L’Ucraina, la “denazificazione” (secondo i russi) e il battaglione Azov, debunkati in nove minuti da Ros Atkins

Mi sono ripromesso di tenermi fuori dal teatrino dei complottismi intorno all'invasione russa dell’Ucraina, ma faccio un’eccezione per questo servizio di Ros Atkins, della BBC, che spiega e smonta bene la polemica artificiosa sul presunto neonazismo che, secondo i russi, dominerebbe in Ucraina e in particolare nel cosiddetto “battaglione Azov". Notate come si fa a comunicare bene, con parole nette, dati concreti, fonti esperte, toni pacati e soprattutto difesa della realtà pura e semplice, senza troppi giri di parole. Nove minuti che valgono novanta minuti di qualunque logorroico talk-show con ospiti chiamati a creare polemica e battibecco invece di informare.

You’ll have seen the multiple false claims that Putin and his supporters are making about ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine. We’ve looked at them in detail. pic.twitter.com/vERMtStdhI

— Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) March 25, 2022

È disponibile, con sottotitoli, anche su Youtube:

Questa è la trascrizione dei sottotitoli e del parlato. Se a qualcuno interessa, ne preparo una traduzione in italiano.

ATKINS: Vladimir Putin has given several reasons for his invasion of Ukraine. This is one of them.

PUTIN: We will be aiming at demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.

ATKINS:  At a recent Putin rally, a banner declared “for a world without Nazism” and Putin has described a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, who settled in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage”. But Russia's claims about Nazis in Ukraine are a mix of falsehoods and distortions. For a start, Ukrainians are not being held hostage by Nazis. Their president’s Volodymyr Zelensky; he's Jewish, he has relatives who died in the Holocaust and he's president because he won 73% of the vote in 2019. The main far-right candidate reached 1.6% and that result is part of a broader shift. In the 2012 parliamentary election, the main far-right party won 10%. In 2014 it was 6%; in 2019 it was 2%. No far-right groups have any formal political power in Ukraine and based on polling and results, the far right's much less popular in Ukraine than, for example, the leader of the far-right in France, Marine Le Pen. Far-right groups, though, do exist in Ukraine and Russia's focus on them is not new.

IZABELLA TAVAROVKSY (Wilson Center): The word “de-Nazify”, the idea that Ukraine has been overrun by the Nazis, is something that Russian propaganda has been talking about for eight years, since the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. 

ATKINS: Ukraine wasn't and isn't being overrun by Nazis. But what happened eight years ago is relevant here. That's because in late 2013, under pressure from Putin, Ukraine's then president Victor Yanukovych backed out of a cooperation deal with the EU. Huge protests followed, as would a crackdown. In time, Yanukovych would flee to Russia. This was a challenge to Putin's ability to influence Ukraine, and he retaliated. First, Russia annexed Crimea; then it backed separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine. And this is where the story connects back to the far right, because in 2014 the Ukrainian military was much smaller than it is now. It was struggling, and brigades of volunteers joined the fight against the separatists. Some of them had far-right elements. The most high profile was this one: the Azov battalion. It was set up by this man, Andre Baletsky, who has a history of racist and anti-semitic views and in 2014 the BBC's Steve Rosenberg spoke to him.

ROSENBERG: Much has been written about Azov. About it being ultranationalist and even neo-Nazi. What is Azov's ideology?

BALETSKY: Yes, we’re nationalists. We’ve never hidden that. Our whole ideology is in our symbol. It’s a combination of the letters I and N. It means “Idea of the Nation”.

ATKINS: This is the Azov emblem being shown to Steve there. It's a pagan symbol known as “Wolfsangel”, and a version of it was used by some SS units in Nazi Germany. Andreas Umland is an expert on Ukrainian nationalism. He's looked at this, writing “The Wolfsangel has far-right connotations... but it's not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine.” That may be, but back in 2015 Azov acknowledged that some of its fighters held Nazi views. A spokesperson told USA Today that only 10 to 20 percent of the group's members are Nazis, and he sought to make a distinction using one fighter as an example. “I know Alex is a Nazi”, he said, “but it's his personal ideology, it has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov”. Now the degree of Nazi sentiment in Azov is impossible to verify, but this 2015 quote is relevant, because by this time Azov had become part of Ukraine's National Guard. It was under government command, and there was one main reason for that happening.

KACPER REKAWEK (University of Oslo): We have to be honest, they were just good fighters in 2014, and they seem to be pretty good fighters now in Mariupol. That's why they were taken on the books.

