Pyotr Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine, was photographed wearing a symbol on his military fatigues that was created by the Nazis, during a meeting with Ukrainian troops last week.
The politician often showcases supplies such as quadcopter drones, household equipment, or even armored vehicles in his social media and PR, to emphasize his personal contribution to the war effort against Russia.
The images posted on his social media accounts last Saturday show him wearing a military patch with the so-called Black Sun, or ‘Sonnenrad.’ The symbol originates from Nazi Germany and is extensively used by various neo-Nazi groups around the world to denote their political leanings.
The infamous Ukrainian military unit, the Azov Batallion, for example, featured the Sonnenrad in its original insignia but later removed it as it attempted to downplay its association with far-right ideologies.
The controversial patch appears to come from the 36th Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. An earlier photo of the ex-president showed him clasping hands with Valery Prozapas, a member of Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party and a captain serving in the 36th Brigade, who wore an identical emblem.
The 10th Mountain Assault Brigade, which Poroshenko was visiting while sporting the patch on his jacket shoulder, is called ‘Edelweiss’ after Zelensky formally assigned the designation to the unit in February.
The Ukrainian military denies that the name has anything to do with the Nazi-era 1st Mountain Division of the Wehrmacht, which is notorious for war crimes committed by its troops on the Eastern front, and used the Edelweiss as an insignia.
The prevalence of neo-Nazi sympathizers among Ukrainian troops after the 2014 coup in Kiev has been thoroughly documented by researchers and the international press. However, this has been largely ignored by the Western media since the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine broke out last year.
In June, the New York Times contended that the widespread use of Nazi iconography in Ukraine was a “thorny issue,” emphasizing it does not reflect the true ideology of those displaying them.
Moscow, on the other hand, has called the empowerment of far-right nationalists in modern Ukraine one of the key reasons for the ongoing conflict.