About 50 fighters from Battalion Azov, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that is now part of Ukraine’s National Guard, gathered on Friday for the cremation ceremony of two fighters who were killed in Moschum, northeast of the Greater Ukraine. Kiev and 35 km from the center of the capital.
One of them, who adopted the nom de guerre Tur, returned to the country after two years working in a company protecting endangered animals in South Africa. “I protect animals because they don’t know how to make war. I make war for them,” he said, as he waited for the bodies of those affected by a bombing to arrive. “It’s not 2014 [em referência à anexação da Crimeia pelos russos], this is another war – we no longer have face-to-face combat. Today the Russians attack us with mortars.”
In announcing the start of his “special military operation”, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited among the reasons for triggering the war the need to “denazify” Ukraine. The existence of the Azov Battalion, created eight years ago to fight against Russian separatists, confirms the presence of neo-Nazis in the country, even though they are not a majority in the army or part of the Ukrainian government.
Tur, 32, says that earlier this year, he did not believe that Russia would actually invade Ukraine. “Putin always knew that Ukrainians are better soldiers than Russians. A Ukrainian soldier can fight ten Russian soldiers and still have a good chance of winning.” An optimist, he is one of an unknown number of front-line fighters, a figure the government keeps secret.
In any case, these soldiers now have modern military equipment supplied by Western countries in their hands to undertake not only defense strategies, but also counterattacks, which has made it possible, so far, in some cities, for Ukrainian forces to maintain their positions.
Information from the British intelligence report released on Friday (25) shows that Ukrainian troops are recapturing cities east of Kiev, and Russian troops, which were trying to take the capital, are retreating. According to Volodymir Borisenko, the mayor of Borispol, where Kiev’s main airport is located, Ukrainian forces regained control of a region between the city and Brovari and advanced, but stopped to avoid the danger the operation would pose to civilians.
On another front, northwest of Kiev, the clashes take place amid ruins left by the fighting of recent weeks. In Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, Ukrainian troops try to encircle the Russians.
In the Kiev cemetery, as the priest read the farewell sermon, the sound of artillery explosions that seemed to be fired from within the urban area of ​​the capital, from somewhere very close to where the two bodies were to be cremated, was heard — and their effects, felt in the form of earthquakes in the earth.
Just over two meters tall, strong without being muscular, with very red hair and beard, the Ukrainian fighter, in addition to having adopted the name Tur, also follows a look inspired by Thor, god of thunder in Norse mythology, adored by many other members of the Ukrainian extreme right.
One of Azov’s recruitment strategies is to look for people like Tur, fascinated by the military world, but who at some point were prevented from pursuing a career for physical, social and even psychological reasons. Often, ideological conviction is forged over time in combat zones.
At the chapel door, the two coffins, one open and the other sealed, were exposed to combatants and family members of the dead youth. In front of the ballot boxes, covered with the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine decorated with the emblem of the Azov Battalion, the “Wolfsangel”, a German heraldic symbol inspired by medieval wolf hunting traps, five soldiers lined up and fired volleys of gunfire afterwards. of a commander uttering the words “Slava Ukaini” – Glory to Ukraine.
The “Wolfsangel” was used extensively by the Nazi SS, including their second combat division.
