‘100% Gentle Azovization’
Neo-Nazis train Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade, and top instructor calls Ukrainians slaves that must be weaponized
“War makes fascists of us all.” Paul Verhoeven, the director of Starship Troopers (1997), said this in an interview about his cult-classic film, which satirized a “fascist utopia,” based on a 1959 novel that some described as actually fascist. For Rostyslav Nyzytskyi, a captain in the Azov Brigade with the call-sign “Polack,” Starship Troopers is one of his favorite books: “The essence of this little work will always be immense to me. But briefly … the state belongs to the strongest.” Only military veterans can vote and hold public office. As for the Ukrainian state, “I want to take her, she belongs to me, she’s mine. I have to take it away from everyone who isn’t me.”
A few days earlier in May 2024, Nyzytskyi said what worries him are the modern-day “esirs” (a Turkish word for a slave, captive, or prisoner). This is apparently what he pejoratively calls Ukrainians unwilling to fight, who are increasingly rounded up by force and sent to the front with little to no training. Meanwhile, “Russia has long been wiping us out with its janissaries,” referring to the elite slave-soldiers of the Ottoman empire. When it comes to Ukraine’s slave-soldiers, “Everything depends on us, whether we can turn them into janissaries … Herd esirs, turn them into janissaries, and expose yourselves to less danger, because there are still many esirs, [but] we are almost gone, and the esirs don’t care who they work for or who rebuilds what.”
By “we,” Nyzytskyi apparently meant the “active nationalists” that dived into battle, some of them hoping to reach Valhalla. As the heavily Nazi tattooed pagan Azov veteran “Martyn” said a few days ago, “unconscious” Ukrainians “consider these people to be sick, misguided, and just plain crazy … [but] WE, the ‘fucked up’ nationalists, are the ones who allow our country to remain sovereign.”
It is the unhinged sportsmen, soccer fans, hooligans, etc. who are now in the management of the strongest units of the Armed Forces … so we are improving our skills, bringing ourselves a little bit [closer] to the ideal. To the ideal of a Ukrainian Nationalist!!!
According to “pro-Ukraine” propagandists, by the time that Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation,” the most notorious military unit in Ukraine was already “deNazified,” after years of integration in the National Guard (NGU). Some “experts” even claimed that the NGU Azov Regiment was “depoliticized” to the point of quietly cutting its ties to the neo-Nazi movement led by Azov veterans. There are, of course, many problems with this evidence-free narrative, as readers of this blog know. A big one is the Yevhen Konovalets Military School, which prides itself on uniting the two major wings of the “Azov family”: the NGU Azov Brigade (expanded in 2023), and the 3rd Assault Brigade in the Ukrainian Ground Forces, a more openly neo-Nazi unit which could be dubbed the “Azov Movement Brigade.”
Rostyslav Nyzytskyi is deputy commander of the Yevhen Konovalets Military School (YKMS). As the journalist Leonid Ragozin noted in 2021, the YKMS has “functioned outside Ukraine’s system of military education — one of many reasons to suspect that Azov was [always] highly autonomous and never truly integrated in the armed forces.” That year, Nyzytskyi declared, “The country exists because of US!”
Andriy Biletsky, the commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade and leader of the Azov movement, founded the YKMS in 2016 to train sergeants in the Azov Regiment — according to NATO standards, and not without a proper ideological education. They named the school after the pro-Nazi founder of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which under Konovalets’ leadership “underwent a process of fascistization” and oriented itself toward Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Furthermore, the NGU Azov ideological service, which works with the YKMS, is named after the fascist OUN theorist Mykola Stsiborsky, whose concept of “natiocracy,” promoted by Azov ideologists, was explicitly totalitarian.
