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Profile: Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment?

The far-right neo-Nazi group has expanded to become part of Ukraine’s armed forces, a street militia and a political party.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth day, a Ukrainian far-right military regiment is back in the headlines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin referenced the presence of such units within the Ukrainian military as one of the reasons for launching his so-called “special military operation … to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine”.

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On Monday, Ukraine’s national guard tweeted a video showing Azov fighters  coating their bullets in pig fat to be used allegedly against Muslim Chechens – allies of Russia – deployed in their country.

Azov has also been involved in training civilians through military exercises in the run-up to Russia’s invasion.

So what is the Azov regiment?

Azov is a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit whose members – estimated at 900 – are ultra-nationalists and accused of harbouring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.

The unit was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.

As a battalion, the group fought on the front lines against pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, the eastern region of Ukraine. Just before launching the invasion, Putin recognised the independence of two rebel-held regions from Donbas.

A few months after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russian-backed separatists, the unit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and exacted high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko.

“These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”

Who founded Azov?

The unit was led by Andriy Biletsky, who served as the the leader of both the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005) and the SNA (founded in 2008).  The SNA is known to have carried out attacks on minority groups  in Ukraine.

In 2010, Biletsky said Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”.

Biletsky was elected to parliament in 2014. He left Azov as elected officials cannot be in the military or police force. He remained an MP until 2019.

The 42-year-old is nicknamed Bely Vozd – or White Ruler – by his supporters. He established the far-right National Corps party in October 2016, whose core base is veterans of Azov.

Before becoming part of Ukraine’s armed forces, who funded Azov?

The unit received backing from Ukraine’s interior minister in 2014, as the government had recognised its own military was too weak to fight off the pro-Russian separatists and relied on paramilitary volunteer forces.

These forces were privately funded by oligarchs – the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region.

In addition to Azov, Kolomoisky funded other volunteer battalions such as the Dnipro 1 and Dnipro 2, Aidar and Donbas units.

Azov received early funding and assistance from another oligarch: Serhiy Taruta, the billionaire governor of Donetsk region.

Neo-Nazi ideology

In 2015, Andriy Diachenko, the spokesperson for the regiment at the time said that 10 to 20 percent of Azov’s recruits were Nazis.

The unit has denied it adheres to Nazi ideology as a whole, but Nazi symbols such as the swastika and SS regalia are rife on the uniforms and bodies of Azov members.

For example, the uniform carries the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol, which resembles a black swastika on a yellow background. The group said it is merely an amalgam of the letters “N” and “I” which represent “national idea”.

Individual members have professed to being neo-Nazis, and hardcore far-right ultra-nationalism is pervasive among members.

In January 2018, Azov rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to “restore” order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community.

“Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” a correspondent for the US-based magazine, the Nation,  wrote in 2019.

Human rights violations and war crimes

A 2016 report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHA) has accused the Azov regiment of violating international humanitarian law.

The report detailed incidents over a period from November 2015-February 2016 where Azov had embedded their weapons and forces in used civilian buildings, and displaced residents after looting civilian properties. The report also accused the battalion of raping and torturing detainees in the Donbas region.

What has been the international response to Azov?

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced that their own forces will not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections.

The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon.

In October 2019, 40 members of the US Congress led by Representative Max Rose signed a letter unsuccessfully calling for the US State Department to designate Azov as a “foreign terrorist organisation” (FTO). Last April, Representative Elissa Slotkin repeated the request – which included other white supremacist groups – to the Biden administration.

Transnational support for Azov has been wide, and Ukraine has emerged as a new hub for the far right across the world. Men from across three continents have been documented to join the Azov training units in order to seek combat experience and engage in similar ideology.

The oscillation of Facebook

In 2016, Facebook first designated the Azov regiment a “dangerous organisation”.

Under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, Azov was banned from its platforms in 2019. The group was placed under Facebook’s Tier 1 designation, which includes groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and ISIL (ISIS). Users engaging in praise, support or representation of Tier 1 groups are also banned.

