You thought they were destroyed? You're so wrong

You thought they were destroyed? You're so wrong

In the forests near the city of Zaporizhzhia, training of three new regiments of special Ukrainian units of Azov is underway, although it is believed that those units were destroyed in Mariupol.

Just to recall, the Ukrainian port of Mariupol fell into the hands of the Russian army, when almost two thousand Ukrainian fighters were captured, among whom were members of the notorious Azov group. But the unit itself still exists, training new members and trying to distance itself from its nationalist roots.

According to Jutarnji list, the training of three new platoons of Azov is underway in the forests near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. Their soldiers, who are volunteers, told the Wall Street Journal that there is no talk of neo-Nazism in today's Azov.

"Don't believe in Russian propaganda," said Vyacheslav Rodionov, who played the flute in the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra before the war and now leads a unit of about 20 Azov fighters. "They will lie about Azov as much as they can, they will call us Nazis - but the real Nazis are Russian soldiers," he said.

However, the Azov group definitely has a problematic past. The first commander of that group, Andriy Biletsky, joined Azov in 2014 after leading political groups that openly flirted with neo-Nazi and racist ideology.

Despite that, the group was joined by many Ukrainians who wanted to help defend Mariupol from the then attacks of pro-Russian separatists from Donbas. Azov was founded at a time when the Ukrainian army was in disarray, and it gathered fighters from all social spheres who successfully defended the city.

The first members of Azov were a diverse group - amateur historians, neo-Nazis and football fans. However, it was a relatively educated group. According to data from 2014, when the unit numbered 345 people, as many as 40 percent of them were university educated, and two had a doctorate.

But the unit today has trouble procuring weapons for its troops. In 2018, U.S. Congress banned the armament and training of that unit, and a group of democratic representatives even demanded from the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Mike Pompeo to include Azov on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, together with Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

At the time, Azov was described as a "violent white racist extremist group" and claimed that it had "recruited, radicalized and trained American citizens for years", citing an FBI report. New Azov fighters are being recruited again from all walks of life, and they claim to journalists that they oppose fascism and that they do not have any extremist views. They describe themselves as football fans, and on their uniforms - which they mostly bought themselves, they wear patches with the logos of their favorite football clubs.

There are many lawyers, among them piano teachers and musicians, and there is also a trader who had a store with vegan pet food in Kyiv. All of them claim that they volunteered for Azov not because they are nationalists, but because that unit guarantees them the fastest access to the first front line and because it has a reputation as an elite unit.

Despite everything, they are poorly equipped. Apart from rifles - which many soldiers had to procure themselves - the new members of the group have only a few anti-tank systems Javelin and NLAW. Then, they have to buy their own boots and bulletproof vests.

One of the experts who trains Azov volunteers is Andrew Milburn, an experienced former US Marine Corps, who founded the private military company "Mozart Group", and who says that the most difficult part of the training is to prepare inexperienced fighters to be sent to the front line in a short time.

"If they only give you 120 bullets, how do you get a guy who never fired a gun to a point where he can reliably hit a target," he asked. "The new volunteers", he adds, "are so inexperienced that one even shot himself in the leg during training last month", Mozart Group instructors claim.