The Ukrainian ultranationalist phenomenon and the Russian concept of “denazification”

Introduction

Since February 24, 2022, international media attention has focused on Ukraine. Russian incursions into the country shocked Western media and generated fear about the possibility of a new conflict on a global scale. So far, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost on the battlefield, in addition to a major crisis with migratory, economic, social and agri-food impacts.

However, it would be reckless and incorrect to say that it all started in February 2022. There have been ongoing conflicts within Ukrainian territory since at least 2014, when, as a result of the pro-Western turn taken by the Maidan Junta, separatist militias were formed in the East of the country as a way of popular resistance against the attacks by Kiev's forces on the ethnically Russian population of the region.

For almost a decade, a civil war affected the Donbass region, opposing the pro-NATO government and the “pro-Russian” rebel republics, in a conflict whose ethnic nuances became evident and unquestionable. As part of a process of “de-Russification” of Ukraine, the pro-Maidan government promoted policies that directly affected regions with an ethnic Russian majority, generating polarization and instability.

It is worth questioning, however, whether all these policies would have actually been materialized just by relying on the potential of the armed forces of a country where two thirds of the population are made up of Russian speakers and 80% of all citizens are members the Moscow Patriarchate. Not surprisingly, there was an immense delegation of services to a group of paramilitary militias integrated into the Ukrainian State, whose loyalty seemed restricted to the government arising from the “2014 revolution”.

Carrying neo-Nazi symbols and advocating an extremist, racist and fundamentally anti-Russian ideology, militias such as the Azov Battalion, Pravyi Sektor, Aidar, S14, Svoboda, among others, were fundamental allies of the pro-Western government against the people of Donbass, and became the central target of Russia’s ongoing special military operation, whose main objective is the “denazification” of Ukraine.

In its official discourse, the “West” – understood here as the group of member countries or allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – denies the existence of a neo-Nazi phenomenon in Ukraine, but, at the same time, these militias, in fact, exist, fight and carry symbols that refer to the Third Reich, generating doubts about how to interpret the situation from a scientific point of view and without ideological and bellicose passions.

In this sense, using a hypothetical-deductive method and taking as a hypothesis the existence of a Ukrainian Nazi phenomenon, which by nature and praxis is at the service of the West, this article proposes to investigate the origins and main characteristics of this problem.

1. Brief historical contextualization

Between November 2013 and February 2014, Ukraine was the arena of a series of violent protests and insurrections in what became known as “Euromaidan”. The name refers to the combination of the words Maidan, the square in Kiev where the demonstrations were concentrated, and Euro, in reference to the European Union (EU), an organization with which the protesters demanded greater integration and possible membership by the Ukrainian State.

The reason for the demonstrations was the refusal of then President Viktor Yanukovych to pursue a political program of European integration and hi decision to adopt a more neutral foreign policy towards Russia. As events unfolded, the demands of the insurgent leaders were joined by a wide range of anti-corruption and pro-Human Rights measures, leading to a wave of criticism of the Yanukovych administration. The president, after rounds of negotiations with the opposition, formally resigned on February 23, 2014.

The Russian Federation, its allies and analysts around the world interpreted the Euromaidan protests as a “color revolution” (7, p. 66), part of the “Global Spring”, which had been going on around the world for a few years, promoting regime changes to the detriment of anti-Western governments - leading to the rise of liberal-democratic regimes whose foreign policies were almost always inclined to align with NATO and the European Union.

As a consequence of the anti-Russian nature of the regime change, one of the first acts of the Ukrainian Parliament upon assuming provisional government was to abolish the law on co-official languages, which guaranteed the validity of the use of the Russian language in documents and public offices in regions with an ethnic Russian majority (17). The revolt of the Russian populations was immediate, triggering a major social crisis in the Russian-speaking Crimea region. With the increase in tensions and the imminent outbreak of an ethnic conflict, following a referendum confirming the popular desire for Crimea to integrate with Russia, in March 2014, a Russian intervention was carried out in the region. Without a Ukrainian military response and with widespread popular support, Crimean reintegration into Russia took place peacefully, although Kiev continues to claim sovereignty over Crimea.

