Azov has also gained itself a reputation far beyond its military exploits as a unit however. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR, 2016) declared Azov Battalion guilty of war crimes on multiple accounts. In 2014 Azov was documented engaging in mass looting from civilian homes in the down of Shyrokyne, as well as targeting civilian areas with artillery and small arms fire. The OHCR report also detailed the rape and torture of a mentally disabled man, claiming “A man with a mental disability was subject to cruel treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence by 8 to 10 members of the ‘Azov’ and ‘Donbas’ battalions in August-September 2014. The victim’s health subsequently deteriorated and he was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital.” In a later report from 2015, it was reported that a captured suspected supporter from the Donetsk People’s Republic was tortured via electrocution and waterboarding until he confessed to allegedly spying for the rebel governments.
Azov Battalion also has strong ties to fascism and uses neo-Nazi symbolism. Azov Battalion members were filmed displaying neo-Nazi and SS symbols and iconography, In one widely-circulated instance, the German ZDF television channel filmed an Azov fighter who had a swastika and SS symbol engraved into his helmet (NBC News, 2015). Azov Battalion has had so much coverage associated with their unapologetic following of Nazi ideology that in 2015 both the United States military and Canadian forces stated that Azov would no longer be directly trained by the two respective nations (Conyers, 2015). Tellingly however, these conditions were quickly removed when Azov became a regular military unit in the Ukrainian armed forces, as opposed to the militia status they had been operating under beforehand (Sokol, 2016). Continue reading
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