An article in The New York Times on June 6 is titled “Kyiv Walks Fine Line As Fighters Embrace Use of Nazi Symbols.” 

The article states that “the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a solder standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an energy worker posing in front of a truck.

“In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.”

The article says that such symbols appear “regularly on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line…”

One of these symbols is a skull-and crossbones Totenkopf (Death Head) patch worn by Nazi concentration camp guards. Another is a symbol known as the Black Sun, also known as a Sonnenrad, that appeared in the castle of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi general and SS director. The Black Sun is popular among neo-Nazies and white supremacists internationally.

The article says:

Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, LGBTQ movements and ethnic minorities.

But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right is marginalized politically.

Gibbons-Neff, Thomas, The New York Times, June 5, 2023 (updated June 7, 2023)

A correction to the Times summary is necessary, because it leaves out the Ukraine coup and civil war. Without going into all the details: In 2014 the elected Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovich, was overthrown in a coup supported by the United States, and these far-right groups, who became known as the Right Sector. The government that took over Ukraine was Ukrainian nationalist and launched a civil war against Ukrainian Russians in the east of the country – a civil war that has lasted until today.

The Right Sector formed the Azov Brigade, which became the spearhead of the Ukrainian military, fighting not Russia as the Times said, but the Ukrainian Russians in the east, up until 2022.

The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a reaction to the stated intention of the new government to join NATO, which would have meant that the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, Crimea, would have fallen into NATO’s hands. The population of Crimea remains largely Russian and supports the annexation.*

After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between Ukraine and Russia were not hostile. Ukraine agreed that Russia would maintain its naval base at Sevastopol, its only base on the Black Sea, which leads to the Mediterranean. Ukraine has other bases on the Black Sea.

In the civil war the new Ukrainian nationalist government was backed by the West, and Russia backed the Russian speakers in the east. The civil war eventually became a stalemate in the Donbas region.

After Russia entered the war in 2022, Russian troops moved into the Donbas region and elsewhere in the south and east. It is true that since then the Azov Brigade and other far-right groups are fighting Russian soldiers.

It was part of the Azov Brigade that held out during the Russian siege of the southern city of Mariupol, before Russia eventually took control of the city. The Times article reports that the Azov Brigade was “celebrated” in Ukraine as a result.

The article also says, “In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II….

“The New York Times asked the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on April 27 about the tweet. Several hours later, the post was deleted. ‘After studying this case, we came to the conclusion that this logo can be interpreted ambiguously,’ the ministry said in a statement.

“The soldier in the photograph was part of a volunteer unit called the Da Vinci Wolves, which started as part of the paramilitary wing of Ukraine’s Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing organizations and political parties ….

“At least five other photographs on the Wolves’ Instagram and Facebook pages feature their soldiers wearing Nazi-syle patches, including the Totenkopf.”

The June 6 Times article also reported, “In November [2022], during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press official wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced ‘Reich’). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press official present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.”

The Times article goes out of its way to interpret these and other incidents as merely expressions of Ukrainian nationalism against Russia. These soldiers aren’t wearing Nazi symbols because they are neo-Nazis, but because they are patriots, the Times implies.

“Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as divisive as they are persistent, and not just in Ukraine. In the American South, some have insisted that today, the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not its history of racism and succession,” the article says.

But who in the U.S. “insists” that? Only white racists.

The article even adds, “The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co-opted by the Nazis.” But this tells us nothing about why Ukrainian soldiers wear Nazi symbols.

There is a similar whitewash concerning the growing cult of Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. Bandera was a fascist and antisemite. He was the leader of one of factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists that joined the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in World War II.

Statues of Bandera have sprung up in recent years in western Ukraine (not the east). The largest is in Lviv, seven meters high. There are, so far, statues of Bandera in 40 towns and cities, with other municipalities considering installing them. The far right groups regularly celebrate his birthday.

The June 6 article says, “Factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty.”

This is a gross whitewash. Yes, they were ultranationalists and wanted Ukrainian sovereignty, and a fascist Ukraine. Bandera and his ilk were quite open that this was their goal.

“Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians…” the article admits.

“Some Ukrainians joined Nazi military units like the Waffen-SS Galizien. The emblem of the group, which was led by German officers, was a sky-blue patch showing a lion and three crowns. The unit took part in a massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944 ….

“Today, as a new generation fights against Russian occupation, many Ukrainians see the war as a continuation of the struggle for independence during and immediately after World War II. Symbols like the flag associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Galzien patch have become emblems of anti-Russian resistance and national pride.”

These “many Ukrainians”, according to the Times account, must be in the dark about the aim of the Ukrainian fascists in World War II – a fascist Ukraine.

It should be noted that the information in the Times article about Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi patches has not been taken up by most of the mass media, and the U.S. pubic is largely unaware of this. Also, the Times has not taken this up again since.

*A short comment on Crimea

Crimea had been part of the Turkey-centered Ottoman Empire, until it was captured by Russia in the late 1700s, under Tsarina Catherine the Great.

After the Russian Revolution and civil war, Ukraine became the Ukrainian SSR under the Bolsheviks’ policy of self-determination for the nations oppressed by Tsarist Russia. Putin attacks the Bolsheviks and Lenin for this policy.

Crimea became part of the Russian SSR at the time because its population were Russians (apart from the Tatars, a remnant of the Ottoman Empire).

Crimea was part of Russia since the late 1700s until the mid-1950s, when it was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet Premier Khrushchev for administrative reasons. This was hardly noted by the rest of the world, since Crimea and its naval base remained part of the Soviet Union.