue his liaison work with the neofascist battalions and begin a “project” to “work with youth.”[67] Injured during the ATO, Yarosh, since the SMO began, has been involved in providing logistics for the provision of medical supplies and assistance to units at the front. This allows him to continue networking with the army’s commanders and rank-and-file soldiers, including the numerous radical nationalists.
In recent years, Yarosh has reiterated his intent to ‘finish the revolution.’ A few years ago, as a General Staff and Zaluzhniy advisor, Yarosh promised there would be a ‘second phase of the nationalist revolution’ of which the February 2014 Maidan revolt was supposedly but the first. The second phase is to sweep away the liberal and oligarchic remnants of the pre-Maidan democratic order brought into the Maidan regime, in Yarosh’s view. Similar views are held by Ukraine’s many other ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists, and they have been waiting for the moment to initiate the second phase. In September 2024, Yarosh repeated his call for the completion of the neofascist revolution on his Facebook page (no, Zuckerberg’s Ukrainian fact-checkers never banned him): “As it turned out, during the Dignity Revolution and the Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian nationalists became the main factor in the Ukrainian national-liberation struggle in the 21st century… I am a Ukrainian Nationalist – sounds proud both in Ukraine and across the world. The next power after the War for Independence should be nationalist. Otherwise, we will once again be led down an unbreakable cycle of national humiliation, corruption, degeneracy, moral degradation, economic decline, inferiority and defeat… Therefore, after the War for Independence, the wise, courageous and noble should rule in Ukraine. Glory to the Nation!”[68] In November 2024, he struck a similar note on Facebook: “Our struggle for God’s values, Ukrainian identification, our State denies all the filth that the ‘multicultural‘, ‚gender-equal‘, ‚tolerant‘ West is trying to impose on us… The Eastern Horde is at war with us, Ukrainians, understanding all the weakness of the collective west… We, fighting for ourselves, do not have to surrender to neither the rot of the West nor the Eastern despotia. We, Ukrainians, need to realize that we can win only when God is with us, and not Satan. The Ten Commandments of God are the landmark of all normal people. Praise God and Nation![69]
Yarosh’s neofascism brings with it a Ukrainian imperialist foreign policy vision. RS’s program proposes a non-aligned course in the current understanding of that term. Partnership with NATO, the EU, the CIS and other existing international organizations is regarded as “dangerous and destructive.” Ukrainian geopolitical strategy is to be based on something like Pilsudski’s ‘Intermarium’: the creation of a “priority space” encompassing a north-south axis extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus and Black Sea based on countries Ukraine has “historically cooperated with” – Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey, Georgia).[70]
In a recent post Yarosh plugged his Ukrainian imperialism and russophobia into Westerners’ ‘decolonization’ plans for Russia: “Frankly speaking, we, Ukrainians, should not be interested only in Sudzha, Kursk, Bilgorod, the Kuban or the Don… The time will soon come when the sub-empire will finally collapse. Of course, with our decisive help… Therefore, we should be interested in all of Russia (RFia): its territory, resources, useful minerals, etc. We need to formulate a strategic plan now on how we are going to divide all this between us and the Western partners, between us and China… Do you think this isn’t real? Remember the year 1991…”[71]
RS is interconnected with Azov not just in terms of ideology, politics, tactics, and strategy but also membership. Biletskiy‘s SNA was a founding group of RS, and so now both Azov and its National Corps party include many RS recruits.[72]
Like Azov and National Corps, RS is deeply embedded within the Ukrainian state and its coercive organs. RS has close relations with the SBU. Recently, RS founding leader Yarosh was photographed with SBU chief Vasyliy Malyuk, who masterminded the terrorist attack on trains in Bryansk in June 2025, among much else.[73] Years ago, when the SBU was hounding the independent newspaper Vesti, RS attacked the paper’s offices and destroyed the entire bulk of an edition of the paper one day after Yarosh’s appointment to the General Staff. RS thugs attacked a Vesti delivery truck, stealing the papers and beating the truck’s driver.[74] Vesti brought “criminal chaos in the center of Kiev” in an appeal addressed to then President Petro Poroshenko, the leaders of the siloviki, and “first of all the Security Service of Ukraine” (SBU).[75]The next day a bomb scare threatened Vesti’s offices.[76] There was no response from the authorities.
