4 Apr, 2024 16:01

Ukraine ‘embraces’ exiled Russian neo-Nazi – Politico

Denis Kapustin leads an anti-Kremlin volunteer militia which is responsible for multiple attacks on villages

Exiled Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin – the leader of the Ukraine-based Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) paramilitary group – admitted that he wants to be a “Hollywood-style bad guy,” in an interview with Politico published on Wednesday.

The RDK has claimed responsibility for numerous cross-border attacks and incursions into Russian settlements, which have often resulted in the deaths of civilians. The group has been designated as a terrorist organization by Moscow.

As noted by the outlet, despite being recognized by Germany as “one of the most influential neo-Nazi activists” on the European continent, Ukraine has “embraced” Kapustin’s “form of bad guy,” seeing him and his group as allies against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The paramilitary group has also received direct support from Ukraine’s military intelligence services (GUR) led by Kirill Budanov, who has described the neo-Nazi fighters as “good warriors” for their cross-border raids on Russian territory, and has vowed to “try and help them as much as we can.”

Kapustin himself has also stated that his group’s raids have been closely coordinated with the GUR, which has provided logistical assistance, vetted their operational plans, and provided them with weapons and resources. He told Politico that while his group is “an official part of the Ukrainian army,” it has “serious political ambitions and political agenda – to march to Moscow and dismantle the Putin regime.”

In the interview, he also said he finds it amusing that Western journalists are put in an awkward position when reporting on his group.

“It is a very funny position for you and your colleagues because you all have been trying hard to put us in a bad light for years. Neo-Nazis, racist, white supremacists, terrible guys, blah, blah, blah. And then the darkest hour in Ukraine’s modern day history arrives. And all of a sudden the eternal bad guys turn out to be brave, courageous, determined, stubborn and heroes. And they’re like, ‘damn, how should I write about them?’”

Despite laughing off the label ‘neo-Nazi’, Kapustin runs a line of far-right apparel that features Nazi symbols. He has also said that he relished the notoriety, admitting that he has always wanted to be a “Hollywood-style bad guy,” calling Darth Vader from the Star Wars franchise his “ultimate inspiration.”

While Kiev openly supports Kapustin’s RDK and other Russian defector militias, one unnamed official from Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council has told Politico that Ukraine should distance itself from these groups, pointing out that the benefits of using them do not “outweigh the overall propaganda disadvantages.”

(US news whitewashes the Neo Nazi’s that Politifact said yesterday, “Ukraine is not a Nazi or neo Nazis there, and if there are, it’s very few. Posted on the Board, yesterday. So will politifact retract or correct their article?)

https://www.rt.com/russia/595422-russia-ukraine-nazi-brigade/

>>20677804

(Pic of the author. KEK)

3 conspiracy theories Putin promoted in his Tucker Carlson interview that Carlson didn’t challenge

• Russian President Vladimir Putin told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “Ukraine is an artificial state.” That claim is inaccurate and one-sided, historians say.

• Putin said the U.S. isn’t being run by elected officials such as President Joe Biden. Experts who study Russian propaganda campaigns and Russian politics told PolitiFact there’s no evidence to support that theory, and said Putin advanced the theory to sow existing political divisions in the U.S.

• Putin claimed Russia’s goal in invading Ukraine was “denazification.” There’s no evidence Ukraine is a Nazi state; this narrative has been rebutted by historians, U.S. officials and other experts.

Putin’s claim that Russia is pursuing ‘denazification’ in Ukraine

Putin has justified his invasion of Ukraine by claiming that Russia seeks to "denazify" Ukraine. During the interview, Carlson asked whether Putin had achieved the goals he had when he invaded Ukraine. “No," Putin replied.

"We haven’t achieved our aims yet because one of them is denazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements."

•There’s no evidence Ukraine is a Nazi state. This falsehood has been fact-checked by experts and news organizations, including PolitiFact. Historians who study genocides and the Holocaust decried Putin’s narrative as "factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive."

• Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust.

• Neo-Nazi groups exist in Ukraine — as they do in the U.S. and Russia — but Putin overstates their power. In 2014, the white-supremicist-led Azov battalion played a key role in fighting Russian separatists, and the battalion received appreciation from some within the Ukrainian government,but experts say it represents a small portion of Ukraine’s military, PolitiFact reported in 2022.

• The U.S. State Department has said Putin exploits a grain of truth to "manipulate international public opinion by drawing false parallels between Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany."

• John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, pointed to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll that found Ukraine was among the European countries with the highest percentage of people who expressed "favorable views" of Jews.

• "If Ukraine was a hotbed of Nazis, then presumably antisemitism is going to be a disproportionately large problem," Herbst said, adding that before Zelenskyy, Ukraine had a Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/feb/09/3-conspiracy-theories-putin-promoted-in-his-tucker/