Original Link Here: US funding of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion purposely undermines peace efforts in Ukraine – LifeSite
The U.S. has reportedly supported Azov since 2015, despite a ban imposed by Congress due to their neo-Nazi ties. This ban was lifted in 2016 under Pentagon pressure, reinstated in 2018, and recently removed again.
Editor’s note: The following article is Part I of a two-part series on U.S. influence in Ukraine and its relationship with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Part II can be found HERE.
(LifeSiteNews) — The news that the Biden administration has lifted a ban on funding the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is simply business as usual for a regime which changes names and definitions to suit itself.
The news should come as no surprise.
Despite the apparent U-turn, the U.S. seems to have been training Azov – and battalions like it – since 2015.
When reports reached the U.S. about this, via the Daily Beast, an amendment was quickly passed in July 2015 which “[p]rohibits funds provided by this bill from being used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.”
The amendment was made to a bill proposing funding to Ukraine, the May 19, 2015, Department of Defense Appropriations Act (HR 5293).
However, in January 2016 this ban was lifted. As The Nation reported:
“Under pressure from the Pentagon, Congress has stripped the spending bill of an amendment that prevented funds from falling into the hands of Ukrainian neo-fascist groups.”
In 2018, Congress again stipulated that U.S. aid money could not be used to support Azov. As The Hill reported on the spending bill at the time:
“… the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill signed into law last week stipulates that ‘none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.’ ”
It is this latest “ban” that the Biden admin has now “quietly dropped” – following sustained lobbying from the Department of Defense. Yet with a 70-plus-year history of the U.S. backing Ukrainian nationalists to fight a war against Russia, this should come as no surprise.
History in the making
Since the beginning of this war, history has been erased, ignored, or simply rewritten. Even the beginning of the war being in 2014 and not 2022 is not widely known. Nor are the circumstances which led to it.
This is normal during and after wars. And so it is also normal that an obviously neo-Nazi battalion – formerly one of dozens of private armies run by oligarchs – is not in fact a neo-Nazi battalion.
This is part of the wider process of the transitioning of our reality to a post-sane politics, where the obvious is false, ruin is a sort of rescue, and everything evil is in fact good for you.
The transitioning of reality
The Hyatt Hotels heiress Penny Pritzker was announced on June 10 as the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery. The Pritzkers are best known for aggressively backing the transgender cult, with one of the family having “transitioned” himself, and another – as Governor of Illinois – being the first to promote what investigative Jennifer Bilek calls “Synthetic Sex Identities” in U.S. schools.
Just as the Pritzkers work to “transition” your children for profit, so does the State Department seek to identify its policies as sane and healthy – when they monetize orchestrated misery.
Ukraine does not have a functioning economy without massive and continued U.S. financial support. It has lost its industrial base and most of its coastline. It has lost much of its farmland. The U.S. has rejected outright an offer of a negotiated peace by Russia made this month, preferring instead to pursue a war through proxies such as the Azov Battalion and others like them.
All of these “neo-Nazi” battalions have a curious origin. Just like the “transgender” industry in the U.S., they were all backed by billionaires. When the Western media first reported on them in 2014, they were rightly seen as threat to the Ukrainian government itself, as well as Ukraine’s “greatest weapon.”
That is because they were not controlled by the Ukrainian state. They were one of many private armies run by oligarchs. Consistently opposed to peace, and vehemently anti-Russian, their partnership with the State Department of Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland has seen their power eclipse that of their former president – the actor Volodymyr Zelensky. They have been recognized as a threat to Ukrainian state power for a decade.
Founding of the oligarchs’ private armies
The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 with money and support from Igor Kolomoisky. He is described as a “Ukrainian-born Israeli-Cypriot” on Wikipedia. He identifies as Ukrainian. He lives in Tel Aviv. In 2019, the FBI was investigating him for financial crimes. Kolomoisky also had his own private army – “The Dnipro Battalion.”
Kolomoisky used this army to invade the Kiev headquarters of Ukrainian gas company UkrTransNafta in March 2015 in a “night raid” reported by Reuters.
He was attempting to seize control of the company, which he said had been “stolen” from him by the government. You can see him come out from the building and swear at reporters immediately after his troops had occupied the building here:
Kolomoisky owns the TV station which broadcasted Zelensky’s TV show, “Servant of the People.” In this show, Zelensky plays a nobody who becomes the president of Ukraine.