Zelenskiy has awarded numerous RS fighters for their role in the war with Russia, including the most notorious of them. On 1 December 2021 Zelenskiy concluded an address to the Verkhovna Rada by bestowing the country’s highest state award, Hero of Ukraine, upon Dmitro Kotsyubailo, a leading member of RS and DUK.[77] Kotsyubailo, one of the top leaders of the RS and its DUK, was mentioned — surprisingly enough — in a New York Times article on Ukrainian concerns about the presence of some 92,000 Russian forces on Ukraine’s border in Donbass. NYT exposed, seemingly unwittingly, what Kotsyubailo’s social net videos clearly demonstrate–that he and other RS ad DUK members frequently violate the Minsk 2 ceasefire and negotiation accords by firing at Donbass with grenade launchers and other banned weapons. Kotsyubailo openly acknowledges that he violates the ceasefire and has shot first in exchanges of fire across the now distended line of contact and that he opposes the Minsk ceasefire agreements as ‘capitulation.’ NYT also quoted Kotsyubailo joking that the wolf his command staff at the front near Avdeevka keeps as a pet is fed with the bones of Russian-speaking children.[78] Kotsyubailo’s girlfriend is a deputy in the Kiev city council and a medic in his battalion. She once said in an interview on the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s YouTube channel that the only good Russian is a dead Russian (https://strana.news/news/364888-dmitro-kotsjubajlo-iz-pravoho-sektora-stal-heroem-ukrainy-kto-eto-takoj.html and https://gordonhahn.com/2021/12/03/zelenskiys-theater-of-simulacra-as-coup-hoax-and-the-activation-of-bad-actors-in-and-around-ukraine/). Kotsubaylo was killed in action in 2024, and his funeral was attended by Zelenskiy and then Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin.[79] The First Separate Assault Regiment named after Kotsiubailo posts photos of its soldiers wearing the Nazi Totenkopf patches on its official Telegram channel.[80] The RS ecosystem is replete with Nazi symbolism. RS along with other neofascist groups such as Azov, National Corps, Svoboda Party and many others routinely hold Nazi-like torchlight marches in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities on nationalist holidays such as Stepan Bander’s birthday and Heroes Day.[81]
PART 3 is forthcoming.
FOOTNOTES
[1] www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/.
[2] www.moonofalabama.org/2025/04/growth-of-ukraines-azov-units-follow-path-of-the-waffen-ss.html.
[3]www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/pfbid07fbi3Z2u8VLPQU1eESuQq9vPhBF9XY5gHe96TKnnXMnty8FZD89ghB9REvyiNgvil.
[4] “Andrei Biletskii | Sotsial-natsionalizm – zolotoi vek Ukrainy,” YouTube, 7 December 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KfqYT6U6xc; Leonid Bershidskiy, “Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Won’t Get U.S. Money,” Bloomberg, 12 June 2015, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-12/ukraine-s-neo-nazis-won-t-get-u-s-money; and Robert Parry, “US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine,” Consortium News, 13 June 2015, http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30719-us-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine.
[5] Programa, Sotsialno-Natsionalna Assembleya, Snaua.info, http://snaua.info/programa/, last accessed 2 October 2019. See also Gordon M. Hahn, Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War’ (McFarland Books, 2016), pp. 180-213 and Gordon M. Hahn, “Maidan Ukraine’s Neo-Fascist Problem,” Fair Observer, 23 September 2014, www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/the-ukrainian-revolutions-neo-fascist-problem-14785/.
[6] “Slovo bilogo vozhdya.pdf,” VKontakte, http://vk.com/doc29866988_319980052?hash=14c0a1bebe416193ef&dl=a33eceb6cbe50c4daf, last accessed on 29 January 2016; and Bershidskiy, “Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Won’t Get U.S. Money;” and Parry “US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine.”
[7] Tom Parfitt, “Ukraine crisis: The neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists,” Telegraph (UK), 11 August 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html. Havryshko sums up the Azov ideology well. See https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1908508572490543432.
[8] See the video at https://x.com/i/status/1910692909260611777.
[9]https://x.com/boweschay/status/1928475314591617430?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[10] https://kresy.pl/wydarzenia/regiony/ukraina/targalski-na-konferencji-azowa-nie-boje-sie-putina-video/#google_vignette.
[11] Gordon M. Hahn, Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West and the “New Cold War” (Jefferson: McFarland Books, 2014), pp. 180-212.