However, on February 24, the day Russia launched its invasion, Facebook reversed its ban, saying it would allow praise for Azov.

“For the time being, we are making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine national guard,” a spokesperson from Facebook’s parent company, Meta, told Business Insider .

“But we are continuing to ban all hate speech, hate symbolism, praise of violence, generic praise, support, or representation of the Azov regiment, and any other content that violates our community standards,” it added.

The reversal of policy will be an immense headache for Facebook moderators, the Intercept , a US-based website, said.

“While Facebook users may now praise any future battlefield action by Azov soldiers against Russia, the new policy notes that ‘any praise of violence’ committed by the group is still forbidden; it’s unclear what sort of nonviolent warfare the company anticipates,” the Intercept wrote.

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Hunting the Invader: Ukraine’s Special Operations Troops

After two weeks of war, one of the most puzzling features is the clumsy and largely inefficient logistics that has so far dogged Russian offensive operations.

The infamous kilometers-long Russian convoy stuck northwest of Kyiv being only one of many cases of bumbling behavior. While many Russian military affairs experts have rightly attributed these shortcomings to poor battle planning, troops’ unpreparedness, and technical breakdowns, the effectiveness of Ukrainian forces should also be noted — they have mounted a stiff and clever resistance aimed at disrupting Russian logistics and lines of communication, with notable results. 

Against this backdrop, Ukrainian special operations forces (SOF) are emerging as a pivotal component of the Kyiv government’s strategy to erode the sustainability of the Russian invasion by raising its human and materiel costs through a combination of guerrilla tactics, mobile defense, and ad-hoc counterattacks.

The Ukrainian special operations forces at a glance

Ukraine’s decision to establish a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as a separate service branch came at the end of 2015 following a string of military setbacks in the south-eastern region of Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists exploited the structural deficiencies and unpreparedness of the Ukrainian military and took control of large swathes of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which were proclaimed the “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk” (DPR and LPR) in the spring of 2014.

This painful experience and the continuing Russian threat pushed the political leadership in Kyiv to launch an ambitious restructuring of the national armed forces. The 100% increase in Ukraine’s defense budget between 2015 and 2020, from $2.96bn to $5.92bn (about 4.1% of GDP), provides an idea of the urgency of these reforms, which aimed to modernize the Ukrainian military and improve their capabilities by prioritizing key areas such as command and control, maintenance, training and professionalization, operations planning, and investments in new weaponry.

This effort was complemented by the substantial support of Western countries, including the US , UK , Canada , and several European nations in the form of financial assistance, security sector reform (SSR) programs, and multiple defense cooperation initiatives within the framework of the 2016 NATO Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Special Operations Command, which includes approximately 2,000 personnel enlisted in seven special operations regiments split between the army and navy (this does not include the country’s main intelligence service, the SBU), has been amongst the main beneficiaries of Western support. Ukrainian special operators regularly participate in NATO military exercises, including all recent editions of the Combined Resolve Exercise , and bilateral as well as multinational training schemes involving NATO and non-NATO partner countries. A secretive US-led training program for Ukrainian special forces units was also launched by the CIA in the US in 2015. The goal was the creation of a highly professional force radically different from its Soviet-trained predecessor and which was designed to sharpen insurgency tactics and “kill Russians”, as one trainer put it.

This extensive cooperation is said to have tremendously improved Ukrainian SOF’s interoperability and capabilities, and in 2019 Ukraine’s 140th SOF Center became the first-ever non-NATO unit to obtain NATO’s SOF certification, becoming eligible to deploy under the NATO Response Force’s umbrella, with additional units expected to join the club soon. Training at alliance standards has also granted privileged access to state-of-the-art equipment, including advanced night-vision goggles , portable real-time intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and communication devices , which greatly enhances the effectiveness of Ukraine’s SOF in highly contested areas. Since 2016, Ukrainian SOF have improved to become the tip of a reforged national military that, just two years earlier, was described as “an army in ruins” by its chief of staff and was barely able to deploy 1,000 fully trained and equipped personnel out of 200,000 on the books.

