While not actively wanting a Russian invasion, Ukraine’s Azov ultranationalist movement will see it as a chance to build its brand, warns far-right expert Michael Colborne. Last Monday, 79-year-old grandmother Valentyna Konstantynovska unwittingly became a symbol of the Russian information war against Ukraine when an image of her engaging in ad-hoc weapons training went viral. Only a short drive away from the current front line, where government forces have been battling a Kremlin-backed insurgency since 2014, Mariupol is a likely target for the more than 100,000 Russian troops massing on the border just 95 kilometers (60 miles) away. And with the threat of a renewed Russian offensive looming, Ukrainians in Mariupol such as Konstantynovska have been lining up for military instruction at the hands of a variety of official and private groups. Sunday’s session was run by members of Azov, a controversial ultranationalist group with its own political party and paramilitary force with ties to Western neo-Nazi groups. Images of Konstantynovska laying prone with a Kalashnikov, an Azov member standing above her in camouflaged fatigues that bore the group’s Wolfsangel logo – a Germanic symbol that was used by various SS armored and infantry divisions and is now popular among neo-Nazis – quickly made the rounds on social media. This prompted Russian state media to accuse the West of seeking to downplay the role of the far right in Ukraine. But while the ideology of groups such as Azov is not widely popular among Ukrainians, the movement is tolerated because of its “patriotism” and willingness to fight for Ukraine, explains journalist and researcher Michael Colborne, who heads up investigative journalism website Bellingcat’s work on the Eastern European far right. Colborne, whose book “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right,” is released next month, believes that to a certain degree, Ukrainian ultranationalists would welcome war with Russia as an opportunity to build their brand.
via haaretz: For Ukraine’s Far Right, War With Russia Can Be an Opportunity