[12] See the Nazi insignia being used by Azov at “Andriy Biletskiy pro zvil’nennya Mariupolya,” You Tube, 13 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lu3HanEJ78, last accessed 4 April 2016 and “Shestvia Azova i Pravogo sektora po Kievu,” YouTube, 14 October 2014, uploaded by Pavel Sheremet, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcTHHuqAf10&feature=youtu.be and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJjBrgxWF8M&ebc=ANyPxKpXOGCNqrTf38UgQ4S7BiH5rQcUoXvwzuplFHT3LEbn8STOELJ3awAK1mojqrSpneaXuDEK9ToxMoFje9EYDudWnQc0NA, last accessed on 4 April 2016.
[13] “Donets’kii dialog na Gromads’komu 19 serpnya,” YouTube, 19 August 2014, posted by Gromads’ke Tellbachennya, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfRFT6vVaEI&list=UU2oGvjIJwxn1KeZR3JtE-uQ, last accessed 4 April 2016.
[14] Taras Kozub, “Lyashko otkazalsya idti pod krylo Kolomoisogo,” Vesti Ukraina, 4 August 2014, http://vesti.ua/strana/63937-ljashko-otkazalsja-idti-pod-krylo-kolomojskogo.
[15] https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1896937721651683464?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[16] Nolan Peterson, “A Ukrainian national Guard Unit Trains to ‘Fight to the Death’,” Newsweek, 21 April 2015, http://www.newsweek.com/ukrainian-national-guard-unit-trains-fight-death-323891.
[17] See a brief videos of the march at “Shestvia Azova i Pravogo sektora po Kievu.”
[18] https://x.com/i_katchanovski/status/1900566607560155623?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[19] See video and Havryshko’s commentary at https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1926286040941166642.
[20] https://x.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1921300406241550456.
[21] https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1896937721651683464?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[22] See the video at http://www.facebook.com/61556573562972/videos/1844297339670330.
[23] Alexander Motyl, “Will Ukraine Survive Yanukovych?,” The Manitoban, 18 March 2014, www.themanitoban.com/2014/03/will-ukraine-survive-yanukovych/19647/; Alexander Motyl, “’Experts’ on Ukraine,” League of Ukrainian Canadians, 22 March 2014, www.lucorg.com/news.php/news/7543, posted from World Affairs, 20 March 2014; and Alexander Motyl, “’Svoboda’, Ukraine, and the West,” Aspen Review, Issue 1, 2013, www.aspen.review/article/2017/svoboda%2c-ukraine%2c-and-the-west/); and https://gordonhahn.com/2020/04/07/report-the-new-terrorist-threat-ukrainian-ultra-nationalist-and-neo-fascist-terrorism-at-home-and-abroad/. For a list of Motyl’s pieces in Foreign Affairs, see “Alexander J. Motyl,” Foreign Affairs, www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/alexander-j-motyl.
[24] See http://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/506232.ukraine-historikerin-im-fadenkreuz.html#:~:text=Die%20ukrainische%20Historikerin%20Marta%20Gawrischko,Erzählungen%20Kiews%20bedingungslos%20zu%20folgen and www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02HLgctXwqYSz3gacUWwCDvVfTXUUgAjSmehSVu2YmV6XSz8wpHELhbtwCjmdCfjvhl&id=61578894123458.
[25] https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1896937721651683464?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ and https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1867028040795979894?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[26]www.facebook.com/61556573562972/posts/pfbid02JubcA91JrcS6bQJh6UTvyz4UTtMH8KQbxz6mkM2iVLjxRfVo6bHEhnau9L6oJ5uUl/
[27] https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1910657103057789419.
[28] https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1907434835674546486.
[29]http://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=122230664234219118&id=61556573562972 and https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1896937721651683464?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[30] https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1907434835674546486.
[31] https://www.facebook.com/61578894123458/videos/1308759390840952.
[32] https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1896937721651683464?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[33] https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1901644260748759395.
[34] https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1867028040795979894?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[35]www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02CbCQrBsSB9zWMR3w9DQYf8HnVtEWK5KRFbKk2obQnsR5v1x8F734ZuKVNDUNgfgBl&id=61556573562972.
[36]https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1918300812205588653?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[37] See the video at https://x.com/leonidragozin/status/1939685742646641014.