Russian intervention, however, remained restricted to Crimea and did not expand to other regions of Ukraine with an ethnic Russian majority. In the Donbass region, popular protests against anti-Russian policies generated a military response by Kiev when, on the summer of 2014, after failed attempts at negotiations between local leaders and government representatives, the first bombings took place in Donetsk and Lugansk, cities that then began to claim sovereignty from Kiev, culminating in a large-scale civil conflict.

In September 2014, representatives of Donbass met with Russian, Ukrainian and European diplomats in Minsk, capital of Belarus, and signed a Protocol agreeing on an immediate ceasefire, mutual amnesty for combatants and broad autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DRP and RPL). The agreement, however, was repeatedly violated by Ukrainian forces and never actually came into force.

The Russian Federation, despite constant requests for support from the Republics, until February 2022, refused to take a position in the conflict or to recognize DPR and RPL as sovereign States. The Russian stance over eight years remained that of an observer of the Minsk Agreements, recognizing Donbass as an autonomous region within Kiev's sovereign space.

Faced with constant violations of the Protocol by Kiev, in 2021, Moscow appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, attaching a court case denouncing war crimes and international violations committed by Ukrainian forces (12). The process, however, was not attended by the Court's judges, culminating in a failure to pacify the conflict through legal means.

On February 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing DPR and RPL as independent states, changing the Russian position in the conflict after eight years. In the same act, defense and security cooperation agreements were signed, which would enable, three days later, the launch of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, whose declared objectives are the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Kiev.

2. Ukraine’s anti-Russian ultranationalism

The two central objectives of the Russian operation in Ukraine caught the world's attention, generating multiple opinions among competent analysts. Talking about “demilitarization” sounds quite direct and literal. The Russian government has long complained about the excessive presence of Western troops in Ukraine and the consequent threat to Russian national security (6, p. 485-490).

However, when we move on to the analysis of what the “denazification” of Ukraine would be, an immense list of doubts appears on the Western mentality. In order to appropriately analyze the denazification topic, we should before pay attention on the Ukrainian Nazism itself.

To delve into the theme, it is necessary to first understand the very essence of Ukrainian nationalism. As Krashennikova and Surzhik (8, pp. 30-126) explain, Ukrainian nationalism, since its foundation, was related to stimuli from Western powers to destabilize Russian national unity. European powers, such as Austria-Hungary and Germany, made financial and political efforts to stimulate anti-Russian xenophobia among Ukrainians. This political practice later was inherited by Americans.

The theoretical basis for this nationalism came from racist authors who began to spread the belief that Ukraine would be a kind of "pure Slavic nation", opposed to "Russian Asians". During the campaigns of the Third Reich, this ideology gained great popularity among Nazi sympathizers, contributing to the creation of armed militias allied with Berlin against Moscow.

In the 20th century, separatist impulses in Soviet Ukraine stirred political passions with several of Russia's enemies on the international stage, which led to an approximation of the first Ukrainian nationalists with the intelligence of the German Nazi Party. The problem, however, comes from even earlier.

As we know, Russia and Ukraine are deeply close nations in their history. What we today call Russia emerged from the ancient Kievan Rus', when Emperor Vladimir converted to Orthodox Christianity, the official religion of the Eastern Greco-Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), establishing the Rus’ as the heir of the Roman legacy.

The natural unity between Russians and Ukrainians - or, better said, between Russians only, since until then it didn't even make sense to talk about "Ukraine" as something separate from Russia - was realized over time as a central point to be analyzed from a strategic perspective. Russia's enemies understood that, to defeat Russia, it would be necessary to destabilize its unity.

British geographer Halford Mackinder (1, p. 228-236) himself, one of the founding fathers of geopolitics, established negotiations with Russian dissidents during the Civil War to co-opt them to support Ukrainian independence and the fragmentation of Russia. Since then, separating the peoples of ancient Russia has been a Western obsession.

