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Comment by unionpivo | Hacker News Reader

People focus too much on Azov.

They (Azov battalion ) are 1000 - 1500 (depending on source) people , and apparently only 10% - 20% of them are self proclaimed Nazis. Even if all of them are, It would surprise me if this was even the biggest Ukraian Nazi group.

Most Westerner nations have more, hell In US you would be hard pressed to find a state that has less of them.

Not trying to excuse them. Any white supremacist and/or nazi has no place in modern society. Just trying to put things in perspective. If Azov is all the nazis that Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries.

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> People focus too much on Azov.

Please enlighten me, what other European country not only gave the arms to a Neo-Nazi gang (making it a government supported armed gang), absolved them of from any persecution from their misdeeds (including torture of civilians, as documented by OHCHR) AND incorporated it as a full featured unit in it's own army?

Complete with a wolfsangel, black sun and reichsadler on the coat of arms, you know, a long standing historical symbols of Ukraine along with vyshyvanka ?

Can you imagine something happening in a present day Germany? Poland? Latvi... well, in Latvia it could happen just fine, sure thing.

The problem is not in Azov, the problem is what there is too many nazi (real nazi, adoring AH and German nazi, not just 'extremely nationalistic' ones) everywhere in Ukraine, including government AND army. If the layer of shit in the cake is only 2% it is still a cake with a shit layer.

> If Azov is all the nazis that Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries.

No, Azov isn't 'all the nazis' sadly. In the first week of war there was enough UPA flags in the videos to tell that.

Germany and Poland aren't under existential threat from Russia. If your neighbor wants to invade you and has 3x the population, you can't pick and choose who you're going to let defend your country. Therefore the blame for tolerance of Azov is purely on Russian aggression.

Look at Mariupol right now. The only reason it's still standing is because of Azov. This shows that the tolerance of Azov was unfortunately necessary in order to stop Russian aggression. If you are upset by Azov, blame Russia.

> who you're going to let defend your country

Oh, sure, the shit started only month ago and there was nobody else to defend except a Nazi unit of a regular army, amirite? And it didn't existed for 8 previous years, right?

> the blame for tolerance of Azov is purely on Russian aggression.

... blame for tolerance? What?

> The only reason it's still standing is because of Azov

Or maybe they just don't want to surrender because they somehow know they would receive the same treatment they gave all those years?

> This shows that the tolerance of Azov was unfortunately necessary in order to stop Russian aggression

And now you are justifying a literal Nazis... Or maybe you are just actually sympathize with them?

No, it started well before that, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and when Russia poisoned a democratically elected leader of Ukraine, and when Russian state controlled media and Putin's own essays constantly talks about empire building and Ukraine not even existing, and given Russia's history of invading other neighbors (Georgia). That you actually said "the shit only started a month ago" shows me you're acting in complete bad faith in defence of the fascist Russia and I'm terminating the conversation here.

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