[38] https://x.com/i_katchanovski/status/1939766266241101826?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[39] www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/the-ukrainian-revolutions-neo-fascist-problem-14785/;www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2014/05/ukraine-unwittingly-becoming-sponsor-of-neo-fascist-terrorism-in-ukraine.html; http://gordonhahn.com/2014/07/14/war-from-below-and-the-warlords-of-ukraine/;http://gordonhahn.com/2015/03/15/everyday-neo-fascism-in-ukraine/; and https://gordonhahn.com/2015/05/02/ukraines-neo-fascist-right-sector-claims-responsibility-again-for-2-may-2014-terrorist-pogrom/
[40] “Ideologichni osnovi Ukrainskoi derzhavnosti: Problema Vybori,” Pravyysector.info, 11 June 2015, http://pravyysektor.info/news/chogo-pragnemo/57/ideologichni-osnovi-ukrayinskoyi-derzhavnosti-problema-viboru.html, last accessed on 31 January 2016.
[41] “Ideologichni osnovi Ukrainskoi derzhavnosti: Problema Vybori;” “Programa Pravogo Sektora,” Pravyysektor.info, http://pravyysektor.info/programa.html, last accessed on 30 January 2016; and “Korotokiy ideolohichno vyhovniy kurs dlya vo tryzub im s Bandery ta pravoho sektora,” Pravyysektor.info, 27 November 2015, http://old.pravyysektor.info/articles/korotkyj-ideolohichno-vyhovnyj-kurs-dlya-vo-tryzub-im-s-bandery-ta-pravoho-sektora/, last accessed on 15 January 2016.
[42] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[43] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[44] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[45] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[46] “Korotokiy ideolohichno vyhovniy kurs dlya vo tryzub im s Bandery ta pravoho sektora.”
[47] “Korotokiy ideolohichno vyhovniy kurs dlya vo tryzub im s Bandery ta pravoho sektora.”
[48] “Doroga na Donbas i Krym lezhit cherez Kyiv,” Pravyysektor.info, 11 November 2015, http://pravyysektor.info/news/news/1155/doroga-na-donbas-i-krim-lezhit-cherez-kiyiv.html.
[49] “Korotokiy ideolohichno vyhovniy kurs dlya vo tryzub im s Bandery ta pravoho sektora.”
[50] “Doroga na Donbas i Krym lezhit cherez Kyiv.”
[51] “Korotokiy ideolohichno vyhovniy kurs dlya vo tryzub im s Bandery ta pravoho sektora.”
[52] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[53] Matthew Schofield, “Leader of Ukraine’s revolution rails against Putin, Russian military and Jewish oligarchs,” Miami Herald,15 March 2014, www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1961440.html.
[54] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[55]https://x.com/havryshkomarta/status/1925287388940775488?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ.
[56] Boris Danik, “The Science of Bandera Bashing,” Kyiv Post, 30 December 2013, http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/boris-danik-the-science-of-bandera-bashing-334483.html.
[57] “Dmitrii Yarosh,” 112.ua, http://112.ua/profiles/dmytryi-yarosh-145.html, last accessed on 27 January 2016.
[58] “Dmitrii Yarosh.” On the Caucasus Emirate, see Hahn, The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond.
[59] Schofield, “Leader of Ukraine’s revolution rails against Putin, Russian military and Jewish oligarchs.”
[60] http://pravyysektor.info/news/marsh-svyatoslava-u-stolnomu-hradi-anons/.
[61] https://politnavigator.net/delo-chernovol-pokazatelnaya-reakciya-svidomojj-bratii.html/ampandhttps://informator.press/pereydem-v-nastuplenye-osvobodymsia-ot-ocheredn-kh-krovopyyts-yarosh-rasskazal-pro-plan/?fbclid=IwAR25I4lQNHqZFvs6Uovw1Tc2FwFDT24tGZ_p-GT8dp2z2nXh4r7GBJfj3o8.
[62] “Yarosh prigrozil Zelenskomu pokazat- ‘kto est’ v Ukraine khozain,” Informator Press, https://informator.press/na-viyni-iak-na-viyni-yarosh-pryhrozyv-zelens-komu-pokazaty-khto-ie-v-ukraini-hospodarem/
[63] www.pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2014/04/1/7020952/.
[64] www.pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2014/04/1/7020952/; https://www.ft.com/content/88987cf8-9f12-11e3-8663-00144feab7de#axzz2uWvmVxAB; and https://time.com/11005/many-ukrainians-want-russia-to-invade/.
[65]https://censor.net/ru/resonance/385673/dmitro_yarosh_pershiyi_nastupalniyi_byi_vyini_vdbuvsya_20_kvtnya_2014go_dobrovolts_atakuvali_blokpost
[66] www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32216738.
