Where do you see those pictures? I follow some pro-Russian propaganda groups on Telegram just to see the other side of the argument and even they don't seem to have such pictures.

A small side-story: In one of those groups I told them I am Turkish (as they really kindly asked the non-Russians following the group to state their reasons for doing so) and out of nowhere they went 15 mins about how disgusting my race is and when I asked how is that different than the behavior of alleged nazis in Ukraine, they banned me :)

A lot of them on Reddit, they even go through the trouble of censoring the flags before they post them.

I'm not a reddit aficionado so I googled "reddit ukraine", which landed me on "r/ukraine" and I went through the first page. The only nazi-like symbol is worn by a bear depicted as a caricature of Russia, on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/xfqauu/go_away_rus...

How do I see "a lot of them"?

I believe they're referring to this removed thread that was on the Reddit frontpage 2-3 days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/xdgv20/chechen_and_uk...

The thread has over 33k upvotes but has since then been removed by its author. You can find the original image online by looking up the url on webarchives.

The image shows mercenary fighters holding flags in front of a landmark. There are two Chechen flags, one flag depicting a skull associated with a certain ideology and one censored flag.

Search "Nazi patch Ukraine" or some variation on Twitter. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there's hundreds of examples - many of them posted by the BBC, Reuters, or Zelensky himself.

A lot of them are taken out of context see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhg8AXXHoRE

I did find some photos of supposedly nazi-symbol-wearing Ukrainian solders but I didn't recognize the symbol before reading the explanation, maybe they didn't too?

Also, I found some photos of Russian soldiers wearing such symbols too:

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fighter-neo-nazi-symb...

If you want to look more into the Russian equivalent of those symbol-wearing soldiers, the Russian soldier in the second link also wears a patch belonging to the 'Rusich DShRG' group

> Ukraine [...] seems to be overrun with explicitly neo nazi groups

So is the US. Rising fascism is simply the state of the world right now.

To pick the first story at the top of my feed right now: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/us/jan-6-camp-auschwitz-h...

In the US you don't have regiments with swastikas on their flags. In Ukraine you do.

The US has the luxury of not being invaded by a country 3x as big. Ukraine doesn't really have the luxury of picking and choosing who is allowed to defend.

Sure but to an external observer it matters, especially if my country is explicitly supporting their cause.

Why does it matter? I'm also an external observer in a country that's supporting to Ukraine but I recognise the reality that Azov is an unfortunate necessity created by multiple Russian invasions.

How though? Ukrainians were in the same boat as the polish as undesirables under nazism so I don’t see why it would be a necessity.

It was a pragmatic necessity for Ukraine's government to allow them to fight once they were created because of the size differential. Ukraine's government didn't create them.

Had the Nazis been purged between 2014 and today Russia would have most likely not invaded.

Least we forget that during that period Nazi death squads killed more people in the break away regions than have so far died in this war. The last time US citizens were killed abroad in large numbers by the army of another country was the Alamo and we still remember it.

You obviously don't like nazis but you openly suggest "purging" humans.

I’m going to be honest, Nazis don’t feel like people worth having around and so subhuman in many ways. A bloodthirsty person isn’t a human, it’s a monster that needs to be… purged, like we do with common murderous criminals. Yes, I’m actively campaigning for the lynching of Nazis.

Nazis were chanting along the same lines against Jews. I don't want to believe you really mean what you are saying. Spreading hate on the internet is much removed from really wanting to kill humans and that's also much removed from being able to actually do it.

The problem isn't really purging Nazis per se, it's the sleight of hand that Russian propagandists use at the last minute to switch "Nazis" with "Ukrainians" or "Ukrainian government".

In the abstract, sure, we all want to purge Nazis. But not if you're saying Nazis == Ukrainians. If you defined Nazis to mean Putin's Wagner Group (headed by a guy with SS tattoo), then sure, I'd agree.

What's so cynical about all this is how they've undermined our language and our ability to talk about fascism (as exemplified by modern Russia) by coopting the linguistic tools that we use (the word Nazi) to do so. It's depressingly effective propaganda.

Ukraine is the only country in the world to have _literal_ nazi swastikas on regimental flags.

Somehow the same people who thought the OK symbol was a secret white supremacist dog whistle are now coming out of the wood work saying that akshually it's only 40% of the Ukrainian army that has Nazi tattoos and it's fine.

It's nowhere near 40% of the Ukrainian army. It's more like somewhere between 20%-100% of Azov, which themselves are less than 1% of the Ukrainian army.

And as we've already been through, Ukraine has no ability to pick and choose who is allowed to defend them from multiple Russian invasions. They are significantly smaller. Such luxuries only apply to strong countries that aren't being invaded. You keep dishonestly comparing Ukraine (small country being invaded) to the US (country not being invaded).

If Ukraine wasn't under constant threat of invasion from Russia, then I'd be the first to criticize their decision making around Azov.

No, your first sentence presumes that the Kremlin propaganda is truthful. Putin's ambitions have nothing to do with neo-Nazis in Ukraine, as his own writings over many years reveal. It's imperial ambition.

Ukraine was smart not to get rid of Azov. Putin invaded once for made up reasons, no reason to think he won't do it again. Ukraine's understanding of fascist Russia's true self was correct.

Sure, but if they had killed a few hundred Nazis 14,000 civilians wouldn't have been killed by Nazis.

That sounds like a win no matter what.

Are you saying 14,000 civilians were killed by neo-Nazis in the Donbas? Do you have a source for that?