YKMS commander Giorgi Kuparashvili, a veteran of the Georgian special forces, is now affiliated with the 3rd Assault Brigade, not the NGU Azov unit. Former YKMS commander Kyrylo Berkal, who led a Nazi pagan ceremony at the Azov Regiment base in 2017, now heads the combat training department of the 3rd Assault Brigade, and might also be a deputy commander of the YKMS. In 2022, they were both “Azovstal defenders.” The NGU Azov unit no longer wishes Andriy Biletsky a happy birthday, but last year Rostyslav Nyzytskyi praised him as a hero of the war, and the YKMS still acknowledges Biletsky as the patriarch of the “Azov family.”
From July to November 2016, Ukrainska Pravda published a series of video “diaries” produced by the press service of the Azov Regiment about the first YMKS sergeant school, which featured at least one speech from Biletsky, around the time that he launched a political party for Azov veterans. Rostyslav Nyzytskyi was among the first class of graduates.
These YKMS videos, embedded in the UP articles, were hosted by an Azov-affiliated channel, “Reconquista” — the pan-European white supremacist movement that Biletsky’s political party, “National Corps,” has tried to build. During the same month that the YKMS school got started, its commander, Giorgi Kuparashvili, represented Georgia at the founding conference of the “Intermarium Support Group,” also organized by the National Corps. According to the journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko, “The advance of the Intermarium is seen by Azov as an integral part of the long-term strategy of Reconquista.”
Some readers might recall that the Georgian YKMS commander led the first Azov delegation to the United States in 2022, which in turn led to a partnership between the YKMS and the “Help Heroes of Ukraine” charity in Detroit. The latter has tagged Rostylsav Nyzytskyi in numerous social media posts about the charity delivering vehicles and other aid to the YKMS and Azov units. Last year, the Detroit-based group sent airsoft guns to the YKMS and announced “from now on, the best guys from each graduating class will receive comprehensive equipment & gear from Help Heroes Of Ukraine.” It was around that time, in September 2023, that Nyzytskyi asked his followers why it should be considered racist for white people to feed bananas to black people. Centuria, the youthful paramilitary arm of the National Corps, “liked” this post.
In October 2023, Rostylsav Nyzytskyi was interviewed by NGU Azov lieutenant Vladyslav Dutchak, call sign “Docent” (Assistant Professor), a middle-aged ideological officer of the NGU Azov “Khorunzha service” named after Mykola Stsiborsky. Dutchak has also been a “lead lecturer” in the Educational Division of the National Corps, which spearheaded the ideological service of the Azov Regiment, and apparently is working to replace Soviet-era “political officers” in the Ukrainian military with nationalist “khorunzhy.” According to 3rd Assault propagandist Oleksii Rains, the ideological service is responsible for “familiarizing” Azov fighters “with the literature of OUN time, and introducing symbols.”
This is a separate unit within Azov that works with personnel. They have broad powers and make sure that the fighters are always highly motivated. The Khorunzha service develops and organizes private mysteries and popularizes rituals among the military. Historically, the term “khorunzhy” dates back to the Zaporozhian Sich. This is how the Cossacks called a person who walked with the flag of the army, a khorugv. One of the key tasks of the Azov khorunzhys is to raise and constantly maintain the morale of the military, just as a flag is raised above the column during a battle. The chevrons of the khorunzhys bear the image of Mykola Sciborsky, a theorist and practitioner who played a key role in shaping the OUN’s ideology by writing the book “Natiocracy” … As of now, not only Azov but also other military formations of the Ukrainian army have their own Khorunzha services.
Among other things, lieutenant “Docent” and captain “Polack” discussed the Yevhen Konovalets Military School. Nyzytskyi said that “we are reorganizing the school,” and “plan to grow to the size of a separate infantry regiment and work for the defense forces.” As he alluded to Azov’s “reform ambitions,” Vladyslav Dutchak added, “Our task is to implement these Azov principles in the field of training soldiers or sergeants … of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Nyzytski said, “Our task is to form the backbone…” For example, he pointed to the 3rd Assault Brigade, which is often said to be an “elite” infantry unit. As they explained, it was formed with the same spirit and principles as the NGU Azov unit.
