A year before the meeting, Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov Battalion, acknowledging its links to Nazi ideology. Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents. The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.” After a journalist asked the Canadian Forces about the Azov social media postings, officers scrambled to come up with a response, according to documents obtained by this newspaper through Access to Information law. Lt. Col. Fraser Auld, commander of Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine, warned that a news article might be soon published and could result in questions being asked inside the Canadian government about why such a meeting took place. A year before the meeting, Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov Battalion, acknowledging its links to Nazi ideology. “Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis,” the Canadian officers warned in their 2017 briefing.
via ottawacitizen: Canadian officials who met with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis feared exposure by news media: documents
siehe auch: Allegations of Canadian troops training neo-Nazis and war criminals sparks military review. A review into how Canada approves the foreign military personnel its trains should be ready by early next year but parts of the study will need to remain secret. (…) But critics point out the Canadian Forces does not actually conduct vetting of those foreign troops that it trains, which is at the heart of the problem. It leaves such vetting up to the nation providing the troops to be trained. The review comes as a Jewish group in Ukraine is highlighting a new video of Ukrainian paratroopers singing a song to honour Stepan Bandera. Bandera was a anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator whose organization is linked to the murder of more than 100,000 Jews and Poles during the Second World War. He is revered in Ukrainian nationalist and far-right circles. The Canadian military was warned in 2015 before starting its Ukraine training mission about the dangers of the far-right within the Ukrainian military ranks, but the senior leadership largely ignored those concerns.
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By Noah Brooks – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external free” href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/ministryofdefenceua/38568991375/”>https://www.flickr.com/photos/ministryofdefenceua/38568991375/</a>, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link