The Russian invasion: Ukrainian SOF’s litmus test

While Ukrainian SOF was established in the context of the operation against irregular separatist units and hybrid threats emanating from Russia, over the years their role has inevitably evolved as part of the country’s preparation for a conventional conflict with the Russian army. Given the prolonged and well-documented military build-up around Ukraine, an all-out Russian offensive was expected, although it has clearly proved incredibly challenging. Still, the available evidence suggests that the Ukrainian SOF are performing remarkably well against an opponent that – at least on paper – enjoys both superior capabilities and overwhelming firepower.

The reasons lie not only in superior tactical skills compared to most Russian troops that have so far taken part in the invasion, but also in the ability to operate at night and in Russia’s poor tactics, as corroborated by the latter’s substantial lack of coordination — even at the platoon level — and combined arms maneuver capabilities.

Ukrainian SOF has repelled advancing Russian mechanized forces in Kyiv’s suburbs, especially Bucha, Irpin , and Hostomel, causing heavy losses. In other areas, they have maintained a “lower” profile and engaged in irregular warfare and operations behind enemy lines to attack the logistical tail, including supply convoys and Russian outposts such as the Chornobaivka airfield, near the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.

SOF units represent a force multiplier and offer Ukraine special skills that are meant to bridge critical gaps in key military domains, while personnel- and equipment-heavy frontline units should remain the preserve of the regular army. But as Russia adjusts its approach and pours new men and equipment into Ukraine, Ukrainian SOF may be forced to engage in more conventional and high-intensity combat against a heavily armed and less-restrained rival.

Although there are no available reports on SOF casualties (it’s unlikely there ever will be), attrition will exact its toll as the conflict continues, with serious consequences in terms of replacements and unit rotation given the force’s highly selective recruitment standards. Notwithstanding their adaptability, should the conflict continue at its current intensity, the Ukrainian SOF risk being stretched dangerously thin within a few weeks.

In anticipation of this and the need to continue a longer-term war of resistance against an occupying force, Ukrainian special forces are likely to use strategies that focus on active/mobile defense to buy time – as they are currently doing – especially if integrated within a nationwide irregular struggle aimed at exhausting the enemy’s human and material resources. This entails a smart relocation of SOF units across Ukraine, embedding them with local resistance, and ensuring they have continuous access to Western supplies and intelligence.

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What lessons for NATO and Western militaries?

Although the invasion is not yet three weeks old, Russia’s aggression already holds lessons for military planners and offers lessons to Western, and especially European countries, regarding the need to relaunch defense as an integral and essential component of foreign policy.

When it comes to special operations forces, this development makes it necessary to reassess – and possibly recalibrate — their role, taking into account their potential use against peer-adversaries in highly contested as well as hybrid environments, but also ensuring these forces preserve their distinctive nature.

Despite clear evidence regarding the poor performance of Russian troops in Ukraine, conventional war with NATO would certainly be different in terms of Russian military commitment, with key confrontations likely taking place in high-intensity scenarios where SOF must be ready to use traditional techniques, but also hybrid approaches based on advanced technologies and cyber warfare aimed at disabling an opponent before they can react.

Frederico Borsari is a Leonardo Fellow at the Center for European Political Analysis (CEPA), NATO 2030 Global Fellow, and a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). His main research interests include security and defense dynamics, transatlantic security relations, and the impact of new technologies on warfare.

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How Russian Soldiers Ran a ‘Cleansing' Operation in the Ukraine Town of Bucha

The organized brutality would be repeated at scale in russian-occupied territories across ukraine, by erika kinetz, oleksandr stashevskyi and vasilisa stepanenko • published november 3, 2022.

