Ukrainian authorities are indulging Neo-Nazis & far-right radicals who operate with total impunity, says Russian Foreign Ministry

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has failed to stop the march of far-right forces in the country, and local neo-Nazis feel complete impunity from the authorities. That’s according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova delivered her comments on Thursday after a march in Kiev to commemorate the anniversary of SS Galicia, a military division formed in Lvov in 1943 and made up of Ukrainians loyal to Berlin and Adolf Hitler during World War 2.

“This policy of official Kiev is an insult to the memory of not only Russian and Ukrainian people, but all the peoples of the former Soviet Union,” Zakharova said. “These soldiers gave their lives for the future of subsequent generations, including the citizens of present-day Ukraine.”

As well as receiving criticism from Moscow, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expressed concern over the celebration of units that were “involved in some of the worst crimes that took place during the Holocaust.”

“We condemn the continued glorification of Nazi collaborators and expect the Ukrainian government to unequivocally condemn all such phenomena and prevent them from being repeated,” the ministry’s spokesman Lior Haiat wrote on Twitter.

Zakharova also noted the increased frequency of neo-Nazi gatherings in Ukraine, noting recent torchlight marches in memory of Stepan Bandera, a fascist hero for the country’s far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

“After Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory in the 2019 presidential elections in Ukraine, many voters who voted for him expected that the new head of state would curb nationalist forces,” she continued. “Unfortunately, those hopes have not been realized. Kiev continues its policy of indulging Ukrainian national-radicals, distorting the history of the Great Patriotic War, and glorifying Nazi collaborators.”

In 2020, the United Nations voted in favor of a resolution to combat the promotion of Nazi ideology, with Zelensky’s Ukraine being one of only two countries to vote against the measure.

The text called on member states to pass legislation to “eliminate all forms of racial discrimination” and condemned the “glorification, in any form, of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization,” as well as “revisionism in respect to the Second World War.”

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