Social media users have called out a member of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, which includes fighters from the reformed neo-Nazi Azov Regiment, over several posts that appear to mock those who were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
In a series of posts on Instagram, Nikita Miroschenko, a member of the brigade, shared photos and reels of him paying a visit to the death camp in Poland several weeks ago. One of the reels showed the gates of Auschwitz with the infamous Nazi slogan “Arbeit macht frei” with German march music playing in the background. The post was accompanied by a caption reading: “We commemorated the memory, but there is one nuance.”
A second reel showed Miroschenko’s girlfriend Anastasia Korshykova, a member of the same brigade, standing in front of the death camp. This image was juxtaposed with a meme known as “Disaster Girl,” featuring a girl staring at the camera as a house burns behind her. The clip was accompanied by the song ‘Baby on Fire’ by the South African hip-hop group Die Antwoor.
Miroschenko was also pictured at Auschwitz wearing a T-shirt that read: “Where we are, there is no place for anyone else” – a phrase attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The flurry of posts, which appeared to mock the memory of the more than a million Jews, Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war who were killed at the camp, sparked a firestorm on social media. Moss Robeson, a self-described researcher of Ukrainian fascism, noted that “it’s unreal how Meta has let Ukrainian Nazis fester while it censors Palestinians and anti-Zionist voices in the name of ‘anti-Semitism’.”
Jake Hanrahan described one of Miroschenko’s posts as “disgusting,” while Daniel Mayakovsky remarked that “if you oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, you are an anti-Semite according to the Western media... but if you go to Auschwitz with a T-shirt quoting Hitler to gloat about killing Jews, then Europe and the US send you weapons.”
Social media users also highlighted another image of Miroschenko smiling against the backdrop of a quote by another Nazi leader Herman Goring, which read: “Marriage[s] between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden.” Mayakovsky denounced the image, suggesting that the Ukrainian soldier had “visited Auschwitz to enjoy what Hitler did.” “They are sick,” he added.
Miroschenko’s controversial posts came to public attention as his brigade announced a tour of several EU countries to seek more support in the fight against Russia. Moscow has long warned about neo-Nazi ideology flourishing in Ukraine, saying that the “denazification” of its neighbor was one of the key goals of the ongoing military campaign.