ADL refuses to call Ukraine-Pentagon Azov Battalion a "neo-Nazi" unit

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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international Jewish NGO, refused to condemn the Pentagon's honoring of a veteran of the Azov Battalion who dons Nazi-inspired tattoos.

An email dated November 9 sent by the ADL to The Grayzone, an investigative journalist website, stressed that it does not view the Azov as the “far-right group it once was.”

Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” the group is a pack of neo-Nazis working with the US-backed Ukrainian military. 

It used to be condemned and labeled with Nazism all over it by Western media and the human rights industry - until the war in Ukraine in February 2022. Azov became the Ukrainian military’s defense of Mariupol, and Western media became suddenly inspired to rebrand Azov as a "misunderstood freedom fighter" and use the Kremlin as the anti-thesis.

The ADL seemed to turn a blind eye when Azov used civilians as human shields and executed those who tried to escape. Back in March, the ADL recognized the unit in a report it published, that white nationalists view Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.” 

In August, Russia's Supreme Court designated Ukraine's Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization.

Email response from the ADL 

After The Grayzone provided the ADL with evidence that Pentagon was harboring a neo-Nazi group, the ADL responded, and offered this defense instead: “When it was created in 2014, the Azov Brigade was a private military group fighting the then annexation of Crimea. During this period, it was a group that had a clear far-right influence.

"In late 2014, the group was brought in as a part of the Ukrainian National Guard and renamed the Azov Regiment. When this happened, the Ukrainian government investigated the group and claims to have expelled it of these far-right members.

"It was also during this time that its founder Andriy Biletsky left AZOV and has since worked in the greater Azov movement, including founding a far-right political party, the National Corps. In essence, there was a split between the military unit AZOV and the political goals of its founding members. Of course, this is not to say that they have successfully removed all far-right elements from their ranks, but our Center on Extremism also does not see Azov Regime as the far-right group it once was.”

Read more: Japan removes Azov Battalion neo-Nazi designation

In the same email, the ADL claimed that “the military unit AZOV and the political goals of its founding members split” in 2014, stressing that Biletsky “left Azov and has since worked in the great Azov movement, including founding a far-right political party, the National Corps.” However, the ADL noted no such “split” in 2019 when they labeled the National Corps as the “political wing of Azov.” 

This Ukrainian extremist group, called The Azov Battalion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Our latest report on international white supremacy details how they try to connect with like-minded extremists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbN https://t.co/gGHMM8L46k

— ADL (@ADL) September 23, 2019

A researcher for the US government-sponsored Bellingcat outlet explained in the NATO-affiliated Atlantic Council in 2020 that Azov “routinely hosts Biletsky (and other former commanders) at its bases and welcomes his participation in ceremonies, greeting him as a leader.”

"Boneface" confessions

According to The Grayzone, an arrest warrant this past November was issued by Italian authorities for Azov fighter Anton Radomsky, on account of planning an attack against a shopping mall near Naples.

An American who fought with Azov in Mariupol named Justin claimed in an interview in October that “Azov Battalion still has a lot of its neo-Nazi presence,” adding that his commander was a “f***** Nazi” who had Adolf Hitler as his desktop background. He further added that he and other soldiers would greet each other with Sieg heil salutes.

Another interview in November featuring an American Azov volunteer named Kent “Boneface” McLellan further stated the neo-Nazi reality. “Boneface” was caught through film by an undercover government informant partaking in paramilitary training with the American Front neo-Nazi unit. According to prosecutors, the group was planning “to kill Jews, immigrants, and other minorities.” 

"Boneface" previously confessed to taking photos of Ukrainian fighters “posing with the corpses of a lynched pregnant woman and a man they said was her husband” in a video called “Kikes get the rope.” 

“There is a ton of liberal whitewashing when it comes to Fascists in Ukraine,” "Boneface" added, as he threw topics such as: “Nazis don’t exist”; “Azov battalion and Azov regiment are different”; “They took all the Nazis out of Azov.”

“I speak out against the whitewashing of Nationalists by the media,” he added. “I use Twitter to mainly troll the (western) left, as they believe Ukraine[‘s] military isn’t full of nationalist ideals.”

Read next: US fears Azov terrorists inhuman acts will go public: Russian embassy