[67] www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/4533858036691045; www.uawire.org/former-leader-of-right-sector-becomes-advisor-to-commander-in-chief-of-ukrainian-armed-forces; https://strana.news/news/364781-mitinhi-v-kieve-1-dekabrja-i-poslanie-zelenskoho-rade-onlajn.html?fbclid=IwAR1capfoKbN7n6TDRm4X7mfoXggz8eXlrh4wWpYgIlZVBBGyyIH6ldRv5sk.
[68]http://www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/pfbid07fbi3Z2u8VLPQU1eESuQq9vPhBF9XY5gHe96TKnnXMnty8FZD89ghB9REvyiNgvil.
[69]www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/pfbid029Ec2hXVvEo9QpME1tEAwBK1xhHSfpWdMFNsZDPF8iPychfbqVFsRo5vPQW2fQDhKl.
[70] Programa Pravogo Sektora.
[71]www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=8785870324823107&id=100002006813356.
[72] “Ukraine segodnya|Chto proiskhodit?,” Program ‘Arena sobytii’, Online TV, 26 June 2014, http://www.onlinetv.ru/video/1670/?autostart=1.
[73] https://x.com/leonidragozin/status/1920881257958744320.
[74] http://pravyysektor.info/news/v-chystyj-chetver-kyyany-ochystyly-stolytsyu-vid-informatsijnoho-smittya/ and http://video.vesti-ukr.com/kiev/3571-zakazchiki-napadenija-na-vesti-mogut-byt-iz-organov.
[75]The Vesti appeal noted: “We demand the cessation of terror against the mass media as well as against business and regular citizens, which is being implemented by representatives of various political and criminal groups. We are sure that the state organs’ reaction to this disorder in the capitol will be a clear indicator as to whether the attack on the newspaper was an independent initiative of criminality or an act planned on the order and under the cover of the authorities.” http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/95772-vesti-trebujut-ot-pravoohranitelej-prekratit-napadenija-na-rasprostranitelej-gazety.
[76] http://vesti-ukr.com/strana/96015-v-pomewenii-radio-vesti-iwut-vzyvchatku.
[77] https://strana.news/news/364781-mitinhi-v-kieve-1-dekabrja-i-poslanie-zelenskoho-rade-onlajn.html?fbclid=IwAR1capfoKbN7n6TDRm4X7mfoXggz8eXlrh4wWpYgIlZVBBGyyIH6ldRv5sk and https://gordonhahn.com/2021/12/03/zelenskiys-theater-of-simulacra-as-coup-hoax-and-the-activation-of-bad-actors-in-and-around-ukraine/.
[78]http://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/world/europe/-ukraine-russia-putin-invasion.html?fbclid=IwAR12g213INq6EpqyrAydEyipoWDO-f0iVHLRFEHVq_NkxqC-haBMTwCMJ_g; https://strana.news/news/329833-v-pravom-sektore-rasskazali-kak-pervymi-otkryvajut-ohon-na-donbasse.html; https://strana.news/news/364888-dmitro-kotsjubajlo-iz-pravoho-sektora-stal-heroem-ukrainy-kto-eto-takoj.html; and https://gordonhahn.com/2021/12/03/zelenskiys-theater-of-simulacra-as-coup-hoax-and-the-activation-of-bad-actors-in-and-around-ukraine/).
[79] https://kyivindependent.com/finnish-prime-minister-sanna-marin-visits-kyiv/.
[80]www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid028oEpJqm7y3vGZhBrEztvhkCQUozp1ZkktU3C5bpomhszECp9PvVx4oFeyT5GpWXMl&id=61556573562972.
[81] For example, www.facebook.com/marta.havryshko.2025/posts/pfbid02Ty23aXJkub8HZx5iopnhRsmyB2MeKcXgVAmbG8axMSbPunKpK6LsnXBKcZKNn2ecland https://ctrana.one/news/179238-v-kieve-startoval-marsh-vo-svoboda-i-druhikh-radikalov-v-chest-bandery.html#google_vignette.
Since it was published in BERLINER ZEITUNG´s online ed. today, Havryshko has an item on Parubij here: (German-language)
Ukraine: Murder of Parubij – between personal revenge and the “Russian lead”
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/geopolitik/ukraine-mord-an-parubij-zwischen-persoenlicher-rache-und-der-russischen-spur-li.2354011
Interesting. Thanks