In season 3 of “Servant of the People,” Zelensky wins the election. At the same time, Zelensky won the real election. The name of his party is “Servant of the People”
Zelensky – who always used to call himself Vladimir Zelensky and was a Russian speaker from birth – is man who now identifies as the president of Ukraine. He has transitioned successfully from a man publicly impersonating the president, and in celebration of this obvious fact all the liberal leaders now respect his pronouns, calling him “Volodymyr Zelyenskyy” and never saying his “deadname.”
Former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko described Zelensky as a “Kolomoisky puppet.”
In June 2023, investigative journalist George Webb reported that Kolomoisky owned the FBI building in Cleveland, Ohio, and rents it to them.
How does a Jewish “entrepreneur” with FBI ties come to own a private neo-Nazi army? He is not the only one.
30 private ‘Nazi’ armies in Ukraine
This story from Reuters in 2015 documents how oligarchs in Ukraine had raised 30 private armies to defend their own business interests from state control. The original link is now mysteriously dead, but you can still read about how Kolomoisky also backed another battalion – Aidar – which was accused of war crimes against “civilians they were charged with protecting.”
“Although all have been brought under the authority of the military or the National Guard, the post-Maidan government is still struggling to control them.”
One of the demands of the 2014 U.S.-backed putsch known as the Maidan was to crack down on this power:
“When the Maidan protesters overthrew former President Viktor Yanukovich [in 2014], they demanded that the new government clamp down on the oligarchs’ abuse of power.”
“Instead, many became even more powerful: Kiev handed Kolomoisky and mining tycoon Serhiy Taruta governor posts in important eastern regions of Ukraine, for example.”
The Jewish Nazis?
How does the Jewish identity of the owners of these battalions – and of the Ukrainian former president himself – square with the celebration of Nazism?
A report in the Times of Israel explained this in March 2022. These are anti-Russian Nazis, not anti-Jewish Nazis.
Jewish “political consultant” Konstantin Batozsky described his experience working with Azov in 2014-15:
“‘They were soccer hooligans and wanted attention, so yeah, I was shocked when I saw guys with swastika tattoos,’ he said about the Azov members he got to know. ‘But I talked with them all the time about being Jewish and they had nothing negative to say. They had no anti-Jewish ideology.’ ”
A second source is given to support this claim. “Daniel Kovzhun, a Jew from Kyiv who ran logistics during the war in Donetsk for paramilitary units, described a similar experience.”
“There were Orthodox Jews in Azov,” he said. “I know because I was there on the battle lines. No one cared who was Jewish, we cared about keeping our country together.”
Both men claimed the Russians were antisemitic.
Zelensky’s future Ukraine a ‘big Israel’
In April 2022, Zelensky announced his vision of Ukraine’s future. He said in the Jerusalem Post: “We will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
This is the transition he plans for Ukraine.
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research says there are 40,000 Jews in Ukraine in a pre-war population of 40 million. Yet the model of Ukraine’s future is the state of Israel, which is currently accused of mass starvation and war crimes. Just like the private armies of the oligarchs, now part of the regular Ukrainian army.
As Reuters reported in 2015: “… private battalions have starved civilians as a form of warfare, preventing aid convoys from reaching separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine, according to [an] Amnesty report.”
Zelensky’s idea of Ukraine as a “big Israel” is that of a nation in a permanent security emergency run by war criminals.
This vision was published by the Atlantic Council, founded in 1961 by the U.S. State Department to strengthen U.S. influence in Europe.
Though funded by U.S. taxpayers, it also receives generous donations from the Rockefeller Foundation, Klaus Schwab’s Schwab Fund, Google, and Goldman Sachs.
The transition of Ukraine from a nation into a permanent state of emergency is backed by billionaires with an agenda of their own.
Zelensky’s promise of peace in 2019
Zelensky was voted into power with a promise of peace. His inaugural speech to the Rada – the Parliament of Ukraine – promised a ceasefire in Donbas and negotiations with the Russians in May 2019.
“However, our first task is ceasefire in the Donbas. I have been often asked: ‘What price are you ready to pay for the ceasefire?’ It’s a strange question. What price are you ready to pay for the lives of your loved ones? I can assure you that I’m ready to pay any price to stop the deaths of our heroes.”
He demanded the return of Crimea, as it was the property of Ukraine. Crimea was gifted to Ukraine by the Ukrainian Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.
Ninety-seven percent of Crimeans are Russian speakers, and 75 percent said they were Russian – not Ukrainian – in a 2015 report by E-International Relations, which describes itself as “the world’s leading international relations website.”