The first man arrived at 7:27 a.m. Russian soldiers covered his head and marched him up the driveway toward a nondescript office building.

Two minutes later, a pleading, gagged voice pierced the morning stillness. Then the merciless reply: “Talk! Talk, f----- mother-f----!”

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The women and children came later, gripping hastily packed bags, their pet dogs in tow.

It was a cold, gray morning, March 4 in Bucha, Ukraine. Crows cawed. By nightfall, at least nine men would walk to their deaths at 144 Yablunska street, a building complex that Russians turned into a headquarters and the nerve center of violence that would shock the world.

Later, when all the bodies were found strewn along the streets and packed in hasty graves, it would be easy to think the carnage was random. Residents asking how this happened would be told to make their peace, because some questions just don’t have answers.

Yet there was a method to the violence.

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What happened that day in Bucha was what Russian soldiers on intercepted phone conversations called “zachistka” — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. Those who didn’t pass this filtration, including volunteer fighters and civilians suspected of assisting Ukrainian troops, were tortured and executed, surveillance video, audio intercepts and interviews show.

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The Associated Press and the PBS series "Frontline" obtained surveillance camera footage from Bucha that shows, for the first time, what a cleansing operation in Ukraine looks like. This was organized brutality that would be repeated at scale in Russian-occupied territories across Ukraine — a strategy to neutralize resistance and terrorize locals into submission that Russian troops have used in past conflicts, notably Chechnya.

Ukrainian prosecutors now say those responsible for the violence at 144 Yablunska were soldiers from the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division. They are pursuing the commander, Maj. Gen. Sergei Chubarykin, and his boss, Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko — a man known for his brutality as leader of Russia’s troops in Syria — for the crime of aggression for waging an illegal war.

Police ended up recovering nearly 40 bodies along Yablunska street alone. Prosecutors have identified 12 around 144 Yablunska; AP reporters documented a 13th body in the stairwell of one of the buildings in the complex, in photos and videos taken on April 3.

Taras Semkiv, Ukraine’s lead prosecutor for the 144 Yablunska street case, told the AP and “Frontline” that it’s unusual to see war crimes play out on video and that the CCTV footage and eyewitness accounts from March 4 are key elements for the prosecution.

“The results of the criminal evidence we’ve gathered so far reveal that it wasn’t just isolated incidents of military personnel making a mistake but a systematic policy targeting the Ukrainian people," Semkiv said.

The Kremlin didn't respond to detailed questions sent by the AP.

This story is part of an AP/FRONTLINE investigation that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and the documentary “ Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” on PBS. The AP and “Frontline” reviewed hundreds of hours of video from surveillance cameras in Bucha and vetted audio recordings of phone calls by Russian soldiers.

Together with SITU Research, a New York-based visual investigations firm, we reconstructed events using a 3D model of Bucha, drawn from data from drones flown over Bucha this spring. AP reporters verified the locations of the security cameras, and The Dossier Center, a London-based investigative group funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, verified the identity of soldiers whose phone calls were intercepted by the Ukrainian government by cross-referencing Russian phone numbers, social media accounts, public reporting and information in leaked Russian databases.

The fall of Bucha

Around lunchtime on March 3, three armored Russian vehicles appeared just beyond the quarry at the western edge of Bucha. Maksym Stakhov, a veteran of the 2014 war against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, spotted them. He jumped in his car and raced around town, hollering: “Hide! Run away! The Russians are coming!”

Stakhov and a few dozen other volunteers, along with a handful of soldiers, set up three checkpoints to inspect people’s documents and help with evacuations along Yablunska street, a strategic road that roughly divides Bucha from neighboring Irpin. Most of the volunteers had never handled weapons before, Stakhov and another fighter told the AP, and they scrounged what few guns they could.

Civilians headed to the well-fortified basement of an office building in an industrial complex at 144 Yablunska street for shelter, unaware that what they believed was a safe haven would soon become a prison.

