[News] The CIA May Be Breeding Nazi Terror in Ukraine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

jacobinmag.com
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/cia-neo-nazi-training-ukraine-russia-putin-biden-nato>
The
CIA May Be Breeding Nazi Terror in Ukraine
By Branko Marcetic
------------------------------

The US government has a well-documented history of backing extremist groups
as part of a panoply of foreign policy misadventures, which inevitably end
up blowing up in the American public’s face. In the 1960s, the CIA worked
with Cuban anti–Fidel Castro radicals who turned Miami into a hub of
terrorist violence
<https://www.americasquarterly.org/fulltextarticle/long-view-how-the-fight-against-castro-once-terrorized-u-s-cities/>.
In the 1980s, the agency supported
<https://www.vox.com/world/22634008/us-troops-afghanistan-cold-war-bush-bin-laden>
and encouraged
<https://publicintegrity.org/accountability/osama-bin-laden-how-the-u-s-helped-midwife-a-terrorist/>
Islamic radicals converging in Afghanistan, who would go on to orchestrate
the September 11 attack. And, in the 2010s, Washington backed
<https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/syrian-rebels-turkey-kurds-accountability/>
Syria’s not-so-“moderate” rebels who ended up cutting a swath of atrocities
through civilians and the Kurdish forces that were meant to be US allies.

Based on a new report, it looks like we may soon be able to add another to
that list of fatally unlearned lessons: Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

According to a recent *Yahoo! News* report
<https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-may-take-central-role-if-russia-invades-185258008.html>,
since 2015, the CIA has been secretly training forces in Ukraine to serve
as “insurgent leaders,” in the words of one former intelligence official,
in case Russia ends up invading the country. Current officials are claiming
the training is purely for intelligence collection, but the former
officials *Yahoo!* spoke to said the program involved training in firearms,
“cover and move,” and camouflage, among other things.

Given the facts, there’s a good chance that the CIA is training actual,
literal Nazis as part of this effort. The year the program started, 2015,
also happened to be the same year that Congress passed a spending bill that
featured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of economic and military
support for Ukraine, one that was expressly modified to allow that support
to flow to the country’s resident neo-Nazi
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right-fighters-ukraine-neo-nazis>
militia, the Azov Regiment. According to the *Nation*
<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/congress-has-removed-a-ban-on-funding-neo-nazis-from-its-year-end-spending-bill/>
at the time, the text of the bill passed in the middle of that year
featured an amendment explicitly barring “arms, training, and other
assistance” to Azov, but the House committee in charge of the bill was
pressured by the Pentagon months later to remove the language, falsely
telling them it was redundant.

Despite sometimes open acknowledgement
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/10/ukraine-azov-brigade-nazis-abuses-separatists/24664937/>
of its Nazism — its former commander once said
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html>
the “historic mission” of Ukraine is to “lead the White Races of the world
in a final crusade for their survival” in “a crusade against the Semite-led
Untermenschen” — Azov was incorporated into the country’s National Guard in
2014, owing to its effectiveness in fighting Russian separatists. US arms
have flowed
<https://therealnews.com/the-us-is-arming-and-assisting-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-while-congress-debates-prohibition>
to the militia, NATO
<https://nackor.org/ukr/do-polku-azov-zavitala-mizhnarodna-monitoringova-grupa-nato?__cf_chl_f_tk=5FrCERjuPAldc2T2sEpCkSlR17ga6iIDmDVpNxE.1UM-1642190561-0-gaNycGzNCGU>
and US military officials <https://archive.fo/bUO3P> have been pictured
<https://therealnews.com/the-us-is-arming-and-assisting-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-while-congress-debates-prohibition>
meeting with them, and members of the militia have talked about
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-america-training-neonazis-in-ukraine>
their work with US trainers and the lack of background screening to weed
out white supremacists.

Given all this, it would be more of a surprise that the neo-Nazis of Azov
*haven’t* been trained in the CIA’s clandestine make-an-insurgency program.
And we’re already seeing the early signs of blowback.

“A number of prominent individuals among far-right extremist groups in the
United States and Europe have actively sought out relationships with
representatives of the far-right in Ukraine, specifically the National
Corps and its associated militia, the Azov Regiment,” states a 2020 report
<https://ctc.usma.edu/the-nexus-between-far-right-extremists-in-the-united-states-and-ukraine/>
from the West Point US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.
“US-based individuals have spoken or written about how the training
available in Ukraine might assist them and others in their
paramilitary-style activities at home.”

