It is interesting the way politicians and media change their view on different groups or characters, depending on their bosses’ interests, and what is even more interesting is the way people fall for the change and transform their feelings, thus turning these villains suddenly into heroes and vice versa.

The country's former villains are now considered heroes, and they are none other than the members of the Azov Battalion or Azov Special Operations Detachment. 

Accused of torture and war crimes and considered to have a neo-Nazi ideology and to be a White-supremacist group, the Azov Battalion had its American military aid blocked by Congress a few years ago.

40 USA House Democrats asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to include the Azov Battalion on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, as a “white supremacist group."

These days, the “terrorist” label associated with the Azov Battalion by members of US Congress seems off the record. 

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Politics of denial

In Romania, a well-known journalist was really shocked when a general declared that the Azov Battalion had been declared a terror group by the USA. Whereas now, they always talk about the Azov Battalion's heroism… On their part, this is not about minimizing the Azov Batalion’s crimes, like they do with politicians’ corruption, other crimes, or totally immoral behavior, but about totally forgiving and forgetting their crimes, just as what happens to Christians’ sins after confession! The only difference is that our media is forgiving and forgetting such horrible crimes no church in the world would simply forgive! … But… the Azov Battalion's members are blue-eyed, blonde, non-Muslim; that is why they are blessed by European and American officials, so… all their sins are forgiven, the same way an American President forgave and pardoned four Blackwater contractors found guilty of killing fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding others, the same way the same President pardoned U.S. soldiers convicted or judged for killing Iraqis or Afghans. How could he let official killers pay for murdering Muslims? He did what everyone was expecting him to do - pardoned some cold-blooded murderers! People found guilty of killing fourteen unarmed civilians were set free in a country that still has the capital punishment, in a country where, if you are White and kill a bunch of people, you will be spared, but if you are Black and kill one White person, you get the death sentence. 

We are used to seeing our leaders changing their minds about this kind of important problems. When trouble started in Syria, every group declaring its opposition to President Assad and its intentions to try to change the regime was getting military aid from the West. This was no secret. That was how groups like Al Nusra or ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State gained power. Everyone was watching TV and watching the horrible acts perpetrated by ISIS in Syria, about Muslim and Christian Syrians getting tortured and killed by those guys, about girls and women getting raped, killed, or kidnapped in order to satisfy those terrorists’ barbaric urges. Still… the West did nothing! In fact, the victims were just some “ragheads”, as Racist Americans use to call Arabs. Arabs killing Arabs. The West did not care so much, even if many of those tortured and killed by ISIS were Christians…

Everything changed when ISIS tortured and killed one American journalist in Syria. James Wright Foley, a 40-year-old war correspondent, was brutally tortured and beheaded in August 2014, by a British member of ISIS. The whole world was shocked! The West realized that not all enemies of their enemy were their friends. 

A few days later, Alan Henning, a 47-year-old British aid worker, was executed the very same way - beheaded by the same person that killed James Foley. 

I wonder how many Western innocent journalists, just like James Wright Foley, or aid workers, like Alan Henning, would Azov Battalion be allowed to kill before being considered, again, a Terrorist organization… I guess non-Western journalists don’t count, anyway, and Russian ethnics from Ukraine are not to be considered… Just by being Russian means they are neither important nor victims, even if brutally tortured and killed, so, as far as they are concerned, Azov Special Operations Detachment has carte blanche… 

If there are images of Russian ethnics from Ukraine being tortured, raped, or killed by members of the Azov Battalion, nobody can watch, simply because European officials decided that we should not watch Russia Today or read news from Russian agencies in order to avoid anything that could threaten Europe’s citizens’ support for Mr. Zelensky.

You can call a donkey a “tiger” or a hyena a “lion”, just as you can call Al Nusra, Daesh, and the Azov Battalion- “freedom fighters” or “patriots”, but, no matter what you call them… a donkey will be just a hard-working animal, not so fierce, and the hyena will always be a coward, just as Al Nusra, Daesh, and the Azov Special Operations Detachment will remain just terrorist groups, as US Congress had once classified them, even if some guys on TV repeat 100 or 1000 times a lie. Of course, when you keep repeating a lie, some people, the not-so-bright ones, will start believing! That is what bleaching history was created for!