The Ukrainian government is often accused of turning a blind eye to what are described as neo-Nazi paramilitary groups fighting Russia-backed separatists.
Many say such groups have been an effective fighting force in the almost eight-year conflict in eastern Ukraine.
But as Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford reports from Kharkiv, while their origins stretch right across Eastern Europe including Russia, they remain politically weak so far.
Threads over Ukraine around here have been escalating to 100 pretty fast but I feel this is an elephant in the room that has mostly been brushed off or even justified as "Russia is more fascist, so having a few fascists in the Ukrainian army isn't so bad".
More broadly, I'm aware that if the US provides aid to Ukraine, it's under the provision of "none of this goes to the Azov Battalion" but realistically, how is that enforced? Is there accountability here? We have historical examples (most recently in Afghanistan/Iraq) of US aid going to insurgents that eventually come back to haunt us or, worse, we have no idea where the money goes/it disappears.
One of the more insidious aspects of this is the deliberate way our media ignores the neo-Nazi associations of these groups in favor of "civilian/volunteer Ukrainian resistance fighting for their country" headlines. If our media covered Trump rallies or neo-Nazi marches but deliberately left out all the white supremacist iconography and behavior, we'd rightly be pissed off.
mod edit: RT is the state media machine for the Russian government with a history of pushing misinformation on the Russian state to an English audience and as such is not a valid source when it comes to their domestic reporting
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