Not since ISIS have we seen such a flurry of recruitment activity.
The would-be militants have been recruited by groups like the Azov Battalion, a far-right nationalist Ukrainian paramilitary and political movement. Azov was absorbed into the Ukrainian national guard in 2014 and has been a basis for Putin’s false claim that Ukraine’s government is run by neo-Nazis. Though Azov remains a fringe movement in Ukraine, it is a larger-than-life brand among many extremists. It has openly welcomed Westerners into its ranks via white-supremacist sites. Azov stickers and patches have been seen around the globe: from a bookbag at a July 2020 neo-Nazi counterprotest in Tennessee to the motorcycle of an attempted mosque bomber in Italy.
To be clear, not all in the far right adore Azov, which some see as having ties to Israel or Jewish funders. But since Azov publicly invited foreign fighters into its ranks on Feb. 25, the organization’s official Telegram chat group has been packed with messages from people in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and other Western countries expressing interest in joining. Neo-Nazi chat groups and channels in various languages have echoed Azov’s calls. I haven’t noticed this level of movement-wide recruitment activity since the Islamic State declared its so-called caliphate in 2014 and sought sympathizers globally to join its fold.
We at SITE, an intelligence group tracking global extremists, have noticed a surge in online activity by white nationalists and neo-Nazis in conjunction with the war in Ukraine. Among the hundreds of individuals who have announced their intent to join Azov in recent weeks are several known neo-Nazis. For instance, “MD,” an American member of Azov’s recruitment chat group, has repeatedly tried to get fellow countrymen to join the battalion in Ukraine. “Are there any Americans looking to go? We could for a group to go over there,” he said. We discovered that MD is also a member of some of the most sadistic far-right extremist chats on Telegram, where he has proposed establishing a neo-Nazi militia in the United States.
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For the most extreme among these neo-Nazis, the plan is even more sinister. They see Ukraine as a chance to further “accelerationist” agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes. This school of thought is demonstrated vividly by “Slovak,” whom we at SITE consider one of the most influential accelerationist neo-Nazi voices in the far right. On Feb. 25, Slovak announced that he was leaving an unknown country to fight in Ukraine. “This war is going to burn away the physical and moral weakness of our people, so that a strong nation may rise from the ashes,” he wrote. “Our job is to ensure that conditions remain terrible enough for long enough for this transformation to happen, and happen it must. Our future is at stake and we may not get another chance, certainly not one as good as this.”
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In many ways, the Ukraine situation reminds me of Syria in the early and middle years of the last decade. Just as the Syrian conflict served as a perfect breeding ground for groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, similar conditions may be brewing in Ukraine for the far right. Syria became a plotting and training ground for terrorists to mount attacks in the West, such as the attacks in Paris in 2015 and in Brussels in 2016 attacks.
The extremists who successfully make it to Ukraine could return home with new weapons and combat experience under their belts — or stay in Ukraine, where they can further influence their countrymen online. Just because extremists are “somewhere else” does not make them any less dangerous to the countries they come from, as we’ve learned all too well. No matter where war takes place, it always amounts to opportunity for extremists.
www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/14/neo-nazi-ukraine-war
