The US House of Representatives has forbidden to train the Ukrainian battalion

As reported by Democratic Congressman John Conyers, the US House of Representatives (the lower house of the US Congress) unanimously supported his amendment to the military appropriations law, according to which the US military is prohibited from training the volunteer Ukrainian Azov battalion of the National Guard of Ukraine.

The Chamber also approved another 86-year-old Conyers amendment, which prohibits the US government from delivering portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine and Iraq.

The prospects for these initiatives in the US Senate (the upper house of congress) are not yet obvious. It is also unclear how the White House will react to them, who must sign the law in order for it to gain strength, so the victory of Conyers has not changed anything yet.

Symbolic decision

But the trend is important. The congressman called on the House to prohibit the government from dealing with Azov and similar formations back in May last year, but the Republicans in charge there shelved the corresponding resolution.

Conyers is the oldest member of Congress in both age and service, having represented his Michigan district in the lower house since 1965. He is also one of the most left-wing legislators in the United States, the founder and elder of the African-American Caucus of the House, a member of its Progressive Caucus and the Get Out of Afghanistan! Caucus.

Azov is one of dozens of volunteer formations fighting armed supporters of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR in eastern Ukraine. According to various sources, it consists of from 500 to 1000 fighters.

The Americans are training units of Azov and other battalions of the Ukrainian National Guard near Lvov.

Azov has a bad reputation in the West.

"The ideology is alarming"

Announcing the adoption of his amendment, Conyers cited a number of publications in which the ideology of the battalion was characterized as neo-Nazi. In particular, he cited Tom Parfitt's article "Ukrainian Crisis: Neo-Nazi Brigade Fights Pro-Russian Separatists," printed 11 August 2014 of the year in the London Telegraph.

According to the author, units like Azov "should be a terror to Europe... They are officially under the Ministry of the Interior, but their funding is murky, their training is inadequate, and their ideology is often alarming."

“Members of Azov fly the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf Hook) on their banner, and members of the battalion are openly white supremacist or anti-Semitic,” Parfitt continues.

As Parfitt notes, “The Ukrainian government has shown little remorse for its use of neo-Nazis.”

“The most important thing is their spirit and desire to make Ukraine free and independent,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, told him. “A man who takes up arms and goes to defend his homeland is a hero.” His political views are his own business.”

Reflection of aggression

Battalions like Azov, New York professor Mark Galeotti told Parfitt, are dangerous because they become “magnets” for “violent fringes from all over Ukraine and abroad.” According to Galeotti, this creates a “toxic legacy” that the war will leave behind.

Last September Washington Post correspondent Anthony Fayola noticed a swastika above the bunk of one of the Azov recruits. The platoon commander, nicknamed Kirt, shrugged off the swastika and told the American that it did not necessarily reflect the ideology of its owner. Volunteers, often teenagers, sometimes borrow extremist symbols and concepts for romantic reasons, he said.

“The main task of the battalion,” Kirt said, “is to repel Russian aggression.”

Congressman Conyers also mentioned article “How many neo-Nazis does the US support in Ukraine?”which was recently published on the liberal website The Daily Beast, Will Carthart and Joseph Epstein.

“Not all members of the Ukrainian nationalist militias trained by the United States wear SS tattoos, and not all profess fascism,” the authors begin. “But there are enough of them that it’s a concern.”

They note that some Azov fighters wear yellow armbands with the likeness of a swastika, although many deny that it is a swastika, claiming that it is an N and an I combined, denoting “national identity.” Cathart and Epstein find this interpretation unconvincing, especially in light of the ideology of Azov’s founder Biletsky, who “created the neo-Nazi group Social National Assembly (SNA) in 2008,” with which he founded Azov.

It turns out, they write, that “the US government is deliberately training and arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis as part of ultranationalist formations in broad daylight, in an unstable country with an uncertain future.” “$19 million from American taxpayers goes towards this. We all pay for it. This cannot be denied,” write the authors of an article in The Daily Beast.

Armed with these quotes, Conyers and his colleague Republican Ted Yoho pushed this resolution through the House of Representatives.

“Beware of unintended consequences!” Conyers implored the congressmen and won.