Below is a link to another recent report in the Western media concerning the Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian far right, this one from Foreign Policy, the influential US publication with close ties to the US defence and foreign policy establishment. Together with the Guardian report posted earlier today, it is further confirmation that concern about neo-fascist influence in Ukraine is not an invention of the Russian government or pro-Russian separatists in the Ukrainian civil war.
The strategic aim of the US and European governments, particularly Germany, is to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence without jeopardizing their access to the important Russian market and resources or provoking a direct military confrontation with a nuclear power. To this end, they have pressured Poroshenko to reach an accommodation with Putin, and in doing so have had to counter far right pressure on the vacillating Ukrainian president from the opposite direction. The Azov battalion numbers only in the hundreds, but is one of dozens of similar volunteer detachments organized under the auspices of Andriy Parubiy, Oleh Lyashko, Ihor Kolomoyskyi and other far right politicians and oligarchs. The important consideration is not the size of the Azov battalion, but how much its mood and outlook is shared by the other paramilitary units and, most important, by how much it would come to be shared by the mass of the population outside the Donbass region which, one expects, holds these front line fighters in high regard and would see the Ukrainian far right parties and militias as the alternative if there is a continued loss of confidence in the pro-Western Poroshenko government. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/30/preparing_for_war_with_ukraine_s_fascist_defenders_of_freedom _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