At 12:45 p.m., two Ukrainian soldiers took up a post in the driveway of No. 144 and began directing traffic. They were soon joined by around 20 more men, who made a brief last stand, their guns and grenade launchers aimed to the west. One soldier lay on his stomach in the road and fired off rounds on his rifle.

Analysts from the Royal United Services Institute and the Centre for Information Resilience reviewed CCTV footage from the AP and confirmed that the camouflage and markings of their uniforms indicate they were Ukrainian.

Meanwhile, a seemingly endless convoy of Russian firepower was winding into town along the railroad tracks. The volunteers’ radios crackled with a warning: Russian forces are moving in with heavy weapons. Evacuate.

“We had almost no weapons. It made no sense to fight them,” Stakhov said. “Guys were crying. We didn’t want to retreat.”

They fled across the fields to a mall in Irpin, which Ukraine still controlled.

Shortly before 1 p.m., most of the Ukrainian soldiers at 144 Yablunska street clambered into a black van and sped off to the east. Four stragglers fired off a few final rounds. By 12:57 p.m., the Ukrainians were gone.

To the west, Yablunska was burning. Half an hour after the Ukrainians disappeared, the first detachment of Russian soldiers emerged from smoke and flames and crept on foot down the street.

In the chaos of the Russian advance, eight Ukrainian checkpoint volunteers got separated from the others. One, a taxi driver named Ivan Skyba, said in court papers that he had volunteered to help Ukraine’s territorial defense but was not officially part of the military. All the men had was body armor, walkie-talkies, a Kalashnikov rifle and a hand grenade.

The volunteers ducked into a pale brick house at 31 Yablunska street and listened in silence to the searing crack of nearby rifles and endless rumble of Russian tanks. At 5:49 p.m., Andrii Dvornikov, another checkpoint volunteer, got a message from a Ukrainian fighter who had made it from Bucha to Irpin. He knew he was in trouble.

“Do you have food?” his friend asked.

“I can’t think about food now,” Dvornikov messaged back. “We want to get to Irpin.”

“Don’t go out at all!” his friend warned.

Around 9 p.m., Russian troops and military vehicles groaned down the long driveway of No. 144 under flurries of snow and sleety rain. By the morning of March 4, the Russians controlled Yablunska.

The cleansing was about to begin.

March 4: The cleaning begins

As more tanks rolled in, Russian soldiers shook hands, chatted and laughed with one another. Henry Schlottman, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst who reviewed surveillance footage from the AP, traced visible symbols and markings on Russian military vehicles and a munitions crate AP reporters found at 144 Yablunska to the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division and related units.

The paratroopers swept up and down Yablunska, checking people’s documents, examining their phones and interrogating them, according to interviews with local residents. In some cases, they already had the names of the people they wanted to find.

Around 10 a.m., Dvornikov called his wife, Yulia Truba, from the house on Yablunska. He told her to delete all evidence of their communications.

Not long after, Russian soldiers broke down the door of 31 Yablunska and hauled Dvornikov, Skyba, six other volunteers and the owner of the house out to the yard. They made them take off their shoes, called them Banderivtsi — implying they were Nazis — and accused them of acting as spotters for the Ukrainian military.

Then two Russian soldiers led the men at gunpoint down the wet, icy road to 144 Yablunska, cursing at them as they shuffled along in their stockinged feet.

It was 11:08 a.m.

Soldiers forced them to their knees behind a Russian military vehicle in the driveway of the complex and kicked them. Then Skyba saw them lift up the man next to him and shoot him in the head.

One of the volunteers, fearing for his life, confessed they’d been manning a checkpoint, Skyba said. The young man, nicknamed "The Saint,” survived the carnage at Yablunska street. But Ukrainians later hunted him down and investigated him for treason, according to documents and photographs seen by the AP and “Frontline.”

Over the next few hours, soldiers delivered more and more people to 144 Yablunska. They had been repeatedly told — by Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others — that they would be welcomed by their Ukrainian brothers and sisters as liberators and anyone who resisted was likely a fascist, an insurgent, not a real civilian.

