A Serbian far-right organisation called the People’s Patrols announced a rally in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, claiming that Vladimir Putin is fighting against a “Nazi and pro-Western government”. The People’s Patrols, an organisation of right-wing extremists which started out as a group hostile to the migrants and refugees crossing Serbia on route to Western Europe, and which has also campaigned against COVID-19 vaccinations, said it plans to hold a protest in support of Russia in Belgrade on Friday. “We want to support the Russian and Belarusian people in the fight against the Nazi and pro-Western government in Kyiv,” the group wrote on its Instagram page. Ukraine’s President Volodymy Zelensky is Jewish and has dismissed allegations that he heads a Nazi administration as absurd. The People’s Patrols also accused the West of hypocrisy over the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and over the Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist volunteer militia with neo-Nazi links that was incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in 2014. The far-right group claimed that innocent Russian civilians were killed during fighting in Ukraine in 2014, when Russia sponsored armed separatists in the eastern Donbas region and annexed Crimea.
via balkan insight: Serbian Far-Right Group to Hold Pro-Russia Rally