ATKINS: And in 2014, with Russia backing separatists, urgent military considerations trumped all others. Ukraine was under attack and its then president Petro Poroshenko called Azov “our best warriors”. But when in 2015 he was asked by the BBC about the group's far-right links, his reply was blunt.

POROSHENKO: Please, don't listen to Russian propaganda.

ATKINS: Russia has used Azov in its propaganda for years, and as we assess claims about Azov's role in Ukraine, context is vital here. Ukraine's armed forces total 250,000 plus 50,000 National Guard. Azov is part of the National Guard, with around a thousand volunteer fighters. It's a tiny fraction of the Ukrainian military. It's also not the same force as it was in 2014. 

ADRIEN NONJON (National Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilizations): Azov opened its recruitment to the whole of Ukrainian society and eventually this radical core was drowned out by the mass of newcomers who joined the regiment because it was an elite unit.

ATKINS: And while the membership, was evolving the founder also left to start a new far-right political party. A party which has failed to achieve any electoral success. But the Azov regiment that he left behind is high-profile and mainstream. This is the view of the Ukrainian government.

ANTON HERASHCHENKO (Adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister): The only Nazi elements we have on the territory of Ukraine now are the Russian fascist army.

ATKINS: In the last few days, President Zelensky announced that Azov's commander in Mariupol will receive the highest national military award. But despite this acclaim, despite the evolving membership, questions about neo-Nazi links remain. In January, Buzzfeed's Christopher Miller reported that he'd seen an Azov veteran wearing white supremacists and Nazi symbols. There is, though, no evidence such sentiment is widespread. Here's Vitaliy Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring.

SHEVCHENKO: I was looking at the Azov battalion's social media activity and its website and all they talk about is fighting the Russian forces, and there's very little in terms of extremist, anti-migrant or xenophobic rhetoric there.

ATKINS: And so it is this Azov regiment that is part of Ukraine's resistance, and just as in 2014 its focus is the Donbass region that includes the two breakaway republics and the city of Mariupol. It is close to the Sea of Azov which gives the regiment its name. It's also where Azov made its name. Back in 2014, Azov successfully defended the city. As Mariupol is bombarded by the Russians now, alongside other Ukrainian forces, it's trying to do so again. And Azov's presence in Mariupol once more makes it central to Russia's false narratives. You'll remember the horror of Russia bombing a maternity hospital in the city. Afterwards the Russians said this.

SERGEI LAVROV (Russian Foreign Minister): At the UN Security Council, facts were proffered by our delegation, saying that the maternity hospital had been taken over by Azov battalion and other radicals.

ATKINS: But there's no evidence Azov were based there; no evidence it was a military facility. Then there's Russia's attack on a theater in Mariupol that was sheltering civilians. Russia accuses Azov of doing this; there's absolutely no evidence this is true. And so, while any Azov volunteers having neo-Nazi sympathies is shocking and worthy of note, neo-Nazis are not the threat that Russia describes. But perhaps this is not about an actual threat and rather about something else entirely. The New York Times writes of how the word “Nazi” appears geared towards Russians, for whom remembrance of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany remains perhaps the single most powerful element of a unifying national identity. Putin is looking to the past to create motivation in the present. This is the historian Shane O'Rourke.

SHANE O’ROURKE: What the regime is doing is using the memory of the war, the very deep feelings it arouses, to legitimize its actions not just in Ukraine but but in many other places as well.

ATKINS: Putin has his reasons to do this, but he doesn't have the facts. Just after Russia's invasion, 150 historians who study genocide, Nazism and World War II released a statement. In it, they argue “This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of nazism and those who courageously fought against it”. The rhetoric is factually wrong: Nazis don't hold Ukraine hostage, they're not launching attacks on Ukrainians. There's no evidence to support this kind of claim.

SERGEI MAKROV (Former Russian MP): Most of the Ukrainians hate these neo-Nazi groups and they pray for Russia and for somebody else to liberate Ukrainian society from a Nazi group.

ATKINS: Ukrainians don't need liberating from Nazis; to their president, this idea is pure fiction.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY: It's already the 25th day of the Russian military trying in vain to find imaginary Nazis from whom they allegedly want to defend our people, just as they're trying in vain to find Ukrainians who would greet them with flowers.

ATKINS: That search will continue to be in vain because while the evolution of the Azov regiment deserves scrutiny, neo-Nazis and the far-right do not play the role in Ukraine that Russia falsely describes. They didn't in 2014; they don't now.