The Azov Brigade, known for its tenacious but ultimately unsuccessful defense of the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol early in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, is regarded as a particularly effective fighting force. But it was barred about a decade ago from using American arms because U.S. officials determined that some of its founders espoused racist, xenophobic and ultranationalist views, and U.N. human rights officials accused the group of humanitarian violations.
“After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State,” the agency said in a statement, referring to the “Leahy Law” that prevents U.S. military assistance from going to foreign units credibly found to have committed major human rights violations.
The State Department found “no evidence” of such violations, its statement says.
The brigade’s leadership says that it long ago shed those associations and that its commanders have fully turned over since that era.
Not looking forward to the inevitable far right attacks on minorities with arms smuggled through Ukraine
The blowback from this thing is going to be massive. They're pouring weapons into that place at a horrific rate, and many are going missing
Sure but the US has already learned it can ignore blowback because it can just lie about the cause. Same thing happened in Afghanistan. Taliban took over because the US armed them, and then the US just pretended like that never happened and invented an excuse to go to war with the Taliban.
Honestly at this point the blowback is probably considered a selling point. When this all dies down in a few years the US can just pretend like none of this happened and then invent an excuse to go to war with Azov. All in the name of shareholder value for arms manufacturing
Truly the great satan
Blowback is something a different administration has to deal with. Therefore, it's not our problem!
Arms going missing? Sudden surge of right-wing groups in places like Germany and Italy getting busted with caches?
Surely this has no coincidence at all. Remember to vote blue.