A 2018 FBI affidavit
<https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RAM-rioting-Rundo-et-al-COMPLAINT133873.pdf>
asserted that Azov “is believed to have participated in training and
radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” including
members of the white supremacist Rise Above Movement, prosecuted
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-neo-nazi-militia-trained-by-us-military-in-ukraine-now-training-us-white-supremacists/251687/>
for planned assaults on counterprotesters at far-right events, including
the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that Joe Biden later co-opted
as a rationale for his presidential campaign. While it seems the
perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque massacre didn’t travel to Ukraine as
he claimed, he clearly took inspiration from the far-right movement there,
and wore
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/asia/christchurch-mass-shooting-extremism.html>
a symbol used by Azov members while carrying out the attack.

Since taking office, Biden has launched an incipient domestic “war on
terror” on the basis of combating far-right extremism, even though the
strategy is quietly aiming
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf>
to target left-wing protesters and activists, something it has already done
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/january-6-capitol-riot-trump-anti-protest-left>.
Yet at the same time, three separate administrations, Biden’s included,
have been providing training, weapons, and equipment to the very far-right
movement that’s inspiring and even training those same white supremacists.
Destroying the Village to Save It

Adding to the absurdity here is that the reason Washington has been giving
Ukrainian Nazis its assistance is so they can serve as a bulwark against
Russia, which war hawks liken
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10304945/Biden-needs-arm-Ukraine-lethal-aid-defend-Russia-GOP-Rep-Kiev-trip-says.html>,
as they always do, to Adolph Hitler’s regime and its expansion through
Europe in the 1930s. While Vladimir Putin’s Russia may be a malevolent
actor on a number of fronts, Putin’s recent incursions into neighboring
states like Ukraine are driven
<https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/united-states-russia-war-ukraine> largely
by the expansion of the NATO military alliance up to his borders and the
security implications that come with it.

In other words, to stop what US hawks classify as the next Hitler and Nazi
Germany, Washington has been backing literal neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine,
who are in turn communicating with and training homegrown white
supremacists, which Washington in turn is ramping up a menacing repressive
bureaucracy at home to counter. It’s what some have called the
“self-licking ice cream cone” in action — the US national security
establishment creating the very threats that justify itself. Instead of
defusing the tensions by simply agreeing to long-standing
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/nato-donald-trump-putin-cold-war>
Russian demands to set a hard limit on NATO’s eastward expansion,
Washington has apparently decided that unlimited planetary military
dominion is so important that it would rather just get into bed with actual
fascists.

The US alliance with Nazi-infected Ukraine has already proven awkward for a
president who is both trying to strike a contrast with his far-right
predecessor and establish
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/us/politics/biden-democracy-summit.html>
the United States as the leader of a global effort to strengthen democracy.
Late last year, in a vote that went completely unreported in the press, the
United States was one of just two countries (the other being Ukraine) to vote
against <https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/ga12396.doc.htm> a UN draft
resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other
practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism.” Both
countries have consistently
<https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-abstains-from-un-vote-on-nazism/> voted
<https://rabble.ca/anti-racism/canada-votes-no-on-un-resolution-condemning-racism-and-neo-nazism/>
against
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-votes-against-anti-nazi-resolution-at-united-nations/>
this
resolution
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-opposes-nazi-speech-but-will-vote-no-at-un-to-banning-it>
every
single
<https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/us-ukraine-alone-oppose-russian-un-vote-condemning-honors-to-nazis>
year
<https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-on-a-resolution-on-the-glorification-of-nazism/>
since 2014.

The Biden administration deployed
<https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-at-the-third-committee-adoption-of-the-combating-glorification-of-nazism/>
a nearly identical, boilerplate explanation for its no vote that Donald
Trump had used
<https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-on-a-resolution-on-the-glorification-of-nazism/>,
citing the constitutional right to free speech even for those with
repugnant views. But this concern is hard to square with the text, which
simply expresses concern about public memorials, demonstrations, and
rehabilitation of the Nazis, condemns Holocaust denial and hate violence,
and calls on governments to eliminate racism through education and
addressing far-right terrorist threats — all roughly the same as Biden’s
own rhetoric and policies.

Washington’s real concern here lies in its description of the resolution as
“thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns
denigrating neighboring nations” — meaning Ukraine. But Ukraine’s
connections to modern Nazism are far from Russian fake news, and are in
fact extensive and well documented
<https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-cuba-sanctions-aid/>:
from Azov’s official incorporation into the ranks of Ukrainian law
enforcement and government officials with far-right ties to state-sponsored
tributes to Nazi collaborators and promotion of Holocaust denial.

It’s no small irony that the US president, elected in large part to halt
the perceived march of fascism at home, is continuing long-standing US
support for literal Nazis in what might well be the nexus of international
fascism. And if these Ukrainian Nazis really are among the insurgents being
trained by the CIA, it will be no small tragedy if they one day take the
same career trajectory as Osama bin Laden.
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