Shortly before noon, four men were marched in. Then a lone man, hands behind his back. Two women and a man, with a red suitcase and a small dog in tow. A cluster of four civilians. Another pair, then a man, trailed by a woman and a black dog and then a cluster of five people and four dogs.

Then, at 12:48 p.m., soldiers led a man with a sack over his head away by the elbows. One minute later, an elderly woman hobbled in on her cane.

One of the people picked up that morning was 20-year-old Dmytro Chaplyhin, a baby-faced store clerk everyone called Dima. Soldiers went to his home, just off Yablunska, and found images of Russian tanks on his phone. They accused him of helping the Ukrainian military.

As the soldiers took Dima away, his grandmother, Natalia Vlasenko, fell to her knees.

“God, I begged them not to touch him,” she said. “He pointed a rifle at me and said, ‘If you won’t give him up the easy way, then we’ll do it the hard way.’”

“Grandma, don’t worry!” Dima called as he left with the soldiers and headed for 144 Yablunska street. “I will come back!”

It was the last time she saw him alive.

Meanwhile, Russian soldiers were breaking into people’s homes, forcing locks and busting through high fences with their tanks, CCTV footage shows. They told locals they were looking for weapons. Residents said the soldiers also stole tools, electronics gear, food and liquor.

They systematically took out every CCTV camera they found. Screen after screen cut to black.

Out front of their makeshift headquarters, Russian soldiers sat on top of their tank, sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola and playing with a pistol. Behind them, the crowd of civilians at No. 144 had thickened.

Barking dogs ran wild. Incongruously, some soldiers handed out tinned meat and matches and told people they were being freed from Nazi oppression, while others conducted public executions.

When the Russians marched Iryna Volynets to 144 Yablunska, she recognized one of the men lined up in the driveway as her old school friend Andrii Verbovyi. He was slumped over on his side in a fetal position, an alarmingly long trail of blood running from his body, she said.

Volynets knew her friend was still alive because she could see him trembling. They locked eyes. She thought she should cover him with a cloth that lay nearby, but her courage failed her.

Shaken, Volynets didn’t immediately notice that her own son, Slava, was also kneeling in the line of doomed men. She finally recognized him by his jacket and pants. He’d taken a blow to the ribs and was breathing heavily.

Soldiers began to lead the kneeling men into the office building two at a time, Volynets said. She was panicked, desperate to negotiate Slava’s release. The Russians took a young man over to take a close look at Slava.

“Is it him?” they asked.

“No, not him,” the young man answered.

Slava got his boots back and lived.

Russians let most of the civilians go that day, first the women, then the men. But the volunteers were not released.

Skyba was hit in the face so hard it knocked his teeth out. His eyebrow split open, and blood gushed down his face.

Russians tied his hands with tape behind his back, put a bucket over his head and kneeled him against a wall inside the office complex. They piled bricks on his back until he fell over, then hauled him up and beat his head through the bucket until he lost consciousness.

“What should we do with them?” Skyba heard a Russian say. “Kill them,” another answered. “But take them away first so they’re not laying around here.”

Russian soldiers led Sykba and other volunteers around the corner of the office building to a small courtyard where there was already one dead body. Then two soldiers started shooting.

Skyba felt something pierce his side, and he hit the ground. He had taken a bullet clean through his abdomen, a photograph shows. He pretended to be dead, terrified the Russians would see his exhalations cloud the cold air.

“I was waiting for the darkness,” he said. “Terrible ... I cannot explain ... . Just terrible.”

Once it was silent, Skyba worked his wrists out of the tape that bound them, crawled through the corpses of his comrades from the checkpoint and stole boots from the body of the only man who still had them on. He ran to a neighboring house and curled up on the sofa, trying to get warm.

Then he heard voices. Russians.