This situation of nationalist influence and promotion of separatism in Russia was drastically worsened by Nazi interventionism and expansionism. Berlin saw in Ukrainian nationalism an opportunity to fragment the enemy, which is why it invested heavily in recruiting Ukrainian chauvinists for its international legions.

Amid this context of nationalist animosities, a particular figure from the first half of the 20th century would emerge as a “martyr-symbol” of the Ukrainian struggle for “national liberation”. Born in a Catholic and Westernist home in Galicia, Stepan Bandera (11) (1909-1959) would become the icon of Ukrainian nationalism and the fight for “emancipation” from Russia. Bandera led the movement known as the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”, having collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of Poland to develop joint strategies to attack Soviet Russia.

Banderist plan consisted of forming an alliance with Berlin as an initial step to defeating Soviet communism, then guaranteeing Ukrainian “independence” through the consolidation of a National State allied with Germany. In his career, Bandera has demonstrably collaborated with racial persecution in Ukraine and Poland, taking an active part in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, not just restricting himself to the role of a “mere” anti-Soviet fighter.

It is known from clear documentary evidence that Bandera was eliminated in an intelligence operation carried out by Soviet agents. At the time of his death, the Ukrainian leader was not recognized as a “hero” or “martyr”, neither by his people nor by the West, which never needed Bandera to guide its anti-Russian strategies. In his time, Bandera was always strictly associated with the agendas he defended: ultranationalism and Nazism. And, at the time of his death, in 1950, such flags did not please either side of the ascending bipolar global order.

However, Ukrainian ultranationalism never actually ceased to exist. Its political strength was neutralized during the decades of Soviet rule, but a new militant spirit emerged when communism collapsed, between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. For the first time, Ukraine came into existence as country, in the form of a sovereign Nation State, voicing every form of nationalism and extremist, xenophobic fascism.

For example, in 1992, almost immediately after the Soviet collapse, the “Congress of Nationalists of Ukraine” emerged. This was a far-right movement that resurrected the memory of Galician Banderist nationalism and served as a precedent for the emergence of yet another broad list of organizations and political parties with similar ideological orientation. Over time, many of these organizations began to form armed “self-defense” militias, contributing to a political atmosphere of tension and hostility.

A new ultranationalist spirit was witnessed after Euromaidan, when, in 2014, these groups that inherited Galician nationalism began to receive direct state support, the most notorious of which was the Azov Battalion, founded in the same year as Maidan, bringing together thousands of fighters loyal to the anti-Russian political junta that took power after the protests in Kiev.

By decision of Arsen Avakov, Minister of the Interior during the government of Petro Poroshenko, Azov and its allied militias became part of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, being given police powers as an auxiliary paramilitary force. In practice, the measure consolidated a gradual process of institutionalization of Banderist ultranationalism in the Ukrainian State.

It is important to note that the Banderist legacy brings with it a huge ideological burden that also refers to the place of birth and main political activity of the Ukrainian leader. Galicia was a key point in the Hitlerite strategy of attacking the Soviet Union, having been founded even a “District of Galicia” under German command in the region, in addition to an entire battalion of the Waffen-SS during the years of Operation Barbarosa. The place, since the times of the WWII, has been a focus of anti-Russian and fascist nationalism.

The “Gallicization” (13, pp. 211-225) – “Banderization” (3, 2022) – of Ukraine, like every political phenomenon, was not a uniform and linear process. There were moments of rise and fall in institutional adherence to ultranationalism. In 2010, for example, President Viktor Yushchenko appointed Stepan Bandera posthumously became a “national hero”, forming a high point of the nationalism hostile to Russia that had been taking shape since 1992. However, with Yanukovych Kiev took more neutral and impartial positions in relation to Moscow, which would be reversed after the Euromaidan.

An incontrovertible fact, however, is that since 2014 ultranationalism has entered an unprecedented escalation in Kiev, fueled both by the political will of a pro-Western government and by the interests of external agents in Eastern Europe.