It’s not the same, it’s very, very explicit in Ukraine.

Russians have no issues with Nazis - it’s propaganda. Eastern Europe has a far right problem; it isn’t unique to any country.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group#Rusich_unit

The right wing "ultranationalist" party Svoboda (In electoral alliance with National Corps, Right Sector, Ukrainian Volunteer Army (Azov), Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists) managed to get 2.15% of the votes at the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

It's pretty difficult for me to see how Ukraine can be "overrun with explicitly neo nazi groups" with that amount of support for their right-wing parties.

Unless of course you live in Russia's fantasy world where a Jewish president can be a neo-nazi

> Unless of course you live in Russia's fantasy world where a Jewish president can be a neo-nazi

Without arguing about the rest of the comment, Russian narrative sees Nazis as a group that want to exterminate Russians, based on what actual Nazis in WW2 did when they attacked. And this "Jewish president" who banned Russian language, banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people and sent an army to punish the rebellion in Donbas fits the Russian definition of Nazi pretty well.

> who banned Russian language

That's an invention by Sergey Lavrov. Of course Ukraine didn't ban the native language of 30% of it's population.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/08/sergey-lav...

> banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people

Ukraine did in fact ban pro-Russian parties. While I must admit I don't particularly like the idea of banning any parties in a democracy, it is understandable why you would ban parties and organizations supporting the enemy while you are at war.

This is, however, a long shot from the claim the he banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people.

Per Wikipedia, the 2019 law says "All schools and universities are required to teach in Ukrainian". I don't know how Politifact managed to find the opposite of that statement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Ana...

On the other hand, a president who natively speaks Russian himself who respected the ceasefire with the Russian-administered "independent" republics and took a more dovish stance than his predecessor doesn't seem like someone who is obviously on the cusp of exterminating Russians. Putin's armies killed far more Russian-Ukranians than even the worst Ukrainian racists could have managed.

There is a grain of truth in your statement though: Russian narrative does define Nazis differently from the rest of the world (and indeed, from Hitler). It defines everyone that doesn't wish to be subjugated by Russia as Nazis.

It's interesting because if you watch one of the interviews with Azov members, this is how they see themselves, as well. They adopt the Nazi aesthetic and ideology not because a hatred of Jews, but a hatred of Russians, and rejection of Russian culture. They look at the battle of Stalingrad and say 1 million wasn't nearly enough, and call modern Russia a communist state. It's really wild to hear.

If you spend a fair amount of time living in Ukraine, you're unlikely to encounter or notice Neo Nazi groups. They certainly do exist and you'll see a swastika spray-painted on abandoned buildings here and there. You can probably find and join a Neo Nazi group more easily than you could in the West, sure.

But generally people don't seem to have much problem with Jews (at least publicly). Middle-aged people and older don't like homosexuals, but the younger generation is totally LGBQ-friendly, albeit not sure about 'T'.

Black people aren't revered or hated- if anything they're so rare that they're either a subject of curiosity or ignored when walking by on the street.

WW2 never left the public consciousness. Older people remember cowering from Nazis and seniors remember fighting them.

It's not "overrun" with Neo Nazi groups. Ya they exist though, but they don't seem to have much sway if any at all.

Antisemitism is significantly higher in Russia than Ukraine according to polling.

Where are you seeing this? Genuinely asking because I always thought that the whole ukraine neo-nazi thing was entirely made up

It’s no more or less made up then the white supremacist narrative in the US. Yes they are real, yes you can fill a football stadium with them,no they are not even a noticeable percent of the population thanks to how large both counties are. This makes it easy to fill a tv screen with Nazis and sell whatever narrative you want.

It's real, but it's only used for its anti-Russia symbolism. It's my understanding that they don't actually adhere to other parts of the ideology.

My understanding was that they do have a neo-Nazi militia that was incorporated into the official army, and they made at least some effort to clean them up a bit, after that. This happened because the militia rose up and started having significant success against the Russians in 2014 while the Ukrainian army was struggling, so there was a "the enemy of my enemy..." aspect. Whether they have any sway over, say, policy, I do not know.

> Whether they have any sway over, say, policy, I do not know.

Far-right political parties only got ~2% of the votes in elections. Not enough for even a single seat in Parliament.

If there still are any Nazis in Ukraine, their influence is much smaller than the far-right factions in Poland or France.

"At least from the pictures I'm seeing". There you have it folks, pictures. Ukraine with their centrist democratically elected leader and lowest amount of neo-nazism in the region compared to all their neighbors according to Pew polling is actually a fascist country justifiably being taken out by Putin's Russia, a mafia dictatorship who promotes known Nazis to high positions (such as the founder of Wagner who has SS tattoos on his neck).

It's so ironic that this thread about purported Ukrainian propaganda is so thick with Kremlin propaganda.

For real. Criticize the British monarchy on hn? Verbotin. Spread Kremlin propaganda? Just part of a "curious discussion".

^this commenter is an example of a pro-russian troll and /or bot

Yep, either someone pushing propaganda, or someone who has ate it all and is regurgitating it.

The problem with them taking each other out is the millions of innocents they’d kill along the way.

The only good outcome is a peace agreement.

Unfortunately that was tried post Crimea and didn't work.

True, sadly the Ukranian state refused to uphold the Minsk agreements guaranteeing regional autonomy to the Donbas. Instead, they kept bombing the region.

> I hate Putin and his regime in Russia right now but

I'm not saying you are one, but this opening "I hate Putin/Russia/etc. but..." is typical opening line of Kremlin trolls.