“Is anybody here in the house?” a man called. Skyba pretended to be the owner.

Believing him to be an injured civilian, the soldiers took him back to 144 Yablunska, this time for medical treatment, Skyba said. They led him to the basement, where more than 100 people were being held.

For the next three days, Skyba huddled there, telling no one about his bullet wound. The only toilet was broken. Children cried. Adults prayed. The smell of human waste was overpowering.

On March 7, Skyba and the others were allowed to leave the basement. Everyone else who had been captured with him, except for "The Saint,” was dead. He retrieved his eyeglasses, which had fallen near the body of one of the checkpoint volunteers. Then he walked out of 144 Yablunska street.

Russia-Ukraine War: Images Show Wreckage, Refugee Crisis

A rising levels of drunken violence spreads.

As their advance to Kyiv stalled and losses mounted, Russian troops continued to cleanse the streets of Bucha and surrounding towns with rising levels of sometimes drunken violence.

On March 14, a soldier nicknamed Lyonya called his mother from a cell tower near Bucha.

“There are civilians on the streets with their brains out,” he said. His mother wanted to know who had shot them.

“Our people,” Lyonya said.

“Maybe they were just peaceful civilians,” his mother said.

“Mom, there is fighting going on. And suddenly he jumps out! You understand? What if he’s got a grenade launcher?” Lyonya said.

One time, Lyonya described, they stopped a young boy and checked the Telegram account on his phone. The app had information about the location and logistics of the Russians.

“He was shot on the spot,” Lyonya told his mom.

On March 17 and 18, a Russian soldier named Ivan called his mother from Bucha. She’d forgotten which military unit he belonged to and he reminded her: 74268 -- the 234th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment, which is part of the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division.

Ivan said that Russians “shoot everyone, who gives a f--- who it might be: a child, a woman, an old lady, an old man. Anyone who has weapons gets killed. Absolutely everyone.”

He explained that his unit goes out for “cleansing” on its tanks, seizing weapons, strip-searching people and examining their phones “to see if there is information or who is against us.”

“If we have to — we will kill,” he said.

On March 21, a soldier named Maksym called his wife from outside Kyiv. He told her he’d been drinking — everyone was drinking — because life here without liquor was too much to bear.

“How will you protect yourself if you are tipsy?” his wife worried.

“Totally normal," he replied. "It’s easier to shoot civilians.”

He was scared, shocked by what he’d seen and very close to the front line.

“You know how many civilians I killed here? Those men leaked information,” he said.

“Don’t say anything!” his wife warned.

“Hide the weapons from me! I think I’m going crazy. I’ve already killed so many civilians.”

Later, she asked: “Why the f--- did you go there?”

"The civilized world must recognize it was murder"

What happened at 144 Yablunska is case No. 1 for the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

Ukraine is scrambling to build a system that can handle tens of thousands of complex war crimes investigations. There are more than 3,500 investigations in Bucha alone, and things have fallen through the cracks. In the case files for 144 Yablunska two dates were off, the AP found. Prosecutors said they were also checking into the 13th body AP reporters identified in April.

“Such grave tortures — we never had such a huge number of them,” Yurii Bielousov, the head of Ukraine’s war crimes department, told the AP and “Frontline.” “That’s why I’m sure that, unfortunately, especially in Bucha, because it was one of the first, lots of mistakes were done at the first stage.”

Some low-level perpetrators may get away due to mismanagement of evidence and procedural challenges, he said, but prosecutions of mid- and top-level commanders won’t be undermined.

For now, the families of Bucha must wait.

What relief Dvornikov’s widow, Yulia Truba, has found did not come from a court. A month after she buried her husband, he came to her in a dream.

“I feel bad without you. How can I talk to you if I already buried you?” she told him in the dream. “I am alive,” he said. His face was luminous.

She jolted awake, weeping. Then she realized his voice was not sad.

“We still have this connection,” she said. “After this, I felt better.”