3. The institutional functionality of Ukrainian ultranationalism

Ideologically, we know that ultranationalism served as a guide for a pro-Western and anti-Russian turn in a Ukrainian political context aligned with NATO. However, the pragmatic and functional aspect of these extremisms also needs to be analyzed.

First of all, it is necessary to emphasize that Ukraine and Russia, despite recent rivalries, continue to be extremely connected nations. The majority of the Ukrainian population knows the Russian language, which is the only one spoken in large parts of Ukraine. There is, in the same sense, a high degree of ethnic mixing, with ethnically Russian and Ukrainian families maintaining common ties, marriages and all types of intercourse. Another relevant factor is the majority religion of the Ukrainian population, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is part of the Moscow Patriarchate, as Ukraine is under Moscow’s canonical territory.

Faced with such a scenario, it is evident that it would be difficult to carry out a political program of “de-Russification” of Ukraine with only forces loyal to the State. The Ukrainian military, which was mobilized for fighting in Donbass, for example, also includes ethnic Russians, Russian speakers and Orthodox Christians in its ranks. Any risk assessment would point to a series of problems in Kiev's strategy to combat the Russian ethnic group with only its regular forces.

It is no coincidence that extremist militias have become a key point in Ukrainian strategy. Ultranationalist groups, previously linked to the image of mere radical gangs, began to structure themselves as organized parallel forces, with public and private support from internal and external agents, high purchasing power for equipment, weapons, and ammunition.

For the projects of a political regime totally inclined towards a pro-Western alignment and an anti-Russian foreign policy, arming neo-Nazi militias was just a way of obtaining strategic advantage through the strengthening of specific groups previously committed at an ideological level to a feeling of hatred towards everything that concerns Russia – including ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural factors. It is no coincidence that these battalions were fundamental allies of the government throughout the civil war. Their ideological commitment to the destruction of any and all Russian memory on Ukrainian soil would serve the interests of the Maidan Junta much more profitably than the Ukrainian armed forces that brought together among their fighters people who speak Russian and share the same religious beliefs as their enemies.

Taking all these factors into account, on another occasion (10), I formulated a comparative model between the functioning of Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias in the Maidan Junta’s structure with the functioning of the Waffen-SS during the German Drittes Reich. As well known, the aforementioned militia operated as a double-armored force of the Nazi Party, with exclusive loyalty to the figure of Adolph Hitler, being outside the regular armed forces.

In practice, the meaning of this type of action is simple to understand: while armed forces serve the State, partisan militias serve specific parties, politicians and juntas, regardless of the government's current configuration. This means that if at any time the German armed forces rebelled against the Hitler government, attempted a coup d'état or surrendered to foreign forces, the Waffen-SS troops would take action, declaring war on the state forces and starting a civil conflict to guarantee the power of the only institution they served to, the Nazi Party.

The Ukrainian ultranationalist militias act in an identical or very similar way, serving as a special protection and double shielding for the Maidan Junta. It is possible to speculate that if a pro-Russian Ukrainian president were eventually elected in Kiev or if there were a military insurrection against the government, such irregular forces would fight to protect the coalition of individuals and organizations that has held power since the Euromaidan.

In short, these militias work for the project of an anti-Russian Ukraine, and their current integration into the State is only due to the context of institutionalization of a radical pro-Western ideology. In any eventual institutional change, it would be predictable that such forces would engage in civil war as a last resort to protect the Maidan Junta.

It is based on this perception of neo-Nazi militias as exclusive protection forces for the Maidan, parallel to the armed forces, that we can understand some of the multiple meanings involved in the Russian discourse of “denazification”.

4. The deep meaning of “denazification”

To understand the Russian notion of denazification, we made an initial effort to outline in general terms what the Ukrainian neo-Nazism would be. However, it is important to first define what exactly “Nazism” would be in the Russian understanding.

For a country whose history is deeply affected by the Second World War, the meaning of “Nazism” is perhaps literal and refers to the horrors experienced by the Russian people during the German invasion, beginning Moscow's dramatic and heroic victory in the Great Patriotic War.

