(CNN Español) — Ukrainian authorities they said this Friday that around 300 people were killed in Russia’s attack on a theater in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city besieged by the Russians in the framework of the war that devastates the country.
But Moscow reacted in the face of the tragedy, detaching his responsibility: he affirmed that the Azov Battalion –also known as the Azov Regiment–, the main presence of the Ukrainian army in Mariupol, was the one that destroyed the theater, without offering evidence or explanations.
“The Russians already lie, [diciendo] that the headquarters of the Azov Regiment was there. But they themselves know perfectly well that there were only civilians,” said last week Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Ukrainian Donetsk regional administration, on Facebook.
Russia had already charged against the Azov Battalion days before, when Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrvov said what the bombed out Maternal Hospital in Mariupol it was “occupied by militants from the Azov Battalion and other radicals”, again without offering evidence.
Soldiers from the Azov Battalion pray in Kharkiv, on March 11, 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Credit: SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images)
But what exactly is the Azov Battalion and why is Russia, which claims to have invaded Ukraine in part to “de-Nazify” do you usually mention them?
The Azov Battalion started as a volunteer militia linked to far-right ideologies before joining a National Guard unit in 2014, in the context of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent civil war between Ukrainian forces and rebels raised in Donbas with support from Russia, in which they fight for Kyiv.
According to the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University (CISAC, in English), the Azov Battalion “promotes Ukrainian nationalism and neo-Nazism through its paramilitary organization National Militia and its political wing National Corps,” led by the group’s founder Andriy Biletsky.
Veterans of the Azov Battalion, who participated in the war with Russian-backed separatists, during the “No Surrender” rally in Kyiv in 2020. (Credit: by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
While the investigative journalistic group Bellingcat noted in 2020 that “individuals in the Azov movement are openly hostile to democracy, but friends of Nazism and admirers of far-right terrorists.”
And the Sofan Center, remarked in 2019 that “the Azov Battalion emerges as a critical node in the violent far-right transnational movement.”
In fact, the group has been caught recruiting in France and, it is believed, in Brazil.
In its Web pagethe Azov Battalion rejects any political links and maintains that the unit was created in 2014 “to fight against Russian terrorism”, and that it is part of the structure of the National Guard, subordinate to the government and the Constitution of Ukraine.
The first congress of the new “National Corps” political party, created from members of the Azov Battalion, in Kyiv on October 14, 2016. (Credit: GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The Azov Battalion was created as a militia in March 2014, in agreement with CISAC, and payment notoriety in June of that year when he participated in the recovery of the city of Mariupol, then in the hands of rebels. Now, in the war unleashed by Russia on February 24, they are fighting once again in Mariupol –on the shores of the Sea of Azov–, this time resisting the Russian attack.
Its extremist ideology has led to Facebook normally ban laudatory content from the group. However, since the beginning of the war this ban was lifted by Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
Joe Osborne, spokesman for Meta, said earlier that the company was “for the time being making a small exception to praise the Azov Battalion strictly in the context of the defense of Ukraine, or in its role as part of the National Guard of Ukraine.”
With information from Andrew Carey, Olga Voitovych, Tim Lister, Lev Golinkin, Timothy Fadek, Archyde.com, and Rishi Iyengar.