What she wants Ukraine may not be able to deliver on its own. Truba — along with Skyba and relatives of two other people killed at 144 Yablunska — has filed a case against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights.

She wants the world to recognize how her husband died, his body left for weeks in a trash-filled courtyard.

“All the civilized world must recognize it was murder,” she said. “I want to prove it’s not fake and that it really happened.”

Associated Press reporters Adam Pemble, Allen Breed, Solomiia Hera, James LaPorta, Janine Graham and Richard Lardner and “Frontline” producers Tom Jennings and Annie Wong and co-producer Taras Lazer contributed to this report.

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February 5, 2023

Ukraine creates Offensive Guard brigades

The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced formation of new assault brigades to liberate Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.

Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs has kickstarted a project named Offensive Guard to reform the existing, and also to form a completely new, assault brigades within the structure of National Guard, National Police and Border Guards. The brigades will consist exclusively of volunteers who are driven by patriotism.

In total, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is forming eight assault brigades and the volunteers can pick the brigade they want to serve in on the official site: storm.mvs.gov.ua .

National Guard of Ukraine

• The well known Azov Regiment is being reformed into a separate brigade.
• The 1st Presidential Brigade from Kyiv. The soldiers participated in the defense of Kyiv, and they are currently deployed to Bakhmut.
• The 3rd Brigade of Operational Purpose from Kharkiv.
• The famous 4th Rapid Reaction Brigade and the defenders of Hostomel.
• The unit was created on the basis of 8th Operational Regiment from Vinnytsia Oblast.
• The National Guardsmen who stopped Russian advance on Zaporizhzhia promises to raise Ukrainian flag on Crimea. The brigade was formed on the basis of 9th Operational Regiment from Zaporizhzhia.

National Police

• A new Special Police Force brigade, created on the basis of Special Purpose Regiment Safari, Tsunami and Luhansk-1 Battalion. The majority of Special Patrol Police Force units will likely be included in the near future.

Border Guards of Ukraine

• Formed by the Border Guard’s elite. They were the first to meet Russian invasion forces in February 2022. The brigade was formed on the basis of 15th Mobile Border Detachment.

The new list of Offensive Guard is available on our site. The list includes all units mentioned above, including unit’s equipment, structure and other details.

Our community |

Mentioned Units |

Deployment Map

Our unique map showing units, operational sectors and defense lines

Is this “Azov brigade” the new name of the 3rd assault brigade that was recently created (and that include elements of Azov) ?

no, 3rd assault brigade is ZSU, and include elements of different Azov

Two different units: https://militaryland.net/ukraine/armed-forces/3rd-assault-brigade/ https://militaryland.net/ukraine/national-guard/azov-brigade/

Ukraine Today .org

Today we are all ukrainian.

‘Safari’ Field Work: Recent Video Of Ukrainian Special Forces Liberating Yampil (Close combat footage posted)

Ukrainian soldiers liberated the village of Yampil in the Donetsk region [app. 5 km SE of Lyman, ofp]. The fighters of the Safari Special Forces Regiment of the National Police of Ukraine took part in the de-occupation of the urban-type settlement.

They showed a fragment of the battles for Yampil.  Serhiy Bratchuk , the representative of the Odesa Regional Civil-Military Administration  published  the video.

“Safari Special Forces Regiment of the National Police of Ukraine takes an active part in the liberation of the Donetsk region. The video shows a fragment of the liberation operation in Yampil. The attached video is also the work of the Safari Regiment,” Bratchuk described the post.

The video shows how Ukrainian soldiers enter the settlement. Some enemy soldiers suddenly opened small arms fire on them from one of the houses. One of the defenders shouts and falls to the ground. The rest of his fellows also jump off, take up positions and open fire on the house from which the shooting is being carried out.

Some of the soldiers who suppressed the enemy’s firing point were also wounded.

https://www.obozrevatel.com/player/2943178.htm

https://charter97.org/en/news/2022/10/2/518167/

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