There is, however, a more contemporary and direct aspect of this meaning, which can be found in the legislation of the Russian Federation itself. In 2014, the “Law against the rehabilitation of Nazism” was implemented in Moscow, being a rule that protects the memory of the Russian struggle against the German invaders and illegalizes the act of disrespecting or vilifying the symbols of Russian military glory (9). In practice, the law criminalizes any and all acts that could be considered “Russophobic”, as its objective is to ensure respect for the memory of the heroes and victims, to the detriment of the figure of Nazism - which is now understood in a supra-ideological level, reaching a status of “perpetual enemy” of the Russian people.

For Russia, and even more emphatically for post-2014 Russia, Nazism means Russophobia. The debate around the rehabilitation of Nazism momentum in Moscow precisely as a reaction to the events in Ukraine. It is no coincidence that the project for the aforementioned law, which had been proposed in 2009 and ignored by Parliament, had its discussion resumed, being quickly approved in the legislative house and signed by the Executive in a period of a few months. The Ukrainian ultranationalist phenomenon and its impacts on the Russian people have reignited concern about the resurgence of the historical enemy, demanding effective actions against any and all acts disrespectful to the memory and legacy of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

Ukraine, in this sense, would be seen by Moscow as the hub of a neo-Nazi phenomenon due to its institutional encouragement of Russophobia and the vilification of Russian memory. For Russia, neutralizing this phenomenon would be a measure of national emergency, given the threat represented by Nazism – and, obviously, such neutralization could only materialize with a military force capable of suppressing the potential for aggression of Ukrainian Russophobic groups.

The institutional meaning of the denazification process must also be highlighted. If for the Maidan coalition the neo-Nazi militias have functioned as a shielding force over the last eight years, on the other hand, for the Russians this institutional system that has been in force since 2014 would be a kind of captivity for Kiev's regular forces.

This perspective allows us to understand more clearly the intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, when, on February 25, he called on the Ukrainian armed forces to seize power (2). At the time, the Russian leader stated that it would be “easier” to negotiate with the Ukrainian military in power than with the “neo-Nazis who occupied Kiev”. In practice, Putin only formalized in speech the previously tacit Russian view that the Ukrainian state was held prisoner by parallel ultranationalist forces. From that moment on, these forces would be neutralized by Russian military action, which would make it possible for the Ukrainian armed forces to intervene in the government and seek a peace agreement without the consent of the Maidan Junta.

Unfortunately, however, Western interventionism prevented Ukrainian military from acting and a peace agreement from being achieved.

Conclusions

Given the above, it is possible to draw some partial conclusions about what we call “Ukrainian neo-Nazism”:

1. Russophobic ultranationalism in Ukraine is real and historically solid, deeply related to Nazi ideology since its origins;
2. This phenomenon increased after the 2014 coup d'état and extremist gangs were elevated by the pro-Western government to the status of auxiliary forces integrated into the Ministry of the Interior;
3. Such militias were a central point in Ukraine's de-Russification strategy, which included promoting policies of ethnic and cultural genocide.

And, in the same sense, it is worth saying about the Russian concept of “denazification” that:

1. The Russian understanding of “Nazism” encompasses any manifestation of hatred or disrespect for Russian culture and its military history;
2. Ukraine has come to be seen as a kind of global center of neo-Nazism and Russophobia, posing an existential threat to Russia;
3. For Moscow, the Ukrainian State was subjected to a kind of captivity, as a hostage of the neo-Nazi militias protecting the Kiev Junta, and therefore “denazification”, in addition to the aim of overcoming Russophobia established in Ukraine, had the objective of restoring the functioning regular status of national institutions – understood here as a return to pre-2014 status.

Evidently, the sources available for the study of such a recent topic are still scarce, and this work should be seen as just a first analytical effort towards a global understanding of the topic. Even so, the partial results point to paths that can serve as guidance for a deeper scientific analysis of the origins and consequences of the ongoing conflict.

 

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