“And now the presidential brigade,” said Dutchak. In fact, the YKMS has been training soldiers from the Presidential Brigade of Ukraine since last year. “We are trying to raise her in the traditions of Azov,” according to Nyzytski, who said that training this unit is like raising “our most difficult child,” but “the best in the plan, we cherish her more than anything.”
There are some signs of far-right infiltration of this brigade, which is tasked with defending the president and his family. For example, the OUN-M, the oldest faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, has a “UVO” platoon in the presidential brigade, named after the pre-OUN terrorist group led by Yevhen Konovalets. “Russians, get ready, everything will be Azov,” Dutchak said to the camera. “One hundred percent gentle Azovization,” Nyzytski said, smiling at Dutchak.
In December 2023, the state-run National News Agency of Ukraine, or Ukrinform, launched a project on its Youtube channel with the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. The series consisted of interviews with people from the military. Rostylsav Nyzytskyi was one of the first guests. He predicted with 100% certainty that “we will bring a new order to the European world,” and suggested that Ukraine’s special forces will become NATO’s hired guns in other conflicts around the world.
The question here is whether we will survive, but the moment we do, we will bring a new order. We will be dominant, we will be in demand for everything. There will be war in the future, it will just be on the African continent or something else. It will go there because Russia and China are now dominating there, and for Europe and the United States … it’s economics, it’s prestige, you have to dominate the regions… Make PMC [private military companies] and go to Africa, to Turkey to slaughter Muscovites. I don’t think we will get a specific resource there, it’s just a tool of influence.
“Do you have any idea when the war might end?” one of the hosts asked. Rostylsav Nyzytskyi hoped for it to last another two years, because “we need it” to complete the process of transforming Ukraine’s military. That was almost one year ago. Asked how he felt about freezing the conflict, Nyzytskyi said, “It is a defeat. Let there be such a phase, but in my opinion, we at least need a year and a half or two.” In the meantime, 18–20 year olds should join the fight, as he did at that age.
“MacTavish,” one of the top YKMS instructors in the 3rd Assault Brigade, has expressed interest in Dominique Venner (1935–2013), a veteran of the far-right “Secret Army Organization” in France, who founded the white nationalist “Europe-Action” movement. This suggests that the YKMS is still plugged into Azov’s “Reconquista” agenda. About a month ago, “MacTavish” posted something about the challenges of being a military instructor.
This is not an easy job and I will explain why: It’s a huge workload (yes, you won’t be killed at the training ground and you won’t be hunted by FPV [drones]), but in one course of the BZVP [Basic General Military Training], about a thousand recruits will go through your training and you burn out from this monotonous work. You work almost 24/7 because you live the life of a recruit every day, you are with them all the time. You also burn out from the low motivation of people who are now joining the army. You train men who were forcibly taken into the army, guys who tried to cross the Tisza [river], but were caught and sent to the army, you train people who are weak in spirit and body, you see it all the time. And then you send these people to the army and realize that they will go to fight on the frontlines, and you are still waiting for a new batch of recruits to come to the training units.
As Rostylsav Nyzytskyi said last year, “Everything depends on us, whether we can turn [esirs] into janissaries.” Far from being noble protectors of the nation, the Azovites would gladly enslave their “unconscious” compatriots in a totalitarian society, if given the chance.
Last month, the Khorunza service of the 3rd Assault Brigade held a roundtable on military reforms, in particular “cleansing it of the Soviet legacy.” They announced the participation of several military units and directorates, as well as a “NATO country colonel,” and the National Defense University of Ukraine. Several weeks earlier, Vladyslav Dutchak brokered an agreement between the Khorunza Service of the NGU Azov Brigade and the mayor of Kostopil, a small city in western Ukraine, for “strengthening patriotic education for children and young people.”
According to Rostyslav Nyzytskyi’s December 2023 estimate, at least another year of “gentle Azovization” is apparently needed before Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis can fully cash in on a frozen conflict.
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